Our objective is to display the city as a human achievement which appeared, spread and intensified over the last ten millennia. All the most admirable and desirable achievements have been intensified in the city, as have the worst horrors. The limitations of human expression and communication compel me to carve this mass of time and space into manageable, communicable portions, although every dissection violates reality. The theory of modes of production adumbrated by Marx is developed into a scheme of divisions which economically maximizes illumination and minimizes distortion.

The process of writing drummed in cumulatively the overwhelming sense that the fate of the majority of human beings has been continually glossed over and travestied, for the obvious reason that those providing the record had contrary interests which affected their selection and focus. The loftiest minds have thus been compromised.

Our basis of selection was to include all urban cultures which seemed to offer doors to progress in the well-being of humankind. In his sample Toynbee chose only ‘some particular phase of each city's history that has been great in the sense that it has made a mark on the subsequent history of civilization’ (1967:5). When an urban culture ceases to offer this I cease to follow it. Greek cities offered a new way in which a substantial minority achieved cultural enlightenment. Though it was at the expense of women and the majority of men its presentation offered aspirations to men and women which have never been lost. Christ's ministry is recorded mostly in the countryside, but the culmination and sequel had to be in the city.