You American's. Next you'll be asking me what irony means. 
.
You... whateveryouareagain. Next you'll be asking me what apostrophes are for.
(Also "city's" for "cities", in OP.)
Living in a relatively small city (on a world scale, and with a number of larger places nationally, as well, but we allegedly have around two million trees!), I'm not sure this place is too typical. I've lived (student-wise) in another city, probably visited 95% of the rest of the cities (some flying visits only) in this country, and was at one time a regular visitor to London[1]. Add Berlin to my "know very well" list[2] (and a couple of state capitals in the US and some other national capitals in Europe to the "flying visit" one), and I shall attempt to summarise "city".
Erm... Well... they're all pretty different. They can't even agree how much of the city is populated. Large amounts of housing (sometimes stacked up high)
are a feature, but in one city there might be one large area that's 'parkland' (most other bits of green, short of the suburbs, aren't much larger than the area a building
doesn't quite fit into), in another it's greenery all over the place in a significant honeycombed network. For business use, there's a often concentration in a zone, and ditto industry, but the amount by which each (and each subsector of business and/or industry) dominates the scene varies wildly. Transport is often aided by the locale Mass Transit Solution (or solutonS), but it's amazing how many cities there are where walking has been easier (and nicer) than public transport, or walking for significant proportions of the distance across the city is impossible (or undesirable) and the Car Is King, and then some seem to have the public transport systems just how I like them. (As a non-resident, where applicable... When I have the leisure to ignore the ebb and flow of the commuter streams, as I wish.)
Amenities can be scarce (but vaguely sufficient) or almost excessive. Depending on your needs at the time. (Too few hospitals? Seemingly too
many hospitals?) There may be an entire district with a concentrated rush of entertainment, or the occasional spot here, there and everywhere, perhaps with
one spot, close to the centre itself, boasting
two or or even
three venues in an actual collection thereof! Shopping may have its nexii (or series of linear features) or have been drained out into "out of town(/city)" developments.
Historically, there are cities that have been so since time immemorial (or far earlier), and ones that show off their historic artefacts that are far newer than some of the still-under-the-same-use
buildings of another. Architecturally there's brutalist, gothic, neogothic, utilitarian, Tudor, pre-Revolution, post-Revolution (...pick your own favourite Revolution here!), modernist, post-modernist, abstract, disastrous, rebuilt
after a disaster,
disastrously rebuilt after a disaster, faux-ancient, ultra-modern and plain old barmy...
Some cities were small and expanded freely out into emptiness. Other cities were constrained by physical and/or political barriers and have only just taken over the (perhaps no longer empty) external environs. Other cities were planned in one mass, quite recently, and grew like a crystal (as opposed to a slime-mold). Yet others are
named for one historic part, but the 'suburbs', and even the central districts, find their current nominative designations sourced from the equally (possibly even
more important minor settlement which grew up alongside the original city-seed but then became absorbed by common consent (or not, but absorbed still).
Some cities grow still, whether outwards or upwards or (at least in some aspects of thier infrastructure) ever downwards into the ground as well. Others have rotted at the core, or along an edge. There's been regeneration and there's been dereliction. (Of buildings, of duty, of intent.)
Some cities stay remote from other cities, others embrace their neighbours, with a deliberate drive towards a conglomeration. Or of
conquest. Others chastely touch borders but do not intrude, either on each other, although it helps if there's a definable physical barrier or marker along this interface. Some cities have
split, socially, politically, even nationally, in times past, and some of these have actually healed their old wound (or are healing still).
About the only thing that I can say that cities share is an (overall) density of population (and amenities, but still with the above caveat) and the transport structure (again, caveated above) that attempts to keep it all together. Beyond that, cities are what they
make of themselves. And I can name a few towns that are only a decree away from being able to call themselves a city, and possibly some cities for whom the epithet of 'town' is more consistent. What of cities that have both a City Hall
and a Town Hall? Or of ones that are merely themselves or
could be allowed to to be prefixed by the word "Greater" to officially encompass their more wide-flung suburbs... And some cities never seem to stop (as Redking mentioned), however true that is... Or can easily be seen to sit, lichen-like, in amongst the otherwise rural nearby hillsides.
And I've not (partly because someone already had) discussed the people... You might be able to put a Neanderthal in a suit and let him sit on the Claham Omnibus and nobody would blink an eye (they say), but would a New Yorker fit straight in in Exeter? A Parisian (of some quarters, at least) in what was once East Berlin? A resident of Chicago in Kingston-upon-Hull? Someone from downtown-Philadelphia transplant well to Garstang, Lancaster, UK? Possibly, but that's because I'm not fairly comparing "looking the part" and "settling
into the part".
I'm still a 'townie' at heart (though while am now less than fifteen miles from where I was born, am definitely in a city). But, like I said, mine isn't a CITY! city, so I can only speak of that small segment of what ultimately
must be an impossibly large experiential whole that must potentially exist, for the true gourmand of city living, despite the (valid!) claims to the breadth of my knowledge...
But I've never been in a city at war. With others or with itself. Shanty-cities are beyond me, as are mesoamerican ruined ones.
There are just so many cities for which I have no (and, in some cases, would
rather have no) experience. So I won't go on about
them, then...
[1] Found some good excuse to be there, e.g. a computer trade show at Olympia for three of four days, then spent another week "being a local" but actually surreptitiously looking at the sights. I must have been good at looking like a local, because I kept being asked for directions from tourists. At which point I broke my disguise by actually
helping them...
[2] My language skills not being so hot, for a couple of months I
only walked everywhere. Only when my parents came to visit was I forced (for their sakes, being even then 'getting on a bit') to work out how the U-Bahn and S-Bahn worked. And from then on I was a frequent traveller (never a Schwarzrahd, though only
once did anyone official ask to see my ticket!)
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Topic: Citys (Read 5687 times)