Napier Centre for Learning Communities

Cities

This area of our website is intended as an open repository of opinions, knowledge and experiences in order to promote discussion and deliberation around key Sustainable Communities research themes. To submit your comments, please click here.

A number of the texts have been sourced from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, and all of the texts included below are freely available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (click here to read this License in full)

What do we understand about cities?

"The city is a human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous" [this definition was the subject of an exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2000] Wikipedia

The difference between towns and cities is differently understood in different parts of the English speaking world. There is no one standard international definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. Although city can refer to an agglomeration including suburban and satellite areas, the term is not appropriate for a conurbation (cluster) of distinct urban places, nor for a wider metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area. Wikipedia

The notion of global cities is rooted in the concentration of power and capabilities within all cities. The city is seen as a container where skills and resources are concentrated: the better able a city is to concentrate its skills and resources, the more successful and powerful the city. This makes the city itself more powerful in terms that it can influence what is happening around the world. Following this view of cities, it is possible to rank the world's cities hierarchically (John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff, "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6, no. 3 (1982): 319). Wikipedia

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Key Areas: Citizens Business Cities Governance E-learning Knowledge Management Sustainable Development This page was last updated Thursday July 01 2010		Cities This area of our website is intended as an open repository of opinions, knowledge and experiences in order to promote discussion and deliberation around key Sustainable Communities research themes. To submit your comments, please click here. A number of the texts have been sourced from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, and all of the texts included below are freely available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (click here to read this License in full) What do we understand about cities? "The city is a human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous" [this definition was the subject of an exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2000] Wikipedia The difference between towns and cities is differently understood in different parts of the English speaking world. There is no one standard international definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. Although city can refer to an agglomeration including suburban and satellite areas, the term is not appropriate for a conurbation (cluster) of distinct urban places, nor for a wider metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area. Wikipedia The notion of global cities is rooted in the concentration of power and capabilities within all cities. The city is seen as a container where skills and resources are concentrated: the better able a city is to concentrate its skills and resources, the more successful and powerful the city. This makes the city itself more powerful in terms that it can influence what is happening around the world. Following this view of cities, it is possible to rank the world's cities hierarchically (John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff, "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6, no. 3 (1982): 319). Wikipedia