■ Direction You have 20 minutes to plan and write your response. You response will be judge on the basis of The quality of writing and on how well your response presents the points in the lecture and the relationship to the reading passage. Typically, an effective response will be 150 to 225 words.
■ Question Summarize the points made in the lecture you just heard, explaining how they cast doubt on the points made in the reading

To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

Throughout human history, cities have been a central place for a society’s political, economic, and cultural developments. It is not without reasons that Rome symbolizes the grandeur of the ancient empire just as Paris represents the 19th century glamor, and New York, the contemporary ideals. A society is an congregation of people with distinctively common characteristics, and a city incubates its specific paradigm and culture of the people based on their uniquely shared ideals. Therefore it is undoubtedly the major city onto which a society’s political, economic, and cultural ideals culminate and spatialize, and hence it offers an exciting site of scholarship in understanding essential aspects of the society to which it belongs.

Political ideology of a specific historical and geographic context regards how people of the time and place conceptualize the ideals of living together as a community; often, these essential ideas of a society as to how to live as a group are epitomized and even spatialized into mapping of its major cities. Rome, for example, follows a circular hub logic, where community centers serve as intermediary centers that spread throughout the town. The residential buildings of the city are located on the circular grid that surrounds multiple center points that are public buildings such as political, economic, and academic institutions of the ruling class. Even the contemporary example of Beijing exhibits a similar quality that addresses the centrality of the governing institution. The congress, plaza, and other public political institutions are located within the central ring of Beijing, whereas financial, economic, and academic institutions are located within the 1st to the third inner rings that surround the center, and most residential areas on the fourth to the fifth. Sheer studying of organization and planning of the city reveals political priorities of a society.

Studying the city can reveal economic ideals in a similar manner: Industrial revolution has further shifted significance of urban settlings into a higher priority for societies as the cities serve as important sites of production and consumption. Early industrialism focused on efficient distribution of labor and resources, which necessitated condensation of capital ranging from physical assets to human labor. The urban landscape of the 19th century New York reveals the economic paradigm of the American society at the time: such names as meatpacking district, the garment district, and financial district all reflect the society’s priority to distribute resources, labor, and economic activities as efficiently as possible. To achieve comparative advantage was the heralded ideal, and the city mapped out the collective thinking on its body. The very square grid logic of the city, with its impersonal naming of the first to two-hundredth streets, demonstrates the society’s focus on efficiency, all the while rectilinear buildings amplify the promulgated industrialism.

Upon the density and symbolism of its major cities, a society exhibits unique cultural developments on the basis of the political-economic centrality of the place. While the intimate relationship between urbanity and culture is a hackneyed imagery, it is also a natural progression that arises out of dense congregation of people. Art progresses where political economic patronage is present, which often takes place in major cities where politics and economics flourish. It is not coincidental that Paris, the capital of France, then a major political-economic power, hosted a myriad of leading artists worldwide in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and the center of art shifted to New York in the post-war era when the United States arose as the hegemonic power. France and the U.S. differ in their aesthetics, sentiments, and ideology, and studying cities of the leading nations shows these differences. Parisian cafés of the early 20th century will demonstrate manifestos of French modern arts and their ideals of Modernism while galleries in Chelsea and SOHO of New York will lead to artistically epitomized characteristics unique to contemporary American society.

The saying goes that all roads lead to Rome. Although trite, truism carries a certain universal truth value. Centrality of major cities city in relation to political, economic, and cultural developments of a society is as clichéd as manifest in humanity throughout historical periods and geographic borders. As post-industrial globalization further progresses, the ideas major cities epitomize of their respective society are becoming more and more significant than ever. To understand the significance of cities to our collective living and better shape their future course--that is the task at hand. 

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An afterthought:

Now I've read the prompt again, I feel like I should have included why the statement may not be true as I only supported the claim of the prompt (I guess I felt as though the burden was on my side to prove as I agree.) Would this be a problem in scoring high if I do not discuss counter-claims?