ABSTRACT

The first urban revolution was the product of agricultural increment and its amassment in favoured localities. It accompanied accessions to human culture that required for their full development specialists and their concentration in urban groups. After the appearance of an agricultural surplus adequate for the existence of towns, the ratio of food-producers to non-producers remained relatively stable for a long time. A town may be regarded first and foremost as a community of people pursuing a distinctive way of life as compared with the rural population of the countryside, or it may be considered as part of the earth's surface differentiated from rural surroundings by a particular type of human transformation with buildings and other distinctive structures. Released from the old-time relation to a surrounding territory which sustained it with food, the modern town finds its territorial basis as a service centre.