CITIES THROUGH TIME

Abstract

This paper presents a historical growth and development of cities, primarily from the perspective of the famous Greek scientist and urbanist C. A. Doxiadis, but also the other scientists such as Z. Gotman, L. Mumford, A. Toynbee, C. Kostic. Firstly, the small and static cities of the past in which the man was free, happy and satisfied are described. Those cities were made suit for a man. Then follows the display of the growth of cities, both in terms of population and their spatial dimensions. The contemporary, dynamic, large and irrational city with big problems is being developed. The man in this kind of city is becoming less free and more alienated. The tempo of the growth of the cities is unstoppable, due to whitch, in the second third of the 20th century appeared megalopolises. The paper presents various definitions of the megalopolis, but also points out what was in common in those determinations - the notion that in the megalopolis are facing huge problems and that the state in them is becoming increasingly complicated. The final section of the paper presents the Doxiadis’s assumptions about the characteristics of the cities of the future and his anticipation of the merger of megalopolises into one single universal world city - Ecumenopolis.