City Beautiful

Early Access: Why Did Humans Invent Cities?

Added 2023-03-18 03:57:29 +0000 UTC

I've always enjoyed Spiro Kostof's book "The City Shaped," particularly the first chapters on the designs of early cities. He also has a nice discussion of different definitions of "city" that helps to frame the discussion of what the first cities were and what were they like. This video is inspired by that book, though surprisingly little of Kostof made its way into the final script. I found the discussion of the Neolithic Era and the agricultural revolution to be very interesting, and he only covered that topic briefly.

My dream follow up to this video is a video all about what cities were like in the Bronze Age, after the Neolithic Era. I discuss it a bit in this video, but it deserves a deep dive. What were the marketplaces like? How did city-to-city trade work? Social hierarchies? Housing? All interesting sub-topics.

Thanks for watching! The next two videos are on historic districts and college towns. Then I think I'll do a video on the suburbs. We'll see!