Toynbee 's View Of The City

Arnold Joseph Toynbee is a famous English historian as well as a philosophy historian. He never stopped writing and created a lot of works in his academy career.He gained a worldwide reputation, because of his remarkable contribution, especially his great work A Study of History. Toynbee is a wise man with strong humanist, he has deeply thought of human life, the social being that Toynbee thought including History, Philosophy, International Affairs, Religion, City and so on. Toynbee thought of the “Civilization” is the smallest unit of history study, but it is not the only one,as an culture morphology, “City” always came into the research field of Toynbee,which was the most important culture morphology in his mind in his later years. We will talk about Toynbee’s idea of city in this article, and we will dissect it from two dimensions, one is “on the move”, one is “morphogenesis”. Studying Toynbee’s city idea will provoke us better to understanding the relationship between city and human,city and nature, city and rural, city and civilization; Moreover, it can help us resolve a series of problems that we had been met in the process of urbanization.Above all, we will discuss the idea of “Cites on the Move”. It mainly consisted with five components including “city is change”, “physic changes in city”, “the dynamic of city”, “the environment change in modern city” and “the stream of people in both direction in the modern city ”. The mainly idea of “city is change” is to tell us the evolvement of city, namely: the earliest human settlement�'city state�'capital city�'mechanized city�'world city. Of course, this evolution trends is not the universal one, it is only a historical phenomenon, moreover the coming world city isn’t an established fact, it is an forecast based on today cities’ developing currency.The “physic changes in city” mainly consist of two parts, including the unbalance relation between input an output in city and the reverse relation of city and rural. The wall of city is an important sign to distinguish the traditional city and mechanized city,the explosion of city result in the vanish of city wall. This explosion not only change the physic of city, but also change the inspire of the inhabitants. “The dynamic of city” mainly emphasis the mobility of city, it is include the internal mobility and the mobility between other cities. “The environment change in modern city” expound the environment pollution which Toynbee experience and the inspire change caused by the environment transition of city. “The stream of people in both direction in the modern city” mainly tell us the migration from rural to the city and from the urbancenter to the suburban.The study of city of Toynbee is also adopt the culture morphogenesis measures,from the aspects of politics, religion and the energy power, Toynbee classify the cityies into four types, that is city-state, capital city, holy city and mechanized city,Toynbee subsequently raise an conception called the coming world city which is based on observation of the city developing currency. Toynbee think of the city-state is an type that is a city as well as a nation, the formation of city-state is influenced by geography, but it isn’t exact, the city-state is more violent than other city types.Capital city is a seat of empire government, it isn’t a sovereign community, it is a bare minimum of municipal self-government, and the seat of it not stable. The major factors that effect on the choice of capital city are convince, prestige and strategy.Holy city is classified by the religion and inspire, and it is the only eternal city in all of the types that Toynbee classified. Mechanized city break away from the traditional city due to the large-scale use of the mechanized power, and the difference between traditional city and it is the degree not the kind. The coming world city is Toynbee’s future city concept, Toynbee predicted the all components of the coming world city according the expansion tendency of today cities. Furthermore Toynbee raise an idea that is the united world city government.