ABSTRACT
The process of urbanization has been a major factor in the development of homo sapiens. As in so many spheres of knowledge, Aristotle had the first word when he wrote: ‘Men come together in the city to live; they remain there in order to live the good life.’ Since then, as Lewis Mumford has documented in his magisterial survey, 1 the city has played a major role in history as the centre of some of man’s most civilizing achievements. At all times, however, a delicate balance has existed between the advantages of urban life, with its rich and stimulating environment, and the cost exacted in terms of poverty, unnatural living conditions, and adverse environmental pressures. Summing up a substantial body of opinion, one twentieth-century observer has concluded that to live according to nature,
we should pass a considerable time in cities for they are the glory of human nature, but they should never contain more than 200,000 inhabitants; it is our artificial enslavement to the large city, too enormous for human dignity, which is responsible for half our sickness and misery. 2
