by Joel Kotkin
In terms of understanding the demography of cities, I have relied heavily on Tertius Chandler and Gerald Fox’s Three Thousand Years of Urban Growth (Academic Press, 1974) and essays in Urbanization in History: A Process of Dynamic Interactions (Clarendon Press, 1990). This reliance was tempered by the recognition that demographic estimates, particularly in the further past, are notoriously speculative. In most cases, I have tried to err toward the most conservative estimates or to give readers the widest range of possible truths.
The work of William H. McNeill was particularly useful in two areas. His Plagues and Peoples (Anchor Press, 1976), with its emphasis on the impact of disease on the development of cities, let me look at urban evolution from a distinctly biological point of view. Similarly, his The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000 (University of Chicago Press, 1982) provided a focus on the often unappreciated role of military technology. Along with these works, I frequently consulted a longtime favorite, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, by Philip D. Curtin (Cambridge University Press, 1984), on matters relating to transnational commerce, one of the prime shapers of great cities.
In this book, I have made particular reference to the issue of religion, moral order, and sacred place. This is a notion that, while clear to secular scholars such as Mumford, has all too often been lost among modern historians. Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated by Willard R. Trask (Princeton University Press, 1971), was especially inspirational in discussing the religious roots of the urban experience, as was Jacques Ellul’s The Meaning of the City (Vintage, 1967).
Historians of ancient cities almost universally acknowledge the role of religion and sacred space. Good places to start include Grahame Clark, World Prehistory: An Outline (Cambridge University Press, 1961); Mason Hammond, The City in the Ancient World (Harvard University Press, 1972); Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (Penguin, 1957); Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Herbert Muller, The Uses of the Past (Oxford University Press, 1952); and my personal favorite, Werner Keller, The Bible as History (William Morrow, 1981). If the writer wants to approach this topic more intimately, I would also recommend The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George (Penguin, 1999), which brings the reader in touch with the spiritual life of the earliest urban dwellers.
Outside the Western tradition, I would strongly recommend Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Originsand Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Aldine Publishing Company, 1971). Wheatley’s work on religion and cities across cultures provides a valuable means of exploring this critical topic. G. C. Valliant, Aztecs of Mexico (Doubleday, 1944), and Jeremy A. Sabloff, The Cities of Ancient Mexico:Reconstructing a Lost World (Thames and Hudson, 1989), both helped to inform me on similar processes in early Mesoamerica. T. R. Fehrenbach’s Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico (Macmillan, 1979) deals evocatively with both the earliest period and the subsequent scope of the Mexican experience.
Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East are generally considered the critical crucible of urban history. A. Bernard Knapp, The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt (Wadsworth Press, 1988), H.W.F. Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon: A Sketch of the Ancient Civi lizationof the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Hawthorn Publishers, 1962), and Michael Grant, The Ancient Mediterranean (Scribner’s, 1969), are all excellent places to start an exploration of this fascinating region.
The Phoenicians held a particular allure for me, in large part because they seemed such apt precursors of the modern commercial city. To learn more about these fascinating people, I would recommend Gerhard Herm, The Phoenicians: The Purple Empire of the Ancient World (William Morrow, 1975), and Sabatino Moscati, The World of the Phoenicians, translated by Alastair Hamilton (Praeger, 1968).
The classical Greek and Roman civilizations produced many fine chroniclers, perhaps none greater than Herodotus, whom I could recommend not only as a fine ancient historian, but as a philosopher of history and thus of cities. I made The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (Penguin Books, 1954), required reading in my history of cities class. I also heartily recommend the diverse essays in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger (Scribner’s, 1988), as an excellent starting point.
I would like to express my particular debt to Michael Grant, the British classical historian. To understand the classical mind, one can gain much from his many works on Greek and Roman history. His production is prodigious, his writing clear and concise, his insights almost uniformly rich. Grant’s From Alexander to Cleopatra (Scribner’s, 1982) covers a critical period between the rise of the Macedonian Empire with a singular flair and revealing analysis.
For the Roman period, the foremost work remains Edward Gibbon’s magisterial The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Modern Library, 1995). Two works that give an especially intimate view of urban life in Rome are Jéròme Carcopino’s Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Yale University Press, 1940) and J.P.V.D. Balsdon’s Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (McGraw-Hill, 1969). For a look at the end of the Roman Empire and its enduring legacy, Robert Lopez, The Birth of Europe (M. Evans and Company, 1967), and Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (Scribner’s, 1980), make compelling reading.
The Islamic city, so relevant in our time, should be of interest to contemporary readers and followers of current events. If there is an equivalent to Herodotus in the Islamic world, it would be ibn Khaldun, a writer I was delighted to be reacquainted with after an earlier encounter during the writing of my book Tribes. His The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated by Franz Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 1969), ranks among the most insightful books not only on the Islamic world, but on the forces that drive the creation of great cities.
In addition to ibn Khaldun, there are many excellent, more modern histories. The prime texts for me included Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Harvard University Press, 2002); Philip K. Hitti, Capital Cities of Arab Islam (University of Minnesota Press, 1973); Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present (Thames and Hudson, 2000); and The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through the Tenth Centuries (University of Chicago Press, 2001) by the remarkable Paul Wheatley.
Janet Abu-Lughod’s Cairo: 1,001 Years of the City Victorious (Princeton University Press, 1971) and André Raymond’s Cairo (Harvard University Press, 2000) greatly enhanced my appreciation of Islam’s greatest city. The evolution of India’s cities was well covered in the magisterial CambridgeEconomic History of India, Volume One, 1200–1750 (Orient Longman, 1982) by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, as well as in Romila Thapar’s History of India (Penguin, 1990).
The history of early and medieval China was a particular challenge, despite my numerous trips to that country and long acquaintance with its culture, both there and in California. In addition to Wheatley’s Four Pivots,I benefited greatly from Kenneth Scott Latourette’s The Chinese: Their History and Culture (Macmillan, 1962), Laurence J. C. Ma’s Commercial Development and Urban Change in Sung China (Michigan Geographical Society, 1971), Victor F. S. Sit’s Beijing: The Nature and Planning of a Chinese Capital City ( John Wiley, 1995), and Alfred Schinz’s Cities in China (Gebruder Borntraeger, 1989).
The rise of Western cities in the Renaissance and early modern period has generated many excellent works. Fernand Braudel and Henri Pirenne most shaped my views of this exciting period. Pirenne’s Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton University Press, 1925) and Mohammed and Charlemagne (Meridian Books, 1957) are extremely useful in understanding the early reemergence of European cities. Braudel’s The Perspective of the World: Civilization and Capitalism:15th–18th Century (Harper & Row, 1984) and The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World of Philip II (Harper & Row, 1972) are full of illustrative detail and knowing insight about sweeping global changes follow
ing the Middle Ages.
In the early modern period this history of cities focuses largely on two cities in particular, London and Amsterdam. In addition to Braudel, the text benefited greatly from such works as Simon Schama’s The Embarrassmentof Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Vintage, 1987); Jonathan Israel’s The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall (Oxford University Press, 1995); and F.R.H. Du Boulay’s An Age of Ambition: English Society in the Late Middle Ages (Viking, 1970).
The shift into the industrial age, and the growing domination of the Anglo-American powers, cannot be adequately understood without looking into three classic texts—Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, translated by Ben Fowkes (Vintage, 1976); Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England, translated by W. O. Hennderson and W. H. Chaloner (Stanford University Press, 1968); and Arnold Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution (Beacon Press, 1956).
There are many excellent histories on the impact of industrialism in specific parts of the world. In Japan, I drew heavily on Carl Mosk, Japanese Industrial History (M. E. Sharpe, 2001); Thomas O. Wilkinson, The Urbanizationof Japanese Labor: 1868–1955 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1965); and several essays collected by Kuniko Fujita and Richard Child Hill, in Japanese Cities in the World Economy (Temple University Press, 1993).
Jon C. Teaford, Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest (Indiana University Press, 1994), and Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived:Urban Society in European and American Thought: 1820–1940 (Columbia University Press, 1985), as well as Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (Macmillan, 1950), provide excellent resources to understand the impact of industrial growth on American cities.
In studying the German experience, Carl E. Schorske’s Fin de Siècle Vienna:Politics and Culture (Knopf, 1979), remains among the great classic studies. The book also drew on the work of both Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (Carroll and Graf, 1998), and Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History (Continuum, 1995).
For insight into Russian industrial urbanization, I looked to W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (Basic Books, 2002); Reginald E. Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855–1970 (Stanford University Press, 1971); and the more recently published, revealing work by Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, translated by Harold Shukman (Grove Weidenfeld, 1991).
Rather than dismiss suburbia as the “anticity,” I have chosen to treat it more as its predominant modern expression. Southern California served as my model for this analysis. Greg Hise and William Deverell’s Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (University of California Press, 2000) and William Fulton’s The Reluctant Metropolis:The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Solano Books Press, 1997) proved an excellent starting point for an understanding of Southern California. Anyone delving into things Californian must also linger with the magnificent series of California histories written by Kevin Starr (all available from Oxford University Press).
Excellent general histories of suburbia include Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1985), Robert Fishman’s Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Basic Books, 1987), and Joel Garreau’s Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (Doubleday, 1991). The parallel decline of traditional cities is well chronicled in such worthy books as Witold Rybczynski’s City Life: Urban Expectations in the New World (Scribner’s, 1995), Robert M. Fogelson’s Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (Yale University Press, 2001), and Fred Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities (Free Press, 1997).
The definitive account of the contemporary third world city may still not have been written. David Drakakis-Smith’s The Third World City (Methuen, 1987) does provide an excellent start. Several books of essays collected in separate volumes by Josef Gugler and by John D. Kasarda— particularly Third World Cities: Problems, Policies and Prospect, edited by Kasarda and Allan M. Parrell, (Sage Publications, 1993)—are must-reads in this topic area. I would also recommend A. S. Oberoi, Population Growth, Employment and Poverty in Third-World Mega-Cities (St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
The rise of East Asia as the focal point for twenty-first-century urbanism also is perhaps only now being chronicled. Valuable insights into this evolution can be gleaned from D. J. Dwyer, editor, The City as a Centre of Change in Asia (Hong Kong University Press, 1972), as well as from Joochul Kim and Sang-Chuel Choe, Seoul: The Making of a Metropolis ( John Wiley, 1997).
Finally, as we contemplate the contemporary city and the future, several works stand out. Perhaps most impressive in my mind is a century-old work, H. G. Wells’s Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (Chapman and Hall, 1902), which contains some of the most piercing insights into the role of technology in cities. Of somewhat more recent vintage but also quite prophetic are Manuel Castells’s The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume III: End of Millennium (Blackwell Publishers, 1998); Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society, translated by John Wilkinson (Vintage, 1967); Taichi Sakaiya’s The Knowledge-Value Revolution, or, A History of the Future, translated by George Fields and William Marsh (Kodansha, 1985); Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Basic Books, 1973); and works by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and most particularly Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave (William Morrow, 1980).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOEL KOTKIN is an Irvine senior fellow with the New America Foundation, which is based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of five books, including Tribes and The New Geography, both published by Random House.
Kotkin is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Inc. magazine, the American Enterprise, and the Los Angeles Times “Opinion” section. He also serves as a senior fellow of the Newman Institute at Baruch College of the City University of New York and lectures at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
He lives in Valley Village, Los Angeles, with his wife, Mandy, and two daughters, Ariel and Hannah.
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2006 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Joel Kotkin
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The city: a global history / Joel Kotkin.
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