Summary

'Peter J. Taylor has produced a sweeping, empirically grounded, defense of cities as fundamental building blocks of long-term, large scale social structures; a way of freeing social science from state-centric bias; and indeed, mankind's hope. However, the single greatest strength of this complex, seductive, argument is the insistence on treating cities relationally, as process. Here the key to understanding the significance of cities is by studying them in terms of the dynamic networks they form and in their relations to states.'
- Richard E. Lee, Binghamton University, US

Accepting that cities are extraordinary, this book provides an original city-centred narrative of human creativity, past, present and future.

In this innovative, ambitious and wide-ranging book, Peter Taylor demonstrates that cities are the epicenters of human advancement. In exploring cities as sites through which economies flourish, by harnessing the creative potential of myriad communication networks, the author considers cities from varying temporal and spatial perspectives. Four stories of cities are told: the origins of city networks; the domination of cities by world-empires; the genesis of a singular modern creative interval in which innovation culminates in today s globalised cities; and finally, the need for cities to act as centres for human creativity to produce a more resilient global society in the current crisis century.

Providing a long-term view through which to consider the role of cities in attending to incipient crises of the twenty-first century, this closely argued thesis will prove essential for students and scholars of urban studies, geography and sociology, and all those with a professional interest in, or personal fascination for, cities.

Contents : Preface Part I: Setting Down and Setting Up 1. A Cities' Perspective 2. Conceptual Toolkits Part II: Narrative I: Beginning Conjectures 3. City and State Beginnings: Western Asia's Great Creative Interlude 4. Geographies of Beginning Creative Interludes Part III: Narrative II: World-systems 5. Normal History 6. Making the Modern World-system: Western Europe's Great Creative Interlude Part IV: Narrative III: Prospective Conjectures - Where Are We and Where Are We Going? 7. Working in an Urban World 8. Towards Green Networks of Cities for the Twenty-first Century References Index

Choice Review

In this intellectually far-reaching, all-encompassing, thoroughly researched, methodologically rigorous archaeological account, Taylor (human geography, Northumbria Univ., UK) sets out myriad arguments that support his notion that cities (all cities) are exceptional. He offers a city-centric analysis of macro-economic change and in so doing disabuses readers of the idea that the state, typically considered the driver of economic change, is in charge. Indeed, he points to the impotence of the state, were it not for the city. In so doing, he masterfully breaks the mold and departs from tradition. For much of the text, Taylor relies on the work of urban studies activist Jane Jacobs (e.g., The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961; The Economy of Cities, CH, Sep'69) to provide both support and grounding and a springboard for critique. Jacobs's work introduces readers to the idea that economies are not coterminous with states; rather, cities are the primary economic organs. But it is Taylor who, bit by bit, painstakingly, and methodically develops the conceptual road map for the journey, and ultimately gets readers to arrive at the only possible destination. In this way, Taylor engages in an archaeological dig of mammoth proportions never before witnessed in the study of cities. An incredible work. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Sanders Temple University