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96-448: The study of cities has changed dramatically from the 1800s over time, with new frames of analysis being applied to the development of urban areas. The first college programs were created to observe how cities were developed based on anthropological research of ghetto communities. In the mid-1900s, urban study programs expanded beyond just looking at the current and historical impacts of city design and began studying how those designs impacted

192-573: A central area containing buildings with special economic, political, and religious significance. Archaeologists refer to this area by the Greek term temenos or if fortified as a citadel . These spaces historically reflect and amplify the city's centrality and importance to its wider sphere of influence . Today cities have a city center or downtown , sometimes coincident with a central business district . Cities typically have public spaces where anyone can go. These include privately owned spaces open to

288-665: A central authority. The term can also refer either to the physical streets and buildings of the city or to the collection of people who dwell there and can be used in a general sense to mean urban rather than rural territory . National censuses use a variety of definitions – invoking factors such as population , population density , number of dwellings , economic function, and infrastructure – to classify populations as urban. Typical working definitions for small-city populations start at around 100,000 people. Common population definitions for an urban area (city or town) range between 1,500 and 50,000 people, with most U.S. states using

384-461: A central point. This form could evolve from successive growth over a long time, with concentric traces of town walls and citadels marking older city boundaries. In more recent history, such forms were supplemented by ring roads moving traffic around the outskirts of a town. Dutch cities such as Amsterdam and Haarlem are structured as a central square surrounded by concentric canals marking every expansion. In cities such as Moscow , this pattern

480-539: A combination of these. Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations . The degree of urbanization is a modern metric to help define what comprises a city: "a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants in contiguous dense grid cells (>1,500 inhabitants per square kilometer)". This metric was "devised over years by the European Commission , OECD , World Bank and others, and endorsed in March [2021] by

576-604: A continuous urban landscape called urban agglomeration , conurbation , or megalopolis (exemplified by the BosWash corridor of the Northeastern United States .) The emergence of cities from proto-urban settlements , such as Çatalhöyük , is a non-linear development that demonstrates the varied experiences of early urbanization . The cities of Jericho , Aleppo , Byblos , Faiyum , Yerevan , Athens , Matera , Damascus , and Argos are among those laying claim to

672-430: A distinctive elite social class, but it should indeed be considered a city based on a functional redefinition of urban development. In particular, Jenné-Jeno featured settlement mounds arranged according to a horizontal, rather than vertical, power hierarchy, and served as a center of specialized production and exhibited functional interdependence with the surrounding hinterland. More recently, scholars have concluded that

768-466: A grid plan with specialized districts used across the Hellenistic Mediterranean . The urban-type settlement extends far beyond the traditional boundaries of the city proper in a form of development sometimes described critically as urban sprawl . Decentralization and dispersal of city functions (commercial, industrial, residential, cultural, political) has transformed the very meaning of

864-507: A key role in both the economy and government. Late antique cities in the East were also undergoing intense transformations, with increased political participation of the crowds and demographical fluctuations. Christian communities and their doctrinal differences increasingly shaped the urban fabric. The locus of power shifted to Constantinople and to the ascendant Islamic civilization with its major cities Baghdad , Cairo , and Córdoba . From

960-520: A minimum between 1,500 and 5,000 inhabitants. Some jurisdictions set no such minima. In the United Kingdom , city status is awarded by the Crown and then remains permanent. (Historically, the qualifying factor was the presence of a cathedral , resulting in some very small cities such as Wells , with a population of 12,000 as of 2018 , and St Davids , with a population of 1,841 as of 2011 .) According to

1056-407: A neglect of urban history until the 1980s. Academics were then allowed to assert that peasant rebellions were often reactionary rather than revolutionary and that China's modernizers of the 1870s made significant advances, even if they were capitalists. For over a century—since Heinrich Schliemann searched for and found ancient Troy —archaeologists and ancient historians have studied the cities of

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1152-688: A privileged elite among towns having won self-governance from their local lord or having been granted self-governance by the emperor and being placed under his immediate protection. By 1480, these cities, as far as still part of the empire, became part of the Imperial Estates governing the empire with the emperor through the Imperial Diet . By the 13th and 14th centuries, some cities become powerful states, taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires. In Italy, medieval communes developed into city-states including

1248-495: A rule cannot produce their own food and therefore must develop some relationship with a hinterland that sustains them. Only in special cases such as mining towns which play a vital role in long-distance trade, are cities disconnected from the countryside which feeds them. Thus, centrality within a productive region influences siting, as economic forces would, in theory, favor the creation of marketplaces in optimal mutually reachable locations. The vast majority of cities have

1344-410: A sample of individuals over ten or 20 years. Common themes include social and political changes, examinations of class formation, and racial/ethnic tensions. A major early study was Stephan Thernstrom's Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964), which used census records to study Newburyport, Massachusetts , 1850–1880. A seminal, landmark book, it sparked interest in

1440-520: A specific city. Urban history Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns , and the process of urbanization . The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history , architectural history , urban sociology , urban geography , business history , and archaeology . Urbanization and industrialization were popular themes for 20th-century historians, often tied to an implicit model of modernization , or

1536-750: A substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower boundary for their size. In a narrower sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing , transportation , sanitation , utilities , land use , production of goods , and communication . Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations , and businesses , sometimes benefiting different parties in

1632-549: A super-wealthy elite living in gated communities and large masses of people living in substandard housing with inadequate infrastructure and otherwise poor conditions. Cities around the world have expanded physically as they grow in population, with increases in their surface extent, with the creation of high-rise buildings for residential and commercial use, and with development underground. Urbanization can create rapid demand for water resources management , as formerly good sources of freshwater become overused and polluted, and

1728-423: A temple. A minority viewpoint considers that cities may have arisen without agriculture, due to alternative means of subsistence (fishing), to use as communal seasonal shelters, to their value as bases for defensive and offensive military organization, or to their inherent economic function. Cities played a crucial role in the establishment of political power over an area, and ancient leaders such as Alexander

1824-567: A workers' town associated with the pyramid of Senusret II , and the religious city Amarna built by Akhenaten and abandoned. These sites appear planned in a highly regimented and stratified fashion, with a minimalistic grid of rooms for the workers and increasingly more elaborate housing available for higher classes. In Mesopotamia, the civilization of Sumer , followed by Assyria and Babylon , gave rise to numerous cities, governed by kings and fostered multiple languages written in cuneiform . The Phoenician trading empire, flourishing around

1920-471: A world of intensifying globalization , all cities are to varying degrees also connected globally beyond these regions. This increased influence means that cities also have significant influences on global issues , such as sustainable development , climate change , and global health . Because of these major influences on global issues, the international community has prioritized investment in sustainable cities through Sustainable Development Goal 11 . Due to

2016-452: Is not urban history. Only a handful of studies attempt a global history of cities, notably Lewis Mumford , The City in History (1961). Representative comparative studies include Leonardo Benevolo, The European City (1993); Christopher R. Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (1995), and James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru. eds. Edo and Paris (1994) (Edo was

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2112-527: Is transdisciplinary because it uses theories from a variety of academic fields and places them within an urban context. A wide variety of academic fields refers to the urban environment as a location studied, such as Environmental Studies , Economics , Geography , Public Health , and Sociology . However, scholars in this field research how specific elements contribute to how the city operates, such as how housing and transportation will change. In addition, researchers also study how residents interact within

2208-502: Is Alan Mayne's The Imagined Slum: Newspaper Representation in Three Cities, 1870-1914 (1993), a study of how slums were represented in the newspapers in Sydney , San Francisco , and Birmingham . The accounts provided dramatic life stories but failed to integrate the agendas and animosities of city officials, property owners, residents, and local businessmen. As a result, they did not reveal

2304-602: Is actually stereotypical. Many suburbs are based on a heterogeneous society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom share the American Dream of upward social status via home ownership. Sies (2001) argues that it is necessary to examine how "suburb" is defined as well as the distinction made between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that move research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions. The "new urban history" emerged in

2400-467: Is especially true of the “modern” city, filled with human artifice and moral contradiction. The Journal of Urban History has been a leading quarterly journal with articles and reviews since 1975. The Urban History Association was founded in 1988 with 284 members; it now has over 400. It sponsored the "Sixth Biennial Urban History Association Conference" in New York, October 25–28, 2012. It awards prizes for

2496-570: Is free. H-Urban seeks to inform historians on such matters as announcements, calls for papers, conferences, awards, fellowships, availability of new sources and archives, reports on new research, and teaching tools, including books, articles, works-in-progress, research reports, primary historical documents (for example, model ordinances, federal/state/local reports, addresses of city officials), syllabi, bibliographies, software, datasets, and multimedia publications or projects. It commissions its own book reviews. H-Urban has 2,856 subscribers (as of 2012) and

2592-728: Is performed in developing economies, leading to more contextual urban and infrastructural development in various parts of the world. The racial segregation of urban residents in the United States has played an important role in developing this field. One program founded to research African-American urban residents, the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies , was founded in 1959 to study residential segregation and to support affected communities. More recently, studies related to race and urban life started to focus on ethnographic methods to study how individuals lived in relation to

2688-508: Is still clearly visible. A system of rectilinear city streets and land plots, known as the grid plan , has been used for millennia in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The Indus Valley Civilization built Mohenjo-Daro , Harappa , and other cities on a grid pattern, using ancient principles described by Kautilya , and aligned with the compass points . The ancient Greek city of Priene exemplifies

2784-420: Is the most urban continent, with four-fifths of its population living in cities, including one-fifth of the population said to live in shantytowns ( favelas , poblaciones callampas , etc.). Batam , Indonesia , Mogadishu , Somalia , Xiamen , China , and Niamey , Niger , are considered among the world's fastest-growing cities, with annual growth rates of 5–8%. In general, the more developed countries of

2880-415: Is the narrative history of a city and often reaches a general audience. Urban biographies cover the interrelationships among various dimensions, such as politics, demography, business, high culture, popular culture, housing, neighbourhoods, and ethnic groups. It covers municipal government as well as physical expansion, growth and decline. Historians often focus on the largest and most dominant city—usually

2976-448: Is the oldest of the H-Net network of discussion lists. The history of European urbanism in the 20th century is the focus of urbanHIST, a current Horizon 2020 European Joint Doctorate programme. It is based on the inherent multidisciplinary approach of the research field and the goal of gaining a pan-European perspective on planning history. City A city is a human settlement of

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3072-480: The Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004; also online edition) and The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995, 2nd ed. 2010) They followed the model of an earlier encyclopedia of Cleveland and relished the details about neighbourhoods, people, organizations and events, without imposing any overall theme. A new subgenre is the history of specific suburbs. Historians have concentrated on specific places, typically focusing on

3168-586: The Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa . In Northern Europe, cities including Lübeck and Bruges formed the Hanseatic League for collective defense and commerce. Their power was later challenged and eclipsed by the Dutch commercial cities of Ghent , Ypres , and Amsterdam . Similar phenomena existed elsewhere, as in the case of Sakai , which enjoyed considerable autonomy in late medieval Japan. In

3264-504: The United Kingdom and the United States have developed, but only to a limited degree. Urban history previously focused mostly on how European and American cities developed over time, instead of focusing on how non-European cities developed. Additional geographic areas researched in this field include South Africa , Australia , Latin America , and India . This is changing as more research

3360-931: The United Nations ... largely for the purpose of international statistical comparison". The word city and the related civilization come from the Latin root civitas , originally meaning 'citizenship' or 'community member' and eventually coming to correspond with urbs , meaning 'city' in a more physical sense. The Roman civitas was closely linked with the Greek polis —another common root appearing in English words such as metropolis . In toponymic terminology, names of individual cities and towns are called astionyms (from Ancient Greek ἄστυ 'city or town' and ὄνομα 'name'). Urban geography deals both with cities in their larger context and with their internal structure. Cities are estimated to cover about 3% of

3456-501: The Uruk period . In the fourth and third millennium BC , complex civilizations flourished in the river valleys of Mesopotamia , India , China , and Egypt . Excavations in these areas have found the ruins of cities geared variously towards trade, politics, or religion. Some had large, dense populations , but others carried out urban activities in the realms of politics or religion without having large associated populations. Among

3552-716: The civilization of Djenne-Djenno was likely established by the Mande progenitors of the Bozo people . Their habitation of the site spanned the period from 3rd century BCE to 13th century CE. Archaeological evidence from Jenné-Jeno, specifically the presence of non-West African glass beads dated from the third century BCE to the fourth century CE, indicates that pre-Arabic trade contacts probably existed between Jenné-Jeno and North Africa. Additionally, other early urban centers in West Africa, dated to around 500 CE, include Awdaghust , Kumbi Saleh ,

3648-427: The government workers . (This arrangement contrasts with the more typically horizontal relationships in a tribe or village accomplishing common goals through informal agreements between neighbors, or the leadership of a chief.) The governments may be based on heredity, religion, military power, work systems such as canal-building, food distribution, land-ownership, agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, finance, or

3744-530: The knowledge economy . A new smart city paradigm, supported by institutions such as the RAND Corporation and IBM , is bringing computerized surveillance , data analysis, and governance to bear on cities and city dwellers. Some companies are building brand-new master-planned cities from scratch on greenfield sites. Urbanization is the process of migration from rural to urban areas, driven by various political, economic, and cultural factors. Until

3840-556: The service economy and public-private partnerships , with concomitant gentrification , uneven revitalization efforts , and selective cultural development. Under the Great Leap Forward and subsequent five-year plans continuing today, China has undergone concomitant urbanization and industrialization and become the world's leading manufacturer . Amidst these economic changes, high technology and instantaneous telecommunication enable select cities to become centers of

3936-535: The " Global North " remain more urbanized than the less developed countries of the " Global South "—but the difference continues to shrink because urbanization is happening faster in the latter group. Asia is home to by far the greatest absolute number of city-dwellers: over two billion and counting. The UN predicts an additional 2.5 billion city dwellers (and 300 million fewer country dwellers) worldwide by 2050, with 90% of urban population expansion occurring in Asia and Africa. Megacities , cities with populations in

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4032-539: The "functional definition", a city is not distinguished by size alone, but also by the role it plays within a larger political context. Cities serve as administrative, commercial, religious, and cultural hubs for their larger surrounding areas. The presence of a literate elite is often associated with cities because of the cultural diversities present in a city. A typical city has professional administrators , regulations, and some form of taxation (food and other necessities or means to trade for them) to support

4128-524: The 18th century), Ile-Ifẹ̀ (70,000 to 105,000 inhabitants in the 14th and 15th centuries), Niani (50,000 inhabitants in 1400 AD) and Timbuktu (100,000 inhabitants in 1450 AD). In the West, nation-states became the dominant unit of political organization following the Peace of Westphalia in the seventeenth century. Western Europe's larger capitals (London and Paris) benefited from the growth of commerce following

4224-420: The 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the rural agricultural population and towns featuring markets and small-scale manufacturing. With the agricultural and industrial revolutions urban population began its unprecedented growth, both through migration and demographic expansion . In England , the proportion of the population living in cities jumped from 17% in 1801 to 72% in 1891. In 1900, 15% of

4320-538: The 1960s and 1970s in quantitative methods, census sources, "bottom-up" history, and the measurement of upward social mobility by different ethnic groups. Other exemplars of the new urban history included There were no overarching social history theories that emerged developed to explain urban development. Inspiration from urban geography and sociology, as well as a concern with workers (as opposed to labour union leaders), families, ethnic groups, racial segregation, and women's roles, have proven useful. Historians now view

4416-431: The 1960s as a branch of Social history seeking to understand the "city as process" and, through quantitative methods, to learn more about the inarticulate masses in the cities, as opposed to the mayors and elites. Much of the attention is devoted to individual behaviour, and how the intermingling of classes and ethnic groups operated inside a particular city. Smaller cities are much easier to handle when it comes to tracking

4512-698: The 30th and 18th centuries BC. Mesoamerica saw the rise of early urbanism in several cultural regions, beginning with the Olmec and spreading to the Preclassic Maya , the Zapotec of Oaxaca, and Teotihuacan in central Mexico. Later cultures such as the Aztec , Andean civilizations , Mayan , Mississippians , and Pueblo peoples drew on these earlier urban traditions. Many of their ancient cities continue to be inhabited, including major metropolitan cities such as Mexico City , in

4608-722: The 9th through the end of the 12th century, Constantinople , the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire , was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, with a population approaching 1 million. The Ottoman Empire gradually gained control over many cities in the Mediterranean area, including Constantinople in 1453 . In the Holy Roman Empire , beginning in the 12th century, free imperial cities such as Nuremberg , Strasbourg , Frankfurt , Basel , Zürich , and Nijmegen became

4704-552: The Andes, the first urban centers developed in the Norte Chico civilization , Chavin and Moche cultures, followed by major cities in the Huari , Chimu , and Inca cultures. The Norte Chico civilization included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru . It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, flourishing between

4800-620: The Centre for Urban History at Leicester University in 1990 and 1991, published by Leicester University. These books made a significant contribution to the bibliographic review of urban history research and literature in both Eastern and Western Europe. In the United States a very different approach was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities has sponsored large historical encyclopedias for many states and several cities, most notably

4896-564: The Cities? City Elites and Urban Power Structures in Europe and North America, 1750-1940 (2008) . Labor activists and socialists often had national or international networks that circulated ideas and tactics. In the 1960s, the historiography of Victorian towns and cities began to flourish in Britain. Much attention focused first on the Victorian city, with topics ranging from demography, public health,

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4992-519: The Great founded and created them with zeal. Jericho and Çatalhöyük , dated to the eighth millennium BC , are among the earliest proto-cities known to archaeologists. However, the Mesopotamian city of Uruk from the mid-fourth millennium BC (ancient Iraq) is considered by most archaeologists to be the first true city, innovating many characteristics for cities to follow, with its name attributed to

5088-530: The ancient capital of Ghana, and Maranda , a center located on a trade route between Egypt and Gao. The dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West was connected with profound changes in urban fabric of western Europe. In places where Roman administration quickly weakened urbanism went through a profound crisis, even if it continued to remain an important symbolic factor. In regions like Italy or Spain cities diminished in size but nevertheless continued to play

5184-439: The ancient world. The study of the culture of specific cities and the role of cities in shaping national culture is a more recent development which provides nontraditional ways of "reading" cities. A representative class is Carl E. Schorske, Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (1980). The basis for some of this approach stems from a post-modern theory including the cultural anthropology of Clifford Geertz . One example

5280-460: The athletic, artistic, spiritual, and political life of the polis. Rome was the first city that surpassed one million inhabitants. Under the authority of its empire , Rome transformed and founded many cities ( Colonia ), and with them brought its principles of urban architecture, design, and society. In the ancient Americas , early urban traditions developed in the Andes and Mesoamerica . In

5376-407: The benefit of mitigating the urban heat island effect, especially in cities that are in warmer climates. These spaces prevent carbon imbalances, extreme habitat losses, electricity and water consumption, and human health risks. The urban structure generally follows one or more basic patterns: geomorphic, radial, concentric, rectilinear, and curvilinear. The physical environment generally constrains

5472-658: The best book prize, best article, and best PhD dissertation. H.J. Dyos (1921-1978) at the University of Leicester was the leading promoter of urban history in Britain, leading the way, especially into the study of Victorian cities. He formed the Urban History Study Group in 1962; its newsletter became the Urban History Yearbook (1974-1991) and then the journal Urban History (1992–present). His edited volume on The Study of Urban History (1968) opened up

5568-680: The city and their respective systems as a whole. Israel Zangwill wrote one of the first books on the Ghettos of Europe and how they impacted the Jewish children that were descendants of the original residents, Children of the Ghetto (1892), he also wrote two other books about the European Ghettos. Louis Wirth was the next scholar to write about the Ghettos, he wrote about them from a sociological perspective. Louis Wirth and Roberts Ezra Park also became

5664-613: The city, and the structure of urban space, became more prominent. Historians have almost always focused on London, but they have also studied small towns and cities from the medieval period, as well as the urbanization that attended the industrial revolution. In the second half of the 19th century, provincial centres such as Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester doubled in size and became regional capitals. They were all conurbations that included smaller cities and suburbs in their catchment area . Available scholarly materials have become quite comprehensive today. Urban biography

5760-518: The city, such as how race and gender differences lead to social inequalities , or concentrated disadvantage in urban areas. Urban studies is a major field of study used by paraprofessional practitioners of urban planning . Researchers struggle how to define basic terms precisely, such as how a city is defined, due to how the roles of cities change. Researchers must be careful in how they describe urban areas, as their work can be manipulated as positive elements for city boosters wanting to promote

5856-462: The concentration of large numbers of horses. Historians are beginning to integrate urban history and environmental history. Thus far most of the attention concerns the negative impact on the environment, rather than how the environment shaped the urbanization process. In literature, the city has long stood as one of the most potent symbols of human capacities and nature. As the largest and most enduring creation of human imagination and hands, and as

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5952-660: The contending groups within the city as "agents" who shape the direction of urbanization. The sub-field has flourished in Australia—where most people live in cities. Demographic perspectives make use of the large volume of census data from the mid-19th century. Rather than being strictly areas of geographical segmentation, spatial patterns and concepts of place reveal the struggles for power of various social groups, including gender, class, race, and ethnic identity. The spatial patterns of residential and business areas give individual cities their distinct identities and, considering

6048-536: The early Old World cities, Mohenjo-daro of the Indus Valley civilization in present-day Pakistan , existing from about 2600 BC, was one of the largest, with a population of 50,000 or more and a sophisticated sanitation system . China's planned cities were constructed according to sacred principles to act as celestial microcosms . The Ancient Egyptian cities known physically by archaeologists are not extensive. They include (known by their Arab names) El Lahun ,

6144-671: The efficiency of transportation and the smaller land consumption , dense cities hold the potential to have a smaller ecological footprint per inhabitant than more sparsely populated areas. Therefore, compact cities are often referred to as a crucial element in fighting climate change. However, this concentration can also have some significant negative consequences, such as forming urban heat islands , concentrating pollution , and stressing water supplies and other resources. A city can be distinguished from other human settlements by its relatively great size, but also by its functions and its special symbolic status , which may be conferred by

6240-479: The emergence of an Atlantic trade. However, most towns remained small. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the old Roman city concept was extensively used. Cities were founded in the middle of the newly conquered territories and were bound to several laws regarding administration, finances, and urbanism. The growth of the modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and

6336-529: The entire population. In the United States from the 1920s to the 1990s many of the most influential monographs began as one of the 140 PhD dissertations at Harvard University directed by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. (1888-1965) or Oscar Handlin (1915-2011). The field grew rapidly after 1970, leading one prominent scholar, Stephan Thernstrom , to note that urban history apparently deals with cities, or with city-dwellers, or with events that transpired in cities, with attitudes toward cities – which makes one wonder what

6432-791: The first millennium AD, the Khmer capital of Angkor in Cambodia grew into the most extensive preindustrial settlement in the world by area, covering over 1,000 km and possibly supporting up to one million people. West Africa already had cities before the Common Era , but the consolidation of Trans-Saharan trade in the Middle Ages multiplied the number of cities in the region, as well as making some of them very populous, notably Gao (72,000 inhabitants in 800 AD), Oyo-Ile (50,000 inhabitants in 1400 AD, and may have reached up to 140,000 inhabitants in

6528-477: The first sociologists to publish about the immigrant neighbourhoods in America with suggestions on their future design. Roberts Ezra Park was a student of George Zimmel in Chicago. Other famous scholars that studied segregation, American Ghettos, and impoverished neighbourhoods include Du Bois (1903), Haynes (1913), Johnson (1943), Horace Cayton (1944), Kenneth Clark (1965), William Julius Wilson (1987). This field

6624-440: The form in which a city is built. If located on a mountainside, urban structures may rely on terraces and winding roads. It may be adapted to its means of subsistence (e.g. agriculture or fishing). And it may be set up for optimal defense given the surrounding landscape. Beyond these "geomorphic" features, cities can develop internal patterns, due to natural growth or to city planning . In a radial structure, main roads converge on

6720-774: The functions of major cities in The Urbanization of America, 1860-1915 (1963), and The Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1966 (1968) Peter Clark of the Urban History Center of the University of Leicester was the general editor (and Cambridge University Press the publisher) of a massive history of British cities and towns, running 2800 pages in 75 chapters by 90 scholars. The chapters deal not with biographies of individual cities, but with economic, social or political themes that cities had in common. Two highly influential, authoritative and comprehensive compendia of European urban history were also compiled by Barry Haynes of

6816-704: The future interactions of people and how to improve city development through architecture, open spaces, the interactions of people, and different types of capital that forms a community. Urban history plays an important role in this field of study because it reveals how cities have developed previously. History plays a large role in determining how cities will change in the future. Such areas change continuously as part of larger processes and create new histories that researchers study on both large-scale and individual levels. Overall, three different themes have influenced how researchers have and will continue to study urban areas: Scholars have also researched how cities outside of

6912-468: The land surface of the Earth. Town siting has varied through history according to natural, technological, economic, and military contexts. Access to water has long been a major factor in city placement and growth, and despite exceptions enabled by the advent of rail transport in the nineteenth century, through the present most of the world's urban population lives near the coast or on a river. Urban areas as

7008-628: The largest and most sustained site of human association and interaction, the city has been seen as a marker of what humans are and of what they do. This signification has almost always been shaded with ambivalence. In old legends, epics, and utopias, cities (both actual and symbolic) appeared as places of exceptional but also contradictory meaning. The histories of Troy, Babel, Sodom, Babylon, and Rome were viewed, in Western cultures, as standing for human power, wisdom, creativity, and vision, but also for human presumption, perversion, and fated destruction. Images of

7104-475: The longest continual inhabitation . Cities, characterized by population density , symbolic function, and urban planning , have existed for thousands of years. In the conventional view, civilization and the city were both followed by the development of agriculture , which enabled the production of surplus food and thus a social division of labor (with concomitant social stratification ) and trade . Early cities often featured granaries , sometimes within

7200-770: The methodology and stimulated young scholars, as did the conferences he organized and the book series he edited. Dyos rejected the quantitative methods of the New Urban History because he was not interested in the individual people in the city, but in the larger social structure, such as the slum or the entire city. Since 1993, the daily email discussion list H-Urban has enabled historians, graduate students and others interested in urban history and urban studies to communicate current research and research interests easily; to query and discuss new approaches, sources, methods, and tools of analysis; and to comment on contemporary historiography. The logs are open to searches, and membership

7296-525: The modern city restated this ambivalence with fresh intensity. Great modern cities like London, Paris, Berlin, and New York, have repeatedly been portrayed as sites of opportunity and peril, power and helplessness, vitality and decadence, creativity and perplexity. This contradictory face of the city has appeared so often in Western thought as to suggest an essential psychological and cultural anxiety about human civilization, an anxiety about humanity's relation to their created world and about "humanity" itself. This

7392-442: The multi-millions, have proliferated into the dozens, arising especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Economic globalization fuels the growth of these cities, as new torrents of foreign capital arrange for rapid industrialization, as well as the relocation of major businesses from Europe and North America, attracting immigrants from near and far. A deep gulf divides the rich and poor in these cities, which usually contain

7488-570: The national capital—which geographers call a " primate city ." Some representative urban biographies are: Historians have developed typologies of cities, emphasizing their geographic location and economic specialization. In the United States Carl Bridenbaugh was a pioneer in historiography. He emphasized the major port cities on the East Coast, the largest of which were Boston and Philadelphia, each with fewer than 40,000 people at

7584-518: The old name for Tokyo). Architectural history is its own field but occasionally overlaps with urban history. The political role of cities in helping state formation—and in staying independent—is the theme of Charles Tilly and W. P. Blockmans , eds., Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800 (1994). Comparative elite studies—who was in power—are typified by Luisa Passerini , Dawn Lyon, Enrica Capussotti and Ioanna Laliotou, eds. Who Ran

7680-432: The origins of the suburb in relation to the central city, the pattern of growth, different functions (such as residential or industrial), local politics, as well as racial exclusion and gender roles. The main overview is Kenneth T. Jackson 's Crabgrass Frontier (1987). Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites, a concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet

7776-573: The process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization , more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for global sustainability . Present-day cities usually form the core of larger metropolitan areas and urban areas —creating numerous commuters traveling toward city centres for employment, entertainment, and education. However, in

7872-500: The public as well as forms of public land such as public domain and the commons . Western philosophy since the time of the Greek agora has considered physical public space as the substrate of the symbolic public sphere . Public art adorns (or disfigures) public spaces. Parks and other natural sites within cities provide residents with relief from the hardness and regularity of typical built environments . Urban green spaces are another component of public space that provides

7968-810: The rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. England led the way as London became the capital of a world empire and cities across the country grew in locations strategic for manufacturing . In the United States from 1860 to 1910, the introduction of railroads reduced transportation costs, and large manufacturing centers began to emerge, fueling migration from rural to city areas. Some industrialized cities were confronted with health challenges associated with overcrowding , occupational hazards of industry, contaminated water and air, poor sanitation , and communicable diseases such as typhoid and cholera . Factories and slums emerged as regular features of

8064-680: The same location as Tenochtitlan ; while ancient continuously inhabited Pueblos are near modern urban areas in New Mexico , such as Acoma Pueblo near the Albuquerque metropolitan area and Taos Pueblo near Taos ; while others like Lima are located nearby ancient Peruvian sites such as Pachacamac . From 1600 BC, Dhar Tichitt , in the south of present-day Mauritania , presented characteristics suggestive of an incipient form of urbanism. The second place to show urban characteristics in West Africa

8160-544: The social aspects attendant to the patterns, create a more complete picture of how those cities evolved, shaping the lives of their citizens. New techniques include the use of historical GIS data. Since the 1980s extensive research has been done on the cities of the Ottoman Empire, where standardized record-keeping and centralized archives have facilitated work on Aleppo , Damascus , Byblos , Sidon , Jericho , Hama , Nablus and Jerusalem . Historians have explored

8256-538: The social bases of political factionalism, histories of elites and commoners, different family structures and gender roles, marginalized groups such as prostitutes and slaves, and relationships between Muslims and Christians and Jews. Increasingly work is underway on African cities, as well as South Asia. In China, the Maoist ideology privileged the uprising of the peasants as the central force in Chinese history, which led to

8352-486: The term and has challenged geographers seeking to classify territories according to an urban-rural binary. Metropolitan areas include suburbs and exurbs organized around the needs of commuters , and sometimes edge cities characterized by a degree of economic and political independence. (In the US these are grouped into metropolitan statistical areas for purposes of demography and marketing .) Some cities are now part of

8448-754: The time of the American Revolution. Other historians have covered the port cities up and down the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, and the West Coast, along with the river ports along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Industrialization began in New England, and several small cities have scholarly histories. The railroad cities of the West, stretching from Chicago to Kansas City to Wichita to Denver have been well treated. Blake McKelvey provides an encyclopedic overview of

8544-541: The transformation of rural traditional societies. The history of urbanization focuses on the processes of by which existing populations concentrate in urban localities over time, and on the social, political, cultural and economic contexts of cities. Most urban scholars focus on the "metropolis," a large or especially important city. There is much less attention to small cities, towns or (until recently) suburbs. However social historians find small cities much easier to handle because they can use census data to cover or sample

8640-439: The true inner-city social structures. Nevertheless, the middle class accepted the image of and decided to act on the social constructions , leading to the reformers' demands for slum clearance and urban renewal . As Rosen and Tarr point out, environmental history has made great strides since the 1970s, but its focus is primarily on rural areas, leading to a neglect of urban issues such as air pollution, sewage, clean water—and

8736-412: The turn of the first millennium BC , encompassed numerous cities extending from Tyre , Cydon , and Byblos to Carthage and Cádiz . In the following centuries, independent city-states of Greece , especially Athens , developed the polis , an association of male landowning citizens who collectively constituted the city. The agora , meaning "gathering place" or "assembly", was the center of

8832-446: The urban landscape. In the second half of the 20th century, deindustrialization (or " economic restructuring ") in the West led to poverty , homelessness , and urban decay in formerly prosperous cities. America's "Steel Belt" became a " Rust Belt " and cities such as Detroit , Michigan, and Gary, Indiana began to shrink , contrary to the global trend of massive urban expansion. Such cities have shifted with varying success into

8928-575: The volume of sewage begins to exceed manageable levels. The local government of cities takes different forms including prominently the municipality (especially in England , in the United States , India , and other British colonies ; legally, the municipal corporation ; municipio in Spain and Portugal , and, along with municipalidad , in most former parts of the Spanish and Portuguese empires) and

9024-520: The working-class, and local culture. In recent decades, topics regarding class, capitalism, and social structure gave way to studies of the cultural history of urban life, as well as the study of groups such as women, prostitutes, migrants from rural areas, and immigrants from the Continent and from the British Empire. The urban environment itself became a major topic, as studies of the material fabric of

9120-512: The world's population lived in cities. The cultural appeal of cities also plays a role in attracting residents. Urbanization rapidly spread across Europe and the Americas and since the 1950s has taken hold in Asia and Africa as well. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs reported in 2014 that for the first time, more than half of the world population lives in cities. Latin America

9216-532: Was Dia , in present-day Mali , from 800 BC. Both Dhar Tichitt and Dia were founded by the same people: the Soninke , who would later also found the Ghana Empire . Another ancient site, Jenné-Jeno , in what is today Mali , has been dated to the third century BCE. According to Roderick and Susan McIntosh, Jenné-Jeno did not fit into traditional Western conceptions of urbanity as it lacked monumental architecture and

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