Susan in NC’s Reviews > Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention > Status Update

“ Faced with a future of superstorms, the vast impermeable concrete layering of modern cities and suburbs has made them unable to absorb excess water. Chicago, Berlin and Shanghai are learning (or relearning) how to mimic natural hydrology as an urgent flood-prevention tactic. Trees are vital because they are capable of absorbing large amounts of water.”

“ Animals behave very differently in cities. Those species that can adapt to a totally different environment thrive. These are known as synanthropic species—ones that benefit from association with human populations.”

“… despite the increase in mammalian hunters and avian raptors, the populations of small animals and birds they prey upon also increase. This is known as the urban “predation paradox.” Enjoying a superabundance of food left by humans, they turn their attention away from small mammals and birds’ nests towards picnic sites, bins and roadkill.”

“ Low-density urban sprawl, automobile-centric cities and the everyday lifestyles that go with it are the product of cheap oil, and utterly dependent upon it. It is therefore a finite metropolitan form. But in the meantime, car-dependence has made the modern city an engine of poisoning smog, environmental fragmentation and climate change.”

“ In Britain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere the picture was similar: the decaying inner city became the home of immigrant communities as their middle- and working-class communities trekked out to more salubrious suburbs, satellite towns and planned new towns.”

“ The American suburbs, with their distinctive look and feel, were not the manifestation of national taste or individual choices; they were largely the creation of the state. Founded in the wake of the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) provided billions of dollars insuring the mortgage market.”

“… real-estate agents and mortgage brokers directed them towards the ideal FHA home, which was typically in a new out-of-town development. The reason suburbia exploded in the 1950s was because the government wanted it to, and subsidised it with billions of dollars.”

“High-rise housing and multi-lane roads tore out the best defence against inner-city poverty—the street-based community…these concrete slabs in the Bronx became infested with crime gangs and drug-dealing. Already scarred by housing projects, poverty and unemployment, the Bronx was hit by a wave of arson in the 1970s as landlords burnt their low-value tenements in order to claim the insurance money.”

“ The Germans entered and occupied Warsaw on 1 October. On the 15th the city was handed over to the Nazi colonial administration, headed by Heinrich Himmler.[7] In a war against urban life, the Nazis tore the heart out of the city, systematically stripping it of its cultural, political and economic significance and suppressing ordinary citizens in a campaign of terror.”