Ever since there have been cities, people have been singing their praises. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese writers repeatedly ranked city life above life in the countryside. Cities were often portrayed as sites of learning, while country life was seen as uncivilized. However, many writers also noted the problems of city life. They saw cities as lawless and immoral.

For almost 6,000 years, people have divided their world between the urban life of the city and the rural life of the country. Life in the city is seen as civilized, but also immoral. Life in the country is seen as uncivilized, but also pure and unspoiled. Even today, in 21st-century America, newspapers are filled with articles about the “rural-urban divide.”

In 3000 BCE, the largest city in the world was the Mesopotamian city of Uruk. It had a population of about 50,000 people. Today, there are almost 50 cities in the world with more than 10 million people. Tokyo alone has more people than the entire world population in 3000 BCE. Over time, cities have spread everywhere and have grown enormously. Love them or hate them, they have profoundly changed human society and the ways we live together.

The First Cities

The world’s first cities developed independently in different parts of the world. They first sprang up in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 6,000 years ago. The next string of cities arose in China, India, and Southeast Asia 5,000 years ago. Another wave of urbanization began 4,000 to 2,500 years ago in Mesoamerica, the Andes mountains of South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. There was no single cause that made a city develop. However, location certainly mattered. A city might sit at a good spot for agriculture, trade, or defense.

Living in a city generally meant living in crowded conditions in which disease spread faster. On average, people in cities died earlier than those in rural areas. So why would anyone choose to live in a city? There are a few reasons. Diseases or not, cities provide safety. Walls and soldiers protected people from enemies, bandits, and wild animals. Like today, young people moved from rural areas to cities in search of money or jobs. Rural communities offered little work other than farming.

Around the world, cities only kept growing. By 1200 BCE, China had some of the world’s largest. Anyang in China’s Yellow River Valley housed as many as 200,000 people. By 100 CE, Rome was the largest city in the world, with over a million people.

Urban Hierarchy: Organizing Cities

Hierarchies were a key part of urbanization. A hierarchy is a social system in which people are ranked into different social levels. The hierarchies of cities placed rural people below city people. But inside a city, there were far more levels. Complicated social hierarchies kept things running smoothly. They served to convince—or even force—people to do their jobs. Priests convinced people that the gods wanted the king to be king, and soldiers enforced the king’s decisions.

Cities required the invention of many new technologies. With more people living together on less land, city-dwellers needed new ways to feed everyone, store food, defend the city, and keep it clean. People developed new kinds of buildings. They built sewers and even installed running water. Canals and irrigation improved transportation and farming. Aqueducts and underground water tunnels brought clean water from distant mountains.

Division of Labor: Job Specialization in Cities

Every city ever built relied on the availability of food. If a society can’t produce enough food, it can’t support a large number of people who don’t farm. Farmers need to produce a surplus of food—that is, more food than they and their family need. Having a surplus of food frees up some people from farming and allows them to take up other occupations. This is how you get laborers, scribes, soldiers, and kings. Each occupies a different level in the hierarchy. Cities depended on this division of labor.

In a city, everybody relies on other people in order to live. This connects people to each other. A shoemaker, for example, needs food from farmers, leather from cowherds, protection from soldiers, and merchants to distribute his product. On the other hand, all those people need shoes from the shoemaker.

In smaller rural villages, people were often more self-sufficient. They did not rely on others as much as city people did. In villages and towns, where people lived was determined by their family group. Its cities, where people lived depended on the kind of work they did.

Urban divisions of labor allowed cities to be productive. However, cities still depended on farms and villages. As cities grew, the rural areas around them were pressured to produce more food. City rulers often conquered neighboring lands just to be able to increase agricultural productivity.

Urban Archipelago: Cities Build Networks

Cities connected the world. As some places got better at producing particular things, cities traded more with each other. Different crops and animals were found in different places. If your city had too little wheat, you could trade some of your wool for another city’s surplus of food. Luxury items were also traded. For example, the Standard of Ur in the picture below is from the Sumerian city of Ur and was made sometime around 2500 BCE. It shows just how far ancient trade networks extended. The artist used lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, red marble from India, and seashells from the Persian Gulf.

Conclusion: Rural-Urban Divide?

This article started with a discussion of the longstanding divide between city and country. Ancient and modern writers all talk about urban and rural life as though they were two completely separate things. But if you’ve been reading this article carefully, you might already be questioning that view. The truth is, city and country have always been deeply connected. Each has always depended on the other. Each is part of the same system.