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

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.

More

Map

City Narratives

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

View

1898 | London

Mixed Media

Ebenezer Howard and the marriage of town and country.More

1889 | Chicago

Job Search

A small-town girl meets big-city life.More

c. 1864 | London

Street Noise

Charles Babbage wages a war on street musicians.More

Charts & Graphs

Town Meetings

Where to see and be seen.

View

Black and white photograph of German-language writer Franz Kafka.

Photograph of Soviet playwright and writer Mikhail Bulgakov.

Black and white photograph of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.

British inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage.

Greek dramatist Sophocles.

Russian poet Andrei Bely.

American writer, editor, and translator Eliot Weinberger.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1962

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

Purchase