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

Purchase

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

Map

City Narratives

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

View

c. 335 BC | Athens

Pledge of Allegiance

Athenian youth swear an oath.More

c. 1185 | England

Shopping Mall

Overwhelmed by overabundance.More

1844 | Manchester

Among the Best

Disraeli marvels at the glory that is Manchester.More

Charts & Graphs

Lost Cities

Destroyed but not forgotten.

View

Photograph of Colin Dickey standing in front of a brick wall.

British inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage.

Photograph of Soviet playwright and writer Mikhail Bulgakov.

Engraving of the medieval Arab traveler Ibn Battuta.

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

American author and journalist Jamie James.

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

Purchase