About a hundred scholars are presently involved in more than twenty countries. They belong to several disciplines, including anthropology, geography, history, the history of architecture and planning, sociolinguistics, and sociology. At the same time, comparative work is being developed along a series of thematic lines. It is the lexicon of the generic and classificatory designations of cities. Long-range historical work and comparisons between East and West, North and South are therefore particularly important here.
Words divide cities into various territories in a great many ways.
The scale of these divisions varies, ranging from the dwelling unit to the city as a whole. Administrative divisions and those which result from the inhabitants' practice do not always coincide, but they rarely completely differ. City divisions can be analyzed as systems of classification that change over long periods of time, which would imply a focus on periods of transition from socially based spatial divisions to merely territorial divisions. Naming new urban areas Today, just as yesterday, cities have uncertain peripheries. The urbanization of modern times has made them the main place of urban growth and more recently, in some parts of the world, the frontier has become blurred between the city and what is no longer a city.