Citie | Article about Citie by The Free Dictionary Citie | Article about Citie by The Free Dictionary Related to Citie: ECITE city, densely populated urban center, larger than a village or a town, whose inhabitants are engaged primarily in commerce and industry. In the United States a city is legally an incorporated municipality (see also city government city government, political administration of urban areas. The English tradition of incorporating urban units (cities, boroughs, villages, towns) and allowing them freedom in most local matters is general in the United States (see city; local government). The traditional U. ..... Click the link for more information. ; local government local government, political administration of the smallest subdivisions of a country's territory and population. Characteristics and Types Although there are special-purpose local government bodies (e.g. ..... Click the link for more information. ). The Rise of Cities Cities have appeared in diverse cultures, e.g., among the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca and in China and India, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and ancient Greece and Rome (see city-state city-state, in ancient Greece, Italy, and Medieval Europe, an independent political unit consisting of a city and surrounding countryside.

The first city-states were in Sumer, but they reached their peak in Greece. ..... Click the link for more information. ). In all these civilizations cities were the centers of internal change and development. From the decline of Rome the cities were in eclipse, and in Western Europe their role as centers of learning and the arts passed to the monasteries. The 11th cent. saw the resurgence of vigorous cities, first in Italy and then in northern Europe, due mainly to a revival of trade; by the 13th cent., with the decline of feudalism, the dynamic life of the Middle Ages was centered in the cities. This time marks the rise of the great modern cities, e.g., Milan, London, Paris, and the Hanseatic cities. The Modern City The giant modern city is a product of the Industrial Revolution, which introduced large-scale manufacturing. Sheer size aggravated existing problems of urban life; some of them, such as sanitation, utilities, and distribution, have been better solved than others, such as housing housing, in general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban populations expanded. .....

Click the link for more information. and transport. As urban life came to furnish more remunerative and varied employment opportunities, rural populations increasingly were attracted, and by the 20th cent. some nations were faced with shortages of agricultural workers. Modern cities are often complex, with subcities within them, e.g., Newark, N.J., falls inside the New York metropolis. The word megalopolis is sometimes used to describe the great swath of communities stretching N and S of New York City from Boston to Washington, D.C. In Great Britain the term conurbation refers to a similar cluster of urban areas such as the one centered on London. There are similar complexes of cities in Asia, notably that of Wuhan Wuhan , city (1994 est. pop. 3,519,600), capital of Hubei prov., central China, at the junction of the Han and Chang rivers. The great industrial, commercial, and transportation center of central China, Wuhan comprises (since 1950) the former cities of Hankou, Hanyang, and ..... Click the link for more information. in China.

Among movements to reform urban life, some aim at abolishing cities as known today; this is the tradition exemplified by William Blaker, Henry Thoreau, William Morris, and Eric Gill. There are also less radical designs, like rational city planning, the development of rapid transit to distant suburbs, and garden cities. There have been many reforms aimed at restoring community life for the rootless strangers so numerous in modern cities; such is a common function of settlement houses, community centers, and other philanthropic and cooperative enterprises. Bibliography See H. Pirenne, Medieval Cities (tr. 1925, repr. 1956); G. Glotz, The Greek City and Its Institutions (tr. 1929, repr. 1965); M. Weber, The City (tr. 1958); L. Mumford, The City in History (1961); J. Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (1969); S. Thernstrom and R. Sennett, ed., Nineteenth-Century Cities (1969); W. A. Robson and D. E.

Regan, ed., Great Cities of the World (3d ed., 2 vol., 1972); P. Geddes, City Development (1973); J. Gottman, The Coming of the Transactional City (1983); D. Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience (1985); W. Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World (1995). city an inhabited central place differentiated from a town or village by its greater size and by the range of activities practised within its boundaries, usually religious, military-political, economic, educational and cultural. Collectively, these activities involve the exercise of POWER over the surrounding countryside. The first cities in human history appeared in areas of fertile land where the production of an agricultural surplus liberated part of the population from land work and encouraged other specialized activities and trades. The city depends upon a flow of goods from the country and therefore its development is structured by the availability of communication and transport technology. See also CITY STATE , URBAN SOCIOLOGY , URBANIZATION .

City a large populated area whose residents are employed primarily in industry and trade, as well as in the spheres of service, administration, science, and culture. A city is usually the administrative and cultural center of the surrounding region. The main criteria for classifying a populated area as a city are the size of its population and the functions it performs (one or more, in various combinations): industrial production, economic organization, cultural-political, and administrative, and the organization of recreation and medical treatment. In a modern city, unlike a village, only a small part of the population is employed in agriculture. Cities are characterized by greater population density and compactness of buildings (frequently multistory buildings). The classification of a populated area as a city is usually formalized in a definite legal manner and is associated with the establishment of the city limits (the boundaries of the city as an administrative-territorial unit) and urban land. In different countries of the world cities are distinguished in censuses and other forms of records in various ways. In some countries a numerical criterion is used (populated areas of a certain size are considered to be cities; the size may be 3,000, 5,000.

or 10,000 residents; in some countries the minimum number of residents for a city is only a few hundred). In other countries a set of features is used. In the USSR classification of population centers as cities is within the competence of the union republics. The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR entitled On the System for Classifying Population Centers as Cities and Workers’ and Resort Settlements of Sept. 12, 1957, establishes the following categories of cities for the Russian Federation: cities under raion jurisdiction (cultural and industrial centers with a population of at least 12.000, at least 85 percent of whom are production and clerical workers and members of their families) and cities under krai, oblast, and republic (ASSR) jurisdiction (large industrial and cultural-political centers with populations of more than 50,000); Moscow and Leningrad are placed in a special category. In the early 1970’s the population of the cities made up one-third of the total population of the world.

In Africa less than one-fifth of the population lives in cities; in Asia outside the USSR more than one-fifth: in America and Europe outside the USSR, up to three-fifths; and in the Commonwealth of Australia, more than 83 percent. In the USSR in 1970, 56 percent of the population lived in cities. There are about 2,000 large cities in the world—that is, cities with more than 100,000 residents. More than 100 of them (including suburbs, up to 150) are in the millions (see Table 1); ten of them are in the USSR. In the life of a society, the city (especially the large modern city) is an extraordinarily multifaceted social organism and economic-geographic, architectural, engineering-structural, and cultural complex. The city is a historical category that is determined primarily by the socioeconomic structure of the society. Having formed with the transition from the primitive communal order to a class society, the city developed further as the social division of labor grew deeper.

Throughout history there have been substantial changes in the nature of cities and the place occupied by them in social production, as well as in their public life as a whole, their social composition, and their external appearance. These changes have been reflected primarily in the level of development of productive forces and production relationships achieved by the society. Economic-geographic and sociological survey. From the point of view of economic geography, cities are above all places in which industrial production and the circulation of significant volumes of goods are concentrated; this determines the development of transportation functions in them. The appearance and development of cities is inseparable from the appearance and deepening of the territorial (geographic) division of labor. This also determines the production functions of cities in the spheres of industry, transportation, and exchange, as well as the production of services for the surrounding areas.

In addition to the primary group of cities, whose development is based on the function of public production, there are also types of cities that are based on administrative functions (although they are usually combined with trade and production functions) or military functions (fortress cities), cities related to culture and science (university cities, such as Oxford, Heidelberg, Tartu and, very recently, the “science cities” such as Dubna), cities related to health and recreation (resort cities such as Sochi and Karlovy Vary), and religious cities (cities that are religious centers— for example, Mecca and Lourdes). The classification of cities on the basis of their functions—and also on the basis of size, which primarily depends on the volume of these functions—should be supplemented by the features of the city’s geographic position and the nature of its relations with the territory near it.

Thus, among the industrial cities it is possible to distinguish cities that are located close to mineral deposits or energy sources (for example, the cities of the Donbas or Ruhr basin), in transportation centers and densely populated areas, where labor resources are large and particularly cheap, and in areas that have significant resources of agricultural raw material (a special variety is cities that are centers of plantation-type farms). Port cities are distinguished according to the role of export, import, and internal shipping in their functions. In all cases the size and economic saturation of the territory around the city are important for evaluating the economic and geographic conditions of the city’s development; for ports it is particularly advantageous to be located at the mouth of a large river with a well-developed basin (Leningrad, New York, Rotterdam, and Hamburg), along straits (Istanbul and Copenhagen), or on large capes that extend far out into a body of water (Dakar and Cape Town). Because the economic and geographic factors that determine the type of the city through its functions are historically variable, the cities themselves may change their profile historically.

The natural environment in which cities develop is also fundamental—for example, location near mountain passes (many cities in northern Italy), on navigable rivers (the Volga cities), on a convenient bay (Vladivostok), or on the border between natural zones. During their historical development some cities lost their significance or even disappeared entirely (as in the case of the “dead cities”); others have become more significant by acquiring an increasingly broad sphere of influence. The size of this sphere also depends on the development of the system of transportation; the progress of transportation promotes the development of larger cities, leaving smaller cities only the role of local centers. Historical development as a whole is leading to increasing urbanization of the population and to the consolidation of cities. The degree of urbanization in a country is an important index of the level of its economic development. Extensive distribution of group forms of urban population is typical of current urbanization—for example, in the USSR more than three-fourths of the urban population is concentrated in local groups of cities. Frequently there are satellite cities in the vicinity of modern large cities.

Cities often grow by forming agglomerations or conurbations; the best-known examples are the so-called megalopolis—the enormous, solidly urbanized zone from Boston to Washington in the United States—and the official conurbations in Great Britain. In the socialist countries the group forms of urban settlement are organized by means of regional plans. The production relations that determine the social order of the given society manifest themselves in concentrated form in these cities [see below: Historical survey of the development of the city). The city is a definite type of social organization (community), distinct from the village, whose residents have inherent traits that are united in the concept of the urban way of life. The city is characterized by the concentration and intensity of different forms of social interaction and by a specific (in Table 1. Largest cities of the world1 With suburbs (or conurbation) Year of census 1 Population of Soviet cities according to data of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR; population of other cities primarily according to data of the UN Demographic Yearbook, 1969, and also from national sources Ahmadabad............... Korean Democratic People’s Republic 1968 comparison with the village) demographic, occupational, and organizational structure.

The large modern city is distinguished by a high degree of variety in types of occupations, by a concentration of a skilled work force, by a higher percentage of employment in the spheres of science, culture, and administration (this is particularly increasing under conditions of the current scientific-technical revolution), and by a well-developed system of state and public organizations. Unlike the relative stability of the medieval city, the social organization of the current city is distinguished by a highly dynamic structure, a multitude and variety of external and internal relations, and the absence of closed social “cells” (commune and guild). The urban way of life is distinguished by greater variety in modes of life, needs, tastes, and habits. Traditions and customs play a significantly smaller part in the city than in the village. Cities, especially large ones, which draw in population from vast areas, are becoming centers where various ethnic groups are mixed and assimilated; at the same time, in capitalist and other cities of the presocialist age, the ugly phenomena of ethnic segregation occur (for example, the Negro ghettos in the USA).

Modern cities, especially large cities, are complicated structural-engineering complexes with the system of engineering structures and utility lines (water, sewage, heat and gas lines, cables and surface power transmission lines, municipal transportation units, and so on) necessary for normal operation of housing resources and for relations among residential areas, industrial enterprises, the terminal points of intercity transportation, and public trade centers. The level of amenities and services in the city is very important for establishing healthy, convenient, and civilized living conditions for the population; this includes the development of municipal transportation and the establishment of a network of municipal and domestic institutions, city lighting, green areas, and sanitation. The system of sanitary and public-health measures in the modern city is directed toward the elimination of the negative consequences for human health of life in large cities—overpopulation, shortage of clean air and light, isolation from nature, and increased pollution, noise, and nervous strain, which are linked with the significant incidence in cities of certain diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, lung cancer, nervous disorders, and tuberculosis. External appearance.

The appearance of the city, which is continuously changing and dynamically reflects the social development and scientific and technical progress of society, is determined by many factors, including the size and spatial structure of the city, the history of its formation, its historical and architectural heritage, and the natural landscape. Special urban zones—the center, the residential zone, the industrial zone, and others—have taken shape historically in cities or have been established according to plan (primarily in cities that were rebuilt or in the new cities of the socialist countries). In new cities this zoning is usually done rather precisely; in the structure of cities that have taken shape historically, the industrial regions are often interspersed with residential areas (the so-called strip arrangement of functional zones takes shape). Functional centers that consolidate the labor, domestic life, and recreation of the urban dwellers sometimes form in modern cities. The center of the city, where the most important administrative and cultural institutions and memorial complexes are usually located, performs public, ideological, and representative functions. Therefore, the most important architectural groupings, which determine the compositional structure of the entire city, are located in the center.

The business and administrative buildings (banks, stock exchanges, offices, and so on), which are overcrowded during the day and empty at night (such as the City in London) and the shopping and entertainment industry streets, with their loud, brightly colored advertising (Broadway in New York), are located in the center of capitalist cities. The appearance of the historical center of cities and areas populated by the capitalist class differs sharply from that of the proletarian areas in the level of services and amenities and the type of residences. The social regionalization of the capitalist cities may vary (for example, an intensive process of resettlement by the privileged strata of the population from the central regions of large cities, which are unhealthy because of air pollution and noise, to the green, well-organized suburbs is under way). In the centers of cities in the socialist countries, public buildings and cultural institutions play a large part. In socialist cities there is no juxtaposition of the center to the periphery, but rather a very close unity is observed in the structure of the city.

This is achieved by developing a system for the social center (the capital avenues of Moscow), which is the core of the entire urban structure, and by a high level of public service and amenities in the new residential regions, where the level of comfort is frequently higher than in the central areas (for example, the Southwest and Khimki-Khovrino in Moscow, the housing development along Maurice Thorez Street in Leningrad, and the Žirmünai area in Vilnius). Industry has a large influence on the external appearance of cities through the considerable area it occupies, its enormous buildings and structures, and its open installations and plant smokestacks (for example, the motor vehicle plant and the Krasnoe Sormovo plant in Gorky and the Fiat plants in Turin). Under the influence of the scientific-technical revolution, research establishments are occupying an increasingly large place in cities, frequently forming special urban centers.

Transportation, which ensures the functioning of the city as a whole and of its individual zones, determines the external appearance of the modern city to a large extent through streams of motor vehicles, parking areas, transportation structures, high-speed roads, interchanges (for example, in Los Angeles), and motor-vehicle and railroad terminals. Green areas also play an important part in the external appearance of a city; this is seen in parks, squares, and boulevards (the A. M. Gorky Central Park for Culture and Recreation, the Moscow Sokol’niki Park for Culture and Recreation, and the Izmailovo Park for Culture and Recreation in Moscow, Hyde Park in London, and the Tuileries and the Bois de Boulogne in Paris). The external appearance of old cities is complex and mul-tifaceted; their long historical development (sometimes many centuries) takes physical form in their historical and architectural heritage. The appearance of such cities results from the complex interaction of elements that took shape at different times and gave the cities individual, sometimes inimitable, features.

In small historical cities such as Bukhara and Pskov, and especially in preserved cities such as Suzdal’, the historical and architectural heritage is an important factor in shaping their external appearance. In large, rapidly developing historical cities, this heritage becomes just a fragment of the current city, preserving its significance in the composition of the areas of the historical center (Moscow, Yaroslavl, and Prague). Many old European cities preserve their historical nucleus, which sometimes includes structures from the classical era (acropolises, forums, theaters, and other structures in Mediterranean cities), but more often they have a medieval center with a castle (citadel), a market square, the radial-ring plan typical of many cities in the medieval period, and narrow, crooked streets. Next to the medieval nucleus are blocks from the 18th and first half of the 19th century, usually with a regular plan, and the formal building groups of a new center; the rings of boulevards occupy the places where the demolished city fortifications were.

Urban aristocrats’ mansions and homes from the 17th century to the first quarter of the 19th century stand next to brick factory buildings from the second half of the 19th century, business buildings (banks, stock exchanges, and offices), railroad stations, and multiapartment income properties. Modern urban buildings, whose stark forms contrast sharply with the architecture of the past, are directly beside what were once suburban palaces and mansions. The spires and domes of churches, large public buildings, high-rise residential buildings, television towers, and factory smokestacks form the complex skyline of the modern city. The external appearance of the city changes during the process of its development; new buildings and structures that reflect the needs, current aesthetic ideals, and technical capacities of the society frequently appear in the historical nucleus or in its immediate vicinity. All the problems related to planning and building cities are included in urban planning. Administration. In the socialist states, urban administration is a form of exercising the unified state power of the working people through representative governmental bodies. These bodies are elected city councils, which organically combine complete rights in local affairs (including the production sphere) with participation in the accomplishment of citywide tasks.

In cities of the USSR the population elects city soviets of working people’s deputies (in the large cities there are also raion soviets) for a term of two years, with extensive authority. Each soviet elects an executive committee (ispolkom) as its executive body, which carries on everyday administration of the city or raion, with extensive public participation through the formation of ispolkom commissions for various sectors of administration. In foreign socialist countries the cities have elected governmental bodies: people’s councils (in Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), city assemblies of deputies (the German Democratic Republic), national committees (Czechoslovakia), city councils (Hungary), people’s assemblies (the Korean People’s Democratic Republic), khurals of working people’s deputies (in the Mongolian People’s Republic), and communal skupštine (in Yugoslavia). In all of these countries the city governmental bodies are elected by the inhabitants for four years (except in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Mongolia, where the term is two years).

The city governmental bodies form executive bodies (executive committees, councils, or administrations), usually from among their own deputies, and they also establish administrations, divisions, or commissions for various sectors of the national economy and culture. The main forms of city administration in the capitalist states took shape in the 19th century as a result of municipal reforms. The needs of the capitalist economy and pressure from the popular masses led to a certain expansion of the functions of city authorities, especially on questions of municipal services, education, health, and road-building; under the pressure of the working people universal suffrage was extended to elections for municipal bodies. The city administrative bodies typical of present capitalist states are the elected municipal council, a head of the city administration (mayor, burgomaster, manager, and so on) elected by the council or by the population, and the divisions, departments, and other services subordinate to them. In France and many other Western European countries the head of the city administration also acts as representative of the central authority. In Great Britain mayors are given insignificant authority, and the management of different sectors of city administration is assigned to permanent commissions of the municipal councils.

In the USA control of the municipal apparatus is concentrated in the hands of the mayor or a professional manager appointed by the council. Special forms of administration are frequently established for capital cities. In the second half of the 20th century the development of centralist tendencies in state life led to substantial changes in the nature of capitalist urban administration; it is increasingly becoming a tool of state capitalist control. The administrative dependence of urban authorities on the central government and the entire administrative apparatus of the central authority is growing broader. The inadequacy of capital income in municipal budgets (primarily through tax payments by the population) makes the municipality strongly financially dependent on state subsidies. The encroachment of the imperialist state on the traditional rights of municipalities is growing stronger; the role of elected city councils is decreasing and their functions are more and more often turned over to municipal civil servants. Some of the powers of urban agencies are passing to the competence of higher-ranking governmental agencies, and various regional administrative institutions that actually replace municipalities are being established.

Despite the encroachment on the rights and authority of municipal bodies in the current capitalist state, the Communist and workers’ parties attach great importance to participation by Communists in these bodies and try to use this institution in the interests of the popular masses, because the questions with which municipalities are concerned are directly linked to the interests of the working population, and it is easier to join all democratic forces around municipal bodies. The municipal program of the Communist parties in the Western European countries meets the needs of the broad masses; evidence of this is seen in Communist victories in the municipal elections in many cities and regions of France, Italy, and certain other countries. Historical survey of the development of the city. Cities arise in the historical stage in which the processes of social division of labor and social differentiation originate in society and, in connection with this, different social groupings (different strata of the developing exploiting classes, including representatives of incipient state power, artisans, and merchants) separate from the main mass of the population, which is engaged in homogeneous agricultural labor. The formation of these groupings and their concentration in certain populated points leads to the formation of urban-type communities (certain historians call this important historical event the urban revolution).

As archaeological excavations show, relatively large-scale settlements with compactly arranged residential buildings made of clay and adobe brick (Catal-Höyük in Asia Minor, Jericho in Palestine, and Annau and Namazga-Tepe in Middle Asia) formed as early as the seventh to fourth millennia B. C .; later, some of these settlements developed into cities. The appearance of the first cities dates to the fourth to third millennia B. C . At first, when cities were forming on the basis of still comparatively weakly developed technology and the economics of the early class societies of the Aeneolithic and Bronze ages, the main constituent element of their population in most cases was probably the representatives of the ruling classes and state power, who lived by exploiting the dependent agricultural population. The cities that were formerly large administrative-political and religious centers usually reached the greatest sizes. In connection with the subsequent development of crafts and exchange, the artisan and merchant population began to play an ever-increasing role in the cities. In the initial period of the history of the ancient world (fourth to second millennia B.

C .) the most important urban centers formed in the river civilizations, which were most developed at that time, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the Nile valley and, somewhat later, in the Indus valley. In these areas, thanks to specific characteristics of their economies, which were based on irrigation farming, particularly favorable conditions existed for the early development of class society and cities (the Sumerian cities of Ur, Lagash, and Nippur, and later Akkad and Ashur, Babylon in Mesopotamia, Memphis and Thebes in Egypt, and Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus basin). A large step forward in the development of cities was taken in the first millennium B. C ., when there was a significant expansion in the area of distribution of class societies and important socioeconomic and political changes took place in them (in this stage of development iron began to be used extensively; therefore cities of this age are sometimes called Iron Age cities).

At this time cities formed in China that were large by the scale of the ancient world (cities had appeared in the Hwang Ho basin as early as the second millennium)—for example, the capital centers of Loyang and Changan (near the present-day Sian). In India the cities of the Indus valley went into a decline in the second millennium, and in their place new cities grew up, primarily in the Ganges basin (the most important was Pataliputra [Patna]). New cities formed and old ones developed in Southwest Asia (Babylon, which probably became the largest city in the middle of the first millennium; Nineveh in Assyria; Persepolis in the Achaemenid state; Jerusalem; and the cities of Phoenicia, Tyre and Sidon [Saida], which carried on extensive trade on the Mediterranean Sea and founded colonies along its coast, including Carthage in North Africa). Classical cities that were the focus of all the social life of the city-states (poleis) typical of classical society took shape in the middle of the first millennium B. C .

Popular assemblies gathered in the city squares (the Greek agora and the Roman forum); there were temples, various public buildings (stadiums, theaters, baths, and markets), port structures and homes of merchants and artisans in the cities. The classical cities formed earliest in Greece (the largest trade and artisan cities of European Greece were Athens and Corinth, and of the coast of Asia Minor, Miletus and Ephesus). During the age of Greek colonization they spread to many areas of the Mediterranean and Black seas, and as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great they spread to the territory of the Hellenistic states, where large urban centers existed (Alexandria, Seleucia, Antioch, Pergamum, and others). Classical cities also formed in Italy and spread to other countries as a result of Roman conquests. Cities that were part of the Roman state had varying legal status (in the first century B. C . the status of city-municipium was established for Italy and later spread to the cities of the Roman provinces), but they kept the social structure and forms of self-government with elected magistrates that were typical of them.

The development and spread of the classical cities was accompanied by their growth and an increase in importance for trade and crafts, but in a majority of cases landowners remained the predominant element in sociopolitical life. Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire, became the largest city of the state. During the period of decline of the Roman empire (third to fifth centuries) the populations of the cities decreased, and they became more agrarian. The formation of cities exerted a strong influence on social development. Cities became the organizational centers of state power and of the development of culture, particularly construction and architecture. Their formation promoted the development of crafts and trade, and merchant and loan capital collected in them. The classical cities played a particularly large historical role; the entire ancient civilization, with its great achievements, was clearly urban in nature. The early Middle Ages (sixth to tenth centuries) were characterized by the decline of the cities in Western Europe. Under conditions of the predominance of subsistence farming, the Roman cities either disappeared entirely or lost their former economic significance and municipal organization.

The urban-type population centers that existed at that time were distinguished from the countryside primarily by their fortifications and by the fact that they were administrative centers (the residences of bishops, counts, and so on). A qualitative leap forward in the development of Western European cities occurred in the 11th and 12th centuries with the advent of the period of developed feudalism. With the intensive process of separating crafts from agriculture, the craftsman and merchant population separated from the mass of the rural population and concentrated at certain points. At first the centers to which this population was drawn were the feudal residences or the old Roman cities. The rapid growth of cities began earliest (in the tenth century) in Italy and later in the Netherlands, France, and the Rhine and southern parts of Germany. A comparatively small part of the population was still concentrated in cities, and small, semiagrarian urban settlements predominated. The cities that reached the largest sizes were large centers of intermediate trade and handicraft production and important administrative-political and religious centers (Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Rome, Naples, Paris, London, Bruges, Ghent, Cologne, and Lübeck).

At first the cities, like the countryside, were entirely dependent on the feudal lords. The major secular or religious lord in whose possessions the city was located (the lord of the city) concentrated in his hands the power over the city population and collected from them various kinds of payments in money and also partially in kind. However, as the result of a long struggle that assumed various forms (from armed uprisings to buying individual freedoms from the feudal lords), the merchant and artisan population of the cities of medieval Western Europe freed themselves from this dependence and achieved rights and privileges (which differed in different countries and cities) not enjoyed by the rural population.

The primary privileges were the personal freedom of all members of the urban commune (that is, citizens of the city); city courts (which were guided by special legal norms that were more appropriate to the conditions of urban life); elected governmental bodies, the most important of which was the city council in self-governing cities (it introduced city taxes itself and determined the method of their collection, managed administrative affairs, supervised commerce and crafts, and commanded the city’s military forces); the abolition of various feudal obligations and their replacement (where dependence on the lord of the city or the king was preserved) by definite monetary payments; and the recognition that the commune had the rights of a military corporation. Under the conditions of feudal society, with its hierarchical structure, these freedoms and privileges changed certain cities (of the type of the French and Italian communes or the German imperial cities) into something like collective lords, who frequently acquired feudal rights over the neighboring peasant population; sometimes the cities (especially in Italy and Germany, which were broken up into numerous small feudal units) actually became independent city-states. In the period immediately following the acquisition of the rights of self-government, power in the city was usually taken by the patriciate.

In the industrially developed cities the artisans who had joined in guilds were able to gain participation in city government and sometimes to completely push out the patrician aristocracy (Florence and Cologne). However, it was usually the upper circles of the guild masters (the guild oligarchy) who came to power in the cities, and the broad democratic strata of the urban artisan population and the urban plebeians stood opposed to them. The medieval cities, the focus of commodity production, exerted a profound influence on all aspects of the life of feudal society. During the period of small, fragmented feudal holdings, the cities—which were interested in securing more favorable conditions for the development of crafts and commerce—acted as allies of royal power in the struggle against the separatism of the large-scale feudal lords in most of the Western European countries, thus promoting the establishment of centralized states. The admission of city dwellers to the estate representation bodies of the feudal state was an indicator of the increasing role of cities in the life of medieval society.

During the Middle Ages technical progress was linked first of all with the urban crafts; new, more highly developed forms of commerce and monetary circulation took shape in the cities, more efficient methods of administration and taxation were developed in the sphere of city government, there were fundamental changes in the field of culture, and at the end of the 15th century and during the 16th century (in Italy, beginning in the 14th century) the urban culture of the Renaissance developed. In the 16th and 17th centuries urban industry and commerce began to grow out of the framework of the economic forms that had taken shape in cities during the Middle Ages and the framework of the medieval city structure, with its guild limitations and oligarchic administration. The most significant cities, whose economies were based to a large extent on the new, capitalist organization of production and commerce, developed at this time in the Netherlands (Antwerp until the end of the 16th century, then Amsterdam), England, and France. In the countries of Asia and northern Africa, the transition to the Middle Ages was not associated with such a decline in urban life as in the countries of Western Europe.

In these regions populous cities, many of which had appeared in ancient times, continued to exist during the early Middle Ages. The largest of the medieval Eastern cities were Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo in the Arabian Caliphate, Isfahan and Shiraz in Iran, Delhi in India, and the Chinese cities of Changan, Loyang, Kuangchou (Canton), and Peking. Large cities also existed at this time in Middle Asia. The eastern cities, which significantly surpassed the Western European cities in population and wealth, for a long time (at least until the 12th and 13th centuries) did not have the rights and privileges that had been won by the European cities. Their merchant and artisan population was not organized in self-governing communes, did not have special urban freedoms, and was entirely subordinate to the feudal authorities represented by the feudal state (only a few cities in medieval Japan achieved partial rights of self-government). Historical science has not yet completely clarified the reasons for this difference in the administrative and legal status of these cities.

Among these reasons were the concentration in the eastern cities of feudal lords who, as a result of their wealth and dominant position in society, became a very influential element in life within the city; the significant development of the production of handicraft articles in shops belonging to individual feudal lords and to the state, which undermined the economic position of the urban artisans; and the centralization of state power, which facilitated the establishment of control over the urban population. The complete domination by feudal lords and the feudal state in the cities of the non-European countries retarded the independent development of urban crafts and commodity production and delayed the birth of elements of capitalist relations. With the development of capitalism, cities began to occupy a new place in public production and in public life as a whole. The most important means of production typical of capitalism and the primary classes of capitalist society—the bourgeoisie and the industrial proletariat—were concentrated in these cities. The vigorous growth of cities and the urban population, which was a result of further intensification of the social division of labor under capitalism and was related to the general progressive process of concentration of production and the appearance of capitalist industry and new types of transportation (the railroads), began with the Industrial Revolution and became an inalienable part of industrialization.

In the mid-19th century, Great Britain’s urban population was 50 percent of the population of the country, and at the beginning of the 20th century it was 78 percent. In Germany in the early 1880’s the urban population was 41 percent, and at the beginning of the 20th century it was 54.3 percent. In the USA, where the urban population at the beginning of the 19th century did not exceed 4 percent, in the early 1880’s it was 28.6 percent, at the beginning of the 20th century it was 40 percent, in the early 1920’s it was more than 50 percent, and in the 1960’s it was more than 70 percent. (In view of differences in criteria for classifying cities, these figures are relative.) With the development of industry and means of transportation, large and very large cities grew especially quickly (see Table 2). As a result, the large industrial cities had an ever-increasing share of the urban population.

Table 2 Growth of population in certain large cities of Western Europe and North and South America (thousands) 76 820 The population growth of the capitalist cities occurred primarily through migration to these cities from outside (mainly the destitute rural population); immigration from Europe was a significant source of growth in overseas American and Australian cities. The large capitalist city became the center of polarization of the class forces of capitalism, and it was there that the contradictions inherent in the capitalist order—between labor and capital and between luxury and poverty—manifested themselves most acutely. The growth of the capitalist city and the appearance of giant cities was followed by the appearance of a number of specifically large-city problems, such as the housing question, the problem of transportation, and the increased incidence of disease in cities. All of these problems were reflected above all and with particular severity in the poor strata of the urban population.

The social problems of the capitalist city were engendered by a whole set of factors, above all by the antagonistic nature of capitalist production, the predatory nature of capitalist entrepreneurship, and private ownership of city land and buildings (which results in high prices for land within the city boundaries, high apartment rents, and difficulties in solving the problems of replanning capitalist cities because of the enormous expenditures involved in buying land and buildings from their owners). The opposition between the city and the country, which has accompanied the entire history of the existence of exploiting society, reached special acuteness under capitalism. In most countries of Asia and Africa the process of urbanization manifested itself in a specific colonial form (cities there frequently developed from strongholds, the bulwarks of colonial rule, or developed as ports or other centers of colonial commerce). The slowness of capitalist development and the economic backwardness of the colonial and dependent countries led to a situation in which the level of urbanization in these countries lagged far behind the level of the countries of Europe and North America. Even by the mid-20th century in the countries of Asia outside the USSR, little more than 20 percent of the population lived in cities.

The percentage of urban population in Africa, especially in the tropics, was even lower. In the mid-20th century the process of growth in cities and urban population became very swift in the developing countries. In many of these countries industrialization lags behind urbanization; this is the source of a number of complex problems in the development of cities, such as unemployment among the urban population and the growth of poverty. Beginning with the age of capitalism, the cities have been—and remain—the main bulwarks of the revolutionary movement. The Great French Revolution relied above all on Paris, and the most important events of the revolutions of 1848–49 were associated with Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and so on. As the working class grows, the cities become centers for its action, beginning with strikes and ending with armed uprisings. The cities in which the industrial proletariat is concentrated are the main bulwarks of the socialist revolutions. The new social order inherits from capitalism the old patterns of settlement.

Among the socialist countries are countries with different initial levels of industrial development and different degrees of urbanization, from countries such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Czechoslovakia, in which the percentage of urban population was significant (about 72 percent in the GDR in 1950 and about 49 percent in Czechoslovakia in 1947), to countries with a very low percentage of urban population (about 20 percent in Albania in 1950, about 10 percent in China in 1949, and about 6 percent in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as late as 1957). The process of socialist industrialization is accompanied by rapid growth in the number of cities and in urban population. In the USSR, for example, the urban population was 18 percent by 1917, and according to the 1970 census it had reached 56 percent.

(See also below: Table 3, Growth of cities and urban population in the USSR.) Among the European socialist countries, the growth of the urban population of Poland (31.8 percent in 1946 and 52.2 percent in 1970), Bulgaria (24.5 percent and about 52.2 percent, respectively), and Rumania (23.4 percent in 1948 and 41 percent in 1970) is particularly rapid. Growth in urban population occurs both through an increase in the number of residents of old cities and through the appearance of new cities. Their growth is linked with the policy followed by the socialist states of even distribution of industry, culture, and science throughout the country. In the European socialist countries, about two-fifths of the total urban population in the mid-1960’s lived in cities with a population of more than 100,000.

Socialist cities develop on the basis of public ownership of the means of production under conditions of a planned socialist economy, which creates the prerequisites for solving the major problems of city development—settlement and planned control of city growth, reconstruction of old cities, solution of the housing problem, and so on. Under socialism the socioeconomic base and class composition of city population changes fundamentally; the division between special residential areas populated by the well-to-do and the areas of the working poor, which is characteristic of capitalist cities, disappears. The socialist revolution begins the process of overcoming the contradiction between the city and the countryside. The city has the leading role in socialist transformation of the countryside, and the countryside receives skilled workers, equipment, chemical fertilizer, and consumer goods from the city. The city takes socialist culture to the countryside. H ISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES ON THE TERRITORY OF THE USSR. The most ancient cities on the territory of the USSR appeared during the first millennium B.C . in the states of Transcaucasia (Erebuni, Teishebaini, and others) and Middle Asia (Samarkand [Marakanda], Merv, and others). Between the sixth century B.C.

and the fourth century A.D . There were classical cities, which took shape as Greek colonies, on the coast of the Black Sea. Among the eastern Slavs, cities first formed as fortified settlements (the Russian word for “city,” gorod, signified a walled place). With the formation of early feudal class society the cities began to change into centers of princely power and trade and commerce. At the end of the tenth century there were about 25 cities in Ancient Rus’, including Kiev, Chernigov, Smolensk, Novgorod, and Pskov. In the 11th century, 64 new cities are mentioned; in the 12th century, 134; and in the 13th century (until 1237), 47. Crafts, commerce, and culture developed in the cities of Ancient Rus’. The cities were the site of major antifeudal uprisings (1068–69 and 1113 in Kiev, 1136 and 1207 in Novgorod, and 1174 in Vladimir).

In the 11th to 13th centuries popular assemblies (the veche) took on an important role. The rise of the class struggle in Novgorod in the mid-12th century led to the formation of the Novgorod Feudal Republic. During the Mongol invasion (1236–40), the majority of Russian cities were destroyed. Cities formed again in northeastern Russia in the second half of the 14th century; the cities that stood on important land and water routes grew particularly rapidly (Moscow, Tver’, Nizhny Novgorod, Kolomna, and Kostroma). New cities arose, primarily in the Moscow Principality, the most heavily populated area. However, the Mongol yoke seriously retarded socioeconomic development of the cities. With the rise and strengthening of Moscow, city dwellers supported the struggle of the Muscovite princes for the unity of the country. With the formation of the centralized Russian state, more favorable conditions were established for the development of cities.

In the mid-16th century there were 160 cities, many of which were built on the southern and southeastern borders of the country as fortified military settlements: Vasil’sursk, Orel, Tsaritsyn, and others. In the 14th to 16th centuries cities such as Sol’-Kamskaia (in the Perm’ region) and Sol’-Vychegodskaia (in the Arkhangel’sk region) formed and developed as centers of the mining industry. With the establishment of centralized state control the power of the feudal state over the cities grew stronger. In 1649 the privately owned “white settlements” in the cities were eliminated, and all city-dwellers came under the rule of the state.

The population of the cities took an active part in the struggle against foreign intervention in the early 17th century (the heroic defense of Smolensk in 1609–11, the uprising in Moscow in 1611, and the struggle of the residents of Novgorod, Pskov, Korely [present-day Priozersk, Leningrad Ob-last], and Yaroslavl against the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish interventionists). The initiative for forming a national militia to fight the interventionists arose among the Nizhny Novgorod posadskie liudi (merchants and artisans). A new stage in the development of Russian cities came in the 17th century, with the beginning of a massive change from crafts to small-scale commodity production. At that time there were 226 cities in Russia (excluding the Ukraine and Siberia), but the level of development of urban life in the country as a whole was low because of intensified serfdom. The reforms of the first quarter of the 18th century had great influence on the development of the cities.

The First Provincial Reform, according to which certain large cities became provincial centers, was carried out in 1708. According to the Statutes on Provinces of 1775 many cities that were part of provinces became district centers. The number of cities in the country reached 336. Certain cities became centers of the textile industry, and cities formed around metallurgical and other enterprises (Ekaterinburg, Nizhnii Tagil, Petrozavodsk, and Lipetsk). In the 1720’s there were pesad (merchant and artisan) populations in about 200 cities; they constituted about 183,000 males, or 3.2 percent of the country’s population. Ratushi (bodies for city self-government) were instituted in 1699, followed in 1720 by the Main Magistrate and later by city magistrates. By the end of the 18th century the urban population had grown to 1.3 million persons, or 4.1 percent of the population of the country.

Many state and palace settlements and towns had taken on a merchant-artisan character, and in the 1770’s and 1780’s the government reclassified them as cities (for example, Bogorodsk, Podol’sk, Bronnitsy, Viazniki, Gzhatsk, and Rybinsk). In the south, new cities—such as Kherson, Odessa, Nikolaev, and Taganrog—formed and became port centers. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861 the development of cities in Russia accelerated. Certain cities were transformed into large industrial centers. Trying to satisfy the interests of the growing Russian capitalist class, the government carried out the urban reform of 1870. However, the functions of city government were extremely limited. In 1863 city dwellers constituted 10 percent of the total population of Russia; in 1897 (according to the census), 12.9 percent. By 1917 there were about 800 cities in the Russian Empire, and 18 percent of the population lived in them.

In the 18th to 20th centuries the cities of Russia became the focus of science and progressive Russian culture: the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (founded in 1725) and the universities in Moscow (1755), Kazan (1804), Kharkov (1805), and St. Petersburg (1819); the development of book publishing; and the appearance of the periodical press and professional theaters in Yaroslavl and Moscow. With the growth of the proletariat, cities became the centers of the revolutionary movement. All the main political events of the two Russian bourgeois-democratic revolutions (the Revolution of 1905–07 and the February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1917) took place in the cities. Petrograd and Moscow were the main centers of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, which spread to all cities of the country as a result of the triumphant march of Soviet power. After the victory of the October Revolution, private ownership of land in the cities was abolished (Oct. 26 [Nov. 8], 1917), and on Aug.

20, 1918, private ownership of real property in the cities was abolished. All so-called income buildings were taken from private ownership and transferred to the local soviets. In 1918–24 millions of working people were moved by Soviet power from basements and slums into the homes of the bourgeoisie (in Moscow alone 500,000 out of 1.7 million residents were moved to new apartments). The city system came under the management of the soviets. The industrialization of the country became the primary factor determining growth in Soviet cities and their economic and cultural role. During the years of the prewar five-year plans (1929–40), more than 500 new cities formed in the USSR (including Magnitogorsk, Berezniki, Komsomol’sk-na-Amure, Elektrostal’, Noril’sk, Magadan, Karaganda, and Igarka). Many cities, including Sverdlovsk, Cheliabinsk, Novosibirsk, Kuibyshev, and Saratov, were transformed into major industrial centers.

Plans were drawn up for rebuilding work on dozens of old cities, among them the capitals of the national republics. Residential buildings were provided with amenities, and schools, nursery schools, child-care centers, clubs, libraries, stores, polyclinics, hospitals, theaters, stadiums, and recreational parks were built. The social composition of the cities changed; the difference between the well-organized center and the outlying workers’ settlements, which is typical of capitalist cities, was eliminated. Soviet cities are characterized by a new social composition of the population: production workers, clerical workers, and intelligentsia. Shock working and the Stakhanovite movement were born in the cities. The cities were the centers of the socialist cultural revolution. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941—45 the residents of Leningrad and the defenders of Moscow, Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Sevastopol’, Odessa, Kiev, and the Brest Fortress showed heroism and selflessness. The honorary title of Hero City has been awarded to six large cities in the USSR that earned glory by their heroic defense during the war.

In the Soviet cities that were occupied by the fascists, 1,209,000 residential buildings out of 2,567,000, as well as 32,000 large and medium industrial enterprises, 82,000 schools, and tens of thousands of hospitals, museums, and stores, were destroyed. In November 1945 the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a decree on the restoration of 15 of the very old Russian cities that were destroyed by the fascist German aggressors. The heavy war damage was eliminated in a short time. The restoration of Kiev, Stalingrad (Volgograd), Minsk, Kharkov, Sevastopol’, Smolensk, and many other cities was accompanied by fundamental modernization. Between 1950 and 1967 more than 460 cities and 1,200 urban-type settlements appeared. Among them are Angarsk, Bratsk, Tol’iatti, Volzhskii, Rustavi, Sumgait, and Rudnyi.

Special “science” cities appeared: Akademgorodok (near Novosibirsk), Dubna, Obninsk, and Pushchino near Moscow. Extensive civil housing construction is proceeding everywhere. The growth of cities and urban population and the size of the population of the capitals of the union and autonomous republics, krais and oblast centers, and cities of the USSR with more than 100,000 residents (as of 1970) are given in Tables 3 and 4. REFERENCES Marx, K., and F. Engels. “Nemetskaia ideologiia.” In K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3. Engels, F. “Polozhenie rabochego klassa v Anglii.” Ibid., vol. 2. Engels, F. “Anti-Dühring.” Ibid., vol. 20. Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed. (See Spravochnyi torn., part 1, pp. 111–12.) Baranskii, N. N.

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Question: What federation of free cities who had developed trade with foreign countries, formed in the 14th century, had its headquarters in Lbeck?
Answer: Hanseatic League