TOWN PLANNING

HELLENISTIC CITY

In order to understand a Hellenistic City one must first understand where the word Hellenistic is derived from. Hellenistic is derived from the Greek's own self described name "Hellens", in other words it means Greek. It is mostly used to describe Ancient Greek History and Culture. Hellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BC to about 146 BC. Hellenistic civilization was preceded by the Classical Hellenic period, and followed by Roman rule over the areas Greece had earlier dominated. The spread of Hellenistic cultures was sparked by the conquests of Alexander the Great. After his ventures of the Persian Empire, Hellenistic kingdoms were established throughout southwest Asia and north-east Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to these new realms and moreover Greek colonists themselves. Hellenistic civilization thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and Southwest Asia and a departure from earlier Greek attitudes towards "barbarian" cultures. The Hellenistic periods was characterized by a new wave of Greek which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. Those new cities were composed of Greek colonists who came from different parts of the Greek world. The main cultural centers expanded from mainland Greece to Pergamon, Rhodes, and new Greek colonies such as Seleucia, Antioch and Alexandria. This mixture of Greek-speakers gave birth to a common Attic-based dialect, known as Hellenistic Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world.

Difference between a Hellenistic City and a Utopian City support with example and sketches.

Utopian City is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio, political and legal system. The word was coined in Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature.

Map of Utopia

view approaching utopia

The Main difference between a Hellenistic City and a Utopian City is that Utopian City is a myth. There is no such evidence of the city existing. The city is an image of the perfect world in which every person wishes to live in. Hellenistic city is the city raised by Alexander the Great, yet as we see in history every city has its glory and fall. In the case of Alexander the great the same occurs.

HELLENISTIC CITY

UTOPIAN CITY

Time period Time period The word Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th Utopian City concepts in the 20th Century century concept; the idea of a Hellenistic period did and continues in 21st century. not exist in Ancient Greece. Art and Cultural Art and Cultural This period experienced 20th-century art and what it became prosperity and progress in known as modern art really began the decorative and visual arts , exploration , with modernism in the late 19th century. literature, sculpture, theatre, architecture, music, mat Futurism incorporated the depiction of hematics, and science. movement and machine age imagery. The Hellenistic era experienced an age of eclecticism, a new awakening of the diverse knowledge and theories present in Greek culture. Instead of contemplating and debating ideals, logic, extinguished emotion, or consummate beauty, people would explore and analyze reality. Political and Social The contradictions between the political and socioeconomic development of society account for the contradictory quality of Hellenistic art, which combines rationalism and expressionism, skepticism and emotionality, an elegiac quality with a profound sense of drama, and archaism and innovation. Political and Social Peter Green, on the other hand, writes from the point of view of late 20th century liberalism, his focus being on individualism, the breakdown of convention, experiments and a postmodern disillusionment with all institutions and political processes. Architecture The most common characteristics of 20th century , International Style buildings are rectilinear forms; light, taut plane surfaces that have been completely stripped of applied ornamentation and decoration; open interior spaces; and a visually weightless quality engendered by the use of cantilever construction. Glass and steel, in combination with usually less visible reinforced concrete, are the characteristic materials of construction.

Architecture The Hellenistic cities, notably Alexandria in Egypt, Dura-Europos, Pergamum, Priene, and Seleucia, were generally laid out in a gridiron plan; their visual character was in large part determined by large colonnades that ran along the main streets and by one- and two-story colonnaded stoas, which either stood independently around the perimeter of the agora or formed part of a building. The centers of the cities were dominated by royal palaces, assembly halls (bouleuteria andekklesiasteria), theaters, and temples.

List down the contribution of Alexander the Great in creation of Hellenistic City and list of major Hellenistic Cities developed by him. The quests of Alexander had a number of consequences for the Greek city-states. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BC seem petty and unimportant. It led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and ambitious, to the New Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until the end of the 1st century BC. The defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander also taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, and that the hegemony of Macedon and its successor states could not be challenged unless the city states united, or at least federated. The Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence. List of cities developed by Alexander the Great: Gerasa (Jerash) in Jordan Scythopolis (Beth-Shean) in Israel, the only city west of the Jordan River Hippos (Hippus or Sussita) in Israel Gadara (Umm Qais) in Jordan Pella (West of Irbid) in Jordan Philadelphia, modern day Amman, the capital of Jordan Capitolias (Beit Ras) in Jordan (Dion, Jordan) Canatha (Qanawat) in Syria Raphana in Jordan Damascus