Section outline

  • Urban Geography
    Our society is an urbanized society.

    The world as we know it is urban and getting increasingly urbanized.

    Since 1950, the world urban population has more than doubled. In 1999, half of the world’s population of 6 billions lived in urban areas. 75% were in developing economies. The majority of economic activities are taking place in cities and they represent dominant attributes of the human landscape.

    Cities are difficult to define. A common element is represented by concentration.

    Different criteria could be considered:

    Topographic – construction (= concentration of buildings)

    Demographic (= concentration of inhabitants) - I.e., urban population in centres > 2.000 inhabitants

    Economic (= concentration of activities)

    Quantity and quality of concentration:
    different activities and different from agriculture, extra-urban demand

     

    Functional definition:

    Aggregation of people to better realise some activities
    (activity = a function of the city);

    Cities as rare, non ubiquitous in the geographical space produce functions over a service  area