ancient cities

884 Urbanism
and cultural transformation processes. Asia holds
more than half of the world’s cities with more than
10 million people, and that number is rapidly rising;
yet Southeast Asia is one of the world’s least
urbanized regions. Towns and cities of eastern
Africa have also experienced very quick growth
over the past 100 years, but urbanization as a historical
phenomenon has only recently begun to
receive scholarly attention.
See also Ancient Cities; Renaissance City; Urban
Archaeology; Urban Studies
Further Readings
Lars Nilsson
Abbott, Carl. 1996. “Thinking about Cities: The Central
Tradition in U.S. Urban History,” Journal of Urban
History 22:6.
Engeli, Christian and Horst Matzerath, eds. 1989.
Modern Urban History in Europe, USA and Japan.
New York: Berg.
Fraser, Derek and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds. 1983. The
Pursuit of Urban History. London: Arnold.
Hershberg, Theodore. 1978. “The New Urban History:
Toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City.”
Journal of Urban History 5(1):3–40.
Jansen, Harry S. J. 1996. “Wrestling with the Angel:
Problems of Definition in Urban Historiography.”
Urban History 23:277–99.
McShane, Clay. 2006. “The State of the Art in North
American Urban History.” Journal of Urban History
32:598–601.
Nilsson, Lars. 1990. Den urbana frågan: Svensk
stadshistoria i retrospektivt och internationellt ljus
(The Urban Question: Research Strategies in Swedish
Urban History). Stockholm: Stads- och
Kommunhistoriska Institutet.
Rodger, Richard. 1992. “Urban History: Prospect and
Retrospect.” Urban History 19:1–22.
Rodger, Richard, ed. 1993. European Urban History:
Prospect and Retrospect. Leicester, UK: Leicester
University Press.
Supphellen, Steinar, ed. 1998. The Norwegian Tradition
in a European Context: A Report from the Conference
in Urban History in Trondheim 21.-22.11.1997.
Trondheim, Norway: Norwegian University of Science
and Technology.
Tilly, Charles. 1996. “What Good Is Urban History?”
Journal of Urban History 22(6):702–19.
Ur b a n i s m
Urbanism refers to the characteristics of, and
quality of life in, cities and, for urban studies, the
question of how human interaction and social
organization has been altered by urban life. Early
urban theorists, observing the overwhelming social
changes brought about by industrialization and
the rapid pace of urbanization, thought that the
city would lead to personal disorganization (persons
living in cites would not be able to cope with
the rapid pace and stimuli of the urban environment)
and social disorganization (families and
social norms would break down). Debate surrounding
these questions continues to inform the
urban disciplines, and urban studies more generally,
as new urban formations and growing megacities
in the developing world further stress urban
populations. This entry summarizes some of the
classic statements about urbanism, surveys the
resulting discussion in the European and U.S. traditions,
and offers a guide to further reading in the
encyclopedia.
Classic Statements
European countries experienced rapid industrialization
in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The city of Manchester, England, would come to
symbolize the early industrial city, due in part to
Friedrich Engels’s description of life and labor in
the city in The Condition of the English Working
Class. An engraving of the town of Manchester
from 1809 shows a rural landscape with village
church spires rising through the trees; an oil painting
by William Wyld of the industrial city from the
same perspective in 1830 shows dozens of smokestacks
and clouds of industrial pollution; the
church spires can barely be made out. Early social
theorists lived through these changes and confronted
questions of what life in the industrial city
would be like.
Ferdinand Tönnies, the German social philosopher,
described the transition from Gemeinschaft
to Gesellschaft, from the small-scale rural society
that tightly encircled the individual and family
within the local community to the large-scale
urban society where the city dweller confronts a
“strange community” lacking traditional bonds,