Urban Life in the Distant Past

The book describes a novel approach to early cities that is transdisciplinary, scientific, historical, and based on social-science knowledge.

This book is for professionals, students, and general readers interested in ancient cities. It takes a transdisciplinary and scientific approach and presents a series of 30 case studies of early cities. Readers will find descriptions of specific ancient settlements, set in a thematically-organized novel framework.In this book, Michael Smith offers a comparative and interdisciplinary examination of ancient settlements and cities. Early cities varied considerably in their political and economic organization and dynamics. Smith here introduces a coherent approach to urbanism that is transdisciplinary in scope, scientific in epistemology, and anchored in the urban literature of the social sciences. His new insight is 'energized crowding,' a concept that captures the consequences of social interactions within the built environment resulting from increases in population size and density within settlements. Smith explores the implications of features such as empires, states, markets, households, and neighborhoods for urban life and society through case studies from around the world. Direct influences on urban life – as mediated by energized crowding-are organized into institutional (top-down forces) and generative (bottom-up processes). Smith's volume analyzes their similarities and differences with contemporary cities, and highlights the relevance of ancient cities for understanding urbanism and its challenges today.