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Chapter nine Opportunity Lost sets the stage for part four. In this
chapter e pointed out Prosperity as the culprit of Asian and Islamic
stagnation and furtherly leading to its decline. He pointed out the ethno
centric attitude that evolves out in the century of political, economic and
social denomination. He describes about the limits of control of each king
and the autocracy among kingdoms which helped the European traders to
easily start their entrepreneurship in the cities. He describe the rise of
power of the merchant at this stage where urban merchants and the
artesian classes were effectively counterweights to the elite political
peoples and influenced in making policy
In cities of Mammon and in fifth part he describes about Europes
imperial cities, Venice, Amsterdam and London through to industrialization
and the creation of high rise cities.kotkin explains the industrialization of
UK and US as primary case study which counterbalances other nations like
imperial japan, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He point out the
mistake of Western industrial cities as they overemphasis the
industrialization with the commercialism. He explains of the industrial
cities changed the nature of the city in terms of environmental and social
degradation. He argues that the Soviet Union stripped cities of their
sacred function. When industrialization destroy the sacred religions and
moral order of the west. Soviet Union created cities with a destitute urban
legacy.
The final section talks about the rush to suburbia and the population
loss majorly of whites that happens in the western cities throughout the
century. Kotkin points to the automobile, mass transportation (to a certain
extent), the fear of crime in the inner city, and prevailing cultural
preferences for a six room house with a big yard. Of course, the ultimate
manifestation of this kind of city is Los Angeles. While suburbanization
gripped the West, the former colonies and imperial territories of Africa
and Asia grappled with their colonial legacies. In this chapter, Kotkin
highlights the impact that Europeans had on the urban landscape of
conquered territories (often creating capitals despite an existing
infrastructure elsewhere, like Calcutta instead of Delhi). Importantly,
Kotkin also discusses the dualistic nature of many former colonial cities.
This dualism is in the relative affluence for a small proportion of the
population, often very visible in social and international media (think of
Mumbai and Cairo) and the near destitution and poverty afflicting the vast
majority of the rest of these urban dwellers. In the concluding section to
this chapter he describes these socially stratified cities in the Middle East
and Africa (in particular) as social time bombs.
equal treatment. As applied to the zoning and land use planning. Without
questioning the basic premise of equal protection clause, the argument
could be made that diversity rather than uniformity is needed in the urban
environment. Mumford suggests as much in his section on the Hellenic
city and Jane Jacobs has made a strong plea for diversity in her book the
death and life of Great American cities.
Mumford himself offers no solution to the urban design problems.
But his bias against the grand and the formal is clear. While we cannot
recreate the medieval form which Mumford does seem to prefer, we can
perhaps adapt some of its commendable features. Like integrated
neighbourhoods in which one can live near his work like in London.
Mumford also sees hope in the assembly of large aggregates of land for
unified development as similar to the garden cities of Ebenezer Howard.
Mumford observed that the most successful urban plans have been
executed at one time by persons having control of the whole entity.
Mumford puts his preference for growth restriction on more than a
liking for medieval form. He sees to feel that any social organism is
innately subject to growth limitations. Mumford accepts Ebenezer theory
that every city, every organ of the community, indeed every association
and organization has a limit of physical growth and every plan to overpass
that limit must be transposed into an etherealized form.
Mumford clearly prefers an urban environment in which growth
controlled communities are associated n a regional grid. These
communities would reflect internally the functional decentralization and
close informality of the medieval town.
In short when Joel Kotkin talks in general about the different cities of
east and west in terms of their origin with a strong religious centers and
its development in time with the protection of a security force or a
administration as a medieval time and its changes that happen due to the
industrialization in general. When Mumford is describing the conditions
and evaluating his ideas focusing to medieval cities.