what is a city

What is a city???Lewis Mumford

Title

Muhammad Salah Eldaidamony

Under Supervision of: Dr. Nurhan Abujidi

The Urban analysis research

Research structure

Firstly Simple meaning of a city

Secondly

Thirdly

Fourthly

Fifthly

City status around the world

The article (what is a city-Lewis Mumford)

Other quotes and conclusion

References

Simple meaning of a city

Firstly


1- British Cambridge dictionary:

1- Any large town.2- Any town in the UK which has a cathedral: The city of Ely has about 10000 inhabitants.

3- A town that has received this title from the Crown 4-The people of a city collectively

2nd smallest city in England

Liverpool city

Oxford cityLondon city

Firstly Secondly Thirdly Fourthly Fifthly


2- American dictionary:1- A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance. 2- An ancient Greek city-state. 3- An incorporated municipality, usually governed by a mayor and a board of aldermen or councilmen. 4- A city-state.

San Jose, California – United states Dallas, Texas – United states



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3- Almoa”agm :City : its plural is cities (housing city), housing complex surrounded by vital facilities and civilized upswing buildings.1-The city of prophet Muhammad (SAAS) “ALMADINA”2-Jerusalem “the flower of cities”3-Peace city “Baghdad”

Almadina Almonawara Jerusalem Baghdad



Secondly


•Is granted by the British Queen to a selected group of communities. The status does not apply automatically on the basis of any particular criteria.•In England and Wales it was traditionally given to towns with diocesan cathedrals. This association between having a cathedral and being, so six English towns was granted them all city status by issuing letters patent.

1-City status in the United Kingdom

The smallest city in England of population of 10,500

inhabitants

The smallest city in the UK of population of 2000 inhabitants



2-City status in the United States

Maza is the smallest city in USA of population of 5

inhabitantsWashington city in USA

In the United States (USA), the definition of cities (and town, villages, townships, etc.) is a matter of state laws and the definitions vary widely by state. A city may, in some places, be run by an elected mayor and city council, while a town is governed by people, select board (or board of trustees), or open town meeting

New York city in USA



3-City status in China

Beijing city in China

•It is an urban area that there should be at least 100,000 non-agricultural population.•City with 100,000-200,000 non-agricultural population refers to a Small city, 200,000-500,000 non-agricultural population is a Medium city, 500,000-1,000,000 non-agricultural population is a Large city•Over 1,000,000 non-agricultural of population is an Extra-large city.



4-City status in Australia & New Zealand

Wellington city the capital of New Zealand

"A city must have a minimum population of 50,000, be predominantly urban in character, be a distinct entity and a major centre of activity within the region.

In Australiacity refers simply to any large enough town. Narrower usage can refer to a local government area, or colloquially to the central business district of a large urban area.

In New Zealand, Canberra city the capital of Australia


The German word for both "town" and "city" is Stadt, while a town with more than 100,000 inhabitants is called a major city, which is the most adequate equivalence for city


5-City status in Germany

Berlin city the capital of Germany



6-City status in Egypt •It is an urban area that there should be more than 50 % of its labor force a non-agricultural workers.•Also it can be distinguished by its civilized, modern and concentration of services.

Cairo city the capital of Egypt Zagazig city Elsharkeya Governorate


The article

what is a city ?

Lewis Mumford

Thirdly

What is a city?

•“The people are the city”. Shakespeare & some urbanists.•“In turning to the people of the cities themselves we move to a consideration of the subtle and ever-shifting interaction between society, community, and culture. This section addresses how urban society affects urban culture and how urban culture affects the daily lives and the life prospects of city inhabitants”.

•“Finally, it analyzes what community is in an urban context and speculates about what it could be”. Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall, and Lain Borden (London and New York : Rout ledge, 2004)

Definition:

Society

Community Culture

urban society

urban culture

Daily life


What is a city?Definition:

•“Cities are expressions of the human spirit, and cities exist to contribute to the ever evolving human personality. •“Defining a city in terms of population size, or density, or attributes of the built environment is inadequate”. Lewis Mumford

city

Population size

DensityAttributes

Not enough+ Human spirit

Lewis Mumford


What is a city? Definition: (as a historian)

•A theater of social action and everything else art, politics, education, commerce – only serve to make the “social drama more richly significant , as a stage-set. Well-designed, intensifies and emphasizes the motions of the actors and the action of the play”•“above all things a theater" and that an urban civilization that has lost its sense of dramatic dialogue “is bound to have a fatal last act.” Lewis Mumford

social action arts

Politics educationcommerce others

social drama

1- Mumford definition of a city:


What is a city? Definition:

•Urge planners to fulfill human needs for “fantasy and exoticism." The city has always been a place of excitement ; it is a theater , a stage upon which citizens can display themselves and be seen by others.” Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard. •Mumford’s emphasis on community value and the city’s role in enlarging the potential of the human personality connects him with a long line of urban theorists that includes Louis Wirth and many others.


What is a city?•Most of our housing and city planning has been handicapped because those who have undertaken the work have had no clear notion of the social functions of the city.

•They sought to derive these functions from a quick survey of the activities and interests of the modern urban scene.

• And they did not apparently, imagine that there might be unpleasant deficiencies, misdirected efforts, mistaken payments here that would not be set straight by merely building sanitary apartments or straightening out and widening irregular streets.


What is a city?Definition (city as a social institution)

2- Urban sociological definition of a city:

Is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations: the first, likely family and neighborhood, are common to all communities, while the second are especially characteristic of city life. These varied groups support themselves through economic organizations that are likewise of a more or less corporate, or at least publicity regulated, character and they all housed in permanent structures, within a relatively limited area.

family City life


What is a city ? The essential physical means of the city existence:

1. The fixed site

2. The durable shelter

3. The permanent facilities for gathering, inter-change, and storage

The essential social means of the city existence:

1. The social division of labor, which serves not only the economic life but the cultural processes

2. The complete sense of the city


What is a city ?

“The city fosters art and is art:; the city creates the theater and is a theater, that man’s more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and cooperating personalities, events, groups, into more significant culminations”.


What is a city ?

3- Social definition of a city:A special framework directed toward the creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and a significant collective drama. As indirect forms of association, with the aid of signs and symbols and specialized organizations.

Definition (city in a social form)


What is a city ?

Personal reintegration possibilities :

The personalities of the citizens themselves become many-faceted: they reflect their specialized interests, their more intensively trained aptitudes, their finer discriminations and selections : in which the personality no longer presents a more or less a complete traditional face to reality as a whole.

Through wider participation in a concrete and visible collective whole. What men cannot imagine as a vague formless society. They can live through and experience as citizens in a city. Their unified plans and buildings become a symbol of their social relatedness; and when the physical environment itself becomes disordered and incoherent, the social functions that it harbors become more difficult to express.

Personal disintegration possibilities :

Social facts are primary, and the physical organization of a city, its industries and its markets, its lines of communication and traffic,

must be subservient to its social needs.


What is a city ?

What is the desirable size of a city?:

He chose three million as the number to be accommodated: the number was roughly the size of the urban aggregate of Paris.

Sizing the city: but if the city is a theater of social activity, and if its needs are defined by the opportunities it offers to differentiated social groups, acting through a specific nucleus of civic institutes and associations, definite limitations on size follow from this fact.

Le Corbusier’s ideal city


What is a city ? A-The absolute factors to identify the city size:

Limitations on : size, density, and area are absolutely necessary to effective social intercourse; and they are therefore the most important instruments of rational economic and civic planning.

area Density

size

At the past there was 2 factors 1.The assumption that all upward changes in magnitude were signs of progress and automatically “good for business” 2.The belief that such limitations were essentially arbitrary, in that they proposed to “decrease economic opportunity”.

Limitations on height (are common in America), drastic limitations on density (are the rule in all municipal housing estates in England)

Such limitations do not limit the population itself: they merely give the planner and the administrator the opportunity to multiply the number of centers in which the population is housed, instead of permitting a few existing centers to increase themselves on a monopolistic pattern.


What is a city ?

These limitations are necessary to breakup the functionless of urban masses of the past.

So far, the planner proposes to replace the “mono-nucleated city” with a new type of “poly-nucleated city ” in which a cluster of communities, adequately spaced and bounded, shall do duty for the badly organized mass city. Professor Warren Thompson

Mark the changes that is in process today.

1.The emerging sources of power,2.transport,3.communication do not follow the old highway network at all.

B- New factors to identify the city


What is a city ?

1. The differentiation of foot traffic from wheeled traffic in independent systems2. The insulation of residence quarters from through roads3. The discontinuous street pattern4. The polarization of social life in specially spotted civic nuclei5. To begin in the neighborhood with the school and the playground and the

swimming pool.

New planning type:Messrs : it is a town in which the various functional parts of the structure are isolated topographically as urban islands, appropriately designed for their specific use with no effort to provide a uniform plan of the same general pattern for the industrial, the commercial, the familiar, and the civic parts.

New planning characteristics and the principles of the poly-nucleated city have been well established. (by Radburn)

This type of planning was carried a logical conclusion in perhaps the most functional and most socially intelligent of all Le Corbusier’s many urban plans

The main relationships are clear:


Other quotes and conclusionFourthly

“It is the largest urban center in terms of population or built area or diversity of its functions”. (El Wakil Shafak, 2006)

Other quotes defining a City

“A spatial concentration of economic activity. Accordingly, urbanization covers description of the spatial pattern of economic activity over space, and explanation of that pattern as well as of the evolution of it”. Urban economists.

“The city is a living organism”. (Le Corbusier)

“The city is a town that enjoys a measure of leadership among towns ”. (Robert E. Dickinson)


“The city occurs when the density is more than 10000 persons per mile square”. (Mark Jefferson)

Conclusion:


Each city is a unique phenomenon that can not be repeated, and therefore it is difficult to determine the characteristics of cities, as every city interpreted by its historical incidents and factors of growth.

City Urbanization properties:

1. Size2. Density3. HomogeneityIn which those elements are linked closely together, leading to a

gathering of people which characterized by huge size and high density and homogeneity.

The city is an urban center in which different economic, social, political, and cultural functions took place sequentially


Characteristics of cities:

1. Function : specified in social and economic functions2. Cultural manifestations3. Human Urban rights4. Legislations5. Expanding of city borders to exteriorly

Ranking cities:

1. By size (town, city or metropolitan)2. By population3. By its historical development4. By its social and cultural factors5. By its economical variables6. By its degree of progress and developing7. By its performed work (political city, social city, cultural city,…)

References Fifthly

Firstly

References

Secondly Thirdly Fourthly Fifthly

Websites:1. www.wikipedia.org2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/city3. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=city4. http://lexicons.ajeeb.com/openme.asp?fileurl=/html/3077282.html5. http://en.wikipedia.org6. http://www.redtilesbarn.co.uk/attractions.php7. http://www.beautifulbritain.co.uk/htm/outandabout/record_breakers.htm8. http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/education/encyclopedia/tourism/tourism.htm

Books and other sources:1. The city culture reader, second edition edited by Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall, and Lain

Borden (London and New York : Rout ledge, 2004)2. Urban culture and society, Lewis Mumford3. City And Region: a geographical interpretation By Robert E. Dickinson4. Urbanism As a Way of Life by Louis Wirth5. Department of urban planning and environment, faculty of architecture, Damascus

university, Arch. Hiba F.Kabbani

Thank you

Muhammad Eldaidamony

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