SIR PETE.

R HALL

CITIE,S
IN
CIVILIZATION

FROMM INTERNATIONAL
NEW YORK

o
 First Fromm International paperbackedition 2001

Copyright @ 1998 by Sir PeterHall

All rights reservedunder International and Pan-AmericanCopyright

Conventions.First publishedin hardcoverin the United Statesby PantheonBooks,
a division of RandomHouse, Inc., New York Originally published
in Great Britain byWeidenfeld &Nicolson, London.

Library of CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData

Hall, Peter Geoffrey.

Cities in civilization / Sir PeterHall.
P. cm.
Includes bibliographical referencesand index.
ISBN 0-88064-250-5
1. Cities and towns-History. 2. Cities and towns-Growth-History.
3. Civilization. 4. City and town life. I. Title.
HT111.H345 t998 307.76'.09--427 98-24007 CIP

Printed in the United Statesof America

 CONTE,NTS

Acknowledgements Ylt
List of Illustrations xi

BOOK ONE: The City as Cultural Crucible

1 Great Cities in their Golden Ages 3
2 The Fountainhead
. 50G400sc 24
{!gr
3 The Rediscoveryof Life
' Flglglc. 1400-1500 69
4 The World as Stage
,/London 1,570-1620 114
5 The City as PleasurePrinciple
. Vienrla 1780-1910 159
6 The Capital of Light
€ Paris 1870-1910 201
7 The Invention of the Twentieth Century
r Bfrli+ 19fi-1933 239
8 The Key to Creativity 279

BOOK TWO: The City as InnovativeMilieu

9 The InnovativeMilieu 291
10 The First IndustrialCiry
. Manchester7760-1830 310
17 The Conquestof the Oceans
. Glgqow 1n0-n90 348
12 The PioneerTechnopolis
* nerfiT 18'10-1930 377
13 The MassProductionof Mobility
. Detrqit 189V1975 396
14 The Industrializationof Information
. SanFrancisco/PaloAlto/Berkeley1950-1990 4?3
vl CONTENTS

15 The State as PermanentInnoYator

.' r - +Tokyo-Kanasawa I89V1'990 455
1,6 The Innovative Essence 483

BOOK THREE: The Marriage of Art and

Technology
17 The Invention of Mass Culture 503
18 The Dream Factory
o k:$des 1910-1945 520
19 The Soulof the Delta
. Mgphit 7948-7956 553
20 The Secretof the Marriage 603

BOOK FOUR: The Establishmentof the

Urban Order
21, The Challengeto the Urban Order 6tr
?2 The ImperialCapital
. sc-ao100 627
P.50
73 The Utilitarian City
\/ Lg!&" 782s-7900 657
,_ The City of Perpetual Public'Works
P_aris1850-1870 706
25 The Apotheosis of the Modern
, Ng-lork 1880-19'+0 746
26 The City as Freeway
o LolArgeles 1900-1980 803
27 The Social Democratic UtoPia
t Stockholm 1945-1980 842
28 The City of Capitalism RamPant
London 7979-1993 888
29 The Achievementof the Urban Order 932

BOOK FIVE: The Union of Art, Technology,

and Organization
30 The City of the Coming Golden Age 943

Nofes 990
Bibliography 1051
lndex 1135

@
 r_*-'*Th"e of each
: to understand the precise conjunctqqg o:[.fo4gqjra!

complementary; and then, as a result, to generalize as to the degree of

commonality these places share, and on the other hand the residual forces that
are special to
one of which had its particular
age; among lasted for perhaps a century and a half,
the shortest a mere fifteen years. For those brief spans of human history, each
of these cities claimed the global limelight; though none was eyer withour
serious competitors, each could fairly claim to be the great creative city of that
time.
I7e start *i(mdDthe Periclean age, the fifth century nc, when the tiny
Aegean polis diM-nced itself from its competitors through an explosion of
creativity - in philosophy, science, art, architecture, lyric poetry and drama.
Athens at this time was transforming itself from a yery traditional aristocratic
oligarchic regime into the world's first and perhaps still most effective democ-
racy: originally a democracy of small farmers, but soon in turn transformed by
the growth of trade, which made Athens the wodd's first true global city. The
wealth thus generatedremained largely in public hands and was used to generate
exceptional state patronage, while the ciry's reputation attracted talents from
eyery corner of a mercantile empire, huge by the standards of the day. And ir

e&*...--._
ffinrr#o*nGe. bn"lan,
V,u,nltnrt!, Brrl,L

9utTURe
rF!"!

THE CITY AS CULTURAL CRUCIBLE

the culture but half excluded

emerges that it was rhese outsiders, half inside
Athenian miracle'
from it, who were the true progenitors of the
bieak of almost exactly two thousand years' with-
The storv contlnuaQ
"ft.. "
theRenaissance suddenlv brokethe bondsof
fiftililil;;'ffi;here
-.it.""r-i".-irH€#ascover the naturalisticarts of the ancientGreeks'
mercantile centre' a
Florence, like Athens, emerges as a great,Mediterranean
global city of its day, ;;;;g civic iealth and civic Patronage which provided
bu' also attracting people talent from all
collective support for the -of
"t'I,f"",tlr. which helps powerfully to explain the
around the city; .oro-on
"
emergenceof both Places- =-
'We
then move ro .f6"aii)f Elizabeth I and of the Globe Theatre: a
mere fifty-year span' i;;fs% 61620, where a golden stream of poetry and
Once again, it
;;" pf,rr.d forth fro- Shakespeareand-his contemporaries.
.*..*i rfti, *", ,tt.-*o;i;5 gtt"t--erchant city of its day' exploring the
it; once again, there was an
ii-i,r" oi th. world and drawing bounty from
consumption; once again, talent
eruption of wealth creation arrd o-fconspicuous
and Midlands grammar schools;
was drawn in, from OJota and CamLridge
this was an economy and
most notably of all, like both Athens .nd Florence,
a traditional aristocratic order
a society in the throes of transformation, from
the resulting tensions
io n* system based on merit and enterprise' and
"
.ffiUf::ilt#:Tj',ln: was
:,..1';r, grv
dirrerent
anintriguin
"$ffi
f f i ; ; ; ; ; , a v e r y d y n a m i c k i n d o f p l a c e a t " u l : l -more
, } . c oconservative'
n t r a r y , i t more
*", tha centre of an .mpi'e and a court that became
hidebound, as they more territory and more power' In fact' over this
".q,rir.d two golden ages: the first came of royal and
Iong period Vienna ;;.J "of .out
,h. .Jigh,.n'n.nt, -and it expressed itself
aristocratic p",rorr"g. i. the age
reaction of a few young Viennese
exclusively in music; the secondwas a
"l-or, what they saw as an ossified and worthless sociery' and was artistic'
"g"in$ both the musicians
il;"; ,.i..rti6c. But they had one thing in common:
"nJ 17g0 to 1g20, and 1910, were quintessential
of the period Jung vien oirsgo to
of established
people of talent m"ki-ng ih.i, o*n way at the fringes
"riria*r, compromisinf *iif i, but"also railing against its artistic and intellectual
society,
tolerant and rather corrupt
ii-irrrionr. And finally, in a strange way' this
so€jctcsave them their heads'
these Viennese
fT;Jb);en 1870 and 19L0 ran parallel to the second of
of them' Here the
\ffi"a-y., J*oi"t"a ,o*. of th. r"-. features as the 6rst
the
outsiders were artists, ^r in vienna they were drawn in from all over
""a there were no
;;;;;t and indeed irom all over Europe; iust as with music'
Paris was the city of painters' -the-
real linguistic barriers. They came bec-"use
..rtr-oos official establishment of education and of
city where there was
".,
p^,,on^g,,butthen,iustbecausetheywerethemosttalentedoftheirgeneration,
they had to create their own
they found ir,.o-p..h..rsion and even ridicule' So
anti-establishmentworld of critics and dealers; but they could succeedbecause
enough
the parisian bourgeoisie, or part of it, was rich enough and sophisticated
to appreciate their qualities and pay for their products'
T'he sixth city is i., -"ny *"yrih. mosr extraordinary of all, for its flowerinl
/i r
V/
 Great Cities in their Golden Ages zJ

was so short and its end so tragic as the paradigm, one

might say the parody, of the creative-irp ofa sudden, all constraints
were shaken off in a frenzy of experimentation across the spectrum of the arts.
It was a special case, and of course there were special reasons: the collapse of
an old imperial order on the battlefieldsof Europe, a failed attemPt at revolution,
a hyperinflation that ruined the middle class; and, coupled with this, perhaps
the strongest left-wing intelligentsia in the whole of Europe, cultivating strong
links with their counterparts in Moscow, the other great centre of artistic
creatiyity at that time. And, final irony, both movements were crushed by
totalitarian dictatorships, one nominally of the right, one of the left. Berlin's is
oLe of the easiest stories to tell, but finally one of the hardest to interpret.
61,]]ffi;rfi)spanning two a.,d a half millennia of human history, are all
*ffi-ffiilil belonging to the same rich cultural stream that was born in
Athens and reborn in Florence. Doubtless, there are entire other stories that
could be told of other culture streams: of the Mohammedan world from the
seventh century to the fifteenth, of the Indian subcontinent of the post-Gupta
period, above all perhaps of the five thousand years of Chinesecultural history.
Thor. tales should and doubtless will get told too' in their turn; but these will
haye to suffice for the purpose of one book, which for good or ill is the story
of Spengler's Abendland, the supposedly declining western culture.
Sipposedly declining: Spengler was wrong, for after the sunset comes the
dawn; unlike Spengler (and unlike Mumford), this is no tale of decline or
-
disintegration. At the end of the twentieth century eighty years after Spengler
foretolJ the decline of the West, sixty years after Mumford saw the modern
ciry proceeding inexorably to Necropolis - neither western civilization, nor the
wesrirn ciry, shows any sign of decay. On the contrary: this book will be a
celebration of the continued vitality, the continual rebirth of creativiry in the
world's great cities; as the light wanes in one, it waxes in another; the whole
process, it seems, has no end that we know of, or can foresee. T-S-c."!d
question, now, is Preciselyhow a
fraTurilfthe creativespark that rekindlesthe urban 6res.

ltJ
 The InnovativeMilieu

Ffihe focus now shifts to the upstart urban places, and the central
I qu.rtions areabouteconomicdevelopment:how andwhy do innovative
\\ I technologies,innovative ways of inaustrial managem
in *1t-9-95-
"na
groWth: xllo now qtl trrcv uuurv rv -- ' "t"v certaln t
6n w. developa theorythat helpsto explai he first i
I . r - ---L:-^:-
ln
itself so st iround Gla
of the first iron stea

rocess ot
forces: the

y, relating
above all in
(" Two to
creativiryJ Does
ral crucibles, and if so whY?
Gcation- is hard, for.a reason quite
io that which pi"gy-edus earlier:now' thereis n9 l1c! tf,tlt:I']:il
"pp"tii"
Uuitai"g blocks; there are .oo many, but they do not iell. So this chapter
"ll
will be a ,ath.i long, hard technicalhaul: up through the academicfoothills,
*ith orrly oc.asion"-isights of the gleaming peaks. The core problem is this:
we have to visit location theory, a rather obscuresub-science, existing at the
bordedine of human geographyand economics. Like many such academic
niches,it representsa t ind of iangledundergrowth, in which wavesof academics
havedone battle over half a century'

t
A Tentative Conclusron

he end of this trail through the thickets of theory, we can wholeheartedly

agree with Dosi that 'there is a significant gap between the wealth of findings
by economic historians, students of technology, applied industrial economists,
on the one hand, and the (more limited) conceptualization of these findings in
economic theory, on the other'.s But we can also believe that the concept of
the innovative milieu has powerfully helped 6ll that gap.
The tentative conclusion, to be tested in Book Two, is that the innoyative
milieu has been an all-pervasive principle throughout the history of capitalist
development, since the first industrial revolution in England; but that it has
changed its nature. In the first, heroic era of capitalism, as Schumperer long
ago emphasized,innovation was a spontaneousprocess in which technical and
organizational challenges were met with a series of brilliant intuitions and
adaptations. Organized science played a very shadowy and indirect role;
rnnovauon came t
contacts between ual engineer-craftsmenplayed a critical part. It was
small wonder, in this period, that the Marshallian industrial district provided
the all-important matrix within which ideas circulated and norions were
 The InnouatiueMilieu

improved. nturv Lancashire and earl

fine-tuned and
indeed also Berlin nlngs,
century Gla
corporate era caDrtallst deve
stage'
C-a
i88osa ermanY and the Uni s
ever more I scient c advance and also
nall into corporate research laboratories with clear
rates the transrtron

n ,, ase of the warfare state

during ar essentiallystemming from the Cold War in the 1950s,
lnnovatlon eYef more
sclen vances rn universities and in
weaPonry n companies whose raison d'€tre

6iifrns ot the wa
y thE principle
of flexible specialization, as abundant examples like Silicon Valley and the
Third Italy or the Japanesekanban (just-in-time) system amply demonstrate.
But the three stagesof evolution are nonethelessa crucial conceptual organizing
'prinfiple,
afowing us rtoa : the
mllleu. r ne Para ment lcon Va the great Tokyo
'ffi;6ti.t precluded from work, illustrate this
complex which was defence

he first, is the quintessential cify first ustrial

That revolution, it
and a new system
ately; at
new mac liinsformed an existing domestic systemof production, which
,. had grown up oyer two or more centuries and had achieved an amazing level
y
of sophistication. Key individuals within this system, and on its fringes,
transformed it; they were powerfully assistedby some unique features of this
city and of its region, including a strong tradition of precision engllg4lgjl4
d
^" Nonconformis;ultu
ln rurn tffese generated the first true innovative milieu in economic history, a
milieu that in its internal structure and dynamics uncannily resemblesSilicon

,etween1820 and 1890, resemblesManchester w

t1-. r---
idly surpnsrng. Here too there were_latlve above
ine.andrhe irott lljg but they could have
were: q€sity
because i
local narrow seas. then Atlantic them. It was driven into
@causeofthecollapseofitsoldtradingbaseafterthe
American revolution, and also b.."lttt g.qup of lo."l
"
engineersformed in effect an innovative milieu of their own, breaking away

@
 E
308 THE CITY AS INNOVATIVE MILIEU

- again - presaged the rwentieth-century

froni their parents on a model that
innovative milieu.
The third story' partly similar but also in one important resPect
diff?rent:here Berlin in the early
is the scenefor the 6rst time. -:-_
neteenth century was ralher Inslgnlncant

\$-0 -War
state, its rtment
thus creat one of Eur
, \?X own rs to set up in business
the deve
YT h for economic d
r6fr-

and for war and

T?ilmphantly al pioneer; thus
-t the 1890sBerlin was t of its day. Of an kind, to be sure:
lt was oomr sg-;a-l tlr-oughthesebeganto spawn
-
[66Giifo..tian experiencehalf a century later
nonethelessthe Berlin experienceresemblesthll4! rival in t
e iq&flSitjes. for the
was internJllzedin the ized research
\ ffiovation
2l

toasr ancl m()rc world, of the

cn tical point is that it represented
rit invent the motor car
fii-in American economichistorY: - did not
but there Ford invented its mass rction for ?6iss market. That
i : - .

becauseone entrepreneur' rn Pa an obsesslon that tne

v conditions were
,r..i e*isted and was determined to fill it. But here the
peculiarly propitious, as it turned out: tlere were strong t
portation eneineqdns, which tutored For? and many others who assistedhim;
ere was a ital, from nouveaux-riches bucc4neer
needs of the farmerq

have
one of the most likely.
ffiara Valley at the southern
Bay, then still virtually undeveloped orchard land'
and therefore geographically the least likely of any of these six places- Here,
palo Alto *", ih. home of itanford University, a relatively new and innovative
eve
w
if an cou
st ts to set here, who after'{qdd-g
's
first Science
'War, 3n
^ T;rT. F;; those,in the unique conditionsof the Cold de
-&ii-aordinary by
cascadeof innovation in solid-state electronics,
a plocess of swarming of new hrms as talented lnolv awa rom
a model of i ilon-
t coll
-tnZI
 The Innouatiue Milieu

of new hardware and software

rt- n A€tt6ouiln g- Ka n agawa prefectu re, f o rm the app ropri ate

at that point by the

deliberatelY veloped

rt, ounng worlcl war lI,

ilf,in f.a
" iElThe practice of sub-
local 6rms, which were deliberately
.ontr".ti.tg parts and processesto smaller
their technical proficiency and innovative capacfy by
,..ou."g.d to improve
the larger firm. It celg13ledg rxqeordi
as rhesefirms pffissed up the learningcurve, from the sin-rplest -eleqtrical
j
ifr fiotndtelevision-,toextreme!1_qqphisl!
Sn and cameras and ca
questlon, is yet truly
is sv-system

in the American
networki
, one

because on them the fate of cities, regions, and entire

s. And the answer is not yet certain; the iury is st

of Manchester and Glasgow show,

I cities that falter in the innovative rocess soon stu
ies. Leaders m ofre generatlon soon De na new competltors,
6 and unlesst
ffiA from behind; either develop new ways of

,k6-and disappear into industrial oblivion' Continued on to

nearly all these stories end that unhappy way: Manchestet
-9!asgo$+F9if
-two are shadows of their torr-nerindustrial selves,thoul
h"ve-found new livet as centres of advanced services and touri
at the Endof World War I
lost its industrialDre-eminence

rst now tof close on iEnrury, the secondfol tg

Ior that reasonarone,Teh stories are exc-pdonallyworth telling and their
tt7

lessonsworth distilling,which will form a main themefor Chapter16,summing

up at the end of Book Two.

@
 and Memphis
Two American Cities: Hollywood
- of mass
American achievement th1 ::ti:'t"
The unique characterof the - is extremelyimportant in understanding
culture through p'iu"" tnttrprise that innovation in both
g;k Th"t' rt i' no
the two storiestota in "ttideni out of the private
,rr. united States,but also
casescame no, onty'oi, ,i - quintessential
located i^ n-.ri."n cities. Here, new entrePreneurs
sector, to createa new
New ;;;:-*;r" forcedjn effectto find ways
schumpeterian who
In both t""" 't"'' *ttt totplt" t"itiattt' The -en'lelreneurs
industry. t-itglllt:^T-1
without. exceptionI..:n,.
createdHollywood ;;;-l-.rt that they made their way into movres
all were J.*iril',,"*l,'no as
nearly "..1a.",
tf'"' t"""i for whims of fashion' such'
from tradition.t Jt*i'n''inJu't'it' had to be alliedto constant
creatrvrty'
clothing.For there,;;;;tt;;duction Allev' the new popular
t"""a *"1 ii" Pan
The parallel itat"'y"tr'"J'ily

*tztqmhrstc
\
(mAis Mudia')
 rrtl T H E M A R R I A G EO F A R T A N D T E C H N O L O G Y '."

music
m r r c i e indusrry
i.i""r.., trhar
L , ^ . developed
A-.,^t^-^) t-
for -r
the r
sareof sheermusicin the rggOs,uu, h
1

inro recorded.music. And there,too, both th.

. r ! yprodu..
::?-iTl1l-moved
and rhe arrists were overwhelmingly
rvuulclS

Jewish.
rh:.n.y enrerrainment corforations grew at
].n:-",*n dizzyspeedto command
semi-monopolies (oligopolies,in the economists'jargon)
both within the United
States and worldwide, the odd fact was th"t
tl,.i..;";;i'"..h.typ"r n.*
firms: owned and controlred by rhe men who
had'foundeJri.-, *rri-sicaly
and often inefficientlv run, owing rittre to the
emergin; ;;.;;;; of American
management science.There were few Alfred Sloans
in Hlily*t"d. And, faced
with the challengeof television in the 1950s,the
srudios air"pp."*a from the
American scenealmost as quickly as rhey h"d
"pp."r.;.-i;#;"-es survive
on the credirs, but the organizarionof the indusrii
it irff.r.n,.
The second-story is even more striking. For it ""* ".rf
ieils ,t. ,rori or ,n. birth of
modern popular music in the 1950s,
at reast as momentous as the
birth of Hollywood. And it emerged"n-.u.n, out of ,*o -ori ;,k;i; sources:two
strains of pure folk music, coming out of deep
curturat ,ooir,-'.".n cherished
and developedby a poor and unrerreredethnic group,
in one of th. .no* remore
and poverty-stricken regions of the united st"t.r,'
*hi.h finaliy fused in a
popular enterrainment industry. And the srrikingli
is that
each of these strains exisred, for at reast harf ; "no-"to*-'point
;.;r;;;;;ry recognized
and barely tolerated, as minoriry cultures far outside
,t. a-.ri."n cultural
mainsrream.Their fusior was accomplishedby
a few ^"u..i.k ,ntrepreneurs,
most of them native sons of the region, some
others from New york, who in
effecr took on the mainsrream e,it.rtainment
establishment - and, after a
f e r o c i o u sb a t r l e ,v a n q u i s h e di r .
Becauseborh indusrries rvere new ones, created
by new people bottom-up, it
was perhaps no wonder that they deveropedin new
ir"..r. Ti;; *.r. of course
urban places;it was to cities that artistic talent
flowed, as it hi arwaysfowed;
and, given that the revolution in each case was
partly technical, only a city
would have the wherewithar. Bur,
iust rike most oith. uprr"r;;;., considered
in Book Two, these were borderrand cities, out of
the ma'instreamof their time.
Indeed, in both casesthe industry was origina[y
establish.J ir, ,r,. urtimate
American merropolis, Ney york City; but in
the first case it moved out, and
in the secondwas vanquishedby th. new competition.
of the two srories,the first is the odder.
Lts Angeresin 1910, Iike alr the
technologicallyinnovative cities of Book Two,
was"a borderland prace; but
even more so than they had been. The others
ail had some sort of ieveloped
industrial or ar least proto-industriartradition;
Los Angeresdid not realry have
any. And it was a very long way from
the th.n J.nt.. ,r,. American
productive system. It was relativery undeveloped "r
in .o-prri*n with san
Francisco' 400 miles to the north, which
had head ,r"., on ii through the
accidentsof the gold rush and the firsr transcontinentar "
rairroad. It did not
have anything obvious going for it at ail, save
for u.nig,,.il."r. prenty
of land. And it was certainly not unique in
those."As we shalr see,"na ir was not
even the place where the fledgringindustry
began. So one could - -say that there
*1.."n elemenrof pure serendipity,pur. iu.k.-nut
nor quit..-
The other casewas more rogicar.Memphis in
Tennesseewas the prace where
 The Inuention of Mass Culture 5r9

rwo great folk-cultural traditions came together: the Afro-American blues of

the MississippiDelta region to the south, and the white country music of the
Appalachian hill country to the east. Each of these traditions flourished also in
other places:the blues in KansasCity and, above all, in Chicago;country music
in Nashville and a score of smaller places. But in no other place was it so
staristically likely that the two streams would meld to produce something
different. Further, Memphis from its earliest days had the reputation of a wild
city, a place where almost anything could be allowed to happen. It was perhaps
the one place in the old American South, even before the civil liberties movement
transformed the region, where black and white cultures could cross-fertilize in
this waY.
So, finally, there is an intriguing paradox: the real powerhouse, where the
mass-mediaculture of the twentieth century was born, was New York City;
yet two of its greatest manifestations, the movie-television complex and the
creation of popular music, happened in far-distant cities. The reasons are very
different in the two cases: in the 6rst they are obscure, and the Hollywood
complex remained closely tied financially to its original New York base; in the
second, upstart provincial entrepreneurs in effect vanquished a New York
industry that had become tired, conservativeand smugly complacent. The two
storiestell us a great deal about the nature of the marriage of art and technology
in the twentieth century, and they contain powerful suggestionsfor the way it
will happen in the twenty-first.

@
J modern tales, because after 1800 did cities become
n
was one consprcuous exceptlon centunes
ro, the subjectof Chapter22. lt was city to reach approximately one
million people, and it did so on the basis of exceedingly simple technology: in
particular, the Romans made no maior advance in transportation technology,
which would have allowed their citizens to spread out more comfortably, so
that their capital was quite extraordinarily compressed and overcrowded.
Nevertheless, achieved triumphs in water supply and to some extent in
w , quite extraordinary in this one.
which 6rst equalled and then greatly
a whole range of novel problems, I
I
some physical, some social. The chapter deals with four: policing, crinle, water t
and servers,an{ housing. What was remarkable about London was not merely
thiili developed answers, however belated and however inappropriate; it was
that they were animated by a philosophy quite different from the public works
tradition that underpinned ancient Romc or contemPorary Paris, one which
was direcdy derived from philosophical utilitarianism. Calculation and economy
and the minimalist state were the order of the day, as by an odd twist of history
they have again become in Britain. And in the course of applying the principles,
nineteenth-century London camc up with solutions that sometimes seem strik-
ingl@risons or workfare.
nd Haussmann representsa sharp reversion to the
lic works, which again can be seen to echo in
Frenchpublic life to this day. Haussmannnot only rebuilt Paris,as everyone'
knows; he also seweredit and-ryateredit and doubl.!-t$-:&gJhereby allowing I
it to rry ,G oflrowth ifi;[d;fr;;hytical collapsethat
".co-mila
had seemedto threatenit. But he did so by an extraordinarysystemof publiq
financing,in efiectrepres.nti
Tf,eJ6curiryof future risesin land values,which eventuallymustproveuntenable.
So it proved:though the city survivedthe crisis after his deparnrre,it brought
nearlya centuryof local governmentparalysis,from which only de Gaulle was

different case again. It was the

Jackson has called it: it was also
growing at extraordinary speed as a result of the migration of almost destitute
feopl.'frorn."r,.rn ro,rthern Europe, which ailied with the city's islandg/
"nd
geography to create a housing problem of the first order' The answer ro New
York's problem, as to that of London and Paris and Berlin,.was effective urban
h would allow peopleto seeknew homesat the metropolitan

was the first city in the world to begin to adapt to the automobile age, but in
doing so it engagedin a fuirdamental debate about its future which would have

as a new city on the far side of the continent,

gt@f urban self-promotion or boosterism, which
confronted the question of its own development through an equally momentous
public debate,and answeredit decisivelyin a radical way: it would not seek to

,, I @,/
 ORDER
6zo THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE URBAN

by enhanclng its systemof public

emulate traditional cities like New York
transPortation, but on th.e

I
in the 1950s and was a small northern European capital of a
---tt.i""tfy,
that it would seelctofollow a path
of socio-economic uite different
a le wa
ffieticians, it was basedon
on socla
rema capitalism would be encouraged to become
:;T:#T"fiffi ;}nil;;lii.;:;"purationweretobeprote":1:l'-::*
ffi il:;i:ffi ffi;;;;;ilit'-ddJ,'*"{1:1P'.11:',:f ::i::?,T:
;:'J;;:;.*;;F;-;ii;""10::t'll'-ll:*IlLl"'?:T:'":'"*:
rilffi"ffi;";il;rril ';;,ie urban
of zustain"bte 9:::t-"1,1.:::
theprinciples
ffi; ffi ffi ,l" ;fi *.Y \lo n:"'d'11'
*::
n'i'!':'dldth;c'".T ::'":::*:;
":,T,
'::'1r^:"f'^:'-T.':::j
;ft:TJil;"' il;;ili;J, "'a
in_the1ee0s Swedes still clineto their unique.
ffi;;;;;;;;.;ieiess,
system,which most oTlf,Efiltill believeis supertor'
;;'Jffi-uTd-tItn with the London of the 1980s'
fffiffi'il;; il d;;r"' 28.Thatcher intoofficewitha /
came
ffi;*il;;;theirSwedish-sryleuai.ii"thewelfarestate,V
'jf,T:'il:r][.;;; order on the
but one result was a collapseof the urban
Her environmert
;;.;; of Brit"ir,, of lind neverseenin the twentiethcenrury.
" remarkable politicianwhose ideologywasquite
ministerMichael H*.ii,n*
"
differentfrom hers,seizedthe momentto tondutt a-tt-"g-ggg1.1n+lltqurbeq*
which was in
,.g.n tait;g*,
-lilonsisted-
"f tGnilallY in
"E
T;Aork D"AFas next to the Crty 9f Lond6n. ,.'
t/
temPle of de'e'ttd' into a
itself; but the.attempt led^to the
6nance capitalism th"i *orrtd rival the city
confidence.
bankruptcy or rr,. ..nol a.u.iop.. and to a severeloss of public
through
The questio" 6""U;;;i;.a uy ,t. l-ondon saga is whether regenerarion
bor disrurbingly, whether it
property d.u.top*.ni l"n .u., bc adequatef "lro,
is'
i, ttt, ,it. only lind of regeneration there
through these stories, and it comes as
so there are.recurrenr,-h.-., running
governments sought to privatize
something of a shock to see that victorian alive
provision but did ;;;;*.f f11,.or that pub:lic-priuate partnership was
p";;;i the'1850s th. New York of the 1900s, or that
and well in the "r,d principles whenever it saw that
California forsook its conservarive financial
there is nothing
;;li; ;;".y could aid profitable private development.?erhaps
increasing the limits of the possible;
new under the sun. But technology evolves,
h o w e v e r , s o c i a l c o m p l e x i r y a l s o i " t t t " " " a n d w i t h i t t h e p r o b l e m s o f r e s o l vbetter
ing
social tensior. Gr;; ;;in"..ing solutions are all very well, and none
but ^ soci.ty that builds splendid
illustrates them rhan several of these ,rori"r,
to a diet of
aqueducts ,.*.,,, and then leaves its 1.,, fo.tun"te citizens
"nd bloody destrucrion.
bread and circuses,is a socierydoomed io .u.n,urt
ff)
er
.k
 Great Cities in their Golden Ages z1

was so short and its end so tragic as rhe paradigm, one

might say the parody,of the creativiE a sudden, all constrainrs
were shakenoff in a frenzy of experimenlation across the spectrumof the arts.
It was a specialcase, and of course there were special reasons: the collapseof
an old imperialorderon the battlefields of Europe, a failed attemPt at revolution,
a hyperinflationthar ruined the middle class;and, coupled with this, perhaps
thc strongestleft-wing intelligentsiain the whole of Europe, cultivating strong
links with their counterparts in Moscow, the other great centre of artistic
creativit)' at that dme. And, final irony, both movementswere crushed by
totalitarian dictatorships,onc nominallyof the right, one of the left' Berlin'sis
finally one of the hardest to interPret.
one|- of the easieststoriesto tell, but
(ft ;l* citr spanningtwo and a half millennia of human history, are all
"".
wffiffiii-belongini ro rhe samerich cultural strcam that was born in
Athens and reborn in Florence.Doubtlcss, there are entire other stories that
could be told of other culture sreams: of the Mohammedan world from the
ssvenlh celltury to the fifteenth, of the Indian subcontinentof the post-GuPta
period, aboveall perhapsof the five thousandyearsof Chinesecultural history.
Thor" tales should and doubtlesswill get told too' in their turn; but thesewill
have to suffice for the purposeof one book, which for good or ill is the story
of Spengler'sAbendland,thc supposedlydecliqingwesternculture'
Sipposedty declining: Spenglerwas wrong, for after the sunset comes the
dawn; unlike Spengler(and unlike Mumford), this is no tale of declinc or
disintegration.At the end of the twentieth century- eighty yearsafter Spengler
foretold the decline of the West, sixty years after Mumford saw the modern
city proccedinginexorably to Necropolis- neither westcrncivilization, nor the
wes;rn city, shows any sign of decay. On thc conrrary: this book will be a
celebration of the continued vitality, the continual rebirth of creativity in the
world's great cities; as the light wanes in one, it waxes in another;' r ' Lthe whole
| .r - t- ,, -t -., --- f^---^ ^
process,it seems,has no end that we know of, or can. forescc. The
'f
^--t-^l

r,. ,, rr
question, now
the creative spa that rekindlesthe urban fires.