Cities and Towns: Cool Places to Live

WHY DO PEOPLE LIVE IN CITIES?
Cities have been around for thousands of years. There are many reasons why people choose to live near other people. Groups of people share responsibilities such as finding food, protecting each other from danger, providing special services, and making friends. Most cities have city centers with town squares, places of worship, and government structures. These spaces bring people together to talk, worship, and sell their products.

Since people must have food, water, and shelter, cities are often built near water and food sources. The Sumerians lived between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in about 3,500 B.C. The Egyptians have continued to live along the Nile River for over 5,000 years. Other early civilizations were built on the banks of rivers including the Yellow, the Indus, and the Amazon.

All cities must have a reliable source of water! Some ancient Roman cities brought water from the mountains in huge aqueducts. Salt Lake City’s water comes from wells or reservoirs that collect runoff from winter snow. Where does your community get its water? Be “city detectives” to find where your water comes from. Do people receive water from underground wells or springs, or is it piped into the community from a river? Who can you contact to find the answer to this question?

ANCIENT CITY LIFE
How do we know about “city living” thousands of years ago? Archeologists study the remains of ancient cities from around the world. By careful examination of tombs, temples, and simple homes, archeologists learn how the people of long ago worked and lived together.

Why do people care about ancient civilizations? People learn a lot by studying the successes and failures of earlier cultures. It is interesting to see how different communities provide basic needs, build roads, organize city centers, defend their citizens, trade with their neighbors, and even have fun! Since basic human needs remain the same, it is interesting to compare today’s cities with those of ancient times.

A TIME CAPSULE: THE BURIED CITIES
In 1709, an Italian peasant discovered pieces of ancient marble sculpture while digging a well. Years later, Italy’s King Charles III decided to see what else might lie beneath the farmland. Workers dug down and uncovered an outdoor theater! Eventually, two ancient Roman cities, named Herculaneum and Pompeii, were discovered buried deep beneath the surface of the ground. Both cities had been destroyed when the nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted as a powerful volcano. Poison gas, rocks, lava, and ash shot in the air and then fell on the buildings and people. The cities were buried and forgotten for sixteen hundred years.

Today, nearly three-fourths of Pompeii has been uncovered. Lava preserved the city and its buildings. Pompeii and Herculaneum are like “time capsules” showing how ancient Romans had planned their cities with paved roads, sidewalks, and gutters. Citizens lived in well-designed homes, went to work in shops and businesses, attended the theater, and visited sports arenas. In fact, ancient Pompeii had many of the public services that are provided by today’s large cities.

CITY PLANNING…WHAT IS THAT?
Not all ancient communities were as successful as Pompeii. With the fall of the Roman Empire, city planning became disorganized or nonexistent. The one planned structure found in all medieval cities was the cathedral or church. This building was constructed in the center of the city and became the main gathering place. Since the church brought people together, merchants set up markets nearby where they could sell their goods. In the Middle Ages, towns were often surrounded by walls to protect them from Vikings and other raiding groups. Powerful kings or lords had harsh rules, and people were mostly on their own with few public services. Open sewers ran through the streets. The spread of disease was so bad that some European cities lost nearly one-third of their population. Medieval cities were dirty, unplanned, and generally disgusting places to live.

GETTING BETTER!
During the Renaissance, people looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and learned from their ideas. European cities slowly began to improve. By 1609, people in Amsterdam set aside special “zones” where people could build homes, and they assigned other “zones” for businesses. Laws were written to improve sanitary conditions and to make owners pay for the upkeep of the footpaths and canal banks next to their property. Educated Europeans looked for ways to create the perfect city or “Utopia.” City planners were often respected artists, inventors, and philosophers.

STARTING FROM “SCRATCH”
Sometimes it is easier to get things right if you start from the beginning and work your way up. In 1666, most of London caught fire and burned to the ground. King Charles II used this disaster as an opportunity to plan a new city. He asked a gifted planner named Christopher Wren to design a new London. Wren created an organized plan beginning with a city center that branched out. He designed buildings of stone rather than wood to avoid another city fire. Across Europe, other medieval communities were also being replaced by well-planned cities.

EARLY AMERICAN CITIES
When colonists arrived in America, they did not use European ideas of city planning when settling their communities. People lived near farms or in scattered towns. Roads often followed wandering streams or animal trails. Most city streets did not have names, and pigs and other animals roamed around freely. Boston and New York finally created fenced parks where animals were banned and where people could have clean places to walk and visit! Colonial cities seemed unorganized and confusing to European visitors.

MACHINES RULE!
American communities changed a lot in the 1800s. Clothing, shoes, household goods, and other products had always been made by hand. With the invention of specialized machines, products could be made quickly and inexpensively in large factories. Where the cathedral had been the focus for medieval towns, now factories became the center of large cities. Factories offered jobs, so thousands of people moved to the cities to find work. But the rise in population created even more problems. Most industrial cities were filled with poverty, crime, poor roads, unsafe buildings, and sickness.

In 1811, DeWitt Clinton, the governor of New York, realized that his city needed better planning and began considering new ideas. New York was the first United States city to use a “grid” design. It was also the first city to ignore the natural environment. Instead of roads being built around streams, lakes, and bays, they were filled in, and hills were flattened to follow Governor Clinton’s plan. By the late 1800s Americans were looking for ways to improve their cities, but there were no rules for modern city planning, and leaders were not sure where to start.

UTAH SETTLEMENTS
Can you imagine going to a school without a plan for student learning? Some students might be taught reading while others might only be taught math. Having a plan helps people make sure that goals are met and things run smoothly. Throughout history, most of the world’s cities were built next to waterways, ports, mineral deposits, or other resources and grew without a plan. By the time Mormon settlers entered the Salt Lake Valley, they had already designed several well-run cities. Brigham Young had specific plans, and the open spaces of Utah provided land for carefully planned cities and towns. Like European city planners, Brigham Young hoped to create a “Utopia” or perfect city. He designed Salt Lake City as a grid with Temple Square as the central block. His plan defined the size of lots and the placement of houses, gardens, and yards. Each Utah city could contain 15,000 to 20,000 people and 960 lots. When the population grew larger than 20,000, a new city would be created. All streets were to be 132 feet wide. (Later that width was reduced to 66 feet). According to Brigham Young: “Each man must keep his land whole,” so plots of land could not be subdivided. Land for farming was shared by everyone.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Mormon settlement extended 1,000 miles north and south and 800 miles east and west. It equaled onesixteenth of the United States and included 500 planned cities and towns.

THE REST OF THE STORY…
Mormon pioneers were not the only ones to settle in Utah. United States soldiers were stationed in Utah forts, merchants moved to Salt Lake City to sell products to settlers, miners rushed to the mountains hoping to strike it rich, and immigrants came to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Some groups built new towns while others settled into existing communities.

SO WHAT COMES NEXT?
The population of Utah continues to grow with new cities and towns taking the place of farms and open spaces. Some cities continue to be planned carefully while others are planned by individual developers who create their own community designs. As an adult, you may be asked to make planning decisions for your city. What would your “Utopia” look like? Who knows, you might have the chance to make your own dreams and plans come true.