Questions on quotations

Urbanization
"The thing called city, is the outcome of a process called urbanization" (Harvey, David 'Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference' 1996, p. 418)

If the city is the outcome of the urbanization-process, then is how urbanism still a discipline? Is the city the outcome of a process, or is the city a process itself?

Planning concepts
"The modernist dichotomies of rural/urban, traditional/modern, industrial/agricultural, religious/secular and local/global, which long ago began to lose their footing, have been pushed into even more extreme contortions by informality. Similarly, termes like [i]decentralization, networks, peripheral, sprawl[/i] and [i]post-industrial[/i], which largely characterize postmodern analyses of the city, are mostly applicable but far from adequate in describing urban qualities that exceed or even precede these concepts." (Fabricius, Daniela 'Resisting Representation - The Informal Geographies of Rio de Janeiro' in Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Summer 2008, 16-17)

Is the informal a quality of the city?

Urban Inhabitants
"It is strange that those with the least money inhabit the most expensive commodity -earth-,; those who pay, what is free -air." (Koolhaas, Rem "S, M, L, XL" 2005, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, p.1253)

Does this account for all cities? Is the city inverse concept if the rural?

City Sense
"The city is an instrument of metaphysical function, an intricate instrument, structuring action and power, mobility and exchange, societal organizations and cultural structures, identity and memory. Undoubdetly the most significant and complex of human artifacts, the city controls and entices, symbolizes and represents, expresses and conceals. Cities are inhabited excavations of culture, exposing the dense fabric of societal life." (Pallasmaa, Jahuni 'Encounters, Architectural Essays' 2005, Rakennustieto Oy, Helsinki, p. 142)

Pallasmaa is really the anti-thesis of Koolhaas, describing the city as a live and vivid place. Is the liveliness of the city defined by the formal entity, the interior? Or is it defined by the informal entity, taking part on the ground? Should we excavate the earth or the air?

Agglomeration
“The concept of agglomeration is next to useless to us as urban designers because we know next to nothing about its form beyond the fact that it is centered somewhere and has boundaries at some rather vague line where agglomeration ends.” (Read, Stephen & Fuchs, Anthony 'From the Creative to the Vital City' 2008, Link)

In line with Koolhaas remarks, what is the difference between the city and the agglomeration? Does an agglomeration have a centre? Is an agglomeration not defined by the filled up space in between multiple centres?

Urban cores
"If new towns are built without a core they will never become more than camps." (Tyrwhitt, J.; Sert, J.L.; Rogers, N. (eds.) 'The Heart of the City: towards the Humanisation of Urban Life' 1979 (or. 1951) Kraus Reprint, Nendeln, p.165)

Do informal settlements need a core to become more than a camp?