ABSTRACT
Modern theories connecting cities with civilization, progress and freedom have their origins, as we have seen, in a diffuse set of influences deriving from the ancient Mediterranean world and from Western Christianity. The more specific relationship between cities and socio-economic change was not articulated in any elaborate way until the eighteenth century. Two interlocking processes were important at this time. The first was the growing sense of economic activity as both a self-subsistent and a dynamic feature of social life, distinct from systems of government. The second involved an increasing realization that the land no longer represented the overwhelmingly predominant material foundation of human existence. The combined effect of such developments was to connect a belief in the importance of economic determination in history with the agency of non-landed social institutions, whether city or state, as progressive influences for social change.
