Part 2 of a series on good and bad government in place and time
In his book The Republic, Plato compared cities to caves in his famous Allegory of the Cave, and he pointed out that there are many types of caves in the world. There are even smaller caves within larger caves, as there are many smaller communities within larger communities—a series of plays within the play.
Our big cities contain inside them several smaller cities, which is obvious to anyone who has ever spent time at a university campus.
The University as City
Anyone who has ever visited a university, or toured a university, knows that a university is not just one building, but a whole series of buildings, entire streets of buildings, forming entire neighborhoods, making them in effect a city onto themselves: we might playfully call it a “universe-city.”
We find them inside the safe confines of their own walled-in community, much like the medieval towns of Christendom, who were kept safe behind their own city walls. Passing through the city gate, policed under the strictest supervision, we soon find ourselves standing before a large map. It’s an impressive creation. The map shows us the inner workings of this civic body, how its different buildings refer to each other, how they live off each other, how a gridded network of roads and bridges leads to reception desks and auditoriums, parks and libraries, garages and laundromats, coffee shops and food marts, dormitory rooms and prayer rooms.
All of these separate organs of the university fill social, professional and intellectual roles which fit into a hierarchical system of groups and classes. As soon as we pass through the security checkpoint, the lawmakers confer upon us a function within this ecosystem. Whether we enter as a professor or a janitor, a receptionist or a groundskeeper, a student or a family member, our position is immediately confirmed within this hierarchy, which also communicates to us what role other people play.
Suit jackets and uniforms, habits and gowns, clipboards and notebooks, desks and blackboards, briefcases and backpacks, or camera flashes and flowers, are attributes which identify us anywhere in the city, whether out on the streets or inside rooms or corridors. Our roles become our uniforms rather clearly in a university setting, yet it’s an equally urban casting which identifies us in hotels and hospitals, train stations and government offices.
It’s the design of our cities which has made them into these recognizable organizations. However, it’s not only a form of human craftsmanship, it’s also the city which has shaped us as humans, to the extent that it’s hard to say what came first: our society or our community?
The Medieval Inheritance
As a city within a city, the university was founded for a single purpose: to educate the ignorant. Because of this formal function, the university has to be a specialized society which doesn’t fulfill other needs of the community. But the university receives its purpose within the city from the city which surrounds it. Whatever happens on the university campus is therefore a reflection of the city itself and a contribution to the maintenance of that city.
The word “university” comes from the Latin universitas which means “the whole,” which in medieval Latin came to signify community or society. In the academic sense, this word was a shortening of the phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium which meant a community of masters and scholars.
In the Emilia-Romagna region, in northern Italy, lies the world’s oldest university, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna. Since the year 1088 when it developed out of the spontaneous and informal initiative of a few students tied to the pre-existing Cathedral schools, Bologna has been a center of Italian learning, quickly lending the city its nickname as La Dotta meaning “The Learned.”
All over Europe, where the temples had previously towered over the market squares, bishops erected Catholic churches dedicated to the early apostles to the pagans. Wall to wall with these Cathedrals there grew, almost organically, these Cathedral schools which then developed into the universities. It was a practical solution to the declining Roman municipal education in the late Roman Empire, when the Roman Catholic Church began to establish schools to provide the church with an educated class of clergy and nobility.
When the university campus continues to protect rules and routines which in significant aspects separate it from the rest of urban society, it’s due to the fact that they developed out of schools run by the Catholic Church. They were founded and run by Catholic religious orders, which in time grew so large that they became cities unto themselves. In addition, they were deeply characterized by the medieval culture and the Mediterranean habits of Christendom.
The Rhythm of Academic Life
When modern students follow an hourly regiment that begins with early morning classes and ends in the afternoon, it’s not because they are necessarily brighter and more energized at dawn, or more able to engage in professional or social life at dusk. It’s an open debate within many societies, especially within the northern hemispheres, if these hours are universally beneficial—it’s simply that these hours are a millennial old inheritance from the academic habits of clerics and religious with roots in the Latin world.
There are three reasons why the academic schedule of our Cathedral schools and Catholic universities developed into their particular time zones:
First, since electricity was yet to be discovered by Benjamin Franklin and since Thomas Edison was yet to invent the lightbulb, daylight from the sun had to be utilized to the greatest possible extent.
Second, the path of the Mediterranean sun across the sky produced an early daybreak and an early sunset throughout the year.
Third, the prayer-life and Mass-schedule of the schools and universities could only be planned before and after their academic obligations.
Neighborhoods as Urban Cells
In this manner we can trace the development of our cities in their various layers of cultural heritage and local inheritance. In this manner we can also trace the outline of how the western man and woman has been shaped by our history, building up a European map that’s sprinkled to the brim with urbane villages and small villages within our great cities, in which we can immediately feel at home without needing to study their design.
The more distant their urban foundations, the more intimately they speak to us today. The ancient streets of central Mantova, Italy, the home of Virgil, will quickly bring you over its Roman foundations to the medieval square of Piazza dell’Erbe. There’s practically no temporal distance between antiquity and modernity as children enthusiastically kick a soccer ball over the cobblestones which is constantly disappearing behind the colonnades. Their delighted screams tell you that western history is here and now.
You’ll never lose your way in the adjacent alleyways, for this neighborhood of Mantova isn’t big enough to cause any disorientation, nor modern enough to inculcate any feeling of cultural alienation. It’s only when a city grows so large that the urban plan consists of many competing urban plans, when we notice their archaeological overlap in space and in time, that we can’t see the forest for the trees, or rather, that we can’t see the city for its villages.
The Nested Hierarchy
Within the great caves that we call our cities, there are many smaller caves. Some of the largest cities in the western world, such as London, New York City and Paris, have many smaller parts to them, with unique social, historical and ethnic differences. These areas appear to be so distinct from one another that they’re practically independent areas, causing the visitor to feel connected to either one village or another, while losing track of the city as a unified whole.
As a visitor explores these various recesses and alcoves of the city, it may soon feel rather burdensome to find the heart of the city, even mentally taxing. In contrast, the local citizen enjoys the existential peace he or she experiences behind the invisible walls of the urban neighborhoods.
It’s quite common to meet local citizens of large metropolitan areas who never explore the historical sights or cultural landmarks of their own cities. They often view their homes as too remote from downtown or the historical center. Perhaps they need to walk for half an hour to reach the Cathedral, Temple or City Hall. They appeal to their local neighborhood as their natural habitat, where they live between small lots and tight shops, between their own houses of prayer and their own coffee bars. That’s where they live, where they work, even where they worship. That’s where they mingle with other families, where they have community.
They never really call their metropolis home, because in actuality they live in an adjacent village to their metropolis, which embodies the concept of home for them.
The Principle of Subsidiarity
If we continue to compare our urban centers to human life, our neighborhoods function as cells within the body within the macrocosm of the city, while the city functions as the microcosm within the universal cosmos surrounding all of us. In this perspective, our childhood bedroom may be compared to the smallest part of a Russian Matryoshka Doll, which in this relationship of an object within a similar object has space for the whole world.
This nesting-doll perspective is still how many American children will write their addresses to Santa Claus: Johnny Smith Jr., 201 Main Street, Town of Lewes, Delaware, USA, North America, The American Continent, The Earth, The Universe. This is a correct hierarchical truth which corresponds to the principle of subsidiarity within traditional Catholic social teaching.
Our conception of place and time is developed in similar degrees and steps. It’s a conception born through personal relationships, whether we grow up in a neighborhood or on a countryside farm. Since our perspectives are completely dependent on our original starting points, whether they are Fernandina Beach or Madrid, Mantova or Copenhagen, our conception of place and time must be gradually uncovered, step by step, doll by doll, in life as in our countries.
What This Reveals About Good Cities
This nested structure of cities within cities reveals something crucial about good urban government: the city works best when it respects and preserves these natural hierarchies of belonging. The good city doesn’t flatten everything into one undifferentiated mass. It allows for the university to be its own world, for neighborhoods to maintain their distinct characters, for communities to self-organize around their particular needs and customs.
The bad city, by contrast, imposes uniformity from above. It tries to manage everything from a central authority, ignoring the principle of subsidiarity that places decision-making at the lowest effective level. It destroys neighborhood character in the name of efficiency or progress. It fails to recognize that people don’t primarily belong to “the city” in the abstract—they belong to this street, this block, this parish, this corner café.
Pax et Bonum!
C.W.Höjer
Next: The City as Living Organism—how Rome and Istanbul embody different approaches to urban unity and diversity.