What is a Modern City: Lec #2 Flashcards
What is urban systems theory?
a theory about the relative population groups of cities that focus on growth
What are urban structures?
A pattern of land-use, settlement, and where different groups of people live.
How are cities “imagined environments”?
In the 20th century, attempts to plan and design cities in reaction to problems of cities that were based on industry and manufacturing
What is global urban population?
people who live in cities
How many people live in cities now (2000s) verus 2000 years ago?
now: 47%
then: 1%
When did the global population start increasing?
Around 1800
What were the four clusters of large cities in around 430 BC?
Eastern Meditarean
Mesopotamia
Northeastern India
Eastern China
What was the global economy like in 430 BC?
almost purely agricultural
small-scale craft production
food growth for individuals, rather than larger food production in cities
What was the centre of cities in 430 BC?
Religious, administrative, or trade-centred
What is largest city in 2010?
Tokoyo, 27M people
What are cities like in 2010?
- cities globally are more spread out (in latitude)
- have coal, petroluem, and nuclear energy
-timber production, agriculture, and construction is highly industrialized. - new tech: planes, trains, trucks, cars, diseal and electrical engines
- More extensive infrastructure like rail and road networks
-GLOBALIZATON: trade big among various regions
-A shift to a gobal integrated economy
What is the urban centre of gravity?
the largest 25 cities and then calculating the avg. population by weighted population
How has the centre of gravity shifted from 430BC to present?
Not much movement until 1500-1800: a big jump north
Then1800-1900: huge shift west
1900-1950: shift south
18950-2000s: shift back east
What caused shifts in urban centre of gravity?
Multiple industrial revolutions
INDUSTRIALIZATION
In 19th C, cities became centres of industry
What is a modern city?
Industrial centres, centres of industrial productions
How do the 1900 and 2010 largest cities maps differ?
-industrial manufacturing shifted south and east after 1980 and so did the large cities
What are “New” cities?
- cities that are shaped by the new global economy, they are post-industrial cities found outside of NorthA and Europe
- a fully planned city that was planned to be built where no settlement existed before
- many created for economic activities or to spark economic or geo-political purposes
Who is Georg Simmel and what did he say about life in cities?
- he was an early urban theorist
- wrote The Metropolis and Mental Life
- Believed modern cities had large and mobile populations (too many people to know everyone personally)
- Cities are “worlds of strangers”
Who is Louis Wirth and what did he say about modern urban life?
- an urban theorist
-wrote Urbanism as A Way of Life
-“ Cities are the workshops of modern [humans]” - Large population led to anomie: feeling isolated, break down of traditions, inc suicide rates, but also free people from rural constraints
- high pop. density: leads to need for social control and explicit rules for behaviour
-Hetrogenous population: leads to different cultural backgrounds, “rewards individual differences”
What is anomie?
The feeling that one is alone and isolated from others, a consequence of high population cities
What are examples of social control in cities?
police, street signs/lights, clock-time
How does social diversity affect urban life?
- more cultural backgrounds and more groups of people which leads to division of labour and more specialization in labour
What is the “city proper”?
delineated by administartive boundaries, it is districts forming an urban centre.
A city without the suburbs.
Urban agglomeration
the city with the suburbs, zones of a distinctly urban character while adjacent but outside the city proper
Metropolitan area
applies to only cities of a large size whose adminstrative centre has about 50 000 inhabitants
- the perimeter often includes suburbs and smaller agglomerations
- doesn’t apply to cities before 1900
