Capital cities: a taxonomy of capital accounts for knowledge cities

The urban experience " An inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village " is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry for " city ". Most definitions, unless referring to very particular usages (e.g.: The City as London's financial district), convey the concept of a status granted to a relatively permanent, organized human settlement. The Chambers Dictionary includes as a definition the following: " …in various countries, a municipality of higher rank, variously defined… " Thus, a generic concept of city can be synthesized as a self-governed human settlement that has been granted a special status by virtue of its relative size, population, merits or strategic importance. In short, a city is a relatively permanent human settlement of relatively high importance. The latest concept comes close to idea of urban region, a permanent and important human settlement that is not formally designated as a city, but that is functionally equivalent. Conurbated regions, sections of large metropolis, suburban areas, even highly urbanized rural or industrial areas that are home to relatively large and established communities are all equivalent to average small cities (say, between 100,000 and one million inhabitants) and aggregate into medium and large agglomerations with populations of up to 30 million 1. For the purpose of this paper, all such human settlements are equivalent to cities insofar as they provide fundamentally an urban experience to its inhabitants.