ancient cities

Tr a n s p o r T a T i o n
Transportation facilities support and shape patterns
of urban development and change. Prior
to the nineteenth century, animal-drawn carriages
were the only form of vehicular transportation
on land. Maritime shipping was the main
means of moving goods and people over long
distances and among the cities located adjacent
to major rivers, lakes, and oceans. The flow of
international trade remained relatively small
and was generally limited to high value–low
weight goods such as spices and silk.
Within cities, walking was the primary means
of mobility. This had a distinctive impact on early
urban form. Constrained by how far city dwellers
were reasonably able to walk in a day, pre-
Industrial Revolution cities remained quite compact.
Major centers such as Rome, Venice, and
Beijing never grew larger than about 20 square
kilometers in area.
The Golden Railway Age
In the first half of the nineteenth century, railway
travel revolutionized patterns of human mobility
and settlement. The construction of steam-powered
railways between cities, beginning in the United
Kingdom in the 1830s and subsequently developed
in many other countries, created vast territories
over which goods and people could be rapidly
moved. Constructed and operated largely by private
companies, the opening of the railways stimulated
the growth and interconnectivity of existing
cities and spurred the emergence of new cities that
were strategically located along the main long-
distance railway lines.
Rail technology was also applied to intraurban
transportation. In the mid-1800s, private entrepreneurs
began operating horse-drawn trams on
fixed rail routes. By the early 1900s, the rail
trams, also known as streetcars, had been electrified
and were in operation in cities across North
America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle
East, and South America. In 1863, London won
the race to become the first city in the world to
have a functional underground railway; it was followed
closely by subways in Paris, Glasgow,
Berlin, Boston, and New York.
Transportation
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Urban rail systems were built not only to move
people but also to convey symbolic meanings with
respect to the competitiveness, vitality, innovativeness,
and affluence of the cities in which they were
constructed. To this end, the great cities of the
world built underground railways with emblematically
designed stations and vehicles, each suggesting
the power and wealth of their jurisdiction as
well as catalyzing further economic development.
The electrification of the streetcars and underground
railways led to a first wave of urban deconcentration.
These early suburbs were built to
capitalize on increased land values adjacent to transit
facilities and create captive markets for rail services
that provided access to jobs in the city center.
These suburbs often had shops along the main street
adjacent to the rail line and were built in a fairly
compact form to maximize the number of people
who could conveniently walk to a nearby station.
Beginning in the 1920s, the tramways began to
falter under the weight of high investment and maintenance
costs, depreciating service quality, and sometimes
poor safety records. As a result, trolley and
combustion engine buses, with lower initial capital
costs, replaced streetcars. By the 1960s, trams had
been removed from the streets of most cities.
Mass Motorization
However, mass transit was being challenged by a
stronger competitive force that was largely beyond
their provider’s immediate control. Although there
are records of steam-powered cars dating back to
the late seventeenth century and Henry Ford began
mass-producing the Model T in 1908, in the first
decades of the twentieth century, relatively few
cars were on the roads of most cities. By the end of
World War II, however, car ownership had
expanded, and the era of mass motorization had
begun in developed countries.
The adoption of the private automobile as the
primary mode of urban transportation was the
strongest in the United States, but it was also
prevalent in developed countries such as Canada
and Australia and in Western Europe. More
recently, automobile ownership has skyrocketed in
developing countries such as China and India. Just
like its urban rail predecessors, car travel embodied
ideas of individual freedom, personal convenience,
and financial success.