conclusion in Chapter 1 was for connected leadership within the modern city. In Chapter 2 I am going to take us into the past to get a stronger sense of why we need to be “systems thinkers” and how we can deliver Peter’s clarity and ambition in today’s city.
Cities themselves are stories. They are not constructed with pen and paper but are built with bricks and mortar. The one thing that remains constant, however, is the human imagination behind them, but just like the way we tell stories changes over time, the way we build and design cities must also change. In Chapter 1, The Ambitious City, Peter discusses how city leadership can aim “beyond” its goals; I too look at some of the ways that cities can move beyond their historical infrastructure to rise up and meet the environmental challenges that face the modern city, and, most importantly, how we can apply those learnings for a better future.
I look at the lessons learnt through the history of cities, from Uruk, the world’s first city (Figure 2.1), to Silicon Valley. I explore what we have learnt to do and not do, along with the history of innovation, problem solving, and governance, and discover qualities that prove to us cities are going to solve the climate crisis, making the case for why local governments are more capable than national governments of addressing this challenge.
Figure 2.1 Uruk. (Source: SAC Andy Holmes / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.)
Many cities are increasing in size and power, leading to environmental degradation, social dis-cohesion, and cultural barbarism. This may seem to predict a dire outcome, but we must remember that the city, as a product of human design, attracts innovative people, absorbing them into its bloodstream, who proceed to invent, inspire, and attract other innovators who synthesize art and technology and move society forwards. From the cultural advancements of Athens and Florence, to the cotton mills of Manchester and the Industrial Revolution, and, most recently, the technological innovations of Silicon Valley (Figure 2.2), human invention has made all the difference in urban development.
Figure 2.2 The “Spaceship” Campus, called the ring in Cupertino, California. (Source: Dronandy/Getty Images)
The question is which story do we tell next, and, more importantly, how? As the great American writer Mark Twain said, “there is no such thing as a new idea”, just as there is no reason as to why modern cities shouldn’t benefit from lessons learnt in the past to find new ways of operating together in solutions that help clean up their delicate but improving urban ecosystems. Innovation relies upon the building blocks of the past as much as it does on imagination.
2 The Civilized City
Martin Powell
From the dawn of time, well since 4500 BCE, people have been telling stories from great cities – from Uruk and Mesopotamia, to Athens and Rome, to London, Hong Kong, and New York – each city having formed an identity based on events through time attributed to their name. Cities are places where people go to, to live, to work, and to raise families. Cities are unique; they have a singular identity and an individual story. Jerusalem, the only city to exist twice, on Earth and in heaven; Venice, a road surface made of water; New York, the city that never sleeps. These identities were forged from inhabitants and visitors, reinforced through time, and ultimately immortalized in their name. The significance of this will become apparent as we navigate through the city archetypes, the governance structures, and the megatrends that are driving an unprecedented change in the natural course of city development – a change that only cities are truly equipped to handle.
In Italy, the “piazza” is the “city”, its symbolic centre where people “descend” to celebrate or protest. It is the soul of local pride, a concept that is close to “campanilisimo” – the affection for one’s own bell tower – and depending on the level of desire to contribute to local society is how much of a “campanilista” I am – how attached I am to my local bell tower. The significance of this place in all cities has defined the great cities across the world. It is a safe place to have a voice, to be heard, to be told, and most importantly for the citizens to transact with the government over the direction of the city.
The magnitude of the problems over which opinions are voiced in the “Piazza” has not changed over time. In Florence in 1784, the local archives1 talk of a council gathering to discuss the construction of 50 new homes in the grand plan of the 500 needed. The population of Florence then, according to local records, was 78,537. A similar discussion held by the London Assembly, in 2020, spoke of the need to build 50,000 homes in a city of 8 million people – exactly the same magnitude of problem, proportionate to the scale of the city: the same constraints; the same concerns over affordability, access to transport, and access to green spaces; and the same people with divergent interests inhibiting progress. To say we have not learned how to do it would be wrong because cities today are underachieving against these targets to the exact same scale as they did in 1784. It’s never fast enough, good enough, or just plain “enough”, but it does get done to a point. The risk of trying to meet the demand required when we need it is that we get it so wrong we end up failing completely, and in an urban environment this is unforgivable.
We can show our greatest innovation when the need exists. In Cities in Civilizatio2, Sir Peter Hall gives an optimistic account of urban history since Athens. Peter was a planner and distinguished academic who refutes predecessors, such as Lewis Mumford, with their dire prophecies that the modern metropolis is doomed. Mumford was clear that cities were “organic” entities that could not exceed their natural limits without terrible consequences. Cities were on a self-defeating quest for increasing size and power, leading to environmental degradation, social dis-cohesion, and cultural barbarism. He cites cities such as Rome and New York. Peter acknowledges that these cities were lawless, overcrowded, and unhealthy, but argues that cities are central to civilization because their sheer size and complexity make them the natural place for “the innovative milieu”. Bringing together the critical mass of creative people takes a “great city”, because the city enables this network of innovators that ultimately enables society to progress. It is clear the cultural centrality of cities will continue to intensify even in a connected world where virtual networks seem to nullify the need for this city co-location of talent.
Peter observes that past histories of success were attributed to the city being a cultural incubator – Athens and Florence – or a technological innovator – Detroit or Silicon Valley – but now that civilization has embarked on “a marriage of art and technology”, a synthesis of these two forms of innovation will create a new culture. The synthesis will take place in large, diverse cities and attract a huge range of skills. It is because of this he believes the city is on the verge of a “golden age”.
In the post-war era, the capitalist urban economy showed real resilience, strength, and agility as the entrepreneurial, individualistic, unplanned, marginal, and chaotic nature of cities shone through to define the great cities.
The artistic networks that grew Elizabethan theatre are analogous to the innovative networks that have created Silicon Valley. These networks are the lifeblood of creative urbanism. The specialism of cities is not just the collection of stories told about them
