SUBURBS, NEW TOWNS, AND URBAN CORES: SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND CHANGING MEANINGS
No single definition of the suburb fits all circumstance. Suburb have existed for as long as humans have lived in urban centers, but their sizes, forms, and demographic and social importance changed almost out of recognition between the sixteenth century and the twenty-first century, outstripping the changes to the urban core around which they are located. Traditionally the medieval suburb was an area of housing beyond the physical boundaries, usually fortifications of some kind, that marked out the limits of and urban center. Its location gave it a number urban nor rural but contained elements of both. Its legal status and that of its inhabitants was ambiguous. Its population consisted of recent arrivals from elsewhere and former residents of the urban center. The latter included some who chose to leave the urban center in search of a better quality of life, who tended to be well off, and some who were forced to leave it because their presence was unacceptable, who were generally poor.