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The World Goes to Town

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mwkruse
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The Economist: The World Goes to Town

After this year the majority of people will live in cities. Human history will ever more emphatically become urban history, says John Grimond.

WHETHER you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia known as Eden, or more prosaically on the savannahs of present-day east Africa, it is clear that Homo sapiens did not start life as an urban creature. Man's habitat at the outset was dominated by the need to find food, and hunting and foraging were rural pursuits. Not until the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago, did he start building anything that might be called a village, and by that time man had been around for about 120,000 years. It took another six millennia, to the days of classical antiquity, for cities of more than 100,000 people to develop. Even in 1800 only 3% of the world's population lived in cities. Sometime in the next few months, though, that proportion will pass the 50% mark, if it has not done so already. Wisely or not, Homo sapiens has become Homo urbanus.

In terms of human history this may seem a welcome development. It would be contentious to say that nothing of consequence has ever come out of the countryside. The wheel was presumably a rural invention. Even city-dwellers need bread as well as circuses. And if Dr Johnson and Shelley were right to say that poets are the true legislators of mankind, then all those hills and lakes and other rural delights must be given credit for inspiring them.

But the rural contribution to human progress seems slight compared with the urban one. Cities' development is synonymous with human development. …

Comments

2 responses to “The World Goes to Town”

  1. Denis Hancock Avatar
    Denis Hancock

    Cities’ development is synonymous with human development. …

    Not quite.
    Human development, in part, was driven by meeting their needs. Food was one of them. When they figured out that growing it in one place was preferable to walking all over the place trying to gather grains, that led to the development of communities. (you need to live near your fields). When they figured out that domesticating and penning up cattle-like animals was a lot more convenient than running them down in a sometimes fruitless chase, there was even more reason to settle down.
    Now we have a society that would gag if they know where their food came from, and who have no understanding of their agricultural roots.
    Human development is not necessarily progress…

    Reply
  2. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    “Synonymous” probably confuses cause and effect issues.
    It is true however that urbanization and improvement in material quality of life are highly correlated. One economic study showed that (in real dollars) that global per capita income was $90 a year in 12,000 BCE. It took until 1750 for it to double to $180. In 2000, it was $6,600. The percentage of people living on less than $1 a day in 1820 was 84%. That had declined to 39% by 1970. It is now less than 20%. All of this correlates in sync with urbanization and industrialization. In the meantime, Infant mortality rates have dropped from 250 out of 1,000 births to 6 out of 1,000. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. It is also true that in most cultures that developed cities, that cities were the icon of the culture’s economic and spiritual vitality.
    “Integral” may have been a better word than synonymous.
    “…and who have no understanding of their agricultural roots.”
    But the upside is that they are free to pursue lives that were purely unimaginable 100 years ago. I have not interest in returning to Green Acres. 🙂

    Reply

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