Die europäische Stadt

Abstract

The striking physical and social contrasts between American and European Cities are the starting-point for preliminary considerations on the differences between these two types of cities. The first paragraph gives an overview on the history of sociological concepts of the city, starting with Georg Simmel and the Chicago-School. It is argued, that the definition of the city by size, density and heterogeneity introduced a universal, ahistorical approach, which neglected big differences between cities in different cultures and different types of welfare states. The empirical base for this model is the American city, which is predominantly organized around markets. The European city has a very different tradition, including the imagination of the urban population as a collective actor. In most recent theoretical interventions on local development in times of globalisation the idea of the ’European City’ as a distinct social organization is again gaining scientific attention.