Lecture 1

Question 1

What are some defining factors of when you know you are in a city?

Answer 1

○ Structures (buildings, roadways, manicured vegetation)

○ Behaviour (rushing, more people in general)

○ Things (cars truck, public transportation)

○ Environment (temp, high wind, sounds)

Question 2

A city is A large human settlement with what 2 requirements?

Answer 2

• Large # of people (>5000+) live and work there

* Fills important societal functions (administrative, religious, economic, trade, transportation)

Question 3

Where does the word city derive from?

Answer 3

Word derived from Latin (civitas)

- meaning citizenship or community member (working together working towards a common goal)

Question 4

What are other names for cities?

Answer 4

Urban Habitation
City Proper
Urban Agglomeration
Metropolitan

Question 5

From the UN how do you determine a boundary of a city?

Answer 5

From the UN there is No standardized international criteria exist for determining the boundaries of a city

Multiple different boundary definitions are available for any given city

Question 6

What is the universally accepted definition of a city?

Answer 6

There isn’t one

Question 7

What is a city proper based on?

Answer 7

Based on political boundaries

Question 8

What is a urban agglomeration based on?

Answer 8

Multiple cities that have grown together

Question 9

What is a metropolitan area based on?

Answer 9

Census area

-encompasses workers and commuters into the city centre

Question 10

What is the difference between a meta, mega and large city?

Answer 10

Meta: 20 million or more
Mega: 10 million or more
-started in the 90’s
Large: 5-10 million

Question 11

Where do most urban people live?

Answer 11

Most urban people live in small urban cities like London

Question 12

How man cities are there worldwide with more than 1 million people?

Answer 12

500

Question 13

What are world/global cities?

Answer 13

Have economic influence on the world

• Transactional nodes that function as the command-and-control (decision-making) centers of the world economy (from the satelite view they shine the brightest).

Strategic sites that run the world

Question 14

What are some examples of global cities?

Answer 14

• London, New York, Tokyo, Paris (the most influence, worlds biggest companies here)
• Singapore, Hong Kong, Washington, Brussels
• Toronto, Chicago, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Shanghai (some cities doesn’t have a ton of people but still has a big impact on the world economy)

Question 15

What are the leaders in producer services?

Answer 15

Banking and Markets
Accounting
Advertising
Law
Real Estate

Question 16

What are producer services?

Answer 16

Businesses serving businesses

-where you have these, you have a global city,

Question 17

What are hubs for innovation rich in?

Answer 17

Human capital (people come and go because they are drawn to theses places, popular culture starts here). -More progressive, magnet for migrants, talent and thrive in diversity

• Dominate popular culture through their powerful media outlets and creative industries
• Open to new people and ideas; magnet for migrants; thrive on diversity

Question 18

there is a shift in cities and nations, what is it?

Answer 18

Cities in some respect are greater/more important on the world stage instead of nations

Question 19

What are different ways to asses cities?

Answer 19

population
economics
liveability (assess stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure in 140 different cities.)
-these dont have to be world cities

Question 20

What are the 2 ways in which you can describe leading cities based on demography and number of people?

Answer 20

Demographic tradition (# of people)

Functional tradition (network, relationship)

Question 21

What is Functional tradition (network, relationship)?

Answer 21

represented in studies of world and global cities which are interpreted as integral to contemporary globalization processes. (flow of capital)

Question 22

What is Demographic tradition (# of people)?

Answer 22

represented by the mega-city project, which is exploring the human and ecological implications of contemporary and future huge population concentrations

Question 23

Are all world cities mega cities?

Answer 23

World city does not = megacity

Question 24

What % of the population live in urban cities?

Answer 24

55% of people now live in urban cities vs in the 1800 there was only 3% of people lived in cities

Question 25

What are the trends for populations living in urban areas, rural areas and the overall world population?

Answer 25

Urban population increasing and rural marginally increasing or even decreasing, and overall for the world the population is increasing and will reach a peak until the trend will eventually decrease, same with urban populations

Question 26

What is urbanization?

Answer 26

refers to the population shift from rural to urban residency, the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas, and the ways in which each society adapts to this change
-Change in lifestyle/livelihood

Question 27

What will the urbanization trends look like by 2050?

Answer 27

Asia and Africa will have the biggest growth and the biggest cities in the world in the future