Urban Geography (continued)

As soon as people started growing things (grain and vegetables) that is the background of agricultural villages 

• food will already be there and it's less to hunt for
• build your home, live a better life (don't have to move a lot)
• not everyone has to worry about hunting
  *have a surplus*

Two components enable the formation of cities:

1. agricultural surplus
2. social stratification (leadership class)

Five hearths of urbanization 

• Mesopotamia 3500 BCE (Iraq)
• Nile River Valley 3200 BCE (Egypt)
• Indus River Valley 2200 BCE (India)
• Huang He and Wei River Valleys 1500 BCE (China)
• Mesoamerica 200 BCE (Guatemala or Mexico)

Mesoamerica

         - many ancient cities were theocratic centers 

Diffusion of Urbanization 

         - the Greek cities 

              by 500 BCE, Greeks were highly organized 

• network and more than 500 cities and towns 
• on the mainland and islands
• each city had an acropolis and an agora

         - the Roman cities

              a system of cities and small towns linked together with                     hundreds of miles of roads and sea routs 

• sites of roman cities were typically for trade
• a roman city's forum combined the acropolis and agora into one space
• roman cities had extreme wealth and extreme poverty (between 1/3 and 2/3 of empires population was enslaved)