Redefiniendo ciudades

Abstract

This paper presents an exercise in the definition of cities from clear and explicit quantitative criteria. The city concept is linked to the local political level, so in this sense we can talk about “administrative cities”, since they are formed by one municipality, or a group of them that are physically contiguous. They are not pure population agglomerations satisfying certain criteria in terms of exceeding a threshold and/or a minimum density. We start from these urban agglomerations, called urban centers, but eventually we link them to municipalities. The main limitations of our analysis are two; on the one hand, our analysis is purely demographic, in the sense that it is the population concentration that eventually determines the number and extend of cities, other aspects such as land cover or the economic structure is absent from our analysis. On the other hand, the commuting has not been taken into account, given lack of data up to date information, and since our focus is more related to the urban core without taking into consideration functional relations. In this sense, our proposal is in line with the urban core concept, more than with the urban areas or larger urban zones that includes the urban core and its hinterland. Building urban centers and linking them to municipalities is accomplished by means of simple Geographical Information System operations (GIS).