Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. The defining theme is the presence of a great number of very different people in a very limited space - most of them are strangers to each other.This makes it possible to build up a vast array of subcultures close to each other, exposed to each other's influence, but without necessarily intruding into people's private lives.

Globally, urban areas tend to also be home to concentrations of power, such as government capitals and corporate headquarters, and the wealthy and powerful people that are employed in them. Cities also organize people, create norms, beliefs, and values.^[3] As outlined by Max Weber in his book, The City, "there are five things that make a city: fortification, market, a law code, an association of urban citizenry creating a sense of municipal corporateness, and sufficient political autonomy for urban citizens to choose the city’s governors."^[4] In some countries, elites have built themselves enclaves outside of the central city (e.g. white flight in the United States)

In most of the Western world, urban areas tend to be politically to the left of suburban and rural areas, even if deindustrialization has reduced the influence of labour unions and the working class, the new urban left is supported by upper middle class white-collar workers, students and academics, and creative types (artists). Urbanites also tend to be less religious, more environmentalist, and more open to immigration than rural people.