Have you seen margouillat's The drifting of the "City"...?
One paragraph in particular I found fascinating, and troubling (because I think he might be right, alas!):
Many of our European countries entered the "City" way of living through the Roman empire (and some never did)! The main difference between the Anglo-saxon view of city (community, collectivity, christianity, protestantism, etc.) and the Latin ones might just be about the Roman urban and agricultural techniques and way of life seduction...
and again in a comment:
In todays Latin countries, as in France's Middle Age, you can see on a Michelin map the two superposed layers... The Roman territorial management AND the cluster of Villages that served well feudal times. The Northern countries evolved differently and you can still feel it on satellite pictures. For the South the City was a dreamed utopia, for the North it was just a commodity. Most Latin cultured urbanist, shudders when he looks at North American cities (or Australian's ones)... He feels it's wrong, while for the people living in them, it seems quite natural. While the Anglo Saxon culture speak a lot of community, Latin culture try to break those systemically... The City heritage! The "freedom" of each feeling, individual centered shows by houses, religion, politics. Most of those from the North. While in the South, individual freedom is not seen as so important vs the belonging to a greater level of life quality (or power, or richness) in a collective way...
For the South the City was a dreamed utopia, for the North it was just a commodity. Most Latin cultured urbanist, shudders when he looks at North American cities (or Australian's ones)... He feels it's wrong, while for the people living in them, it seems quite natural.
While the Anglo Saxon culture speak a lot of community, Latin culture try to break those systemically... The City heritage! The "freedom" of each feeling, individual centered shows by houses, religion, politics. Most of those from the North. While in the South, individual freedom is not seen as so important vs the belonging to a greater level of life quality (or power, or richness) in a collective way...
I'd like to think that we can still have the city, without sacrificing community and -- I think this is what we are talking about -- solidarity. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
I found it fascinating because it had never occurred to me that there was an "Anglo-Saxon" version of cities in contra-distinction to a "Latin" version of cities, and that these versions were based on different cultures and values. I guess I had always assumed that cities emerged due to general factors that were common to any conglomeration of lots of humans living within a physical space, combined with the peculiar geographical features and limitations of their locations. I had not considered how much impact culture and outlook could affect the physical make-up of a city.
I found it "troubling" (maybe not the right word) because when I first read it, it felt like "top-down" bureacratic "city engineering" (which I am less comfortable with, though I see its neccessity, assuming certain conditions are fulfilled) was being contraposed against "bottom-up" "community" and "collectivity" (which I am a fan of).
Having said that, I just re-read margouillat's diary, and realize that I misread it the first time. I am not sure that I have totally gotten his idea of the city, but the first time I thought he might be advocating a certain "impersonal" administrative approach to organizing the city to correct and reign in the "natural" tribalistic, self-ghettoizing, even self-particlizing tendencies that people have -- again, the top-down administrative approach. But I think perhaps what he is talking about is that the city -- with the right awareness, intelligence, and discipline, yes, perhaps the administrative super-ego -- can and has helped humans to live a richer, more complex, more interconnected communal existence than would otherwise be possible without that communal "discipline".
His concern about community is clear from this sentence:
I shudder at the idea that they might get "autonomous" one day, shutting most of my fellow countrymen in social darkness.
And the new possibilities of communal living he describes in this paragraph:
As the city needed new people (immigration) they were very open about beliefs and religions, as anyhow the City itself was founded by a god, a half-god, or at least a hero! Moral was not so tight (you had people from various origins so inbreeding wasn't a risk as in villages)... And an underground economy could be tolerated... Then recuperated!
Again, I'm not suure if I "capte" his ideas quite yet, and I am still a little bit intimidated byy "the city", but I think I understand it better. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
In distinction, the heavier soils north of the Alps requires a different technology: the moldboard plow and oxen (horses) a set of equipment not available until the Middle Ages. Therefore, the Germanic peoples: Germans, Saxons, Swedes, & etc tended to concentrate on stock raising at first. This required a dispersed population. In the north 'cities' were primarily established to be trading centers - I'm thinking of Hedeby - or centers of power and production - the Celtic oppidum.
As always, behind the obvious generalization, there are greater subtleties. It was more meant as a wink to the "we are the cities we have" that seems to sustain a passionate debate in this thread :-)
If we must live in a global world, let it be with our differences and the understanding of those... "What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
