Critical Review 2017

The Natural History of Urbanization

by Lewis Mumford

The true history of urbanization hasnt been recorded properly yet. Without
understanding the earlier forms of cohabitation development, one cannot study
the city development. The permanent village settlements dates back only from
Neolithic era. The tendency towards formal habitation and fixed residence gave
rise in Neolithic times, a collective utility idea which was brought forth by the new
agricultural economy. And with need new spaces came into order, to match the
needs like permanent shelters, storage pits, refuse dumps and burial grounds. He
notes Jafferson by saying urban and rural, city and country are one thing not two
separate things.

In the earliest times, if we notice in Mesopotamia and Egypt, people used to have
a symbolic relationship with the nature through agriculture. As brunhes have
described, cities are nothing but unproductive occupation of soil. The emergence
of cities was made possible by the improvements in plant cultivation and stock
breeding that came in Neolithic culture. Just like the famous story of Joseph, in
Egypt, the cultivation of hard grains that can be kept untouched for years came to
existence, which made possible for the foods to store for the hard times or to
support a much larger crowd of people. Till the coal seams of Saxony and England
were opened no other source was important as food. Before that even cities were
characterized as wheat cities, rye cities, rice cities and maize cities. The early cities
bore many marks of their village origin they still had the essence of villages. They
had field around the cities till the transportation became more affordable and
easy.

The villages and the small country towns are historic constants. One of the facts
about the urbanization is that, while the urban population of the globe in 1930
numbered around 415,000,000 souls or about a fifth of the total population, the

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remaining fourfifths still lived under conditions approximately that of the

Neolithic economy.

The Neolithic community appears to have been a more co-operative one. They
always kept a more balanced relation with the nature and the settlement. During
that course of time village tended to spread evenly as far the topography allowed.
But after the introduction of metallurgy, the succeeding period of urbanization
brought technological specialization, caste differentiation, and heightened
temptations to aggression: and these lead to disregard for the community as a
whole. With the development of long distance trading, numerical calculations and
coinage, the urban civilization began to throw out limits and to regard all form of
wealth as purchasable by trade.

Till the modern times the extension of the city wall marked the growth, just like
how a additional ring is added to the tree. The wall might be the reason in the
origin of cities, as the walls were made of permanent materials, surrounded by
moats which gave the city the protection which the villages couldnt offer. The
earliest meaning of town was to be enclosed or fortified place. The place due to
its defensible site offered protection against predators of all kind.

There are mainly two facts that separate the city from the village. The first of it
the presence of an organized social core, around which the whole system of
community coheres. The presences of a central nucleus or core are the main
points where the whole structure of place evolves from. Thus the temple unlike
the hut which is the nucleus of a place , will be built from the permanent
materials with solid stone walls, often plated with precious stones or roofed with
the rare wood that are available. It will also have paved pavements from the rest
of arteries in order to show the importance of the social than the rest of the
place. Similar type of layout can be noted in the imperial Rome. The second fact
is the tendency to loosen the bonds that connect its habitants with nature and to
transform, eliminate or replace its earth-bound aspects, covering the natural site
with an artificial environment that enhances the dominance of man and
encourages an illusion of complete independence with the nature. As the time
passed man learned to melt copper and iron, to resist fire, to make paper out of

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trees, to build durable buildings with proof against wind, weather, and fire, and
over the course man also figured out to have durable shelters, arcades, the paved
way, reservoirs, the aqueducts, the sewer which all lead to the lessening the
impact of nature and increase in the dominance of man. The city became an oasis
of stone or clay. The paved roads the irrigation ditch, a manmade river systems
that releases farmers from the irregularities in the seasonal rainfall: the artificial
brook through the city; the pyramid, an artificial mountain that serves as symbolic
reminder of mans desire for permanence and continuity, all these inventions
recorded the displacement of natural conditions with a collective artifact of urban
origin. Physical security and the social continuity were the two great contributions
for the city.

All this lead to the illusion of self-sufficiency and independence, in the possibility
of physical continuity with conscious renewal to the man. Many elements that
was essential for the physical and mental balance was lacking in the city. The
Rome of seven hills is an acropolis type of city, formed by a cluster of villages
united for defense; and the plain of the Tiber was the original seat of their
agriculture. The population first conquered the territories of Etruscans and then
those of more distant lands. By systematic expropriation Rome brought wheat,
olive oil, dried fish, and pottery back to the origin site to sustain its growing
population. To facilitate the movement through the land it built roads with the
triumphed disregard for the terrain of the area. The roads and viaducts went in
hand in hand. To bring the water to meet the necessity they built the aqueducts
and reservoirs. They created a cult of the public bath which in turn imposed a
heavy drain upon the fuel supplied by the near by forest areas. The advance in
technology with the central heat system triggered the deforestation more. The
ship making industry, the iron and glass melting also increased the rate of
deforestation without considering the natures dependence in account. At this
point of time the symbolic relation with the nature became the parasitic one
mostly and thus the cycle of imbalance began.in other words the more complete
the urbanization, the more definite is the release from the natural limitations; the
more highly the city seemed developed as an independent entity, the more fatal
are the consequences for the territory it dominates. This series of changes

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characterized the growth of cities in every civilization. The transfer of Ecopolis

into the Megalopolis. Through we will get a clear idea how cities have wrought
damage to the nature even from the earlier cities layout.

So at first stage the size of cities varied with the amount and the productivity of
the agricultural land available. Cities were manly confined to valleys and flood
plains so there was limitation upon the expansion of the cities. The second stage
of urbanization began with the sea transport and the road transports for the carts
and chariots marked the important landmark in the development of the cities.
And it permitted the city to grow beyond the agricultural hinterlands. At this stage
the city grew by draining away the resources and the manpower without
returning any equivalent goods. Along with this there was over exploitation of
natural resources for industrial purposes. The third stage of urbanization came to
scene from the nineteenth century .

This wave of urbanization was nnot as is sometimes thought chiefly dependent

upon the steam engine or upon improvements in local transportation. The fact is
that the number of cities above the 100,000 mark had increased in the
seventeenth century, well before the steam engine or the power loom had been
invented. London marked the million mark in population by 1810, before it had
mechanical means of transportation or the beginning of an adequate water
supply.

After this came another layer of urban tissue. The further development of mass
transportation gave rise to to suburban spaces around the cities. People tended
to move away from cities in order to find a more peaceful and silent space; that is
rid of overcrowded streets of the cities. In London the suburban movement
started from the time of Elizabethan as a reaction against the over building and
over crowding.

Under modern technical conditions the open pattern of the residential suburb is
not confined to domestic needs alone. The demand for large areas characterizes
modern factory organization, with horizontally ordered assembly lines, housed in
spreading one-story structures, and above all, airports for long distance flights

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whose demand for landing lanes and approaches on the order of miles have
increased with the six and speed of planes.

So the areas of the biggest cities could be measured in hundreds of acres brore
nineteenth century, but when we look into the scenario the situation and scale
are different, now the cities will be measure in around thousands of swaure miles.
Within a century the economy of the western world has shifted from the riral
base, harbouring a few big cities and thousand of villages and small towns, to a
metropolitan base whose urban spread not merely has engulfed and assimilated
the small units, once isolated and self contained, as the amoeba engulfs its prey,
but is fast absorbing the rural hinterland and threatening to wipe out many
natural elements favorable to life which in earlier stages balanced off against
depletion in the urban environment.

When we study the whole natural history of urbanization one thing is

evident that we have forgotten to nurture nature as we move forward. We
always a blind eye towards the nature part. We must realize that the true stability
of our being lies with the stability of the nature, and as we grow we must take
care of the surrounding along with it, it is a need more than anything.

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