The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale, c. 1482. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale, c. 1482. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The City

Volume III, Number 4 | fall 2010

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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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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.

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Map

City Narratives

The tumultuous histories of Algiers, Istanbul, Beijing, and Mexico City.

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1520 | Tenochtitlán

Nothing Is Equal

Cortés extols the splendor of the Aztecs.More

1850 | Washington, DC

Body Politic

Henry Adams surveys life on the Hill.More

1883 | Los Angeles

Ancien Régime

Looking at the remnants of old California.More

Charts & Graphs

Official and unofficial city slogans,

Welcome to...

Official and unofficial city slogans.

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Chinese poet Du Fu.

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Photograph of Charles Baudelaire

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Black and white photograph of E. B. White sitting at his typewriter with his dachshund.

Black and white photograph of Mencken looking over his shoulder at the camera

black and white photo of Groucho Marx wearing glasses and smoking a cigar from the side of his mouth

American poet and novelist Helen Hunt Jackson.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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