On the Life-Cycles of Cities
I wrote this a number of years ago and left it unfinished. I'm rather proud of the ideas behind it, and some of the ideas behind it are good. I recently polished it up, filling in some bare areas and rewriting large sections that I had written in an unecessarily condescending tone for some reason. I'm not sure what to do with it now, so I'm just going to post it for posterity.
Almost everything we encounter and can recognize is alive, depending on one's point of view. Any definition of life broad enough to see past the traditional restrictions of chemistry and genetic structure will demonstrate that the traits we see in things unarguably alive are also seen in many things we consider to be biologically inert. Moreover, some fundamental processes seen in biology, such as evolution and entropy, are absolute- every system in the universe evolves, and every system decays. A city, despite not having an obvious carbon-based cellular structure or DNA, exhibits most of the behaviors expected of a living thing: cities are born, grow, develop in predictable (and some unpredictable) ways, consume resources, produce waste, adapt to their environments and climates, including sudden changes in these, create young who share some of their own information, make every effort to preserve their own existences indefinitely, and finally, when they can no longer sustain themselves, die, becoming fodder for some other form of life. Thus, by a reasonably open-minded definition, something such as a city can be considered alive.
It should come as no real surprise that a city, being a thing constructed by and for living creatures, functions as a living thing in and of itself. And because it is so new, evolutionarily speaking, and so unlike any life-form that has come before it, it has few natural predators and has not approached a balanced life-cycle within the rest of nature (Note I say the rest of nature; a city is as much the result of natural processes as anything else that exists). Because of this, the lifestyles of cities are highly turbulent and varied, as each one seeks a different niche by which to thrive, eventually passing on its particular genome and creating ever-new types of cities that may stand the test of time. Thus the sheer number of city species is staggering, and I will not make an attempt at taxonomy at present. Cities are undergoing an evolutionary explosion, and there’s no evidence that this will slow any time in the foreseeable future.
Evolutionary History
Before I get into the specific traits and behaviors of cities, let me first elucidate the primary theory of how cities came to be, to evolve, from smaller creatures and simpler systems. It begins, as with all life forms, several billion years ago when the first biological structures (amino acids, proteins, etc.) began to function with autonomy, replicating themselves from available resources, and thereby achieving the first aspects of life.
After a long time of existing as semi-independent molecules, these structures developed a remarkable and powerful technique, one which began an explosion of biological growth on our world, and which has continued to be a basic technique of biological life since: conglomeration. By fusing together, by creating a combined mechanical entity that was greater than the sum of its parts, each component element significantly increased its longevity and chances of reproduction. Individual strands of molecular matter became complex biological machines, eventually developing a form we call cells. These were the first true organisms, capable of adopting focused and specialized strategies for survival.
This conglomeration is the crux of the process of creating ever more complex lifeforms. What’s most important is that it is recursive. Single cells eventually formed into groups of cells that worked together as even larger systems. Groups of cells, primitive polycellular organisms, became so wholly enmeshed in their lifestyle that they lost all sense of constituency, of the autonomy of their parts. They became collective, singular entities that could not be taken apart without severe repercussions. And these single multicellular organisms eventually found that, by combining with one another, they could once again increase their chances of survival. So the organisms became even more complex. And this process compounded until they created truly complex structures, plants and animals composed of trillions of cells of several different types and fulfilling dozens of distinct functions, all for the reason of maintaining the group, of ensuring the overall survival of the multitude. And again, each part has lost the sense of its individuality. Each animal is, from a certain perspective, a multitude, trillions of living things coming together to make a greater and indivisible whole, yet they bear no sign of this diversity within themselves.
But the story doesn’t end there. There is a limit, at least within the particular design of our biological cells, to how large a creature can become, due to the limited speed by which chemical and electrical signals can travel; and there are major downsides to being huge. These limitations make it infeasible to continue combining indefinitely. Instead, some species found a different way of combining: socialization. By developing means to communicate through visual or audible stimuli, creatures can function as a unit while remaining individual in a biological sense, and retaining some degree of autonomy. And by the same combining process as before, creatures that depend on this combining strategy tend to lose the ability to survive on their own. Some creatures, such as bees and ants, tend to lose most of their independence, while others (most social mammals) are capable of thinking for themselves but still need to be part of a community to have a chance of long-term survival.
Cities are born of a continuation of the same compounding, cooperational process. Individual humans form family units, which in turn form community units, which can be termed “clans” or “tribes” or “villages”, etc. At this point each level of grouping is still interconnected- each family knows each other family within the same community, and each individual knows each other individual within the same community as well, even if they’re from another family. However, when municipalities come together to form a higher level of complexity (towns, i.e. communities over 150 or so members), this is lost. In a small town, the extended families may all be aware of one another, and the clans certainly are, but there is no illusion that any individual has a significant familiarity with every other individual in the same town. When a town grows big enough to become a city, the family and community units that constitute it become remote enough that even the families are not connected with one another.
The compounding process doesn’t end there. Cities can merge into metropoles (plural of metropolis), if conditions allow, and cities, towns and metropoles together form into a greater society or nation (though, note that societies and nations are formed by a different compounding process, with independent rules), though their physical distance gives them a less direct communication (just as social animals are less connected than the organs within a single creature). In recent history, some societies and nations have begun to form relationships with one another, forming huge and cooperative multinational federations that take up considerable portions of the world. It’s possible that these federations will someday combine, creating a singular planetary organism, an individual living planet. At that point, we will have to either discover or create life on other planets in order to continue the trend. It's also possible that these federations are too big to be maintained stably, and will eventually collapse, and it may prove necessary to discover yet a new paradigm by which to combine into larger entities.
However, my purpose here is not to talk about these more complex lifeforms, which are so very young and volatile that it is difficult to say anything definitive about their natures. So I return to cities, which have existed for thousands of years and seem to have settled into a relatively stable way of life that has, even with the continuous and accelerating advance of technology, continued to function by the same basic principles. I will begin the description of the life cycles of cities in the logical place, with birth, or rather, conception.
Birth and Reproduction
Cities can, functionally speaking, have sex, though they do it remotely, like trees and fungi, being inherently sedentary and unable to come together in one place. They seem to have the same romantic entanglements as many animals, as well. Travellers, individual residents, are the spores of cities, carrying information, the genetic code of a city: ideas on architecture, cultural ideals, and economic theory, etc.; and by such information do cities create their young. They can also transmit disease, but more on that later.
Merchants and adventurers travel throughout the world, like drifting seeds looking for a nest. When they find a place that holds some value, a place convenient to settle down, something soon sprouts. The candidacy of a given location is based, as with most creatures and their nesting sites, on the availability of resources. Water is a major one, but many will suffice in its stead. A city depends on many substances and compounds and products, and if an area is found to be rich in just one, a city can, possibly, thrive there, gaining the others through commerce. Gold, stone, iron, lumber, domesticable animals or crops… sufficient quantities of these things nearby can make a spot very attractive, and if such a spot happens to fall along the path of least resistance between two mature cities, it is prime to be settled by means of the stream of mercantilism that passes continuously by. Someone, sometime, will set down a little industry or rest stop, taking advantage of the produce, the space, the convenient river, or just the cozy little meadow which happens to be right between two very distant trading powers. At this point, the seed has sprouted. It is a sapling, frail, uncertain, at the mercy of fortune and the elements, not to mention certain parasites. If it weathers all of these, it will mature. How big it gets depends on the circumstances; in this way, cities are again rather like trees. If the “air” (commercial opportunity) is thin, they will contrive to stabilize themselves but may remain very tiny compared to others of their kind. But because a city’s life depends on so many kinds of nutrients, its fortunes may change at any time, withering it to a stalk or allowing it to blossom into a colossus. Either way, if it is possible for a city to exist somewhere, it's likely that one will eventually arise, because it is the prerogative of all life to sustain itself through its progeny. Note that reproduction need not happen between exactly two cities. There can be three parents, or five, or only one. There is a proportional relationship between the rate of a city’s growth and the number of its neighbors, so having many parents is in many ways advantageous to a city. At the same time, its genome is more diverse in such a case, which may cause conflicts within the city’s own systems but may also result in a useful hybridization that will eventually change the nature of the species as a whole. Such is the nature of mutation and evolution. Another thing which can happen when there are many parents to a city, especially if there are several child-cities growing at about the same time, is that conflict of resources may occur, forcing one of the young cities to choke out and weaken or kill one of its parents or siblings, in the nature of trees fighting over sunlight and water by extending their roots and branches.
Heredity
The traits that a young city inherits from its parents are many, ranging from the architectural to the economic to the governmental. Culture is of course significantly influential, because human beings are component parts of a city, and how they think, collectively, determines how the city runs. Among commutative life forms such as cities and other sorts of social organizations, genetic information (note I use the term “gene” in a purely metaphorical sense) can influence a city long after it has been born, and can come from any other city with which the particular organism is in contact, but, I think you’ll find, while this information can proliferate itself throughout a city, rarely does this have the effect of truly altering the city’s form or function; cities generally remain true to their roots, following their original genetic data, as much as possible. When a city does change, when it tries a different type of governmental system for example, this is often not because of genetic mutation stemming from other cities but rather because the possibility for such a change was present always in the city’s root DNA, a contingency that was always potential from the time of the city’s birth, and merely awaiting a trigger to force it into actuation. Of course, cities are adaptable things, and can institute changes that contradict their previous ideals. This process often leads to internal conflicts with a city’s genome, in much the same way that a transplanted body part may face rejection by the host immune system.
Biological Systems
The subsystems of a city are many, many of which are easily comparable to those found in biological entities. The functions of each of these systems often overlap, creating healthy redundancies, but generally they correlate to the following:
Structure
Buildings are the cells of a city, having a semi-independent existence but being ultimately dependent on their neighbors for survival. They tend to be grouped into districts that function like organs, where they perform specific functions for the city as a whole. Individual humans work as organelles within the building cells, maintaining their functionality but also transmitting various resources between cells.
Nervous System
Broadly, the government, specifically its administrative authorities. This consists of two main parts: the “brain,” which is essentially the ruling body of the being as a whole, and the "nervous system", the bureaucratic offices, whose jobs are to facilitate cooperation between the various agencies of the government. The brain is furthermore divided into many parts by function: the city council, mayor, and other individuals and groups who decide the city’s policies on the large scale function as the forebrain and the conscious mind, whereas the rest resemble other parts of the brain, regulating the systems below and making sure everything is working in synch to the greatest of ability.
Endocrine System
Also part of the government, the equivalent of the endocrine (or hormonal) system decides what each part does and how it develops. Such functions include zoning areas and passing ordinances to make sure that they grow up in a way that is useful to the whole. When a new, undeveloped area becomes part of the city it is like a stem cell, capable of becoming anything, and this system is instrumental in determining its ultimate development. Just as with other lifeforms, a city’s endocrine system is most active during its juvenile phase, when growth is at its highest rate.
Circulatory System
Every complex living thing has something akin to blood, a fluid that transfers vital nutrients to and between the constituent cells. In fact, there may be several fluids that serve various parts of this purpose, but the one that correlates most closely to blood in a city is trade. We know this when we see roads: they are veins and arteries, constantly carrying materials to and from the city's economic core, as well as between its outlying parts. The roads, like blood vessels, carry more than just oxygen (money) and nutrients (food, building materials, and other raw supplies). They also facilitate the immune system (described below) and the hormones (endocrine system, above). Historically, they have also performed part of the function of the nervous system, transmitting orders to and from the command center at the city’s economic core (the brain and heart are, naturally, always as close as possible). However, now the nervous system transmits itself largely along phone lines, cable lines, and satellite networks; such technologies supplement the city’s nerve transmissions today. Note that rivers serve the same purpose as roads; they simply don’t need to be built first, and are usually thicker. Rivers serve roles similar to the primary blood vessels connected directly to the heart, and likewise, the city's core is usually found among them.
Digestive System
Cities are in some ways like animals, and in others more like plants. They do not possess a single stomach, a central place of digestive processing. Rather, they take in materials through the mouth or mouths (ports and intercity roads), which are then diluted among a number of digestive facilities (distribution centers, markets, and other trading locales) and then broken down further, transferring them directly to where they are needed most. This is more efficient in some ways than relying upon a central resource handling location, but also increases traffic.
Integumentary (Defensive) System
The equivalent of the outer skin, which protects the inner portions from the harsh elements. Strangely, cities have little in the way of skin, despite the numerous ways in which they can be injured or sickened by external influences. This is because each subordinate organ and cell thereof is independently protected, a defense which is effective if not very efficient. Historically, they do have a mechanism to protect from one another; they grow a very thick skin (walls) around themselves when they feel threatened by other cities and organizations. These skins remain for some time, but gradually degrade from lack of upkeep when not in need. The practice of building walls around cities is now obsolete due to advancing martial technology. On the other hand, many cities are building wall-like structures to protect against environmental hazards.
Immune System
Police, fire, and health services protect the individuals who form the city and preserve as many of them as possible, protecting the whole organism from infections of criminal behavior, physical damage, or biological disease, any of which can threaten the whole city if left unchecked. Other support systems such as welfare also contribute to the health of the constituent humans.
Waste System
Every city has some kind of waste management system; if this doesn’t work well, its parts become choked with garbage and increasingly unable to function correctly, just as with any lifeform. Such a situation can eventually lead to death. Once a cell has processed the nutrients provided to it, it naturally produces waste, which has to be collected and sent back through the bloodstream by the trash collectors. Some can be recycled, but the rest needs to be placed somewhere outside of the body, where it will provide a risk to the city’s (economical) health. Sadly, a species has not yet evolved that can efficiently convert city waste back into usable materials. It is yet to be seen whether such a one will come about soon, or if the living space of cities will gradually be encroached by their own offal, leading to overcrowding in the future.
Predators
There are, as discussed before, other types of meta-human organism. Some of these, such as nations are much larger than cities, and in some ways less sedentary, and can use their influence to harm cities. When war erupts between societies, the cities that lie between them are physically threatened. It's also possible for one city, especially when it reaches the larger "metropolis" phase, to devour and incorporate smaller cities and towns, but this is only possible when they happen to be physically near one another. Rarely, small organizations such as terrorist groups can cause harm to a city, but this seldom results in death.
Parasites
Small, mobile organizations of humans also exist, spreading among cities and societies alike: businesses, religions, subcultures. These, especially businesses, can function like bacteria within a larger animal, and as such can be beneficial or harmful. Businesses that sell and transmit food and other supplies contribute to the city's digestive system, just as a human's gut biome does (though again, with the lack of a central location). On the other hand, a business that is concerned only with profit, and that is not held in check by the city's immune system, can begin to hoard the city's resources, glutting itself while the community begins to starve. If not purged, these organizations can cause irreparable damage to a city or other meta-human organism, a condition known as terminal capitalism.
Diseases
Being entities of such complexity, cities are susceptible to a wide range of ailments. Many of these stem from malnutrition, the lack of a vital resource to a city component. Lack of wealth, food, or security certainly harms the human constituents, and can cause the city to behave strangely and erratically, just as a human can develop scurvy from a lack of vitamins. Other diseases are caused by parasites, as detailed above. It is also possible for one city to infect another with its traits, by influencing it commercially or culturally, attempting to turn the other city into a clone of itself. From the perspective of the city in its original cultural ideals, this may be considered highly undesirable.
Healing and Resistance
Cities have remarkable regenerative capabilities. Even if only a few cells survive a traumatic event, the city is capable of making a total recovery, although it will not always be able to do so depending on which cells survive, what the conditions in the city’s habitat have become, etc. Also, even in the case of a complete recovery the city will naturally never be exactly the same as it was, but it can manage a reasonable facsimile of a former self and, indeed, will often strive greatly to do so rather than to take on new attributes, which is of course entirely possible. If only a relatively minor portion of the city is destroyed or otherwise afflicted, the city can often maintain a near-normal level of activity and productivity while attempting recovery, even if the damage ultimately proves lethal.