Necropolis means
“a large elaborate cemetery of an ancient city” (www.m-w.com)
The world
necropolis, as used in urban planning and urban design, is referred to the
final phase of urban development, the dead of city. This word was used by Louis
Mumford in his famous work <The city in history> to describe the
evolution of city from the form of polis in ancient Greece to metropolis, megalopolis,
tyrannopolis, parisitopolis and necropolis in the end. Mumford compares city as
a container, with certain volume and capacity. The bigger the city, the worse
it would be. He urges urban development needs to be controlled in a moderate
scale. Otherwise it would implode and end in a graveyard of dust.
The image shows
the debris of Roman Empire. It is not only a
history but also a lesson. (http://www.thejupiter.info/about/author/admin/page/5/)
“From the
standpoint of both politics and urbanism, Rome
remains a significant lesson of what to avoid: its history presents a series of
classic danger signals to warn one when life is moving in the wrong direction.
Wherever crowds gather in suffocating numbers, wherever rents rise steeply and
housing conditions deteriorate, wherever a one-sided exploitation of distant
territories removes the pressure to achieve balance and harmony nearer at hand,
there the precedents of Roman building almost automatically revive, as they
have come back today: the arena, the tall tenement, the mass contests and
exhibitions, the football matches, the international beauty contests, the
strip-tease made ubiquitous by advertisement, the constant titillation of the
senses by sex, liquor, and violence – all in true Roman style. These are
symptoms of the end: magnifications of demoralized power, minifications of
life. When these signs multiply, Necropolis is near, though not a stone has yet
crumbled. For the barbarian has already captured the city from within. Come
hangman! Come vulture!”
cited from book<The City in
History> p242 by Lewis Mumford
