Painting of a sunlit plaza with people and a bell tower.

Preamble

City Light

By Lewis H. Lapham

When it comes to the medieval cathedral and mosque, the modern skyscraper and the slum, world history is city history.

More

Photograph of a riverbank with shanties.

Dickens in Lagos

By George Packer

In Nigeria, modernity hasn’t yet begun to solve the problems of people thrown together in the urban cauldron.

More

Painting of a boat with two shrouded figures approaching a rocky island at night.

Necropolis

By Colin Dickey

The corpse has proved to be a bedeviling problem for the city—how do we live with our dead?

More

Engraving of an overhead view of the city of Rome.

A Matter of Optics

By Warren Breckman

Rulers of cities have always had an interest in visibility, both in representing their power and in controlling people by seeing them.

More

Painting of people and carriages in the road next to a park.

Urban Scrawl

By Jamie James

The city novel begins with a young person arriving from the provinces—and the world rising up to greet them.

More

Painting of two statues in a grove of trees.

City of Seeds

By Daniel Mason

With an influx of people from all over the world, the city can become a hothouse for foreign flora.

More

Photograph of a crowd of people seated in bleachers and looking up.

Waiting for Goffman

By Michael Dirda

There are few better interpreters of modern metropolitan life than sociologist Erving Goffman.

More