This is a study of the growth of cities in four regions over the past 4,000 years. The authors discuss changes in the relationship between political/military power, economic power, and city systems with special attention to the rise of European hegemony and the subsequent rise of East Asian world cities. They compare East Asian urban growth with the original heartland of cities in West Asia and North Africa, as well as Europe and the subcontinent of South Asia. This reveals the trajectories of city growth and decline and the relative importance of the different regions over time. And they re-examine the hypothesis of synchronicities of city growth and decline across distant regions as the Afro-Eurasian world system became more and more integrated.
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