What's Rome to me, what business have I there? / I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear? / Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, / Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times? ~JuvenalWhen the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?” What will you answer? “We all dwell together to make money from each other”? or “This is a community”? ~T. S. EliotNot so long ago, I examined some maps showing juvenile delinquency, diptheria, tuberculosis and murder quotients in a number of cities fromNew Orleans toLos Angeles. The maps all looked alike.Disease, crime and delinquency were invariably grouped in the same parts of the cities — in theslum districts. That is the cause of crime, not themotion picture. ~Humphrey BogartTo anyone growing up in any large city, the immediate neighborhood becomes the world. The street on which one lives provides a kid with local identification somewhat similar to being branded by national origin. Streets have a status. They grow, get old and change in character. In large coastal cities, immigration has an effect on the profile of a street altering it as each new group enters, stays a while, assimilates and then moves away. Streets seem to have a discernible life. Some start out ostentatiously and gradually descend into slums while others begin as poor the disreputable neighborhoods and rise to ostentation through what city planners call gentrification. ~Will EisnerLatin America is particularly susceptible to pockets ofcrime because of its speedyurbanization. Its cities grew faster than in most other parts of the world during the past 50 years, according to theEconomist. By 2000, three-quarters of the population lived intowns andcities. That is about double the proportion inAsia andAfrica. Asthe Economist explains, “that move from thecountryside concentrated risk factors for lethalviolence —inequality, unemployed young men, dislocated families, poor government services, easily availablefirearms — even as it also brought together the factors needed foreconomic growth.” ~ Amanda EricksonCities, like cats, reveal themselves at night ~Rupert BrookeTheAmerican city should be a collection ofcommunities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feelssafe on hisstreets and in thehouse of hisfriends. It should be a place where each individual’sdignity andself-respect is strengthened by therespect andaffection of hisneighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find thesatisfaction andwarmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn ofcivilization. It is what we seektoday. ~Lyndon B. Johnson
Cities are relatively large and long lastinghuman settlements. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within generalEnglish language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.
When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, thestate comes into existence, originating in the bare needs oflife, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.
Aristotle,Politics, book 1, chapter 2; reported inAristotle’s Politics and Poetics (translation by Benjamin Jowett and Thomas Twining, 1952), p. 5.
If you are aChristian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City ‘the Builder and Maker is God.’ Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled inheaven: ourcitizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city’sgreatness, butvirtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue.
The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not well before, aconsciousness that begins to separate you from the country possibly even before you decide to journey toward it. It encircles you with forces much greater than the walls and gates which imitate tinier villages or towns. People who come to it come seeking the future, not realizing all that will finally affect them in it is their own, only more or less aware, involvement with the past. The way we do things here—really, that’s all there is to be learned in our precincts. But in the paving of every wide, clear avenue, in the turnings of every dark, overhung alley, in the ornaments on every cornice, in the salt-stained stones of each neighborhood cistern, there are traces of the way things once were done—which is the key to why they are done as they are today.
To anyone growing up in any large city, the immediate neighborhood becomes the world. The street on which one lives provides a kid with local identification somewhat similar to being branded by national origin.Streets have a status. They grow, get old and change in character. In large coastal cities,immigration has an effect on the profile of a street altering it as each new group enters, stays a while, assimilates and then moves away. Streets seem to have a discernible life. Some start out ostentatiously and gradually descend into slums while others begin aspoor the disreputable neighborhoods and rise to ostentation through whatcity planners call gentrification.
Will Eisner,A Contract With God, XIX, December 2004
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
My troops are bound to me as acow is bound to its calf; but like ason who,hating his mother, leaves his city, my princely sister holyInana has run away from me back to brick-builtKulaba. If sheloves her city and hates me, why does she bind the city to me? If she hates the city and yet loves me, why does she bind me to the city?
Latin America is particularly susceptible to pockets ofcrime because of its speedyurbanization. Its cities grew faster than in most other parts of the world during the past 50 years, according to theEconomist. By 2000, three-quarters of the population lived intowns andcities. That is about double the proportion inAsia andAfrica. Asthe Economist explains, “that move from thecountryside concentrated risk factors for lethalviolence —inequality, unemployed young men, dislocated families, poor government services, easily availablefirearms — even as it also brought together the factors needed foreconomic growth.”
TheAmerican city should be a collection ofcommunities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feelssafe on hisstreets and in thehouse of hisfriends. It should be a place where each individual’sdignity andself-respect is strengthened by therespect andaffection of hisneighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find thesatisfaction andwarmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn ofcivilization. It is what we seektoday.
Lyndon B. Johnson, special message to the Congress on the nation's cities (March 2, 1965); reported inPublic Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, book 1, p. 240.
It shall be remembered that the first to be mentioned in theSacred Scriptures as a builder of cities was at the same time the first murderer —Cain. (Gen. 4:17.)
Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris,Chicago,Pittsburgh,Detroit, orGlasgow are high spots ofslavery in comparison toAlbania,Bulgaria, or evenCentral Africa. Theslavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of theproletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke.
Go through that city, and behold What intellect can yield, How it brings forth an hundred-fold From time’s enduring field. Those walls are filled with wealth, the spoil Of industry and thought, The mighty harvest which man’s toil Out of the past has wrought.
How wonderful the common street, Its tumult and its throng, The hurrying of the thousand feet That bear life's cares along. How strongly is the present felt, With such a scene beside; All sounds in one vast murmur melt The thunder of the tide.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon,Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836 (1835) 'Scenes in London: Piccadilly'
I do own I have a most affectionate attachment for London—the deep voice of her multitudes "haunts me like a passion." I delight in observing the infinite variety of her crowded streets, the rich merchandise of theshops, the vastbuildings, whether raised for pomp, commerce, or charity, down to the barrel-organ, whose music is only common because it is beautiful. The country is no more left as it was originally created, than Belgrave Square remains its pristineswamp. The forest has been felled, the marsh drained, the enclosures planted, and the field ploughed. All these, beggingMr. Cowper’s pardon, are the works of man’s hands; and so is the town—the one is not more artificial than the other.
Any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!
Fritz Leiber,Diary in the Snow (1947) in the collectionNight’s Black Agents
I am a child of the city. I was born in one, but that alone is not enough to make a man want, even need, to live and die in one, not even the city of his birth isLondon, as mine is. Millions are born in cities and flee them, London included; others go on living in them and become more and more unhappy. I think I can understand what moves those who cannot endure city life, but that is largely because the things they cannot abide are the very things that made cities so attractive to me in the first place.
To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, materials, workmen, money, and especially time, will be required.
Joseph de Maistre,Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1809), XXXVIII
The greatest division of material and mental labour is the separation of town and country.
Thezooanimal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
The size of a town rarely determines my pleasure. If a person does not enjoy a small town, it's likely he is too small-minded to delight in the ordinary.
[Solon] being asked, namely, what city was best to live in, “That city,” he replied, “in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.”
Plutarch,Plutarch's Lives, translated by Bernadotte Perrin (1914), life of Solon, section 18, vol. 1, p. 455.
Petite ville, grand renom.
Small town, great renown.
François Rabelais,Pantagruel (1532), Book V, Chapter XXXV. Of Chinon, Rabelais's native town.
We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun.
Theodore Roosevelt, "The City in Modern Life",Literary Essays (vol. 12 ofThe Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), p. 226. Book review inThe Atlantic Monthly (April 1895).
This country is known by its cities: those amazing aggregations of people andhousing, offices and factories, which constitute the heart of our civilization, the nerve center of our collective being.
Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ, Hæ septem certant de stirpe insignis Homeri.
Smyrna,Rhodes,Colophon,Salamis,Chios,Argos,Athens—these seven cities contend as to being the birthplace of the illustriousHomer. (The second line sometimes runs "Orbis de patria certat, Homere, tua.")
Anonymous translation fromGreek. Same inAntipater of Sidon.
The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
Euripides,Encomium on Alcibiades. (Probably quoted). SeePlutarch, Life of Demosthenes.
In the busy haunts of men.
Felicia Hemans,Tale of the Secret Tribunal, Part I, line 2.
Seven cities warr'd for Homer being dead, Who living had no roofe to shroud his head.
Friends andloves we have none, norwealth, nor blest abode But the hope, the burning hope, and the road, the lonely road. Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, For we go seeking cities that we shall never find.
I dwelt in a city enchanted, And lonely indeed was my lot; * * * * * Though the latitude's rather uncertain, And the longitude also is vague, The persons I pity who know not the City The beautifulCity of Prague.
W. J. Prowse,The City of Prague ("Little Village on Thames.").
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion,… the city of the great King.
Psalms. XLVIII. 2.
Great Homer's birthplace seven rival cities claim, Too mighty such monopoly of Fame.
Thomas Seward, on Shakespeare's Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon.
Urbem lateritiam accepit, mamoream relinquit.
He [Cæsar Augustus] found a city built of brick; he left it built of marble.
