In this chapter, I compare the size, history, and nature of political authority and integration of cities and their hinterlands in three regions of later Formative Oaxaca: the Valley of Oaxaca, the Mixteca Alta and the lower Río Verde Valley (Fig. 2.1). Briefly, I define urbanism as a product of intertwined political, economic, social, and religious relations and institutions, simultaneously material and semiotic, which produce dominance and interdependence among the people of cities and their hinterlands (e.g., Joyce 2009; Love 2011a; M. E. Smith 2002). Cities therefore are centers of political, economic, and religious authority that engage the people of a broader hinterland, although these relations are always negotiated, contested, and opened-ended to varying degrees (Janusek 2004; Joyce 2009; Yaeger 2003a; Yoffee 2005, 2009). Cities connect people both in the center and hinterland in ways that generate technological, social, and cultural innovations as well as novel identities (M. L. Smith 2003: 24–28). Some scholars have stressed the ways in which city dwellers are differentiated from those in other communities according to practices, occupations, experiences, and the complexity of social relations, possibilities, and conflicts, especially as understood by notions of identity (Emberling 2003; Guernsey and Strauss, Chapter 9; Hutson 2016; Janusek 2004: 24; M. L. Smith 2003: 24–28; Yaeger 2003a). Such a relational definition of urbanism also means that the boundaries between what is urban and what is not are decidedly fuzzy, making it possible to speak of degrees of urbanity where smaller communities, typically not viewed as cities, may have urban features (M. E. Smith 2008b: 6, 205; M. L. Smith 2003; Love, Chapter 1).