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 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.

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Map

City Narratives

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

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1844 | London

Examining the Costs of Production

Friedrich Engels sheds light on the lives of London’s poor.More

c. 1864 | London

Street Noise

Charles Babbage wages a war on street musicians.More

1776 | Glasgow

Import, Export

Adam Smith explains the commercial origins of political order.More

Charts & Graphs

Official and unofficial city slogans,

Welcome to...

Official and unofficial city slogans.

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Chinese poet Du Fu.

Black and white photograph of historian and man of letters Henry Adams.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian Mike Davis.

Jules Verne

Photo of stone Aristotle statue face

American novelist and journalist John Hersey.

My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.

—Benito Mussolini, 1929

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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