Restructuring Urban Systems

Abstract

According to anthropological and archaeological findings, cities are inventions of agrarian societies. As nomadic groups became settled tribes, a new social system arose. Small egalitarian groups gave way to larger social entities with hierarchical socioeconomic relations About 80 to 90 percent of the people within these regional agrarian societies were “primary producers.” They were controlled and protected by the other 10 to 20 percent, comprised of political, economic, and military leaders and their religious, administrative, and technical staff. The primary producers had to grow a surplus of food and biomass to support the leadership and their administrators. From an ecological point of view it was a new form of symbiosis, manifested in terms of culture.