Urban Areas Essay

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For thousands of years, humans have lived together in cities. The concept of urban entities predates recorded history. The role of cities in everyday life has changed throughout human history. This evolution has never appeared more evident than now. With the majority of the world’s population living in cities, they have taken a new prominence in the study of geography. Cities serve as cultural and economic hubs from which new ideas and businesses diffuse. Their control reaches far beyond the immediately surrounding areas. Some large cities, such as New York and London, are referred to as world cities because of the extensive control they possess over the world economy (Getis et al., 2014). Despite the prominence of cities and urban culture, …show more content…

These terms help differentiate between types of urban areas and the relationships between them. The most basic of these, the terms city and town, can be defined as “nucleated settlement, multifunctional in character, including an established central business district and both residential and nonresidential land uses. Towns are smaller and have less functional capacity that cities, but they still have a nuclear business concentration” (Getis et al., 2014, p. 305). Another commonly used term, the word suburb, can be defined as “a subsidiary area, a functionally specialized segment of of a large urban complex, dependent on an urban area” (Getis et al., 2014, p. 305-306). Suburbs surround the central city (Getis et al.). Larger conglomerations of urban areas can also be defined. Getis et al. (2014) defines the term urbanized area as “a continuously built landscape defined by building and population densities with no reference to political boundaries” (p. 306). Similarly, geographers use the term metropolitan area to describe “a large-scale functional entity, perhaps containing several hundred urbanized areas, discontinuously built up but nonetheless operating as an integrated economic whole” (Getis et al., 2014, p.

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