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

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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.

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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.

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Map

City Narratives

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

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1949 | Boston

Fare Hike

Trapped in the Boston subway.More

1844 | London

Examining the Costs of Production

Friedrich Engels sheds light on the lives of London’s poor.More

1520 | Tenochtitlán

Nothing Is Equal

Cortés extols the splendor of the Aztecs.More

Charts & Graphs

Welcome to Levittown

“The Most Perfectly Planned Community in America.”

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

Sufi mystic and poet Rumi.

Former Prime Minister of United Kingdom Benjamin Disraeli.

English architect Christopher Wren.

Engraving of Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Swiss traveler and writer Nicolas Bouvier.

French novelist Gustave Flaubert.

One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.

—Ernst Jünger, 1977

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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