Cities in Civilization - Hardcover

Hall, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394587324 ISBN 13: 9780394587325

Publisher: Pantheon, 1998

Synopsis

Ranging over 2,500 years, Cities in Civilization is a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque.

Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances. Tales of the creation of Los Angeles' movie industry and the birth of the blues and rock 'n' roll in Memphis depict the marriage of culture and technology.

Finally, Hall celebrates cities that have been forced to solve problems created by their very size. With Imperial Rome came the apartment block and aqueduct; nineteenth-century London introduced policing, prisons, and sewers; twentieth-century New York developed the skyscraper; and Los Angeles became the first city without a center, a city ruled instead by the car. And in a fascinating conclusion, Hall speculates on urban creativity in the twenty-first century.

This penetrating study reveals not only the lives of cities but also the lives of the people who built them and created the civilizations within them. A decade in the making, Cities in Civilization is the definitive account of the culture of cities.

About this title

About the Author

Sir Peter Hall is Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College, London, and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books, including The World Cities and Cities Tomorrow, and is a former Special Advisor on Planning to the Secretary of State for the Environment. He lives in London.

From the Inside Flap

2,500 years, Cities in Civilization is a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque.

Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances.

Reviews

What brings a city to its golden age? Hall (Cities of Tomorrow)?a distinguished professor of urban planning?applies this question to cities ranging from Rome and Athens to Glasgow, Memphis and Palo Alto in his new survey. His conclusions, like the book itself, are diffuse. Examining cultural belle epoques, Hall contends that it was, ironically, the restrictiveness of the official artistic culture in turn-of-the-century Paris and Vienna that fueled startling innovations, as new artists were forced outside the mainstream. Looking at technology, Hall argues that an unfettered market is a great stimulant to invention?as in the heydays of Glasgow's shipbuilding trade and Manchester's cotton textile manufacturing?but, as both cases show, it also leaves cities vulnerable to the losses that result from other cities improving on their initial innovations. Turning to the fusion of cultural and industrial innovation?using L.A.'s film industry and Memphis's pop music scene as examples?Hall asserts that the success of both rests on recognizing a "society in flux" and catering to "the deepest emotional needs" of an important, untapped market. Hall next examines the great successes?and boondoggles?of urban planning over the last two centuries (as well as in imperial Rome) before ending with a coda in which he applies his accumulated insights to the future cities. Hall's broadmindedness allows him to draw useful insights from thinkers as diverse as Joseph Schumpeter and Michel Foucault. While it may not come as a great surprise that neither entirely unregulated markets nor rigid central planning, but a little of each?with a pinch of kismet?will bring a metropolis to its peak, Hall must be commended for making this case with unusual thoroughness.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Any book this size must pass the hernia test: Is the payoff from reading it greater than the potential discomfort from lifting it? Urban planning expert Hall's (University Coll., London) magnum opus passes, but just barely. He observes that certai n cities, at certain times, pass through ``golden ages,'' and he seeks an explanation for these brief historical moments. Hall explores the cultural flowering of Athens, Florence, London, Vienna, Paris, and Berlin, each in their prime; considers the produ ctive innovation of Manchester, Glasgow, Berlin, Detroit, Palo Alto, and Tokyo; and describes the merger of art and industry in Los Angeles and Memphis. This survey produces a wealth of information but doesnt pin down specific variables explaining the ris e and fall of great cities, so the indefatigable author seeks out the organizational basis of the urban order in Rome, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Stockholm. The empirical description is supported by theoretical analysis drawing upon a wide array of thinkers, and Hall's ability to remain focused on his initial question through a thousand pages of material is remarkable. A reasonable reader, however, could feel cheated by his conclusion. While recognizing preconditions which can encourage or retard a city's development, Hall finds that ``time and chance happeneth to them all; it is a question of finding the moment and seizing the hour.'' To explain that theres no explanation cannot satisfy. And the failure may reflect an authorial flaw. For H all, cities are too much the grandest variable in human existence for them to be epiphenomena, so factors such as the rise and fall of nations or shifts in global economic patterns remain at the margin of his analysis. Unfortunately, excluding the variabl es most likely to be fruitful is a recipe for intellectual frustration. Nevertheless, his exhaustive case studies of cities are commendable. (48 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like Braudel's and Holmes's, Hall's thesis here is that "the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities...have throughout history been the places that ignited the sacred flame of the human intelligence and the human imagination." Case studies illustrate themes such as the city as cultural crucible, the milieu for innovation, etc. Other recent larger studies of historically important cities include Robert Hughes's Barcelona (LJ 10/1/91) and Roy Porter's London: A Social History (Harvard Univ., 1995). (LJ 12/98).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hall, professor of planning at University College, London, tackles a vast enterprise with absorbing results. Taking more than 1,000 pages to argue his case, Hall nonetheless surprises the reader not so much with the amount of detail he works into his narrative but with the fluidity of his lengthy presentation. The general topic is this: Why, since ancient times, have certain cities in the West experienced a golden age--specifically, "What makes a particular city, at a particular time, suddenly become immensely creative, exceptionally innovative?" From ancient Athens ("first in so many of the things that have mattered, ever since, to Western civilization and its meaning") to Paris in the late nineteenth century to Memphis (Tennessee) in the 1950s to London in the 1990s, Hall follows the cycle of golden ages, characterizing the nature of each city's flowering and investigating why it happened there and, as an inevitable consequence, why its brightness eventually dimmed. Challenging but not forbidding, this is a complete education on a fascinating topic. Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394587324
• ISBN 13: 9780394587325
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 1184