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oa Incorporating Geographical Imagination into Early Urban Demographic Estimates
- Brepols
- Publication: Journal of Urban Archaeology, Volume 3, Issue 1, Jan 2021, p. 137 - 142
Abstract
Abstract
Global estimates of early levels of urbanization are shown to be grossly underestimated. An attempt is made to rectify this using Jacobs’s ideas on cities converted into a broad ‘geographical imagination’, a theoretical patterning of cities. This is applied to estimates of urbanization in 300 bc to fill in the many missing cities in a current historical demographic study. This results in a sixfold increase in estimated urbanization that is interpreted as a qualitative difference based upon different approaches to understanding cities. In conclusion, some implications of this difference are discussed.
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