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Figure 2.3 The remains of Mesopotamia provide key insights into the benefits of urban living. (Source: Fat Jackey/Shutterstock)
Memphis – Ancient Egypt
The Greek historian Herodotus once said, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”, a saying that describes just how much Egypt relies, and still relies, on the Nile. Since the days of the Pharaohs, the Nile has been the main source of Egypt’s water for agriculture. The yearly flooding of the Nile was an important factor in ensuring a good harvest. The river was also an important trade route and mode of transport.
It can therefore be seen that Egyptian civilization developed along the river. The majority of Egyptian cities were located on the east side of the river, whilst the tombs and pyramids were built on the west side, mirroring the life and death cycle of the sun’s daily route. All cities and settlements were built on the edge of the desert, with relative distance to the river so they would remain dry during the yearly floods. The land close to the Nile was considered too precious to build upon and remained the place for valuable crops to be grown and harvested.
Egypt’s first Pharaoh, Menses, the source of many legends, unified Upper and Lower Egypt and established his capital just a few kilometres to the southwest of modern Cairo. Not wanting to favour Upper or Lower Egypt, Menses decided to build the new capital on the border between the two. The city was called Men-nefer, or, as the Greeks later called it, Memphis.
Memphis was one of the largest and most important cities of its day, with archaeologists predicting that as many as 100,000 people may have lived in it at the height of its power.10 As the capital, it was also the seat in which Menses ordered Egypt’s first irrigation system to be built in 3100 BCE.11 The unpredictability of the Nile caused problems ranging from excessive flooding to droughts, but it did, however, also lead to the invention of water dams – one of ancient Egypt’s greatest archaeological feats, with the foundations of this technology still in practice to this day. This allowed water from the Nile to be diverted into canals and lakes, considerably reducing the chance for water-related disasters.
The invention of water dams provided an infrastructure within the cities, such as Memphis, that lined the river’s edges that faced a high environmental disaster risk and made them more resilient, whilst also ensuring the safety and welfare of its citizens. It is an excellent lesson of cities investing in resilience and an act of quick and decisive leadership and governance.
Rome
There is a reason why Rome remains so present in our minds when it comes to talking about cities, infrastructure, equality, subjugation and slavery, television dramas, movies, and even Shakespeare. Rome is dramatic, mysterious, and unique, and it is also like any other city today. It expanded, conquered, innovated, succeeded, and failed, and like all civilizations it eventually withered away and died. In many ways, Rome is inspiring, but there are also many lessons to be learnt from it.
Rome is the perfect example of how well positioned cities are to govern on a global level. Unlike the other cities we have looked at that fold back into the region in which they were established, Rome quite literally took over the world. I say “Rome” because it was a dominating identity that remains to be our prevalent descriptor in the course of history – whether you lived in the capital or not you were a Roman; there was no country but an empire – the Roman Empire.
For sustainable development and the economic growth that goes along with it to be truly effective, it must go hand in hand with social inclusion and respect for the environment. The Roman Empire lasted 500 years in part due to its ability to respect these unspoken bonds. It created social equality by giving the plebeians equal rights to the patricians, creating a democracy. It prioritized public service and the common good. It imported grain, servicing and feeding its population. It outsourced its material needs to foreign slaves (not necessarily something to be admired but in line with the times). This is governance we still see today with modern companies outsourcing the vast majority of things they buy abroad. China now produces 50% of the world’s clothes and 70% of its mobile phones.12
Inevitably, the fault lines erupted, and it all went downhill with territorial expansion, corruption with the new wealth market not shared, wars and uprisings within conquered lands, national debt, and inflation.
Another, less well-known factor was climate change. As documented by Kyle Harper in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, the period between roughly 200 BCE and 150 CE is now known as the Rome Climate Optimum.13 This was a period of a warm, wet, and predicable climate that helped harness the empire’s agricultural crops. The climate became cooler and dryer in the third century, resulting in droughts and crop failures, and by the fifth century the Late Antique Little Ice Age arrived. The changing climate reduced the empire’s resilience to a variety of shocks, such as a smallpox pandemic and the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian. The decade before the outbreak of the plague in the sixth century saw some of the coldest temperatures in millennia brought about by a series of massive volcanic eruptions in central Asia, which likely forced gerbils and marmots out of their natural habitats, causing the bacteria-bearing fleas they carried to infect the black rats whose population had exploded along Rome’s network of trade routes.
A weakened population, mass deaths, a dying democracy, war, inflation, national debt, and corrupt governance, helped along by a climate crisis, saw the fall of Rome. But this does not take away from the lesson that Rome is perhaps the greatest example we have in recorded history of a city with effective, far-reaching leadership. They recognized that sustainable development and economic growth must go hand in hand with social inclusion and respect for the environment.
Venice
Venetians have lived on water ever since the first Venetians chose to settle in a mosquito-filled marsh in the northern Adriatic Sea. These fifth-century settlers were fleeing German and Hun invaders and probably picked the area, which consisted of dozens of disparate islands surrounded by a 200-square-mile (517-km2) shallow lagoon, for the protection it offered them.14
They harnessed the natural landscape to build a city by driving wooden poles into the ground, creating plank and marble foundations, and redirecting the rivers to the sea away from the lagoon15 – problem solving at its finest. If the original Venetians hadn’t done this, Venice as we know it today would be Italian coastline and not much else.
Venice is the city where the streets are made with water. There are no additional lanes or roads that have to be built, road traffic is purposefully kept to a minimum, and this has in turn made everyone walk. Venice is an inspiration for cities who want to reduce their car use and diversify their transport system. Venice was one of the first cities to hit its GHG emissions peak before the 2020 target.16
Venice faces many challenges today, including rising sea levels and shifting tectonic plates that technology and urban development are attempting to keep up with, but the original premise is still to be admired. For a city founded for the purpose of protection, it seems to still be in line with its original values (Figure 2.4).
Figure 2.4 Venice today, a city founded for the purpose of protection, now ironically under threat from rising sea levels. (Source: Miiisha/Shutterstock)
Venice has endured, with a concept that is wholly unique. It has taught us a model for
