An image is worth a thousand words, by one estimate. A word to the wise suffices, according to another one. And it is written in many languages that strength derives from the unity of multitudes. If someone accustomed to defining structures in terms of numbers and drawings tries to unite words and images in a stable equilibrium, a constructive view might result.
Countries are possessive, cities are transactional. Countries absorb energy, cities exude intelligence. As cities flourished in the Old World, their intelligence exceeded the space / time of their countries. The Eternal Rome outlived its Empire by millennia. To contain Paris after 1789, France split it into 12 Arrondissements, up to 20 since 1859, each with its own mayoralty. Still, the City of Light stands for France body and soul. When the territory of a country expands, the role of the cities shrinks. Body energy rules the intelligence of the head. No single city can claim to represent the United States. Relying on local energy above cosmopolitan intelligence, the young nation did not make its largest cities state capitals. Democracy spread horizontally and centrifugally. Single-story America stretches far and wide between the oceans, while geological pre-history reaches deep down and high up in the national parks.
The smaller a country, the more its population concentrates in the capital. New Yorkers outnumber many such populations, but add up to less than 3% of Americans. Like Shakespeare’s happy few they are a diverse but select minority. Exclusive “one-in-a-million” crowds compete with their equals throughout the multi-storied City canyons.
Packed on its islands, New York City digs deeper and stretches higher. Layers of past, present and future pile on top of each other from Calvary Cemetery in Queens to the Manhattan skyscrapers. Understanding a city requires familiarity with the back yards. In New York, as in Rome, Paris and London, there are also the catacombs, the water mains, the tunnels and the subways, the storehouses and the penthouses, the rooftop terraces, the swimming pools and parks, the elevators, and the bridges.
The social gravity distributes the population vertically and horizontally, as implacably as the physical one. It buries the largest groups underground – in cemeteries and subways, and scatters big crowds over the surface. Density and information thin out towards the peripheries. Countless nomads share the darkness of abandoned tunnels by strict unwritten laws. Discrete residents of bright penthouses transact uncountable fortunes by tentative written ones.
In the four dimensions of the organic City – three in space and one in time – only the constructors can move freely. Today any tourist can walk through the remains of the Roman Colosseum from the tunnels to the tribunes. Two thousand years ago, when it was the center of the Empire, the builders alone enjoyed that freedom. As then, so always, they erect and support the material framework of the social spectacle, they know how the decor looks backstage, and what holds it up. Take a peak from their exclusive angles.
