by Charles Lyons
Read any books lately that made you go “Wow!”? Joel Kotkin’s The City, A Global History had just that effect on me. How does an author jam so much into such few pages? (160 pages text, 40 plus pages notes)
“Two central themes have informed this history of cities. First is the universality of the urban experience, despite vast differences in race, climate, and location.” Secondly, “Since the earliest origins urban areas have performed three separate critical functions — the creation of sacred space, the provision of basic security, and the host for a commercial market.”
Among the “essential problems facing urban regions in the West and increasingly the developed parts of the East and South Asia are of a different nature. Cities in these regions are frequently relatively safe and, when their suburban rings are included, remarkably prosperous by historical standards. Yet these cities increasingly seem to lack a shared sense of sacred place, civic identity or moral order.” Kotkin continues, “The study of urban history also suggests that even affluent cities without moral cohesion or a sense of civic identity are doomed to decadence and decline.”
Joel Kotkin is an Irvine Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation based in Washington D.C. He is the author of five books including Tribes and The New Geography, both published by Random House. He is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Inc., The American Enterprise, and the Los Angeles Times “Opinion” section. He serves as a Senior Fellow at Baruch College of the City, University of New York.
Given the sweep of the book, it is remarkable for its brevity. Kotkin addresses the rise of cities in a global context, classical cities in Europe, the Oriental epic, Western cities reasserting their primacy, the industrial city, and the modern metropolis.
His observations related to Islamic cities were particularly intriguing. “The Muslim epic represented a new beginning in urban histories. The primacy of faith was evident in the layout of Islamic cities. Instead of the classical emphasis on public buildings and spaces, mosques now arose at the center of urban life.” He notes that Islam’s early success was as a city-based religion and that Islamic civilization at its core is profoundly urban. “Islam virtually demanded cities to serve as the places where men pray together.”
Kotkin cites a noted top U.N. official who pointed out that urban areas from North Africa to Pakistan represented “nothing less than social time bombs that threaten to undermine the entire global order.” It was only a few weeks after I read that section that Cairo protests became a worldwide headline days on end. As I write this, uprisings have erupted in cities across the Middle East.
Of specific interest to Bible students is the chapter titled “Rome — The First Mega City.” This certainly provides great insight, if not a whole new understanding, into the book of Romans and the first century world dominated by the Roman Empire.
The “Anglo-American Revolution” chapter will give every leader in any arena a better understanding of how urbanization has marked and molded the United States.
I don’t know how religious the author is, but I found his comments and observations related to sacred space catching my attention. “This sacred role has been too often ignored in contemporary discussions of the urban condition.” He goes after the “new urbanists” architects, planners, and developers and their campaigning for city green space, historical preservation, and environmental stewardship saying “they rarely refer to the need for a powerful moral vision to hold cities together.” In his mild way he bashes those who propagate the idea that all a city needs is business and hipness to be viable. Mind you, he is not arguing for a particular religion. He simply makes the case that “without a widely shared belief system it would be exceedingly difficult to envision a viable urban future.”
Preachers need to read this book. I don’t know where, in such a brief treatment, you could gain such a grand overview of the role of the city in shaping the human experience. Professors need this book. It reminds that urbanology is not some remote, fringe realm of academic study. Rather, it bears on the life of every person on the planet, impacting how we view the world, how we learn, how we live. Anyone going into Christian service needs to interact with Kotkin’s material. Every believer will have a better understanding of the world in which he or she is seeking to serve Christ having spent a few hours with this volume.
As a result of reading Kotkin’s work, I am far more informed as to the role of the city in every period of history. I was reminded that even presumably secular academics cannot avoid the necessity of the sacred. I was encouraged by being reminded, I’m in the right place at the right time.