Die Stadt im Werden

Archaeology tells us that the first cities emerged more than ten millennia ago in the wake of the agricultural revolution. Why did human societies opt for this dense and technically complex way of living, which always presupposes the exploitation of labor? We can attempt an answer by showing that every city is three-dimensional: it is a monument, a machine, and a network. 
What is the state of humanity’s urbanization? What remains of the city as a form of public space in the age of the virtual world? What does it mean to live with our fellow human beings in these built complexes, which are first and foremost places of subjective experience and which, straddling the public and the private, accommodate communal life—whose original forms and diversity have always been expressed by the street?