Urban areas represent an important part of the national economy and feature higher GDP per capita and productivity levels than their country’s average. But they also harbour large pockets of unemployment and poverty and suffer from problems such as congestion, pollution and crime. This book...

The chapter discusses whether largest cities share common geographic attributes, as opposed to urban localities of smaller size. As the study reveals, the largest cities of countries are rarely places of geographic extremes; they are seldom found at high elevations, far away from the seashore,...

Cities and city regions are growing throughout the world and this trend is forecast to continue well into the 21st century. The authors of The Rise of the City see the next 100 years as being the "Urban Century". In this book they examine urban growth and the dynamics that are transforming the...

Beginning with the recent history of capitalism and urbanization and moving into a thorough and complex discussion of the modern city, this book outlines the dynamics of what the author calls the third wave of urbanization, characterized by global capitalism's increasing turn to forms of...