essay on modern city

Future cities: new challenges mean we need to reimagine the look of urban landscapes

Professor of Urban Design, Lancaster University

Senior Lecturer in Design (People, Places, Products), Lancaster University

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Imagining future cities has long been a favourite activity for architects, artists and designers . Technology is often central in these schemes – it appears as a dynamic and seemingly unstoppable force, providing a neat solution to society’s problems.

But our recent research has suggested that we need to significantly rethink the way we imagine future cities , and move our focus from an overarching technological vision to other priorities, such as environmental sustainability and the need to tackle social inequalities.

We need to answer questions about what can be sustained and what cannot, where cities can be located and where they cannot, and how we might travel in and between them.

The coronavirus pandemic has further reinforced this need. It has profoundly disrupted what we thought we knew about cities . It has further sharpened existing inequalities and brought about major challenges for how we physically live and work together.

The future – yesterday

The architect and influential urban planner Eugène Hénard was arguably the first to publicly discuss “future cities” in Europe during his 1910 address to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. His vision anticipated the technological advances of the future, such as aerial transportation. This approach, prioritising technology, was also evoked in cinema in Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis .

It was also mirrored by architects such as Le Corbusier in projects such as the 1924 Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) . In this work, Le Corbusier developed his concept of the city as a symmetrical, regulated, and highly centralised landscape.

Such an approach can be traced through many subsequent visions for cities, portrayed as the physical embodiment of technological prowess.

A new focus

But rather than simply focusing on technology to shape our future, we also need to look at it through social and global lenses. These alternative approaches are increasingly urgent. To provide a safe and sustainable world for present and future populations, we need to think beyond “solutionism”. This is the idea that every problem we have has a technological fix.

An identifiable shift in how future cities are being conceived, designed and delivered concerns the people involved in these processes. This ranges from localised projects to global initiatives. For example, the Every One Every Day project in Barking and Dagenham in London aims to make practical participation in neighbourhood projects inclusive and available to all residents. On a much wider scale, the New Urban Agenda global vision by the United Nations’ Habitat programme, meanwhile, calls for more inclusive and sustainable urbanisation and settlement planning.

We may want our future cities to prioritise environmental renewal. The Green Machine , a design for a future city by architect Stephane Malka, moves like a mobile oasis, replenishing desert rather than causing more environmental degradation. This future city collects water through air condensation and uses solar power to drive itself over arid landscapes.

These are ploughed and injected with a mixture of water, natural fertiliser and cereal seeds as it passes. Agricultural greenhouses along with livestock farms support the city’s inhabitants and supplement local populations. The project is scaleable and replicable in relation to the number of people needed to be accommodated.

Climate change brings with it the possibility of dramatic sea level rise. Post Carbon City-State , a project by architecture and urban design group Terreform, imagines a submerged New York. The project proposes that, rather than investing in mitigation efforts, the East and Hudson River are allowed to flood parts of Manhattan.

The new city is rebuilt in its surrounding rivers. Former streets become snaking arteries of liveable spaces, embedded with renewable energy resources, green vehicles, and productive nutrient zones. This replaces the current obsession with private car ownership towards more ecological forms of public transport.

Both these projects emphasise responses to the impacts of climate change over technological innovation for its own sake.

Alternatively, the cities of the future may prioritise equality. This is illustrated by spatial design agency 5th Studio’s Stour City, The Enabling State .

This is a future city for 60,000 inhabitants, envisioned along the River Stour and the Port of Harwich in East Anglia, England. Based around the urbanisation and intensification of existing rail and port infrastructure, it features initiatives such as waste to power generation in order to support a viable, low-impact city, with priorities including affordable housing for all.

Imagining these cities helps us understand how we want our future lives to look. But we must open up the opportunity to conceptualise these futures to a wider and more diverse set of people. By doing so, we will be better positioned to rethink the shifts required to safeguard our health, that of other species and the planet we share. This is the significance of visions for tomorrow’s world – and why we need to create new ones today.

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The Spaces of the Modern City

Gyan Prakash

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Political Science

The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life

• Edited by Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse
• Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University

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By United Nations estimates, 60 percent of the world’s population will be urban by 2030. With the increasing speed of urbanization, especially in the developing world, scholars are now rethinking standard concepts and histories of modern cities. The Spaces of the Modern City historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth of the city landscape. This interdisciplinary collection examines how the city develops in the interactions of space and imagination. The essays focus on issues such as street design in Vienna, the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, architecture in Marseilles and Algiers, and the kaleidoscopic paradox of post-apartheid Johannesburg. They explore the nature of spatial politics, examining the disparate worlds of eighteenth-century Baghdad, nineteenth-century Morelia, Cold War-era West Berlin, and postwar Los Angeles. They also show the meaning of everyday spaces to urban life, illuminating issues such as crime in metropolitan London, youth culture in Dakar, “memory projects” in Tokyo, and Bombay cinema. Informed by a range of theoretical writings, this collection offers a fresh and truly global perspective on the nature of the modern city. The contributors are Sheila Crane, Belinda Davis, Mamadou Diouf, Philip J. Ethington, David Frisby, Christina M. Jiménez, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ranjani Mazumdar, Frank Mort, Martin Murray, Jordan Sand, and Sarah Schrank.

"This ambitious collection of essays is the result of a series of seminars at Princeton University aimed at developing fresh thinking about the city as a dynamic physical space that 'shapes, and is shaped by, power, economy, culture and society.' A fascinating introductory essay by Gyan Prakash outlines recent urban theorising and counters the idea that, in an age of globalisation, specific cityscapes are losing their significance: our urban experiences still depend on 'local lifeworlds', rich with memories and imagination."— The Guardian

"This is a very ambitious collection of diverse, high quality essays. Prakash is certainly right that the study of the modern city is stuck in the literature of European metropolises, and I fully agree with the direction he stakes out in his introduction. The Spaces of the Modern City may be worth its price simply for the introduction."—Thomas Bender, author of The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea

"This is an interesting and substantial collection of essays. Combining conceptual sophistication with rich historical studies, the book moves beyond familiar reference points in debates about urban modernity to open up nuanced perspectives on experiences in a wide range of places and periods. The volume makes a significant addition to the growing literature on cities and urbanism."—David Pinder, Queen Mary, University of London

"Its global reach and attention to history make this wonderfully ambitious collection unusual. It is very much in line, in terms of scope and conception, with where historically minded urban studies should be heading. Its interdisciplinarity, determination to look beyond the typical Western cities, and insistence on urban centers remaining the source of local concerns—all this is to the good. This is a real landmark volume."—Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of China's Brave New World: And Other Tales for Global Times .

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Ecofying Cities, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Right now, our economy operates as Paul Hawken said, "by stealing the future, selling it in the present and calling it GDP." And if we have another eight billion or seven billion people, living on a planet where their cities also steal the future, we're going to run out of future really fast. But if we think differently, I think that, in fact, we can have cities that are not only zero emissions, but have unlimited possibilities as well. Alex Steffen

The urgency of urban planning today

Within a few decades' time, we can expect the planet to become more crowded, resources more precious, and innovative urban planners increasingly important. By midcentury, the global population will likely top nine billion, and more than half will live in cities. What will these cities look like? Will we have the resources to power them and comfortably provide for their residents? Will global urbanization harmonize with efforts to curb climate change and secure a sustainable future, or are these forces hurtling towards a head-on collision?

The TED speakers featured in Ecofying Cities underscore the urgency, but also suggest that some optimism's in order as they outline the issues and offer imaginative solutions.

There's no single reason for or response to the complex environmental, economic and social challenges that are part of our future in cities. They call for multiple approaches, originating from different sources — individuals, communities, governments, businesses — and deployed at different levels — in the home, the neighborhood, the city, region, nation and across the globe — to respond to the challenges at hand. As Alex Steffen reminds the urban planners, architects, designers, elected leaders and others involved in the effort, "All those cities are opportunities."

Urbanism and the environment: A brief history

For centuries, successful city-building has required careful attention to the environmental consequences of urban development. Without this, as Jared Diamond demonstrated in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , a city inevitably ended up fouling its nest, thus entering a spiral of epidemics, economic hardship, decline and, ultimately, oblivion. Civilizations evolved different ways of dealing with environmental considerations — some with more success than others. For example, thanks to elaborate aqueducts and sewer systems, the Romans were able to build and sustain for centuries large cities that featured a reliable public water supply and state-of-the-art public health conditions.

In other civilizations, however, residents simply abandoned cities when they could no longer rely on their environment to supply the resources they needed. Often this was a direct result of their own activities: for example, deforestation and the attendant erosion of fertile soil, epidemics due to contaminated water and, with the advent of coal-fired industrialization, air pollution.

Urban planning got its start as a profession largely dedicated to averting different types of crises arising from urban growth and providing conditions for public health. This was particularly true in the many 19th century European and North American cities transformed by industrialization and unprecedented rates of population growth. Rapidly deteriorating air and water quality made it necessary to introduce regulations to protect the health of the residents of these cities.

The planners' first-generation improvements included sewers, water treatment and distribution, and improved air quality through building codes and increased urban green space. It's especially remarkable today to think that these interventions were adopted in response to observable health consequences, but without knowledge of the contamination mechanisms at work: germ theory didn't arrive on the scene until Louis Pasteur published his work in the 1860s. From the late 19th century onward Pasteur's findings bolstered the case for even more urban sanitation improvements, particularly those designed to improve water quality.

Starting in the 1950s, however, planners no longer narrowly targeted immediate health effects on urban residents as their chief environmental concern. Their work also absorbed and reflected Western society's deeper understanding of, and respect for, natural processes and growing awareness of the long-term environmental impacts of cities from the local to the planetary scale.

Rachel Carson is often credited as the first to popularize environmentalism. Published in 1962, her landmark book Silent Spring sounded a warning call about how pesticides endanger birds and entire ecological systems. Soon after, air pollution became a rallying point for environmentalists, as did the loss of large tracks of rural and natural land to accelerated, sprawling development. Today, sustainable development and smart growth, which largely overlap and address multiple environmental considerations, enjoy wide currency; most urban planning is now based on these principles.

Today, as we reckon with population growth, advancing rates of urbanization, and widespread recognition of climate change, we know that the cities of the future share a common destiny. The choices we make about how we build, inhabit and maintain these cities will have global and long-term effects.

Sustainable development: Two schools of thought

In modern urban planning, there are two general categories of sustainable development. The first doesn't challenge the present dynamics of the city, allowing them to remain largely low-density and automobile-oriented, but still makes them the object of measures aimed to reduce their environmental load (for example, green construction practices). Ian McHarg spearheaded this approach as a way to develop urban areas in harmony with natural systems; the planning principles he formulated gave special care to the preservation of water and green space. His lasting influence is visible in many of the more enlightened suburban developments of recent decades which respect the integrity of natural systems. Today, the Landscape Urbanism movement promotes these same ideas.

A second school of urban development focuses on increasing urban density and reducing reliance on the automobile. This approach advocates transit-oriented and mixed-use development along pedestrian-friendly "complete streets." On a regional scale, it aims to reduce sprawl by creating a network of higher-density multifunctional centers interconnected by public transit. Today, it's common for plans with a metropolitan scope to follow this approach.

Studying the city: About these materials

Cities are arguably the most complex human creation (with the possible exception of language) so it's not surprising that we study them at multiple scales and from diverse perspectives. We can approach cities through a narrow focus on an individual building or a neighborhood, expand the investigation to consider a metropolitan region in its entirety, or study the global system of cities and its interconnections. What's more, we can think about cities as built environments, social networks, modified ecologies, economic systems and political entities. Aware of the multiple ways that we engage with cities, the Romans had two words to refer to them: urbs referred to the physical city with its wall and buildings, and civitas , the city as a collection of residents.

Ecofying Cities explores urban areas at different scales. In some cases, the TED speaker focuses on a neighborhood project, like The High Line in Manhattan; others describe city-wide transformation, as in Curitiba, Brazil, or a regional or national initiative like China's plan for a network of eco-cities to house its growing urban population. Likewise, the talks explore cities from different disciplinary perspectives including urban planning, urban design, transportation planning, architecture, community organization and environmental science. What unites them all? A commitment to sustainability and a belief that sustainability is more about creating positive effects rather than reducing negative impacts.

The message emanating from Ecofying Cities is one of complexity, optimism and uncertainty. We can't be sure that the changes these speakers suggest will be enough to help us balance supply and demand in the sustainability equation. But we can expect that their ideas and efforts will improve the built environment — as well as quality of life — in cities, thereby providing hopeful perspectives for a sustainable future.

Let´s begin with writer and futurist Alex Steffen´s TEDTalk "The Sharable Future of Cities" for a look at the interplay between increasing urban density and energy consumption.

Alex Steffen

The shareable future of cities, relevant talks.

Jaime Lerner

A song of the city.

Majora Carter

Greening the ghetto.

Robert Hammond

Building a park in the sky.

Michael Pawlyn

Using nature's genius in architecture.

William McDonough

Cradle to cradle design.

James Howard Kunstler

The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs.

Ellen Dunham-Jones

Retrofitting suburbia.

The Way We Were, the Way We Are: The Theory and Practice of Designing Cities since 1956

Jonathan Barnett

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24: The Origins and Evolution of “Urban Design,” 1956–2006

What is the designed city, who wants to make it happen, and who designs it?

Today most urban design professionals would say that a well-designed city has three components: it conserves the natural environment and is responsive to it; it creates a desirable public realm that includes transportation, streets, civic spaces, shopping, entertainment, parks, and recreation; and it supports social interaction in residential neighborhoods, work places, and mixed-use downtowns. 

The three major political constituencies for implementing urban design concepts are environmentalists who want to shape development to conserve the natural world and preserve its systems, civic promoters who seek to distinguish their city from its competition by its higher quality urban and civic life, and community activists who want to preserve and restore the places where they live and who want new development to have the good qualities of traditional neighborhoods. 

Cities today are designed by an intricate interplay of private investment, public subsidies and incentives for development, government regulations, public participation, and public protest. The professional urban designer needs to know how to work with and guide all these forces. Landscape architecture, architecture, and city planning each relate most directly to one of the constituencies for urban design. The urban designer is likely to have a professional credential in one of these disciplines and needs to be conversant with all three. But how does the designer get a seat at the table when the decisions are being made?

Urban Design and the Natural Environment

In 1956, Ian McHarg, a recent Harvard graduate in both city planning and landscape architecture, was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. The next year he was to begin his course,  Man and the Environment , which led to a television program,  The House We Live In , and ultimately to his 1969 book,  Design with Nature . McHarg saw the natural environment as the equivalent of a design, the resolution into equilibrium of such elements as geologic forms, rain and flood­­-water, soil conditions, vegetation, and animal habitat. Ignorant interventions that disturb natural systems lead to incalculable consequences, many times adverse. Once you understand McHarg’s thesis, you see why summer houses built on dunes will wash away in hurricanes, why whole streets of houses in landslide-prone Los Angeles are fated to subside into valleys, and why Houston becomes more and more subject to flooding. 

The failure to relate the natural environment to urban design is a conspicuous blind spot in most of the Harvard Urban Design Conference proceedings. Richard Neutra provided an interesting exception when he said: “The urban landscape which we want to improve by our artifacts is in the first place a phenomenon to be understood on a biological basis,” 3  a statement that also includes Anne Spirn’s extension of McHarg’s philosophy to the existing city in  The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design . 4  (Spirn was McHarg’s pupil of at the University of Pennsylvania and was once head of Harvard’s Landscape Architecture Department.) McHarg helped define the need for today’s geographic information systems (GIS) which replace with “layers” on a computer the overlays on tracing paper, pain­stakingly researched and redrawn to the same scale by hand, which made up McHarg’s analyses of the most appropriate locations to build within the natural landscape.

Today GIS and the spatial analytics that they make possible are powerful tools that enable an urban designer to understand and describe natural systems at a variety of scales and to demonstrate with maps the interactions between development alternatives and natural systems. These demonstrations of the future impacts of different development scenarios can be shown interactively in real time at public meetings, giving the public a means of making informed comments on long-range regional design decisions like the selection of highway routes. This is one way that today’s urban designer can gain a seat at the decision-making table.

Urban Design as a Civic Vision

“The sponsors have avoided the term Civic Design as having, in the minds of many, too specialized or too grandiose a connotation,” reads the introduction to the 1956 conference summary in  Progressive Architecture . “Urban Design” was the name that the Harvard Graduate School of Design selected for its 1956 conference and for the “joint work of the architect, landscape architect, and city planner.” By explicitly discarding the term  civic design , the sponsors were disavowing the City Beautiful with its park and boulevard plans repeating formulations worked out in Haussmann’s Paris and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (“too grandiose”), and its emphasis on public buildings grouped in a civic center (“too specialized”). Defining urban design as collaboration among professionals, rather than as a series of specific design objectives, reflected the then current thinking in the city planning profession, which was giving up on end-state plans and redefining planning as a continuous process.

Partly because of the 1956 Harvard conference,  urban design  has become the accepted term; it is too late to wonder about changing it. Many present problems in implementing city designs were described by the conference participants, but the conference also helped formulate urban design in a way that has itself contributed to current difficulties in creating coherent, well-designed cities. Discarding the word  civic  marked a significant change in city design priorities. The illustrations that accompany the summary of the conference express utility and perhaps social equality, but aside from the diagrams of Radburn and Welwyn Garden City, there is little in these drawings to connote more complex societal aspirations. 

While the design vocabulary for civic design in the United States was drawn from palatial European examples, Americans had never accepted such designs as if they were creating a place to watch the royal coach roll down the boulevard on the way to a state occasion. The Chicago Fair of 1893 was a populist fun-fest; Grand Central and Pennsylvania Stations glorified mass transit; impressive museums and libraries were open to everyone, as were the great civic parks in almost every city. However, Hitler’s and Stalin’s use of the classical design vocabulary established for many people that not only might such designs not be appropriate to the modern era but also that they were the language of oppression. It is understandable why the sponsors of the conference wanted to distance themselves from classical architecture, which had been renounced at Harvard for almost twenty years; the problem is that they confused it with civic design. There is still confusion about this today.

Not acknowledging the civic component of urbanism turns sidewalks and public spaces into utilitarian places between buildings, providing little more than light and air, and passages for pedestrians. Most urban plazas of the last fifty years provide good views of the buildings they front but are devoid of social significance. The research of Jan Gehl and William H. Whyte, among others, has helped establish how people use public space, and that in turn has helped show designers how to configure and furnish sidewalks and public places so that they will be used and thus regain signi­ficance in community life. Other lessons for the design of civic space have come from the devices retailers use to attract people to shopping precincts. “Place-making” has become a slogan of modern-day retailing. With retailers saying, “Hey, this stuff really works,” civic spaces have again become important in city design as a means of attracting people to the city and of keeping them there. Urban designers are now in demand to provide the inspiration for such places.

Defining civic spaces with groups of buildings designed by different architects at unpredictable intervals over a long period of time is a central task for the urban designer. As designers have rediscovered the importance of civic spaces, they have also discovered the devices used in the past to pull such places together: the guidelines of Baron Haussmann in Paris, those for the Back Bay in Boston, and the more abstract, form-based street walls and setbacks of New York City’s original 1916 zoning code. These elements of civic design derive from the classical tradition, but they are abstract enough to be incorporated into zoning codes. Zoning codes always determine city form, but the modern codes that came into use in the 1960s introduced floor area ratios as the basic bulk control, making the shape of buildings an often unanticipated by-product. Writing the preferred location and shape of buildings into codes makes them a major tool for realizing urban design concepts. Beginning with New York City’s special zoning districts in the 1960s, the design guidelines for Battery Park City in the late 1970s, and the “regulating plans” used at Seaside and other master-planned communities in the 1980s, “form-based coding” is now finding its way into zoning ordinances in such places as Louisville, Nashville, Miami-Dade County, and St. Paul.

Using zoning to implement urban design was discussed by Frederick Adams at the Harvard conference, but he assumed that requiring good design meant wide administrative discretion, and he expressed himself as doubtful that public officials would ever be permitted to exercise this kind of subjective control. Adams’s skepticism was justified, but he underestimated the ability of designers to identify the salient characteristics of good civic design and express them in ways compatible with zoning. Writing and administering codes is becoming another way for designers to gain a seat at the decision-making table.

Urban Design to Support Social Interaction

Neighborhood planning, as defined by Clarence Perry and others in the 1920s and 1930s, was rediscovered first in the 1960s as an antidote to urban renewal or, to repeat the Lewis Mumford quotation, “the absolute folly of creating a physical structure at the price of destroying the intimate social structure of a community’s life.” Once planners and architects started listening to communities and planning with them, they began designing buildings and spaces to fit into existing neighborhoods rather than replace them. Neighborhood planning was rediscovered again in the 1980s as an antidote to large tracts of suburban houses, all the same size on the same-sized lots, completely segregated from stores and work places. The creation in newly developed areas of compact, walkable neighborhoods with a mix of different house-types and some stores and civic buildings replicates traditional patterns in cities and suburbs before the Second World War. Some designers are also attempting to replicate pre-Second World War neighborhood architecture (no architectural historian would be fooled for a minute), but doing so is not necessary to the concept of neighborhood design and is likely to be a transitional phase. Helping developers create new places friendly to the social interactions that make up a neighborhood and helping cities preserve and restore older neighborhoods and historic districts have turned out to be major activities for urban designers, another place where design has become a significant part of the decisions that shape urban and suburban development.

The sponsors and participants of the Harvard conference undoubtedly agreed on the importance of neighborhoods, a principle accepted by CIAM and seen in the work of even such an iconoclast as Le Corbusier. But the speakers, including Jane Jacobs, don’t seem to have perceived the neighborhood as an element shared by city and suburb, and thus a basic unit of the multi-centered modern metropolis. Instead they described city and suburb as at war with each other, and the suburb as the city gone wrong. 

When they spoke, Jean Gottmann was beginning the research that he published in 1961 as  Megalopolis , a book that demonstrated that formerly separate cities were growing together into conglomerations that extended over big geographic areas. He helped change everyone’s understanding of the modern city. In 1956 downtowns were still found only in the historic centers of big cities or suburban towns. Today a mixed-use town center is a real estate concept that might be attempted in many kinds of places. Office buildings and other urban elements that used to be found exclusively downtown can be scattered over the landscape, forming what have been called “edgeless cities.” Today’s city is a complex metropolitan organism still in the process of formation, and guiding its development is the principal challenge for urban designers. 

José Luis Sert and most of the speakers at Harvard in 1956 would be pleased to see that today hundreds of architecture, landscape architecture, and planning firms offer urban design services as a significant part of their professional practice and that many urban design concepts have actually been implemented. However, they would look at today’s rapidly urbanizing world and tell us that there has also been a big increase in the kinds of problems urban designers need to solve. Experts tell us that the world’s population will have stabilized at about ten billion people in the next fifty years. If we are spared world-wide war, famine, and plague, the correctives for over-population that the Reverend Thomas Malthus predicted, perhaps people will then be able to perfect the built environment and its relationship to nature. Let us hope that there will be a collection of essays like this one published fifty years from now.

“The action of the Congress of the United States in appropriating one billion dollars to create a new urban environment places on all of us a responsibility we cannot duck.” 1  So Edmund Bacon began his remarks at the Harvard Urban Design Conference in 1956, provoking our reflections on the history of urban renewal, on the smaller value of a billion dollars in today’s money, and on the current lack of any such Congressional commitment. Not having Federal subsidies to help cities buy land and buildings makes a big difference in the design of cities today. The flow of Federal money is the presence behind much of the discourse at the 1956 Harvard Conference about the directive role of the urban designer. In the 1950s, developers and elected local officials could be expected to pay attention to urban renewal administrators, housing authority directors, and the heads of city planning departments—and by extension the designers who worked for them—when they could unlock subsidies from Washington and help determine how they were spent. Once cities have to depend more on their own resources, the city design problem becomes one of managing the cumulative effect of everyday decisions about zoning, housing subsidies, and public works. The planning and urban renewal directors revert to being administrators rather than initiators, and the role of initiator belongs mainly to the state transportation departments—the  de facto  planners of today’s regional cities — and to private real estate investors. 

The 1956 conference sponsors were right to define urban design as a collaborative process, but less right to define it as a collaborative process among architects, planners, and landscape architects. What are the roles of the engineer, the real estate investor, and the elected public official? And what about the public itself? Jane Jacobs was present at Harvard in 1956 and had some cogent criticisms of the kinds of abstract, geometric urban designs, mostly urban renewal proposals, that were on exhibit and that illustrate the report on the conference. Interestingly, Lewis Mumford, who was to have a sharp public quarrel with Jane Jacobs when her critique of planning and urban renewal,  The Death and Life of Great American Cities , was published five years later, agreed with her completely at Harvard: “If this conference does nothing else, it can at least [lead its participants to] go home and report on the absolute folly of creating a physical structure at the price of destroying the intimate social structure of a community’s life.” 2

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Exploring New Urbanism Principles in the 21st Century

• Written by Kaley Overstreet
• Published on June 18, 2021

The discussion around how we plan the cities we want to live in is a never-ending conversation. As our world experiences shifts that impact urban designs in both predictable and unpredictable ways, some principals have held true- that cities that rely less on private transportation, create walkable neighborhoods, boast a multitude of public parks and spaces, and are designed at a more human scale tend to be favored and well-recieved by the people who inhabit them. Enter the concept of New Urbanism . Backed by these ideologies with a modern spin on is how they might apply to our 21st-century lifestyles, New Urbanism a planning strategy that has been both praised and critiqued since its implementation.

The principles of New Urbanism were first created in the 1980s as an alternative to the suburban sprawl that was characterized by low-density zoning, and single-use buildings and homes that had become popular after the end of World War II. Underscored by the desire to make cities more walkable and remove the dependence upon cars, New Urbanism reflects on historical precedents and seeks to return to a more traditional planning strategy as seen in places like Charleston, South Carolina, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Beyond the pedestrian-friendly zones, the idea is that these neighborhoods would be packed with a combination of multi-family housing buildings, flourishing businesses, and commercial sites that line a gridded street system. All of this space would then be bisected with a “Main Street”, where all of the town activities would come together in a central location.

New Urbanism strategies , and their offshoots like the 15 Minute City, have been tested all across the globe. One of the first and most notable projects is the Stapleton neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. It was rezoned to become one of the largest mixes of residential and commercial areas in Denver, with an emphasis on public parks. But the reality of how Stapleton is utilized by its residents has become one of the biggest criticisms of the New Urbanism movements in general. A study from the University of Colorado in Denver concluded that Stapleton actually has higher vehicle speeds, fewer bikers, and fewer public transit users when compared with other neighborhoods in the region.

Despite all of the promise that New Urbanism holds, in recent years, there have been some concerns with how these cities are planned from a density perspective. If they are so dense, how will residents experience a level of privacy? The other concern is that not everyone wants to live in a city like this- some people actually enjoy the suburban and rural sprawl that affords them a large yard and separation from their neighborhoods. Some of the proposed towns also feel like more of a movie set, with their heavily manicured designs, and don’t reflect the way in which cities naturally grow.

Even with these criticisms, the ideas behind New Urbanism have only continued to gain traction, hold promise in the eye of city planners, and its ideas are still implemented into many new developments around the globe- even if at a smaller scale. It’s only a matter of time before more cities are walkable and their policies support high-density designs.

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Designing the Modern City

Urbanism since 1850.

• Eric Mumford
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Copyright year: 2018
• Main content: 360
• Other: 125 b-w illus.
• Published: April 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780300230390

Visions of the Modern City

William Chapman Sharpe and Leonard Wallock

The relentless pace of urbanization since the industrial revolution has inspired a continuing effort to view, read, and name the modern city. "We are now at a point of transition to a new kind of city", write William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "and thus we are experiencing the same crisis of language felt by observers of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cities." Visions of the Modern City explores the ways in which artists and writers have struggled to define the city during the past two centuries and opens a new perspective on the urban vision of our time.

In their introduction, the...

In their introduction, the editors outline three phases in the evolution of the modern city—each having its own distinctive morphology and metaphor— and argue that a new vocabulary is needed to describe the sprawling "urban field" of today. Eric Lampard draws a detailed demographic and geographic picture of urbanization since the late eighteenth century, culminating with the "decentered" city of the 1980s. Other contributors examine the representation of cities from the London and Paris of 1850 to the New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the present. Deborah Nord and Philip Collins follow Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens, respectively, through the urban underworld of Victorian London. Theodore Reff traces the double life of Paris expressed in the work of Manet, while Michele Hannoosh shows bow Baudelaire influenced the Impressionists by transferring the aesthetic implications of the term nature to urban experience. Thomas Bender and William Taylor focus on tensions between the horizontal and the vertical in the architectural development of New York City, and Paul Anderer investigates the private, domestic spaces that represent Tokyo in postwar Japanese fiction. Steven Marcus analyzes the breakdown of the city as signifying system in the novels of Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon, writers who question whether the indecipherable contemporary city has any meaning left at all.

Related Books

Dean G. Lampros

Thomas Zeller

edited by Charles E. Beveridge, Lauren Meier, and Irene Mills

Anne E. Mosher

John C. Hudson

Contributors illustrate how modern cities have been read and conceptualized with vocabularies ranging from the biological to the physical sciences.

Book Details

William chapman sharpe, leonard wallock.

with Hopkins Press Books

Economy and Development in Modern Cities

• First Online: 11 April 2019

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This chapter focuses on the roles of energy and strategies for capital accumulation as the primary determinants of urban development. The essay begins with a brief survey of the city in history: ranging from the mercantile trading city, characterized by craft production, to the rise of the industrial city with its large-scale industrial production, to the corporate city based on the service sector, paying special attention to the role of energy surpluses in transforming work processes and expanding economic surpluses. The chapter ends with a discussion of Third World cities, especially megacities, and their role origins in the globalization process, as well as a reflection on the possibility of sustainable cities in the future.

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Klitgaard, K. (2019). Economy and Development in Modern Cities. In: Hall, M., Balogh, S. (eds) Understanding Urban Ecology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11259-2_5

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How to Describe a City in Writing (100+ Best Examples)

Crafting compelling descriptions of cities is a skill that can vividly immerse your readers in your narrative.

Here’s how to describe a city in writing:

Describe a city by considering its size, culture, age, geography, architecture, infrastructure, economy, climate, landscape, and nightlife. Each characteristic offers a unique perspective, allowing you to craft a vivid, engaging description. Tie your description to your theme.

This article will guide you through the process of describing a city, focusing on ten crucial elements that add life and color to your descriptions.

10 Elements for Describing a City in Writing

Table of Contents

When describing a city in writing, you need to know these 10 elements:

Architecture

Infrastructure.

Next, let’s explore each of these elements in more detail and provide examples of how to apply them to your own stories.

Size refers to the scale of a city in terms of its physical extent and population.

By mentioning the size, you set a foundation for the readers, giving them a sense of the city’s vastness or compactness.

Words to Describe the Size of a City in Writing

• Densely populated
• Medium-sized

Examples of Describing a City by Size

• Sprawling across the landscape like a behemoth, the metropolis swallowed the horizon whole.
• With a population exceeding millions, the city buzzed with ceaseless activity.
• The dense network of streets formed a compact, labyrinthine cityscape.
• It was a small city, where everybody knew everybody.
• The city was vast, its boundaries stretching as far as the eye could see.
• Its towering skyscrapers were a testament to its grandeur and size.
• Nestled in the valley, the city covered a small area, yet housed a myriad of cultures.
• The size of the city was deceptive; it was more densely populated than it appeared.
• The city was a sprawling canvas of urbanity, cutting across county lines.
• The petite city was neatly crammed into a pocket of the mountainside.

Culture comprises the beliefs, traditions, arts, and history that influence a city’s way of life.

Highlighting the culture paints a vivid picture of the people, customs, and ethos that define the city.

Words to Describe the Culture of a City in Writing

• Traditional
• Cosmopolitan
• Multicultural
• Conservative
• Progressive

Examples of Describing a City by Culture

• The city was steeped in ancient traditions, echoing its ancestral roots.
• Its lively arts scene painted the city with an irreplaceable cultural vibrancy.
• The city was a melting pot of diverse cultures, blending seamlessly into one another.
• The annual festival was a cultural extravaganza that transformed the city into a carnival.
• The city was synonymous with classical music, its soul resonating in symphony.
• The local cuisine, a testament to the city’s rich culture, left a tantalizing aroma in the air.
• An artistic hub, the city was a cradle of avant-garde movements.
• The city’s cultural tapestry was woven with threads of countless ethnicities.
• The city wore its history like a proud badge, its culture speaking volumes of its glorious past.
• The city was a cultural cocktail, stirred with vibrant arts, and timeless traditions.

The age of a city refers to how long it has existed, which is often reflected in its architectural style, infrastructure, and historical landmarks.

Describing the age can transport your reader back in time or into the future.

Words to Describe the Age of a City in Writing

• Prehistoric
• Contemporary

Examples of Describing a City by Age

• The city’s ancient walls were steeped in history, whispering tales from centuries ago.
• The futuristic skyline was a testament to its recent establishment.
• Age-old monuments punctuated the city, standing tall as symbols of its venerable past.
• The city was a blend of old and new, where modernity met antiquity.
• Modern skyscrapers towered over the city, evidence of its recent urban development.
• The city was an enduring relic of the Medieval Age, its cobblestone streets weaving tales of yore.
• With buildings dating back to the Victorian era, the city was an open history book.
• Despite its youthful age, the city wore an old soul.
• The city was a testament to the future, a spectacle of cutting-edge technology and sleek architecture.
• Age-old traditions thrived amidst the modern cityscape, telling tales of a city that respected its past.

Geography describes the city’s location, its physical features, and how these factors influence the city’s character and lifestyle.

Words to Describe the Geography of a City in Writing

• Mountainous

Examples of Describing a City by Geography

• The city was built on hills, its houses twinkling like stars on an undulating landscape.
• Its coastal location made the city a paradise for beach lovers.
• Tucked between mountains, the city was a serene oasis in a rugged setting.
• The desert city was a mirage of golden sands and sparkling oases.
• The city was a confluence of rivers, forming a scenic waterfront that buzzed with life.
• Surrounded by dense forests, the city was an island of urbanity in a sea of wilderness.
• The coastal city was a playground of surf and sand, where the sea kissed the cityscape.
• The city was a picturesque valley carved into the heart of the mountains.
• A city of islands, it was a constellation of vibrant urban life amidst the tranquil sea.
• The city was an urban jewel nestled in the heart of the vast plains.

Architecture refers to the style and character of the city’s buildings and structures.

It speaks to the city’s history, culture, and technological progress.

Words to Describe the Architecture of a City in Writing

Examples of describing a city by architecture.

• Gothic spires and Romanesque arches painted a canvas of architectural marvels.
• The cityscape was a fusion of Brutalist concrete and sleek glass towers.
• Traditional thatched cottages adorned the city, a spectacle of rustic charm.
• The city was a palette of Art Deco buildings, their geometric patterns a testament to its rich architectural legacy.
• Modern skyscrapers dotted the city skyline, interspersed with green terraces and solar panels.
• The city was a sprawling labyrinth of narrow alleys, flanked by ancient terracotta houses.
• The city was a spectrum of architectural styles, from Victorian houses to modern lofts.
• The city’s architecture was a reflection of its sustainable ethos, with green roofs and walls covered in foliage.
• The city’s colonial architecture narrated tales of a bygone era.
• Futuristic architecture characterized the city, with self-sustaining buildings and smart infrastructures.

Infrastructure speaks to the functionality of a city – its roads, bridges, public facilities, and utilities.

It provides insights into the city’s level of development and organization.

Words to Describe the Infrastructure of a City in Writing

• Well-developed
• Sustainable
• Disorganized

Examples of Describing a City by Infrastructure

• The city boasted an intricate network of subways, making commuting a breeze.
• Its wide boulevards were lined with trees, merging functionality with aesthetics.
• The city had a robust public transportation system that kept its lifeblood flowing.
• Advanced telecommunication infrastructures turned the city into a global hub of digital innovation.
• Its well-planned bike lanes made the city a paradise for cyclists.
• The city was illuminated by solar-powered streetlights, a testament to its green infrastructure.
• The city’s skywalks connected buildings, forming a labyrinth above the hustle and bustle.
• The city’s efficient waste management system kept its streets clean and green.
• The city’s infrastructure was a seamless blend of urbanity and nature.
• The city was a beacon of technological prowess, its infrastructure speaking volumes of its progress.

The economy of a city speaks about its wealth, main industries, and job opportunities.

It gives the reader a sense of the city’s prosperity or lack thereof.

Words to Describe the Economy of a City in Writing

• Impoverished
• Agricultural
• Technological

Examples of Describing a City by Economy

• The city was a bustling hub of commerce, its markets buzzing with activity.
• It was an industrial city, its skyline punctuated with factories and smokestacks.
• The city’s booming tech sector attracted talent from around the globe.
• Its struggling economy painted a city in decay, with boarded-up storefronts and desolate streets.
• The city was a hub of finance, home to towering banks and bustling stock exchanges.
• A rich agricultural economy defined the city, its verdant farms a testament to its wealth.
• The city thrived on tourism, its bustling streets a carnival of foreign faces.
• The city was an emblem of prosperity, its thriving economy lifting people out of poverty.
• Despite the economic downturn, the city held onto its vibrant spirit, a testament to its resilience.
• The city’s economy was a vibrant tapestry of trade, services, and manufacturing.

Climate characterizes the city’s weather patterns throughout the year.

It can deeply influence a city’s culture, lifestyle, and even architecture.

Words to Describe the Climate of a City in Writing

• Mediterranean
• Continental
• Subtropical

Examples of Describing a City by Climate

• The city was blessed with a temperate climate, keeping it lush and vibrant all year round.
• Its harsh winters painted the city in shades of white, with frost-etched buildings and snow-blanketed streets.
• The tropical climate kept the city in a perpetual state of summer, with azure skies and sun-kissed streets.
• The city was a desert, its climate oscillating between scorching days and frigid nights.
• The city’s Mediterranean climate filled it with fragrant breezes and clear, sunny days.
• The city was caught in an eternal spring, awash with blooming flowers and chirping birds.
• The city experienced four distinct seasons, painting a vivid palette of changing landscapes.
• The city was infamous for its torrential rains, transforming its streets into rivulets.
• The city’s harsh climate made it a fortress of solitude, its cold winters keeping outsiders at bay.
• The city’s mild climate was a relief to its residents, offering respite from extreme weather.

Landscape refers to the natural and artificial features that shape the city’s terrain and overall visual appearance.

Words to Describe the Landscape of a City in Writing

Examples of describing a city by landscape.

• The city was a symphony of undulating hills and glass-and-steel towers.
• Its landscape was punctuated with verdant parks, like emeralds set in concrete.
• The city was a mosaic of picturesque canals and charming footbridges.
• The city’s landscape was a spectacular blend of towering cliffs and sweeping beaches.
• The city’s landscape was dominated by a majestic mountain that stood as a silent sentinel.
• The city was a concrete jungle, a dense matrix of buildings interspersed with occasional pockets of green.
• The city’s vast plains stretched to the horizon, a vast checkerboard of farmland and urban clusters.
• The city was characterized by its dramatic coastline, where jagged cliffs met the roaring sea.
• The city was nestled in a lush forest, its buildings camouflaged amongst the towering trees.
• The city’s landscape was a harmonious blend of the old and new, where verdant vineyards met sprawling shopping malls.

Nightlife includes the after-dark activities that a city offers – from dining, music, and theater to clubs, bars, and other entertainment venues.

It reflects the city’s vibrancy and energy when the sun sets.

Words to Describe the Nightlife of a City in Writing

• Nonexistent
• Underground
• Sophisticated

Examples of Describing a City by Nightlife

• The city came alive at night, its streets pulsating with lights and music.
• The city’s nightlife was a whirlwind of neon signs, lively bars, and pulsating dance floors.
• The city was famous for its jazz clubs, their sultry tunes wafting into the night.
• The city’s vibrant night markets were a treasure trove of culinary delights.
• The city’s nightlife was a spectrum of opera houses, theaters, and art galleries, enriching the cultural fabric.
• The city’s skyline glittered with rooftop bars, offering panoramic views of the starlit cityscape.
• The city’s after-hours was a playground for night owls, teeming with nightclubs and music venues.
• The city’s tranquil nights were a respite from the bustling days, its streets bathed in the soft glow of streetlights.
• The city was a nocturnal paradise, its nightlife teeming with gourmet restaurants and wine bars.
• The city’s night scene was a melting pot of cultures, its streets resonating with music from around the world.

Here is a good video about how to describe a city in writing:

3 Full Examples of City Descriptions in Writing

Here are three full examples of how to describe a city in writing.

Nonfiction Essay

Los Angeles is a sprawling city, spreading across a vast, flat coastal plain nestled between mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Its multicultural nature is palpable, a melting pot where hundreds of cultures converge to create a rich tapestry of humanity. From Little Tokyo to Olvera Street, the city offers cultural enclaves that transport visitors to different corners of the world.

The architecture of Los Angeles tells a tale of its age and history.

From the contemporary designs of downtown skyscrapers to the Spanish Colonial Revival structures that pay homage to the city’s early days, LA offers a visual feast of architectural styles. Infrastructure-wise, Los Angeles is a car-centric city, known for its iconic freeways, yet, it is also actively expanding its public transportation system.

The climate in LA is Mediterranean, providing its residents with sunshine nearly all year round.

This, combined with the city’s picturesque landscape of rolling hills and sandy beaches, contributes to the quintessential Southern Californian lifestyle. The nightlife in Los Angeles, known for its glitz and glamor, mirrors the city’s reputation as the entertainment capital of the world.

Mystery Novel

The city of Edinburgh, ancient and mysterious, was shrouded in a veil of fog.

Narrow, winding streets wound their way up and down the city’s undulating terrain, past centuries-old Gothic buildings that seemed to hold whispered secrets in their cold stone. The towering Edinburgh Castle, perched atop an extinct volcano, cast long, eerie shadows across the Old Town, lending an air of mystique.

Despite the Scottish capital’s gloomy weather, the city was alive with culture. The annual Fringe Festival transformed the streets into a vibrant tapestry of theatre, music, and dance. Meanwhile, tucked away in the corners of the city were hole-in-the-wall pubs, where folk music hung heavy in the air.

Even in the dead of night, the city refused to sleep.

The pubs and clubs of the Royal Mile, teeming with locals and tourists alike, created an eclectic nightlife. The cobblestone streets echoed with faint laughter, ghostly footfalls, and the faint skirl of bagpipes, imbuing the city with an aura of enchanting mystery.

Romance Novel

Venice, with its endless maze of canals and charming footbridges, seemed to have been woven from dreams.

It was an intimate city, its compact geography fostering a unique, close-knit culture. The melodies of the gondoliers’ serenades drifted through the air, their words telling tales of age-old love stories.

The city’s Gothic architecture, ornate and elegant, reflected in the shimmering waters of the Grand Canal. The iconic Rialto Bridge, a testament to Venice’s architectural prowess, served as a lover’s meeting spot, its stone balustrades bearing witness to countless stolen kisses.

The Venetian economy thrived on tourism and the arts, its numerous mask shops, and glass-blowing factories testifying to the city’s artisanal heritage.

Venice was a city that never hurried. Its pace was defined by the gentle ebb and flow of its canals.

As twilight descended, the city transitioned from a bustling tourist hub to a serene sanctuary. The street lamps flickered to life, casting a romantic glow on the cobblestones. The serenade of the gondoliers intertwined with the soft whispers of the wind, composing a nocturnal symphony that was the heartbeat of this city of love.

Final Thoughts: How to Describe a City in Writing

Before you type “THE END” to your story, essay, or piece of writing, consider how your city weaves into the tapestry of your narrative.

Particularly, how your city embodies and exposes the theme.

Related Posts:

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Visions of the Modern City: Essays in History, Art, and Literature Paperback – September 1, 1987

Purchase options and add-ons.

The relentless pace of urbanization since the industrial revolution has inspired a continuing effort to view, read, and name the modern city. "We are now at a point of transition to a new kind of city", write William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "and thus we are experiencing the same crisis of language felt by observers of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cities." Visions of the Modern City explores the ways in which artists and writers have struggled to define the city during the past two centuries and opens a new perspective on the urban vision of our time.

In their introduction, the editors outline three phases in the evolution of the modern city―each having its own distinctive morphology and metaphor― and argue that a new vocabulary is needed to describe the sprawling "urban field" of today. Eric Lampard draws a detailed demographic and geographic picture of urbanization since the late eighteenth century, culminating with the "decentered" city of the 1980s. Other contributors examine the representation of cities from the London and Paris of 1850 to the New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the present. Deborah Nord and Philip Collins follow Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens, respectively, through the urban underworld of Victorian London. Theodore Reff traces the double life of Paris expressed in the work of Manet, while Michele Hannoosh shows bow Baudelaire influenced the Impressionists by transferring the aesthetic implications of the term nature to urban experience. Thomas Bender and William Taylor focus on tensions between the horizontal and the vertical in the architectural development of New York City, and Paul Anderer investigates the private, domestic spaces that represent Tokyo in postwar Japanese fiction. Steven Marcus analyzes the breakdown of the city as signifying system in the novels of Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon, writers who question whether the indecipherable contemporary city has any meaning left at all.

• Print length 280 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date September 1, 1987
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.71 x 8.5 inches
• ISBN-10 0801835402
• ISBN-13 978-0801835407
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

From the back cover.

In their introduction, the editors outline three phases in the evolution of the modern city-- each having its own distinctive morphology and metaphor-- and argue that a new vocabulary is needed to describe the sprawling "urban field" of today. Eric Lampard draws a detailed demographic and geographic picture of urbanization since the late eighteenth century, culminating with the "decentered" city of the 1980s. Other contributors examine the representation of cities from the London and Paris of 1850 to the New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the present. Deborah Nord and Philip Collins follow Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens, respectively, through the urban underworld of Victorian London. Theodore Reff traces the double life of Paris expressed in the work of Manet, while Michele Hannoosh shows bow Baudelaire influenced the Impressionists by transferring the aesthetic implications of the term nature to urban experience. Thomas Bender and William Taylor focus on tensions between the horizontal and the vertical in the architectural development of New York City, and Paul Anderer investigates the private, domestic spaces that represent Tokyo in postwar Japanese fiction. Steven Marcus analyzes the breakdown of the city as signifying system in the novels of Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon, writers who question whether the indecipherable contemporary city has any meaning left at all.

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press; First Paperback Edition (September 1, 1987)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0801835402
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0801835407
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.71 x 8.5 inches
• #4,205 in Landscape Architecture (Books)
• #8,940 in Sociology of Urban Areas

About the author

William sharpe.

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City Life Essay

500+ words essay on city life.

City life is very busy, fast-moving and restless. All the necessary things are easily available in the city. Life is full of luxuries, and everything is within reach. The city has many things to offer, such as better job opportunities, higher living standards, medical facilities, clubs, shopping malls, stores, restaurants, etc. It has theatres, amusement parks, cricket stadiums etc., for entertainment. People from rural areas are shifting to the cities for a better quality of life. This essay on city life will throw light on the positive and negative aspects of city life. Students must go through it and try to write their own essays. For more practice, they can go through the list of different essay topics, which will help in improving their writing section.

Positive Aspects of City Life

Life in a big city is a whirl of activities. Very often, people from the countryside move to the cities in order to find decent jobs. It offers good educational facilities for children by providing the best schools, colleges and institutions. Cities have always been the hub of innovation, the home of creative thought, art forms, political ideas and many more things. People of the city do not waste their time as they keep doing something to gain growth and success in their life. Cities are well connected with road, railway and flight networks. So, it becomes easy for individuals to connect with other people and grow their businesses as compared to rural areas. Cities have become a potent force for addressing economic growth, development and prosperity.

Negative Aspects of City Life

Cities are very crowded places. The cost of living in the city is high. The houses are small and inadequate due to space limitations. Bad housing conditions can cause various health issues. The environment of the city is very polluted due to the air, water, land and noise pollution. This causes bad health and can infect people with various diseases.

Some of the cities are very dirty due to the lack of a proper disposal system. Also, drainage problems are often found in the city. People do not get fresh air to breathe and natural places where they can rejuvenate themselves. People in the city are often busy, so they do not socially interact with others. They limit themselves to their houses and families. Sometimes, they don’t even know about their neighbours and surroundings.

The impact of the city on a person’s life is both negative and positive. From the bad quality of air to noise pollution and restless life, it has affected peace of mind. But cities are also stimulating as centres of industry, art, science and political power. They are the focus of progress. By reducing the aggressive impact of the city on people, the essential positive aspects of city life can be greatly intensified.

Students must have found this city life essay useful for improving their essay writing skills. They can get the study material and the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams at BYJU’S.

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Security and the Modern City, Essay Example

Pages: 3

Words: 748

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Security has become one of the main aspects of today’s society, especially after the attacks of 911. There is more surveillance, more security and more officers on the roads within all of the United States and Canada. Laws are stricter and people are more leery of doing specific things. Our privacy has been taken from us in order to make an attempt to keep people safer. Charles Sykes in “Privacy and Surveillance” couldn’t have said it better. He states that “privacy is like oxygen. We really only appreciate it when it’s gone” (Code and Keall, “Privacy and Surveillance”). This is very true. However, the modern city has gone overboard with security and continues to take away privacy as well as other forms of security in our people.

Surveillance is high in the modern city now, especially surveillance in places such as Toronto. The police, government, military, and multiple companies are consistently using surveillance cameras and surveillance media in order to “protect” the public. The use of CCTV’s (small cameras used to watch patrons in banks, shopping malls, and other places) are used more commonly in the modern city. Police are now using these cameras at the majority of street lights in cities in order to capture people breaking the laws of the road. This is a big change as many cities did not have this technology before 911. These cameras are used to combat crime and are much cheaper than using police officers to do the work for them (“Example: Surveillance Cameras in Public Places”). Eavesdropping is another form of surveillance that is more prevalent in the modern city these days. Police and the government use “bugs” in order to overhear what people may be talking about. These bugs are put in vehicles, on telephones, and even through our email (Code and Keall, “Privacy and Surveillance”).

Since 911, security specifically has been heightened. There are a great number of security officers and security measures in airports, shopping malls, travel destinations such as Disney World, and many other places. Security in airports is probably the most prevalent today as we have seen a huge difference in the security measures in the last 12 years. There are more cameras, more security officers, and more security measures being put into place in these airports all over the world. “The traveler is identified, probed and monitored in ways that would never have been tolerated a decade ago” (Code and Keall, “The City in Crisis: Terrorism and Other Challenges”).

Fortification has also been heightened by the military in order to protect boundaries in both Canada and all of the United States. More and more military personnel are building walls per se in order to keep intruders out of our country. This is important to do; however, just like surveillance and security, there has to be boundaries. It is important for the military and government to understand what they are truly doing to the country.

There are many advantages to the heightened security of the modern city. However, there are just as many disadvantages. There are economic, social, political, technological, and administrative repercussions in the midst of the trying to secure our cities, our people, and our country. Economically, more companies are paying for cameras, officers, and ways in which to keep their products and customers safe. This is costly to the companies as well as its patrons. Socially, more and more people are afraid of talking to each other. We, in the modern city, never know when we are being watched, taped, bugged, or seen based on the security systems that have been put in and many are afraid to speak their own minds. Politically, many are fighting the new security measures saying that they are unconstitutional or unfair which makes it difficult for officers and the government to do their jobs. Technologically, more and more people are working harder to maintain equipment that suits the government’s standards of security. This means more labor, more pay, more equipment, and more money. Administratively, there are more people watching cameras, taking notes, spending hours reviewing security measures and laws. All of this creates some form of conflict. As stated, there are advantages and disadvantages that many have to consider as we continue to build security and surveillance in the modern city.

Works Cited

Example: Surveillance Cameras in Public Places.”. N.p., 22 Apr 2000. Web. 3 Apr 2013.<http://debate.uvm.edu/handbookfile/pubpriv/208.html>.

Lewis Code and Peggy Keall. Privacy and Surveillance . 2012-2013. Print.

Lewis Code and Peggy Keall. The City in Crisis: Terrorism and Other Challenges. 2012-2013. Print.

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Guest Essay

How to Make Room for One Million New Yorkers

By Vishaan Chakrabarti

Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, a New York City architecture firm, and the former director of planning for Manhattan.

New York City doesn’t have enough homes. The average New Yorker now spends 34 percent of pre-tax income on rent, up from just 20 percent in 1965. There are many reasons homes in the city are so expensive, but at the root of it all, even after the pandemic, is supply and demand: Insufficient housing in our desirable city means more competition — and therefore sky-high prices — for the few new homes that trickle onto the market.

Some New Yorkers harbor fantasies that instead of building more, we can meet our housing needs through more rent control, against the advice of most economists , or by banning pieds-à-terre or by converting all vacant office towers into residential buildings, despite the expense and complexity . Given the enormity of the crisis, such measures would all be drops in the bucket, leading many to worry that if we were to actually build the hundreds of thousands of homes New Yorkers need, we would end up transforming the city into an unrecognizable forest of skyscrapers.

This resistance to change is more than just the usual grumbling from opinionated New Yorkers; it has become a significant obstacle, and it threatens to stifle the vitality of this great city. As Binyamin Appelbaum of The Times argues in his analysis of New York’s housing crisis: “New York is not a great city because of its buildings. It is a great city because it provides people with the opportunity to build better lives.”

I Want a City, Not a Museum

New York’s layers of laws to protect existing buildings has led to a shortage of housing.

By Binyamin Appelbaum

To do that, New York needs to build more housing, and it can. New York could add dwellings for well over a million people — homes most New Yorkers could afford — without substantially changing the look and feel of the city.

My architecture firm, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, previously worked with Times Opinion to imagine the future of the city’s rail infrastructure and streets . This time, we took a fresh look at housing.

We found a way to add more than 500,000 homes — enough to house more than 1.3 million New Yorkers — without radically changing the character of the city’s neighborhoods or altering its historic districts.

Here’s how we got to 500,000 housing units — the same number that the mayor has called a “moonshot goal.”

Apartments near public transit are convenient for residents and better for the environment, so we started by looking at areas within a half-mile of train stations and ferry terminals.

Next, we excluded parts of the city that might be at risk of flooding in the future.

In the remaining areas, we identified more than 1,700 acres of underutilized land: vacant lots, single-story retail buildings, parking lots and office buildings that could be converted to apartments.

For each lot, we calculated how much housing we could add without building any higher than nearby structures.

Take this single-story grocery store in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

A mid-rise apartment complex built above a replacement grocery store could create 58 new housing units. The resulting structure wouldn't be any taller than the apartment complex next to it.

We also identified sites that could support smaller developments, like this vacant lot on the northern edge of the Bronx.

Low-rise apartment buildings house many more people than single-family homes. If designed thoughtfully, they could become just as much a part of the urban fabric as the city's brownstones.

This single-story store in Flushing, Queens, is just minutes away from a subway stop on a line that runs straight to Midtown Manhattan. It’s a prime example of underutilized land.

Matching the density of surrounding buildings, a high-rise built above new retail spaces could create 242 apartments.

Last, we considered office buildings that could be converted to apartments.

Office building conversions can require a tremendous amount of construction. But we should consider any reasonable proposal to house more New Yorkers.

The hypothetical buildings in our analysis would add 520,245 homes for New Yorkers. With that many new housing units, more than a million New Yorkers would have a roof over their head that they could afford, near transit and away from flood zones, all while maintaining the look and feel of the city.

Of course, adding apartment buildings would place more demand on our subways and schools in some neighborhoods. But the construction of over 520,000 homes would stimulate our economy; add people to our sidewalks, making them safer; and make the city more accessible to middle-class families — who are essential to the long-term health and prosperity of New York.

How to add 520,245 housing units to N.Y.C.

conversions

Getting to 500,000

How many housing units our proposed buildings would add.

Office conversions

Mid-rises wouldn’t feel out of place

in many parts of the Bronx and Queens.

Almost all of the office conversions

we’re proposing are in Manhattan.

Residents of high-rises along Atlantic Avenue could easily take the subway to work.

Low-rises near the

Staten Island Railway

could house thousands

more New Yorkers.

Several political, legal and economic impediments stand in the way of addressing New York City’s housing crisis. Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have proposed ambitious plans to build hundreds of thousands of new housing units, but they have faced stiff opposition. Our City Council and State Legislature need to support a significant expansion of housing supply for the city or otherwise answer for our housing and homelessness crisis.

There are many reasons it is so difficult to build new housing in New York City — including zoning, the under-taxation of vacant and underutilized land, the continuing rise of construction costs, the elimination of important tax incentives, and intense and often misguided anti-development sentiments. These challenges can and should be addressed. But please, don’t let people tell you we can’t build the homes New Yorkers need because we’ve run out of room or because it would ruin the city’s character. We are, in fact, a very big apple.

Methodology

We identified underutilized lots using the Department of City Planning’s PLUTO dataset. Transit stations include stops for the subway, ferry, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North train lines. For the flood risk analysis, we used the NYC Flood Hazard Mapper’s 0.2 percent annual chance floodplain for 2100.

Contiguous lots facing the same street were merged to maximize hypothetical development potential; small and irregular lots were excluded from the analysis. Maximum building heights were determined by looking at buildings in an 800-foot radius from sites on local streets or quarter-mile radius for sites on more heavily trafficked thoroughfares, as defined by the city’s LION street database.

For low- , mid- and high-rises, we calculated the number of units in each proposed building using the following assumptions: We allocated 37 percent to 45 percent of each lot to open space, and then multiplied the remaining lot area by the number of stories allowed as determined above to calculate the amount of buildable area. Of that total buildable area, we allotted 15 percent to hallways, lobbies and mechanical spaces; we divided the remaining residential space by an average unit size of 750 square feet to determine the number of units.

To identify offices that could be converted to apartments, we created a list of larger, older offices that were built between 1950 and 1990 and have not been altered since 2003. We excluded offices that are publicly owned or have architectural or historical significance. To estimate the number of units in the proposed conversions, we allocated 40 percent of each building to hallways, lobbies and mechanical spaces.

To calculate how many people could live in the proposed housing, we used a rate of 2.56 people per housing unit, based on statistics for New York City from the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World Essay

General statement, what does a postmodern city look like, is las vegas the world’s first postmodern city, are there any other contenders.

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to the general changes that occur in the institutions. The term modern refers to the present and post modernism refers to events that happened after modernism. Post modernism came into being in the 20th century and it covered the theories that related to changes in the literature, architecture, design, drama as well as the various changes that are experienced in our economic and industrial cultures. The changes that have occurred after the era of modernism have given a new wave to the value and the condition or state of the institutions today. The overall considerations of the changes in the politics, economics, culture, philosophy and institutions has given rise to new cities which are referred to as the postmodern cities. In the global sphere, a postmodern city has been attached to various changes which reflect the cultural framework of the city, changes in the economy and a new orientation in the post industrial capitalist society. Post modernism gives a reflection of post modern city that depicts a lot of fun in the lifestyles of the locals, freedom and also sex.

Postmodernism describes the appreciation of the changes that occur in today’s institutions, culture, economy and how these changes are sustained. The structure of a postmodern city has been defined by various scholars. This has given rise to questioning of what the postmodern city really comprises in terms of the various described changes that are deemed to have occurred after modernism. The paper assesses the query of what the postmodern city looks like and what changes one would expect to find in these cities as opposed to other cities. The paper also analyses the theory of Las Vegas being the first postmodern city in the world. An in depth study of the changes, structure, culture among other changes are analyzed against the description of the postmodern city. The final analysis takes a look at other cities and gives a statement on their ability to be considered as contenders to the consideration of being postmodern cities against Las Vegas. Each of these sections comprises different descriptions of the topic, examples, background and conclusions of how the topics supports the thesis.

A postmodern city must have defined characteristics and conditions that must be satisfied in order for that city to be considered postmodern. In the global category Las Vegas was the first city to meet these conditions and is therefore considered the first postmodern city in the world. Over time, other cities have struggled to meet the prescribed conditions and this therefore means that there must be other contenders of the postmodern city description.

The issues related to the postmodern idea emerged with the reactions that were brought forward against modernism. Post modern cities are created through the recognition of the key principles and values that lead to their formation and sustaining. Post modern city can be defined with the rise of the invention of tradition by imitating older forms. This has been referred to as historical eclecticism. Another feature of a postmodern city is the presence of multi culture which has its roots to the locality and the ethnicity of the people who occupy the region. The final aspect of the postmodern city is the commercialization and the theater. The post modern city gives a reflection of the change from modernism to postmodernism through the changes in the economic and also the cultural codes. The postmodern city is described to be more flexible in the economic issues. The city has better methods of mass production which incorporate international considerations. There is a great transition from the fordist system of mass production to flexible methods of accumulation. The city is also deemed to have a lot of space that incorporates self contained cities and also continued rediscovery of the local aspects. Other features that incorporate the postmodern city include the overlapping themes such as contextualism, historicism, regionalism, anti-universalism, collage, reflexivity, self-referentiality, fragmentation, commercialism, politicization among others. The rise of the postmodern cities is viewed as change of values which are brought about by activities of the communities with the consideration of pluralism and also regionalism, the urban design, mixed ecological approaches and also pedestrian design (Burbank, 2005, p17).

The postmodern cites are comprised of various urban designs which place the city beyond competition with other cities. The urban planning in these cities is more directed to the issues related to age and their different ideas towards the planning of the city. The postmodern cities focus on projecting a city that has very attractive images. The environmental, historical and public image is a major consideration in the urban planning. The planning and design usually addresses the global competition, public realm and the sustainability of the city. The social aspect of the city is greatly influenced by cultural vocabulary which gives a new look into the culture and the ethnicity of the region. Environmental factors are also considered as they relate to the biodiversity and energy efficiency.

According to Robert, postmodern cities are more cynical about the future and they delight in the uncertainty. They are more expressed using a description of their art; literature and also music. The postmodern cities are also differentiated in the structure of urban design, planning and also transportation (1997, p23). Other scholars such as Docker describe the postmodern city as reflecting a variety of approaches in designing the urban city. This include the approaches related to the urban public space, street lights, traffic, aspects that affect the culture, commercial predominance and social behavior of the locals (1994, p34). He further clarifies that postmodern cities are continuously involved in the preservation and the renovation of the older buildings such as housing, offices, and institutional buildings and also the commercial strips into more compatible and attractive housing.

In his research about the description of the postmodern city, John (1999) describes the new approach of rebuilding the cities that has been up taken by major cities which are trying to achieve the level of the postmodern city. In his book he states that:

“… There is a great decline in the heavy and manufacturing industries that have dominated the modern city. This has since been replaced by the increasing importance of the post industrial industries. The changes have also been coupled by a change in the social and the demography of the cities. These processes reflect a lot of diversion in terms of space and also social formations and this has had a great effect in impacting change on the upcoming postmodern cities. These changes are described as advancing capitalism into the postmodern outlook. There is a new global symbol in the economy which depicts change into massive mass production and consumption. Other changes in the postmodern cities include a diversion in culture and the image of the cities into more projected images.” (p 64).

This exhibit clearly indicates that these cities must undergo various changes in the social, cultural, political, environmental and also economic changes in order to achieve the goal of a postmodern city. There is prove on the ground of many cities moving away from the modern industries in the post modern industries which include the banking services, advertising, financial sector and other retail sectors such as entertainment and leisure. This has seen the move into mass production which is demonstrated by the new era of capitalism. The cities organize their economic structure in a manner that will sustain the post industrial sectors of their economy. Most of the activities in the postmodern cities have moved to the service sector. There is a shift to the production and consumption culture. Changes in culture are demonstrated by the new outlook of the city which is appealing to the public. Post modern cities are therefore generally shaped by the city style, urban design and also culture.

The above discussion clearly agrees with the thesis that the formation of the postmodern city must be met with some conditions. The studies and research performed on the design, structure and the appearance of the postmodern cities clearly brings out some crucial factors that any city working towards this goal must fulfill. Various changes must be performed especially on the issues related to art, culture, urban design, politics and also the economic sphere of the city. The changes performed on these cities must not only meet the needs of the local people but it must be possible to attract other cultures into the city. Changes made in the city must continually be reinvented in order to meet the needs of the changing multicultural population. This therefore means that the formation of such a city must factor in the sustainability of changes in the social culture.

The elements that are traced in Las Vegas are a great role model for other upcoming postmodern cities. Las Vegas used to be described as the city of sin and it is known to be one of the fastest growing cities in America. The city has been described as the city with exemplary growth in the twentieth century. This city began its transformations back in the 1980’s and has developed over the years to become America’s most thriving city. The city has a population that is estimated to 603,093 as at U.S Census bureau 2008. In its bid to become a postmodern city, Las Vegas started by reinventing its image of Disney by constructing hotels that were very appealing to the visitors and also attractive in the environment. It has seen through various changes in culture which is clearly revealed in its environment. The city has many fantasy buildings along its Las Vegas strip which are not similar to each other. The city has a variety of modern entertainment that keeps its visitors coming back. Sceneries and entertainment in this city are sufficient enough for families since it satisfies both adults and their children. It has monuments such as the Luxor hotel and casino which is described as an imitated version of the ancient Egypt (Transparency now). The pyramid shaped hotel provides the visitors with great scenery of mystery images. Other postmodern commercial businesses include a variety of cultural hotels such as the Polynesian and the Chinese hotels. McCracken (1997)

The city has an international history about its major activities such as gambling, shopping malls and entertainment. Las Vegas is actually referred to as the entertainment capital of the world. It is a major setting area for major films and programs. The lighting in the Las Vegas Strip is superb just like other areas in the city. The spacing in the city makes it the brightest area in the world. The growth of the city has mainly been attributed to its legalizing of gambling as a legal business in 1931. The city is also known as the pioneer of the trails to the west through its rail road of the 1900 (Littlejohn, 1999, p10). Most of the surrounding areas shipped their goods from here to the rest of the country. The economy of this region basically concentrates with the involvement in tourism, gaming and also conventions which in turn provide a basis for the other retail and dining industries. The Major drive of this economy is therefore the service industry. It serves as the headquarters for the world’s largest gaming companies. Other major companies focus on the production of the gaming machines and marketing of tourism services. Its major technologies are concentrated in the electronic gaming and telecommunication sector. Cultural trends in the city include the celebration of local artists and musicians on the first Friday of every month. Other cultures include the zoology and botanical parks besides the performing of different arts such as dances, opera, orchestra which are aimed at attracting and entertaining tourists. The city is also involved in sports although this is not a major event in Las Vegas (Burbank, 2005, p23).

Various studies have been documented regarding the growth and the transformations of the Vegas city as a postmodern city. Smith and Valerie (2000) trace the development of the city to its heavy investment in architectural sociology. The various architectural forms in the city have had a great effect on its cultural transformations. The city is continuously changing and always reinventing its marketing strategies, culture and very high incorporation of technology. This in turn has resulted to mass production especially in its service sector (P1). They describe the city as one with impossibilities in its achievements especially with its predominant characteristics of differentiation, approach in technology, diversity, simulation and commodification. Brien, 1995 further describes the development of the city as the reinvention of the dead or old styles into modernity which is characterized by a lot of potentials, individualism and personalities. They reinforce the fact that the city basically developed due to its distinguished architectural works and also differentiated culture. He also points out the great development of the city owing to technology, especially electronic gaming. The study also explores the great nature of the hotels in the region which are well designed to fit the modern culture. Springer editions (1995) also bring out the importance of architectural works in Las Vegas besides its dominance in the gambling sector. They argue that Las Vegas was made a postmodern city owing to its architecture which brought out a new city. Other postmodern elements in the city such as the reconstruction of the Las Vegas city has made the city to move to higher levels of gambling. They conclude that postmodernism is generally owed to the cultural aspects and framework that is adopted by the city.

Las Vegas is a city that has invested in the reproduction and invention of original ideas which demonstrate a lot of creativity in their culture. This has enabled the city to have a variety of new technologies which are adopted to sustain the economy and the culture of the city. This makes it very differentiated from other cities in that it has very distinguished and unique features. Smith and Valerie, 2000 bring out a very clear description of the city which makes it the most vibrant city in the world where all things can be experimented or invented; “Everything that is supposedly enjoyed and experienced can be encountered on the grandest of scales in Las Vegas, including the New York Skyline, the great monuments of Paris, instantaneous escapes to Rio, the exotic lure of Asia at Mandalay Bay, the pyramids and mysteries of ancient Egypt, the Caesars, queens, and gladiators of ancient Rome, sinking pirate ships, remembrances of early Hollywood, and dueling Knights of the Round table.

The belief is that anything that can be imagined can also be designed and accomplished in Las Vegas.”(p1)The ideas brought out in its description indicate that Las Vegas is a city that has strived to bring changes that are unique in their kind. There is no other city in the whole world that has been described to bear the descriptions of the ever changing features, economy and culture which sufficiently satisfies a multitude of people all over the world. The exhibit brings out the different architectural works of the city which describe the great works of invention and renovation that characterize the city. The culture of impossibility makes the locals achieve great heights in sustaining Las Vegas as a postmodern city.

The description and the debate brought forward by various studies leave no doubt of Las Vegas being the world’s first postmodern city. The different features and elements found in the city meet the characteristics described to form a postmodern city. It is described as a role model for other cities. This has seen other cities imitate its culture of reconstructing, invention and also innovation to create a distinguished postmodern city. The uniqueness of the city in its transformations and sustained changes in architecture, culture, economy urban developments and design in world’s history support the thesis that Las Vegas is the pioneer of the postmodern cities in the world.

Other Cities within the nation have been competing to achieve the heights of the Las Vegas city. This includes cities such as Florida City, Las Angeles and Miami. Florida is a city that has endeavored to hire very qualified architects in bid to improve on its image by constructing very appealing buildings. The architects are expected to factor in the art of cultural buildings in masking renovations within the city. This led to the successful creating of the Guggenheim art museum. The city strives to achieve comfort levels for its residents. The city has also put effort in creation of new parks and investing in public spaces among other urban developments. Other transformations have been greatly invested in the economic changes, culture, symbolic manipulations and constructions. The city of Las Angeles has made various attempts in meeting the elements of a postmodern city. However this city has been met with a lot of challenges such as the limited geographical space. The activities in the city such as the entertainment and advertising do not bring out the city as a center for fun and freedom. The architectural considerations of the city are also low compared to Las Vegas. The city has high incorporation of technology especially in industrial development. The region has made a remarkable approach to urban design changes which feature the self contained urban space. The city also experienced a great transformation in its financial sector in the 20 th century (Jeff, 2005, p23). This marked its efforts in the reexamination of urban growth. The financial transformations were characterized by widened gaps which brought great dynamics in the banking sector. This is reflected in the social changes within the community which featured social inequality. Miami on the other hand is a city that has placed its focus on the social and cultural foundations. The approach to the postmodern city is focused on the changes in the social races and ethnicity. Its efforts also depict a wider scope in the changes towards identity of power and definition of politics. The city also takes a new look into its housing developments and institution such as schools.

Previous studies indicate that a city such as Los Angeles has greatly anticipated constructing unique full service shopping malls such as supermarkets, restaurants and other retail shopping malls that are distinguished from other cities. The city has also made changes in its fashion and design of the housing units (Jeff, 2005, p25). The city of Florida has been involved in the efforts of redesigning the city over the past few years. Wilkerson, 2000 describes the various programs that have been initiated in Miami to make improvements on the neighborhood, economic growth and prosperity and also introduction of more diversified entertainment blogs. These programs have been designed in a manner that will incorporate changes as the social and economic cultures assume different directions. This serves as a step towards satisfying the cultural needs of the changing society (p28).

Main developments especially in Florida and Las Angeles describe their endeavors to compete with the Las Vegas city in being postmodern cities. Wilkerson, 2000 took a greater depth into the study of these cities and states that:

“Los Angeles has set the pace for privatized, unplanned and sprawling growth into post modernism. The city developed to be the host of a vast number of public parks and backyard swimming pools. Florida has not been left behind in its efforts to create changes in economy, culture and architectural works.” (p31).

This statement supports the existence of competitors into development of postmodern cities. The cities have invested to make various changes as depicted above in the urban designs, buildings, culture, economy among other changes required to meet the requirements of a postmodern city.

The developments in the above cities indicate that Las Vegas is in competition with many other cities which are effortlessly trying to make changes to meet the characteristics described for the postmodern city. The uniqueness in the transformations of the Las Vegas city still leaves it as a very distinguished postmodern city.

In conclusion, the study thesis can be described to be 80% accurate as the research that has been taken on the study brings out the true picture of the postmodern cities. The previous studies conducted by the previous scholars have greatly supported the thesis. The studies have brought out the various conditions that are considered essential for any city to be considered as a postmodern city. The thesis that certain conditions must be met therefore turns out to be true. The development and the transformation of the Las Vegas city were unique in its kind and this makes the research more accurate in proposing that Las Vegas was the first postmodern city in the world. Over the years, other cities have been in the race to meet the postmodernism elements and this lays a background for competition of Las Vegas with other cities. This study however leaves room for further studies and research into the topics in order to prove or disprove the thesis.

Lastly I would like to recommend a visit to the city of Las Vegas to the individuals who have never been into this region. A visit to such a city always gives the visitors a great experience of marvelous sceneries, and entertainment. Just like it has been described as a postmodern city, it is truly a city of fun where every one would like to spend their leisure time. It is always a welcoming, entertaining and satisfactory place to be.

David Littlejohn (1999). The real Las Vegas: Life beyond the trip. Oxford University Press.

Jeff Burbank (2005). Las Vegas Babylon: True tales of glitter, glamour and greed. New York.

John Docker (1994). Postmodernism and popular culture: A historical history. Cambridge University Press.

Kevin O’Brien (1995). Fear and loving in Las Vegas – concept of pastiche in postmodernism. Web.

Robert D McCracken (1997). Las Vegas: The great American playground. University of Nevada Press.

Ron Smith and Valerie Bugni. Defining Architectural Sociology. Web.

Springer (1995). “Postmodern” Las Vegas and its effect on gambling. Journal of Gambling Studies,Springer Netherlands. Web.

Thomas Ainlay, Judy Dixon and Charles, Sc (2003). Las Vegas: the fabulous first century. Arcadia publications.

Transparency now. Las Vegas: Postmodern City of Casinos and Simulation. Web.

W.R Wilkerson (2000). The man who invented Las Vegas. Beverly Hills.

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IvyPanda. (2021, December 7). Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World. https://ivypanda.com/essays/las-vegas-the-first-postmodern-city-in-the-world/

"Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World." IvyPanda , 7 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/las-vegas-the-first-postmodern-city-in-the-world/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World'. 7 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/las-vegas-the-first-postmodern-city-in-the-world/.

1. IvyPanda . "Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/las-vegas-the-first-postmodern-city-in-the-world/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Las Vegas: The First Postmodern City in the World." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/las-vegas-the-first-postmodern-city-in-the-world/.

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Pep Guardiola is expected to call time on a spell of unprecedented dominance at Manchester City next summer.

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Ederson is a target for Saudi Pro League side Al Ittihad as he considers bringing an end to his stay at Premier League champions Manchester City.

Leeds United fans have been condemned after social media videos emerged of them singing vile chants aimed at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Southampton supporter, before Sunday's Championship play-off final at Wembley.

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Crystal Palace could secure their first summer signing as early as Monday with Real Betis defender Chadi Riad set to arrive in London for a medical.

Aston Villa are offering a three-year deal to Luton Town midfielder Ross Barkley as they look to tempt him into staying in the Premier League.

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Everton are showing interest in Newcastle United winger Yankuba Minteh, who had an impressive 2023-24 campaign on loan with Feyenoord.

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Enzo Maresca and Roberto de Zerbi have emerged as the frontrunners to become Chelsea's next manager with fears that Kieran McKenna is not yet ready for the leap to such a high-profile role.

Erik ten Hag still retains the support of senior figures in the new Manchester United football structure and there are fears removing him from his managerial role will not go down well with supporters.

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Manchester United officials have met with representatives of both Thomas Frank and Mauricio Pochettino as they continue to explore their managerial options before this week's review of their season.

Manchester United will wait for the summer transfer window to close before they turn their attentions to securing the future of teen sensation Kobbie Mainoo.

Manchester United's transfer policy of finding young players from other clubs could see them land Blackburn Rovers' 16-year-old striker Igor Tyjon.

Philippe Coutinho is set to leave Aston Villa this summer and make a return to one of his former clubs, Vasco da Gama.

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Sofyan Amrabat has no idea whether his Manchester United loan deal will be made permanent but says staying at Old Trafford is "certainly an option".

Barcelona are ready to try and tempt Luis Diaz away from Liverpool this summer amid reports that sporting director Deco has already been in talks with his agent.

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Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Mohammed Mustafa, left, speaks after receiving a document handed over by Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, right, prior to a meeting for talks on the Middle East in Brussels, Sunday, May 26, 2024. Norway on Sunday handed over papers to the Palestinian prime minister to officially give it diplomatic recognition as a state in a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel. The formal recognition by Norway, Spain and Ireland, which all have a record of friendly ties with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, while long advocating for a Palestinian state, is planned for Tuesday. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

BRUSSELS – The European Union's foreign policy chief insisted Sunday that Israel must abide by the U.N. top court's rulings and end its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and, at the same time, questioned the possible involvement of authorities in the settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

On a day that visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa basked in the attention after two EU nations and Norway pledged to recognize a Palestinian state, Josep Borrell further pressured Israel to take immediate actions to make sure that tax income meant for the Palestinian authorities is no longer stopped.

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The demands came at the end of the week that saw the international community put increasing pressure on Israel to fundamentally change the course of the war it wages on Hamas in the Gaza Strip through international court action and diplomatic maneuvering.

Borrell insisted Israel had driven the Palestinians to the edge of a catastrophe because “the situation in Gaza is beyond words. The occupied West Bank is on the brink, risking an explosion any time.”

While most of the global attention is centered on Gaza, Borrell said that “we should not forget what’s happening in the West Bank,” where the seat of the Palestinian Authority is based.

“There we see an intensified spiral of violence. Indiscriminate and punishing attacks by extremist settlers, more and more targeting humanitarian aid heading to Gaza. And they are heavily armed. And the question is, who is arming them? And who is not preventing this attack from happening,” Borrell said.

Rights groups and Palestinian residents have said that Israeli forces often provide an umbrella of security to armed settlers attacking Palestinian towns and nomadic communities.

Such settler violence, Borrell said, "is coupled with unprecedented Israeli settlement expansions and land grabbing.”

Borrell also countered Israeli threats to hit the Palestinians financially. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would stop transferring tax revenue earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, a move that threatens to handicap its already waning ability to pay salaries to thousands of employees.

Under interim peace accords in the 1990s, Israel collects tax revenue on behalf of the Palestinians, and it has used the money as a tool to pressure the PA. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza, Smotrich froze the transfers, but Israel agreed to send the money to Norway, which transferred it to the PA. Smotrich said Wednesday that he was ending that arrangement.

“Unduly withheld revenues have to be released,” said Borrell, with Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide standing next to him.

Eide was in Brussels Sunday to hand over diplomatic papers to Mustafa ahead of Norway's formal recognition of a Palestinian state, a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel.

The formal recognition by Norway as well as Spain and Ireland — which all have a record of friendly ties with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, while long advocating for a Palestinian state — is planned for Tuesday.

The diplomatic move by the three nations was a welcome boost of support for Palestinian officials who have sought for decades to establish a statehood in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and still controls.

“Recognition means a lot for us. It is the most important thing that anybody can do for the Palestinian people," said Mustafa. "It is a great deal for us.”

Some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state but a majority of the 27 EU nations still do not. Several have said they would recognize it when the conditions are right.

The EU, the United States and Britain, among others, back the idea of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel but say it should come as part of a negotiated settlement.

Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, has said that first the Israeli hostages held by Hamas need to be freed and the fighting in Gaza must end. Some other governments favor a new initiative toward a two-state solution, 15 years after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed.

Sunday's handover of papers came only two days after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in the latest move that piled more pressure on the increasingly isolated country .

Days earlier, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Hamas officials.

The war in Gaza started after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.

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