Urban Design for an Urban Century: Shaping More Livable, Equitable, and Resilient Cities, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1Roots of Western Urban Form: Centralization

This chapter focuses on key points in the evolution of human settlements that, while reflecting very specific times, cultures, and conditions, also serve as the roots of America’s planning and urban design traditions.

First Cities

Early organized societies: Organic cities

Whenever archeologists think they have identified the oldest human settlement, it seems that a dig somewhere else unearths an even older one. Each new find adds to a rich human tradition: Cities exist because humans are social beings, variously tribal, communal, and mutually supportive. From nomadic beginnings—first hunter-gatherers, then tribal herdsmen—came agricultural settlements that eventually clustered for religious, administrative, defensive, or economic reasons. With the emergence of surplus economies, hierarchical societies appeared and supported the growth of villages, then towns, and, finally, cities.

In simplified terms, two basic city forms emerged early in Western civilization: the organic and the geometric.¹ Organic cities arose by chance and accretion; they grew willy-nilly. Geometric cities were typically planned, functional, and rational. Geography, climate, and land apportionment shaped both forms, whether in an administrative center in a Mesopotamian kingdom, a trading settlement on the Silk Road, a Mexican colonial outpost, or a farming community on the Canadian plains.

Likely the more ancient of the two, organic settlements developed ...