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Wow, this thread took a left turn while I wasn't paying attention. If you go back to the time of ancient Rome most of my ancestors were living in one-room houses made of saplings and bark in villages of a couple-dozen people with no running water, electricity, refrigeration, internet.... or for that matter roads, draft animals, livestock, metal tools..... none of which really has anything to do with how people are living on this continent today. And I'm not sure how fallen European cities relate to it either. Current lifestyles are just too different to draw many meaningful parallels.
As far as ancient Rome goes... if I remember my history correctly something like half the population were slaves. I doubt they had the option of relocating to a more rural area if they felt their living conditions were too cramped.
The density in these ancient cities was more like Paris than say Houston or Phoenix. Have a look at ruins like Jericho, Pompeii etc.
Actually, the densities of those cities were more like Houston than Paris. They had a dense core that was 1 or two miles across, but low density areas for miles and miles around the walled inner core.
Actually, the densities of those cities were more like Houston than Paris. They had a dense core that was 1 or two miles across, but low density areas for miles and miles around the walled inner core.
Possibly, but most people probably lived in the dense core.
Possibly, but most people probably lived in the dense core.
nope. They way it was described for many ancient cities was that the core had a bunch of people living in an area that you could walk across easily in an hour. But outside the core there were what we now call suburbs (residential areas with little to no commerce- usually poorer people who could not afford to live in the walled part) surrounding on all sided.
The last example I read was the one Marco Polo gave of Beijing. He said the inner core was walled and had 12 gates. and at each gate there were communities as large or even larger than the inner core in population.
Unfortunately the outer houses were cheap (not ornate and made of stone like the richer areas, so a lot of these were lost.
The example I gave, AngKor was originally thought to consist of the walled part, but later excavations showed the the city was much much larger, and what they thought was the real city was just an area filled with temples and homes for the rich and priests, etc.
Cities built by the Ancient Greeks and Romans were ahead of their time, I should read up on them
Within the city wall of most early cities, a visitor would see a dense mass of buildings, congested streets, and a rich and highly dynamic urban life offering many choices, at least for those able to afford them. A few miles outside the walls, however, the same visitor might see nothing but croplands and rural villages. The pace of daily activities would be slower, the environment less quick to change, and social and political life completely different.
In almost every era in urban history, however, there was a transitional zone between the two, a region just outside the city that housed activities and individuals that were still intimately connected with the social and economic life of the city but that couldn’t be accommodated easily within the walls. This zone provided space for burial grounds, pottery works, or other industries that were either too space consuming or too noxious to be tolerated within the city itself. It also housed marginal social or political groups and families too poor to afford dwellings inside the walls. In a great many cities, however, this zone also supported activities of a very different sort. Here were the houses of affluent or powerful families who had the means to build and maintain working farms or villas or second houses where they could escape the congestion, noise, contagion, and social unrest that have characterized the center of large cities from the beginning of time until our own day. Sometimes these settlements were permanent, sometimes for seasonal or occasional use. Sometimes they were fairly compact, composed, for example, of small villas surrounded by gardens in a pattern we would today call suburban. In other cases they were very dispersed with imposing houses set on a large acreage, often with a conscious attempt to maintain a rural appearance. These we would call today exurban.
most media attention to ancient civilization focused on the core city, or the rural parts. They often overlook the part in between the two. So it is quite understandable for one to assume that all ancient cities were dense from end to end, because the burbs were not highlighted.
Here is what the article said about Rome:
Quote:
Although this pattern apparently characterized Babylon and Ur and many of the earliest large cities known to us, the best evidence we have comes from ancient Rome. At the beginning of the Christian era, this great city had an estimated population of about 1 million people piled up within city walls that enclosed a little more than six square miles. In other words it had a population of a city like Dallas today but in less than one-fiftieth of the space. This created densities of something like 150,000 per square mile. This kind of density, which would translate to more than two hundred people per acre, seems to have characterized most large, thriving cities up until the beginning of the twentieth century. It is hard for us today even to imagine the consequences of crowding of this order in cities that had, by today’s standards, primitive water delivery, waste removal, and transportation services.
In Rome, as in most other cities until quite recently, this crowding was even worse than the figures suggest because social and economic inequalities were much greater than they are today. A small group of wealthy Romans lived in splendor in spacious palaces that, together with nonresidential facilities, took up most of the space within the walls. This left relatively little acreage for the neighborhoods that housed the vast majority of families. In these neighborhoods apartment blocks were built so densely that they allowed little direct sunlight or ventilation into living quarters. Human wastes disgorged from the apartments into the streets contaminated the soil and water; a vast number of fires used for heating and industrial uses polluted the air. It is not surprising that periodic epidemics wiped out large segments of the urban population. These urban plagues continued in the Western world until well into the twentieth century, and they continue to this day in some large cities in the developing world.
most media attention to ancient civilization focused on the core city, or the rural parts. They often overlook the part in between the two. So it is quite understandable for one to assume that all ancient cities were dense from end to end, because the burbs were not highlighted.
Here is what the article said about Rome:
not very flattering.
Thanks for the link, very informative.
We have much better sanitation now and in the the developed world, extremely high densities aren't much of a problem. Plus, not having automobiles curtailed and limited the land outside the city walls which could be developed. Plus, they were laying down stone foundations and roads much more than concrete as we do today (along with asphalt. and the Romans did have concrete, it was only rediscovered in the late 19th century.) When our vast suburban areas are abandoned, concrete slabs will be left across the landscape as that will be the last part of the houses and other buildings to crumble.
And unlike today's exurban residents, those of Thoreau & Muir's time, as well as those of earlier periods, did not say they were living in X large city when they were living in their woodland cabin. And they weren't relying on John Deere or Cub Cadet and a wide variety of chemicals to keep their five acre lawn manicured. I'm not sure how many ex-urban residents have Y2K bunkers though.
We have much better sanitation now and in the the developed world, extremely high densities aren't much of a problem. Plus, not having automobiles curtailed and limited the land outside the city walls which could be developed. Plus, they were laying down stone foundations and roads much more than concrete as we do today (along with asphalt. and the Romans did have concrete, it was only rediscovered in the late 19th century.) When our vast suburban areas are abandoned, concrete slabs will be left across the landscape as that will be the last part of the houses and other buildings to crumble.
And unlike today's exurban residents, those of Thoreau & Muir's time, as well as those of earlier periods, did not say they were living in X large city when they were living in their woodland cabin. And they weren't relying on John Deere or Cub Cadet and a wide variety of chemicals to keep their five acre lawn manicured. I'm not sure how many ex-urban residents have Y2K bunkers though.
Oh yeah, I do agree, the modern cities are a lot cleaner and healthier than the ancient ones. I just wanted to refute the claims that ancient cities were not sprawling.
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Current lifestyles are just too different to draw many meaningful parallels. 
