The changing character of the city

Cities and society have developed and  flourished in an almost symbiotic manner. 
The latin word for city is civitas, from which the words civilization and citizenship 
are derived. 

Take, for example, British cities prior to the Industrial Revolution.
 Despite being home to the minority of the population, these cities often
physically dominated their surroundings and exerted immense influence 
over all spheres of human endeavour. From their beginnings, cities were
 places of manufacture and commerce, often developing in locations suited 
to a particular economic activity such as on trade routes or near useful 
resources such as coal. 


There was a tension in the division of wealth and power between the country 
landowners, and the city-based merchants and rulers, but over time the latter 
prevailed, as cities grew physically larger and, thanks to additions to the workforce, also
economically more powerful. 
The British Census of 1851 showed that, for the first time, more people were 
living in urban areas than rural, at 54% of the population (Best, 1979).
Today, globally about 2.6 billion people live in cities of up to 5 million inhabitants
with an additional 400 million living in some 40 large urban areas, often called 
mega-cities, of over 5 million inhabitants (Angotti, 1993; Sassen, 2000). 
Two-thirds of the population of Europe lives in cities and urban areas that
occupy about 1% of the land area (Stanners and Bordeau, 1995). 
With their concentrated population, diversity of skills and growing demands,
 cities stimulated economic growth.
Often this was led by the consumption patterns of a privileged stratum, made 
up of the few new rich, who often lived in close proximity to the many in abject
poverty (Best, 1979). Some would argue that this wide gulf between the rich and the poor
has never disappeared.