Given that I just HATE the big city- whether Sydney or London- what PODs pre-1900 could've prevented the rise of major metropolises thruout the world ? Would no Industrial Revolution have been a key factor ? What else ? How would the world look without such ratraces then ?
No big cities develop
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
- Start date
~see middle ages~
What constitutes a big city? By 1400's Europe standards a big city had 100,000 people in it. Be more specific
Hendryk
Banned
Short of catastrophic disruption of long-term historical trends, I don't see how you could butterfly away large cities. Chang'an had one million inhabitants circa 800 CE, with Baghdad a close second and Constantinople not far behind. One could argue that urban growth is both a cause and a consequence of the rise of complex civilizations.
It has been estimated that Constantinople was much smaller than once thought.
It certainly dropped very low in the 8th C - maybe 50,000. I would have to check but even a century or two later I we are not talking over half a million.
This makes me wonder about Chang'an and Baghdad, the sanitation, food and water issues for a settlement that size are massive.
Having no society anywhere develop sanitation/plumbing/running water would do it, though ASB.
Couple of centuries earlier I would think. During the height of the Justinianic Plague they were said to be burying 0,000 a day, according to Procopius, although obviously that could be exaggeration.
If it weren't for cities, many important inventions would not be around today; cities are where the scientific minds meet, where trade occurs, and ideas are shared. Many important inventions were for cities. If not for cities, then we could potentially be seeing many mroe languages than usual (no cities=no mixing up) and a smallerhuman population, as well as a low tech level. It would take an extremely long time (centuries, perhaps) for ideas to spread across an entire continent. ANd central government would probably be nonexistent. And who is to say that there would be any government at all?
Rivers are good but ports are better because sea going ships were the most efficient form of pre-industrial transport for moving bulk cargoes.
On size, no pre-industrial city appears to have had a population greater than one million where it was Athens, Rome, Babylon or Tenochtitlan. Given that the latter was supported by hoe agriculture and shipping was by oared barges (and was culturally very different to the other three), it is going to be very difficult to prevent the expansion of cities to the 1 million limit on purely technological grounds.
Agriculture.
Once you get villages, you get towns. Once you get towns, you get cities. Once you get cities, you're going to get technological development, whcih leads to bigger cities. It's that constant process of accretion. Admittedly, I've simplified it way too much, but the basic principle is there.
So, I don't know, wipe out some domesticable crops or something? Perhaps something like Australia, where the climate is so random and so inimical to life that agriculture never got a chance to develop (and not having the crops needed helped too). So perhaps the forebears of maize and wheat never develop.
You could still have villages, even small towns, based on fishing and other crops, but without the staple foodstuffs there wouldn't be any way to feed a large city.
Once you get villages, you get towns. Once you get towns, you get cities. Once you get cities, you're going to get technological development, whcih leads to bigger cities. It's that constant process of accretion. Admittedly, I've simplified it way too much, but the basic principle is there.
So, I don't know, wipe out some domesticable crops or something? Perhaps something like Australia, where the climate is so random and so inimical to life that agriculture never got a chance to develop (and not having the crops needed helped too). So perhaps the forebears of maize and wheat never develop.
You could still have villages, even small towns, based on fishing and other crops, but without the staple foodstuffs there wouldn't be any way to feed a large city.
Jomazi
Banned
Humans cannot eat vegetables or grain. The result is a much lower (by a factor of at least 10) population density, and food would be much harder to store.
How could this happen? Likely one'd need to change human physiology in some way, like making any ammount of cellulose intolerable to the bowel system. If animal milk is also inedible even pastoralism loses many of it's benefits. Perhaps total lactose intolerance?
Then keeping beef cattle would be the optimal way to create population density, which would likely be 20-30X smaller than IOTL. As grain cannot be stored, city populations need to have access cattle which puts a limit to city growth. Smoking or salting meat could make it store longer though, question if it's enough to feed a 500 000+ pop city.
How could this happen? Likely one'd need to change human physiology in some way, like making any ammount of cellulose intolerable to the bowel system. If animal milk is also inedible even pastoralism loses many of it's benefits. Perhaps total lactose intolerance?
Then keeping beef cattle would be the optimal way to create population density, which would likely be 20-30X smaller than IOTL. As grain cannot be stored, city populations need to have access cattle which puts a limit to city growth. Smoking or salting meat could make it store longer though, question if it's enough to feed a 500 000+ pop city.
That would make us carnivores a la Niven's Kzin, Traveller RPG Vargr and Anderson's Ythri. In the case of the latter anyway they had agriculture in order to grow forage for animals.
In addition other groups go to find prime waters with fish and ceteceans in them and hunt them instead. They settle down and built fishing villages and eventually move onto fish farming. Their success is noted by some pastoralists who imitation start ranching. Humans had now hit the village stage and can snowball from there.
There is still the issue of density noted above and that almost probably lead to far fewer large cities. However a alternate Rome with the entire Med to tap for food ought to be able to feed itself.
Easy! No internal combustion engine.
Without it, it will mean that older froms of things that agriculture and communting will remain dominant.
Doesn't stop cities, I'm afraid, but will limit their size and encourage more people to stay on the farm.
Size as in area, yes. without cars you don't get LA. However cities like London and New York have a supporting travel network of underground and overground trains plus trams. They can (and did) expand along the network creating more and more suburbs as they did so.