Metropolis summary

Seven thousand years ago, urban civilization was born in an unlikely place: the swampy marshlands of southern Mesopotamia. This watery cradle of civilization spawned humanity’s first great metropolis, Uruk, which pioneered monumental advances in architecture, arts, mathematics, administration, and technology – advances that still reverberate to this day.

Yet the path to progress came with a steep price. Concentrating tens of thousands of people together fostered inequality, violence, slavery, and environmental strain. The costs of civilization were already apparent when Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, ventured beyond his magnificent city walls into the wilderness in search of meaning.

The nineteenth century brought a new type of urban landscape: Dickensian “shock cities” like Manchester and Chicago. These pioneering industrial cities astonished visitors with their technological wonders – and horrified them with human misery. They grew with frightening speed, birthing new technologies and new ways of living. While impoverished rural people flocked to the smog-wreathed metropolises in search of factory jobs, living conditions proved a rude awakening. This rapacious expansion came at immense human cost, as the swelling ranks of city residents endured squalid, hazardous conditions – fertile breeding grounds for disease. 

In the year 1854 alone, Chicago lost 6 percent of its population to cholera. And in industrial-revolution Manchester, life expectancy plummeted to as low as just 26 years.

What will the city of the future look like? A glittering, high-tech metropolis powered by big data and artificial intelligence? An overcrowded, chaotic megacity ringed by slums and shantytowns? Perhaps neither?

Lagos, Nigeria is a twenty-first century metropolis of great complexity. Its population of over 20 million grows at a dizzying pace as migrants flood in seeking opportunity. Lagos has no shortage of problems: paralyzing congestion, unreliable electricity, and rampant crime. Yet the city also bursts with optimism and success. Young people flock there to tap into its vibrant nightlife, fashion scene, and tech startups. In scale and complexity, Lagos represents a certain kind of pinnacle of the 7,000-year urban experiment started with the world’s first city, Uruk.