Portal:Cities

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P:CITY

A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower boundary for their size. In a narrower sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution.

Historically, city dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for global sustainability. Present-day cities usually form the core of larger metropolitan areas and urban areas—creating numerous commuters traveling toward city centres for employment, entertainment, and education. However, in a world of intensifying globalization, all cities are to varying degrees also connected globally beyond these regions. This increased influence means that cities also have significant influences on global issues, such as sustainable development, climate change, and global health. Because of these major influences on global issues, the international community has prioritized investment in sustainable cities through Sustainable Development Goal 11. Due to the efficiency of transportation and the smaller land consumption, dense cities hold the potential to have a smaller ecological footprint per inhabitant than more sparsely populated areas. Therefore, compact cities are often referred to as a crucial element in fighting climate change. However, this concentration can also have some significant harmful effects, such as forming urban heat islands, concentrating pollution, and stressing water supplies and other resources. (Full article...)

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Samuel Beckett Bridge

Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2022 census, the city council area had a population of 592,713, while Dublin and its suburbs had a population of 1,263,219, and County Dublin had a population of 1,501,500, making it the largest city by population on the island of Ireland.

A settlement was established in the area by the Gaels during or before the 7th century, followed by the Vikings. As the Kingdom of Dublin grew, it became Ireland's principal settlement by the 12th century Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest in the British Empire and sixth largest in Western Europe after the Acts of Union in 1800. Following independence in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, renamed Ireland in 1937. As of 2018^[update], the city was listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha minus", which placed it among the top thirty cities in the world. (Full article...)

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... that despite a career writing queer literature, Chen Xue's 2019 novel Fatherless City had a "putatively straight premise"?
... that the socialite Lucy Drexel Dahlgren's New York City house was designed by a neighbor whom Dahlgren met in Paris?
... that actress Katharine Hepburn threatened to remove her name from a garden in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza when New York City officials said they would not widen the plaza?
... that unlike other armories in New York City, the 69th Regiment Armory was designed in the Beaux-Arts style because its architect did not want it to look like a "mediaeval castle"?
... that after one of Piet Mondrian's paintings (shown) was discovered to have been hanging upside down for decades, the museum left it as is?
... that the parked vehicle of one candidate in a 2024 Mexico City borough election was shot five times to "give her a scare"?

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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

From top, left to right: Moncton skyline at night, the Capitol Theatre, Magic Mountain, Centennial Park, and Downtown Moncton at dusk

Moncton (/ˈmʌŋktən/; French pronunciation: [mɔŋktœn]) is the most populous city in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Situated in the Petitcodiac River Valley, Moncton lies at the geographic centre of the Maritime Provinces. The city has earned the nickname "Hub City" because of its central inland location in the region and its history as a railway and land transportation hub for the Maritimes. As of the 2021 Census, the city had a population of 79,470. The metropolitan population in 2022 was 171,608, making it the fastest growing CMA in Canada for the year with a growth rate of 5.3%. Its land area is 140.67 km² (54.31 sq mi).

Although the Moncton area was first settled in 1733, Moncton was officially founded in 1766 with the arrival of Pennsylvania German immigrants from Philadelphia. Initially an agricultural settlement, Moncton was not incorporated until 1855. It was named for Lt. Col. Robert Monckton, the British officer who had captured nearby Fort Beauséjour a century earlier. A significant wooden shipbuilding industry had developed in the community by the mid-1840s, allowing for the civic incorporation in 1855. But the shipbuilding economy collapsed in the 1860s, causing the town to lose its civic charter in 1862. Moncton regained its charter in 1875 after the community's economy rebounded, mainly due to a growing railway industry. In 1871, the Intercolonial Railway of Canada chose Moncton as its headquarters, and Moncton remained a railway town for well over a century until the Canadian National Railway (CNR) locomotive shops closed in the late 1980s. (Full article...)

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The economy of Dubai’s gross domestic product of the calendar year 2023 as of January 2024 is AED 429 billion ($USD 116.779 billion). Dubai has substantially transformed over the last couple of decades. More than 90% of the population are foreigners.

The International Herald Tribune described it as "centrally-planned free-market capitalism". Oil production, which once accounted for 50% of Dubai's gross domestic product, contributes less than 1% today. In 2018, wholesale and retail trade represented 26% of the total GDP; transport and logistics, 12%; banking, insurance activities and capital markets, 10%; manufacturing, 9%; real estate, 7%; construction, 6%; tourism, 5%. (Full article...)

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Image 1The Round city of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq (from History of cities)
Image 2Excavated foundations of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. An Anatolian town dated to 7000 BCE. (from History of cities)
Image 3This woodcut shows Nuremberg as a prototype of a flourishing and independent city in the 15th century. (from History of cities)
Image 4The city of Arbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has a radial urban structure centred on an ancient fortress (from Urban structure)
Image 5The Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan originates with the Pyramid of the Moon, forming the basis of the city grid. (from History of cities)
Image 6A map showing the world energy consumption per capita based on 2013 data from the World Bank. (from Urban geography)
Image 7Palmanova, Italy, constructed in 1593 according to the defensive ideal of the star fort, today retains its distinctive geometry. (from History of cities)
Image 8Daily life of people from the Song period at the capital, Bianjing, today's Kaifeng (from History of cities)
Image 9Glasgow slum in 1871 (from History of cities)
Image 10The "Great Colonnade" marks the cardo maximus of Apamea, Syria. (from History of cities)
Image 11Aerial photograph shows the remains of the Sumerian city Ur, near Nasiriyah, Iraq. (from History of cities)
Image 12New York City, one of the largest urban areas in the world (from Urban geography)
Image 13Cain founding the city of Enoch (from History of cities)
Image 14Mohenjo-daro, a World Heritage Site that was part of the Indus Valley Civilization (from History of cities)
Image 15A poster from the EPA entitled "Soak Up the Rain with Green Infrastructure." The poster depicts various green infrastructure that can be effective in preventing floods. (from Urban geography)
Image 16Constantinople, the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th through the 12th century (from History of cities)
Image 17View of the Agora of Athens with the temple of Hephaestus to the left and the Stoa of Attalos to the right (from History of cities)
Image 18Extent and major sites of the Indus Valley Civilization of ancient India (from History of cities)
Image 19Gdańsk in the 17th century (from History of cities)

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v t e Cities
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Environment	Climate change Green urbanism Sustainable city Sustainable urbanism Sustainable Development Goal 11 Urban heat island Urban ecology

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