Are cities like organisms?

Or text, “citybeautiful” to 500 500.

Sources:
A. West, G. B. (2017). Scale: the universal laws of growth, innovation, sustainability, and the pace of life in organisms, cities, economies, and companies. Penguin.

B. Samaniego, H., & Moses, M. E. (2008). Cities as organisms: Allometric scaling of urban road networks. Journal of Transport and Land use, 1(1), 21-39.

C. Solesbury, W. (2013). World cities, city worlds: explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives. Leicestershire: Matador.

D. Solesbury, W. (2013). World cities, city worlds: explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives. Leicestershire: Matador.

E. Solesbury, W. (2013). World cities, city worlds: explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives. Leicestershire: Matador.

Produced by Dave Amos in sunny Sacramento, California.
Edited by Eric Schneider in cloudy Cleveland, Ohio.

[CityBeautiful]

How else are cities like organisms? Any other similarities?

[Fosos]

I can't believe you didn't say "Buffalo or buffalo?"

[fernbedek]

Wouldn’t fungi be a better organism to compare a city to than a mammal? Fungi can be multi-nodal and grow based on surrounding resources, rather than a genetic game plan?

[josephlombardo]

Just because you don't have a 1-to-1 match of systems between cities and vertebrates doesn't mean that the metaphor doesn't hold. Cities are an organism unlike any other organism that exists. Some multicellular organisms don't have circulatory systems (jellyfish). Some organisms have a distributed brain (octopuses). Some organisms can have multiple centers or no clear boundary (funguses). The similarity between cities and organisms is that they have similar problems to solve - the demands of obtaining and distributing resources, growing, eliminating waste, etc. Those problems can be solved in all kinds of different ways depending on the needs and history of the organism, and the unique demands of a city leads to unique solutions to those problems.

[Chanemus]

"cities consumed raw materials like timber, ore and sheep" love it

[DiegoSaulReyna]

I am so glad youtube came along an gave nerds all this power, so they can rise above anonymity, mockery and bullying and just rule the influencer world, if you doubt my words just read this line
"is it saskatoon or a rackoon"

[Fourturn]

Good day from Saskatoon, I’ve been enjoying the City Beautiful videos for a while now. Keep up the great work.

[ttaaddoo]

Just a quick note, I don't believe metaphors are supposed to be perfect; a perfect metaphor would largely just be a description.
The point of the metaphor, as I see it, is to be limited, because it's point is to draw forth similarities, which otherwise might go unnoticed, not describe.

[CIAagent]

2:01 I broke my ankles just watching that heel strike

[Occupant]

I clicked through hoping he would say "No" and then the rest of the video would be 9 minutes of silence.

[paxundpeace]

Really great Introduction into the topic.

[akiotakahashi]

Twin Cities!!! Love that I get to see my home state in a video.

[GLee-oeop]

I’m pretty sure you could also compare cities to a human anatomy, like NYC with Times Square as the heart and the Subway as the blood stream

Which in retrospect is the same analogy I guess

[CitiesoftheFuture]

Great Video!! We are big fans of the channel. Thanks for subscribing!

[yesid]

Tijuana and iguana only have three syllables, tee-hwaa-nah
love your videos, keep up the great work!!

[AmtrakProductions]

Love this video! You’re on my favorite channel!!!

[mullac]

I've not heard many people used the "cities as environments" metaphor, and I'd love to hear more on it

[RobertGoddard]

Cities have Symbiotic relationships with one another, so you could use something from the sea. Also you could say Cities are sorta like Computers aka Motherboards with different components, like different buildings.

[brianbordenkircher]

Similar to how corporations are similar to an organism. I’m doing a final relating a corporation to the organism of a tree. And how trees rely on other organisms and such. How they network with fungi as a communication network as well as food network that can spread resources over vast distances to trees asking for more resources, etc.

Pretty interesting stuff

[Vinnysol]

Regional planner here that was originally educated in biology ( I also double minored in chemistry and mathematics). I view communities like organisms but not like a circulatory system or nervous system - those systems are restricted to a certain type of function overall. Each city has its node and the people/communities communicate with each other in a manner that reminds me of quorum sensing or antibody-antigen reactions.