Cities

Cities: The First 6,000 Years- Monica L. Smith
Viking/Penguin Group
Release Date: April 16, 2019

Rating:
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Synopsis:Six thousand years ago, there were no cities on the planet. Today, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, and that number is growing. Weaving together archeology, history, and contemporary observations, Monica Smith explains the rise of the first urban developments and their connection to our own. She takes readers on a journey through the ancient world of Tell Brak in modern-day Syria; Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan in Mexico; her own digs in India; as well as the more well-known Pompeii, Rome, and Athens. Along the way, she presents the unique properties that made cities singularly responsible for the flowering of humankind: the development of networked infrastructure, the rise of an entrepreneurial middle class, and the culture of consumption that results in everything from take-out food to the tell-tale secrets of trash.

Cities is an impassioned and learned account full of fascinating details of daily life in ancient urban centers, using archaeological perspectives to show that the aspects of cities we find most irresistible (and the most annoying) have been with us since the very beginnings of urbanism itself. She also proves the rise of cities was hardly inevitable, yet it was crucial to the eventual global dominance of our species--and that cities are here to stay.

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In her book Cities: The First 6,000 Years, archaeologist Monica L. Smith gives us the story of cities: how people built them and why, how ancient cities compare to modern cities, and how cities impact the people who live in them.  It is a fascinating look at the urban environments that so many of us take for granted, unquestioningly walking streets everyday without considering why or what went before.

Smith's love of archaeology and discovery shine clearly off of each page- she seems as eager to share her discoveries with us as we are to read about them.  What I found most interesting was that Smith's views on the development of cities were such a seamless flow between the physical and the psychological.  She describes what a city needs: infrastructure of roads, water, food, planning, but also what a city does: it provides humans with exposure to people, ideas, and consumer goods that they would never see in a rural setting.  Much of the book examines how consumer habits are both created by the environment but also create the environment and the people's mindsets in turn.

There is also the inevitable discussion of what comes next.  What about the collapse of cities?  Looking at the question from an archaeologist's point of view, Smith argues that perhaps this isn't as inevitable as we often think.  Cities may grow and change with the times, the environment, and the people in them, but historically very few simply end.  And even if a city ends (like Pompeii), its people may survive, move on, integrate and influence other cities.

Although occasionally repetitive, Cities is a book full of fascinating information and new ways for people to look at the urban environments around them.  An excellent read for history lovers, those interested in archaeology, or even human psychology, as Smith makes the argument that all of those aspects go into what makes a city and how we should look at their history. 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review