ABSTRACT
The symbolic significance of a city used to be described by early urban sociologists and anthropologists in contrast to nature and countryside (Redfield 1947; Wirth 1938). The city has been considered the greatest symbol of civilization, the biggest achievement of human society, centre of learning and communication, meeting point, space for activity and mobility. On the contrary, the countryside has been usually defined as a place of backwardness, ignorance and limitation (e.g. see Williams’s historic analysis of literary representations of the countryside and the city, 1973). The negative descriptions of the city present it as a place of noise, ambition, decadence, anonymity, loneliness, impersonal relations, crime, drugs and prostitutes, which is in contrast to the rural environment as a place of peace, harmony, innocence, isolation, solidarity, homogeneity and strong family ties (Redfield 1947; Williams 1973; Wirth 1964). In addition to this general symbolism of a city, particular cities develop and produce their own special symbols that contribute to constructing urban identity of the inhabitants on the one hand, and to creating outside image of the city on the other.
