Literary notes about urban (AI summary)
The term “urban” is used in literature with remarkable versatility, functioning both as a description of city life and as a proper name in historical and religious contexts. In sociological and statistical texts, “urban” characterizes metropolitan areas—detailing data such as population statistics and the organization of city districts ([1], [2])—as well as contrasting urban social dynamics with rural ones ([3], [4], [5]). Meanwhile, in historical narratives and satirical works, “urban” appears as a proper noun referring to popes (for instance, Urban II, Urban VI, Urban VIII) whose identities have influenced religious history and literature ([6], [7], [8]), and also as a playful or derisive epithet in conversational dialogue ([9], [10]). This multiplicity of uses highlights not only the geographical and demographic facets associated with urban areas, but also the rich cultural, political, and historical connotations that the word has acquired over the centuries ([11], [12]).
- Greenland urban population: 84% of total population (2008) rate of urbanization: 0.9% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
— from The 2009 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency - Saint Pierre and Miquelon urban population: 89% of total population (2008) rate of urbanization: 0.1% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
— from The 2010 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency - Social interest in the city was first stimulated by the polemics against the political and social disorders of urban life.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - In the urban districts one elector was chosen for every fifty voters, and in the rural districts, one for every one hundred.
— from The Governments of Europe by Frederic Austin Ogg - Casterbridge was the complement of the rural life around, not its urban opposite.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - Pope Urban, a bacon-picker.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - A Jesuit, Alphonso Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Æthiopia, accepted, in the name of Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of the penitent.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - 1371–8 Pope Urban VI 1378–89
— from Europe in the Middle Ages by Ierne L. (Ierne Lifford) Plunket - "An urban miss is what you are."
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy - The last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - Writers belonging to these two schools are making studies of what they call the "rural" and the "urban" minds.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
