What Is a City?

What Is a City?What properties characterizes a urban center? The exposition of the term city is some what ambiguous. Our modern definition merely describes the material characteristics of a city. However, I deliberate the definition has passed many ordeals to evolve into the present-day(prenominal) state as I will explain the few much popular explanations for What is a city? Firstly, a city has the property of proximity where there are educational institutions, entertainment, medical facilities, friends and family etc with a good pedestal transcription. Businesses enterprises will often situate themselves in a centralized hub where they feed access to labour forces while being close to markets therefore it makes daily commuting between residences and workplaces (Filion Bunting, 2006, pg.5) possible.Mumford, on the other hand describes a city as a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a domain of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of c ollective unity (Mumford, 2007, pg.87) by steering on the social needs rather than physical structure. This means that art, politics, education, doctor only serves to make the drama much richly significant, as a tier-set, well-designed, intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action of the play (Mumford, 2007, pg.87).Contrasting Mumfords concept with Wirths, one observes a more focused perspective on urbanism and its effect on our quality of life. Wirth defines a city as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals (Wirth, 2007, pg.90). His argument is that the greater the number of individuals participating in a interaction process, the greater the potential differentiation is between them. These variations segregate individuals gibe to color, race, ethnic, social status and preferences. Although we are physically close, our social contacts are distant, which results in the declining significance of the family the disappearance of the neighborhood and the undermining of the traditional basis of social solidarity.after much consultation from scholars, the question What is a City? is still unenviable to answer. On basic observation, a city can simply be a workplace as suggested by Filion Bunting. However I believe a city is a much more complex crew of hierarchies, both the physically and the socially, as Mumford and Wirth stated. A city is the organized interconnection between the site and structure and its people. Such as, the city needs a water system, different variety of jobs to offer its people, a governing system but these systems cannot operate without the people its accommodating, which is how it all connects and flows like a stage with its actors just like in Mumfords theatre. The city is a mere organisation of the people who reside in it. It is only a city, as great as its residence will give the name and credibility in the social and physical hierarchy.Work CitedBunting, Tr udi. Canadian Cities in Transition, trey Edition. Canada Oxford, 2006.Mumford, Lewis What is a City? In The City Reader, Fourth Edition, eds. R. Legates and F. Stout, 85-89. London Routledge, 2007.Wirth, Louis Urbanism as a Way of Life. In The City Reader, Fourth Edition, eds. R. Legates and F. Stout, 90-97. London Routledge, 2007.