Hence, cities were essential for culture and civilization they allowed a centralization of power and knowledge, and they were crucial for the division of labor and for organizing the demand of the people, on which economic development rests. From ancient to medieval and modern times, and from China, India and Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean, Europe and Mesoamerica, cities have been a recurrent phenomenon, and still archeology finds further evidence for large and hitherto undocumented – albeit not totally unexpected – settlements in distant periods and places. While there were phases and places in history, when and where cities were not particularly important, and as a rule, only a small fraction of the population lived in these settlements, the history of civilization as we know it is very much connected to cities. Thus the modern city is the primary manifestation of globalization today, and its very essence is a global network of multidimensional spaces of congestion that both describes and shapes it.ĢThe relevance of cities is nothing but new. In addition, these cities look increasingly alike, shaping a global space which is more and more indistinguishable between continents. In reality, it is much more a “global city”: today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities (although often under poor conditions), and many metropolises of the world are much more economically productive and significant with respect to global networks than most of the world’s states. 1It is often said that the world is turning into a “global village”.
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