CITIESCITIES
A city is a relatively large, dense, permanent, het-
erogeneous, and politically autonomous settlement
whose population engages in a range of nonagri-
cultural occupations. Definitions of cities and their
associated phenomena vary by time and place, and
by population size, area, and function (Shryock,
Siegel, and associates 1976, pp. 85–104). The city is
often defined in terms of administrative area,
which may be larger than, smaller than, or equal to
the area of relatively dense settlement that com-
prises what is otherwise known as the city proper.
The suburb is a less dense but permanent settle-
ment that is located outside the city proper and
contains populations that usually have social and
economic ties to the city.
Definitions of urban vary by nation; in the
United States the term refers to populations of
2,500 or more living in towns or cities and to
populations living in urbanized areas, including
suburbs. In other nations, the lower limits for
settlements defined as urban vary between 200
and 50,000 persons. United Nations definitions of
urban areas emphasize a population of 20,000 or
more, and cities a population of 100,000 or more.
Urbanization refers to the economic and social
changes that accompany population concentra-
tion in urban areas and the growth of cities and
their surrounding areas.
Cities reflect other areas with which they are
linked and the civilizations of which they are a
part. Cities are centers of markets, governments,
religion, and culture (Weber 1958, pp. 65–89). A
community is a population sharing a physical envi-
ronment and leading a common and interdepen-
dent life. The size, density, and heterogeneity of
the urban community have been described as
leading to ‘‘urbanism as a way of life,’’ which
includes organizational, attitudinal, and ecologi-
cal components different from those of rural areas
(Wirth 1938).
THE CITY IN HISTORYTown and city development has been described as
tied to a technological revolution in agriculture
that increased food production, thereby freeing
agriculturalists to engage in nonagricultural occu-
pations. This resulted in an evolution to urban
living and eventually to industrial production
(Childe 1950). A second view is that some towns
and cities first developed as trade centers, and
were then nourished by agricultural activity in
their hinterlands (Jacobs 1970).Increasing complexity of social organization,
environmental adaptation, and technology led to
the emergence of cities (Child 1950; Duncan 1964).
Excluding preagricultural settlements, towns and
then cities were first established in the fourth to
third millennium B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia
within the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the
Harappa civilization in the valleys of the Indus
River and its tributaries, and in the Egyptian Old
Kingdom in the lower Nile valley. Other centers
appeared in the Huang Ho basin on the east coast
of China and the Peruvian Andes in the second to
first millennium B.C., and in Mesoamerica in the
first millennium B.C. (Phillips 1997, pp. 82–85).Small agricultural surpluses and limits on trans-
portation meant that the first towns were small
and few in number, and contained only a small
proportion of the populations of their regions.
Economic activities of the earliest towns were tied
largely to their surrounding areas. After the rise of
towns in the Middle East, trading centers appeared
on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean;
some, such as Athens, became city-states. After
developing more effective communication and
social organization, some Western city-states ex-
panded and acquired empires, such as those of
Alexander the Great and of Rome. Following the
decline of Rome, complex city life continued in
the East and in the West in the Byzantine and
Muslim empires, while the population of Europe
declined and reverted, for the most part, to subsis-
tence agriculture and organized into small territo-
ries held together by the Catholic Church (Hawley
1981, pp. 1–35).Sjoberg (1960) has described preindustrial cit-
ies as feudal in nature and sharing social, ecologi-
cal, economic, family, class, political, religious,
and educational characteristics different from those
in modern industrial cities. In the former, the city
center, with its government and religious and
economic activities, dominated the remainder of
the city and was the locale of the upper social
classes. Homogeneous residential areas were found
throughout the city, but nonresidential activities