What is a city? Brenner, N & Schmidt, C (2011) Planetary Urbanisation. In Gandy, M (ed) Urban Constellation. Jovis Verlag 10-14 · Still mapping human settlement space like we did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where large scale industrial cities were developing major demographic and socio-economic shifts in "the countryside" · Most of 20th century urban studies assumed there were city regions/urban space/global cities and then the non urban spaces beyond the boundaries while now there is more of a rural-urban continuum · Last 30 years also consider the creation of new scales of urbanisation: o Sprawling urban areas stretching beyond a single boundary, representations of these boundaries is under debate o Former central functions (shopping centres, headquarters, research, cultural venues ... are being dispersed outwards from historic city cores causing a blurring and re-articulation of urban territories · Remote hinterland areas are being transformed into warehouses/back offices/waste disposal areas/corridors of connectivity to facilitate continued expansion of urbanisation and its associated planetary networks · The end of earths wilderness as oceans, alpine regions, polar zones, deserts and rainforests etc are increasingly connected to planetary urbanisation from the local to global · Now when studying urbanisation we cannot look just at the city region due to this expansion and encompassing of planetary networks · 'Today the urban represents an increasingly worldwide condition in which political-economic relations are enmeshed' · Planetary urbanisation - even spaces that lie well beyond the traditional city cores and suburban peripheries have become integral parts of the worldwide urban fabric · Agglomeration (mass/collection of things) remains essential but we cannot study cities as discrete or universal settlements anymore
What is a city? 28/09/20 Video - What is a city? · A city is a complex system and a magnet attracting people in faster when there's a larger city centre as there are more interactions · City has life like an organism with the infrastructure like circulatory systems · Cities scale up Chicago to New York, bigger city has more crime, faster walking speed, AIDS and wages - can be predicted by scientists along a graph · Few cities are dying as they are resilient Modelling cities: · Many theorists and scientists have tried to make urban development models over the years to shape urban planning and policy planning · Cities have been modelled for centuries - try to think of best ways that a city operates (Ebenezer garden city/Burgess model/Hoyt sector model) · This fails to recognise the diversity between cities and ignores how cities stretch beyond their borders · Models can be too specific on a location so cannot be replicated elsewhere (e.g. Nuclei model) · Why do we need to model a city? Purely for development? Better and more profitable living and facilities? · Cities are a live political and economic model not just for geographers who theorise what it means to be urban Planetary urbanisation · Brenner and Schmidt (2012) - urban condition is worldwide not just physically but through political