This document discusses definitions and characterizations of cities. It analyzes the genesis of cities through the historical processes of surplus food production, division of labor, and the development of functional interdependencies between clusters of producers and families. Analytically, cities emerge from division of labor and agglomeration economies that concentrate human activities around a center. This urban land nexus requires governance institutions to manage density and proximity. While urban theory is eclectic, analyzing cities' intrinsically urban aspects is important. Cities emerge in capitalism as producers and workers agglomerate. A focus on agglomeration and the urban land nexus highlights the importance of the urban commons to competitive advantage and communal life.

1. Reflections:
The Science of the City
Allen J. Scott
University of California – Los Angeles

2. Some Definitions/Characterizations
of the City
• “The city is a collection of one or more separate dwellings in a closed
settlement.” Max Weber.
• “A city may be defined as a relatively large, dense and permanent
settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.” Louis Wirth.
• "The city … is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an
institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of
collective unity.“ Lewis Mumford.
• “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only
by traveling; namely, the strange.” Jane Jacobs
• “Ne pas essayer trop vite de trouver une définition de la ville; c’est
beaucoup trop gros, on a toutes les chances de se tromper.” Georges
Perec.

3. The Genesis of Cities:
The order of history and the order of analysis
• HISTORY:
• Surplus of foodstuffs (hunting? agriculture?)
• Division of labor (agricultural vs nonagricultural work)
• Further division of labor in nonagricultural
work.
• Functional interdependencies.
• Clusters of producers and families
• Long-distance trade

4. Towards an Analytical
Understanding of the City
• The abstract theory of:
division of labor
economies of scale and scope
agglomeration
• Proto-urban forms as an outcome of localized
economic growth and development – most
notably after the Industrial Revolution.

5. Analytical Genetics Continued:
The Urban Land Nexus
• Agglomeration by definition involves multiple
human activities.
• These cannot all be accommodated at a single
point in space.
• Hence a twofold locational process:
1. Convergence towards a mutual center of gravity
2. Allocation (e.g. by competition) to unique locations.
• Three generic and interdependent spaces:
Production, social, circulation

6. Impossibility of “Equilibrium”
under conditions of market competition.
Hence the urban land nexus calls insistently for
institutions of governance.
(Cf. later comments on Commons)

7. Analytical generality but historical
specificity
These general processes work themselves out in
specific social and geographical contexts:
1. Level of development.
2. Rules of resource allocation.
3. Social stratification.
4. Political authority and power.
5. Cultural norms and traditions.

8. Examples
• Ancient Jericho
• Ancient Babylon
• Imperial Rome
• Timbuktu in the Empire of Mali
• Tenochtitlan in 15th century Aztlán
(contemporary Mexico)
• Manchester in the industrial era in Britain
• Los Angeles, Mexico City, Hong Kong

9. The City Thus Represents --
(a) a specific local scale of economic and social
interaction (pace planetary urbanists) …
(b) … generated by agglomeration processes …
(c) … focused on the imperative of proximity …
(d) …deriving in the first instance from the division of
labor …
(e) … expressed extensively in the urban land nexus ...
(f) …and almost always endowed with governance
arrangements that attempt to deal with the
problematical effects (+ and -) of density and
propinquity.

10. The eclecticism of
existing urban theory
• The eclectic nature of urban theory/analysis: a
failure to distinguish the necessarily urban
from the contingently urban.
• i.e. a distinction between (a) those things that
are contingently IN the city and (b) those
things that are intrinsically OF the city qua an
agglomerated land nexus. (Cf. Poverty)

11. • Eclecticism is intensified by currently
fashionable:
• -- ordinary city theory,
• -- assemblage theory,
• -- postcolonial urban theory
• with their insistence on difference,
particularity, “provincialization,” and
ontological “flatness.

12. The City in Capitalism
• In analytical terms, the city emerges in
capitalism as producers in selected sectors
and their workers converge locationally
around their own center of gravity.
• (At the same time, the city represents a basic
condition for the social reproduction of
capitalism. There is no historically realized
version of capitalism where cities are absent).

13. Three very specific empirical versions of
agglomeration and the urban land nexus:
• 1. The 19th century industrial town (Cf. Engels on
Manchester).
• 2. The mass-production metropolis of the 20th century
• 3. The global city-region of the 21st century (cognitive-
cultural capitalism).

14. The Commons
• A focus on agglomeration and the urban land
nexus points immediately to the phenomenon
of the commons – especially in cognitive-
cultural capitalism.
• (i.e. what mainstream economics considers
implicitly as normatively undesirable. The
commons as an aberration, or, “market
failure.”)

15. • The urban commons is one of the key
foundations of urban viability:
(a) Competitive advantages
(b) Communal life (socialization and biopower)

16. • In cognitive-cultural capitalism, the commons is
expanding rapidly :
– (a) in cyberspace (Rivkin, Benkler, Rullani, etc.
– (b) in the city:
• Agglomeration economies.
• Communal epistemic and cultural resources
(foundations of Chamberlinian competition).
• The creative field of the city.
• The “smart” city
• Socialization and habituation (Cf. Frankfurt School,
Hardt and Negri).
• Public goods and institutions in order to optimize
the commons in the public interest

17. • Need for a reformulation of the science of the
city:
(a) A thoroughgoing genetic theory of the
form and logic of the city.
(b) A corresponding description of the city
in cognitive-cultural capitalism.