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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.

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

Essay

Waiting for Goffman

By Michael Dirda

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

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Painting of two statues in a grove of trees.

Essay

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.​

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

Essay

Necropolis

By Colin Dickey

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

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Photograph of a riverbank with shanties.

Essay

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.

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

Essay

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.

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Engraving of an overhead view of the city of Rome.

Essay

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.

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