“Almost everyone still lived—it seemed to them—as they always had, surrounded by a material culture that appeared likely to last for generations, though in fact surprisingly little of it has survived.” Although the author might be describing Babylon in 539 BCE, or Rome in 455, or Tenochtitlan in 1519, or any other city in history when the handwriting was about to appear on the wall, the historian William L. O’Neill was actually writing about Americans in 1945, at the end of the Second World War.
From Manila to London, famous cities in Eurasia were buried in rubble; and, as in W. H. Auden’s poem, “Memorial for a City” (1948), the future looked to be all ruins and barbed wire. Meanwhile, America’s cities were unbombed and prosperous. Greater New York, with a population of 12.5 million, had surpassed London as the most populous city in the world: Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles were among the twenty biggest. Then came the great postwar exodus, and as early as the late 1950s it seemed to sensitive observers, like the philosopher Hannah Arendt, that the endless sprawl—at its most exaggerated in Los Angeles—might in time lead to the disappearance of the city as such.
In 1950 the top ten urban areas were: New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Chicago, the Ruhr (Germany), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). In 2021 the list begins with Tokyo, at 38 million, followed by Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo, Mexico City, Dhaka, Cairo, Beijing, Mumbai, and Osaka. Istanbul is once again Europe’s largest city, as it was when it was Greek Constantinople, and again in the Ottomon days. The last seventy years have restored the ancient pattern in which the giant cities were in Asia, the more modest metropolises in Europe, and in the Americas, Mexico and South America once again, as it was in 1800.
Of course, population doesn’t translate directly to political dominion or cultural sway, but sheer numbers can be an indicator of rude health and appeal as a destination; and even by 20th-century standards, the numbers of today’s megacities are staggering.
Almost certainly, for example, the combined population of Tokyo and Osaka outnumbers that of the Roman Empire in the days of the Antonines; and while Japan’s population is shrinking, Mumbai’s and Dhaka’s and Lagos’s are growing. What is the future to be for “those great constellations of earth,” as Rilke called the cities? Is there going to be a future?
The Plague Year, now lengthening into its fifteenth month, has left the look of the cities unscathed, but their life subtly altered in ways which only time and distance will reveal. How many will be returning to the topless towers, and how many of them are eager to resume old routines? Have power relations really been altered, if so, cui bono?
With a respectful nod to the Partisan Review of old, we feature our first symposium, “The Fate of the City,” which ventures to address such questions. In various ways, the inquiry is continued with dispatches from New York by Jesse Tisch, who tests the atmosphere; Los Angeles by Greg Roque, lifting Dodger Stadium to inspect the ground beneath it; Sky O’Brien, leaving Perth for its surrounding forests; and Chris Grunder’s anatomy of a locust generation.
In fiction, Philippe Aronson remains on the scene in Paris, presenting a literary friendship that takes a treacherous turn. Reminiscent of such trailblazers as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gil Scott-Heron, San Francisco Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, is a voice for this time and place.
Gates Scholar Devlin Gandy explores the relationship between the Bay Area urban zone and the native flora and fauna in stunning photography. Our Person-to-Person interview presents the ever-more essential Los Angeles writer, Lynell George, on an array of rich topics, including her most recent publication, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler.
In Arts & Culture, Julian Harake reports on the complicated construction of Geoscope 2, and its installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Doubtful about Fran Leibowitz’s self-centered Pretend It’s a City, directed by an indulgent Martin Scorsese, Jessica Boyall explores lesser-known but worthier documentaries on city life; and Hannah Fagin introduces us to multidisciplinary artist Manuel Molina Martagon. Finally, in Express, our incomparable Azule Greene sees us off with another urban art phantasmagoria.
Thanks to our friends at Stack Magazines, in London, issue 02 of Dispatches will be distributed farther and wider than we ever expected. We all have urgent stories to tell, and these are our latest.
