Why aren't there a lot of big cities in Africa? All current evolution evidence points to our development on this continent, so surely it should have the highest concentration of big cities, right? As we know this is not the case. As it happens, most of the world's largest and greatest Empire's were located in Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia's shape is particularly well suited for large Empires being wider than it is tall.
When we look at some of the greatest empires in the past, for example, The Qing Empire, Mongol Empire and Roman Empire we see a roughly horizontal expansion across Eurasia and the top of Africa in the case of Rome. All well and good, but what made Europe and Asia so conducive for city building? Theories and models may suggest that the shape of land greatly affects the success of cultures and civilizations.
The width of this slab of Earth provides a lot of land that's roughly on the same latitude. This provides, more or less, the same or similar climates. If you lived on a continent, say like Africa, it is taller rather than wide. This means the climate will change more dramatically as you travel North or South compared to a longer rather than taller continent. Major early developments in human life were linked to animal husbandry and farming.
These innovations allowed us to move from a nomadic hunter-gatherer society to a settled farming lifestyle. Plants and animals that have thrived on one part of the continent are likely to do well throughout the same land mass on a similar latitude.
Even other continents with a similar climate are likely to accommodate these species. The Americas are a good example of this. Modern empires such as the British Empire were able to use European agricultural crops in their colonies. The US and Europe are, more or less, climatically identical. If you needed to expand your civilization across a great many of latitudes, you'd likely end up needing to domestic various different species rather than use the same or similar ones you already successfully have.
Once settled humans could focus on less immediate issues, like eating, to work on technological advancement for labour saving and many other aspects of modern societies. An excess of food leads to a positive feedback on population growth. This meant that towns and colonies could support ever more people. The most successful or best-placed ones could eventually become the biggest cities in the world. Water has always been one of the most important and attainable methods as per transporting heavy goods and resources over long distances.
Taking the advantage of being close to a body of water, may have just been the reason that enabled many of these cities to grow into the megacities they are today — in some cases, even socially more powerful than entire countries. Sao Paulo, Rio , and Johannesburg are some of the 32 out of largest cities in the world located in the Southern Hemisphere. An interesting thesis revolves around the fact that continents in the Northern Hemisphere have a vast east-west span, rather than a long north-south span.
That is seemingly the reason why ancient emperors such as Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan were able to advance so much, conquering new territories without changing the assets and animals that used their troops.
That might answer why the distribution of major settlements on the globe to date has remained disproportional. When Fernando Magellan embarked with his fleet around the world in , the first purpose of his odyssey was not to circumnavigate the planet, but to find the Spice Islands in South East Asia, by reaching them through a new western route. Resources have also taken central place as per city location, or at least they have been the reason for their presumably rapid growth.
In the case of boomtowns, an abrupt population and economic growths are frequently preconditioned thanks to lucrative resources such as gold, silver, gas or oil.
A recent example is Dubai, which has immensely benefited from being an administrative heart of oil resources in the Middle East, albeit not physically located near the oil. Dubai Tram is the first completely APS based tram network in the world, photo credit. In the past, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester all make pretty good examples for boomtowns on the territory of United Kingdom, all undergoing a dramatic surge in the population at the turn of the 19th-century due to the Industrial Revolution.
In pre-industrial Britain, these towns were just relative backwaters, in contrast to then more prominent market cities such as Bristol, York, and Norwich.
These boomtowns do not directly owe their sudden growth to the discovery of local natural resources, but more to the factories that were launched there.
A great advantage, of course, was the availability of large seams of cheap coal to fuel those factories. Liverpool was the port of registry of the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic, photo credit. According to the Wendover Productions, there is a Ten Mile Rule , a building block for the spread of cities across a country or a region.
What most small towns all had in common, were everyday services such as food stores, pharmacies, banks or restaurants services that everyone would use , but not every town needed or had specialized services as provided by car mechanics or more developed hospitals. In modern days, this role of specialized services may be fulfilled by airports and universities, which makes a city spread its influence for hundreds of miles. Last but not least, mountains may be a very strong reason why some cities sprout where they sprout.
Although a double-edge, historically, mountains have been essential for the survival of some cities and even civilizations. While mountainous terrains generally slow down trade and transport activities, they still come with a natural advantage, which is reduced risk of siege in the case of invasion.
La Paz, the Bolivian seat of government thrives at an altitude of 3, m, being among the top highest large cities of the world, photo credit. Many fields of historical, geographical, and spatial research are devoted to exploring the evolution of cities, revealing a set of similarities across the globe.
In a recent video , Wendover Productions described a common set of characteristics linking some of our largest cities, six of which we have outlined below. Watch the video after the break:. If you measure the distance between two adjacent pre-industrial American towns, you will likely find it to be miles.
Before the advent of cars, people in rural settings could only walk a maximum of five miles to the nearest town in a single day for work and supplies. As a result, towns developed a five-mile sphere of influence, creating a common mile distance between each medium-sized settlement. The Ten Mile Rule is a building block for the spread of cities across a country.
While most small towns had common, everyday services such as banks, food stores, and pharmacies, not every town needed specialized facilities such as hospitals. Therefore, certain towns increased in size to accommodate more people and services within their spheres of influence. As this process continues, we eventually see the creation of large cities equipped with airports , universities , and other highly-specialized facilities, with spheres of influence stretching hundreds of miles.
Oceans have always been the most feasible, cost-effective, enduring method of transporting heavy goods over long distances.
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