The Ancient and the Modern City

In the course of our first week’s readings I came across a reference to the ancient Greek polis, the city state. Self-ruling cities that dotted the Mediterranean for centuries, the polis has occupied a place in the urban imagination far outstripping their size and actual importance. Though by no means insignificant, most were small and even tiny, counting citizen populations of hundreds and a few modest public buildings. Even the greatest among them, such as the famed city of Athens, would fit into a single Toronto neighborhood today. Time has made a mockery of ancient glory.

It suggests how premodern our conceptions of the city still are, how eager we are to draw examples from a much less populous, and in some ways more explicable world. When we speak of self-government or local democracy, we imagine a model or ideal built for towns of thousands that we suggest should still apply to cities of millions, and draw a line of continuity between them. But our own cities would be unimaginable to the classical Athenian, dwarfing even ancient Rome or Alexandria, drawing in the goods and commerce of the world and shuttling millions through a web of economic corridors none of us can fully comprehend.

It raises a question of how ‘local’ our cities truly are. These vast, sprawling conglomerates may inspire our affinity, but how much of that is motivated just by the little sliver of it that we ever get to see? What does it mean to be a Torontonian when we will never know almost all our fellow citizens? It seems, at least to me, that our discussion of urbanism must grapple with the enormity of the modern city. Has it grown too big to be comprehended as a single space, a single civic community? And if so, what does that mean for the ‘self’ of the self-governing city?

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