Index
All 21 cities.
◇ Antiquity
−3000 → 500 CE
- c. 3500 BCE — 1600 BCE· Tigris–Euphrates basinMesopotamia (Uruk · Ur · Nippur)Where civilization first wrote itself down.
- c. 1800 BCE — 539 BCE· Lower MesopotamiaBabylonThe first scientific bureaucracy.
- c. 500 BCE — 320 BCE· AegeanAthensThe institutional invention of public reason.
- 331 BCE — c. 640 CE· Egyptian MediterraneanAlexandriaThe first state-funded research city.
- c. 100 BCE — 476 CE (West)· Italian peninsulaRomeCivil engineering as a form of empire.
- 202 BCE — 907 CE (Han · Tang peaks)· Wei River basinChang'an (Xi'an)The eastern terminus of antiquity's longest network.
- c. 1000 BCE — 600 CE (multiple capital periods)· Yellow River basinLuoyangThe cosmological center of the Middle Kingdom.
◇ Medieval
500 → 1450
◇ Mercantile
1450 → 1700
◇ Industrial
1700 → 1900
- c. 1700 — c. 1914· Thames estuaryLondonThe empire that printed money for two centuries.
- c. 1780 — c. 1900· Northwest EnglandManchesterThe first city built by industry rather than for it.
- c. 1750 — c. 1914· Seine basinParisThe capital of state-rationalist science.
- c. 1810 — 1933· Brandenburg plainBerlinThe world's leading research university, until it wasn't.
◇ Atomic & Digital
1900 → 2000
- c. 1900 — present· Hudson estuaryNew YorkThe 20th century's clearing-house.
- c. 1860 — present· New EnglandBostonThe university-as-economy city.
- 1943 — 1946 (Manhattan Project) · ongoing· New MexicoLos AlamosThe first compute-civilization city.
- 1925 — c. 1984 (peak)· New JerseyBell Labs (Murray Hill)The most productive research lab in human history.
- c. 1955 — present· San Francisco BaySilicon ValleyThe first venture-funded research region.
- c. 1975 — present· Pacific NorthwestSeattleThe platform-software capital.
- c. 1950 — present· Kanto PlainTokyoThe postwar engineering city that almost replaced America.
◇ Networked
2000 → 2030
- 1980 — present· Pearl River DeltaShenzhenThe fastest urban civilization in history.
- c. 2000 — present· North China PlainBeijingThe political-AI center of the second-largest research economy on earth.
- 1980 — present· TaiwanHsinchu (TSMC)The most strategically important small city on earth.
- c. 1970 — present· Korean peninsulaSeoulThe memory and display capital.
- c. 1965 — present· Strait of MalaccaSingaporeThe neutral node of the Pacific century.
- c. 2000 — present· Persian GulfDubaiThe first sovereign-AI city of the 2020s.