The City A World History Sparknotes

Andrew Lees’s book, The City: A World History, provides the history and growth of human civilization and urban settlements. A key feature of his novel is that it is not limited to the western world as it covers various regions around the world. This review will show that Lees’s overall goal is to help the reader understand the history of different civilization and how cities have changed from the beginning of time. His book is organized chronologically to aid in simplicity and understanding the concepts of the aim. Lees goes into extensive detail about on the success of early civilizations, the obstacles that have caused urban decline, and the resulting urban growth in modern society. Lees exhibits the importance of understanding the history
Historians define a region to be a city only if the area had large population density, a large population, and a high degree of durability (Lees 2015). A positive aspect is that Lees delivers his message clearly about the influence of early civilizations and explorers have on today’s era. For instance, he brings forwards the city of Uruk, which inhabited the greatest amount of people at the time with 20 000 inhabitants in 3200 BCE (Lees 2015). Uruk was extremely successful due to its citizens’ strategy of settling close to water. Cities near bodies of water had easier accessibility to water and growing crops. Foreign goods were easier to obtain via trade as ships had a path to set sail (Lees 2015). Lees demonstrates to the reader that many cities wouldn’t have existed if it were not for the influence of Uruk and explorers. The city of Uruk has led to expansion and exploration to various parts of the world. Explorers began exploring the new world in the late 15th century and ultimately leading to the discovery of Australia and both Americas (Lees 2015). If not for these explorers, great cities such as New York and Montréal would not exist in today’s world
Pandemics have caused a great ordeal of human deaths. During the age of industrialization, Western Europe, the United States, and Japan were the regions that experienced significant population growth (Lees 2015). Overcrowding became more prominent causing levels of health to deteriorate and for diseases to be more common. The most notorious case of disease happened during the 14th century when the bubonic plague hit Europe; many cities lost up to 62.5% of their population (Lees 2015). Lees later reveals these cities implemented change to prevent another pandemic to outbreak. Lees’s arguments are applicable to his research, demonstrating evidence to back-up his research; the reader can identify the importance of conflicts based on Lees’s data. Likewise, the author relates his data to the impact in which these cities faced to have sustainability within our society (Lees