Urban History...

From The Creativity Exchange, Richard Florida's blog, just read through Soul of the Cities. That jumps to a series of articles that appear in the most recent issue of the The Economist.

WHETHER you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia known as Eden, or more prosaically on the savannahs of present-day east Africa, it is clear that Homo sapiens did not start life as an urban creature. Man's habitat at the outset was dominated by the need to find food, and hunting and foraging were rural pursuits. Not until the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago, did he start building anything that might be called a village, and by that time man had been around for about 120,000 years. It took another six millennia, to the days of classical antiquity, for cities of more than 100,000 people to develop. Even in 1800 only 3% of the world's population lived in cities. Sometime in the next few months, though, that proportion will pass the 50% mark, if it has not done so already. Wisely or not, Homo sapiens has become Homo urbanus. read the rest...

Excellent series of articles, and an audio interview - here - with the writer, Johnny Grimmond. If you are at all interested in the largest migration in human history - going on right now - with people leaving rural ways of life and plunging into the urban realm, you'll want to check out the hyperlinked list of resources consulted for this series - sources.

You may also want to re-visit the work of journalist Robert Neuwirth - Cities of Tomorrow...

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