| This study employs urban population estimates to analyze changes in the world-city system over 5,000 years, periodizing its history into six successive but overlapping "architectonic orders": The Fertile Crescent (3000 BC-1000 BC): Regional Connections (1500 BC-1 AD); Silk Roads (100 BC-1350 AD); Spice Routes (1 AD-1800 AD); Atlantic Crossings (1500-2000) and the Pacific-Global Network (1950-on). Chapters 1 though 5 describe the rise and fall of each architectonic order, noting the degree to which they witness a geographic and demographic expansion of the world-city system. These chapters provide the foundation for Chapter 6, which concludes the following: (1) each architectonic order, as defined by anchor and link cities, represents a distinct period in the life of the world-city system; (2) each order represents a complexification of the system, moving it to greater structure and higher connectivity; (3) the world-city system has alternated from a continental to a maritime orientation until the 14th century when Spice Routes won out over Silk Roads; (4) the world-city system co-evolves with economic, political, social and cultural processes, each of which is composed of selection mechanisms; (5) as a complex adaptive system the world-city system is capable of circumventing blockages in its circulation of trade; (6) an evolutionary paradigm accounting for adaptation and selection best accounts for the synergistic relationship among population, technology and the environment, competition among trade routes and systemic behavior such as the maritime shift; and (7) in the contemporary world-city system Atlantic dominance has yielded to Pacific prominence within a globalized architectonic order--one which remains ecologically unstable and hence geographically and demographically expansive. Finally, this study suggests that cities rather than nation-states may be the most salient units of analysis, particularly for long-term developments, and it further suggests the historical centrality of connections rather than places, a conception compatible with network and evolutionary theory. |
