Category: Historic Cities

Articles Galleries Historic Cities India Indonesia Japan Netherlands Networked Cities Physical Geography Short Films Singapore / Malaysia

Multi-cultural communities and global trade from 1500-1900

ARTICLE

Honeycombers Editorial, 3 Feb 2017

Centuries before the proliferation of social media, networks of people, cultures, and information flowed freely between port cities such as Batavia (Jakarta) in Indonesia, Goa in India, Canton (now Guangzhou) in China, and, of course, Singapore. Spawned by advances in ship technology and knowledge of sea routes, these cities were thriving, cosmopolitan hubs of trade. They’re great examples of early globalisation and the hodgepodge – or “rojak” – of ethnicities, language, culture, lifestyles, and fashion.

For short films about the Port Cities exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore click here for a presentation on the life of Cornelia van Nijenroode, and here for another on the Indian Chettiars of Saigon.

Articles Codes, Density & Urban Form Economists Historic Cities Mega Cities Modernist Cities Urbanisation

Mapping the ‘Urban Fingerprints’ of Cities

ARTICLE

Linda Poon, City Lab, Sep 11, 2015

The most valuable visual information that these maps convey is the density of a particular area. Planned right, a dense city can be a positive environment for productivity. Griffiths explains that the clustering effect creates “agglomeration economies.” “If you cluster a whole lot of people close to each other, with skills that aren’t necessarily the same,” he says, “you get opportunities for new creations.”