At some point in 2008, someone, probably in either Asia or Africa, made the decision to move from the countryside to the city. This nameless person pushed the human race over a historic threshold, for it was in that year that mankind became, for the first time in its history, a predominantly urban species.
It is a trend that shows no sign of slowing. Demographers (人口统计学家) reckon that three quarters of humanity could be city-dwelling by 2050, with most of the increase coming in the fast-growing towns of Asia and Africa. Migrants to cities are attracted by plentiful jobs, access to hospitals and education, and the ability to escape the boredom of a farmer’s agricultural life. Those factors are more than enough to make up for the squalor (肮脏), disease and spectacular poverty that those same migrants must often at first endure when they become urban dwellers.
It is the city that inspires the latest book from Peter Smith. His main thesis is that the buzz of urban life, and the opportunities it offers for co-operation and collaboration, is what attracts people to the city, which in turn makes cities into the engines of art, commerce, science and progress. This is hardly revolutionary, but it is presented in a charming format. Mr. Smith has written a breezy guidebook, with a series of short chapters dedicated to specific aspects of urbanity—parks, say, or the various schemes that have been put forward over the years for building the perfect city. The result is a sort of high-quality, usually rigorous coffee-table book, designed to be dipped into rather than read from beginning to end.
In the chapter on skyscrapers, for example, Mr. Smith touches on construction methods, the revolutionary invention of the automatic lift, the practicalities of living in the sky and the likelihood that, as cities become more crowded, apartment living will become the norm. But there is also time for brief diversions onto bizarre ground, such as a discussion of the skyscraper index (which holds that a boom in skyscraper construction is a foolproof sign of an imminent recession).
One obvious criticism is that the price of breadth is depth; many of Mr. Smith’s essays raise as many questions as they answer. Although that can indeed be frustrating, this is probably the only way to treat so grand a topic. The city is the building block of civilisation and of almost everything people do; a guidebook to the city is really, therefore, a guidebook to how a large and ever-growing chunk of humanity chooses to live. Mr. Smith’s book serves as an excellent introduction to a vast subject, and will suggest plenty of further lines of inquiry.
