ABSTRACT
Cities constantly change in response to the conditions of the time. Yet each change is “layered” over the previous set of changes. In the United States, a relatively young society, only a few layers of previous history lie beneath the built environment of contemporary cities. In Europe, on the other hand, cities have been constructed and reconstructed over centuries and even millennia.
Cities of the Global North have some similarities and some differences. In general, they share a high level of economic development with each other, but they differ in terms of their social norms and political policies. Cities of Western Europe generally have strong but decentralized planning laws that keep the cities compact and prevent sprawl. They also tend to have robust social housing programs that maintain a supply of affordable housing. Cities of Eastern Europe generally have strong centralized planning bodies that are coordinated from the national capital and may be influenced by leaders' political motives. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, wars, economic dislocation, and religious disputes have upset the traditional patterns of migration and caused international crises.
