Abstract

This chapter gives an overview on the development of cities, from the early Jericho, i.e., 10,000 years ago until today. The first rapid change of the urban landscape resulted from industrialization and the building of railways in the early nineteenth century. The growth of cities at this time was accompanied by their functional change, where barter and monetary economy belonged to the central features. Nowadays, cities are chiefly characterized by their administrative sizes, ranking from small cities with 5000 to 20,000 to megacities with 1,000,000 and more inhabitants, up to global cities such as London, New York, and Tokyo, which are determined on qualitative grounds; they are the world centers of finance, politics, and culture. In this paper I discuss the spatial and social structure of cities in poor and rich countries.