City Growth

Guest: Michael Smith, a Mesoamerican archaeologist and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University It’s difficult to imagine that large urban centers in 2015, with their trains and taxis and traffic and tall buildings, could bear any resemblance at all to ancient settlements like the Aztecs of Mesoamerica. But archaeologists increasingly believe that urban centers follow predictable growth pattern that are the same no matter the era.