How Defensive Fortifications Shaped Cities

Dave Munson provides a history of how defensive fortifications shaped cities. Starting with early settlements built on hills in Syria, the discussion shifts to citadels, like in Iraq and other places, to outer walls, like those in many cities in Germany.

Eventually the discussion focuses on star-shaped fortifications, meant to deflect cannon fire, such as Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh and Fort Hill in Baltimore. According to Munson, there was one age of warfare in particular that reversed the millennia long trends of cities providing protection from the violence of war: " The nuclear era was the first time that the incentive for defense actually pushed people out of cities. When you have a single weapon that can kill hundreds of thousands in an instant and level an entire city, urban areas start to look less like refuges and more like targets."