Editing City (section)

== Meaning ==
[[File:Sheth Motisha Tonk 01.jpg|thumb|[[Palitana]] is a religiously significant city in Gujarat, India.<ref>Moholy-Nagy (1968), p. 45.</ref>]]
A city can be distinguished from other human settlements by its relatively great size, but also by its functions and its [[city status|special symbolic status]], which may be conferred by a central authority. The term can also refer either to the physical streets and buildings of the city or to the collection of people who dwell there and can be used in a general sense to mean [[Urban area|urban]] rather than [[rural territory]].<ref name="OED" /><ref name="Lynch2008p678">Kevin A. Lynch, "What Is the Form of a City, and How is It Made?"; in Marzluff et al. (2008), p. 678. "The city may be looked on as a story, a pattern of relations between human groups, a production and distribution space, a field of physical force, a set of linked decisions, or an arena of conflict. Values are embedded in these metaphors: historic continuity, stable equilibrium, productive efficiency, capable decision and management, maximum interaction, or the progress of political struggle. Certain actors become the decisive elements of transformation in each view: political leaders, families and ethnic groups, major investors, the technicians of transport, the decision elite, the revolutionary classes."</ref>

National [[census]]es use a variety of definitions – invoking factors such as [[population]], [[population density]], number of [[dwelling]]s, economic function, and [[infrastructure]] – to classify populations as urban. Typical working definitions for small-city populations start at around 100,000 people.<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://data.oecd.org/popregion/urban-population-by-city-size.htm|title= Population by region – Urban population by city size – OECD Data|website= theOECD|access-date= 3 June 2019|archive-date= 3 June 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190603220158/https://data.oecd.org/popregion/urban-population-by-city-size.htm|url-status= live}}</ref> Common population definitions for an urban area (city or town) range between 1,500 and 50,000 people, with most [[U.S.]] states using a minimum between 1,500 and 5,000 inhabitants.<ref>"[https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2015/notes/notes06.pdf Table 6] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170811011352/https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2015/notes/notes06.pdf |date=11 August 2017 }}" in [[United Nations Demographic Yearbook]] ([https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2015.htm 2015] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180708191849/https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2015.htm |date=8 July 2018 }}), the 1988 version of which is quoted in Carter (1995), pp. 10–12.</ref><ref name="HugoEtAl2003" /> Some jurisdictions set no such criteria.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.nclm.org/resource-center/Pages/How-Municipalities-Work.aspx|title= How NC Municipalities Work – North Carolina League of Municipalities|website= nclm.org|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100516211303/http://www.nclm.org/resource-center/Pages/How-Municipalities-Work.aspx|archive-date= 16 May 2010|url-status= dead}}</ref> [[List of cities in Australia|In Australia]], the definition of what constitutes a city varies between the states.

In the [[city status in the United Kingdom|United Kingdom, city status]] is awarded by the Crown and then remains permanent, with only two exceptions to this rule due to policy changes. A lack of official qualifying criteria results in some particularly small cities, notably [[St Davids]] with a population of 1,751 {{as of|2021|lc=on}}.

According to the "functional definition", a city is not distinguished by size alone, but also by the role it plays within a larger political context. Cities serve as administrative, commercial, religious, and cultural hubs for their larger surrounding areas.<ref name="Smith2002" /><ref name="Marshall14">Marshall (1989), pp. 14–15.</ref> The presence of a literate elite is often associated with cities because of the cultural diversities present in a city.<ref>Prokopovych, M. (13 May 2015). Literary and artistic metropolises. EGO. Retrieved 5 March 2023, from http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/crossroads/courts-and-cities/markian-prokopovych-rosemary-h-sweet-literary-and-artistic-metropolises</ref><ref>Kaplan et al. (2004), pp. 23–24.</ref> A typical city has professional [[Public administration|administrators]], regulations, and some form of [[taxation]] (food and other necessities or means to trade for them) to support the [[Civil service|government workers]]. (This arrangement contrasts with the more typically [[egalitarianism|horizontal]] relationships in a [[tribe]] or [[village]] accomplishing common goals through informal agreements between neighbors, or the [[leadership]] of a chief.) The governments may be based on heredity, religion, military power, work systems such as canal-building, food distribution, land-ownership, agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, finance, or a combination of these. Societies that live in cities are often called [[civilization]]s.

The ''degree of urbanization'' is a modern metric to help define what comprises a city: "a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants in contiguous dense grid cells (>1,500 inhabitants per square kilometer)".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/how-do-we-define-cities-towns-and-rural-areas|title=How do we define cities, towns, and rural areas?|date=10 March 2020|first1=Lewis |last1=Dijkstra|first2=Ellen |last2=Hamilton|first3=Somik |last3=Lall|first4=Sameh |last4=Wahba|access-date=2 October 2021|archive-date=6 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211006193626/https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/how-do-we-define-cities-towns-and-rural-areas|url-status=live}}</ref> This metric was "devised over years by the [[European Commission]], [[OECD]], [[World Bank]] and others, and endorsed in March [2021] by the [[United Nations]] ... largely for the purpose of international statistical comparison".<ref>{{cite news|title=What makes a city a city? It's a little complicated|first=Oliver|last=Moore|date=2 October 2021|newspaper=[[The Globe and Mail]]|page=A11}}</ref>