THE CITY AS A MEDIEVAL COMMERCIAL SETTLEMENT: THE URBAN AIR MAKES YOU FREE
Historically, the city as an independent phenomenon is the result of the specialization of labor. In the 9th and 13th centuries cities were separated from villages as places where artisans and church hierarchs lived. Cities emerge as centers of trade and craft production (Tilly, 2009). It is worth noting that the city in the modern sense is a historically contingent phenomenon that is about a thousand years old. Moreover, during these years most of humanity lived in villages, and it was not until 2006 that city dwellers began to be more numerous[7].
It was in the Middle Ages that the city began to demonstrate social distinctions: it became the center of trade, administration, religious and social life (Svanidze, 1999). Residents moved from the village to the city also for the reason that there was a legal custom "The urban air makes you free" (Gurevich, 2005). It meant that a serf was liberated after several years of life in the city. Cities were created on someone’s land – the land of a feudal lord, monarch, or church. Simultaneously with the formation of the urban system came the communal movement. It was a struggle of the urban community (commune) against their liege lord. The ideal city of the Middle Ages is artistically and metaphysically typified by the City of God without a concrete image of the urban layout.
THE CITY OF INDUSTRIALIZATION: SHEEP DEVASTATE CITIES
The industrialization would alter a medieval city very much. Industrial buildings and new social classes appeared in its center. The period of transition from the medieval to the modern city saw the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. In it he strongly criticized contemporary industrialization and the negative effects it had on the community: "Your sheep… be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves." Here More describes the practice of enclosing farmland as pasture for wool production, which accompanied the creation of the cloth industry in Britain – the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The enclosures damaged the economic well-being of the peasants, their culture and customs.
Thomas More’s Utopia used Plato’s ideas. In contrast to the emerging industrial society, the agrarian family community was taken as the basis of the ideal city – the city included individual households propagating their craft skills. More’s Utopia is known for then-sensational proposal of abolishing private property and achieving complete uniformity, ultimately ending up in having identical clothes and dwellings. The square city is centrally crossed by a river with cultural and public buildings along its banks.