I am writing a five-part miniseries about cities to consolidate and record my learning about urban planning and economic development. These thoughts represent a synthesis from books, talks, podcasts, conversations, documentaries, and our work at Subcity. Part II is The Importance of Transportation in Cities
“Underneath the city, there are programs and infrastructure designed to support the buildings, equipment, people, and jobs - the very things that have always made cities engines of upward mobility for humanity.”
-Everywhere Ventures (Subcity investor)
Source: Boston Public Library. Army and Navy marching, first men to World War l, Tremont Street at the corner of Dover Street and Berkeley Street. 1917
We like to think that ancient townspeople fought savagely against each other, a constant clashing of swords and thundering of hooves. Yet, according to Lewis Mumford, the primary defensive concern early humans faced was from wild animals—not other people. Humanity did not switch from hunting and gathering to farming all at once, so Mumford and other scholars believe that the hunters that coexisted with the agricultural communities would have provided periodic service in the form of killing dangerous area animals. A lion or other large predator that was menacing the population would be tracked and put to rest by a “hired gun.” Even if there were no dangerous animals in the vicinity, these hunters could also have provided meat to supplement the citizen’s agrarian diet.
Due to the irregular nature of hunting, these early warriors would have needed significant territory and would have had to engage with multiple settlements where they could provide meat and protective services in exchange for lodging or domestically grown and produced meals. The evolution of this practice from a harmonic relationship to something more sinister would have occurred as the settlements gained in stability and the hunters gained in hunger or greed. Like the mafia, what starts as cooperation can easily slip into shakedowns. Mutually assured destruction philosophy from the Cold War also played out in prehistoric times as villagers needed to arm themselves should the hunter’s next visit not be welcome. The bronze age, where weapons evolved from clubs and spears to swords and shields catalyzed an arms race that continues to this day at the nation-state level.
It is here where we come to one of the oldest military technologies present across all civilizations. The wall. It’s evolved from mounds of dirt and wooden fences, to electrified and “smart” but the purpose remains the same. A safe space for those inside, and the manufacturing of an “us” vs. “them.” Even Wall Street, a symbol of financial power today, was once a wooden barrier built by the Dutch to protect the fledgling colony from Native American tribes.
The opportunities and community offered by cities has always acted as a strong magnet but, during medieval times, to stay outside the city walls invited almost certain harm. Like Yale’s New Haven campus today, the gates were closed at night and opened each morning with the protection of the defined group sequestered from the “other.” As discussed in The Location of Cities, many of these walled towns would be located on water. The gate against the water would become the default port to receive goods and people. The word port is derived from “portal” as the handoff point between the boat’s cargo and the city gate, and its progeny became the seaport and ultimately the airport.
As weapons and technology improved, the walls needed to strengthen against attackers. When simple dirt, wood, or stone walls sufficed it was easy to expand a village’s walls to accommodate additional land and people. As the wall height rose and construction became more costly, it became less practical to expand the walls of the city. This limited the outward expansion and ushered in an era of urban density. This collective effort of wall construction, expansion, and upgrading became the earliest public works projects for a society. Its success would have required political leadership, taxation, a class of workers skilled in construction, and the ability to organize and coordinate raw materials, labor, and set exact perimeters.
Modern-day Istabul, Turkey, sits between two magnificent continents, Europe and Asia. The land route between the two, popularized by the writing of Marco Polo, must pass through the city due to the surrounding terrain. As a Roman city, Constantiople was the capital of the Byzantine empire, was protected by water on three sides and five walls along its 14-mile entrance. Twenty-three armies had tried and failed to take the city until the Ottomans were able to do so in 1453, turning the city into the capital of their Islamic Caliphate and hostile to Christian states and travelers. With this chokepoint sealed, the race for a sea-route to Asia began amongst the European powers with the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and British and others sailing all the way around Africa, India, and the Philippines and launching the western explorations of Henry Hudson and, of course, Christopher Columbus.
Dense city centers with small winding streets exemplify the classic medieval town. The narrow streets seem confusing and traffic-inducing now. When constructed, they were practical since walking was the only means of transportation for most of the population and the narrowness would have provided shade in the summer heat, as well as warmth from wind in the cooler climates. The proliferation of the horse and carriage, trolley, and ultimately the automobile, necessitated a widening of the roads. However, a larger driver in Europe of the widening was military and government leaders.
Paris was the first Western city where walls were leveled by the king and replaced with wide boulevards. It was meant as a strong signal that the protection of the city could be served by France’s wider borders and military might. As the resources and importance of a large standing army grew, so did the need to display this strength. Battalions of goose-stepping soldiers interspersed with the latest in military hardware can’t charge through curving footpaths in the same way as they can down wide, straight avenues.
Roman armies on the march would set up their camps in a standardized layout. This meant that all Roman legions knew where to find everything, even if delivering something to another camp. The layout followed a classical grid pattern with the generals in the center and two main roads intersecting at a perpendicular angle in the middle. The main street, Via Principalis, ran north to south and was very wide. These temporary camps would turn into forts and inspire the grid layout used in cities around the world.
From the defensive walls that set outer city perimeters and forced urban density, to the widening of medieval roads for military processions, and the grid pattern modeled on marching Roman legion’s war camps, the influence of the military on cities is clear from our grandest boulevards, to the old walled city, and the layout of Main Street.
Sources:
➢ The City in History, Mumford
➢ Rise of the Ottomans on Netflix
➢ Roman Army Camp - https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-army/roman-camp/