The City and Its Residents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry O. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Population Density ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Demography ◽  
The City

The chapter discusses the administration, economics, population, poverty, life expectancy, and practices of Roman imperial urban life and New Testament intersections with them, focusing chiefly on the eastern Mediterranean. It describes the Roman Empire as a network of cities hierarchically arranged according to differing kinds of privileges. It treats the architecture usually found in cities and the usual offices of city administration. It presents typical urban demography and population density. It considers taxation, urban poverty, and wealth distribution, presenting Christians as impoverished as a corrective to scholarship that has exaggerated their wealth. It discusses the artisan economy of cities and the lives of tradespeople as a backdrop for the settings of Christianity. The administration and organization of differing types of associations are considered as an analogy for conceiving Christian assemblies. It describes the integration of Jews in urban life, together with ad hoc rather than empire-wide policies of toleration. It discusses “god-fearers” as a term to describe non-Jews affiliated with synagogues, as well as a word used to describe the piety of devotees of other religions.

scholarly journals Sustainable development, international cooperation and local authorities

2002 ◽  
Vol 69 (415-417) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
Ruşen Keleş
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The City

The author is a Professor of Local Government and Urban Studies at the Faculty of Political Science , Ankara University and Eastern Mediterranean University. He served as Director of the Ernst Reuter Center for Urban Studies as well as Director of the Center for Environmental Studies, Ankara University for many years. His numerous publications include The Politics of Rapid Urbanization: Government and Growth in Modern Turkey (New York , Holmes and Meier, 1985), Housing and the Urban Poor in the Middle East: Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco (Tokyo, IDE, 1986), Urban Management in Turkey (Ankara, Turkish Social Science Association, 1988), Urban Poverty in the Third World: Theoretical Approaches and Policy Options Tokyo (IDE, 1988). Dr Keleş has been a correspondent of Ekistics since 1965. He is a member of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE) and has also served as a member of its Executive Council. The text that follows is a slightly edited and revised version of a paper presented at the WSE Symposion "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century," Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001.

Cities in the Roman World

Classics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Sears
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Public Writing ◽  
Mediterranean History ◽  
Rural Sites ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

The Roman Empire was an empire of cities. The city was the primary organizational building block of the empire; almost the whole empire was divided into city territories. Despite this, there are problems when defining a Roman city. In this article the “Roman city” is understood as an urban space within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Even on these terms, given that this definition encompasses over a thousand years of history and a space that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, the “Roman” city is a much-varied entity. Furthermore, many of these cities predated the Roman conquest, complicating analysis of what is “Roman” about them; it is perhaps better to think of them as cities that existed under Roman rule. It is also important to note that the Roman legal definition of the city did not just comprise the urban area but also the rural hinterland with its villages and small towns that were dependent on it. In any definition of the Roman city, there is also a question of whether we should include the vici (small towns) of these territories. Although not institutionally independent, some demonstrate aspects of urban life, for instance the erection of public buildings, while others contain more-industrial installations than many cities. If these settlements developed enough, they might petition for their freedom and become a city in their own right; Orcistus in Asia Minor famously managed to free itself from Nacolia by appealing to Constantine I (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum III 352 = 7000). The city itself, as a special category of study, has come under attack on numerous fronts. Horden and Purcell 2000 (The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, cited in the City and Economic Models), for instance, argues that the city was not ontologically different from other settlement types (although others have pointed to the importance of the density of specialists making such places qualitatively different), while the concentration on the “Roman” city at the expense of rural sites has sometimes been viewed as an expression of cultural colonialism. Because of the nature of the evolution of urban space, the examination of the Roman city has been inherently bound up in the study of Romanization and has benefited and suffered as a result. Examinations of the Roman city encompass a variety of approaches, from assessments of institutions and legal charters to demography, urban religion and Christianization, monumentalization, public writing, and the city as lived experience.

When the City Begins to Talk

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-56
Author(s):  
Kristian Kloeckl
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Condition ◽  
Current Design ◽  
Virtual City ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This chapter introduces the digitally augmented city as a major focus of current design research and practice. It critically examines the impact that the entanglement of networked information technologies with the urban realm has produced and discusses this in reference to extant literature. The entanglement of networked information technologies and urban environments has changed cities and urban life, and it has changed how we think about cities. Over the past two decades, a profusion of terms have been coined by scholars and practitioners to describe aspects of this changing urban condition. Networked city, real-time city, virtual city, smart city, hybrid city, responsive city, and ad hoc city are terms that are at times used lightly but that have underlying concepts that can help us capture more of the current urban condition and point to ways of working with it.

Amida and Tropaeum Traiani: a Comparison of Late Antique Fortress Cities on the Lower Danube and Mesopotamia

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. CROW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Internal Structures ◽  
New Foundations ◽  
Urban Organization ◽  
The City ◽  
Positive Factor

Fortifications are now recognized as a defining feature of the late antique city and in a time of insecurity they were a positive factor for the maintenance of urban life as well as making an important contribution towards imperial defence. But in place of the fora, aqueducts and curiales of the high Roman Empire, the new foundations of the fourth century display new urban typologies derived, in part at least, from patterns of military organization rather than urban organization. This chapter compares the two frontier cities of Amida in Roman Mesopotamia and Tropaeum Traiani in Scythia as examples of new urban foundations in the early fourth century. Detailed structural evidence from the walls of Amida indicates two main phases of construction, one under Valens and a second under Anastasius following the major siege of 502. On the lower Danube the city of Tropaeum Traiani reveals similar features of major defences and urban layout with a range of internal structures including granaries and churches distinct from the typical attributes of the classic Graeco-Roman city.

Oscar Lewis, Urban Poverty, and The Children of Sánchez

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua K. Salyers
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Institutional Revolutionary Party ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
The City

Revolutionary leaders favored depictions of Mexico City in the mid-20th century that highlighted the progress and orderly growth of a modern industrial city. The ruling party made Mexico City the focus of post–World War II development policies and the showcase for the success of those policies in achieving the new goals of the Mexican Revolution during a period of sustained economic growth known as the “Mexican miracle.” When, in the early 1960s, the American anthropologist Oscar Lewis published The Children of Sánchez, his popular study of urban poverty, and turned the public’s attention away from the sites that underscored the official narrative of orderly industrial growth, it incited a heated public debate in Mexico City. The book contained the oral histories of a family living in the low-income neighborhood of Tepito, in the center of the capital, and was a shocking account, told in their own words, of a family’s attempt to survive urban life. Supporters of the modernizing policies of federal officials and the capital’s mayor, Ernesto Uruchurtu, attacked the book in the press and even filed formal complaints with Mexico’s attorney general demanding that the book and its author be banned from the country and the publisher reprimanded. They claimed that the book was too vulgar for public consumption and called it a foreigner’s attack on the reputation of the country and the city. Critics of the Institutional Revolutionary Party used the publicity generated by the attacks to open up a dialog about the marginalized people left behind by urban development and engaged in the debates as a safe way to express its own concerns about Uruchurtu’s inhumane development policies and the government’s insistence on hiding reality to present the city to the international community as a modern showcase.

Perancangan Boneka Edukasi Terinspirasi oleh Pencipta Boneka Si Unyil

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azhari Amri
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Rural Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The City ◽  
Simple Materials

Film Unyil puppet comes not just part of the entertainment world that can be enjoyed by people from the side of the story, music, and dialogue. However, there is more value in it which is a manifestation of the creator that can be absorbed into the charge for the benefit of educating the children of Indonesia to the public at large. The Unyil puppet created by the father of Drs. Suyadi is one of the works that are now widely known by the whole people of Indonesia. The process of creating a puppet Unyil done with simple materials and formation of character especially adapted to the realities of the existing rural region. Through this process, this research leads to the design process is fundamentally educational puppet inspired by the creation of Si Unyil puppet. The difference is the inspiring character created in this study is on the characters that exist in urban life, especially the city of Jakarta. Thus the results of this study are the pattern of how to shape the design of products through the creation of the puppet with the approach of urban culture.

A Process of Glocalisation? Roman Marble Imports and the Rise of Blocked-Out Capitals in Local Stone

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Matthias Grawehr
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
High Quality ◽  
White Marble ◽  
Aesthetic Preference ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Short Period ◽  
New Type ◽  
Local Materials

In the Augustan Age, a new aesthetic preference was propagated in the Roman Empire – the surface of white marble was valued as it symbolised the strength and superiority of the ‘new age’. Soon, an immense trade in high quality marble over land and sea developed to meet the emergent demand. While the development and scale of this trade is well studied, the repercussions that the new aesthetic preference had on the local architectural traditions in areas where no marble was close at hand is not commonly considered. In this contribution, two developments are traced, taking the Corinthian capital as the leitmotif. First, in the short period between c. 40 and 10 BC, patrons would choose imitation of marble in plaster to meet up with the demands of the new standard and to demonstrate their adherence to the Empire. In the second line of development, a different path was taken – a conscious use of local materials which went hand in hand with the development of a new type of capital, the so-called ‘Nabataean blocked-out’ capital. This combination turned into a new vernacular tradition across large parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Both developments were local responses to a new ‘global’ trend and can therefore be viewed as a phenomenon of glocalisation in the Roman Period.

Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
External Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Different Sources

This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.

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