Helen Meller. Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner. (Geography, Environment and Planning Series.) New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall. 1990. Pp. xvi, 359. $85.00.

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 790-791
Author(s):  
Richard A. Soloway
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
City Planner

THE SIZE OF CITIES

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 719-719
Author(s):  
Kirkpatrick Sale ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Optimum Size ◽  
Human History ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Eye Blink ◽  
City Planner ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The World ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
The City

. . . records of urban populations suggest that for most of human history cities did not generally grow beyond the 50,000 to 100,000 range. For most of its celebrated life the city of Athens hovered around 50,000 people, though at periods of particular power the surrounding state may have grown to 150,000 or 200,000. The Italian cities that nurtured the Renaissance were no larger than 80,000, and most of them held closer to 50,000—the Rome of Michelangelo had perhaps 55,000 people, the Florence of Leonardo 50,000, and Venice, Padua, and Bologna at their height probably 50,000 to 80,000. Boston and Philadelphia at the time of the Revolution did not have more than 30,000 people, New York had even fewer. In fact, it seems that only rarely did historical cities go much beyond 100,000, and then only temporarily when serving as the capitals of empires. . . . The very existence of giant cities is so recent as to be a mere eye-blink in recorded history. It was not until 1800 that any city grew to more than one million people—that was industrialized London—and by 1900 there were only ten others of that size. The conclusion of the great Greek city planner Constantine Doxiades, who spent his life categorizing such things, seems on the mark: "If we look back into history . . . we find that, throughout the long evolution of human settlements, people in all parts of the world have tended to create urban settlements which reached an optimum size of 50,000 people."

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