6. A NEW WORLD

When we compare cities of today with cities from the past we are comparing individuals of the same species. Australia resembles North America because Australian and North American cities are of the same group: New-world western cities of first world status. Keeping this group of cities in mind and the branch of cities I have tracked west from Europe (Rome and London) to North America (New York and Los Angeles) to Australia (Sydney and Perth), let us cross the Indian Ocean to South Africa, one of the youngest members of this group.

Historically, western civilisation has been in South Africa for hundreds of years. However, age in years does not always correlate with systemic maturity. In what is arguably the focal point of the west, the United States, South Africa remains largely out of cultural awareness. Common associations with South Africa have a lopsided focus on negative issues such as white emigration, political instability, crime, poverty and disease. Such issues are part of reality, but when systemic age is taken into consideration they are not exceptional. It is not uncommon for the urban organism to experience uncertain early growth. A good example is North America which took over 500 years to reach systemic maturity. One reason for North America’s slow initial growth in the first 100 years between Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and the 1600s is that Europe was not at a level of economic maturity capable of thoroughly exploring North America until the 16th century. In other words, there were not many people who were willing and able to finance or make the journey.

To understand what I mean by urban economic maturity, consider a bowl of pears and the way mold will spread throughout the bowl. Before a colony of mold will spread to a second pear, the initial pear will have to possess some critical mass of mold. This critical mass signifies first, a necessity for more resources, and second, the capability to facilitate mold proliferation

Figure 19: Mold proliferation

Cities spread in the same way. For North America it was not until a small group of Spanish explorers injected huge quantities of North American gold into European economies that Europe was stimulated and disrupted enough to warrant larger scale exploration and settlement of the New World. The economic situation of the parent system is vitally important to city development. Perhaps equally important is human competition. In North America, and the world over, city growth has correlated negatively with conflict between indigenous populations and westerners. For example, South Africa was settled prior to Australia, but it is likely that Australia will mature faster due to the relative ease settlers had in colonising the sparsely populated land. Rapid maturation has hardly been the case in Africa, where the indigenous population is proportionally large, conflict remains a major issue, and a pacifist moral shift throughout western culture has rendered traditionally brutal methods of settlement taboo in South Africa. Thus, functionally the region remains relatively young.