ABSTRACT

Geography is generally accepted by its practitioners as ‘that discipline that seeks to describe and interpret the variable character from place to place of the earth as the world of man’; * urban geography attempts such description and interpretation for those parts of the earth's surface classified as urban places. There is no universal definition of urban places. The usual criterion is that an urban area should be a nucleation of settlement in which the great majority of the population is not employed in agriculture. Most statistical agencies set a population size threshold below which such a nucleation is not considered urban. But the majority of urban places are large and the majority of urban dwellers live in big towns and cities. A precise definition is of little relevance except for detailed statistical comparisons, therefore; in this book, the terms ‘town’ and ‘city’ are used interchangeably to apply to any non-agricultural settlement containing more than a few hundred inhabitants.