Metropolis: A History of the City, Mankind’s Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson.
This book is a paean to the city throughout human history. Ben Wilson sees our urban areas as the lifeblood of various civilizations starting in 4000 BC with Uruk in Mesopotamia (Iraq today) and ending with Lagos, Nigeria, a city with a population 3 times larger than London with a much smaller footprint. The book is very detailed, probably too detailed unless you're a graduate student in advanced urban planning. Cities have been gigantic information exchanges, centers of commerce, and death traps during plagues. He notes that by 2025, 440 cities with 7% of all of the people on the planet will account for half of the worldwide gross domestic product.
Cities are different in many ways. Paris occupies 40 square miles for its 2 million people while Tokyo fits 40 million residents into 5,240 square miles. One of the largest slums in Asia, Dharavi in Mumbai, India, squeezes almost 1 million souls into .8 square miles. That is tight.
The tale begins with Uruk, the first city which developed next to the Euphrates River. Uruk was a center of commerce and agriculture and was home to 80,000 people living in a stratified society with slaves supporting elites. Farmers used the river to develop sophisticated irrigation systems to grow crops. Written language developed in Uruk as did administrators, the people who ran things. A prolonged drought and climate change shifted the course of the Euphrates and eventually led to the dissolution of the city around 300 AD after 4000 years of existence. Not a bad run.
Cities had a bad rap in the Bible. The Book of Genesis sees them as symbols of human pride. The best example of this was ancient Babylon, also located in Mesopotamia, which the author calls the original Sin City. Prostitution was a big business. The Book of Revelation subtly refers to the city as the Whore of Babylon. Wilson picks up on the theme of cities as dens of inequity in describing London in the late 1700s, where 8% of the population had a sexually transmitted disease compared to 1% of the country folk. Similarly, in the Dutch and Belgian cities of the 1800s the illegitimacy rate was 6% compared to .05% in the country. The author doesn’t suggest that cities are more libertine; they just provide more opportunities for debauchery.
The city was considered a bad place carried through much of history. Thomas Jefferson observed, “When we get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.” He may have a point as the author sees the city “as utopia and dystopia at the same time.” Immigration is a major theme in the book. Today, most of our major cities – Los Angeles, London, Singapore – have between 35% and 52% of their residents born in another country. Back in ancient times, Athens had over one-third of its population foreign-born, with the shipping trade bringing new people into the city-state from faraway lands. Greeks were big on the idea of polis, a self-contained community that ran its own affairs. There was public dialogue in a public space around major issues with a quorum of 6,000 needed to do any business. There were lots of civic bonding activities - parades, street parties, sporting events and religious rites. Wilson sees the fall of Athens due in part to the erosion of immigrants’ rights over time as newcomers gradually lost their right to vote and participate in civic life.
You can’t talk about cities without looking at ancient Rome. The public had access to almost 1,000 heated public bath houses, with water supplied by a superb aqueduct system. As many as 60,000 Romans could bathe at one time. Naked people were entertained by jugglers, weightlifters, and athletic contests – all the while as they discussed politics and current events and conducted business. Rich and poor came into contact in this communal activity. While some saw the public bathing craze as proof that the city was getting soft, others saw baths as integral to the civic weal. As one Roman said, “When we get down to swimming, we get down to democracy.”
Wilson notes that many great cities have access to water - Coney Island in New York City, Copacabana Beach in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Los Angeles, with miles of Pacific Ocean beaches. Sometimes people swam in unhealthful places - the East River in New York and the Thames in London were essentially open sewers as well as places to try to frolic in the water. In many American cities, pools were segregated with fights breaking out when Black families tried to use the nicer white people’s pools.
One downside to public bathing in Rome was that it was filthy. There weren't any filters or chlorine treatments. Some researchers believe that the diseases and plagues that routinely hit Rome were related to the dirty water in the public baths.
During the period between 400 to 500 AD, Rome was besieged by Visigoths and other vandals. They destroyed the aqueducts, which ended public bathing. The population dropped from 800,000 at its peak to around 35,000 by 537 AD.
From the 6th and 13th century, the Middle East, anchored by Baghdad, became the trade center of the world, often doing business with China over 12,000 miles away. The Muslim world dominated the Middle Ages, with members of the faith being very comfortable in cities with accessible mosques and thriving commercial centers. Nineteen of the world’s twenty most populous cities were Muslim or in the Chinese Empire.
In the 9th century, Baghdad was the biggest storehouse of knowledge in the world, with its House of Wisdom, a huge repository of what was known about the world. Since the city was the crossroads of international commerce, it made sense that scholars would come to Baghdad with their work. Math, astronomy and geography were popular subjects since they were disciplines that had many practical applications. All good things must come to an end. Baghdad was razed by the Mongols in the 13th century, but it was soon rebuilt and became a major city once again. The death and resurrection of cities is a major theme of the book. Urban centers periodically get wiped out but they usually make a comeback.
Street food was a big deal in these cities of yesteryear as it is today in our metropolitan areas. There is evidence of gab-and-go food in ancient cities. London in the 1800s was fed primarily by street vendors; sit-down restaurants weren’t that big a deal. Wilson observes that cities and street food are natural pairing. Renting space is expensive and many urban dwellers don’t have a lot of money so the less expensive offerings of the mobile food cart are popular.
Not all of the action in the Middle Ages was in the Middle East. London and Paris thrived. For 300 years, Lubeck, in Northern Germany on the Baltic Ocean, was the center of the Hanseatic League, the leading trade group in the region. The city prospered and was known for its support of the arts. Alas, it was wiped out in the 16th century and never quite came back to its commercial glory.
Plagues were a constant in the ancient world, often spreading along trade routes. That meant that the most successful commercial centers were more likely to be infected than out-of-the-way places. In the 1300's the Black Plague essentially wiped out Eurasia and Europe, spreading east to west. All of the major commercial centers suffered innumerable deaths.
Medieval cities were dangerous places, with 75% of all crimes being “spontaneous, impulsive acts of violence between citizens.” Paris and London were particularly nasty places.
Beginning in the 15th century, Lisbon, Portugal, became the center of the effort to launch ships to explore the world. Columbus is the best known of these seafarers, but there were many others that opened up prosperous trade relations for Portugal. Vasco de Gama and Bartolemeu Dias developed commercial opportunities with India and Muslim countries.
Coffee and cafes fueled the rise of cities. The first coffee house in Western Europe was in London in 1654. By the middle 1800s, Paris probably led the world with 40,000 caffeine shops. These establishments quickly became the center for conversation, political debates, and, in the minds of some urban leaders, of sedition, as coffee drinkers plotted all sorts of nefarious activities. Coffee houses in London doubled as places to trade government and bank stocks. Presaging Starbucks and free WIFI, coffee houses became hangouts for the first stockbrokers. Lloyds Coffee Shop became a place where brokers hung out and underwrote various things. That shop eventually became Lloyds of London, one of the world’s preeminent insurance companies.
By the mid-1800s, cities had evolved into places that were shaped by market forces and abundant leisure activities, with plays, street performers, cock fighting, freak shows, museums, and art galleries. By 1800, there were 29,500 seats available at any one time in London’s theater district, a place where people of all classes mingled. Of course, the author notes that London also had rampant crime, muggings, animal cruelty, and lots of gang fights.
Coffee wasn’t the only thing people drank. In London in 1737, there were 531 coffee houses, 207 inns, 447 taverns, and 5,975 alehouses. These establishments were places to do business and to host clubs of all sorts. There was a Farting Club, an Ugly Club, a Little Club (for men under five feet tall), a Fat Man’s Club, and a One-eyed Men Club. In the 1800s, as Londoners moved out to the outer rings of the city, many clubs closed because of a reduced customer base.
In the middle 1800s, many cities became industrial centers. By 1840, Manchester, England, had 500 smokestacks exhaling noxious fumes. Chicago was the American equivalent, with slaughterhouses added to the industrial mix. Workers were shamelessly exploited, but the cities grew, with Manchester’s population quadrupling over 40 years and Chicago going from 100 people in 1830 to 1.7 million in 1900. That is indeed explosive growth.
One downside to such growth in Chicago was the deterioration of the environment. Blood and offal of the 3 million livestock slaughtered each year polluted rivers and contaminated the ground. Rats loved the new normal in Chicago, and carried disease all over the city. In 1854, 6% of Chicago’s population died from cholera.
When the workers left the job, many headed to bars. There was one saloon for every 70 people which meant you could get a drink refill pretty quickly. Crime also took root in the soiled society, with over 1,000 gangs disrupting life. It was pretty miserable.
Today other cities are trying to deal with the consequences of a rapidly increasing population. Lagos, Nigeria, and Mumbai, India, are home to some of the biggest slums in the world, but Wilson sees some hope here. Inhabitants have carved out sub-societies that work pretty well. There are thousands of small businesses – often one person – in these neighborhoods, and this entrepreneurialism often leads to a better life for people. One of the main themes in the book is that cities are tough places to live but they do have a certain energy that can lead residents to a better place. Industrial workers in Manchester eventually organized themselves into unions, improved working conditions, started worker-friendly banks and created local organizations to give people needed assistance.
Chicago followed a similar path, with Jane Addams 1889 Hull House, the first multi-service center dedicated to urban reform, leading the way to a better life for the poor.
The Paris Syndrome Paris was different from Manchester and Chicago. Parisians are less serious than the English who tend to be dour, observes the author. Paris was planned better than most, with sewer lines and roads carefully thought out before they were laid out. Its main business is tourism. Art has a larger presence in Paris than in most cities. It is a very clean city. Wilson talks about the Paris syndrome, which is a condition where people who visit Paris don’t want to leave.
Skyscrapers Cities were getting too dense, so somebody invented the skyscraper, which first appeared in Chicago and New York City in the late 1800s. In the early 1900s, New York City had 2 million residents and 2 million commuters coming into the city each day. They were running out of space. Until new zoning regulations were enacted in 1916, skyscrapers sprung up all over the place, which cut into the quality of life for many people. By 1930, there were 2,479 high-rises in New York City, greatly outdoing Chicago, which was not land locked as was Manhattan by being an island.
The author sees skyscrapers as bringing soul to cities. By creating space by building dozens of stories into the sky, skyscrapers allowed more people to work and live in the city, which added to overall vitality. Shanghai’s illuminated skyscraper row is a major tourist attraction at night. Asian cities led the way in constructing huge buildings, but Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has the tallest skyscraper in the world at 2,717 feet.
High-rises can be problematic. They limit sunshine and change air flow. Further, many subsidized housing buildings are high rises – Cabrini Green in Chicago being notorious -– a setting that does not work well, with people being stacked on top of each other.
One of the most interesting and depressing chapters in the book is <em>Annihilatio</em>n, which documents the various ways cities have been destroyed over the years.
Destroying Cities
One occupying the city, which is what the Nazis did to Warsaw in 1939 after some preliminary bombing. The Germans proceeded to tear the heart out of the city by closing schools, universities, museums and other cultural institutions, and rooting out the intelligentsia and shutting down the professions. The occupying force cut down the food supply, and periodically rounded up men and boys, sending them off to labor camps. Between 1940 and 1942, over 80,000 people died from disease and maltreatment at the hands of the Nazis. The soul of the city was destroyed.
The obvious way to eliminate a city is to bomb it into oblivion, which the Japanese did to Shanghai in 1937, essentially leveling it. Coventry, England, was destroyed by German bombers in the fall of 1940. While London never fell, it was severely damaged by bombing. The Royal Air Force destroyed Hamburg and the US Army Air Corps firebombed Dresden, killing 25,000 people during one night in February 1945. Before the war ended, 350,000 Germans were dead and between 50% to 60% of urban Germany had been pulverized.
One ray of hope in the midst of all of the bombing is the resilience of city dwellers. Both Coventry and Hamburg quickly rebuilt, with Hamburg's industry back to 80% capacity within 4 months. Coventry rebuilt 22,000 homes within 6 weeks of the destruction.
The biggest bombing run of the war hit Tokyo in March of 1945 where in one night, 100,000 people died and 267,000 buildings were destroyed. In August of that year, the atomic bomb killed one-third of the 420,000 people living in Hiroshima. Within 10 days, 30% of the city had its electricity back with total power restored by November.
Ben Wilson is right: City people are incredibly resilient.
Another way to croak a city is total war, which is a bit difficult to explain. In June of 1941, Adolph Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against Russia. The goal was to capture the agricultural resources of the Soviet Union to get the food needed to feed the growing German empire.
It started off fine for Adolph, with the Germans taking Minsk and laying siege to Leningrad, effectively cutting off supplies and starving the population of 3 million. War really is hell.
With Leningrad neutralized, the Nazis moved on to take Moscow. Stalin had other plans and vowed to stay in the city and hold it. He brought in 400,000 troops, 1,500 planes and 1,700 tanks from the Far East to defend the capital.
Then the Russian Winter happened, with Stalin attacking the Germans camping near Moscow and pushing them back 150 miles, effectively ending the offensive. He lost almost a million men. Back in Leningrad, 20,000 people were dying of starvation and disease each day. In January of 1942, a lake froze over, opening up a way to bring supplies into the city and essentially foiling the siege. One million residents died and another 1.4 million were evacuated, but the city held on.
Meanwhile Hitler’s troops had overrun their supply lines, which even Bob in the Basement knows is a big No-No when you’re trying to conquer the world. On top of that, the German army was not dressed for success; the bitter cold did them in. They had no fuel - a supply line problem - so they couldn’t go anywhere.
The Germans went after Stalingrad and were involved in hand-to-hand combat for three months, something they weren’t very good at. The Nazis were better at shooting and firing artillery than gutting it out one-on-one. Just when Hitler’s guys felt that they had taken the city, the Russians left and, with additional troops, surrounded Stalingrad, trapping the Germans. They were under siege and starving to death. Despite Hitler’s rants to never surrender, in January of 1943 the Germans did give up.
This pattern repeated in other Soviet cities the Germans had occupied. Russian troops surrounded them and the Nazis either surrendered or tried to fight their way out which did not work. The cites were wiped out as many German soldiers followed Hitler’s admonition to fight to the death. Half a million German soldiers died and 150,000 were captured. The Russian victory essentially destroyed any chance that Germany could win the war in Europe.
The last approach to destroying a city is genocide, deportation, pillage and demolition. While Hitler did literally annihilate several cities, the best example is Warsaw. The Germans had occupied the city in 1939 and had killed or removed hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite that, the resistance fought back. People started underground schools, held religious ceremonies, and provided business services to the survivors. By 1944, Hitler was furious and ordered the remaining survivors to be sent to concentration camps. He then ordered the destruction of the city. The army pillaged valuables, including extensive art work, and then proceeded to lay artillery fire on what was left of Warsaw, destroying 93% of the physical plant.
The author points out that in 1945 allied bombing and the Russian ground game essentially destroyed most of Berlin. In war, turnabout is fair play.
Warsaw and much of Tokyo were wiped out in WW 2, but they rebuilt their communities relatively quickly after the war ended, again a testament to the resilience of city people.
The Suburbs
The book looks at how cities changed after the end of World War II. Urban renewal demolished 6 million housing units between 1950 and 1970, disproportionately affecting non-whites. High-rises sprouted up all over cities, destroying the street-level community that had bonded neighborhoods together for decades. Many returning soldiers moved to the suburbs leaving the cities for Blacks. Over time, disinvestment and neglect sharply reduced the quality of life in urban areas, spurring resentment among some people.
The Bronx went downhill, which led to the creation of hip-hop, the soundtrack of urban protest. New York City was a mess in the 1970s and 1980s, with an early 1990s poll showing that 60% of New Yorkers wanted to live somewhere else.
At the same time new suburbs were flourishing. Wilson uses Lakewood near Los Angeles as his discussion point. In the early 1950s, 70,000 people moved into the 17,500 new single-family houses, which pretty much all looked the same. The development eventually incorporated as a separate town and did a pretty good job of keeping minorities out for many years. Eventually Asians came in as the whites moved to bigger and better properties, and Latinos and Blacks followed. This pattern was repeated many times in California and all over the country.
Wilson does not like suburbs since they take people away from the city with its convivial communality and easy mixing of different people. He blames the automobile and government mortgage policies for the explosive growth of the ‘burbs. Cars gave people the means to live in one place and work in another. FHA and VA housing loans made it easier for people to buy houses outside of the city because that’s where the inexpensive land was located. The result of the mass exodus from downtown was that in the 1960s and 1970s, America’s major cities grew by 10 million people while the suburbs gained 85 million.
Some things helped California become the model for suburban sprawl.
- In Greater Lops Angeles after the WW2, many people worked at good jobs in defense plants which gave them the income needed to buy and maintain a home. Author Wilson is not wild about war so that bothered him a bit.
- From 1913 to 1932, civil engineer William Mulholland oversaw the development of a series of aqueducts (one 233 miles long), pipes, and dams that fed almost unlimited water to the Greater Los Angeles area, giving it a huge advantage in pushing massive development.
- in the 1950s the federal government was wary of Russian attacks. One of the missile defense policies put in place was to encourage housing sprawl so that damage from bombs would be limited. Los Angeles, which was developed horizontally since there was so much land and water, made it easy to implement this strategy.
- The weather was great.
Compton was a different kind of suburb south of Los Angeles. It became a destination for upwardly mobile Blacks looking to move out of South Central LA and other rough neighborhoods. In the mid-1950s and early 1960s, it was a fairly diverse community with Blacks and whites living together. Then, in 1965, the LA community of Watts blew up in a massive riot. “There goes the neighborhood,” thought many Blacks and whites as they moved out of Compton. After that, it was just a matter of time until the community unraveled. It eventually had the highest crime rate in the state.
In 1988, the group NWA (N-word Wit Attitude) released the rap album <em>Straight Outta Compton</em>, a seminal work that was especially popular among white suburban teenagers who liked to embrace the gangsta’ affectation. It laid the ghetto bare and made a lot of money for the group. The performers were all from middle-class families in Compton, but the city wasn’t working for them or anyone else. They chronicled the ascendance of ruthless gangs, massive drug problems, and the total despair of many people in the community. They also took shots (musically, not literally) at the cops.
Latinos eventually moved into Compton and the situation improved. That rebirth supports Wilson’s observation that one of the great things about cities is that they rebuild themselves after bad times. Later in the book, Wilson points out that a strong Latino presence in the suburbs – making them a bit more urban - has transformed greater Los Angeles into a much more stable urban megalopolis than it was for much of its existence.
You will not be surprised that Ben Wilson doesn't like suburbs:
- Suburbs are boring. Raymond Chandler said that Los Angeles was “a city with all the personality of a paper cup.”
- Suburbs are wasteful in that they constantly demand more electricity, road systems, gas, and water.
- Cars and commuting are out of control. Between 1960 and 2000, the time spent driving to work has tripled. That’s a waste of time and energy.
- Historically, suburbs were racist. By 1960 only 2% of federal housing loans went to non-whites so the suburbs had no problem keeping “others” out.
In short, suburbs are “an apt monument to the triumph of capitalism and globalization,” two forces that created the strong economy that enabled people to move to the suburbs.
The Future of Cities
Ben Wilson’s last chapter is fascinating as he teases out where we are headed concerning urbanization.
- He sees climate change as a threat to some cities. Shanghai, Osaka, Ho Chi Minh City, and Miami are all in danger of being flooded relatively soon. He does think that we’ll figure out what to do about that.
- He notes that technology is helping cities thrive. Many have installed sensors that improve traffic flow, tell the DPW when to pick up commercial trash, monitor soil moisture and automatically turn on sprinklers, and such.
-Many cities are phasing cars out of the transportation mix and replacing them with light rail vehicles and buses which reduce traffic and help with climate change.
But the last chapter primarily focuses on Lagos, Nigeria, as the exemplar of future megacities. The city has three times the population of London but only two-thirds of the land mass. By 2040, it will double in size to 40 million people, making it the largest city in the world. (As a side note, by 2030, Africa will be the first inhabitable continent to become majority urban.)
Lagos is massive, chaotic, loud and dirty. Traffic is out of control with a typical commute to work taking three hours. It is considered to be the second-worst city in the world, after Mumbai, India.
Now some good stuff. At night, the city comes alive, with the streets hosting the biggest party on the planet. Lagos is a lot like Uruk in 4000 BC, Baghdad in the 10th century, and Chicago in the 19th century in that the people who live there love it.
Lagos is responsible for more than one-third of Nigeria’s gross domestic product, but what's interesting is that most of the commercial activity is in the informal or underground economy, far away from government regulation. There are millions of entrepreneurs - often one-person shops - that cater to every need in society. These flourishing micro-economies fall between the cracks but they work. Entrepreneurs have learned to take advantage of the traffic congestion that literally stops vehicles on the roads for part of the commute, a great opportunity for a street vendor to hustle goods. Lagos has a large computer village that repurposes technology from all over the world and sells it for a profit. It has a huge farmers market that serves people throughout the region. These successful operations are unregulated although the central government is trying to rein them in.
Wilson sees this do-it-yourself work approach as being the salvation of many of our cities. He notes that the most successful economy in the world today - China - is a top-down, heavily regulated operation but is also unique. Much of the rest of the world is like Lagos, a dynamic mess.
Throughout much of history, winner cities were the ones that were located on trade routes. Today, the cities that thrive are attractive to smart, creative people. They have good entertainment, coffee shops and fine restaurants, sports teams, and a positive buzz about life.
Bob’s Take
This was another bear of a book that was very detailed. Of the 40 or so books I’ve written about since last March, this was the most interesting. It is a sweeping narrative about a fundamental building block of our planet, the city. I learned much more than I needed to know about ancient Sumeria, but I picked up a lot that I hadn’t thought about concerning cities.
- Ancient cities did surprising things. Some had crop irrigation systems and flush toilets with sewage systems. More contemporary smaller cities, such as Lisbon and Amsterdam, had fleets of sailing ships that could travel thousands of miles and return home with word about new trading partners.
- War is really bad for cities. Before reading this book, I had never seen such detail about the utter destruction of cities in WW2. It was horrible.
- Cities are messy. They are home to anyone who chooses to show up. You can't just go to a tony suburb and plant yourself down. You have to have a lot of money and perhaps even a certain status to do that.
- Cities give people chances to better themselves. Living in the country is nice but you’re kind of stuck, with relatively few options to break out and make a better life.
-Climate affects cities a lot. Many of the great cities discussed in the book didn't disappear because of being conquered. Often, over hundreds or even thousands of years, something in the climate changed, causing a temperature shift, less rain, or a relocation of a life-giving river.
- Wilson sees climate change as a threat to many cities located near seas. Shanghai, Osaka, Ho Chi Minh City, Miami - all could be flooded in the near future. He does believe that city smarts will figure out how to meet these meteorological challenges.
Cities by definition are often in a state of flux. How they respond to emerging challenges determines their success or failure. Throughout human existence, there has been a tension between top-down regulation and individual creativity. As Wilson says on the last page of the book, “History demonstrates this constant tension between those who thrive in the messy human city, and those who want to impose some kind of artificial coherence upon it.”
To Ben Wilson, messy is not bad. It’s a sign that people are busy remaking their city so that it can be better for everyone.
