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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1898 | London

Mixed Media

Ebenezer Howard and the marriage of town and country.More

325 | Constantinople

Divine Plan

Constantine builds a city in his own image.More

360 | Antioch

Public Square

Mixing and mingling in ancient Antioch.More

Charts & Graphs

Workforce

From a 1292 inventory of craftsmen in Paris.

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Swiss traveler and writer Nicolas Bouvier.

Photo of stone Aristotle statue face

American novelist and journalist John Hersey.

Black and white photograph of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.

Classical bust of Thucydides.

Statue depicting Roman orator and historian Tacitus.

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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