Social City

Abstract

The theme of the IGSS Conference 2023 is the study of urban development through multidisciplinary approaches: ecological, political, economic, and social. The social is perhaps the most evident of these, as cities first formed from the convergence of different populations in one place, for the production and exchange of goods and ideas. From the beginning of urbanization, cities provided space for social activities — spaces which belonged to the social civic body. Markets are some of the earliest examples, but with the development of city states, this expanded to include spaces for collective governance. We can see this in Jericho, one of the first trading cities, and in later Mesopotamian and Greek city-states. In Republican Rome, the Latin term civitas described the social body of the citizens, united by law and forming a res publica (“public body”) — the source of our present-day word “rep