Cities as Concepts

Abstract

Cities have been with us for over 5000 years. This, of course, if we do not consider some early, premature, appearances such as 8th millennium B.C. Chatal Hüyük in Anatolia and Jericho in the Jordan valley. Since the urban revolution in 4th millennium B.C. Mesopotamia, cities form the largest artifacts ever produced by humans and their most dominant socio—spatial entity. Despite its archaic origin, urbanism survived all subsequent sociocultural changes: It was the most dominant cultural, social, and political, spatial entity for the Sumerians, Acadians, Hittites, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Chinese, Muslims, Middle-Ages Europeans, and with the rise of modernity it played a major role in the industrial revolution. Cities such as Uruk, Ur, Jerusalem, Hatushash, Athens, Rome and so on, are considered as important landmarks in human evolution, and some of our most central terms and concepts are derived directly from cities — citizen, police, politics, bourgeois ...