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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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.

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Map

City Narratives

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

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c. 540 | Constantinople

City Planning

Justinian soaks the poor.More

c. 1185 | England

Shopping Mall

Overwhelmed by overabundance.More

1866 | Atlantis

The Character Remains

Stumbling across a lost civilization.More

Charts & Graphs

Town Meetings

Where to see and be seen.

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French novelist Gustave Flaubert.

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

Image from Codex Manesse depicting a tournament of knights.

British inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Engraving of Scottish economist Adam Smith.

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified heads, fills citified ears—as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk happy.

—Frank Lloyd Wright, 1958

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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