Urbanism & Planning (GESP1)
Summary various authors
2018-2019
Useable for upcoming years, but can therefore be incomplete.
Book of literature: The City Reader - 6th edition.
Can contain brackets with personal notes and Dutch translations.
1.1 “Introduction to part one”
The spread and increase of urban populations have been the central facts of human history.
People started building cities way before the year zero. This happened, independently, in a
couple of places. They built the same kind of cities: pyramids and towers, near a river, massive
irrigation systems outside the walls and the cities were driven by all-powerful religions or
military rulers. All cities developed (kind of) similar social structures, economic functions,
political order and architectural monumentality. The same features define a city today: citadel
(government), marketplace (economic activity) and community (place of homes and local
culture).
> The first discontinuity of urban history is the shift to complex social, political and economic
systems in for example Mesopotamia. This is called the ‘Urban Revolution’.
Before the whole concepts of ‘states’ as we know them today, cities ruled and competed with
each other. In cities, specialisation took place. Not all people had to worry about producing
food and having enough water. Not only the concept of specialisation developed in cities, also
social and political structures.
> Specialisation made that people can go to school without having to worry about getting enough
food nowadays.
> The social/political structures as we have today developed there. You could say: Cities + time =
modern social/political structures.1
Ancient Greek cities developed in a very different way. The cities were not big, sometimes only
a thousand inhabitants, and political structures which are comparable with town politics. The
perfect size was described by Aristotle as ‘one small enough so that a single citizen’s voice
could be heard by every other citizen’. However, the cultural, artistic and intellectual
principles developed a lot faster.
> The key contribution of the Greek cities were urban citizenship a
nd democratic self-government
in a polis.
Rome developed from a couple of villages along the Tiber to a polis (sized like the Greek one)
and then exploded into a giant megapolis. They contributed a lot to urban life (see > section).
What they didn’t do well was the concept of community and participation in the city, like the
Greek did.
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In history, people were scattered all across the globe. Cities that developed early in time, had to deal with
problems we have to deal with today: living on a small plot of land with a lot of people, keeping the city safe, etc.
,> The roads, aqueducts and sewers renewed the engineering, the military and colonial
administration spread a common law and set a common peace and the spread of Roman
culture created a widespread hegemony.
Urban life fell apart in the Middle Ages in Europe. But cities in India and China developed and
became imperial systems as well. Cities dominated by Islam religion became centers of powers.
Other cities in Europe started to revive around the year 1000 and became small centers of
commerce. They gained power and later independence through their successful economic
activity.
> With the creation of nation-states, the city became a battleground for conflicting cultures and
dissonant ways of life.
> When market capitalism and a new industrial economic order were introduced, the last
vestiges of the medieval city were destroyed by separating the Church from the economy and
reducing its role to a social one.
Europe dominated politically and economically through exploration/discovery/expansion. The
United States made itself independent. Therefore, those continents had an advantage when
the Industrial Revolution hit the world.
> It was the first phase of industrial urbanism. The shape (in every way) changed, by developments
in technology. E specially after 1920, the standard of living increased dramatically. The life
expectancy of people living in cities increased as well.
> Because of this wealth, the middle class moved to suburbs. Segregation by social class was
created and the city center was (almost) abandoned and left for the lowest class. The suburbs
spread and so called sprawl w as created.
Urbanism took another turn when the suburban sprawl turned Los Angeles (CA) into a true
megapolis, with lots of cars and highways.
> The reliance (over-reliance) on cars were characteristic.
> After this phase, the business moved (partly) away from the city center to the decentralized
edge city. The commutes started to go suburb to suburb.
At the end of the cold war, globalisation emerged and created a world city network. These
cities with reliance on globalisation, can be called world cities, global cities, technopoles and
information cities.
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,1.2 “The Urbanization of the Human Population” by Kingsley Davis
(1965)
Kingsley Davis (1908-1996) was a sociologist and demographer. He pioneered historical urban
demography and was fascinated by the phenomenon ‘urbanization’.
Urban societies of today have urban agglomerations which are bigger than ever and have a
higher proportion of the population living in those agglomerations. Living in a present-day city,
you are required to have much more human contact and contains social complexity.
> Cities are social constructions and the buildings are just an outcome of social, economic and
political need.
Urbanization is the proportion of a population living in cities ( so it isn’t the same as the growth of
cities).
> A common line between urban and rural, is if the place has 100.000 inhabitants, or more. This
can, of course, vary between countries.
> The real problem is: where to draw a line between the urban and the rural area? Before WWI,
this wasn’t much of a problem. But since then, people started to spread out, ignoring political
boundaries. e.g. The population of New York City is given to be around 8 million. When you
count the ‘spillover’ in New Jersey, the population has risen to 14 million.
Medieval cities did not develop as cities develop today. That’s because people had to trade, so
agriculture had to be traded against crafts: they couldn’t prosper from agriculture alone. Also
the feudal social system prevented the gain of political power.
That’s why medieval cities had a close connection between industry and commerce. This
connection is a key ingredient to urbanize. This breakthrough came eventually when energy and
machinery were invented. Europe were a highly agricultural place just before the Industrial
Revolution, and therefore the transformation to an industrial society went extremely fast.
> The later the country became industrialized, the faster was its urbanization.
There is a strong connection between economic development and urbanization. Urbanization
is, however, a finitive process. This does not mean that economic development or the growth of
cities will end. All cities will follow this pattern, thus far, called the S-curve.
The S-curve can go down again
(de-urbanization) , it just did not happen yet.
The urbanisation2 will start and then it will
attenuate. This is followed by a rapid growth
(due to an/the Industrial Revolution), till it hits
a percentage of 50. The urbanization numbers
will not grow, or slightly, to a maximum of 75
percent.
2
mainly rural-to-urban urbanization
2
, If a country is 100% urbanized, it can still grow (always connection between urban-rural).
Urbanization will rise because:
a. Rural settlements will grow and will be classified as cities;
b. The excess of births over deaths are greater in the city than in the country;
c. People move from the country to the city.
> (a) never had a major impact, (b) never has been the case (in the latter half of the 19th
century it was actually the opposite) and that leaves us with (c). This means that a maintained
urbanization percentage, mend a increasing drain on the countryside, given that migration
wasn’t sufficient to close the gap.
Agriculture uses land as its prime instrument of production (land-use) , while
commerce/services use it as a site. That means that commerce/services can locate near each
other. When there is more productivity, commerce/services can provide higher wages. To let
the productivity rise in agriculture, technology is improved and therefore, manpower is not
economically attractive but also not needed. People are attracted to the higher wages, which
are located in a city. Rural population will therefore start to decline in absolute and relative
terms.
> In general, an increasing percentage of the ‘urban’ as opposed to the ‘rural’, does not mean
that the population declines.
But it does not have to. With the introduction of cars, motion pictures, a shorter workweek
etc., the disadvantage of living in a rural area is less. That’s why, in certain countries, there was
never a decline in absolute rates.
As said, urbanization will decline in a later stage. The connection between economic
development and urbanization will therefore also cease. This is because:
a. The farm families can’t furnish a significant population, because there are so many
living in cities already;
b. The growth of the rural nonfarm is as big as the growth of city population.
If urbanisation ceases, it does not have to mean that city growth ceases as well (or the other
way around).
The fast urbanization of the world happens mainly in third world countries. This urbanization
looks a lot like the western urbanization that happened earlier, but it’s definitely not the same
process:
> The third world countries are urbanizing faster than western countries did and do.
That’s why, the contrast between countries that are urbanizing now and the countries which
have been urbanized is bigger w
ith the absolute number instead of the share of the total
population. This is because:
> Third world countries have a bigger total population growth, as well rural as urban. Cities will
therefore grow fast (basically because a lot of babies are born).
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