There is debate about which of the world’s cities is the largest because it all depends on the criteria you decide to use. Among the contenders are Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City while the Chinese port of Beihai was recently named as the city showing the most rapid expansion.
What is certain is that cities around the globe are getting larger as they act like magnets drawing people from ever-widening surrounding areas into suburbs and slums, tenements and tower blocks, ghettos and gated communities.
The ways in which we live in close proximity to each other, and navigate our lives within and without networks and neighbourhoods, has long been a subject of fascination to the distinguished American-born sociologist Richard Sennett.With a background in a range of overlapping disciplines, he is currently professor of sociology at the London School of Economics.
He will be in Cambridge on Thursday 21 February to give a public lecture titled The Open City – the last talk in the Understanding Society series organised by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities).
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Image: Welcome to Newcastle
Credit: Rob Hain (Flickr Creative Commons)
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Cities and how we live in them
19 February 2013
More and more of us live in cities where disparate communities jostle for space. Eminent sociologist Richard Sennett will give a public lecture on The Open City in Cambridge this Thursday (21 February).