Big Cities

Big Cities

1)      A millionaire city is a city with over a million inhabitants.  Examples include:

A world city is a city that is a major centre for finance, trade, business, politics, culture, science information gathering and mass media. It is one that serves the whole world and can be considered an important multinational city.  Examples include New York, London and Tokyo.

A mega city is a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people. The population density is usually over 2,000 persons/km2.  They can be distinguished from global cities by their rapid growth, new forms  of spatial density of population, formal and informal economics, as well as poverty, crime, and high levels  of social fragmentation. In 2000, there were 18 megacities – conurbations such as Mumbai, Tokyo, New York City, and Mexico City

2)      Urbanisation: The growth in the proportion of the country’s population that lives in urban as opposed to rural areas.

Globalisation: A set of processes leading to the integration of economic, cultural, political and social systems across the world. It specifically refers to increasing economic integration of countries, in terms of trade and the movement of wealth.

Urban Agglomerations: An extended city or town built up around a central place. Super-cities like Tokyo, Mexico City and Seoul are examples of agglomerations where they have expanded and consumed their neighbours.

Conurbations: Related to agglomerations. A more specific term defining how cities are connected by continuous built up development.

3)      Largest urban areas in the world (2006):

A pattern is evident, as they are all based in MEDCs, north of the Brandt line. With the exception of Mexico. Both Tokyo and New York, based in MEDCs correlate with their pattern as the largest urban areas. However, this aside, they do all mostly seem to be MEDCs, meaning that wealth is localised in the northern part of the world.

6) Developing countries are generally listed on the fastest growing list, where as ready developed countries are on the richest list. Which by this time, their birth rate has slowed and growth is minimal. They are completely different and are in fact opposite.