Chapter 2: The Origins and Growth of Cities

This chapter follows the evolution of cities from their origins about 5,500 years ago through the Industrial Revolution that began in the English Midlands in the mid 1700s. As describe in Knox, Urban System is a complete set of urban settlements of different sizes that exists within a given territory

• Territorial limits set the bonds of an urban system
• Cities and urban life are recent features in the long span of Human existence
  
• Theories of urban origins come together to offer the reasons for why cities originated.
• Mesopotamia, Egypt, The Indus Valley, Northern China and Mesoamerica provide the earliest evidence for urbanization and urban civilization
• Evidence- street patterns, religious precincts, and different neighborhoods.

Urbanization spreads out from the 5 regions of urban origin so that by 1000 A.D. successive generations of city-based empires. The regional specializations and long-distance trading patterns emerge that provided the foundations for a new phase of urbanization based on merchant capitalism.


What role has empire and military power played in forming urban systems?

1. The need for people to gather together for protection inside the safety of military defenses.

   "warfare may often have made a significant contribution to the intensification of urban developments by including a concentration of settlement for purposes of defense and by stimulating craft specialization."--Wheatley