http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2009/04/10#cities <P>Are there any instances of cities which are not parts of states (perhaps just limited to that city and its immediate environs)? &mdash; Come to think of it, are there states without cities? Not necessarily permanent capitals, mind you, but some cities? <ul>Recommended: <li>Guillermo Algaze, "The Sumerian Takeoff", <a href="http://repositories.cdlib.org/imbs/socdyn/sdeas/vol1/iss1/art2/"><cite>Structure and Dynamics</cite> <strong>1:1</strong> (2005): 2</a> [From the abstract: "Economic geographers correctly note that regional variations in economic activity and population agglomeration are always the result of self-reinforcing processes of resource production, accumulation, exchange, and innovation. This article proposes that essentially similar forces account for the emergence of the world's earliest cities in the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Souther Mesopotamia), sometime during the second half of the fourth millennium BC."] <li>Fujita, Krugman and Venables, <cite>The Spatial Economy</cite> <li>Vernon Henderson, Zmarak Shalizi and Anthony J. Venables,"Geography and Development," <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jeg/1.1.81"><cite>Journal of Economic Geography</cite> <strong>1</strong> (2001): 81--105</a> [Yes, that's my father.] <li>Stephen Johnson, <cite>The Ghost Map</cite> <li>Spiro Kostof, <cite>The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History</cite> <li>Scott Page, "On the Emergence of Cities", <citE>Journal of Urban Economics</cite> <strong>45</strong> (1998): 184--208 [Preprint: <a href="http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/wpabstract/199808075">SFI working paper 98-08-075</a>] <li>Marc Van De Mieroop, <cite>The Ancient Mesopotamian City</cite> [<a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1998/1998-10-09.html">Review in <cite>BMCR</cite></a>] </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Peter Allen, <cite>Cities and Regions as Self-Organizing Systems: Models of Complexity</cite> <li>Alex Anas, Richard Arnott and Kenneth A. Small, "Urban Spatial Structure," <cite>Journal of Economic Literature</cite> <strong>36</strong> (1998): 1426--1464 <li>Michael Batty, <cite>Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262025836">blurb</a>] <li>Grady Clay <cite>Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/12662.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>George L. Cowgill, "Origins and Development of Urbanism: Archaeological Perspective", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093248"><cite>Annual Review of Anthropology</cite> <strong>33</strong> (2004): forthcoming</a> <li>Paolo Crucitti, Vito Latora and Sergio Porta, "Centrality Measures in Urban Networks", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0504163">physics/0504163</a> <li>Claude S. Fischer, <cite>To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City</cite> <li>Anique Hommels, <cite>Unbuilding Cities: Obduracy in Urban Sociotechnical Change</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/978-0-262-58282-7">blurb</a>] <li>Jane Jacobs, <cite>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</cite> [I've read an awful lot <em>about</em> this book...] <li>Spiro Kostof, <cite>The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History</cite> <li>Jennifer S. Light, <citE>From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/1635.html">Blurb</a>] <li>G. Malescio, N. V. Dokholyan, S. V. Buldyrev and H. Eugene Stanley, "Hierarchical Organization of Cities and Nations," <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0005178">cond-mat/0005178</a> <li>Roderick J. McIntosh, <cite>The Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-Organizing Landscape</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521012430">Blurb</a>] <li>Sergio Porta, Paolo Crucitti, Vito Latora <ul> <li>"The Network Analysis of Urban Streets: A Dual Approach", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0411241">cond-mat/0411241</a> <li>"The Network Analysis of Urban Streets: A Primal Approach", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0506009">physics/0506009</a> </ul> <li>Todd Sinai and Joel Waldfogel, "Geography and the Internet: Is the Internet a Substitute or a Complement for Cities?" <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.CY/0109061">cs.CY/0109061</a> <li>Paul Wheatley, <cite>The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13941.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Rainer E. Zimmermann, Anna Socia and Giorgio Colacchio, "Reconstructing Bologna. The City as an Emergent Computational System --- A Study in the Complexity of Urban Structures. Part I: The Basic Idea and Fundamental Concepts," <a href="http://arXiv.org/abs/nlin/0109025">nlin.AO/0109025</a> </ul>