Urban

Dr. Orit Rotem | Dr. Nir Cohen

The contemporary world is an urban world. Nowadays, for the first time in the history of humanity, more than half of the global population lives in cities. Additionally, the percentage of urban population is likely to increase. Rates of growth are higher in south and East Asian and African cities, and a continued but much slower growth is occurring in developed regions.  Understanding urban environment in general and cities in particular are of fundamental importance for processes such as the distribution of population within countries, cultural life and the structuring of social life, and the distribution and organization of economic production and power.

Urban geography seeks to explain the distribution of towns and cities, and the socio-spatial similarities and contrasts that exist between and within them. Since cites are not identical, this task is becoming very complex. Urban environments exhibit common features; they contain residential spaces, transportation and service networks, and economic activities. However, different urban places present individual characteristics; therefore, urban geography is concerned with local variability within a general context. This means that it aims to acknowledge the regularities of places, but to understand the distinctiveness of individual places. Urban geography seeks to study urban structure, urban culture and cultural processes occurring in cities, residential mobility and neighborhood change, housing problems, housing policy, retail, economic activities, power, politics, urban governance and policy.