Chapter 9 - Consuming the Earth in Cities of Light … and Delight

Summary

Chapter 9 of Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet explores cities’ role as creators and creations of the first world religions, of new “scientific” knowledge of the Earth, including its cities, and a global consumer culture based on goods sourced from urban hinterlands that spanned all continents for the first time. It also explores the expanding consequences of the earliest years of Earthopolis as a truly planetary Urban Planet. These included the first global pandemics of disease and the expansion of human destruction of the habitats of other life forms, including those of the World Oceans so crucial to the period’s expansion of urban-enabled human actions, habitats, and impacts.