Power and the City

The city is humanity’s most enduring symbol of power. States and empires rise and fall, armies conquer and collapse, ideologies come and go, but the world’s great cities endure. If there is a force that can vanquish a city, it is natural, not artificial. Ancient cities that anchored early states in Southwest, South, and East Asia fell victim to climate change as deserts encroached on their hinterlands. Modern cities on low ground at the water’s edge would not survive the sea-level rise that could accompany sustained global warming. But no political upheaval or economic breakdown would end the life of a major city—not even destruction by atomic bombs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt because the advantages and opportunities offered by their sites and situations were unaltered by the catastrophes that struck them. Silk route terminal Chang’an morphed into Xian and Tenochtitlan became Mexico City because their locational benefits, sites, and regional networks outlasted their violent transitions. Not for nothing is Rome known as the Eternal City. With the maturation of the modern state came the notion of the “capital” city, focus of its administrative system and emblematic of its power. Cities had always dominated their hinterlands, but now their power radiated far afield. From Athens to Amsterdam and from Madrid to Moscow, these national capitals became imperial headquarters that launched colonial campaigns near and far. London was synonymous with this early wave of globalization, but Paris also lay at the heart of a global network of power and influence. In these capitals, cityscapes substantiated national achievements through elaborate palaces, columned government buildings, decorative triumphal arches, spacious parade routes, and commemorative statuary. Museums bulging with treasure attested further to the primacy of the culture, leading one observer, long ago but memorably, to designate such centers as “primate” cities (Jefferson, 1939). The trappings of this primacy reappeared in the architecture of colonial headquarters from Dakar to Delhi and from Luanda to Lima, incongruous Greco- Roman-Victorian-Iberian imprints on administrative offices, railroad stations, post offices, even prisons half a world away from Europe. More than ever before, the city in the global periphery was the locus of authority and transculturation.