Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism ed. by Georges Farhat (review)

This book is a result of a symposium held on May 5–6, 2017, with the title "Landscapes of Preindustrial Cities," co-organized by Georges Farhat and John Beardsley at Harvard University. This event was sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through their Architecture Urbanism and the Humanities initiative. In the preface to the book, John Beardsley expressed, "What we need next … was a still deeper history of urban formation, in yet wider geographical and cultural contexts, one that might explore the origins of city building in preindustrial societies and begin to reveal whether the relationships of these early cities to their landscapes were similar to or different from more recent urbanism" (ix). Unlike recent books on urbanism in the preindustrial world (Smith, 2003; Storey, 2006; Marcus & Sabloff, 2008; Zuiderhoek, 2016), Farhat's edited book is much more geographically focused versus sociologically or anthropologically focused, although these perspectives are addressed. For previous reviews of Smith (2003), Storey (2006), and Marcus and Sabloff (2008), see the three-book review by Yoffee (2009).

A note about the editor: Farhat is a licensed architect and landscape historian with degrees from French universities, including a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His research is at the nexus between territorial organization and design, addressing historical optics, historiographical perspectives, and epistemology of landscape and organism. There are nine other contributing authors. Farhat wrote the introductory chapter, "Bridging Remote Sensing and World Views," which is followed by three major parts: Earthworks, Waterscapes, and Forestry, with several essay chapters in each part.

Farhat's introductory essay addresses the nexus between technologies and environments in preindustrial urban landscapes. In defining the urban landscape and its scope, the author maintains that in this book, the contributing authors have used a more inclusive historical and less anthropological approach so that landscape is considered in specific historical, technical, and environmental frameworks. Farhat proceeds to address foundational questions of how geographers, historians, and archeologists look at regional scale patterns in analyzing past landscape urbanization. He notes the use of remote sensing in revealing previously unseen settlement patterns plus the role of geoarcheology and historical ecology. Last, the introduction includes a discussion of different worldviews and their influence on research approaches to preindustrial urbanization.

In the next section of the book, Earthworks, three essays address the role of ground material and structures such as substrate, outcrops, soils, earth moving, leveling, and terracing, plus topographic construction affecting preindustrial settlement spatial organization. The chapters include early Mesopotamian space and structure, medieval Rome landscape change along two major linear ways, and the Greater Cahokia upper complex along the Mississippi River. All three essays examine landscape change over time using historical and archeological research tools. The essay on the Greater Cahokia Native American urbanization is a bit different because of the "mediation between human's affective experience, spiritual force and climate induced watery transition" (20).

Part II, Waterscape, covers ways that urban pre-industrial landscapes are shaped by water as life-giving energy source or flooding threat. The essays in this section address water harvesting and distribution in different climates plus environment variability and management issues. There are four essays, which address Roman-influenced hydrologic landscapes, monsoon-influenced preindustrial Indian communities, the Phnom Kulen capital in ancient Cambodia, and the transition of what is considered nature in a historic temple in India. The first three essays focus on historical hydrologic relationships in preindustrial settlements, and the last one, by Priyalean Singh, is much more philosophical from a cultural ecology perspective.

Part III, Forestry, focuses on preindustrial settlements in forested landscape where remote sensing and geoecology approaches are meshed with ethno-ecology and political ecology. There are two essays: the garden city concept applied to early Amazon settlements, and the role of politics and slavery on the development of preindustrial urban settlements of tropical West Africa.

In the epilogue, Thaison Way stresses that we need to understand possible forms and organizational relationships of preindustrial urban landscape from...