The term core city denotes the central area of a city .
- Colloquially the eponymous historic capital of a city, in contrast to other districts that also belong to the city today, which were incorporated, for example, in the course of a community reform.
- In urban planning and anthropogeography, the urban area of the central location of an urban region as an administrative administrative unit. In contrast, there are the suburban suburban communities. Outside of core cities in the geographical sense there are often satellite cities and satellite cities .
The core city is often equated with the inner city or city center. The inner city is only understood to mean the actual center of a city, i.e. the center with the shopping streets, which have mostly been redesigned as pedestrian zones.
The two terms should be clarified using the Baden-Württemberg state capital Stuttgart :
- The core city of Stuttgart includes the original city of Stuttgart, before the first incorporation at the end of the 19th century. Today these are the city districts of Mitte, North, South, East and West.
- The downtown Stuttgart including the center with City Hall, Central Station, King Street and all the surrounding shopping streets that were transformed in large part as a pedestrian zone City : Today, this is the city's Mitte district.
A distinction must also be made between the core city and the old town: the old town is the historical city center as it has been preserved, but the core city refers to the current state.