During the two hundred millennia of our existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. Led through the centuries by Ben Wilson's remarkable METROPOLIS, we shall journey through twenty-six world cities and across seven thousand years to learn how the city has spurred humankind's greatest innovations. As we follow his itinerary, we develop a new slant on human history from religion to war, food to art, from disease to comfort.
1. Dawn of the City, Uruk, 300-1900 b.c. the first development of urban centers. 2. Harappa and Babylon: 2000 - 539 a.d.: the emergence of the great cities as "gardens of Eden" and sin. 3. Athens and Alexandria: each an early cosmopolis, becoming major cultural centers. 4. Rome: 30 b.c. to a.d. 537: the dominant imperial city, developing culture, polity, and the openness to citizenship. 5. Baghdad,537- 1258: a "gastropolis" introducing cuisine in addition to culture as a dominant influence. 6. Lubeck, 1226 - 1491; a city of war, typical of the struggles of the Middle ages. 7. Lisbon, Malacca, Tenochtitlan, and Amsterdam, 1492 -1666: pivotal "world" cities in their time and place. 8. London, 1666 - 1820, the dominating center of world politics and commerce over a world empire. 9. Manchester and Chicago 1830 -1914, "the gates of hell" introducing the industrial revolution with all its offenses and successes. 10. Paris, 1830-1914, the world's most admired and imitated city, culturally, architecturally and politically. 11. New York, 1899 - 1939, the ":skyscraper city" evincing power through wealth and accretion. 12.Warsaw 1939-1945, observing the devastation of a world city. 13. Los Angeles, 1945 - 1999: A new kind of city, based on urban sprawl, the rise of "suburbia". 14. Lagos, 199-2020, the "megacity", a model for our future?