COMMENTARY : More Like Athens Than You Think

When I used to teach Greek drama at USC, I sometimes asked the class to imagine an ancient Athens roughly the size of Glendale. The comparison usually managed to draw a few easy laughs, no doubt because of the unexpected, and even oxymoronic, pairing of two cities separated by such distance and time. I never pursued the parallels, and just as well, since students have absorbed enough misleading information by the time they reach college.

Yet here I was again thinking of ancient cities and former civilizations the other day when I read the conclusions of a survey that the firm of Silny, Rosenberg conducted recently about public attitudes toward Glendale.

The majority of citizens claim to be well satisfied with their hometown; in fact about 70% of the respondents think Glendale is the best place to live in Southern California.

But on closer examination, the study reveals that satisfaction is not rising with the benefits of progress. Back in 1983, 70% rated the quality of life in Glendale “excellent” or “very good;” but only 35% did in this recent survey. About two-thirds consider the rapid rise in population as the chief problem facing their city.

Glendale added 41,000 people during the go-go ‘80s, almost as many as in the 30 previous years. In the ‘70s, the increase was 6,000. The decline in satisfaction can be related directly to an almost 600% jump in the rate of population growth from one decade to the next. The last census made Glendale the 92nd most populous city in the United States, ahead of such places as Spokane or Tacoma in Washington, or Ft. Wayne, Ind. No wonder some old-time residents have been complaining about losing that “small-town feeling.”

These figures brought to mind the debates in ancient Athens and elsewhere about how large a city should be allowed to grow before the advantages associated with city life begin to be outweighed by the drawbacks. Through many centuries of civic evolution a simple formula governed the size of ancient and medieval towns: If you couldn’t hear the town crier from one end of town to the other, the place had grown too big.

Hippodamas, an early Greek town planner, considered a citizenry of 10,000 sufficient. He thought a third should be engaged in agriculture, another third in the crafts, with the remainder ready to defend the city. By no coincidence, Athens in about 500 BC had 10,800 households, which means a real population of about 50,000, or twice as many, counting slaves and foreigners.

But as their city-state grew into an international metropolis three times that size, Athenians keenly felt the loss of intimate political and social ties. In reaction, Plato conceived his ideal Republic around a ruling class of only 5,040 citizens.

His pupil Aristotle, whose scientific views accommodated the concept of organic growth, joked that 10 people might be too few to start a city-state but that 100,000 was far too many to govern. He thought that one should be able to take in the entire city in a single view. This was possible from a high point such as the Acropolis, dominating Athens rather as Forest Lawn looms above Glendale.

Self-sufficiency was one of the key political ideals of the city-states. To feed themselves, they controlled large areas of the surrounding countryside. Ancient Corinth, for instance, possessed an area about 10 times the size of Glendale’s 30.59 square miles; still, it was considered important that any farmer or shepherd could reach the civic center within a day’s walk.

Most American towns until the middle of the 19th Century were built on similar principles. Their radius rarely extended beyond two miles, so that one could walk anywhere in less than half an hour. Today’s cities sprawl to serve the automobile, but we still consider 30 or 40 minutes a reasonable commute.

There is a large difference, however, in our attitudes toward cities. The Greeks and Romans founded theirs for a limited number of people who could interact, play or work in settlements on a human scale. They had an ideal of what a city needs to be. American cities were deliberately designed--when they were--to accommodate undefined and indefinite growth.

When Americans no longer liked what they built, they simply moved on. Joel Garreau, in his recent book “Edge Cities,” asserts that we have not constructed a city from the ground up with a conventional downtown for 75 years. Instead, we are creating Edge Cities, which grow up on the margins of discarded towns. “It is common for a first-generation Edge City to arise 10 miles from an old downtown,” Garreau writes, “and a next-generation one 20 miles beyond that, only to attract workers from distances 45 minutes beyond that.”

There were 200 such Edge Cities in America by 1990, with Southern California leading the way.

Though Garreau does not say it, Glendale, founded 85 years ago, was probably the prototype of such an Edge City when Los Angeles began bursting at her seams, just as Glendale is doing now. Citizens still support development and limited growth. But they do not like the resulting alienation from their civic institutions and their fellow citizens.

The Athenians, confronted by the same problems, debated the fundamental purpose of a democratic community: what is best for the city, not just the individual. The Glendale survey suggests that a similar rethinking is under way now, at least beneath the surface. All to the good, if the citizens opt to retain the best part of living in an Edge City--being on the leading edge.