Origins of the City and the Dwelling Space According to Murray Bookchin

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on some compelling ideas from Murray Bookchin’s book, From Urbanization to Cities. While I don’t agree with all of his ideas, I found several chapters particularly insightful and worth sharing.

As an architect who designs homes for people, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what homes mean to me, what larger cultural values our homes reflect, and how they are valued by our society. To gain insight into these questions, it helps me to reflect on our earliest civilizations and how/why humans began assembling in groups of small dwelling units, which eventually showed signs of the first cities.

Bookchin’s writing provides a history of the city from its earliest days, showing how humans came together to form collective groups, from tribes to cities. He challenges the conventional view that cities emerged from farming technology and the desire for economic prosperity, material accumulation, and control. He says in this theory, they’re assuming that our urban forbearers were exactly like us, “that they were economic beings who were engaged in the pursuit of their material interest within the fixed confines of a structural and territorial entity, called the city.”  In other words, we are projecting our values of economic enterprise and our materialistic culture onto these ancient civilizations.  

He believes this is an oversight, stating that the earliest cities' archaeology suggests there were other reasons that cities began to evolve. He uses Çatalhöyük and its archaeology as an example, saying that its origins of creation seem to stem primarily from religious and spiritual activity. The archaeology suggests an intensely vivid religious life, as many dwelling units are adorned with wall art depicting shaman-like figures, animals, and natural scenes. He thinks that the transition from the tribe to the city cannot be fully attributed to economic motives, and that it was not as clear as our traditional orthodox historians would lead us to believe. We should consider that cities began with the creation of shrines, cultic practices, and temples, possibly some within or having the dual function of a family dwelling unit, rather than with economic motives, farming, or the plow. Although the economy, farming, and food supply would need to be considered as the city evolved, these technologies were not the primary drivers of the emergence of the first cities.

He thinks that the home or domestic scene, with its rich spiritual imagery, symbolism, and practices, was a much more probable seed of the city.  Our contemporary society unconsciously adopts economic return and materialism as its primary source of value. Through this lens, it’s difficult for us to consider that these ancient settlements and cities could have developed within societies with drastically different values and outlooks on life.  He states that “Initially, if the city had a pronounced function at all, it was a religious one.”

When we look at early civilizations and the structures that they built, the imperial systems such as those of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Aztecs, and the Incas, to name a few, its fair to say that at the height of these civilizations, construction of their cities and monumnets was performed, at least in part by, the oppressive savagery of brutal tyrants and a core of rulers.

But what about before these civilizations reached their dynastic or imperial heights, before they calcified? How did the first small sprouts of the city emerge? He proposes that these building projects were at least initially voluntary, undertaken by people who were deeply committed to their beliefs and viewed their contributions as a spiritual calling. Maybe later, as civilization developed and the values of economy, trade, and materialism began to take over, oppressive coercion and force were needed to continue building the city, but their initial conception more than likely came from an act of creative expression rather than oppression.

I find these ideas compelling, and they seem right to me when I reflect on what I know about human nature and cities. They also align with my own experience in creating architecture. When designing a home or building, for me, it is almost essential that the creative conception take place in a state of deep peace, connection, and contemplation. In this state, I feel compelled to create, and the process happens naturally with very little resistance. When I feel forced or obligated to create architecture, the process is significantly more challenging and often generates a less-than-desirable result. In this way, it makes sense that the initial creative act of designing the first temples would come from a spiritual state of contemplation, where the creators felt compelled rather than forced.

When I look at our cities today, there seems to be a frail presence of spirituality and religion.  If Bookchin’s theory has any degree of truth, I have a great deal of concern about the uprooting and shifting of the values we’ve come to worship in our contemporary societies.  If cities were conceived as spiritual, religious, community centers, ritualistic entities grounded in our internal worlds, with human connection and nature at their core, and have shifted to a value system of materialistic economic accumulation and individuality, I think this is something we should be aware of and look at more closely. This is not to say we should revert completely or do anything at all, only that, at a minimum, we should be aware of the new values we are worshiping.

This brings me back to the article's opening statement about being an architect of the home. I believe the home is where our cities originate, and that the domestic space should, above all, foster and reflect the values of beauty, connection, nature, ritual, and spirituality over those of economic accumulation. In Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s terms, this would be those values of the right hemisphere. (If you would like to learn more about these ideas, please read our article here.) This makes the role of architect crucial in our society today.

This raises an important question: Are we designing homes as storehouses of material accumulation, prioritizing bedroom and bath counts and square footage as the main markers of value? Or should we give credence to other forms of value more intrinsic to human nature, which seem to be the initial catalysts of the city's existence?

Homes designed through this lens would prioritize human experience, health, and our inner worlds over their financial pro forma. Not to say that economics would be omitted, rather, they would be counterbalanced to a higher degree, and not unconsciously placed as the highest marker of value. When we begin to view and build homes solely as tools for financial gain, for me, this piques my curiosity and compels me to gain deeper insight into the project's motives and values.