Towns
Towns or suburb - the general name of a inhabited territory or locality located outside the administrative border of a city, not far from it. Most modern suburbs are "sleeping areas" with many residential buildings. Many suburbs have some degree of political autonomy and they have a lower population density than in the interior of the city, mainly due to individual housing. Mechanical transport, including cars and high-speed trains, allowed the suburbs to grow in the 20th century, which gave an impetus to the rapid growth of nearby settlements with an abundance of land suitable for settlement.
Towns in the United States began to emerge in the colonial period around the largest cities of that time: Boston, Philadelphia and New York. At that time, the suburbs were inhabited mainly by representatives of the working class, and the word suburb itself was extremely negative. At that time, the most prestigious places to stay were located closer to the city center, and the territories that were farthest from the center were considered the least attractive. An exception was the suburban dachas of wealthy citizens who spent the summer months or weekends there.
However, in the middle of the second decade of the XIX century, Americans change their attitude towards the suburbs from an undesirable habitat to the most preferred. Even before the Civil War, the opinion of the degree of prestige of the regions is changing in large US cities, and many wealthy residents move from city centers to suburbs. This was facilitated by the development of transport, in particular, railway transport. Already from the 30s of the XIX century, railways began to appear, which were engaged exclusively in delivering people from peripheral areas to cities. Since the trains could not make frequent stops, the suburbs did not stretch continuously along the tracks, but were peculiar islands.
From a geopolitical point of view, a town is a settlement, which is the administrative, cultural, educational center of the adjacent region. A settlement is considered a city when the number of its inhabitants exceeds a certain threshold. Another difference of the city is that its inhabitants are not engaged in agriculture, they are engaged in the fields of industry, production, trade, culture, science, etc.
In most countries (including Russia and earlier in the USSR), the assignment of urban status to a settlement is enshrined in law, but in some countries this concept is not legal, but only historical, everyday, statistical and so on.
One of the principles of giving a settlement the status of a city is the population. According to the UN recommendations, for the possibility of comparing the urbanization of countries and other goals, it is proposed to consider all settlements with 20 thousand inhabitants or more as cities.
In the majority of provincial small towns and regional centers of Europe with a population of about 25–200 thousand inhabitants — up to 50%, and in some places and more residents, are suburban suburbs-suburbs in the prevailing form of housing development: divided into separate quarters-microdistricts of multi-unit “ high-rise buildings ”- and single-story houses (differing from each other in an independent social infrastructure). Often a former village or village, a cottage microdistrict, now part of an administrative city line, but not always included in a well-maintained communal infrastructure, with autonomous solid fuel stove or gas heating, with water use from water intake columns, without a central sewage system. These are usually residential areas-blocks of individual one-story buildings of the private sector with permanent residence (IZHS), located on the periphery and outskirts, in contrast to the denser buildings of the main industrial multi-storey urban center, and with a small household plots (about 3-6 acres ) - in comparison with a country or rural area.
Such suburbs serve as a “transit point” for the migration of economically active people from the more remote neighboring villages of the region, and also as part of suburbanization. At the same time, features characteristic of pendulum migration are revealed - the development of a distinctive contrasting center-peripheral property and social stratification. That is, property differentiation actually arises: comfortable apartments in high-rise buildings in the prestigious microdistrict of the city - for the more affluent; and low-rise communal barracks and so on. with a minimum of amenities - for the poorer sections of the population. However, this situation is offset by the affordable opportunity for social mobility and the implementation of municipal programs to improve housing conditions.
In Russia, a settlement can acquire the status of a city if at least 12 thousand inhabitants live in it and at least 85% of the population is employed outside agriculture. Nevertheless, in Russia there are quite a lot (208 out of 1092) cities with a population of less than 12 thousand people. Their city status is associated with historical factors, as well as with the change in the population of settlements that already had city status.
Modern towns are divided into small (up to 50 thousand inhabitants), medium (50-100 thousand), large (100-250 thousand), large (250-500 thousand), largest (500 thousand - 1 million) and millionaire cities (over 1 million inhabitants).
Many large cities have satellite cities. Often, satellite and satellite cities combine to form agglomerations that can be combined into megalopolises.
Cities, as important territorial centers of various types, have been formed since the Paleolithic period (a proto-city of the Kostenok type), and they proved their special status with respect to rural settlements with all their existence, the characteristics of urban life. For a long time - since the beginning of the Neolithic - the classification of the settlement as a city was associated with the presence of city walls. The first known city of this kind was Jericho, walled in the VIII millennium BC [1]. The status of the cities of Egypt and Sumer, China and India, Gelon in Scythia and others was often taken from various deities and rulers. They had the features of the status registration of the city of Ancient Greece and Rome, the city of the Northern Black Sea Region and the Sea of Azov.
In the Middle Ages, town rights allowed the city to organize its more independent system of self-government. The status of the city to the settlement could be appropriated by the monarch for some merit, or the townspeople as a community bought out the right to be called a city. In addition to the benefits that city status provided, additional obligations appeared. For example, in Königsberg, when building houses, developers had to take into account the width of the street. When accepting a house (or houses), the rider galloped in the middle of the street, holding a spear perpendicular to the direction of the street. If one of the ends of the spear clung to a house, then this house was demolished. Strict control over the minimum width of the streets was due to military objectives. On the territory of the city, surrounded, as a rule, by a fortress wall, it was necessary to place a military garrison and ensure freedom of movement of troops from one section of the city to another. After the collapse of buildings from artillery firing along the axis of the streets, free passage should remain. This requirement has survived to this day. The distance from the street axis to the nearest building must be at least half the height of the building.
With the exception of the presence of fortifications, the differences between the towns and the surrounding villages were small for a long time. Residents of the city were engaged in tillage and cattle breeding, and the name "townspeople" allocated them only at the place of residence. When cities could no longer accommodate everyone who wanted to take advantage of a safer city life, new settlements appeared near them (in Germany - Vorstädte, Vorburgen or Vororte; in France - Forsburgs, Fauxburgs or villae, villes; settlements and settlements in Russia). After enclosing them with walls, these settlements became part of the city and entered the city line around which new suburbs arose. So, old Paris was divided into cité (central part, walled) and ville (suburb); at the end of the XII century. Philip II Augustus ordered to surround the suburbs with walls, and from that time Paris was already divided into three parts: cité (old city), ville (new city) and fauxburgs (suburbs).
In Ancient Russia, the city was the center around which the remaining settlements of the volost were grouped. As the main settlement, he gave the name of the entire parish. In addition to cities, the annals also mention the suburbs - smaller fenced settlements that obeyed the city as the eldest, looked for protection in it and acted along with it: "the elders will think it over, and the suburbs should become the same." After the final approval of serfdom in Russia (mid-17th century), the distinction between town and country became class. Peter I laid the foundation for a new urban arrangement by establishing in 1699 a Moscow Burmistra Chamber (soon renamed the Town Hall), and in other cities - Zemstvo huts and elected Burmisters. Under Catherine II, in 1785, a general regulation on cities was published, or "A Charter on the Rights and Benefits of Cities of the Russian Empire." In the city code of 1785 uniformity and relative order were imposed in the public city administration, and the rights of various classes of urban inhabitants were more precisely determined