What makes a city a city?

This week’s class discussion showed that most have already developed an individual definition of what a city means to them.

When is a city a city? What should it offer?

We bring our own experience and perception to our personal definition — where and how did we grow up? What was our experience with infrastructure, access to services, housing, green spaces, accessibility to other cities in the area, and connectivity to international places? How many people lived around us? In single-family homes or in skyscrapers?

Each of us has our own idea of when a city is a city. But what do official definitions say? Oliver Moore drew attention in his text to the fact that in March 2021 the UN endorsed a new international definition of a city. The definition evolved from the European Commission and the OECD: For long enough, there was no harmonized European definition of what is a city. The new definition is based on population and density thresholds and provides an international orientation.

I am convinced that definitions of a city should consider more than just population and density. I grew up in Bremen, a German city with about 500,000 inhabitants. For my undergrad studies, I lived in a very small student city in the Netherlands. (But what is small anyways?). For the past 4 years, I have lived in Berlin, Germany’s largest city, and I am currently living in Toronto. All are considered cities by the UN definition that is laid out in Moore’s text. But actually, they are very different in their architecture, educational and cultural offerings, access to health care, transit, and governance. So, in the last few years alone, my perception of what makes a city, what the relationship is between the city and its inhabitants, and what a city should offer, has already changed and continues to evolve.

What am I trying to say? It is right to set up international standards and definitions of what a city is. But it is also a fact that our own definition is shaped by our own experiences and can therefore differ from international guidelines. In our personal definitions, we take into account a much more complex understanding of a city and accept multiple criteria that can change over time.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich.

(Plato)

Another learning, however, is that each city is perceived differently as a city, even within its own boundaries. Plato hits the nail on the head: our cities are sites of social injustice. John Lorinc points out in his text that social minorities, refugees, and low-income groups are less able to participate in what a city has to offer and how it is shaped. Their personal perception of what a city is and what it should need varies greatly from high-income classes.

Cities are both the arena and the solution for many of today’s societal problems, such as social injustice. As policy-enthusiasts, it is our task to ensure that social inequality in cities is reduced and to make those heard who are also part of the city but are mostly overheard.