Economics for everyone (episode sixteen)—Lessons from a more distant past, part one
(Continued) ...
Roots of our modern cities
The concept and design of our modern monocentric cities may have roots more ancient than previously reported. The American Economist Paul A. Samuelson (“Thunen at Two Hundred,” Journal of Economic Literature XXI:1470-1475, 1983) traces our intentional monocentric communities back to the one described by German author Johann Heinrich Von Thünen in “The Isolated State” (1826; English translation Peter Hall, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966). Von Thünen describes his ideal city in the form of a series of concentric rings dedicated to habitation and production. However, evidence exists that dates monocentric urban models and ancient sites to the Age of Prehistory. In our early historical era, parallels to modern urban planning reached their apex in Ancient Greece. The polymath Plato developed a set of monocentric-urban allegories based on the mathematical tradition, which goes back to the Sumero Babylonian Period in the Middle East with roots in the Vedic literature of northern India. As well as several other prominent ancient traditions, this Platonic approach survived through the suppression of the Middle Ages and appears to have influenced a line of monocentric urban thought and planning that began during the Renaissance and continues to this day.
This episode has a two-fold purpose. First, chronicling the evolution of the monocentric urban concept in Western thought and practice offers our modern era a more profound historical foundation that supports the ancient but still relevant ideas of urban development. Second, such research provides substantial and substantiated material with which we can extend our modern Urban Models. Along with existing templates, we recognize the need for revised models that sufficiently address rapid urban growth throughout the world and serve the urban re-development of major manufacturing, service, and retail subcenters that have overshadowed our older central business areas. The current Pandemic, as well as those in the past, remind us that we have a long road to travel to ensure healthy human survival in our modern cities.
As we trace the evolution of urban regional thought from ancient times to the present, we will uncover several classical variations of our modern cities that may prove useful for the task at hand. The monocentric model stands as one of many urban models. In his book “Good City Form” (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), American Urban Planner Kevin Lynch presents the range of general urban models, including the star (found in radial urban areas with a central hub such as Chicago, Indianapolis, Paris, and many others), the linear city (as found in New York along Manhattan Island, and the rectangular city (that emerged west of the Alleghany Mountains in the territories laid out using the rectangular U.S. Public Survey System in the early 1800s). Lynch implies that a sole universal urban model does not exist because cities develop in some distinctly different ways. However, the monocentric model does form the basis of the Standard Urban Model as developed in modern times.
As we have stated, the field of Economics usually traces our principal urban regional models back to the Isolated State as described by Von Thünen. In this tradition, writers envision concentric-zone urban land-use within a central metropolitan area surrounded by increasing employment and residential rings. However, now we recognize that earlier locational schemes bear striking similarities to contemporary ones. Ancient model-cities often include radial pathways (such as Gratiot, Mound, Woodward, Grand River, Michigan Avenue, and Toledo Road in Metropolitan Detroit) along employment subcenters, a feature not always found in more modern conceptualizations. Indeed, these earlier drafts predate the work of Von Thünen by more than two millennia. Therefore, we may regard these sources as our meta-history of modern urban revivals, drawn from a range of information that comes from the fields of Anthropology, Archeology, History, Philosophy, Law, and Spiritual Studies. The challenge that faces larger urban areas as well as small towns has proven to be the decimation of inner cities a major urban areas and commercial main streets in smaller cities, towns, and villages caused by the rapid development of large chain stores and shopping centers beyond the urban limits (Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, Brave New Films, 2005).
The primitive roots of modern thought
Though the ancient monocentric concept and the cities produced reached a culmination in the development and refinement of techniques that emerged during the Classical Greek Age, we can trace the legacy of ancient urban models to the Era of Prehistory. The mathematical tools developed by the ancient Greeks and others form the foundation of modern thought and application. Plato and additional early philosophers appear to have derived their monocentric urban concepts from the ever-growing reservoir of mathematics, symbols, myths, and simple concepts. Ancient and modern ideas appear to rest on an elementary numerical foundation in their development. However, they also employ concepts of the circle, triangle, and cone (vortex) as a basis for urban allegory. In this application, these geometric concepts appear to have roots that trace back to ancient mythology. In his book “The Inner Reaches of Outer Space” (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), the American mythologist Joseph Campbell indicates that we have every reason to believe that ancient mythology, in which accurate mathematical insight appears, dates to the Sumero Babylonian period or even earlier.
In his book “The Sacred and the Profane” (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), Romanian-born historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade offers us an underlying raison d’etre for the existence of monocentric cities through his presentation of many examples from both primitive and traditional societies. Eliade states that conventionally, cultures believe that human beings need holy sites to form a center of human settlement and that we see the main cosmological image across cultures as a cosmic pillar that supports Heaven. From this pillar, a sequence of conceptions and images emerges, which in turn forms a “System of the World.” Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French-American urban planner, planned spaces such as Washington, D.C. to be filled with our “sacred” historical sites such as the Jefferson and the Lincoln Memorials and the Washington Monument. Sacred Places break the homogeneity of space. Such a spatial breaks form axes around which our world locates. As with many ancient sites, Eliade surmises that such an axis forms the center of the world. Furthermore, he states that human beings often represent this point as both a real and a mythical mountain. Analogous to such mountains, we find holy sites, such as mounds, temples, and churches, situated at the center of our world.
American-French-Polish mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot introduced the concept of Geometric Fractals that grow smaller and smaller toward infinity. Traditional societies characteristically reflect this macrocosm of being in the microcosm because a Mandelbrotian process reiterates this image of the world on increasingly smaller scales through a multiplicity of centers. The “cosmogony” of traditional cultures establishes a paradigmatic model for the construction of each macrocosm and microcosm. Upon this principle, we may envision the settlement of territory as equivalent to the founding of a world, a country, a state, a city, a neighborhood, a home, a room, a cozy corner of that room, and so on and infinitum.
Buildings also possess roots in the transcendent time/space continuum. On the most microcosmic level, Eliade states that cosmic symbolism appears in the structure
of housing. A tent or a house represents the local image of the world: representation follows from a primitive belief that traditional cultures tend to conceive of the Sky as a vast tent supported by a central pillar of the world. It is not only our modern cities that form the microcosms of the world. German Economist August Lösch describes that many three dimensional renderings of the current plan resemble such a tent (“The Economics of Location.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954).
Eliade concludes that traditional societies derive their symbols and rituals, which have to do with temples, cities, and houses, from the first experience of Sacred Space. This recurring theme, which has endured throughout history and across cultures, forms the common thread that runs throughout the early evolution of the monocentric urban State.
Preview/takeaway
In our next episode, we will continue along our current line of thought. We will look at the effects of transportation on personal well-being along with wages and rents in the employment and housing sectors through the allegory of Athens by Plato. Then we will consider the impact of land use on societal development through his allegorical tale of the City of Magnesia. By using these and associated works, we explore the impact of Ancient Greek thought from early Christian times through the Renaissance and into our Modern Age. One question remains with us in our modern times in which the old normal has given way to a new one. Will the concept of a one-center city that radiates outward from a central location continue to remain efficient and sufficient for humans in an automotive and internet driven society or do we need to find another concept that will serve us better in this brave new world?
We hope that this exploration of the Classics will aid our readers in integrating our expanding puzzle of finding the key to the continued development of a sustainable economy built on unity and sufficient affluence for all. Stay healthy!
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Dr. John F. Sase teaches Economics at Wayne State University and has practiced Forensic and Investigative Economics for twenty years. He earned a combined M.A. in Economics and an MBA at the University of Detroit, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics from Wayne State University. He is a graduate of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School (www.saseassociates.com).
Gerard J. Senick is a freelance writer, editor, and musician. He earned his degree in English at the University of Detroit and was a supervisory editor at Gale Research Company (now Cengage) for over twenty years. Currently, he edits books for publication (www.senick-editing.com).
Julie G. Sase is a copyeditor, parent coach, and empath. She earned her degree in English at Marygrove College and her graduate certificate in Parent Coaching from Seattle Pacific University. Ms. Sase coaches clients, writes articles, and edits copy (royaloakparentcoaching.com).
