Cities and Urbanism

Theoretical Foundations of Urbanism and the Urban Revolution

• V. Gordon Childe's Urban Revolution:

  • Vere Gordon Childe (who went by Gordon, with the first name Beer) was an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist operating in the early twentieth century.
  • Childe defined the urban revolution as the culmination and structural organization of human communities that caused, or was directly accompanied by, a dramatic increase in the population affected.
  • Early anthropologists and archaeologists posited that the emergence of large-scale settlements and the human propensity to aggregate in large numbers marked a major revolutionary trajectory in species history.

• Link to the Neolithic Revolution:

  • Childe linked the urban revolution directly to the Neolithic revolution, which marked the evolutionary transition from foraging/hunting-gathering to settled agriculture.
  • Living in urban centers requires an agricultural surplus—producing substantially more food than the immediate agricultural producers consume.
  • Food surplus funds non-agricultural societal roles, freeing individuals from primary food production to become specialized artisans, bakers, butchers, politicians, religious elites, and administrators.

• The Fertile Crescent Context:

  • Childe focused his theoretical models primarily on the Near East, specifically the region known as the Fertile Crescent.
  • The Fertile Crescent contained rich farmland where some of the world's earliest permanent settlements, early states, and urban complexes originated.

Evaluation of Childe's Criteria and Modern Perspectives

• Childe's Checklist for Urban Civilization:

  • Childe constructed a list of ten specific characteristics that functioned as a diagnostic checklist to categorize a site as a city or civilization:
    1. Population Size and Density: Settlement size and population density significantly larger than any pre-existing settlement.
    2. Social Differentiation: Internal division into distinct socio-economic classes, occupational specializations, and distinct functional roles.
    3. Taxation and Surplus Concentration: Formal systems of taxation or tribute to accumulate and centralize economic capital.
    4. Monumental Public Architecture: Presence of large-scale civic, religious, or administrative buildings.
    5. Ruling Class: Formation of a distinct administrative, political, or elite class.
    6. Record-Keeping Systems: Administrative mechanisms to keep track of accounting, public finances, and socio-economic reporting.
    7. Writing Systems: Formal script systems for communication and administrative record-keeping.
    8. Advanced Artistic Expression: Heightened, specialized artistic traditions and craft specialization.
    9. Centralized Craft Production: Dedicated urban spaces where raw materials are imported and transformed into finished manufactured goods.
    10. Long-Distance Trade: Network systems for importing exotic raw materials and exporting processed goods.

• Critique of the Checklist Approach:

  • Treating criteria as a binary checklist (