Two Types Of Urban Cities

The first point to consider is urban structure. Initially, only a limited number of urban places became real cities (Antrop, 2004). The majority of settlements were small towns, villages and hamlets and the countryside was everywhere. The city was the exception; the countryside the common. Mobility remained restricted and so were the daily travel distances. Long distance traveling happened in stages of several days or weeks and helped to shape the urban networks. It also stimulated specialization of disclosed places according to time distance to the major cities along the major trade or pilgrim routes. This is the reason for excluding transportation from the result of our studies.

The same research reports the existence of two types of urban

These strong municipal structures, with a well established territorial consolidation, gave rise to specific urban forms, which were shaped by the administrative and political organization (Liddy et al., 2012). Life in medieval towns and free communes was closely related to suburban and peri-urban areas, where citizens cultivated the fields and raised animals for home consumption (Ronchi et al., 2014). In central Italy, during the Renaissance, many gardens were planned as complement of the nobiliary residences; the structure of these historical gardens included portions for fruit orchards and forest products (Botti and Biasi, 2009). This urban form is still preserved in many cities in central and northern Italy, although it has been adapted and shaped by different political, economic, social and cultural rights, that have occurred over the centuries. The same was true for China. In fact, there can be little doubt that sprawl, following Bruegmann’s definition (Bruegmann, 1977), existed around many ancient cities. This is particularly true in nearly all known cases walled cities and towns, which were accompanied by extra-mural or suburban development (Smith,

The use of fossil fuels and the following electrification supported the growth of the ‘vertical city’ and also a strong horizontal urban development, which required a transformation of transport systems. While the present options include the preservation of central-place systems, which are both efficient (in terms of economies of scale) and equitable (in terms of equivalent living conditions) (Wegener, 2013), polycentricity is also considered. Nonetheless both of the solution perform poorly with respect to the policy goals efficiency, equity and sustainability. With respect to efficiency, large centres can exploit economies of scale and agglomeration effects but suffer from negative effects of over-agglomeration. Dispersed settlements enjoy nature but are too small to support efficient infrastructure facilities and units of production. With respect to equity, spatial polarisation is built on competition and so leads to spatial segregation between rich and poor, central and peripheral cities. Spatial dispersal is egalitarian in its distribution of poverty but denies its citizens opportunities for social mobility. With respect to sustainability, large settlements use less energy for transport but more for high-rise buildings, air-conditioning and waste management. On the contrary, dispersed settlements can utilise local renewable resources but are wasteful in terms of transport energy