I discuss this in my blog at:

http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-archaeologists-need-to-publish.html

I also mention briefly problems with Jacobs’s interpretation in an upcoming paper:

Smith, Michael E.
2009 V. Gordon Childe and the Urban Revolution: An Historical Perspective on a Revolution in Urban Studies. Town Planning Review 80 (in press).

The answer is: prejudice!

I’m sure life for a slave in ancient Chester was pretty **** no matter how neat the cobbles were laid in roads. Similar life for a feudal vassal was probably equally miserable whether he was living in York or some miserable hamlet ruled by some noble who was off to batter the French every summer, and taxed his estate accordingly.

In many ways, cities did not better what the Romans did until the 20th Century. Certainly, living in a Medieval city, with trash simply thrown from windows into the street, would be nasty and short, if not brutish.

Regarding rural life, I think the point is that, much like during the Depression, rural folks are more self sufficient. That might make survival more likely in tough times. And filth certainly isn’t as concentrated there, which might make life expectancy a lot higher.

Corn Law. Enclosure Act. Starvation. Unemployment or seasonal labour with no prospects or opportunities for learning a trade or skill. Absentee landlords. No franchise. Overcrowding. Press gangs. Arbitrary taxation with no representation…. the background characters of Thomas Hardy’s and George Eliot’s novels aren’t glossed over, we just choose to ignore them to promote the “city bad, countryside good” fantasy.

Even if cities were deathtraps, if people moved to them, they did so to escape even worse conditions in rural areas run by an aristocracy who generally didn’t give a toss.

I always thought that the rural idyll was a particular disease of English romantics and nostalgics who parade as The Conservative Party. It’s interesting that this particular myopia spreads to the US as well!

My memory of courses in anthropology & history suggests that we needed agriculture to produce the surplus that allowed labor specialization, and thus cities, to survive. It’s not quite chicken & egg, but close.

The cities served the purpose of exchange centers (market day in medieval towns, for example), and a way of turning excess agricultural production, which had a limited shelf life, into something of value for the next season.

Seems to me it would be logical for those who had something other than food to create, such as artists, weavers, and so forth, to be at the trading center to which the agricultural producers brought their excess.

I live in Spokane, WA (where Prof. Florida spoke a few years ago). It is often described by people who live here as a city with a small-town feeling. We have both a symphony, art museums, universities, & so forth, and agricultural production close at hand. If I want to, I can bike to the Green Bluff farming area or go to the farmers’ market in downtown and buy food directly from the people who grew it.

As energy prices increase (and they will, despite the current drop), I think these cities, which have the opportunity to provide both urban-style amenities and lifestyle with access to locally produced food, are going to thrive.

@BarbChamberlain

No one is asking you to live downtown, Wil. But some people actually do like living there, and they would be as flabbergasted to hear you describe their homes as slums, or “cheaply built, tiny, but overpriced, condominiums,” or as something that anyone hopes will “fail,” as you might bristle at the out-of-hand rejection of suburbs.

Different strokes for different folks. That’s something Victorians need to learn – and in Victoria’s case, it includes letting downtown be downtown. You can’t have it both ways – live in the suburbs and force a suburban mentality on the city.

And by the way, I’m not sure that you’re talking about a Victoria I recognize when you mention “mini-farms, horses, and agriculture within the city, among neighbourhoods with single family houses.” That sounds like Saanich or another municipality in the Capital Regional District. Victoria has that unique 13-distinct-municipalities thing going on (total pop. ~350,000), but the city of Victoria itself is only ~80,000. It isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be again a “country.” I grew up here in the late 60s and early 70s, and don’t recall what you describe within the city of Victoria.

I am disheartened by the hatred directed against the city by those who don’t even live here. You are misusing our region’s best potential by denying its existence. Saanich can be Saanich – but please let Victoria be the city it is.

The trauma of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to lots of great literature and art, and also left us this lasting idea of cities as hell-holes. Just consider the word “slum” – what does it conjure? Factory workers, displaced persons (i.e., penniless immigrants at the mercy of economic forces beyond their control), intolerable working conditions: hallmarks of Industrial Revolution.

As a result, many urban planners came to think of any place as a slum if many, many people lived there – which sort of meant painting cities with the same brush. It’s to Jane Jacobs’s everlasting credit that she parsed out the difference between *density* and *overcrowding*, rescuing density from slum conditions, and that she described how a non-centrally-planned-from-above process of *unslumming* actually works.

I do know something of Renaissance and post-Renaissance cities. They weren’t hell-holes. Sure, full of thieves and shady characters (just look at Caravaggio’s paintings!), but vibrant and exciting, and definitely *the* place to be if you wanted to move up, intellectually, creatively, and – yes – financially.

The Victoria-era legacy of Industrial Revolution trauma (thinking of cities as slums by default) is pernicious, but with ecologically-influenced thinking, we’re getting over it (I hope).

I write a monthly column for Victoria BC’s Focus Magazine, and my March 2008 column, “Victorian Fables: Does Victoria have an urban planning blindspot?” deals with this. You can access it here: http://tinyurl.com/d8fows (it’s a PDF on Scribd.com). In that particular piece I suggest (cheekily?) that the Industrial Revolution left some planners with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), which is why my city (Victoria BC) has such a block when it comes to embracing urban density. I think many Canadian cities – with their ingrained British legacy – have traces of Industrial Revolution PTSD, and it’s too bad.