Cities In Civilization
I have posessed a copy of Sir Peter Hall’s “Cities In Civilization” for quite some time now - the hardback was published in 1998, and I must have bought it within a year. It is quite the resource on comparative urban studies - he saw that there was a piece missing in the analysis of what made certain cities at certain times great. I’ve been nibbling at this thousand-pager a bit here and there, and it seems like a nice compliment to “The Riddle of the Modern World” - so many of those same issues are addressed by Hall. Any good remarks on economics are a special treat for me, and so the following bit about ancient Greece struck me:
“[The citizens of Athens] saw wealth as good and desirable, even necessary for the life of the good citizen. But its function was not to provide a base for more acquisition; it was the very reverse, to liberate the citizen from economic activity and concern.
Posted by Evan Bittner Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:43:00 GMT
