ABSTRACT
The City cannot be fully understood by reference only to its arbitrarily defined administrative area. It has to be interpreted as ‘an organic part of a social group’. 1 In approaching the analysis of the four main urban functions—dwelling, work, recreation, and transport—it must be remembered that every city forms part of an economic, social, cultural, and political unit, upon which its development depends. 2 The problem of defining and analysing the functions and limits of the city and the unifying relationships with the surrounding area, is one of disentangling the regional component and examining the multitude of tributary areas served by, and serving, the city. Each group of functions has its particular zone of influence. Consequently, many functional areas have no relationship with each other in their geographical extent—which is often difficult to define. However, they all have a common denominator in their dependence on the city. We may refer to this area of functional association with the city as the city-region.
