But Aren't Modern Cities Very Different from Premodern Cities ?

This post is a kind of reply to my previous post, "Why are Premodern Cities Important Today?" If cities today are completely different from those that came before, then it is hard to make the argument that premodern cities have anything to tell us about urbanization today. I am playing devil's advocate with myself here. These are the main arguments I have found in the literature on how modern cities are very different from earlier cities. They come mostly from environmental historians.

(1) The Industrial Revolution

Environmental anthropologist Emilio Moran talks about how cities after 1800 (I assume he refers to  Europe and North America) differed greatly from earlier cities. He presents a common technological and demographic argument:

Prior to the eighteenth century, urbanization was a limited phenomenon and cities had a coupled relationship to their surrounding rural areas. Provisioning cities back then depended on a relatively proximate rural zone near the city. Cities recycled their ‘night soil’ and other urban wastes in the nearby rural areas, making them bad smelling but ecologically virtuous (Guillerme 1988; Harvey 1996). These same processes also made cities a locus of disease, pestilence, and plagues that decimated urban populations until the implementation of drainage systems, potable water supplies, and public health services. Before 1800 the ecological footprint of cities was light because they were embedded bioregionally and their size permitted provisioning by the immediate surrounding hinterland. (Moran 2008: 310).

(2) Cities and the Environment

(A)  Environmental historian John McNeill focuses on urban changes in the twentieth century:

Twentieth-century urbanization affected almost everything in human affairs and constituted a vast break with past centuries (McNeill 2000:281).

McNeill points to changes in the sizes of cities, the nature and extent of garbage and pollution, and the size of ecological footprints.

(B) In the broader sustainability literature, the great social changes of the recent period are sometimes referred to as the "Great Acceleration" and the epoch is sometimes referred to as "the Anthropocene" (Steffen et al 2007).

These and many other changes demonstrate a distinct increase in the rates of change in many human-environment interactions as a result of amplified human impact on the environment after World War II—a period that we term the “Great Acceleration. (Hibbard et al 2007).

For an up-to-date review of the environmental focus on contemporary urbanization, see Seto et al. (2010).

(3) The World Picture

For twentieth century changes in cities, urban scholars Gordon McGranahan and David Satterthwaite stress globalization and the expansion of the world capitalist economy over the strictly environmental factors discussed above:

The most important underpinning of urban change during the twentieth century was the large increase in the size of the global economy. In general, the nations with the largest cities and with the most rapid increase in their levels of urbanization are the nations with the largest increases in their economies. (McGranahan and Satterthwaite 2003: 246).

Unlike many urban scholars who rarely think beyond the modern western world, these two are clearly concerned with urbanization all over the world today (as their many fine publications indicate).

(4) An Archaeological Response

While not disagreeing with any of the observations listed above,  I think that there are still non-trivial continuities, similarities and parallels between modern and ancient cities. Indeed, this whole blog is based on this premise. But just how far can the similarities be pushed? We still need considerable comparative research to answer this question. Many of my posts in this blog illustrate my own exploration of this theme. But I am not the only archaeologist who feels this way. A number of years ago, Monica Smith (no relation!) made this observation:

Rather than seeing cities as fundamentally changed by the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the global connections of the modern world, new anthropological research suggests that both ancient and modern cities are the result of a limited range of configurations that structure human action in concentrated populations (Monica Smith 2003:2).

I heartily agree!! What do you think? I'd be interested in other opinions on this matter.

References:

Hibbard, Kathy A., Paul J. Crutzen, Eric F. Lambin, Diana M. Liverman, Nathan J. Mantua, John R. McNeill, Bruno Messerli, and Will Steffen

2007    Group Report: Dacadal-scale Interactions of Humans and the Environment. In Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth, edited by Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen, pp. 341-375. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

McGranahan, Gordon and David Satterthwaite

2003    Urban Centers: An Assessment of Sustainability. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28:243-274.

McNeill, John R.

2000    Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. Norton, New York.

Moran, Emilio F.

2008    Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology. 3rd ed. Westview, Boulder.

Seto, Karen C., Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez, and Michail Fragkias

2010    The New Geography of Contemporary Urbanization and the Environment. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35:167-194.

Smith, Monica L.

2003    Introduction: The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, edited by Monica L. Smith, pp. 1-36. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Steffen, Will, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill

2007    The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature? Ambio 36:614-621.

Why are premodern cities important today?

Medieval street life

Sociology without history resembles a Hollywood set: great scenes, sometimes brilliantly painted, with nothing and nobody behind them. Seen only as the science of the present or — worse yet — of the timeless, sociology misses its vocation to fix causation in time. It thereby vitiates its vital influence on historical thinking, its influence as the study of social mechanisms operating continuously in specific times and places.

-- Charles Tilly (2008:120)

Substitute "urban studies" for sociology, and this quote from Charles Tilly nicely describes one of the reasons that premodern cities are important if we are to understanding cities and urbanism today, throughout history, and in the future. (I use the term "premodern" to include ancient cities around the world, European cities prior to the industrial revolution and world cities prior to the expansion of European imperialism).

I see at least four reasons for the continuing importance of premodern cities for understanding modern and more general processes of urbanization. Two are examples of what I call the "urban trajectory" argument: trajectories of urban change over the decades and even over centuries show us how cities work, and how they respond to and shape developments in their social contexts. The other two reasons are versions of the "sample size" argument: adding premodern cities to the list of modern cities gives us a much larger sample, which helps us in both understanding and planning/managing cities.

Kilwa (Swahili)

 1. Urban trajectory argument, A: the long perspective

The quote from Winston Churchill that I use in the description of this blog (see the right-hand column) justifies this argument: "The farther back we look, the farther ahead we can see." Archaeological data on ancient cities describe trajectories of urban expansion and retraction over long periods. Why were some cities successful for many centuries while others rose and fell within a decade or two? Why did cities initially develop in several parts of the world independently? Big urban questions like these can only be answered with the long time perspective of archaeology and history.

2. Urban trajectory argument, B: the short perspective

To understand the nature or structure of cities (or society) today, we need to know how they developed in recent decades and years. The urban past created the urban present, an argument Richard Harris has illustrated in several works (Harris and Lewis 1998; Harris and Smith 2011). Sometimes cities develop in ways that leave them little opportunity to easily change (this is called path dependence), and in other cases urban development is more flexible, allowing more options today and in the future. This second trajectory argument also applies in the past. Europeans constructed colonial cities in the New World, but those of Latin America differed from those in North America. Part of the reason for these differences is the existence of vibrant indigenous urban traditions in many parts of Latin America, but not in North America. Indigenous trajectories influenced subsequent urban development.

Babylon

3. Sample size argument A:  a broader base for generalization and explanation

Many observers are struck by regularities in city form and process. All cities have neighborhoods. Nearly all cities have a civic center with prominent public buildings. Many cities have higher population densities than smaller settlements in their society. To fully appreciate the patterns of similarity and difference among cities, scholars need to draw on as large a sample of cities as possible. Most works on urban history and comparative urbanism focus wholly on the western urban tradition, which obviously biases our picture of cities (and many other social phenomena). But cities in other eras may or may not have resembled European cities. Cities in pre-European Africa and in Mesoamerica were much more dispersed than western cities, yet they shared the same urban functions (administrative roles, economic activities, religious significance, etc.). We will never be able to understand the phenomenon of urbanism unless we consider the widest possible range of cities.

4. Sample size argument, B: more choices for planners and managers to draw on

Urban growth and its affects on society and the environment is surely one of the major social problems facing us today. How can we cope with persistent poverty, crime, and overcrowding in many cities? How can we reduce the ecological footprint or the carbon footprint of our growing cities to make them more environmentally sustainable? Planners, politicians, managers (and scholars) who consider these issues need ideas. If they consider a wider range of cities and urban traditions, they may be able to come up with better solutions to today's urban issues. I am not arguing that a detailed knowledge of, say, Teotihuacan, will by itself illuminate the problems of a city like Phoenix today. But if planners are familiar with Teotihuacan, Machu Picchu, Ur, Timbuktoo, Kilwa, and other premodern cities, this may help stimulate creative thinking on how we might improve cities today.

Teotenango, Mexico. The ancient ruins are on a cliff above the modern town

References

Harris, Richard and Robert Lewis
1998    How the Past Matters: North American Cities in the Twentieth Century. Journal of Urban Affairs 20:159-174.

Harris, Richard and Michael E. Smith
2011    The History in Urban Studies: A Comment. Journal of Urban Affairs 33(1):99-105.

Smith, Michael E.
2010    Sprawl, Squatters, and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20:229-253.

Tilly, Charles
2008    Explaining Social Processes. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO.

Viking Urban Planning

Fig 1 - A Trelleborg fortress today

The very phrase "Viking urban planning" may strike some as an oxymoron. The Vikings are famous for raiding, conquering, and pillaging, hardly activities that resonate with the the careful design and planning of cities. Yet a group of geometrical fortresses exhibiting exacting planning were built in Denmark by the Viking king Harald Bluetooth around A.D. 980, and these give us insights into cities and planning in the Viking age. Most of my discussion here is based on Roesdahl (1987), an excellent discussion of these fascinating sites.

Fig 2 - Plans of three Trelleborg sites

At least four of these fortresses are known. They are often referred to as the "Trelleborg fortresses," after the first one to be discovered and excavated. Figure 2 shows plans of three of these settlements. These sites are clearly planned; they correspond to both of the measures of urban planning for ancient cities: standardization among cities, and coordination of buildings within cities (Smith 2007). The main features they share are: outer circular walls  with ditches; with four gates at the compass points; two axial roads that link the gates; a ring-road inside the rampart; and large standardized long-houses arranged in quadrangles (Roesdahl, p.211). Within each site, the houses are identical in size and form.

Fig 3 - Reconstruction by Holger Schmidt of Firkat

Fig 4 - Reconstruction of a house

Based on artifact dating and dendrochronology, all of the Trelleborg fortress sites were built in or close to A.D. 980, and they were only used for a very short time. Although the housing at first glance looks like soldier's barracks, excavation shows that men, women, and children lived in the sites, and that some were craftsmen. Roesdahl interprets these as "very special and very organized royal manors" (p. 217). Several reconstructions of the houses have been made (Fig. 4).

Fig 5 - Realm of Harald Bluetooth

King Harald Bluetooth ruled Denmark from around A.D. 958 - 985. His realm covered a sizable part of southern and western Scandinavia (figure 5). He was the first Viking king to convert to Christianity, and he set up elaborate rune stones at Jelling (fig. 6), in association with several large burial monuments. In case you were wondering, Harald Bluetooth provided the name for the Bluetooth wireless communication technology, developed by the Swedish company Ericsson. The Bluetooth logo consists of the runic characters for King Harald Bluetooth's name.

Fig 6 - Harald's runestone at Jelling

Fig 7 - Bluetooth runes

These circular fortresses are unique in Scandinavian urban history. They do not have clear predecessors or successors. In the interpretation of Else Roesdahl, they were built in a time of decline and crisis, "primarily to control a country ready to revolt." (p. 226). Within a few years, Harald's son, Sven Forkbeard, revolted, and Harald was killed in one of the resulting battles.

The Trelleborg fortresses are important as monuments of Harald Bluetooth's reign, and as a good example of the unusual practice of circular urban design (Smith 2007; Johnston 1983). But perhaps most importantly, their discovery and excavation overturned existing ideas of the urban accomplishments of the Vikings. In the words of Roesdahl,

[The discovery of] Trelleborg causes a sensation. Nobody had thought the barbaric Vikings able to plan, organise or construct such a sophisticated structure, and the learned world conseequently had to rethink their concept of Vikings. (p.208)

References


Brink, Stefan and Neil Price (editors)
2008    The Viking World. Routledge, New York.

Johnston, Norman J.
1983    Cities in the Round. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

Roesdahl, Else
1987    The Danish Geometrical Viking Fortresses and their Context. Anglo-Norman Studies 9:208-226.

Smith, Michael E.
2007    Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning. Journal of Planning History 6(1):3-47.


*** ONE of my favorite historical novels is The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson, which starts with the end of Harald Bluetooth's reign and follows its Viking protagonists for several decades. According to a book review by NPR.org:   "Even though The Long Ships was first published in 1941, it remains the literary equivalent of an action-and intrigue-filled adventure movie that won't insult your intelligence...Bengtsson is an infectiously enthusiastic and surprisingly funny writer--even readers with zero interest in the Europe of a millennium ago will want to keep turning the pages." How can one not like a book whose characters have  names like Sven Forkbeard and Ragnar Hairy-Breeks?

The Ancient History of Gated Communities

Fig 1 - Modern gated community

Gated communities are a hot topic of research and discussion in urban studies. As summarized in a recent encyclopedia entry:

 Although gated communities are eulogized by residents, developers, and real estate agents for providing safe family spaces and secure financial investments, they have received a largely negative press from academics and the media, who perceive them as private fortresses that destroy the vibrancy of the city through their exclusivity. (Lemanski 2008)

The dominant view -- both scholarly and popular -- emphasizes security and fear. People are shutting themselves away in gated communities to keep out crime and undesirables. The spread of gated communities is said to produce alienation and anomie among residents, and a socially divided or segregated urban landscape (Blakely and Sneider 1997; Low 2001). Some research, however, challenges the security/fear interpretation of modern gated communities. Andrew Kirby and colleagues (Kirby et al. 2006), for example, report that in a sample of Phoenix gated communities, "residents are not alienated" (p.29), and the communities are not responses to a "culture of fear."

Fig 2- Informal neighborhood gate, Lima

The fear/security factor may, in fact, be more prominent in gated communities in poor neighborhoods of cities in the developing world than in modern U.S. or European cities. In Peru, enclosed areas are being established long after initial construction, by the residents themselves. Jörg Plöger (2006) studied neighborhoods in Lima, Peru, and found that most neighborhoods are "enclosed" or sealed off (with barriers and fences) by their residents for reasons of security (figure 2). These gates are installed not by developers or municipal authorities, but by the residents; they are informal, not formal, urban features. And even Dharavi, the Mumbai slum (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) where people are living in extremely close quarters, is the setting for many fenced-off residential zones. Jan Nijman (2010) explores how Dharavi challenges a number of standard notions in urban studies, a field whose models are based overwhelmingly on modern western cities.

Fig. 3- Chinese walled compound

These studies of the developing world are important for establishing a broader comparative perspective for gated communities. When we consider the past, the diversity of forms and meanings of gated communities increases even more. It turns out that gated communities have been common in Chinese cities for more than a millennium (Xu and Yang 2009), and they have been prominent in Mexico from the time of Spanish conquest until the present (Scheinbaum 2008). Figure 3 shows a traditional Chinese walled compound (i.e., a gated community). Interestingly, these features  resemble Inka walled compounds (called kancha) in Peru (figure 4). There is no historical connection at all between the Chinese and Inka examples; these are independent adaptations to what were probably similar urban forces and conditions. My guess would attribute this similarity in form to the importance of kinship and lineage in Chinese and Inka society. Several generations of families live together,

Fig 4 - Inka Kancha

 and the compound wall served as a visible marker of the close-knit social unit.


As in most premodern cities, the Chinese compounds were probably designed by their residents, and built either by the residents or by builders contracted by the residents. We know less about the construction of Inka compounds. The Inka state was strongly bureaucratic, and officials supervised and carried out many activities that were left to individual families in most early societies. Maps of Inka settlements show that these kancha units are highly standardized, perhaps because of central planning (Hyslop 1990).

Fig 5- Walled compounds in Chang'an

In some ancient cities, there is clear evidence for state planning in the construction of walled residential compounds. In Tang period Chang'an China, more than a millennium ago, the more than one million residents lived in walled-in neighborhoods. Gates closed off these neighborhoods at night, and guards made sure people stayed in their walled compounds and off the streets. A stone map from A.D. 1080 (figure 5) shows these ancient gated communities. In the following Song period, the state's power declined with a dramatic rise in commerce. In place of two enclosed markets, shops and stalls proliferated along the streets, gates were no longer guarded, and a real urban street life was generated. In this case, the gated communities were part of a state policy of control of the population, and when the policies changed to allow more freedom and self-determination, the gates came down (Heng 1999)

Fig 6- Old neighborhood gate, Jerusalem

Just the opposite process occurred in the Islamic cities of the Ottoman period in the Near East -- the neighborhood walls came down not from a loosening of state control, but from the imposition of strong control. These traditional cities had enclosed neighborhoods whose walls and gates were built by the residents (figure 6) to protect their neighborhood from outsiders; municipal and state authorities did not concern themselves with regulating life at the neighborhood or household level. But when these cities were conquered by European empires, one of the first tasks of the imperial overlords was to tear down the neighborhood gates. The new rulers were worried that people might be planning resistance in these closed neighborhoods, and the streets were opened up so that officials could begin to see what was going on in these areas (Abu-Lughod 1987).

Fig 7 - Hohokam walled compound

If there is this much variation in the social contexts of gated communities in premodern (and modern) cities, how can archaeologists begin to interpret ancient gated communities at sites where there are no written records? The Hohohkam of southern Arizona, in the final period prior to collapse and abandonment of their towns (ca 12th-15th centuries), started building walls around their neighborhoods (figure 7). Previously, their houses had been built in groups or clusters, with without walls. What does this signal? Or consider the Iron Age oppida towns in Europe (these are the towns defeated by Julius Caesar in his conquest of Gaul). Some of them had gated communities (figure 8). The walls in this reconstruction are not very high. Do they signal social exclusion, or perhaps just a way to keep the farm animals from wandering?

Fig 8 - Iron Age walled compound

These comparisons have intrigued me for a number of years. What is needed is a comprehensive comparative study of walled compounds / gated communities in the premodern world. Synthetic studies like Grant and Mittelstaedt (2004) are a good place to start. Perhaps we can figure out some of the social parameters of these features, and allow archaeologists to link the spatial layouts to social processes. Or perhaps the situation is just too messy and diverse. But until someone attacks this problem, we will never know.


References

Abu-Lughod, Janet L.
1987    The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 19:155-176.

Blakely, Edward J. and Mary G. Snyder
1997    Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Grant, Jill and Lindsey Mittelsteadt
2004    Types of Gated Communities. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 31:913-930.

Heng, Chye Kiang
1999    Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu.

Hyslop, John
1990    Inka Settlement Planning. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Kirby, Andrew, Sharon L. Harlan, Larissa Larsen, Edward J. Hackett, Bob Bolin, Amy Nelson, Tom Rex, and Shapard Wolf
2006    Examining the Significance of Housing Enclaves in the Metropolitan United States of America. Housing, Theory, and Society 23:19-33.

Lemanski, Charlotte
2009    Gated Communities. In Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, edited by Ray Hutchison, pp. Article 109. Sage, New York.  http://www.sage-ereference.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/urbanstudies/Article_n109.html.

Low, Setha M.
2001    The Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear. American Anthropologist 103:45-68.

Nijman, Jan
2010    A Study of Space in Mumbai's Slums. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 101:4-17.

Plöger, Jörg
2006    Practices of Socio-Spatial Control in the Marginal Neighbourhoods of Lima, Peru. Trialog: A Journal for Planning and Building in the Third World 89(2):32-36.

Scheinbaum, Diana
2008    Gated Communities in Mexico City: An Historical Perspective. Urban Design International 13:241-252.

Xu, Miao and Zhen Yang
2009    Design History of China's Gated Cities and Neighbourhoods: Prototype and Evolution. Urban Design International 14:99-117.

Arrival City

Teotihuacan, Mexico

Ever since the first cities, people have been moving into town from the countryside. The earliest cities in southern Mesopotamia (Uruk) and central Mexico (Teotihuacan) grew from rural-to-urban migration. These two settlements got their start as small political capitals. Then they went through a period of explosive growth, while at the same time their hinterlands were depopulated. Although archaeologists cannot trace specific migrants from the village to the city, it's pretty clear that the people who abandoned the small rural settlements were the ones who swelled the capitals with their numbers.

Prior to the twentieth century, the level of urban disease was so high that cities were demographic sinks. That is, mortality was high, with more people dying than being born. I first read about this situation in William McNeill's 1976 book, Plagues and Peoples, a very readable book that is still valuable and fascinating today. The only way that premodern cities could maintain their population (or grow) was through migration from the countryside. Thus migration was the lifeline of premodern cities--without it, they would shrink and die.

Although urban migration has always been with us, it first came to world attention in the mid-twentieth century. Throughout the developing world, a combination of global and local economic forces led to population growth and increasing poverty in the countryside. Peasant families moved into cities in large numbers. This led to the creation of large shantytowns around most of the big cities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. At first, governments, the media, and even scholars decried these places as settings for crime, violence, poverty, and the breakdown of families and social values. But ethnographic fieldwork by urban anthropologists (pioneered by Oscar Lewis and William Mangin) showed that these shantytowns were full of hard-working poor people who hustled to make a living while maintaining the family structure and value system (see Mangin 1970; Turner 1991).

This massive exodus from rural to urban never ceased. Now more than half of the human species lives in cities, and all over the world rural peoples continue to migrate to shantytowns and other urban settlements. In his new book, Arrival City, journalist Doug Saunders (2011) describes this migration process around the world, from Africa to China to the United States. His findings echo the results of the urban anthropologists from fifty years ago: most migrants work hard to make a living, creating vibrant and dynamic urban neighborhoods in the process. Like their cousins two generations ago, these migrants maintain contact with their villages of origin, regularly sending money back home. Like premodern cities all over the world, people can live, work and relax in their own neighborhood. If the authorities provide key services (buses most of all, but also street lighting and other infrastructural features like paved roads, sewage systems and water), these urban villages become successful and sustainable neighborhoods.

Doug Saunders has a website on the book, "Arrival City" and a nice photo essay in the magazine Foreign Policy.  There are excellent and insightful reviews in  The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.  In the latter review, Fred Pearce says,

This may be the best popular book on cities since Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities half a century ago. Certainly it shares the same optimism about human aspiration amid overcrowded buildings and unplanned urban jungles, and the same plea for planners to help rather than stifle those dreams.

The picture painted by Saunders is vivid and contemporary, but the phenomenon of Arrival Cities -- those places where the migrants end up -- is quite ancient. If the ancient Sumerian scribes had been inclined to inscribe their cuneiform tablets with stories of urban migrants rather than accounts of the temple's herds of sheep or stories of the great deeds of kings and gods, this book might have been written five thousand years ago. Migration is absolutely crucial to urban dynamics, a regular pattern in the wide urban world.

Early Sumerian cuneiform text.

References:

Mangin, William (editor)
1970    Peasants in Cities: Readings in the Anthropology of Urbanization. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.

 McNeill, William H.
1976    Plagues and Peoples. Academic Press, New York.

Saunders, Doug
2011    Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping our World.  Pantheon, New York.

Turner, John F. C.
1991    Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. Marion Boyars, London.

Cosmograms, Sociograms, and Cities Built as Images

Idealized Chinese Cosmogram Capital

Ten years ago a group of archaeologists published a collection of papers titled "Were Cities Built as Images?" (Carl et al. 2000). They discussed the notion that ancient urban planners laid out cities as pictorial diagrams. In some urban traditions, such as Imperial China and ancient Khmer Angkor, cities were designed explicitly as models of the cosmos ("cosmograms"). For many ancient urban traditions, however, there is little or no evidence for urban cosmograms, but this has not stopped many writers from asserting a cosmological source for urban design principles. A concept used much less frequently is the "microcosm" or "sociogram," referring to an urban design that encodes not cosmology, but features of social organization. I think this latter category may have been more common than is typically appreciated.

Imperial China: Capital Cities were Cosmograms

Feng shui masters pick new capital site

The best examples of ancient cities laid out in imitation of the cosmos are the imperial capitals of ancient Chinia (see figure above). Written sources describe a belief that the emperor had to act in harmony with heaven or else his luck would run out and the kingdom would suffer. One aspect of this belief was the idea that the emperor should build a new capital in a propitious place and that it should be built as a model of the cosmos: a symmetrical rectangle with nine gates, crossing avenues, and a royal compound in the center. The figure at left shows the imperial feng shui masters selecting the site for a new capital. For these Chinese cities, see Wheatley (1971) and Steinhardt (1990).


Ancient Mesoamerica: Cities were Not Cosmograms

There is a common "cartoon view" of ancient societies which holds that ancient peoples were obsessed with religion, death, and the afterlife, thinking about these things more than they thought about daily life. Everyone has heard this about ancient Egypt, but the belief is much more common. "Those people were not logical people like us," the cartoon view holds, "They were irrational prisoners of their religion." This view is nonsense. Ancient people were very much like you and I. Although they lived under very different cultural and social conditions, ancient people were logical and rational. Religion was important to them, but they were generally not fanatical or obsessive about it.

One expression of this cartoon view is the idea that all ancient cities were like the Chinese capitals in being cosmograms. The extent to which some writers are willing to speculate in the absence of evidence in order to uphold the cosmogram view is impressive (and depressing). I have debunked this view for the Classic Maya cities in Smith (2005). To put it simply, there is no evidence that the Maya, or the Aztecs or any other ancient Mesoamerican peoples, viewed their cities as cosmograms. Spanish writers recorded thousands of pages about the religious beliefs of the Aztecs and Mayas, providing great detail about the gods, rituals, and myths, but there is not a word about cosmograms.

The central district of Moundville

Microcosms and Sociograms

The absence of cosmograms does not mean that for form and design of ancient cities were arbitrary or devoid of social meaning. Vernon Knight (1998) used the concept of "sociogram" to describe a model in which aspects of social organization were expressed in the arrangement of public platforms at Mississippian chiefdom capital Moundville (see figure). A series of temple mounds and residential mounds were arranged around a plaza in a form similar to the way that clan buildings were arranged around plazas in Chickasaw villages as described by European observers. Kate Spielmann (2008) adds several archaeological examples of such sociograms, mostly for the village and town layouts of small-scale societies.

Monte Alban, main plaza

Although Knight limited his definition of sociogram to ranked clans in pre-state societies, it can be generalized to urban state societies. For example, three decades ago Richard Blanton (1978) made a similar interpretation of the structures that line the plaza at the Classic-period capital Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Mexico (see map at left). Blanton argued that Monte Alban was created by a series of formerly competing chiefdoms in the Valley of Oaxaca who came together to built the impressive mountaintop city. If correct, then the main plaza at Monte Alban was a sociogram in which each of the structures lining the east and west sides of the plaza represented one of the original chiefdoms. In 1988, Olivier de Montmollin provided a parallel interpretation of the highland Maya city of Tenam Rosario, arguing that rural social groups were represented in the arrangements of plazas and structures in the capital city.

Cosmograms Today?

Burley's plan of Canberra

Urban cosmograms like the ancient Chinese capitals no longer exist in the modern world. Although some specialized religious compounds may be designed as cosmograms, whole cities are not. In the account of Amos Rapoport (1993), modern capital (and other) cities have lost the high-level symbolism and meaning of many ancient cities.Cities are more secular in layout today. But this has not stopped conspiracy enthusiasts from claiming that esoteric knowledge has been used to create secret cosmograms of some modern cities and buildings. Peter Proudfoot (1994), for example, claims that planner Walter Burley Griffin used esoteric symbols from the field of Theosophy to design the layout of Canberra in the early twentieth century. Burley's wife was a follower of Theosophy, and according to Proudfoot this led Burley to design Canberra as a secret Theosophical cosmogram. It is a fascinating book that reveals far more about the author than about the city of Canberra.

The basic message of this discussion is that not all ancient cities in the wide urban world were alike. Chinese and Khmer capitals were built as cosmograms, but Aztec and Maya capitals were not. Smaller Chinese cities were probably not cosmograms either. But the idea of encoding social meaning in city layout may have been broader and more widespread than the cosmogram concept. Are modern cities, or perhaps parts of them, laid out as sociograms? I'll have to think more about that; if you have examples or suggestions, please pass them on.


References:

Blanton, Richard E.
1978    Monte Alban: Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Zapotec Capitol. Academic Press, New York.

Carl, Peter, Barry Kemp, Ray Laurance, Robin Coningham, Charles Highan, and George L. Cowgill
2000    Viewpoint: Were Cities Built as Images? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10:327-365.

de Montmollin, Olivier
1988    Tenam Rosario: A Political Microcosm. American Antiquity 53:351-370.

Knight, Vernon J., Jr.
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Arcosanti: Paolo Soleri's futuristic vision of urbanism

Fig. 1 - view of Arcosanti

The other day my wife and I visited Arcosanti, the futuristic urban development in the desert an hour north of Phoenix (fig. 1). This is the brianchild, and life's work, of visionary architect Paolo Soleri. In the 1960s Soleri developed ideas about sustainable and livable cities for the future. At first glance, his idealized drawings and plans (figure 2) seem like unrealistic fantasies, disconnected from reality. But Arcosanti, still very much a work in progress, shows how Soleri's vision is starting to be expressed on the landscape. "Arcology" is Soleri's term for his cities (from ARChitecture and eCOLOGY).

Fig. 2 - One of Soleri's plans for a future city

Soleri advocates recycling of materials, waste reduction, energy conservation, and renewable energy sources. Cities should be dense, not sprawling. Expansion, through construction, should move upward, not outward (fig. 2), in order to reduce the impact on the landscape and keep people close together. Surrounding areas should remain as green or natural landscapes. People should be able to live, work, and shop within a relatively small area, without need for cars. Some of these ideas were later taken up by the new urbanism.

In 1961 Soleri worked out an interesting construction technique called "earth casting" for the production of dome roofs. In one variant, sand and silt are piled up into a mound, and cement is poured on top to make a dome. Spaces are left on the sides for doors and windows. Then the dirt is dug out, leaving the dome roof in place. In other variants, wood frames are used instead of earth mounds.Figure 1 shows some of the cement dome roofs at Arcosanti.

Fig. 3 - The extent of Arcosanti today

The construction of Arcosanti has been in process for four decades, and it falls far short of Soleri's original plan. Instead of the planned 5,000 residents, there are fewer than 100 people living there today. Figure 3 shows its extent today. In addition to the urban site, there is considerable land surrounding it, with gardens and orchards. Soleri refuses to take corporate donations, instead financing work through the sale of bronze and ceramic wind bells. These bells are quite nice, visually attractive with very nice sound (figure 4); we have two in our patio, where they tell us the strength of the wind. The bells are forged on site, using a casting method similar to earth casting, but on a much smaller scale. Bells are also made in Cosanti, Soleri's residence/workshop/foundry/shop in Paradise Valley (much closer to Phoenix). Much of the labor to construct Arcosanti is done by volunteers who attend month-long workshops to learn Soleri's construction methods by apprenticeship.

Fig. 4 - Bronze bells forged at Arcosanti

Arcosanti is a kind of utopian community. It is staffed by true believers in Soleri's vision. There are periodic workshops were students and volunteers contribute labor and learn to build using Soleri's methods and materials. The tour guide, clearly a follower of his ideas, told us that living space is apportioned on the basis of need: large families get larger quarters and smaller families get smaller lodgings. I asked what would happen if someone wanted a bigger apartment just to have a big place; I was told that things did not work that way in Arcosanti.

Fig. 5 - Small evaporative cooling pool.

My wife and I found Arcosanti to be a pleasant and very livable place. There are trees and vegetation and the construction is aesthetically pleasing. Soleri's positive construction methods are clearly in evidence, including passive solar heating methods for the winter, and evaporative cooling ponds (fig. 5) for the summer. But Arcosanti is not a city yet, and perhaps it will never be one. At the current construction rate, it will take decades, perhaps centuries, to complete.

Ultimately I was frustrated from the tour - I want to see a city with people, not a pleasant construction site with  some finished buildings. Can Soleri's ideas work in practice? What would life be like in such a settlement? I am fascinated by his vision and by the parts of Arcosanti that have already been built, but even after four decades it seems too soon to get an idea of what an "arcology" would be like.

Arcosanti has a nice website with lots of information about its history, construction, ideals, as well as volunteer opportunities, tours, and the like. Paolo Soleri has a number of books that explain his ideas and work; several are listed below. David Grierson has done a study of Arcosanti and has several papers available on the Internet. His work, like most things available on Arcosanti, are strongly positive and supportive of Soleri's vision. I did find one negative scholarly voice, however. In an interesting and insightful article in the University of Michigan journal Agora, urban planner Catherine Gaines Sanders states,

"Arcosanti, like many experiments in sustainable living, has been successful; however, it is not a city. ... These numbers [100 residents, not the planned 5,000] do not constitute the 'urban effect'. As an urban experiment, Arcosanti is a failure." (Sanders 2008:21)

While that sounds like a harsh judgment, I must agree with it. Soleri's ideas and vision are positive and inspiring, but they have yet to be put into practice. While I respect his insistence on independence from commercial or corporate funding, the result is an unfinished settlement in the desert. Perhaps he has valuable advice for the future of urbanism, but until someone builds an "arcology", the jury is still out.

REFERENCES

Grierson, David
2001    The Architecture of Communal Living: Lessons from Arcosanti in Arizona. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Communal Studies Conference: Communal Living on the threshold of a New Millennium: Lessons and Perspectives, pp. 215-228. International Communal Studies Association, Israel.

2003    Arcology and Arcosanti: Towards a Sustainable Built Environment. Electronic Green Journal 18:(published online).  .

2003    Arcosanti. In Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, edited by Karen Christensen and David Levinson, pp. (published online). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. 


Sanders, Catherine Gaines
    2008    Paolo Soleri: Another Urban Utopian. Agora 2:18-22.

Soleri, Paolo
1973    Arcology : the city in the image of man. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

1987    Arcosanti : an urban laboratory? 2nd ed. VTI Press, Santa Monica, CA.