1.2. Town alteration: Brief history and commentary on several cases.

a) The first towns The town model appears during the Neolithic revolution. When the people have settled down and discovered agriculture, the surplus permits to develop professions which are not directly related with food obtaining, such as craftwork, trading or administration. The first city centers appear around the year 3000 b.C. and are located in the valleys of big rivers in Asia and Africa: The River Nile (Egypt) 1.2.1. Antiquity

Eufrates and Tigris (Iran, Irak and Siria) Indo (Pakistan)

Typology of the first towns : Working-class towns Plan of the remains of the city of Kahun (Egypt) The city of Kahun (Egypt) Is built to house workers of the pyramid for Sesostris II (1897-1879 b.C.) Little houses in rectangular blocks. Houses separated by very narrow streets (dirty water draining and access to houses) Tiny rooms around a closed patio. Difference between the workers’ houses and the civil servants’ .

Temple-cities - Monumental avenues and big squares. - The building adapts to the ground to create a stage which will be used in religious ceremonies or the public appearances of the monarchs. The city of Tebas was the capital of the Middle Empire and the New Egyptian Empire. It has a necropolis (El Valle de los Reyes) and several religious ensembles. The Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el Bahari, opposite the Tebas)

Fortress-cities Babilonia was an old town in Lower Mesopotamia. It became the capital of a big Empire under the reign of Hammurabi (XVIII b. C.) In 6th Century b.C. it was a huge city. It took up the two banks of the River Euphrates. A bridge connected both sides of the city. Inside there were religious buildings, houses, palaces and gardens. Chaotic layout of the streets. It was strongly fortified. Imaginary view of Babilonia Plan of the city

b) Ancient Greece The state cities of the Ancient Greece, heirs to the Mycenaean culture, used to follow a more organized plan, especially when they were new founded. A big colonial expansion along the Mediterranean Sea from XIX to VIII b. C. allowed them to rise up a great many cities from scratch. For that reason, they could follow a town plan in advance. As a result of all this, we have the first town planner, Hipodamo de Mileto (c. 498 a.C.-?) a Greek architect, philosopher and mathematician who established revolutionary rules to build up cities, such as his distribution from an almost perfect grid. Hipodamo de Mileto was the inventor of the hipodamic plan or hipodamic tracing. This tracing searched for symmetry and order in the structure of the city. It also intended to find a fast way of building cities in new Greek colonies. Plan of the city of Mileto. We don’t have any works by Hipodamo de Mileto but it is suspected that alterations on Mileto could have been made by him after a Persian attack.

In general terms, there were two big areas in the Greek cities. Present view of the acropolis of Athens (Greece). The Acropolis: City of Gods. It was located in the highest part of the city and all the religious buildings were there.

The Agora: The main public buildings, like the market, were there. With the time, the agora became the center of the polis from different points of view: Economic and commercial: Political market: meeting place for citizens to discuss the problems of the community and take collective decisions about laws. This way and around it there appeared public buildings to hold all these activities. The squares of the Greek cities were related to one another in a balanced way and many times the agora was a bit separated from the busy streets. Present view of the Agora in Athens (to the North-East of the Partenon)

c) ROMAN EMPIRE

Rome was the first large city in the history and it expanded its dominions for nearly all the world which was known at that time. The big amount of taxes coming from the East and the West, as long as the work of many slaves, led to a spectacular town development in a city which reached 1 million inhabitants. A titanic crowd for that time. The development of town planning in Rome was gradual. City life was promoted by all the emperors of the 1st C a.C., especially by Augustus and Claudius. Augustus consolidated Rome as an empire thanks to the aristocratic families and the rich traders. The old noble families could put the figure of the emperor at risk (especially the republican ones) but the emperor leaned on the civil servants of the empire, the army, the traders and the families of libertos . They were social classes which had spread and achieved power in the city.

ROMAN TOWN PLANNING THE CITY , ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CENTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TOWN INFRASTRUCTURE (solve the problems of living in the city) water supply sewer system public transport defense forums: squares and public spaces markets THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT impress the rest of the world, which they feel they own FAVOR THE HUMAN AND MATERIAL COLONIZATION OF THE EMPIRE AND MAKE ITS POLITICAL DOMINATION POSSIBLE TOWN FOUNDATION PAVED ROADS SYSTEM

The forum was the center of the city (inspired in the Greek agora). It gathered the political, economic, administrative, social and religious activities. The most magnificent and relevant buildings were made. There isn’t a Roman city without its forum. The important cities also had theaters and amphitheaters. The biggest cities could have circus and stadiums. Plano del Foro de Roma.

LA ORGANIZACIÓN DEL ESPACIO URBANO DIBUJO DE UN CAMPAMENTO ROMANO EJE AXIAL CARDO (N-S) EJE AXIAL DECUMANO (O-E) FORO PLANO EN CUADRÍCULA