Emergence and the Forms of Cities

Michael Weinstock 's significant new book The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation calls into question the received notion of culture. Rather than perceiving civilisation as intrinsically human or humanist, standing outside and beyond nature, Weinstock positions human development alongside ecological development: the history of cultural evolution and the production of cities are set in the context of processes and forms of the natural world. In this extract from Chapter 7, Weinstock charts how the proliferation of cities and systems of cities and their extended metabolic systems across the world were characterised by episodic and irregular expansions, consolidation, collapse and subsequent reorganisation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.