What are Cities and Where Do They Stop?

From Cairo to London, from New York to New Delhi; the world is dotted with great cities. Cities whose names instantly ignite an imaginative spark. Cities which are familiar to individuals who have never even set foot in them, but have heard about them on the news, read about them in great novels or seen them through epic films.

Cities, sometimes even more so than their associated countries, have the power to lure people in from all over the world. They are melting pots of different flavours, colours, sounds and traditions. Cities are characterised by explosions of culture, arts and creativity, which are inevitable when packing masses of unique individuals so closely upon each other.

I love cities. Cities are my muse. The fast-paced living, the tangling transport systems, the history and the culture of the world’s great cities are an inexhaustible source of inspiration and fascination for me.

I have always lived in or near large cities: Amsterdam, Brussels, Beijing and Barcelona. Each of these cities dramatically differs from the next.

Cities are defined by the people that reside within their limits, but the determination of these limits and the physical features which they entail can also have a sizable impact on the people living in the city, or just outside of it.

The geographic and bureaucratic oddities surrounding the cities of Earth are numerous enough to fill several books with, so I am not going to attempt to convince you that this article provides anything near a comprehensive overview of them.

It will rather make you familiar with the concept of a city, and the reasons why they are where they are; it will give you, dear reader, the tools to make sense of the oddities when you go out to discover the world’s great cities for yourself.

City, urban area, metro region: some definitions

Before we dive in, it is important to establish what we are really talking about; what is a city?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a city as a large and important municipality. If you ask me, this is quite a vague definition. This is probably deliberate since different places around the world have different rules for which settlements can call themselves cities.

In the United Kingdom, municipalities can receive the title of “city” only from the monarch. There are merely 76 cities in the UK, ranging from a population count of just 1,841 for the smallest to 1,092,330 for the largest.

My most clever readers may know that London, the capital of the UK, has a population of 8,799,800; why is it not the largest city in the UK, then? Well, that is because, surprise surprise, London is not a city, at least not officially. It is a collection of settlements, called boroughs. But, even though London in itself is not a city, two of its boroughs do hold city status.

The situation above is meant to exemplify the arbitrariness with which the term city is used; each country has its own way of appointing the city title, some more logical than others, but we can safely conclude that a city in one country might not have been a city if it would have been located in another country.

An important nuance to know when researching the cities of the world is the difference between a city, urban area and metropolitan area. Where the definition of the term city is pretty vague, the other terms have more concrete definitions.

An urban area is a region which is continuously and densely settled by humans. Usually, this region consists of a city and its direct surroundings. Inhabitants of the urban area tend to move about as if they live in one city; they use the same transportation and look towards the same centres.

An example of this is the urban area of New York; the city itself consists of five boroughs, but the urban area spreads across the borders of Brooklyn and Queens over the larger part of Long Island, across the river from Manhattan into New Jersey and over the Borough line separating the Bronx, all the way into Connecticut.

A metropolitan area is in many ways similar to an urban area: a long stretch of densely populated land. The difference is that a metropolitan area includes towns that are not directly physically connected to the main city. These settlements are defined as suburban.

When two or more metropolitan areas grow together, they form a polycentric metropolitan area. In these areas, there are at least two centres which are of equal importance. If you want a real-life example of this, grab an atlas and look at the Rhine-Ruhr region in the west of Germany.

It contains four cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants (Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Essen) and a bunch of smaller towns and villages belonging to the metropolitan areas of these cities. Individually, all of these cities and towns would be mid-sized at best, but together they form one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe.

Why are cities where they are?

Let’s have a look at the largest urban areas in the world. In the list below, you’ll find the 15 largest ones by population count:

Now, reach for the atlas again which you obviously still have lying around from looking at the Rhine-Ruhr area earlier, and have a look at the cities from the list above. Do you spot any patterns as to where they’re located?

Well, I performed the same exercise as you did, and I noticed one factor which all of these cities, with the notable exception of Mexico City, have in common: they are all located near water. Access to navigable bodies of water is essential for a city to flourish.

Historically, the boat was the only means of transporting large amounts of goods. Nowadays, there are various alternatives to maritime transport, but transporting goods on the water is still way more efficient than packing goods on a plane, truck or train.

Another factor which determines the location of cities is protection, both from natural threats and from man-made ones. A pattern amongst ancient cities is that they are usually located in valleys, sheltered by mountains on all sides.

The one city on the list above which isn’t directly on a body of water, Mexico City, a city which can trace its heritage to 1325, is located at a high altitude, in between mountains and volcanoes. Even though this makes transportation difficult, it also hinders invading forces from easily conquering the city.

Along with proximity to water and natural protection, access to resources is also a factor which draws cities near. Fertile ground, oil and natural gas are some of the things which can drive people to a specific place. The presence of natural resources provides employment opportunities for the people living in the city and the goods which are harvested can be easily supplied for consumption within the city.

Yet another interesting pattern is that large cities are disproportionately located in the Northern Hemisphere. The majority of Earth’s landmass is located in the north; 68% to be precise. But it contains 86% of the large cities. The reason for this discrepancy may be that the North is better suited to large empires. The Eurasian mega-continent is a wide landmass, whereas the southern part of Africa and South America are long. Climate changes when you move north to south but tends to stay quite similar when you move from east to west.

Early empires succeeded largely due to the domestication of plants and animals. On a wide landmass, with a similar climate throughout, the same plants and animals can be used in a large area. Early empires, like the ones of the Romans and the Mongols, promoted the creation of settlements for strategic purposes. These settlements eventually grew into today’s cities.

For more information on this subject, check out this very interesting video.

Where does a city stop?

There is a simple, unsurprising answer to the question ‘Where do cities stop?’. You might have already guessed it. Well, if you have, then say it with me: at the city’s boundary.

But, if you made it this far into this article, you know that there is a more satisfying take to this question and I know you would love to read about it.

All of the cities I’ve lived in so far have weird boundaries. Let’s take Amsterdam as an example: one part of Amsterdam is separated from another part of Amsterdam by a small village called Duivendrecht. Duivendrecht has a station on the Amsterdam metro and is served by Amsterdam’s buses. The people of Duivendrecht live closer to the centre of Amsterdam than some people who actually live within the city of Amsterdam; for all intents and purposes, they are Amsterdammers. Why isn’t Duivendrecht part of Amsterdam?

Duivendrecht wasn’t always surrounded by Amsterdam. It used to be a rural village, a few kilometres away from the city. But in the 20th century, Amsterdam expanded massively, until it reached the boundaries of Duivendrecht.

To meet the growing demand for housing in the region, the Dutch government proposed a massive project to fill the Bijlmermeer, then an agricultural area, with large apartment buildings. Initially, this project was to be realised by several small municipalities bordering Bijlmermeer, of which Duivendrecht was one. But the government decided that it would be a better idea to have a large municipality, with proven success in such ambitious projects, handle it. Therefore, the new neighbourhood of Bijlmermeer became part of Amsterdam and our small, quaint village of Duivendrecht was now surrounded by the big city.

Since then, Duivendrecht has continued to remain independent from Amsterdam, while existing right in the middle of it. Logically, you would think that it’s better for Duivendrecht’s citizens for the village to become part of Amsterdam since it would allow them to vote for the city’s municipal council, which makes decisions about services they use every day.

So why aren’t the people of Duivendrecht Amsterdammers? Well, many villages and towns neighbouring large cities cite sentiments of a distinct identity as a reason to remain independent. Small municipalities, as opposed to those of large cities, also seem more accessible to their inhabitants. In addition to that, there are also certain financial benefits to living in a smaller municipality, especially if its inhabitants generally have a higher income than the inhabitants of the neighbouring city.

Revenue from municipal taxes does not have to be divided across a large area, inhabited by people of different socioeconomic denominations, but remains concentrated in the small village, in which the small municipality decides on what the money is spent.

Amsterdam is just one example of a city with weird boundaries. Around the world, there are many cities with arbitrary borders. In North America, there are a lot of interesting examples, as you can read in this article. Each of these oddities has its own background, and its own story to discover.

So, for the last time, I will urge you, my dear reader, to grab your atlas and explore the interesting world behind our cities. There is much for you to explore. And if you find interesting oddities, please do not hesitate to share them with me in the comments.

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