What makes a city successful?

Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form by David Harvey is an interesting article questioning where the category of 'urban' has disappeared to, why marginalisation is occurring and what makes a city unique.  David Harvey is a well-known geographer and a leading social theorist of international standing.

David Harvey emphasises the importance of thinking about cities in terms of processes rather than just things.  He views cities as sites of conflict based on race, ideology, gender and other social categories. He argues that processes are both shaped by time and place and shape time and place.

http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2008/10/what-makes-a-ci.html 

With the rise of the industrial revolution came urbanisation.  The ninetieth century was concerned with the rapid increase in urbanisation and therefore aimed to effectively utilise and plan for the urban world. Urbanisation was essentially the 'urban process' or 'urbanising process' each representing a link between the city and processes.  David Harvey identifies 'the city' as a 'thing-type' word and explains that once a thing is created, they have the habit of affecting the processes that constituted them.

Keeping 'urbanisation' and 'things' in mind, how does this affect social processes, what attributes make a 'thing' function? What makes a 'thing' unique?

Whilst the majority of regions are urbanised, there are still rural areas that have completely different wants and needs to that of an urbanised community.

A community is more than a group of people that reside in the same area; a community shares a sense of place, a set of common values and an important component of a city and a community is the interaction within the community.

The definition of the word community should not be able to actually define a community as all communities are different.  It is this definition of communities that is creating marginalisation within communities and different sectors of communities.  Yesterday Richard spoke about visiting São Paulo and mentioned the gated areas throughout the city which was a depiction of marginalisation, how the rich were divided from the poor and how this separated the city and communities immensely.

Melbourne is a successful interactive, socially and culturally diverse, vibrant and well planned city where there is a strong sense of togetherness.

However, what works for one city, may not work for another.  Therefore, people need to identify and create their own sense of place and make their city their own.