Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

Metropolis is an overview of city life through human civilization. It is a really excellent book on a subject that should be written about more. The author gives an overview of city life through the chronicles of ancient and modern cities and their populations. Ben Wilson starts with Mesopotamia and takes us all the way to Shanghai and Lagos and brings the reader into the life of the city inhabitant through human history, which has both changed magnificently but also not changed that much in purpose. It is entertaining, nostalgic and uplifting and being a person who has always lived in cities, found it comforting.I really enjoyed Metropolis, there is much to get out of this book. There is history, economics, sociology and biology. When one steps back the city is a remarkable human construct that is a complex adaptive system of remarkable scale. Despite occasional ebbs and flows, city life is what an increasing part of human civilization is part of and the author reminds the reader of why. Reading through the descriptions of life in Athens and the Roman Baths and how such social infrastructure was installed throughout the empire reminds the reader that cities were built with human needs influencing city architectures. The author also highlights that when the opportunity of cities vs country side relatively improved cities could easily be overwhelmed by inflows of people leading to then affluent exodus to the suburbs. Such ebbs and flows have always been part of how cities are built. One learns of the difference between European and Asian and even Latin America city administration, with European having the worst hygiene. The author details how life expectancy and health was always worse in cities but still was attractive as it improved mobility and broadened the horizons of its inhabitants. The author gives the reader a tangible window into how despite the complications of dense living, human creativity is more easily brought to bloom in a city. The author also discusses how destroying a city is almost impossible with a chapter on the attempts to destroy cities during the WWII by both Allies and Axis, neither of which succeeded. The author highlights a key point which is that the buildings don't make up the city but the people do and their ability to regenerate the infrastructure can be remarkable. In particular one learns of how power was restored along with running water to fire bombed cities at great speed and how in cities like Hiroshima schools quickly recommenced. The book is filled with remarkable reminders of the resilience of populations in the face of adversity, of which cities are central examples. The author then moves on to concepts like suburbanization and the changing nature of how city populations desire more to be embedded in nature rather than replacing it. The case study of LA and its sprawling expanse is discussed with a lot of reference to modern culture and socio-economics. The author ends with a discussion of Lagos, one of the most undesirable cities to live in the world but is on a trajectory to be the largest city in the world over the next 20 years. The author brings up the top down model of city optimization, including the Chinese city growth model, but sides with the concept of the city as a living organism that will solve its own problems with the right administration rather than the administration making decisions on behalf of the population. The author then weaves back the need for city populations to live with nature rather than independent of it as an issue of ecology and how our ability to navigate climate change will be dependent on our ability to manage our resource usage which will depend on city life.Overall Metropolis gives a perspective on city life through human civilization and how it has been a center of our heritage and a likely foundation of our future. It is entertaining and informative and filled with perspective that will be of interest to a wide audience. One will appreciate the relevance of the city more and the inevitability of evolution within cities as the needs of the populations change with changing circumstances. This is book is a must read for a wide audience.

Wow! This book is wonderful. I've been reading it after having read Four Lost Cities, and before reading Jane Jacobs' seminal book on American cities. Cities have lives of their own, regardless of war, earthquake, flood, drought, famine, or other disasters. Highly recommended.

What an awesome book. Ben Wilson have turned this mega research project into a marvelously digestible read.A really great read spanning the intertwining of the city and humans across the ages.The city is us AND we are the city.

At this point, I've read only the long introduction and then the 1st 2 chapters. The book's overall organization, signaled by its chapter headings, is fine and quite clear. The beginnings of each chapter are very good. But within each large unit, there's way too much repetition, but also a surprising amount of self-contradiction. Only 2 examples: on p. 63, the author attributes the central attitude of the US, "a society that is profoundly ANTI-urban," (as, indeed, some parts of it are) as beginning with Thomas Jefferson. 2 pages later, it begins with Romanticism instead. In another example, the author praises but then very quickly skims over Babylon's architecture, libraries, extraordinary culture in all ways, in order to focus much more tightly (and, again, very repetitively) on its later reputation as a giant sinkhole of sin, particularly of "illicit" sex. This seems to be a major titillation that the author is most interested in himself, given how much space he allows it. So as I continue to read, I pay a lot of attention to the author's set-ups and general factual history. When he goes into a vortex of negative opinions about how awful cities are (or were seen to be by most of the people he cites), rather than a straightforward history of a city itself, then I read very quickly until I get to the next solidly grounded text. It's not his beliefs that I have trouble with, but his constant emphases on cities' difficulties and sordidness. I've lived, or spent a good deal of time, in large cities -- Boston, New York, Munich, Paris, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC -- as someone with very little money and having to be very careful, as well as someone who wasn't so poor but also wasn't rich in any real sense. Ben Wilson, however, at least so far is presenting cities in a strikingly uniform, and largely negative way, to the point where I'm wondering whether he has any real, lived experiences in cities from the inside, as opposed to reading about them from other, mainly literary, sources. Does he like cities and city living? Does he actually know enough about city living to pass such uniform opinions on it? Later update: I read about another 50 pages or so, so in total about 1/3 of the whole, then gave it up.

Though i knew that cities went back thousands of years it was mind opening to realise just how backwards Europeans were and how smug we are about our civilisation. Fascinating book though a little repetitive at times

A quite fascinating book from early Mesopotamia up to C20 Los Angeles. Well worth reading if youbare interested in urban development.

Huge topic; a celebration of cities and why we love them. Particularly important right now.

Fantastic book. Loved reading it - fast paced, interesting and it really made me think. Wonderfully well written.

This book is a very good read I enjoyed it