Exam 7: An Urban World

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(1) Mesopotamia: Ur, Babylon (c. 350 BCE);
(2) Nile Valley: Memphis, Thebes (c. 3200 BCE);
(3) Indus Valley: Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro (c. 2200 BCE);
(4) Huang Valley: Erlitou, Sanxingdui (c. 1500 BCE);
(5) Pacific-Andes (Peru): Aspero, Caral (c. 900 BCE);
(6) Mesoamerica: San Lorenzo, La Venta (c. 200 BCE)

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A city is a legally defined entity, a municipality. Cities are incorporated places, typically bigger than a town or village, with fixed boundaries and a locally elected government (i.e., a city council) that makes decisions about taxes and the provision of essential services. In many cases, cities include both densely settled areas and lower-density suburbs. But in other cases, especially in the United States, many suburban areas lie outside the city's boundaries and are thus governed separately; the result is often the duplication of services and unplanned and uncoordinated suburban growth.
Urban areas include built-up areas of various population sizes, from about 200 people (as defined in many northern European countries) to tens of thousands of people (as defined in Japan). As in Canada, urban areas can be villages, towns, cities, suburbs, or a mix of cities and suburbs. One simple way of thinking about an urban area is to recall what you can see when you fly over a place at night; the extent of the illuminated part can be equated with its urbanized area. Typically, the urban area is more spatially expansive than the city proper, as the built-up area usually spills across the municipal boundaries.