What is a City?

• Most people can agree that cities are places where large numbers of people live and work; they are hubs of government, commerce and transportation. But how best to define the geographical limits of a city is a matter of some debate.So far, no standardized international criteria exist for determining the boundaries of a city and often multiple boundary definitions are available for any given city.
• One type of definition, sometimes referred to as the “city proper”, describes a city according to an administrative boundary.
• A second approach, termed the “urban agglomeration”, considers the extent of the contiguous urban area, or built-up area, to delineate the city’s boundaries.

A third concept of the city, the “metropolitan area”, defines its boundaries according to the degree of economic and social interconnectedness of nearby areas, identified by interlinked commerce or commuting patterns, for example.