What Defines a City?
I know we don't think about this very often, but what exactly constitutes the foundation that allows an area to consider itself to be a city? Is it because it is a geographically located area that has a government that defines it as city-hood, or is it something else? I was analyzing the base code for the game Civilization the other day when I started to wonder what exactly causes one to proclaim "THAT" is a city. And once that area is established, what serves to constitute its borders and end?
In Robert Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, those questions don't really have obvious answers. First off, we don't really even have established national borders in many places because in quite a few cases those borders have been established by common acceptance and through traditional understandings that come from mapmakers who have created what they designated as specific boundaries. While this might work in a place like the United States that has pretty solid borders with Mexico and Canada, how do you establish those boundaries in a place like Sub-Saharan Africa where the borders change on an almost hourly basis? And then you have places that are established in the minds of international organizations, like the UN, yet are further divided based upon ethnic and religious differences in the population itself.
Which brings me back to the idea of a city. One thing I noticed about the base code of a city construction tool is that someone down the line decides "this is a good place for a city" and then starts to build. Then people build alongside that first settlement until others have gathered enough dwellings so that a community can be considered. In olden days, you might have a border built around that village, town or city, but nowadays we rarely have that. If you drive into San Francisco, you drive across an imaginary line that might have a sign stating "Welcome to San Francisco," but does that really mean that you have entered a city or left one? Something that has happened in the last few decades is urban sprawl where people have kept their ties to main cities by building suburban dwellings on the edge of these cities, so that they are attached, yet not legally a part of the city. Are those dwellings to be considered a part of the original city, or are they completely separate?
I think of places like Daly City, which is located right outside of San Francisco to the south. Yes, it is its own city, but it relies on the proximity to San Francisco, so do we really have the right to say that it is separate when it is a part of the economic picture upon which the larger city relies?
Living in a place like Seoul, South Korea is exactly the kind of place that makes this argument. There are so many people here, and the city incorporates so many different districts (it is reported to be the second largest city in Asia, and one of the top five in the world). When traveling through it, there is never really a sense that you're in one big city, but that you're traveling through a lot of different areas that happen to be politically connected by some points on a map somewhere. What makes that city really a city?
An interesting argument that Kaplan makes in his book is that cities of the future are becoming something much different than they've ever been before, as they become larger and larger, yet cannot maintain the healthy lifestyles of so many people. Quite possibly, we're looking at a need for ruralization of the population in many sectors of the world, yet more and more people are continuously moving to the larger cities in hopes of jobs, food and survival, making it harder to survive due to fewer jobs and scarcity of food.
In this context, will cities need a reexamination, so that we define them by functionality rather than political expediency? Are cities of the future doomed as they become unsustainable, and if so, will the rural areas be able to compensate for the return of so many people to their former roots?
Stumble It!
In Robert Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, those questions don't really have obvious answers. First off, we don't really even have established national borders in many places because in quite a few cases those borders have been established by common acceptance and through traditional understandings that come from mapmakers who have created what they designated as specific boundaries. While this might work in a place like the United States that has pretty solid borders with Mexico and Canada, how do you establish those boundaries in a place like Sub-Saharan Africa where the borders change on an almost hourly basis? And then you have places that are established in the minds of international organizations, like the UN, yet are further divided based upon ethnic and religious differences in the population itself.
Which brings me back to the idea of a city. One thing I noticed about the base code of a city construction tool is that someone down the line decides "this is a good place for a city" and then starts to build. Then people build alongside that first settlement until others have gathered enough dwellings so that a community can be considered. In olden days, you might have a border built around that village, town or city, but nowadays we rarely have that. If you drive into San Francisco, you drive across an imaginary line that might have a sign stating "Welcome to San Francisco," but does that really mean that you have entered a city or left one? Something that has happened in the last few decades is urban sprawl where people have kept their ties to main cities by building suburban dwellings on the edge of these cities, so that they are attached, yet not legally a part of the city. Are those dwellings to be considered a part of the original city, or are they completely separate?
I think of places like Daly City, which is located right outside of San Francisco to the south. Yes, it is its own city, but it relies on the proximity to San Francisco, so do we really have the right to say that it is separate when it is a part of the economic picture upon which the larger city relies?
Living in a place like Seoul, South Korea is exactly the kind of place that makes this argument. There are so many people here, and the city incorporates so many different districts (it is reported to be the second largest city in Asia, and one of the top five in the world). When traveling through it, there is never really a sense that you're in one big city, but that you're traveling through a lot of different areas that happen to be politically connected by some points on a map somewhere. What makes that city really a city?
An interesting argument that Kaplan makes in his book is that cities of the future are becoming something much different than they've ever been before, as they become larger and larger, yet cannot maintain the healthy lifestyles of so many people. Quite possibly, we're looking at a need for ruralization of the population in many sectors of the world, yet more and more people are continuously moving to the larger cities in hopes of jobs, food and survival, making it harder to survive due to fewer jobs and scarcity of food.
In this context, will cities need a reexamination, so that we define them by functionality rather than political expediency? Are cities of the future doomed as they become unsustainable, and if so, will the rural areas be able to compensate for the return of so many people to their former roots?
Labels: Politics
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 8:33 AM
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