URBAN AND RURAL

Urban Area

An urban area is the region surrounding a city. Most inhabitants of urban areas have nonagricultural jobs.
Urban areas are very developed, meaning there is a density of human structures such as
houses, commercial buildings, roads, bridges, and railways.

"Urban area" can refer to towns, cities, and suburbs. An urban area includes the city itself, as well as the
surrounding areas. Many urban areas are called metropolitan areas, or "greater," as in Greater New York
or Greater London.

When two or more metropolitan areas grow until they combine, the result may be known as
a megalopolis. In the United States, the urban area of Boston, Massachusetts, eventually spread as far
south as Washington, D.C., creating the megalopolis of BosWash, or the Northeast Corridor.

Rural areas are the opposite of urban areas. Rural areas, often called "the country," have low population
density and large amounts of undeveloped land. Usually, the difference between a rural area and an
urban area is clear. But in developed countries with large populations, such as Japan, the difference is
becoming less clear. In the United States, settlements with 2,500 inhabitants or more are defined as
urban. In Japan, which is far more densely populated than the U.S., only settlements with 30,000 people
or more are considered urban.

Throughout the world, the dominant pattern of migration within countries has been from rural to urban
areas. This is partly because improved technology has decreased the need for agricultural workers and
partly because cities are seen as offering greater economic opportunities. Most of the world’s people,
however, still live in rural areas.

Towns

One type of urban area is a town. A town is generally larger than a village, but smaller than a city. Some
geographers further define a town as having 2,500 to 20,000 residents.

Towns usually have local self-government, and they may grow around specialized economic activities,
such as mining or railroading.

The western part of the United States, for instance, is dotted with "ghost towns." Ghost towns no longer
have any human population. They are full of abandoned buildings and roads that have been overtaken by
shrubs and natural vegetation.

Many ghost towns in the western U.S. are the remains of "boom towns," which developed
after gold and silver were discovered in the area in the 19th century. Economic activity boomed in these
towns, most of it centered on mining. When all the gold and silver was mined, economic activity stopped
and people moved away, leaving ghost towns of empty homes and businesses.
Growth of Suburbs

Suburbs are smaller urban areas that surround cities. Most suburbs are less densely populated than cities.
They serve as the residential area for much of the citys work force. The suburbs are made up of mostly
single-family homes, stores, and services.

Many city residents move to suburbs, a situation known as suburban migration. Homes in suburbs are
usually larger than homes in cities, and suburbs usually have more parks and open spaces. Residents may
move to escape the traffic, noise, or to enjoy a larger residence.

Large groups of Americans began to move to suburbs in the late 1800s. The invention of
the streetcar made it possible for residents to commute from their homes to their city jobs.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. government enacted a program that gave home loans to returning
war veterans. This created an explosion of single-family homes and increased the growth of suburbs
across America.

The establishment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 also contributed to the growth of suburbs and
urban areas. The Highway Act created 66,000 kilometers (41,000 miles) of interstate roadway systems.
The original plan for the highway system was for the evacuation of large cities in case of a nuclear or
military attack. What the Highway Act created instead was suburban sprawl.

Suburban sprawl continues to be a phenomenon in the U.S. First, outlying areas of a city widen. Slowly,
these outlying areas become more crowded, pushing the suburbs farther into rural areas.

Housing and businesses that serve suburban communities eat up farmlandand wilderness. More than
809,000 hectares (2 million acres) of farmland and wilderness are lost to development every year in the
U.S.

Smart Growth

Recently, experts have tried to curb the spread of suburban sprawl, or at least create urban areas that are
developed more purposefully. This is known as "smart growth." City planners create communities that are
designed for more walking and less dependency on cars. Some developers recover old communities in
downtown urban areas, rather than develop the next piece of farmland or wilderness.

States such as Oregon are passing laws to prevent unplanned urban sprawl. They have created boundaries
around cities that limit the growth of development. Officials have created laws stating that the minimum
size of a plot of land is 32 hectares (80 acres). This is to prevent developers from creating suburban
communities. An 80-acre plot of land is too costly for a single-family home!

Other smart-growth communities are creating new types of development. Some have large amounts of
undeveloped "green space," organic farms, and lakes.

Urban areas typically drain the water from rain and snow, which cannot collect in the paved-over ground.
Rather than use drainage pipes and ditches, smart-growth communities create wetlands designed to
filter storm runoff.
More city planners are developing urban areas by considering their geography. Engineers build structures
that blend with their natural surroundings and use natural resources. White roofs, for example, reflect
the sun’s rays and lower the cost of air conditioning. Homebuilders in urban areas as diverse as Los
Angeles, California, and the island communities of Greece create homes and businesses with white plaster
or tile roofs for this reason.

There is also a move toward preserving and maintaining more green areas and planting more trees in
urban areas. Landscape designers often consult with city planners to incorporate parks with development.

Rural Area
A rural area is an open swath of land that has few homes or other buildings, and not very many people.

A rural areas population density is very low. Many people live in a city, or urban area. Their homes and
businesses are located very close to one another. In a rural area, there are fewer people, and their homes
and businesses are located far away from one another.

Agriculture is the primary industry in most rural areas. Most people live or work on farms
or ranches. Hamlets, villages, towns, and other small settlements are in or surrounded by rural areas.

Wildlife is more frequently found in rural areas than in cities because of the absence of people and
buildings. In fact, rural areas are often called the country because residents can see and interact with the
countrys native wildlife.

Throughout the world, more people live in rural areas than in urban areas. This has been changing rapidly,
however. Urbanization is happening all over the world. In Asia, for example, the United Nations estimates
that the urban population will increase by almost 2 billion by 2050.

Shift to Cities
People are migrating to urban areas for many reasons, including agricultural technology, industrial
technology, and the hope of changing ones economic circumstances.

Agricultural technology has decreased the need for agricultural workers. Improved transportation,
tools, fertilizer, and genetically modified crops mean fewer farmworkers harvest more food. This
decreased need for farm employment drives many farmworkers into cities in search of jobs.

Industrial technology has created many jobs unique to urban areas. Developing countries often have
resource-based economies, meaning most people make their living from agriculture, timber, mining, or
other harvesting of natural resources. These natural resources are most often located in rural areas. As
developing countries expand the use of industrial technology, they often shift their focus to a service-
based economy. Service-based economies use industrial technology to provide finished goods and
services to people inside and outside their countries.

India, for instance, is a country where many people practice agriculture in rural areas. As the
Indian economy develops, however, more people migrateto urban areas like Bangalore to work in
the technology industry. Instead of providing the raw materials (metals) for computer chips to nations like
the United States, Indian companies now manufacture the computer chips themselves.

Centers of learning, such as universities, hospitals, and regional government, are usually located in urban
areas. Many rural residents travel to cities to take advantage of economic opportunities there.

The cost of living in urban areas is usually much higher than in rural areas. It costs more to rent a house,
buy food, and use transportation. For this reason, wages are usually higher in urban areas. The search for
higher wages is another reason people migrate from rural areas.

In the United States, rural areas take up about 98 percent of the country but are home to only 25 percent
of the population. In Ethiopia, a less-developed country where agricultural jobs are much more common,
87 percent of the people live in rural areas.
– National Geographic

CITY
Meaning

A city is 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 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.

A variety of definitions, invoking population, population density, number of dwellings, economic function,
and infrastructure, are used in national censuses to classify populations as urban. Common population
definitions for a city range between 1,500 and 50,000 people, with most states using a minimum between
1,500 and 5000 inhabitants. However, some jurisdictions set no such minimums. According to 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 sometimes included in the definition. A typical city has professional
administrators, regulations, and some form of taxation (food and other necessities or means to trade for
them) to feed 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 through leadership of a chief.) The governments may be based on heredity, religion, military
power, work projects such as canal building, food distribution, land ownership, agriculture, commerce,
manufacturing, finance, or a combination of these. Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations.

The word city and the related civilization come, via Old French, 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.

Geography

Urban geography deals both with cities in their larger context and with their internal structure.
Site

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 a rule cannot produce their own food and therefore must develop some relationship with
a hinterland which 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
market places in optimal mutually reachable locations.[28]

Center

The vast majority of cities have 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.

Public space

Cities typically have public spaces where anyone can go. These include privately owned spaces open to
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.

Internal structure

Urban structure generally follows one or more basic patterns: geomorphic, radical, concentric, rectilinear,
and curvilinear. Physical environment generally constrains the form in which a city is built. If located on a
mountainside, it 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 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 and also Moscow, this pattern is still clearly
visible.

A system of rectilinear city streets and land plots, known as the s, has been used for millennia in Asia,
Europe, and the Americas. The Indus Valley Civilisation 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 a grid plan with specialized districts used across the Hellenistic
Mediterranean.

Urban areas

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 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 USA
these are grouped into metropolitan statistical areas for purposes of demography and marketing.) Some
cities are now part of a continuous urban landscape called urban agglomeration, conurbation, or
megalopolis (exemplified by the BosWash corridor of the Northeastern United States.)

History

Cities, characterized by population density, symbolic function, and urban planning, have existed for
thousands of years. In the conventional view, civilization and the city both followed from the development
of agriculture, which enabled production of surplus food, and thus a social division of labour (with
concomitant social stratification) and trade. Early cities often featured granaries, sometimes within a
temple. A minority viewpoint considers that cities may have arisen without agriculture, due to alternate
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 the Great
founded and created them with zeal.

Ancient times
Jericho and Çatalhöyük, dated to the eighth millennium BC, are among the earliest cities known to archaeologists.

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 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, 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 fostering multiple languages written in cuneiform. The Phoenician trading empire,
flourishing around 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 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 athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life of the polis. Rome's rise to power
brought its population to one million. Under the authority of its empire, Rome transformed and founded
many cities (coloniae), 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 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 the 30th century BC and the 18th century
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 drew on these earlier urban traditions.

Jenné-Jeno, located in present-day Mali and dating to the third century BC, lacked monumental
architecture and a distinctive elite social class—but nevertheless had specialized production and relations
with a hinterland. Pre-Arabic trade contacts probably existed between Jenné-Jeno and North Africa. Other
early urban centers in sub-Saharan Africa, dated to around 500 AD, include Awdaghust, Kumbi-Saleh the
ancient capital of Ghana, and Maranda a center located on a trade route between Egypt and Gao.

In the first millennium AD, Angkor in the Khmer Empire grew into one of the most extensive cities in the
world and may have supported up to one million people.

Middle Ages
The Ming Dynasty of China oversaw the creation of the Forbidden City and the expansion of Beijing to become the
largest city in the world.

In the remnants of the Roman Empire, cities of late antiquity gained independence but soon lost
population and importance. The locus of power in the West shifted to Constantinople and to the
ascendant Islamic civilization with its major cities Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba. From the 9th through the
end of the 12th century, Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine 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.

By the thirteenth and fourteenth 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 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 a considerable autonomy in
late medieval Japan.
Early modern

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 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.

Industrial age

The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and 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.

19th-century London as capital of the world, crowded and thick with its own variety of smog.

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.

Industrialized cities became deadly places to live, due to health problems resulting from 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 the urban
landscape.

Post-industrial age

In the second half of the twentieth 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 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, the People's Republic of China has undergone concomitant urbanization and
industrialization and to become the world's leading manufacturer.

Amidst these economic changes, high technology and instantaneous telecommunication enable select
cities to become centers of 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
Urbanization is the process of migration from rural into urban areas, driven by various political, economic,
and cultural factors. Until 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
through 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 the world population lived in cities. The cultural appeal of
cities also plays a role in attracting residents.

Urbanization rapidly spread across the 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 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, villas miserias, 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%.[95] In general, the more developed countries of 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 population in 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 relocation of major businesses
from Europe and North America, attracting immigrants from near and far. A deep gulf divides rich and
poor in these cities, with usually contain 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 the volume of sewage begins to exceed manageable
levels.

Government

Local government of cities takes different forms including prominently the municipality (especially in
England, in the United States, in India, and in other British colonies; legally, the municipal corporation;
municipio in Spain and in Portugal, and, along with municipalidad, in most former parts of the Spanish
and Portuguese empires) and the commune (in France and in Chile; or comune in Italy).

The chief official of the city has the title of mayor. Whatever his true degree of political authority, the
mayor typically acts as the figurehead or personification of his city.
City governments have authority to make laws governing activity within cities, while its jurisdiction is
generally considered subordinate (in ascending order) to state/provincial, national, and perhaps
international law. This hierarchy of law is not enforced rigidly in practice—for example in conflicts
between municipal regulations and national principles such as constitutional rights and property rights.
Legal conflicts and issues arise more frequently in cities than elsewhere due to the bare fact of their
greater density. Modern city governments thoroughly regulate everyday life in many dimensions,
including public and personal health, transport, burial, resource use and extraction, recreation, and the
nature and use of buildings. Technologies, techniques, and laws governing these areas—developed in
cities—have become ubiquitous in many areas. Municipal officials may be appointed from a higher level
of government or elected locally.

Municipal services

Cities typically provide municipal services such as education, through school systems; policing, through
police departments; and firefighting, through fire departments; as well as the city's basic infrastructure.
These are provided more or less routinely, in a more or less equal fashion. Responsibility for
administration usually falls on the city government, though some services may be operated by a higher
level of government, while others may be privately run. Armies may assume responsibility for policing
cities in states of domestic turmoil such as America's King assassination riots of 1968.

Finance

The traditional basis for municipal finance is local property tax levied on real estate within the city. Local
government can also collect revenue for services, or by leasing land that it owns. However, financing
municipal services, as well as urban renewal and other development projects, is a perennial problem,
which cities address through appeals to higher governments, arrangements with the private sector, and
techniques such as privatization (selling services to into the private sector), corporatization (formation of
quasi-private municipally-owned corporations), and financialization (packaging city assets into tradable
financial instruments and derivatives). This situation has become acute in deindustrialized cities and in
cases where businesses and wealthier citizens have moved outside of city limits and therefore beyond the
reach of taxation. Cities in search of ready cash increasingly resort to the municipal bond, essentially a
loan with interest and a repayment date. City governments have also begun to use tax increment
financing, in which a development project is financed by loans based on future tax revenues which it is
expected to yield. Under these circumstances, creditors and consequently city governments place a high
importance on city credit ratings.

Governance

Governance includes government but refers to a wider domain of social control functions implemented
by many actors including nongovernmental organizations. The impact of globalization and the role of
multinational corporations in local governments worldwide, has led to a shift in perspective on urban
governance, away from the "urban regime theory" in which a coalition of local interests functionally
govern, toward a theory of outside economic control, widely associated in academics with the philosophy
of neoliberalism. In the neoliberal model of governance, public utilities are privatized, industry is
deregulated, and corporations gain the status of governing actors—as indicated by the power they wield
in public-private partnerships and over business improvement districts, and in the expectation of self-
regulation through corporate social responsibility. The biggest investors and real estate developers act as
the city's de facto urban planners.

The related concept of good governance places more emphasis on the state, with the purpose of assessing
urban governments for their suitability for development assistance. The concepts of governance and good
governance are especially invoked in the emergent megacities, where international organizations
consider existing governments inadequate for their large populations.

Urban planning

Urban planning, the application of forethought to city design, involves optimizing land use, transportation,
utilities, and other basic systems, in order to achieve certain objectives. Urban planners and scholars have
proposed overlapping theories as ideals for how plans should be formed. Planning tools, beyond the
original design of the city itself, include public capital investment in infrastructure and land-use controls
such as zoning. The continuous process of comprehensive planning involves identifying general objectives
as well as collecting data to evaluate progress and inform future decisions.

Government, as the ultimate wielder of force is legally the final authority on planning but in practice the
process involves both public and private elements. The legal principle of eminent domain is used by
government to divest citizens of their property in cases where its use is required for a project. Planning
often involves tradeoffs—decisions in which some stand to gain and some to lose—and thus is closely
connected to the prevailing political situation.

The history of urban planning dates to some of the earliest known cities, especially in the Indus Valley and
Mesoamerican civilizations, which built their cities on grids and apparently zoned different areas for
different purposes. The effects of planning, ubiquitous in today's world, can be seen most clearly in the
layout of planned communities, fully designed prior to construction, often with consideration for
interlocking physical, economic, and cultural systems.

Society

Social structure

Urban society is typically stratified. Spatially, cities are formally or informally segregated along ethnic,
economic and racial lines. People living relatively close together may live, work, and play, in separate
areas, and associate with different people, forming ethnic or lifestyle enclaves or, in areas of concentrated
poverty, ghettoes. While in the USA and elsewhere poverty became associated with the inner city, in
France it has become associated with the banlieues, areas of urban development which surround the city
proper. Meanwhile, across Europe and North America, the racially white majority is empirically the most
segregated group. Suburbs in the west, and, increasingly, gated communities and other forms of
"privatopia" around the world, allow local elites to self-segregate into secure and exclusive
neighborhoods.

Landless urban workers, contrasted with peasants and known as the proletariat, form a growing stratum
of society in the age of urbanization. In Marxist doctrine, the proletariat will inevitably revolt against the
bourgeoisie as their ranks swell with disenfranchised and disaffected people lacking all stake in the status
quo. The global urban proletariat of today, however, generally lacks the status as factory workers which
in the nineteenth century provided access to the means of production.
Economics

Historically, cities rely on rural areas for intensive farming to yield surplus crops, in exchange for which
they provide money, political administration, manufactured goods, and culture. Urban economics tends
to analyze larger agglomerations, stretching beyond city limits, in order to reach a more complete
understanding of the local labor market.

As hubs of trade cities have long been home to retail commerce and consumption through the interface
of shopping. In the 20th century, department stores using new techniques of advertising, public relations,
decoration, and design, transformed urban shopping areas into fantasy worlds encouraging self-
expression and escape through consumerism.

In general, the density of cities expedites commerce and facilitates knowledge spillovers, helping people
and firms exchange information and generate new ideas. A thicker labor market allows for better skill
matching between firms and individuals. Population density enables also sharing of common
infrastructure and production facilities, however in very dense cities, increased crowding and waiting
times may lead to some negative effects.

Although manufacturing fueled the growth of cities, many now rely on a tertiary or service economy. The
services in question range from tourism, hospitality, entertainment, housekeeping and prostitution to
grey-collar work in law, finance, and administration.

Culture and communications

Cities are typically hubs for education and the arts, supporting universities, museums, temples, and other
cultural institutions. They feature impressive displays of architecture ranging from small to enormous and
ornate to brutal; skyscrapers, providing thousands of offices or homes within a small footprint, and visible
from miles away, have become iconic urban features. Cultural elites tend to live in cities, bound together
by shared cultural capital, and themselves playing some role in governance. By virtue of their status as
centers of culture and literacy, cities can be described as the locus of civilization, world history, and social
change.

Density makes for effective mass communication and transmission of news, through heralds, printed
proclamations, newspapers, and digital media. These communication networks, though still using cities
as hubs, penetrate extensively into all populated areas. In the age of rapid communication and
transportation, commentators have described urban culture as nearly ubiquitous or as no longer
meaningful. At the same time hallmarks of rural life may appear in the midst of the city, as in the case of
urban agriculture.

Today, a city's promotion of its cultural activities dovetails with place branding and city marketing, public
diplomacy techniques used to inform development strategy; to attract businesses, investors, residents,
and tourists; and to create a shared identity and sense of place within the metropolitan area. Physical
inscriptions, plaques, and monuments on display physically transmit a historical context for urban places.
Some cities, such as Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome have indelible religious status and for hundreds of years
have attracted pilgrims. Patriotic tourists visit Agra to see the Taj Mahal, or New York City to visit Ground
Zero. Elvis lovers visit Memphis to pay their respects at Graceland. Place brands (which include place
satisfaction and place loyalty) have great economic value (comparable to the value of commodity brands)
because of their influence on the decision-making process of people thinking about doing business in—
"purchasing" (the brand of)—a city.

Bread and circuses among other forms of cultural appeal, attract and entertain the masses. Sports also
play a major role in city branding and local identity formation. Cities go to considerable lengths in
competing to host the Olympic Games, which bring global attention and tourism.

Warfare

Cities play a crucial strategic role in warfare due to their economic, demographic, symbolic, and political
centrality. For the same reasons, they are targets in asymmetric warfare. Many cities throughout history
were founded under military auspices, a great many have incorporated fortifications, and military
principles continue to influence urban design. Indeed, war may have served as the social rationale and
economic basis for the very earliest cities.

Powers engaged in geopolitical conflict have established fortified settlements as part of military
strategies, as in the case of garrison towns, America's Strategic Hamlet Program during the Vietnam War,
and Israeli settlements in Palestine. While occupying the Philippines, the US Army ordered local people
concentrated into cities and towns, in order to isolate committed insurgents and battle freely against
them in the countryside.

During World War II, national governments on occasion declared certain cities open, effectively
surrendering them to an advancing enemy in order to avoid damage and bloodshed. Urban warfare
proved decisive, however, in the Battle of Stalingrad, where Soviet forces repulsed German occupiers,
with extreme casualties and destruction. In an era of low-intensity conflict and rapid urbanization, cities
have become sites of long-term conflict waged both by foreign occupiers and by local governments against
insurgency. Such warfare, known as counterinsurgency, involves techniques of surveillance and
psychological warfare as well as close combat, functionally extends modern urban crime prevention,
which already uses concepts such as defensible space.

Although capture is the more common objective, warfare has in some cases spelt complete destruction
for a city. Mesopotamian tablets and ruins attest to such destruction, as does the Latin motto Carthago
delenda est. Since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and throughout the Cold War, nuclear
strategists continued to contemplate the use of "counter value" targeting: crippling an enemy by
annihilating its valuable cities, rather than aiming primarily at its military forces.

Infrastructure

Urban infrastructure involves various physical networks and spaces necessary for transportation, water
use, energy, recreation, and public functions. Infrastructure carries a high initial cost in fixed capital (pipes,
wires, plants, vehicles, etc.) but lower marginal costs and thus positive economies of scale. Because of the
higher barriers to entry, these networks have been classified as natural monopolies, meaning that
economic logic favors control of each network by a single organization, public or private.

Infrastructure in general (if not every infrastructure project) plays a vital role in a city's capacity for
economic activity and expansion, underpinning the very survival of the city’s inhabitants, as well as
technological, commercial, industrial, and social activities. Structurally, many infrastructure systems take
the form of networks with redundant links and multiple pathways, so that the system as a whole continue
to operate even if parts of it fail. The particulars of a city’s infrastructure systems have historical path
dependence because new development must build from what exists already.

Megaprojects such as the construction of airports, power plants, and railways require large upfront
investments and thus tend to require funding from national government or the private sector.
Privatization may also extend to all levels of infrastructure construction and maintenance.

Urban infrastructure ideally serves all residents equally but in practice may prove uneven—with, in some
cities, clear first-class and second-class alternatives.

Utilities

Public utilities (literally, useful things with general availability) include basic and essential infrastructure
networks, chiefly concerned with the supply of water, electricity, and telecommunications capability to
the populace

Sanitation, necessary for good health in crowded conditions, requires water supply and waste
management as well as individual hygiene. Urban water systems include principally a water supply
network and a network for wastewater including sewage and stormwater. Historically, either local
governments or private companies have administered urban water supply, with a tendency toward
government water supply in the 20th century and a tendency toward private operation at the turn of the
twenty-first. The market for private water services is dominated by two French companies, Veolia Water
(formerly Vivendi) and Engie (formerly Suez), said to hold 70% of all water contracts worldwide.

Modern urban life relies heavily on the energy transmitted through electricity for the operation of electric
machines (from household appliances to industrial machines to now-ubiquitous electronic systems used
in communications, business, and government) and for traffic lights, streetlights and indoor lighting. Cities
rely to a lesser extent on hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and natural gas for transportation, heating,
and cooking. Telecommunications infrastructure such as telephone lines and coaxial cables also traverse
cities, forming dense networks for mass and point-to-point communications.

Transportation

Because cities rely on specialization and an economic system based on wage labour, their inhabitants
must have the ability to regularly travel between home, work, commerce, and entertainment. City
dwellers travel foot or by wheel on roads and walkways, or use special rapid transit systems based on
underground, over ground, and elevated rail. Cities also rely on long-distance transportation (truck, rail,
and airplane) for economic connections with other cities and rural areas.

Historically, city streets were the domain of horses and their riders and pedestrians, who only sometimes
had sidewalks and special walking areas reserved for them. In the west, bicycles or (velocipedes), efficient
human-powered machines for short- and medium-distance travel,[185] enjoyed a period of popularity at
the beginning of the twentieth century before the rise of automobiles. Soon after, they gained a more
lasting foothold in Asian and African cities under European influence. In western cities, industrializing,
expanding, and electrifying at this time, public transit systems and especially streetcars enabled urban
expansion as new residential neighborhoods sprung up along transit lines and workers rode to and from
work downtown.
Since the mid-twentieth century, cities have relied heavily on motor vehicle transportation, with major
implications for their layout, environment, and aesthetics. (This transformation occurred most
dramatically in the USA—where corporate and governmental policies favored automobile transport
systems—and to a lesser extent in Europe.) The rise of personal cars accompanied the expansion of urban
economic areas into much larger metropolises, subsequently creating ubiquitous traffic issues with
accompanying construction of new highways, wider streets, and alternative walkways for pedestrians.

However, severe traffic jams still occur regularly in cities around the world, as private car ownership and
urbanization continue to increase, overwhelming existing urban street networks.

The urban bus system, the world's most common form of public transport, uses a network of scheduled
routes to move people through the city, alongside cars, on the roads. Economic function itself also became
more decentralized as concentration became impractical and employers relocated to more car-friendly
locations (including edge cities). Some cities have introduced bus rapid transit systems which include
exclusive bus lanes and other methods for prioritizing bus traffic over private cars. Many big American
cities still operate conventional public transit by rail, as exemplified by the ever-popular New York City
Subway system. Rapid transit is widely used in Europe and has increased in Latin America and Asia.

Walking and cycling ("non-motorized transport") enjoy increasing favor (more pedestrian zones and bike
lanes) in American and Asian urban transportation planning, under the influence of such trends as the
Healthy Cities movement, the drive for sustainable development, and the idea of a carefree city.
Techniques such as road space rationing and road use charges have been introduced to limit urban car
traffic.

Housing

Housing of residents presents one of the major challenges every city must face. Adequate housing entails
not only physical shelters but also the physical systems necessary to sustain life and economic activity.
Home ownership represents status and a modicum of economic security, compared to renting which may
consume much of the income of low-wage urban workers. Homelessness, or lack of housing, is a
challenged currently faced by millions of people in countries rich and poor.

Ecology

Urban ecosystems, influenced as they are by the density of human buildings and activities differ
considerably from those of their rural surroundings. Anthropogenic buildings and waste, as well as
cultivation in gardens, create physical and chemical environments which have no equivalents in
wilderness, in some cases enabling exceptional biodiversity. They provide homes not only for immigrant
humans but also for immigrant plants, bringing about interactions between species which never
previously encountered each other. They introduce frequent disturbances (construction, walking) to plant
and animal habitats, creating opportunities for recolonization and thus favoring young ecosystems with
r-selected species dominant. On the whole, urban ecosystems are less complex and productive than
others, due to the diminished absolute amount of biological interactions.

Typical urban fauna includes insects (especially ants), rodents (mice, rats), and birds, as well as cats and
dogs (domesticated and feral). Large predators are scarce.
Cities generate considerable ecological footprints, locally and at longer distances, due to concentrated
populations and technological activities. From one perspective, cities are not ecologically sustainable due
to their resource needs. From another, proper management may be able to ameliorate a city's ill effects.
Air pollution arises from various forms of combustion, including fireplaces, wood or coal-burning stoves,
other heating systems, and internal combustion engines. Industrialized cities, and today third-world
megacities, are notorious for veils of smog (industrial haze) which envelop them, posing a chronic threat
to the health of their millions of inhabitants. Urban soil contains higher concentrations of heavy metals
(especially lead, copper, and nickel) and has lower pH than soil in comparable wilderness.

Modern cities are known for creating their own microclimates, due to concrete, asphalt, and other
artificial surfaces, which heat up in sunlight and channel rainwater into underground ducts. The
temperature in New York City exceeds nearby rural temperatures by an average of 2–3°C and at times 5–
10°C differences have been recorded. This effect varies nonlinearly with population changes
(independently of the city's physical size). Aerial particulates increase rainfall by 5–10%. Thus, urban areas
experience unique climates, with earlier flowering and later leaf dropping than in nearby country.

Poor and working-class people face disproportionate exposure to environmental risks (known as
environmental racism when intersecting also with racial segregation). For example, within the urban
microclimate, less-vegetated poor neighborhoods bear more of the heat (but have fewer means of coping
with it).

World city system

As the world becomes more closely linked through economics, politics, technology, and culture (a process
called globalization), cities have come to play a leading role in transnational affairs, exceeding the
limitations of international relations conducted by national governments. This phenomenon, resurgent
today, can be traced back to the Silk Road, Phoenicia, and the Greek city-states, through the Hanseatic
League and other alliances of cities. Today the information economy based on high-speed internet
infrastructure enables instantaneous telecommunication around the world, effectively eliminating the
distance between cities for the purposes of stock markets and other high-level elements of the world
economy, as well as personal communications and mass media.

Global city

A global city, also known as a world city, is a prominent centre of trade, banking, finance, innovation, and
markets. Saskia Sassen used the term "global city" in 1991 to refer to a city's power, status, and
cosmopolitanism, rather than to its size. Following this view of cities, it is possible to rank the world's cities
hierarchically. London, New York City, Paris, and Tokyo form the capstone of the global hierarchy, exerting
command and control through their economic and political influence. Global cities may have reached their
status due to early transition to post-industrialism or through inertia which has enabled them to maintain
their dominance from the industrial era. This type of ranking exemplifies an emerging discourse in which
cities, considered variations on the same ideal type, must compete with each other globally to achieve
prosperity.

Critics of the notion point to the different realms of power and interchange. The term "global city" is
heavily influenced by economic factors and, thus, may not account for places that are otherwise
significant. Paul James, for example argues that the term is "reductive and skewed" in its focus on financial
systems.

Multinational corporations and banks make their headquarters in global cities and conduct much of their
business within this context. American firms dominate the international markets for law and engineering
and maintain branches in the biggest foreign global cities.

Global cities feature concentrations of extremely wealthy and extremely poor people. Their economies
are lubricated by their capacity (limited by the national government's immigration policy, which
functionally defines the supply side of the labor market) to recruit low- and high-skilled immigrant workers
from poorer areas. More and more cities today draw on this globally available labor force.
Modern global cities, like New York City, often include large central business districts that serve as hubs for economic
activity.

Transnational activity

Cities increasingly participate in world political activities independently of their enclosing nation-states.
Early examples of this phenomenon are the sister city relationship and the promotion of multi-level
governance within the European Union as a technique for European integration. Cities including Hamburg,
Prague, Amsterdam, The Hague, and City of London maintain their own embassies to the European Union
at Brussels.

New urban dwellers may increasingly not simply as immigrants but as transmigrants, keeping one foot
each (through telecommunications if not travel) in their old and their new homes.

Global governance

Cities participate in global governance by various means including membership in global networks which
transmit norms and regulations. At the general, global level, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG)
is a significant umbrella organization for cities; regionally and nationally, Eurocities, Asian Network of
Major Cities 21, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities the National League of Cities, and the United
States Conference of Mayors play similar roles. UCLG took responsibility for creating Agenda 21 for
culture, a program for cultural policies promoting sustainable development, and has organized various
conferences and reports for its furtherance.

Networks have become especially prevalent in the arena of environmentalism and specifically climate
change following the adoption of Agenda 21. Environmental city networks include the C40 Cities Climate
Leadership Group, World Association of Major Metropolises ("Metropolis"), the United Nations Global
Compact Cities Programme, the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA), the Covenant of Mayors and the
Compact of Mayors, ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, and the Transition Towns network.

Cities with world political status as meeting places for advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations,
lobbyists, educational institutions, intelligence agencies, military contractors, information technology
firms, and other groups with a stake in world policymaking. They are consequently also sites for symbolic
protest.

United Nations System

The United Nations System has been involved in a series of events and declarations dealing with the
development of cities during this period of rapid urbanization.

 The Habitat I conference in 1976 adopted the "Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements"
which identifies urban management as a fundamental aspect of development and establishes
various principles for maintaining urban habitats.
 Citing the Vancouver Declaration, the UN General Assembly in December 1977 authorized the
United Nations Commission Human Settlements and the HABITAT Centre for Human Settlements,
intended to coordinate UN activities related to housing and settlements.
 The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro resulted in a set of international agreements including
Agenda 21 which establishes principles and plans for sustainable development.
 The Habitat II conference in 1996 called for cities to play a leading role in this program, which
subsequently advanced the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals
 In January 2002 the UN Commission on Human Settlements became an umbrella agency called
the United Nations Human Settlements Programme or UN-Habitat, a member of the United
Nations Development Group.
 The Habitat III conference of 2016 focused on implementing these goals under the banner of a
"New Urban Agenda". The four mechanisms envisio 14ned for effecting the New Urban Agenda
are (1) national policies promoting integrated sustainable development, (2) stronger urban
governance, (3) long-term integrated urban and territorial planning, and (4) effective financing
frameworks. Just before this conference, the European Union concurrently approved an "Urban
Agenda for the European Union" known as the Pact of Amsterdam.

UN-Habitat coordinates the UN urban agenda, working with the UN Environmental Programme, the UN
Development Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health
Organization, and the World Bank.

The World Bank, a United Nations specialized agency, has been a primary force in promoting the Habitat
conferences, and since the first Habitat conference has used their declarations as a framework for issuing
loans for urban infrastructure The bank's structural adjustment programs contributed to urbanization in
the Third World by creating incentives to move to cities. The World Bank and UN-Habitat in 1999 jointly
established the Cities Alliance (based at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.) to guide
policymaking, knowledge sharing, and grant distribution around the issue of urban poverty. (UN-Habitat
plays an advisory role in evaluating the quality of a locality's governance.) The Bank's policies have tended
to focus on bolstering real estate markets through credit and technical assistance.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO has increasingly focused on
cities as key sites for influencing cultural governance. It has developed various city networks including the
International Coalition of Cities against Racism and the Creative Cities Network. UNESCO's capacity to
select World Heritage Sites and maintain them through Public/social/private partnerships gives the
organization significant influence over cultural capital, tourism, and historic preservation funding.

Representation in culture

Cities figure prominently in traditional Western mythology, appearing in the Bible in both evil and holy
forms, symbolized by Babylon and Jerusalem. Cain and Nimrod are the first city builders in the Book of
Genesis. In Sumerian mythology Gilgamesh built the walls of Uruk.
Cities can be perceived in terms of extremes or opposites: at once liberating and oppressive, wealthy and
poor, organized and chaotic. The name anti-urbanism refers to various types of ideological opposition to
cities, whether because of their culture or their political relationship with the country. Such opposition
may result from identification of cities with oppression and the ruling elite. This and other political
ideologies strongly influence narratives and themes in discourse about cities. In turn, cities symbolize their
home societies.

Writers, painters, and filmmakers have produced innumerable works of art concerning the urban
experience. Classical and medieval literature includes a genre of descriptions which treat of city features
and history. Modern authors such as Charles Dickens and James Joyce are famous for evocative
descriptions of their home cities. Fritz Lang conceived the idea for his influential 1927 film Metropolis
(film) while visiting Times Square and marveling at the nighttime neon lighting. Other early cinematic
representations of cities in the twentieth century generally depicted them as technologically efficient
spaces with smoothly functioning systems of automobile transport. By the 1960s, however, traffic
congestion began to appear in such films as The Fast Lady (1962) and Playtime (1967)

Literature, film, and other forms of popular culture have supplied visions of future cities both utopian and
dystopian. The prospect of expanding, communicating, and increasingly interdependent world cities has
given rise to images such as Nylonkong (NY, London, Hong Kong) and visions of a single world-
encompassing ecumenopolis.

TYPES OF CITIES
The prospect of urban innovation excites the imagination. But dreaming up what a “smart city” will look
like in some gleaming future is, by its nature, a utopian exercise. The messy truth is that cities are not the
same, and even the most innovative approach can never achieve universal impact. What’s appealing for
intellectuals in Copenhagen or Amsterdam is unlikely to help millions of workers in Jakarta or Lagos. To
really make a difference, private entrepreneurs and civic entrepreneurs need to match projects to specific
circumstances. An effective starting point is to break cities into four segments across two distinctions:
legacy vs. new cities, and developed vs. emerging economies. The opportunities to innovate will differ
greatly by segment.

Segment 1: Developed Economy, Legacy City

Examples: London, Detroit, Tokyo, Singapore

Characteristics: Any intervention in a legacy city has to dismantle something that existed before — a road
or building, or even a regulatory authority or an entrenched service business. Slow demographic growth
in developed economies creates a zero-sum situation (which is part of why the licensed cabs vs Uber/Lyft
contest is so heated). Elites live in these cities, so solutions arise that primarily help users spend their
excess cash. Yelp, Zillow, and Trip Advisor are examples of innovations in this context.

Implications for city leaders: Leaders should try to establish a setting where entrepreneurs can create
solutions that improve quality of life — without added government expense. Airbnb is an example of a
win-win quality improvement: landlords realize more cash flow from their assets, and customers gain both
better choice and lower costs in their travel lodging options. Similarly, city leaders should encourage
enterprises that create jobs directly (Lyft or Uber) or that indirectly facilitate expansion of work (Angie’s
List or Handy).

Implications for entrepreneurs: Denizens of developed legacy cities have discretionary income. This
means that entrepreneurs should focus on highly targeted solutions that work for defined segments of
the population. Solutions should trend toward entertainment, education, and social networking, and they
can be location specific. OpenTable (a restaurant reservations service), Motivate (the operator of CitiBike,
Bay Area Bikeshare, and others), and Luxe (a web-based valet parking service) are examples.

Segment 2: Emerging Economy, Legacy City

Examples: Mumbai, São Paolo, Jakarta

Characteristics: Most physical and institutional structures are already in place in these megacities, but
with fast-growing populations and severe congestion, there is an opportunity to create value by improving
efficiency and livability, and there is a market of customers with cash to pay for these benefits.

Implications for city leaders: Leaders should loosen restrictions so that private finance can invest in
improvements to physical infrastructure, to better use what already exists. They should also encourage
sources of repayment for such investments beyond just user fees. Large-scale examples include Hong
Kong’s historic real estate subsidy for MTR rail from the airport to downtown, or the per-liter subsidies
for private urban water and sanitation providers in Algiers and many other cities.

Implications for entrepreneurs: Focus on public-private partnerships (PPP). Compelling solutions that
focus on the usefulness of existing infrastructure — for example, traffic-route optimization or ride sharing
or more effective trash pickup — also can be essentially self-funded when subsides are not available.
Waze, Turo (formerly RelayRides), and Waste Zero are examples. There are opportunities to combine
creative financing with thoughtful use of new sensor and big-data technologies to create projects that
contribute to building sustainable cities.

Segment 3: Emerging Economy, New City

Examples: Phu My Hung, Vietnam; Suzhou, China; Astana, Kazakhstan; Singapore (historically)

Characteristics: These cities tend to have high population growth and high growth rates in GDP per capita,
demographic and economic tailwinds that help to boost returns. The urban areas have few existing
physical or social structures to dismantle as they grow, hence fewer entrenched obstacles to new
offerings. There is also immediate ROI for investments in basic services as population moves in, because
they capture new revenues from new users. Finally, in these cities there is an important chance to build
it right the first time, notably with respect to the roads, bridges, water, and power that will determine
both economic competitiveness and quality of life for decades. The downside? If this chance is missed,
new urban agglomerations will be characterized by informal sprawl and new settlements will be hard to
reach after the fact with power, roads, and sanitation.
Implications for city leaders: Leaders should first focus on building hard infrastructure that will support
services such as schools, hospitals, and parks. This also might be done through PPP arrangements. Next,
they can encourage commercial platforms for entrepreneurs to create services including data
connectivity, banking, and insurance.

Implications for entrepreneurs: In these cities, it’s too soon to think about optimizing existing
infrastructure or establishing amusing ways for wealthy people to spend their disposable income.
Entrepreneurs should focus on applications and services that address likely “institutional voids” ranging
from inconsistent electric power to the slow enforcement of contracts. Alibaba Escrow, a unit of Chinese
e-commerce giant Alibaba, holds buyer payments for B2B transactions until goods are received
satisfactorily, and then releases the cash to the seller. This helps to facilitate commerce among trusted
parties in a situation where some institutions and business norms, such as courts and contracts, are not
fully developed to Western expectations.

Segment 4: Developed Economy, New City

Examples and characteristics: Such cities are very rare. All the moment, almost all self-proclaimed “new
cities” in the developed world are in fact large, integrated real-estate developments with an urban theme,
usually in close proximity to a true municipality. Examples of these initiatives include New Songdo City in
South Korea, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, and Hafen City Hamburg in Germany.

Implications for city leaders: These satellites of existing metropolises compete for jobs and to attract
talented participants in the creative economy. Leaders should focus on hard infrastructure that reduces
costs for companies and on the soft infrastructure that positions the city high on the quality-of-life metrics
that appeal to creative-economy workers. These factors include easy transit, clean air and water, green
space, and support for arts and recreation.

Implications for entrepreneurs: Align with city leaders on services that are important to knowledge
workers, and help build the cities’ brand. For example, Cisco has deployed telepresence technologies
(high-quality, real-time video interaction) to developments including New Songdo City in Korea and Lavasa
in India to improve both the delivery of civic services and to attract employers.

Cities are different. So are solutions.

The current buzz around “smart cities” is driven by many forces, ranging from political leaders to academic
writing to vendor enthusiasm. Elites can be distracted by cool technology and tourist-friendly innovations,
but that’s not the whole story. Most cities can’t pay directly for “smartness,” and often they can’t even
finance basic infrastructure, so innovation in many situations has to be led also by private capital with a
focus on interventions that pay for themselves. Global urban innovators will do well to consider the
different situations and approaches across the four segments and to match goals and financing
appropriately.
 LGA Regional
Attribute Land-use planning RMA planning Growth/Urban Spatial planning
Development Strategy

Growth/urban
Promoting the development strategies
sustainable management have emerged in Shaping spatial
of natural and physical recognition of the need development
resources – controlling to sustainably manage through the
Regulating land use and
adverse environmental growth/development so coordination of the
development through
effects from the use and that communities can spatial impacts of
designation of areas of
development of benefit socially, sector policies and
Purpose development and
renewable resources. economically and decisions.
protection, and
Some regulation of land culturally while Considers economic,
application of
use and development safeguarding resources social and
performance criteria.
through zoning and for future generations. environmental
protection, and Their aim is to provide effects of
application of long-term guidance for development.
performance criteria. the management of the
urban environment.

Context, issues,
objectives, policies and
methods.
Methods are regulatory
Strategy identifying
means of
critical spatial
Schedule of policies and implementation
Schedule of issues, development issues
decision rules to (eg, structure plans
objectives, policies and and defining clear
regulate land use for the defining growth issues
methods for the desired outcomes
Form administrative area. that relate to particular
administrative area. across functional
Mapping of designation areas that need to be
Mapping of areas (eg, areas.
of areas and sites for addressed in a plan
residential zones). Visualisation of
development purposes. change(s)).
spatial goals and key
Base map showing main
areas of change.
roads, existing urban
areas and local authority
boundaries.
Maps are schematic.

Continuous process
Some information of plan review and
Discrete process leading Discrete process leading sharing, driven by adjustment.
to adoption of final to adoption of final plan – debate on alternative Mutual learning and
blueprint plan. option of plan changes. development models as information sharing,
Confrontational process, Confrontational process, part of a collaborative driven by debate on
instigated through instigated through process. alternative
Process consultation on draft consultation on draft Key stakeholders may development
plans and political plans. not be involved and/or models as part of a
negotiation. Stakeholders use the have marginal collaborative
Stakeholders use the legal processes to involvement. political process.
process to protect and protect and promote Development of Stakeholders use the
promote their interests. their interests. indicators to monitor process to achieve
progress. their own and
mutual goals.
 A corporate
A document of the
document of the
A document of the planning authority
A corporate document local authority in
planning authority providing guidance to
Ownership and of the local shared ownership
providing guidance to applicants on the
policy authority/some shared with communities
other professional regulation of
community ownership with and other
planners promoting and development and
territorial authorities. stakeholders,
regulating development. mitigation of
partnerships and
environmental effects.
NGOs.

Final plan incorporated

Final plan determined into RPS, which is Final plan
through adversarial notified. May change determined by
Final plan determined
Environment through adversarial inquisitorial
Procedural through adversarial
Court/appeals process Environment examination of the
safeguards inquiry on parts of plan
on parts of (or the whole) Court/appeals process soundness and
subject to objections.
plan subject to on parts of (or the coherence of the
submissions. whole) plan subject to whole plan.
submissions.

Sets the scene and Building

makes predictions for understanding of
the future (ie, District critical spatial
Profile). Examines the development trends
Mapping of constraints current capacity of and drivers, market
and collection of residential, commercial demands and needs,
sectoral policy demands. and industrial areas. and the social,
Bargaining and Looks at possible new economic and
negotiation with Sets out issues, areas for development environmental
objectors and other objectives, policies and (ie, land-use zones). impacts of
stakeholders, informed methods. Sets out a vision and development.
Methods
by broad planning Criteria-based approach. how it fits with other Analysis of options
principles. Environmental effects council documents. through visioning
Checking of proposals are assessed. Identifies issues and and strategic choice
through sustainability provides means of approaches.
appraisal/strategic addressing these so that Generation of
environment the vision may be alternatives and
assessment. achieved. options assisted by
Sets out council’s sustainability
philosophy for growth, appraisal/strategic
proposes objectives, environmental
policies and methods. assessment.

Seeks to influence
decisions in other
Seeks to direct change
sectors by building
and control investment Seeks to Seeks to manage
joint ownership of
activity in land use manage/mitigate growth/development
the strategy and a
through prescriptive environmental impacts through influencing
Delivery and range of incentives
regulation, whilst of change through land-use regulation via
implementation and other
mitigating local prescriptive regulation local level
mechanisms,
externalities through and development plans/development
including land-use
conditions and planning contributions. contributions.
regulation and
agreements.
planning
agreements.

Measures conformance
of the plan’s policies and
proposals with planning
control outcomes.
Data provides portrait of
Monitoring and
plan area as general
review
context for
implementation of
proposals.
Periodic but infrequent
review of whole plan.
Measures
performance of the
plan in influencing
Formal evaluation may
sector policy and
be commissioned/little
decision-making.
monitoring.
Data informs
Data beginning to
Periodic but infrequent understanding of
inform development
review of whole plan. spatial development
and testing of strategic
and the application
choice options.
of the strategy.
Periodic but infrequent
Regular adjustment
review of whole plan.
of components of
plan around
consistent vision.