WEEK 1

Origins and evolution of settlements

FROM SANCTUARY TO MEGALOPOLIS

Introduction
This section will begin the study of the city by putting forward some
connections between the origin of cities, human development and culture. It
will look for the reasons why we became city-dwellers by asking questions
about what the city means to humans, how we can define the city, and, first of
all, why we should study it. An evolutionary path is presented in generalised
terms since a more detailed discussion on specific developments, places and
events follows in subsequent sections.

The discussion will necessarily remain incomplete, as the topic city is almost
inexhaustible, in both its history and complexity. Thus, it will focus on a limited
number of representative developments or themes to foster an understanding of
what cities are and why they are the way they are. These developments will be
considered in a historical perspective. Yet, while they are presented in roughly
chronological order, they should not be seen as discrete and isolated events but
as part of the enduring impulse which compels humankind to live in cities and
build citiessometimes under the most extraordinary circumstances.

FIGURE 1.1

The abandoned city of

Macchu Picchu, built
by the Incas in the high
Andes. Photo by
Guenter Lehmann

Deakin University 1
2 WEEK 1 Deakin University

Why study the city?

1
The building of cities is one of mans greatest achievements.

The first and most obvious reason to study the city is that it is one of our most
visible and significant accomplishments, as Edmund Bacon reminds us in the
opening statement to his book Design of Cities. Yet, looking at the state of
many cities today, this judgment appears to be an act of faith rather than based
on fact. At the end of the twentieth century the city had become for many
people the epitome of an inhuman and confusing environment, a place of
alienation and of social conflict in numerous societies rather than a great
achievement. Although anti-urban voices are almost as old as cities
themselves, one senses a widespreadalmost dominantunease about the city
in contemporary culture. Yet it is worth remembering that:

In all pre-industrial societies, particularly in the West before the nineteenth

century, the city was the human order, in opposition to the chaotic and
menacing reality beyond the walls of the city [and that] we are the
witnesses of a very perverse and irregular inversion of priorities whereby the
order of the city is no longer human but exclusively the embodiment of
2
technological processes.

We should compare the contemporary attitude of doubt and disquiet to the

much more optimistic, affirmative view toward the city that prevailed in times
past, best exemplified, perhaps, in the famous German proverb of the Middle
Ages: Stadtluft macht frei (City air makes you free).

What has happened then in the recent past in many societiesor, at least, many
Western societiesthat has caused a reversal of this traditional appreciation of
the city as refuge, as the human order, as the symbol for a civilisation? How did
it happen? And who or what is to blame? Or was it an inevitable development
beyond control?

These questions provide some more reasons why the city should be studied,
including the sometimes distressing realities of the contemporary city and how
they came to be. Only after having examined this development and understood
the underlying causes should we pass judgment on the city as either the place of
great enrichment or of shameful depravation.

There is another, even more compelling, reason to study the city: living in cities
may soon be a universal experience. As population growth continues, the world
is rapidly becoming urbanisedmeaning, in this case, the majority of the
3
population are living in towns and cities. In many industrialised or developed
countries the majority of the people already live in cities. And the so-called
less developed countries are catching up at a rate of urban development even
greater than that of the industrialised world.

The process of urbanisation is ably discussed by Davis, even if much of the data
referred to has been superseded since the time of writing of the article.

READING Turn to the reading by Kingsley Davis, Urbanisation: An historical perspective.

Keep in mind some questions:
 Deakin University ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 3

What is the connection between industrialisation and urbanisation identified

by Davis?
What relationship between population growth and urbanisation does Davis
describe?
Does the process of urbanisation mean that eventually all inhabitable areas in
the world will be covered by cities or even one great city, Ecumenopolis as it
has been called?

Please note that the processes discussed by Davis have continued unabated and
some of his projections been met, as for instance, half of the worlds population
living in cities by 2000.

Two significant phenomena thus can be noted:

the number of people living in urban environments, and with it the number
of countries we call urbanised, is increasing; and
urban agglomerations are reaching sizes never seen before in human
history.

These phenomena deserve elaboration. The first could mean a literal dominance
of cities over the countryside, that is, a physical phenomenon where most of the
land area is covered by cities. But few countries seem to be covered by cities
4
with little or no open country left and the evidence is quite opposite. Moreover,
others that are called highly urbanised clearly do not suit that image at all
(Australia is, in fact, a striking example of that paradox). The term urbanised
thus refers to percentages, that is statistical evidence, and as such actually
depends on the definition of urban. For instance, what is defined as urban in
Australiaa place having at least 1000 inhabitantswould exceed Denmarks
standard of a mere 200, but not qualify in either the United States or the United
Kingdom, where that threshold is reached at 2500. Even higher figures are
required in India or Japan, where it takes 5000 and 30 000 inhabitants,
5
respectively Thus, the appellation urban can be about notional standards or
physical aspects. As the former are mostly used for administrative convenience,
they do not reflect qualitative characteristics of a physical setting or a way of
living or behaving that might be called urban. Thus, we must take some
caution when using notional standards.

The second phenomenon, that of the increasing size of cities, is less ambiguous.
Clearly, more and more people live in ever larger, often densely populated
urban agglomerations which may eventually force us to rethink our concepts
of city. While cities of one million or more were relatively unknown until
6
recent history, they are rapidly becoming commonplace.

In fact, some urban agglomerations are growing to sizes dwarfing all

pre-existing ideas of the city. And most of these mega-citiesas they are
popularly dubbed when referring to cities of ten million inhabitants or more
are emerging in parts of the world where urbanisation itself is a recent
development rather than in the industrialised and already highly urbanised areas
of western Europe or North America. For instance, while New York City still
ranked first as the worlds largest city in 1960 with 14.1 million inhabitants, it
is expected to slide to sixth place by the early 2000s. With its expected growth
to only 15.8 million by 2000, it has been outpaced by such cities as Mexico
4 WEEK 1 Deakin University

City (with an estimated size of well over 20 million by 2000), So Paulo in

Brazil, or Calcutta in India.

The new mega-cities will include places like Jakarta in Indonesia, Dacca in
Bangladesh, Manila in the Philippines, Cairo in Egypt and Beijing in China. If
the state of current super-sized cities, like Mexico City, Calcutta, or Lagos, is
any indicator of what these mega-cities will be like, we may have reasons for
considerable anxiety about the future of the cityat least as we know it.

Therefore the rapid growth of these super-sized cities raises two questions:
Is there a limit to which a city can grow beyond which it will cease to
function as a city as we know it?
Does the state of the currently largest cities demand that we re-think our
definitions of what a city isor is supposed to be?

These questions are posed rhetorically here but we should be mindful of them
throughout this study of the city. We may well have to reconsider the way we
think about the city, what the city represents and what it should be. Thus, we
need to consider at this point what a city is.

What is a city?
How does one define the object of this study? For something seemingly so
familiar, the definition is strangely elusive. Odd as it may seem, a single
definition of cityexcept for a dictionary definitionis difficult to find. Is it
a physical agglomeration of buildings, streets and open spaces? Is it a particular
social arrangement? Is it a just centre of exchange of goods and ideas? Can it be
defined by a certain size, in either area or population, or by specific mode of
living without distinct boundaries? The difficulties appear many; the city seems
7
to be all things to all people.

Whatever definitions are available, owing to the varying use of the term city
they are grounded within particular disciplines. We would expect a sociologist
to be focussing on different aspects of the city than an economist, geographer or
architect and consequently arrive at a divergent definition.

READING Turn to the reading by Louis Mumford, What is a city?A humanists point of
view, taking note of the following:
Cities are social endeavours and express collective living and symbolise the
achievements and ambitions of the collective, that is, the community.
The nature of city should not be sought in its economic base and social
arrangement but how the resulting activities, opportunities, and strengths
have contributed to civilisation.

Mumford, too, cautions against the reliance on size, or numbers, in defining

what is urban but suggests that a complex of traits characteristic of life in
cities is more meaningful.

In the reading, Mumford articulates a view which relates the city to civilisation,
culture and community, centred on human activities and spirit; thus it represents
 Deakin University ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 5

a humanistic view. The ideas expressed remind us that the city is practically
synonymous with civilised life or civilisation itself. Indeed, the word city
and the associated permutations such as citizen, citadel, civic, civilcan
be traced to the Latin word civitas, an aggregation of cives, or citizens, and
8
meaning city-state.

The etymological connection between city and civilisation is another

indication that the city is linked with a specific social organisation, that the city
is basically a communal endeavour.

READING Now turn to the reading by Louis Wirth, What is a city?A sociologist's point of
view, and take note of the particular bias in his argument.
How does Wirth finally define city?
What are the characteristics of a city suggested by his definition?

Please note that the original date of the publication is 1938 and the world
population Wirth mentioned is very much outdated. We may in fact see this as a
distinct reminder of the exceptional population growth over the last sixty years,
having more than trebled to about six billion people today.

Another sociologist, Robert Park, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, developed
theories about the city and who pioneered a whole school of thought for the
study of cities known as the Chicago School as Park and his followers were
based in and used this city for their studies and were associated with the
University of Chicagopromoted a theory of the city that emphasised the large
urban community as a natural habitat of civilised man. His definitions of the
city claim that:

the city is rooted in the habits and customs of the people who inhabit it.
The consequence is that the city possesses a moral as well as a physical
organisation and these two mutually interact in characteristic ways to mould
9
and modify one another.

We find a strong qualitative difference proposed here, something that connects

culture and consciousness to form an urban state of mind. This state of mind is
as much the result of the urban environment as it shapes the environment.
Therefore, Parks definition represents an ecological view.

The relationship between people and the environment and between people and
the shaping of the environment, reappears in different form in another
definition:

Cities have often been likened to symphonies and poems, and the comparison
seems to me a perfectly natural one; they are, in fact, objects of the same kind.
The city may even be rated higher, since it stands at the point where nature
10
and artifice meet.

This view of the city as a work of art by achieving a balance between natural
and artificial elementsa balance between nature and cultureis,
unfortunately, to be found rarely. Others, particularly architects, will see the
city as a human-made object, as an artefact. Aldo Rossi, an Italian architect of
6 WEEK 1 Deakin University

the late twentieth century, who wrote passionately about architecture and the
city, echoed the view of an architectural theorist of the Enlightenment, Durand:

Just as the walls, the columns, etc. are the elements which compose buildings,
11
so buildings are the elements which compose cities.

Obviously the search for single definition of city yields mainly a number of
different ones and in accepting one definition or the other the particular
orientation of anyone putting forth a definition should be considered. This
orientation may be by discipline, theory, orin some casessimply an
attitude. Moreover, the lack of a single definition can be seen as inherent in the
nature of the object of study:

A complicated and perpetually changing entity such as the city is open to all
manner of interpretations and misinterpretations, precisely because its codes
of composition cannot be understood in advance of what experience teaches.
A city is not a thing but a process, the organization of nucleated,
interdependent sets of activities. Its characteristic form a millennium ago was
the town, a century ago the city, a decade ago the metropolis, today the
12
megalopolis, and before the millennium a name perhaps as yet unsaid.

PRESCRIBED Now turn to Spiro Kostofs The City Shaped and read pp. 3741.
TEXT Kostof presents a summary of various definitions of what a city is. Note that each
of them carries with it certain theoretical orientations. For example, the notion of
urban clusters will refer to possible theories regarding urban hierarchies; that of
the written record represents the primacy of literacy; etc.

Consider the following as you proceed:

Can you establish the theoretical orientations of the various points of view
listed by Kostof?
Could you collect a similar list of definitions from a variety of sources and
classify them?
Can you add your own definition? On what would it be founded?
What, do you think, his assertion below means to our study of the city?
Cities are places where a certain energized crowding of people takes
place. This has nothing to do with absolute size or with absolute numbers:
13
it has to do with density.

It is apparent that several theories about and interpretations of the city have
come from other disciplines and, when useful, we may occasionally make use
of those theories. But our interest here is the built environment, and thus the
physical aspects of a city and their significance come first. We will examine
these aspects of cities, their origins, developments and meanings. How and why
cities develop will be a recurring theme in the course of this unit, but right now
the question should be asked: how did cities originate?

How and why did human settlements originate?

Humans are thought to have inhabited the earth for more than 500 000 years but
only quite recently, about 10 000 years ago, began to settle permanently. For a
 Deakin University ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 7

very long time, therefore, human existence was one of food-gathering and
seeking shelter. In other words, humankind created cities rather late in its
development. Where and how it occurred first is still subject to much debate.

Moreover, this concept There is some agreement, however, that the earliest permanent settlements were
village should not be
connected rigidly to a
related to the ability of people to produce their own food by growing crops and
Neolithic stage in domesticating animalsthe so-called Neolithic revolution. But the Neolithic
human development settlements, villages in fact, were small agglomerations (a few hundred people
because village at most) and hardly permanent in the true sense; agricultural techniques were
communities can still
be found in modern limited and, in order to achieve even minimal returns from the land, the villages
times. often still had to be shifted every twenty years or so. It took considerable time
for the change from the Neolithic village to the city to occur. Both
developments happened in various locations at different times. For many
peoples, in fact, there was no reason to alter the former condition as it suited
their needs very well and thus no changes took place for thousands of years; for
some it lasted right up to their first contact with Europeans during the last few
hundred years.

There are numerous theories about the origins of urban settlements, or cities,
whether they be regarding the reasons, the factors involved, or the locations of
the earliest examples.

READING Turn to the reading by Mumford, Origin of human settlement, and note
Mumfords explanations about the inception of human settlements. Keep in mind
the following:
Why can Mumford speak of a spiritual origin of the city?
What does Mumford see as the crucial difference between city and village?

Most explanations, however, express a more practical view. Some sources will
speak of an urban revolution as one of the three major events that altered
human culturethe earlier agricultural and later industrial revolutions being
the other twowhile others will see the emergence of the city as a logical and
14
rather evolutionary transformation. Whatever changerevolutionary or
evolutionarymay have induced the transformation, the change from a village
community to a permanent settlement of the kind we can call urban is a
significant transformation.

Looking for the differences between village and city, several important points
begin to emerge. The most obvious among them is the division of labour and a
15
significant proportion of the people engaged in non-food-producing work.
This then is a major difference: the lack of self-sufficiency for the citys
populace and the emergence of non-agricultural specialists. Two possibilities
are usually advanced for how this came about:
1 agricultural production resulted in a surplus;
2 the emergence of a ruling elite who could either force or convince those
who produced food to surrender a portion of it to sustain a community not
engaged in food production.

The terms related to these propositions, economy and social organisation, will
reappear throughout the discussion of the origins and development of human
settlements. Thus, the latter become associated with, or explained through,
8 WEEK 1 Deakin University

economic or social development. Many sources, particularly those by Western

authors, refer to the link with economic development. Consequently, one of the
most common scenarios encountered in the literature of the origin of cities is
that based on the generation of surplus. This is hardly surprising since the
concept of surplus is of appealing simplicity and logic.

Concept of surplus
Improved agricultural efficiency and technology allowed increased food
production. This gradually enabled the transition from entirely subsistence
living to a surplus, allowing communities to pursue some non-food producing
activities (referred to as discretionary tasks) and separate work tasks for even
greater efficiency. This surplus of food and other stocks gave rise to trade with
other groups and generation of additional non-food tasks. As this trade would
most conveniently occur at crossroads, settlements would develop naturally at
those locations. Increasing specialisation and efficiencies provided further
surpluses to address activities unrelated to food production (culture, religion,
defence, etc.). Thus, successive growth and increased productive capacity
through agricultural, craft and industrial changes are said to have led to the
complexity of todays society and urban centres.

However, we need to be aware that this explanation is not accepted universally

and that questions have been raised about the notion of surplus as well. It is
argued, for instance, that the city is not the consequence of an agricultural
surplus but that, conversely, a city with its technology, creativity and various
16
resources will stimulate a surplus in agricultural production.

Social development
Literacy related to The division of labour, with specialisation for defined tasks, resulted in a
urban life is, of
course, also part of our
greater social interdependency amongst a larger social unit, allowing a ruling
description of someone elite to emerge. This development is linked closely to another advance which,
as urbane, that is, as is frequently maintained, characterises an urban society: literacy or writing.
being cultured and The initial impetus for developing writing is often seen as connected to the
sophisticated, a quality
unlikely to be attained creation of a surplusas storage and trade required record keeping for their
without literacy in the administrationthus strengthening the notion of surplus. How writing and
contemporary world. social development are interrelated is explained by Gideon Sjoberg: once the
oral tradition typical of village or folk societies is replaced by a written one and
allows more complex administrative and legal systems to emerge which
govern the coexistence of larger and unrelated groups, a transformation to a
more complex social order is made possible. And complex social organisation is
something that, despite cultural diversity and being separated geographically
17
and temporally, the early human settlements appear to have had in common.

Another factor significant for the originbut even more for the development
of cities has only been mentioned implicitly until now: technology. The
reciprocal relationship between technology and city is again advanced by
Sjoberg:

From its inception the city has been a continuing source of innovation.
Indeed, the very emergence of cities greatly accelerated social and cultural
 Deakin University ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 9

change The mere fact that a large number of specialists were concentrated
in a small area encouraged innovation, not only in technology but also in
religious, philosophical and scientific thought.
The course of urban evolution can be correctly interpreted only in relation to
the parallel evolution of technology and social organization (especially
political organization); these are not just prerequisites to urban life but the
basis for its development. As centers of innovation cities provided a fertile
setting for continued technological advances, these gains made possible the
further expansion of cities. Advanced technology in turn depended on the
18
increasingly complex division of labor, particularly in the political sphere.

We should note here the close relationship between progress and city origin
that is, by some accounts, considered a necessary precondition for the
development of cities. In other words, technologically primitive societies will
have no cities according to this view.

It is possible at this point to list what distinguished the early city from the
village: a diverse population, a complex social order, an advanced technological
base, advanced patterns of thought, and a symbolic centre. It could be argued
that the ancient city bears much resemblance to modern cities in these
characteristics. Indeed, these characteristics change little over many years, in
19
what Sjoberg has called on another occasion the preindustrial city, until
massive transformations take place as a result of industrialisation.

PRESCRIBED Go to Kostof pp. 314 and read his discussion of several major ideas on urban
TEXT origins, and the evolution and development of settlements.
How would you describe Kostofs attitude towards various schools of urban
origin?
Why does he warn us not to seek inevitable or natural causes for the origin
of cities?
What is his conclusion?

Keep in mind Kostofs remarks about four major concepts since you will
encounter these concepts as you begin to read a number of different texts on this
topic.

Whatever theoretical position on the origin of the city one wishes to embrace, it
is clear that, for the chosen factors to be effective, certain conditions and
decisions were necessary to enable permanent settlements, and ultimately cities,
to be established. The word established is crucial as it attests to one significant
aspect: cities did not grow naturally from the simple village but from human
intervention. In other words, cities are not natural phenomena but artificial
ones in the best sense; they are made by humans. Kostof states this clearly:

whatever the actual practices of urbanization may have been, ancient

traditions insisted that making cities was an intentional act, approved and
implemented at the highest level. The gods made cities and took charge of
them. The kings made cities, in order to set up microcosms of their rule. The
city was a marvellous, inspired creation As far as peoples beliefs were
20
concerned, cities were made, they did not happen.
10 WEEK 1 Deakin University

These are words worth remembering, as we will also discuss at a later stage whose
intentions didor shouldguide the founding and making of cities.

Conclusion
As a conclusion to what a city is, how and why it came into existence, and why
we should study it, let Kostof have a final say:

Cities are amalgams of buildings and people. They are inhabited settings from
which daily ritualsthe mundane and the extraordinary, the random and the
stagedderive their validity. In the urban artefact and its mutations are
condensed continuities of time and place. The city is the ultimate memorial of
our struggles and glories: it is where the pride of the past is set on display.
Sometimes cities are laid out by fiat, as perfect shapes and for premeditated
ends. They may aim to reflect a cosmic rule or an ideal society, be cast as a
machine of war, or have no higher purpose than to generate profit for the
founder But whether born under divine guidance or the speculative urge,
the pattern will dry up, and even die, unless the people forge within it a
special, self-sustaining life that can survive adversity and the turns of
21
fortune.

This quote by Spiro Kostof establishes several major aspects about the city
significant for our study of the city. First, the city is neither just a physical
object nor a social or political construct only. It is not simply an agglomeration
of buildings, or the formation of a specific social organisation, or something
circumscribed by a political boundary and called city. Cities are much more.
They express a societys abilities and aspirations andeven in a ruined or
barely traceable statespeak eloquently about human achievement or failure.
They are places of sacred rituals as well as profane activities and accommodate
the myths and symbols attached to either. In order to understand the city, we
need to consider the relationships between thought and action, between values
and physical embodiment, between form and content; in short we need to search
for meaning.

Endnotes
1
Edmund N. Bacon, Design of Cities, rev. edn, Thames & Hudson, London, 1992,
p. 13.
2
Alberto Prez-Gomz, The city as a paradigm of symbolic order, The Carleton
Folio, Carleton University Press, Ottawa, 1985, p. 5.
3
The important threshold-one-half of the worlds population living in cities, was
passed in the year 2000 according to United Nations estimates along with the other
milestone of reaching 6000 million peoplewhich means about 3000 million city-
dwellers.
4
Recall, for instance, that Davis describes the concentration of population in urban
agglomerations in urbanised society, e.g. 53 per cent of the 1960 United States
 Deakin University ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF SETTLEMENTS 11

population living in what constitutes 0.7 per cent of the land area of the United
States.
5
A. J. Rose, Patterns of Cities, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1967, p. 13.
6
John Stevens quotes Mr Michael Garand, the President of the Metropolis
Association, speaking at Metropolis 90 in Melbourne: In 1940 only one person
in 100 lived in a city with a population of a million. Between now and the year 2000,
the proportion will be every other human. (Age, 20 October, 1990). This may have
been an exaggeration but it indicates clearly the speed of city growth perceived by
the public.
7
Emrys Jones, Towns and Cities, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966, p. 3.
8
Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English,
Greenwich House/Macmillan, New York, 1983, p. 101.
9
Robert Park et al., The City, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1926, p. 4.
10
Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. J. Russell, Hutchison, London, 1961,
p. 127.
11
Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, trans. D. Ghirardo & J. Ockman,
Opposition Books/MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982, p. 35.
12
Carol Burns, What is City?, Harvard Architecture Review, no. 10, 1998, p. 182.
13
Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped, Thames & Hudson, London, 1991, p. 37.
14
See, for instance, Robert Adams, The origin of cities, Scientific American, vol.
203, no. 3, 1960 or V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1964.
15
In some countries, notably India, this is used as a statistical threshold: a certain
percentage of people in a settlement must be engaged in non-agricultural activities
for it to be called urban.
16
For a discussion see, for example, J. Jacobs, The Economy of Cities. Jonathan Cape,
London, 1970.
17
Gideon Sjoberg, The origin and evolution of cities, Scientific American, vol. 213,
no. 3, 1965, pp. 5562..
18
Sjoberg, The origin and evolution of cities, p. 59.
19
Gideon Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City: Past and Present, Macmillan, London,
1960.
20
Kostof, p. 34.
21
Kostof, p. 16.
12 WEEK 1 Deakin University

References
Adams, Robert, The origin of cities, Scientific American, vol. 203, no. 3,
1960, pp. 15367.
Bacon, Edmund N., Design of Cities, rev. edn, Thames & Hudson, London,
1992.
Burns, Carol, What is City?, Harvard Architecture Review, no. 10, 1998.
Childe, V. Gordon, What Happened in History, Penguin, Harmondsworth,
1964.
Davis, Kingsley, The urbanization of the human population, Cities, Scientific
American Books/Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967.
Jacobs, Jane, The Economy of Cities, Jonathon Cape, London, 1970.
Jones, Emrys, Towns and Cities, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966.
Kasinitz, Philip (ed.), Metropolis: Centre and Symbol of Our Times, Macmillan,
London, 1995.
Kostof, Spiro, The City Shaped, Thames & Hudson, London, 1991.
Levi-Strauss, Claude, Tristes Tropiques, trans. J. Russell, Hutchison, London,
1961.
Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl, Matrix of Man, Praeger, New York, 1968.
Murphey, Rhoads, The city as a centre of change: Western Europe and China,
in The City in the Third World, ed. D.J. Dwyer, Macmillan, London, 1974.
Park, Robert, et al., The City, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1926.
Partridge, Eric, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English,
Greenwich House/Macmillan, New York, 1983.
Prez-Gomz, Alberto, The city as a paradigm of symbolic order, The
Carleton Folio, Carleton University Press, Ottawa, 1985.
Rose, A.J., Patterns of Cities, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1967.
Rossi, Aldo, The Architecture of the City, trans. D. Ghirardo & J. Ockman,
Opposition Books/MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982.
Sjoberg, Gideon, The origin and evolution of cities, Scientific American, vol.
213, no. 3, 1965.
Sjoberg, Gideon, The Preindustrial City: Past and Present, Macmillan, London,
1960.
Wirth, Louis, Urbanism as a way of life, American Journal of Sociology, vol.
44, 1938.