An archaeologist explores the enduring appeal of urban life
MONICA SMITH begins her provocative and engaging tour of 6,000 years of “crowd-based living” with a question: Why cities? The problems that arise from packing too many people into too small a space range from inadequate food supply and housing to unmanageable waste, not to mention disease, crime and the daily indignities of living on top of the neighbours. These difficulties began in ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus river valley, and in the sprawling metropolises of the Mayan and Aztec empires.
Of course, city life can sometimes be unpleasant. The hustle can foster anxiety. Disease can spread easily in congested neighbourhoods. Newcomers sometimes find themselves no better off than they were in the countryside. All these problems were as familiar in imperial Rome as in Brazil’s favelas today. But Ms Smith is an optimist—perhaps to a fault. Even the worst blights, such as shanty towns and overflowing landfills are, for her, as much cause for celebration as worry.
A recurrent theme is the continuity of urban life across both time and space. When the conquistadors encountered the metropolises of the New World, they felt an instant sense of recognition. There were the same broad thoroughfares and marketplaces, grand religious buildings and crowded slums. Ms Smith thinks their “experiences with New World cities like Tenochtitlan and Cuzco provide the nearest thing to a laboratory condition for capturing the universality of the urban form”.
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