Though historically based on trade and manufacturing, most European cities are now primarily service oriented. With many ancient educational and research institutions, urban Europe now has numerous hubs of innovation in the knowledge-intensive service sector that has become so crucial to the modern European economy. With thousands of years of history and culture visible in their architecture and well-funded museums, concert halls, theaters, and other cultural institutions, many cities in Europe also draw a disproportionate share of the world’s tourists. In most years, Europe has 7 or 8 of the 20 most visited cities on the planet, a very large share given the region’s size and population.

Many European cities began as trading centers more than a thousand years ago and still bear the architectural marks of medieval life in their historic centers (Figure 4.20A). These old cities are located either on navigable rivers in the interior or along the coasts because water transportation figured prominently (as it still does) in Europe’s trading patterns.

Since World War II, nearly all the cities in Europe have expanded around their perimeters in concentric circles of apartment blocks (see Figure 4.20B). Usually, well-developed rail and bus lines link the blocks to one another, to the old central city, and to the surrounding countryside. Land is scarce and expensive in Europe, so only a small percentage of Europeans live in single-family homes, although the number is growing. Even single-family homes tend to be attached or densely arranged on small lots. Except in public parks, which are common, one rarely sees the sweeping lawns familiar to many North Americans. Because publicly funded transportation is widely available, many people live without cars, in apartments near city centers (see Figure 4.20C, D). However, many others commute daily by car, bus, or train from suburbs or ancestral villages to work in nearby cities.

Although deteriorating housing and slums do exist, especially in the poorer cities and towns of Central Europe, substantial public and private investments in housing, public transportation, sanitation, water, and utilities mean that most people maintain a generally high standard of urban living.