THE GROWTH OF CITIES

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30278, 2 November 1963, Page 3

THE GROWTH OF CITIES

Babylon Is Everywhere. The City as Man’s Fate. Wolf Schneider. Translated from the German by Ingeborg Sammet and John Oldenburg. Hodder

and Stoughton. 400 p.p.

This is a wide-ranging book, for there is much to be said about the city, which has become increasingly a characteristic of main's life. As the author reminds us. a hundred years ago there were only five cities with more than a million inhabitants: today there are 115. A great part of the book is a conspectus of world history in terms of the city, which grew up as nomads turned into peasants tilling the soil and found it necessary to draw closet together for protection. The temple was ttie nucleus, and the wall the defence. So we are introduced to a large number of past and present cities, including Jericho, Troy, Kish. Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh. Athens, Carthage, Rome, as well as the ancient cities of South America, and so on through the great mediaeval and modern cities to Brasilia and Canberra and the days when the city wall has lost its significance and the distinctive features are generally the tall buildings and the factory chimneys.

With all this there is a remarkable collection of detailed information. The i reader may learn about the ' shape and pattern of Babylon, Athens, Rome, Peking and Miletus, and examine the ground plains of a house in Mohenjo-Daro and a German craftsman's home in the sixteenth century. Those who are attracted by statistics may study the areas and populations of the largest waited-in cities of antiquity or the development of the 10 largest cities of the United States and compare the relative living-spaces available to

the individual inhabitants of New York and Calcutta. Finally we have what maybe called the sociological section of the bock, im which the author discusses the attractions of city life and its effects on physical and mental health and human behaviour. So we are ted on to a consideration of the cities of the future. Mr Schneider does not believe in too detailed planning, but he is well aware of the problems that the planner has to face, including the' menace of the motor car (from which the pedestrian in Indian Chandigarh has beep given complete protection). The a car, says Mr Schneider, has become the master of the cities and throughways must be provided for it. The parking place cannot be allowed to supplant the market place, an ancient feature which must be revived, and the city must be given firm boundaries.

So there is something here for the historian, the amateur of statistics, the sociologist, and the town planner—a wide and thorough study within a relatively smell compass. There are also 32 pages of photographs, a large number of line illustrations and a bibliography.