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Cities in Civilization, by Peter Hall
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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.
- Sales Rank: #309976 in Books
- Published on: 1998-11-17
- Released on: 1998-11-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 7.00" w x 2.25" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 1184 pages
- Hardcover Book
- First Edition
- Dust Jacket
- Non Fiction
- Civilization
Amazon.com Review
Every golden age has been an urban age; throughout history, cities have provided a crucible for creativity. How do such belles �poquescome about? Why should the creative flame burn so uniquely in cities and not in the countryside, and why does the creative and innovative spirit of one city inevitably yield to another? Cities in Civilization explores these issues and others related to the central role of cities, past and present, in the fostering of artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technological genius.
Peter Hall devoted 15 years of his life conceptualizing, researching, and writing Cities in Civilization. His extraordinary efforts are apparent in the analytical scope, historical depth, and sheer length of the book, which, including photographs and a bibliography, is well over 1,000 pages. Supporting his argument with ample reference to dates, historical figures, and citations of leading urban scholars, the book does not lend itself to casual, cover-to-cover reading. Despite the book's length, though, it remains easy to navigate through the case studies of individual cities. Hall systematically divides the text into five thematic chapters, further subdividing each chapter chronologically by city. The chapters explore themes of cultural creativity, technological and economic innovation, the urban fusion of art and technology, urban innovation, and the partnership of the private and public sector to promote urban development and regeneration.
Breaking from other leading scholars in the field, Hall does not consider the great city doomed. Instead, Cities in Civilization testifies to his confidence that cities of the 21st century, like the great cities of the past, will successfully work to solve their own problems and ameliorate their own ills. --Bertina Loeffler
From Publishers Weekly
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.
From Library Journal
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.
Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
The Jacques Barzun of the city
By Amazon Customer
This book reminds me very much of Jacques Barzun's FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE both in size and scope. Barzun looked at 500 years of Western cultural life and Sir Peter Hall has much the same interests, although he goes back some 2500 years and is more narrowly focused on urban culture. The title CITIES IN CIVILIZATION could be the other way around as Hall is interested in the Golden Ages that seem to have been a feature of all the great cities in history. "The Renaissance" he says "was an urban phenomenon; so was every great burst of creativity in human history." Hall then is seeking the civilization in cities.
Two other books that this one could be (should be, has been) compared with are THE CULTURE OF CITIES and THE CITY IN HISTORY, both by Lewis Mumford. Hall knows this and quickly dispatches the comparisons. "I do not at all share the Mumfordian view that the great city is doomed." Fair enough but his work remains valuable to urban historians and Hall's comment that "Mumford was fundamentally a brilliant polemical journalist, not a scholar" is uncalled for and irrelevant. I'm glad Hall got his academic tetchiness out of the way early and didn't bring it up again, because being subjected to such jibes and digs over the course of the 1000 pages of this book would have been unpleasant. And Hall doesn't need to resort to that anyway.
This book is a detailed, well researched exploration of the unique nature of the city as "a crucible of creativity". The first section of the book looks at artistic creativity - the most recognizable type of Golden Age and most closely associated with the foundation cities of Western civilization - Athens, Vienna, Florence, Paris, London and Berlin. Other themes are innovation and its technological and economic manifestation in urban settings. Here we visit Manchester, Glasgow, Detroit, San Francisco (more accurately Palo Alto and "Silicon Valley") and Tokyo. Hall then looks at two cities - Memphis and Los Angeles that he says offer a mix of artistic, technological, and economic exuberance. He is referring to the music and film industries. In his final section he acknowledges the emergence of regional urban areas and global cities and while recognizing the challenges they pose, he is not daunted and remains optimistic about the future of urban life. His coming Golden Age of a new urban order faces three challenges. That of transport technology and sustainable urbanism, an unequal urban world (the megacities of the Third World) and the threats to economic, family, and civic life.
If persons with interest in any aspect of urbanism don't find some mention of their pet subject in this vast sweep of urban life over the last two millennia, it's simply because they haven't waded through. And that's the only caveat about Hall's work. In the best traditions of old English learning this book is dense and it's not written in the snappiest of prose either. Cities are a testament to the slow processes of humanity. You'll have to rely on one of those tendencies - patience - when working your way through this book. In the end it's well worth it.
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
A superb analysis of how cities induce innovation
By A Customer
Do not be put off by a conventional title. Under the appearance of academic urban history this is an account of the urban sources of cultural creativity and technological innovation throughout history, from Athens to Florence, to London, to New York, to Paris, to Los Angeles, to Silicon Valley, and beyond. It deals with art, culture, music, technology, business, power, dreams and nightmares. Wonderfully written by one of the most distinguished urbanists in the world, this book delights, informs, and explains why certain people in certain places create, prosper and enjoy life, and others don't. The best book on cities in many years. Manuel Castells, Berkeley, California
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
A Masterful Historical Study of Majestic Sweep
By A Customer
Peter Hall's book "Cities in Civilization" is a masterful work with majestic sweep. Although not meant for everyone, this book provides insights into history and culture like no other. Hall looks at the golden ages of cities to illuminate their influence on great cultural achievements as well as economic and technological development, and then draws comparisons to discern what it was about these places that enabled them, of all cities, to become what they became at a particular time in history. The creative bursts of classical Athens, Renaissance Florence, and Shakespearean London are thoroughly discussed and utterly fascinating. The music of Vienna and the artistic creativity of late 19th and early 20th century Paris are literal courses on Western culture. The decadence and creative explosion of Weimar Germany is thoroughly explored before Hall turns his attention to industrialization and technology.
Hall is especially good, in the midst of his analysis, at discussing various theories of social change from Marx to Schumpeter, and Weber to Harold Innis. He details the reasons for industrial and technological growth and invention in 18th century Manchester, 19th century Glasgow, and 19th and 20th century Berlin. His discussion of Detroit and Henry Ford is particularly interesting. Silicon Valley and Tokyo are also discussed, and never does Hall loses sight of how their creativity permanently affected human civilization.
His section on "The Marriage of Art and Technology" is fundamental to an understanding of mass culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Hollywood and "The Delta" region around Memphis are discussed for their impact on movies and popular music. These two sections are utterly fascinating. And his lengthy last section, which some readers may find the least interesting, deals with how many of the world's great cities have adapted to deal with increasing size and changing needs. Here Hall profiles the changes in the cities themselves, as well as changes in the cultural and social environment, of ancient Rome, and modern London, Paris, New York, Los Angelas, and Stockholm. The social experimentation in equality and how it affected housing in Sweden is particularly interesting.
All in all, if you have the stamina to read 1,000 pages you will be served a wonderful course on the development of Western culture and material civilization, as well as gain a fuller appreciation for the role of the great city in history. We are all in Sir Peter's debt for his years of study and the preparation of this book. His erudition and immense learning are greatly appreciated.
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