No one has written a history of cities in order to condemn them. At most, as Lewis Mumford did in The City in History (1961), authors criticize certain eras for failing to live up to the city's potential, or they treat urban problems as challenges that have usually been solved. Ben Wilson is no exception, as the subtitle to his latest book makes clear. Wilson has already made a name for himself for histories of the (British) Royal Navy and the fraught, centuries-long struggle for civil liberties. Some reviewers have described him as brilliant. And so we urban historians might feel flattered, or at least intrigued, that he has turned his attention to our favourite subject. The result has limitations – what work doesn't? – but it is enormously impressive.
Wilson briefly makes his purpose and point of view clear at the outset. His approach is ‘not simply to see cities as centres of power and profit, but as human habitations that have had a profound effect on the people who have lived in them’ (p. 8). More particularly, ‘it is the interaction between the built environment and humans that is at the heart of urban life, of this book’. In other words, like Lewis Mumford – and H.J. Dyos and Richard Rodger – Wilson wants to show how cities have mattered. He does this by choosing ‘a series of cities that tell us something not only about their own time, but about the urban condition in general’ (p. 8). Most of his selections – including Babylon, Rome, Manchester and Los Angeles – are predictable. A few rather less so, notably Lübeck and Warsaw. Most are (or were) in Europe or the Middle East. However, in addition to features of varying length on Malacca, Tenochtitlan and Lagos, he includes asides on other cities, such as Shanghai and Mumbai. Eurocentric, then, but not exclusively so.
Wilson could have adopted the strategy of Peter Hall in Cities in Civilization (1998), the work that is perhaps closest in approach. In the introduction to the five major sections, as well as to the book as a whole, Hall spells out his major themes and arguments. The core chapters then deal wholly, and thoroughly, with each city in a specific historical period. Instead, Wilson mixes things up. The introduction to Metropolis is relatively brief, and Wilson offers no separate, formal conclusion. Instead, the last five pages in the final chapter look to the future, commenting on densification and climate change. The core chapters focus on particular cities, but as points of departure. Athens and Alexandria, for example, are used in part as excuses to talk about migrants, new ideas and cosmopolitanism. And in each chapter, he moves backwards and forwards in time, drawing parallels. In this way, he aims to highlight elements of ‘the urban condition in general’.
It is an imaginative, indeed daring approach, but runs the risk of short-changing, and failing to evoke, the distinctive character of each place and time. Certainly, Wilson cannot deal as thoroughly with each city and period as Hall does, not least because Metropolis is only about one quarter the length. But Wilson pulls it off. He knows his stuff: the extensive (although difficult to read) references show this, as does his grasp of key features of the cities he has chosen – or at least the ones I know well enough to comment on. He has visited a number of the cities, and sometimes interjects personal observations. Most importantly, he has the right style. Take Paris. He features it in the period 1830–1914, speaking of city-planning, tourism, flânerie and city walks, and uses it as a springboard to speak about the urban experience of women, making his case through perceptive interpretations of several Impressionist paintings, including Manet's Corner of a Café-Concert. Here, and in many other contexts, it is Wilson's ability to distil, juxtapose and communicate the elements of a general, as well as of a particular, urban culture that justifies his strategy: he can keep several balls in the air.
Yes, there are limitations. There is a western bias, although less marked than in Mumford's or Hall's works. Wilson is also stronger on the cultural and social aspects of cities than the economic. Trade and ports, certainly, get their due, but he has little to say about agglomeration economies or the role of cities as places of technical, as opposed to cultural, innovation. In this regard, Metropolis reflects the current state of our subfield, in which economic history plays little part. Too bad. But this is a fine piece of work. Wilson is clearly addressing a general, not a specialist audience. To that end, Metropolis entertains as well as informs. In the process, it could also inspire readers, including students looking for a field of study, to pay more attention to urban history, or indeed current urban issues. It could even profitably be read by jaundiced senior scholars such as myself. After all, I was intrigued to learn that, around 2100 BC, it was a week-long fling with Shamat that persuaded Enkidu to abandon his wilderness utopia for the uncertain pleasures of Uruk. It is an old story, well told.
