City center
A city center is the central area of a city .
In urban planning and anthropogeography , the city center is the urban area of the central location of an urban region as an administrative administrative unit. In contrast, the suburban are suburban communities (see also suburbanization ). Outside of core cities in the geographical sense there are often satellite cities and satellite cities .
The core city is often equated with the inner city or city center . The inner city is only understood to mean the actual center of a city, i.e. the center with the shopping streets, which have mostly been redesigned as pedestrian zones.
In contrast to inner city, the term city center specifies the geographical and historical location of the center in relation to the city as a whole. So a core - z. B. the historic city center or the old town - the center and the origin of the later districts that emerge from the suburbs .
A distinction must also be made between the city center and the old town : the old town is the historical city center as it has been preserved, but the city center refers to the current state.
Here is an example:
- The city center of Stuttgart includes the original city of Stuttgart, before the first incorporation at the end of the 19th century. Today these are the city districts of Mitte, North, South, East and West.
- The city center of Stuttgart includes the center with the town hall, main train station, Königstrasse and all surrounding business streets, most of which have been redesigned as a pedestrian zone (the city ): Today this is the Mitte district .
Ringstrasse and city center
In many cities, the old city center can also be delimited precisely if it is surrounded by a ring road (e.g. Frankfurt am Main , Hamburg , Cologne , Leipzig , Milan , Moscow , Munich , Paris , Vienna ), a historical city wall ( e.g. Nuremberg , Nördlingen , Dinkelsbühl , Tübingen , Neubrandenburg ), city moat (e.g. Meiningen ) or ramparts (e.g. Bremen , Recklinghausen or Emden ).
The inner ring roads are often on the aprons of the old fortifications. During the founding period in the late 19th century, when large parts of the last city walls in Central Europe were finally razed because they had lost their meaning, the building sites that became free were expanded into large boulevards. But older city extensions are still legible in the development plan, and one or more older rings are located within the late modern ring in larger cities.
- Examples
In Vienna the ditch (12th century), inner ring and double line (after 1857) and the outer belt (around 1900); the further ring segments Südosttangente (1970) and outer ring (2006) can be seen as a similar development .
Comparable developments
Comparable developments can be seen in the expansion of many modern large cities .
A good example is the development of Paris from the 16th to the 20th centuries:
16th century: Paris within the limits of the older city center, engraving
1860: Old arrondissement in front of the local government reform within the attachments 1840-1845 (gray today's limits), the districts are along the streets of the city gates, the Faubourg , divided
Today's arrondissements , the Arr. 1 er –6 e are completely in the old core, the Arr. 8 e –11 e in the younger core, which is now bordered by the boulevard périphérique
The two old city limits are still legible in the aerial photo, LandSat
See also
- Core city
- Urban development | Urban planning | Urban renewal
- Urban development funding | Urban monument protection
- The social city | Urban redevelopment
- Cities with historical city centers
- Working group "Cities with historic city centers" in Brandenburg
- Downtown
