Cities trivia: 65 facts and unknowns about the places we live in!

More and more cities are popping all over the map due to the increase of the population.

These cities are the places where our homes are and a place for us to discover and do things. They are big, they are small.

But they have been an integral part of our modern culture. So what you say about finding out some more things about them?

A city is a large human settlement
Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, and communication
Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process
Historically, city-dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall
Following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, roughly half of the world population now lives in cities
This has had profound consequences for global sustainability
Present-day cities usually form the core of larger metropolitan areas and urban areas
These cities are creating numerous commuters traveling towards city centers for employment, entertainment, and edification
All cities are in different degree also connected globally beyond these regions
The most populated city proper is Chongqing
While the most populous metropolitan areas are the Greater Tokyo Area, the Shanghai area, and Jabodetabek (Jakarta)
The cities of Faiyum, Damascus, and Varanasi are among those laying claim to longest continual inhabitation
A city is distinguished from other human settlements by its relatively great size
Also cities are distinguished by its functions and its special symbolic status
The term can also refer either to the physical streets and buildings of the city or to the collection of people who dwell there
It can be used in a general sense to mean urban rather than rural territory
A variety of definitions, invoking population, population density, number of dwellings, economic function, and infrastructure, are used in national censuses to classify populations as urban
Common population definitions for a city range between 1,500 and 50,000 people
According to the “functional definition” a city is not distinguished by size alone, but also by the role it plays within a larger political context
Cities serve as administrative, commercial, religious, and cultural hubs for their larger surrounding areas
The presence of a literate elite is sometimes included in the definition
A typical city has professional administrators, regulations, and some form of taxation (food and other necessities or means to trade for them) to feed the government workers
Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations
The word city and the related civilization come, via Old French, from the Latin root civitas, originally meaning citizenship or community member and eventually coming to correspond with urbs, meaning city in a more physical sense
The Roman civitas was closely linked with the Greek “polis”
This is another common root appearing in English words such as metropolis
There is a section of geography that deals with cities and their surroundings, Urban geography
Town siting has varied through history according to natural, technological, economic, and military contexts
Access to water has long been a major factor in different cities placement and growth
Most of the world’s urban population lives near the coast or on a river
Urban areas as a rule cannot produce their own food and therefore must develop some relationship with a hinterland which sustains them
The vast majority of cities have a central area containing buildings with special economic, political, and religious significance
Archaeologists refer to this area by the Greek term temenos or if fortified as a citadel
These spaces historically reflect and amplify the city’s centrality and importance to its wider sphere of influence
Today cities have a city center or downtown, sometimes coincident with a central business district
Cities typically have public spaces where anyone can go
These include privately owned spaces open to the public as well as forms of public land such as public domain and the commons
Western philosophy since the time of the Greek agora has considered physical public space as the substrate of the symbolic public sphere
Parks and other natural sites within cities provide residents with relief from the hardness and regularity of typical built environments
Jericho and Çatalhöyük, dated to the eighth millennium BC, are among the earliest proto-cities known to archaeologists
In the fourth and third millennium BC, complex civilizations flourished in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, India, China, and Egypt
Excavations in these areas have found the ruins of cities geared variously towards trade, politics, or religion
In the following centuries, independent city-states of Greece developed the polis, an association of male landowning citizens who collectively constituted the city
Agora, meaning “gathering place” or “assembly”, was the center of athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life of the polis
Rome transformed and founded many cities (coloniae), and with them brought its principles of urban architecture, design, and society
In the ancient Americas, early urban traditions developed in the Andes and Mesoamerica
In the Andes, the first urban centers developed in the Norte Chico civilization
Chavin and Moche cultures, followed by major cities in the Huari, Chimu and Inca cultures
The Norte Chico civilization included as many as 30 major population centers
It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, flourishing between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC
Mesoamerica saw the rise of early urbanism in several cultural regions, beginning with the Olmec and spreading to the Preclassic Maya, the Zapotec of Oaxaca, and Teotihuacan in central Mexico
Later cultures such as the Aztec drew on these earlier urban traditions
From the 9th through the end of the 12th century, Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, with a population approaching 1 million
The Ottoman Empire gradually gained control over many cities in the Mediterranean area, including Constantinople in 1453
In the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in the 12th. century, free imperial cities such as Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Zurich, Nijmegen became a privileged elite among towns having won self-governance from their local lay or secular lord or having been granted self-governanace by the emperor and being placed under his immediate protection
By 1480, these cities, as far as still part of the empire, became part of the Imperial Estates governing the empire with the emperor through the Imperial Diet
By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, some cities become powerful states, taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires
In the West, nation-states became the dominant unit of political organization following the Peace of Westphalia in the seventeenth century
Western Europe’s larger capitals (London and Paris) benefited from the growth of commerce following the emergence of an Atlantic trade
However, most cities remained small
During the Spanish colonization of the Americas the old Roman city concept was extensively used
Cities were founded in the middle of the newly conquered territories, and were bound to several laws regarding administration, finances and urbanism
The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and the rise of new great cities
Ιn the second half of the twentieth century, deindustrialization (or “economic restructuring”) in the West led to poverty, homelessness, and urban decay in formerly prosperous cities
A global city, also known as a world city, is a prominent centre of trade, banking, finance, innovation, and markets