What makes a city or town aesthetically pleasing? Places such as Prague, Florence and Santorini are famous for their picturesque cityscape. Instead of specific famous buildings or tourist spots, postcards from these areas could just show any part of the city and they would still be beautiful. What sets these places apart? How is it that despite all our technological development, modern cities can’t compare to the beauty of cities that are hundreds or thousands of years old?
Korean architect Yoo Hyun-Joon proposes a theory regarding two factors: material and shape. Consider the following matrix using the two:
Out of these four, the combination that we find the most beautiful is when a city has simple materials but complex shape. For example, Santorini is made only of stone buildings painted white and blue. But because it is built on a volcano, the ground is uneven and the building shapes differ to accommodate for this. Florence is almost entirely made of bricks. Traditional Korean houses were made only of wood. This is because in the old days, due to labour costs and poor logistics, cities were usually built with materials abundant in the surrounding area. Instead of varying materials, architects would challenge the limit of materials with varied shapes.
Nowadays, thanks to trade and globalisation, it is much easier to obtain materials from all over the world such as glass, concrete and steel. Furthermore, we can use industrial vehicles to change the terrain to flatten the ground and we use tall rectangular buildings to maximise space. Thus, we end up with the ugly, chaotic combination of many materials and simple shape.
The solution to making a beautiful city is simple then – create a building restriction that unifies the building material to one. A good example is Newbury Street in Boston, USA. This shopping district is famous for its classy red brick appearance, thanks to a building restriction that ensures every new shop built on the street must have the side of the building facing the street built using red bricks.
Of course, just unifying the building material to any one thing does not solve the issue. For example, cities made of only concrete rarely are as appealing. What is important is to use local materials that best represent the context of the city and the land it was built on.
An ancient Greek philosopher named Plutarch pondered this scenario. Imagine that the Greek hero Theseus was to repair his ship after a long journey by replacing broken parts with new timber. If he was to embark on so many journeys and repair his ship so much that all of the original material that made the ship were replaced, is that ship still the same ship of Theseus?
This is an interesting philosophical question where some may argue that the ship is still, by definition, the “ship of Theseus” while some may argue that it is no longer the same ship Theseus once owned, but merely a replacement.
Although it is hard to grasp the significance of this question when using an analogy of ancient Greek heroes and ships, it comes closer to home in the field of biology. It is a known fact that the human body is under constant change; cells divide to produce a new lineage of fresh cells while shedding away old, dead cells. Different cells turnover at different rates; skin is almost completely replaced every 4~6 weeks, the lining of the gut is turned over every 4~6 days, while brain cells are almost never replaced (but contrary to popular belief, they can regenerate). If this is the case, are you the same “you” as you were a year ago when the majority of your skin and gut cells were technically “different” (but genetically identical) cells to what they are now? Or are you simply a replacement shell for your brain?
A simpler way of thinking about this would be to consider the case of clones: are clones the “same” as their originals?
The paradox of the ship of Theseus can be extended into a larger scale. Consider a large city like New York. If we were to assume that all of the inhabitants of a city are replaced over a hundred years, then is that city still “New York”? Not only would it looks different because of its new buildings and whatnot, but the people that make up the culture and substance of the city would be completely changed. However, New York is still called “New York” just as it was in the early 1900’s. So is the modern day New York still New York or New New York?
A natural world is a world of curved lines while a man-made one is a world of straight lines.
Mountains, trees, valleys, rivers, rocks… all of these have curved edges. Apartments, buildings, desks, cellphones… everything in a city has straight edges.
Those with life are curved and those that are dead are straight. But whether it be a city or the countryside, a person is curved.
How many friends can a person have? Believe it or not, science has solved this question. An anthropologist called Robin Dunbar studied various societies, tribes and primate groups to determine how many members a group can have to maintain stability. He discovered that the ideal size for a group of humans was about 150.
What happens if there are more than 150 people in a group? This is easily explained by the following thought experiment. Imagine that you have a friend called Mr. White. Add a personality to him – flesh him out as a person. Next, you make another friend called Mr. Red. Then Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Maroon… At a certain point, you will no longer remember the name or personality of your “friend” and not even care about that person. This is the limit set by our brains – known as Dunbar’s number, or more colloquially the Monkeysphere.
Any person outside of this Monkeysphere is not of your concern. Once you saturate your brain with 150 relationships, the brain ceases to care about other people. Interestingly, the Monkeysphere is directly related to the size of the neocortex (the part of the brain responsible for higher order thinking). For example, most monkeys can only operate in troupes of 50 or so.
The Monkeysphere can be defined as the group of people that you conceptualise as “people”. Because of this limitation, we are physiologically incapable of caring about everyone in the world. For example, we are highly unlikely to be concerned about the welfare of the janitor at work compared to a loved one. As politically incorrect it may be, the brain sees the janitor as “the object that cleans the building” rather than a human being. You may “care” about the janitor in the sense that you greet him in the corridor, but there is a limit to this. This effect actually explains quite well why society is dysfunctional in general.
Because we do not see people outside the Monkeysphere as “people”, they mean less to us. Stalin once said that “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”. Similarly, the death of a family member is devastating but 10,000 people dying in a foreign country from war does not have the same emotional effect. Furthermore, if a stranger was to die in front of your eyes, you would still not be nearly as devastated as the death of someone you are close to.
Also, as we do not feel connected to these “outsiders”, we are much more prone to act rude or aggressively. For example, one may insult other drivers with the most colourful words on the road, but would (hopefully) never say those words to a friend.
This expands to a greater scale in the context of survival. We are wired to put the need of the members of our Monkeysphere ahead of those outside of it. Thus, we would not steal from our friends but openly evade taxes as we see the government and others as a cold, faceless body. It does not occur to us that through our actions, we are harming other human beings. The same applies to our view of corporations; despite being made up of real people, we only see them as heartless machines actively conspiring against us.
What if the scale was then expanded to countries? If we do not see a person on the other side of the road as a human being, it is extremely unlikely we would register a foreigner as one. This explains why racism and stereotyping is so common in human societies. Although liberal-minded people would like to believe that we should treat every human being like we treat our mothers, our brain is incapable of it. In fact, it is much more likely we would see those people as acting against our interests by “stealing jobs” and so forth. Thus, racism is a hard-wired behaviour to protect the best interest of our Monkeysphere.
We have established that it is impossible to worry about the seven billion strangers in this world. This brings us to an important point: it is just as impossible to make “them” interested in “you”. It is a cold, hard fact that if you are outside of their Monkeysphere, people will not care about you. Ergo, they treat you badly, put you down, steal from you and downright ignore you. In fact, cognitive dissonance means you are even less likely to care for people outside the Monkeysphere as your brain actively rejects people from getting closer to your Monkeysphere, exceeding the preset limit of 150 people. This is why propaganda always focusses on dehumanising the enemy and why people seeking votes and attention pull at sympathy strings – to try get as close to your Monkeysphere as possible.
Many people will lament how we are not monkeys and the Monkeysphere does not apply to us. We have laws, ethics and “humanity”. However, we cannot escape our primitive psychological behaviours and this is reflected in societies filled with crime, unhappiness and a general disinterest in people not related to yourself. This is why city-dwellers tend to be less friendly than villagers, as there are too many people to fit in one, happy Monkeysphere. In fact, monkeys may have more functional societies than us because they hardly ever exceed their own Monkeyspheres (which may also explain why they rarely have wars). The same can be said of tribes and villages of the past.
Ironically, the development of society has been based around working around the limitations of the Monkeysphere – a theoretically ideal society. By living in larger groups, humans can achieve greater feats such as industries and large-scale economies. Although we suffer the consequences of racism and crime, we have become very effective in survival.
Economics is based on the Monkeysphere too. As we only care about our Monkeysphere, there is no reason for us to be concerned about the needs of others. So when a system such as communism forces us to share our bananas, we become infuriated that we have to give up our bananas to people we do not know. But in capitalism, every individual can pick bananas for just ourselves and those we care about. The system thrives as each Monkeysphere acts dynamically and everyone is happy. This is the concept of the invisible hand that is the foundation of modern economics.
But still, the concept of countries means that we have to share the burden of millions of people we do not care about in the form of taxes and civil duties. This makes us unhappy. So what can we do?
Firstly, realise that you are to others what others are to you. If you find a certain person on television as annoying and irrational, chances are that someone else sees you in that light. You are limited to your Monkeysphere of 150 people and people outside of it are in their own Monkeyspheres.
Secondly, understand that no one is special. There are no heroes or perfect beings. Everyone is a human being and prone to making mistakes and acting “human”. Therefore, we cannot idolise people and be disappointed by their actions. This also means that you cannot judge another person and consider their words and actions as insignificant, as they are just as human as you.
Lastly, never simplify things. The world is not simple. It cannot be generalised as one happy village with everyone living happily in harmony. It is a composite of a massive number of different Monkeyspheres, all concerned with their own well-being and not caring about anything else.
Remember the words that Charles Darwin spoke to his assistant, Jeje Santiago: “Jeje, we are the monkeys”. As much as we would like to think that we are higher-order beings, we are simple creatures of habit and behaviour limited by our Monkeysphere.
In 305 BC, Demetrius I of Macedon waged war with the island of Rhodes, now known as the siege of Rhodes. During this siege, Demetrius utilised a superweapon that is, to this day, the largest siege tower ever built – the Helepolis. Helepolis loosely translates to “destroyer of cities”, which is interesting as Demetrius’ nickname was Poliorcetes, or “The Besieger” in ancient Greek. In short, Demetrius was set to raze Rhodes or wipe it off the map.
The Helepolis lived up to its name: designed by Polyidus of Thessaly, it was 40m high (about 13 stories), 20m wide, weighed 160 tons and had a crew of 3400 people. It had eight wheels, each 3.7m high, and had compound wheels that allowed it to move side-to-side. The 3400 men both pushed the tower and worked a belt system that moved the wheels forward. The entire structure was clad in iron plates, making it completely arrowproof and fireproof.
Its armament was just as impressive. One face of the tower was covered in windows, with each concealing a catapult that could hurl heavy objects at the target. The first floor had a pair of catapults that could hurl 80kg projectiles (about the weight of a refrigerator) and one that launched 30kg projectiles. The second floor had three 30kg catapults and the third to eighth floor had ten 15kg catapults in total. Lastly, the roof had four dart throwers which could clear any defenders on the top of castle walls. Essentially, the tower had both the ultimate defensive and offensive capabilities.
Of course, there was no chance the Rhodians could stand a face-off with such a behemoth. So instead, they came up with a cunning plan that exploited the huge size of the Helepolis. The night before the siege began, the Rhodians channelled the water and sewage coming out of the city into the area they expected the attack to come from to create a vast area of mud and bog. When the Helepolis stormed in for the offensive, it immediately started sinking in the mire. Knowing that no amount of horses and men could pull the structure out of the mud, the soldiers abandoned the superweapon without even using it once.
Ultimately, the siege of Rhodes failed (largely due to the failure of Helepolis) and the Rhodians took apart the Helepolis, melted the iron plates and used it to build the Colossus of Rhodes (one of the Seven Ancient Wonders).
When asked “name a bird you see often”, most city-dwellers would name a pigeon or a sparrow. These two birds are the most famous urban birds that are closely associated to humans. The sparrow, being very opportunistic and adaptable, have easily taken over environments around the globe, especially those where European settlements were made. Nowadays, they are regarded as a pest due to their foraging of agricultural crop and the spread of disease. However, citizens still view them in a positive light, especially in parks or gardens where the sparrows appear to be a “symbol of nature” (ironically, they are likely an invading species driving away native birds).
One interesting fact regarding sparrows that most people do not seem to know is how to differentiate a male and female sparrow. A female sparrow has very soft, brown feathers, with no marked features. A male sparrow has areas of dark brown or black feathers, especially on the head and eyes. Its beak is also darker than the female. If one observes carefully at sparrows, they can notice that the two behave slightly differently as well.
A few years ago, a theoretical physicist studied population growth in cities to find the mechanism of how cities operate. What he found was an astonishing law. Wherever the city, as the population doubled in size, the average income, number of patents, number of educational and research facilities and other important numbers all increased around 15 percent. Although it is normal for such statistics to increase as a city grows, it is interesting to see that almost all of them increasing at a similar rate, despite being so different sometimes. More fascinating is the fact that not only do the above “good” statistics increase equally, but so do crime rates, pollution, smog occurrence, stomach flu and AIDS prevalence all increase approximately 15 percent. Therefore, a city can be seen as a double-edge sword that is both the source of fast growth, wealth and ideas, but also waste, pollution, stress and disease.
Biologically speaking, an organism has a tendency to have slower growth and pace of life as it gets larger. For instance, an elephant’s heart beats slower than a mouse, and its cells do less work on average too. However, a city exhibits a snowball effect where it grows faster as it gets larger. To achieve this extremely high rate of growth, it must consume an immense amount of resources, which ultimately ends up as large quantities of waste and pollution. Also, as people get busier, the overall “quality” of the society falls, leading to increased stress and disease prevalence.
If so, should we abandon our current productivity and live a slow, village life and ignore our potential as a species? Or should we continue our exponential growth at the cost of using up nature’s well-maintained resources like no tomorrow?
