Missions Resources - Bibliography
The City: A Global History
Authors: Joel Kotkin
ISBN: 0679603360
Publisher: The Modern Library
Number of pages: 214
Type of cover: Hard Cover
Summary: Reviewed by Paul Grant
In some key respects, a resident of ancient Babylon has more in common with one
in today's San Francisco than either has with the rural dwellers of the surrounding
countryside. The experience of living in a city is that unique.
This new book tells the history of cities in the broadest way possible; in order to all the better highlight the similarities across millennia. Cities from the ancient Middle East, Africa, Mesoamerica China and Europe developed for entirely different reasons, but, looked at from afar, startling similarities emerge.
Cities, Kotkin argues, require three main impulses to grow and survive: Sacredness, Safety and Wealth.
In reverse order: cities need to provide opportunities for commerce and the creation of property. Since urban dwellers don’t grow their own food, trade is necessary for a city to emerge in the first place. But beyond mere subsidence, commerce is necessary to drive the society of the city.
Second, cities must be safe and secure. Without basic security, including infrastructure and sanitation, cities will empty out in a few short generations. Today’s attempts to rebuild New Orleans’ flood-control systems, for instance, are largely motivated by the United States reluctance to lose a significant city. In the year 1900, a major hurricane destroyed the city of Galveston, Texas, killing at least 8,000 people. Despite the subsequent building of an enormous sea-wall, Galveston never fully recovered; the nearby city of Houston became the regional metropolis. The reason is simple: if a city can’t provide safety for its residents, it loses a significant aspect of its meaning.
In the contemporary West, especially in North America, cities develop themselves almost exclusively along these two threads alone – commerce and security. But Kotkin believes sacredness is every bit as important. Sacredness lends eternal and supernatural authority to a city, and provides meaning for its residents. Temple cities around the world, along with cathedral cities across Europe project spiritual authority in large circles.
Without a spiritual center (“spiritual” in the general sense of the word), cities become mere marketplaces, not worth a person’s life.
Kotkin develops his history through several eras of urbanization, including today’s burgeoning growth in poor countries – like those cities in InterVarsity’s Global Urban Trek program.
The City: A Global History is a great primer on urban life. And at a mere 160 pages, it can be read in a few evenings.
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