During the time of our ancestors, one of the techniques that they utilized in

order to have a continuous growth and development in their civilization is the

construction of great walls. The function of these walls is mainly for
defensive purposes, which is very vital for every civilization in that time
especially in the economic side and development of lifestyle of the people. In
the present, borders and walls seemed to burst onto the global agenda in the
context of migration and halting spontaneous movement. In the early 1960s,
eminent scholar Lewis Mumford published a massive tome called The City in
History. He argued that cities evolved largely as military entities, and their
walls were the most obvious sign of their profoundly warlike character.
Undeniably, early city walls were built as social armor, sometimes protecting
a single settlement and sometimes an entire region. The Great Wall of China is
the city wall writ large. Countries as diverse as Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia,
Hungary, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia announced or began work on new
border barriers. This trend has continued apace with Bulgaria, Hungary, and
Austria expanding their fences, Norway building a fence on its Russian border,
the United Kingdom funding a wall in Calais, France, and Pakistan building a
fence on its border with Afghanistan.1 All of these issues regarding building
walls for economic development have much more pros and cons that are very
important to be considered especially that the world today is more united than
in the past, and that every country relies a part of their economy from other
countries. In line with this, a comparative study between Nanjing City Wall
and Roman City Wall is presented in this paper which will define and enumerate
the main points that these walls can bring for the economic development of the
city.

1 Vallet, Élisabeth, “Borders, Fences and Walls: State of Insecurity?” Farnham, UK: Ashgate
Publishing, ed. 2014.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308013130_Elisabeth_Vallet_ed_Borders_Fences_and_Walls_State_of
_Insecurity
Before going directly to the comparison of the cities, the following sections
give a very informative idea of how and why these walls were built. The first
city wall involved in this study is the Nanjing City Wall, which was designed
by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang who also founded the Ming dynasty. His main reason
why he built this structure is to consolidate his sovereignty and keep out
invaders. The city wall is an ancient military defense structure forming the
boundary to enclose the urban area’2. Along with great social changes and
urban transformation, city walls have evolved through the process of urban
modernization since the mid-19th century. Under the influence of political,
military, economic and cultural factors, city walls have undergone several
developmental phases such as reconstruction, transformation, demolition and
conservation’3. Based on these studies, security is the main reason for the
construction of the Nanjing City Wall. But these walls were not just part of
the history because it had some changes that were in line with the
modernization of the world. Moreover, the purpose of this wall does not rely
only on the security side, because in the past, due to continuous development,
our ancestors also used these walls for their transportation purposes and also
for agricultural purposes which paved the way for the steady growth of the
economy of the people in the city. With this, we can say that the walls have
had a multifunctional role for the people, and not just to secure the people
from invaders which was the first thing that come into the minds of the people
when they are discussing about great city walls.

Fig. 1. Nanjing City Wall of Ming Dynasty

2 Zhang, Y.H. History of Chinese City walls; China Friendship Publishing Company: Beijing, China, 2009
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332163416_The_historical_process_of_the_masonry_city_walls_cons
truction_in_China_during_1_to_17_centuries_AD
3 Bandarin, F.; Oers, R.V. (Eds.) Reconnecting the City: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the
Future of Urban Heritage; John Wiley & Sons: Oxford, UK, 2014.

The second city wall included in the discussion is the Roman City Wall. One
Roman City Wall named as Hadrian’s Wall served as the most northerly frontier
of the Roman Empire., located in northern England. The construction of this
wall was started by Emperor Hadrian whose main purpose is to consolidate the
Roman Empire’s borders because of the revolution started by the captives
called Caledonians. The wall’s initial fortifications were finished within a
few years and were manned mainly by auxiliary units’4. A series of
modifications were then made to the wall, including the replacement of the
turf portion in favor of stone and the construction of a road called the
“military way” to the south of the wall’5. There are other walls aside from
Hadrian’s Wall that were built by our ancestors. The many Roman walls still
visible today throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, be they defensive
walls such as the Serbian Wall or house and monument walls, tell us a great
deal about the evolution of Roman construction techniques. Roman walls went
from dry-stone and sun-dried bricks walls at the beginning of
Roman civilization to walls built with a concrete core and brick facing by
the beginning of the Empire. These walls also provide many clues to the
history of ancient Rome and the different stages of the Roman economy and
society’6. These researches show how building of the great wall greatly
affected the society and the people. Firstly, it served as their defense from
revolutionists and other invaders, second, it paved the way for the
development of their construction methods. Today, the economic development of
a country can be based on their industrialization. The many structures you
have, the more you have a better economy as these structures can serve many
different purposes for the people such as for livelihood, manufacturing, and
other processes that leads the city to a continuous development. In this
section, we have seen how the roman city walls served its purpose for the
people, which was not just from the past but is still has its continuing in
the present through the construction ideas and developments that were
discovered along with the development of the wall.

Figure 1. Roman City Walls in Hugo

4 Labate, Victor. "Roman walls." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified August 31, 2016.
https://www.ancient.eu/article/942/.
5 Paz, Sarit, and Raphael Greenberg. 2016. Conceiving the City: Streets and Incipient Urbanism at Early
Bronze Age Bet Yerah. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 29: 197–223.
https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JMA/article/view/32572
6 Duygu, Ergen, Mauro Francesco La Russa, Silvestro Antonio Ruffolo, Rafael Fort1, and Ana Luc´ıa
S´anchez Montes3
THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL PLUS
Characterization of the wall paintings in La Casa de los Grifos of Roman city Complutum
https://www.academia.edu/38051424/Characterization_of_the_wall_paintings_in_La_Casa_de_los_Grifos_of_Rom
an_city_Complutum

Having defined the main function and purposes of these walls, we can now
compare how each of them served their functions which were based also from
other researches. In this section, we can also compare on how these structures
helped the economic development of their city until the present day. These
villagers' ancestors may have had light tents, but Neolithic people had walls of mud, wood
and thatch. They could hide from their neighbors. For the first time, people could begin to
develop a sense of privacy. In Peter J. Wilson's book The Domestication of the Human
Species, the anthropologist argues that humans first walls were probably a social or cultural
development. They allowed people to develop a sense of individual and group identity in
villages and cities that grew far beyond the size of any hunter-gatherer group.8 All in all,
we can say that the Nanjing City Wall and the Roman City walls initially
served as fortifications or defensive walls to be able to protect the people
in the civilization. But as time goes by, there were many developments on how
they used the walls’7. The Chinese have considered these walls to be a factor
that can improve their transportation alignment and they also used these walls
to grow their crops which mainly provided agricultural growth for the economy.
In the side of the Europeans, these walls became their forerunner of
development especially in the field of construction, wherein they were able to
discover materials that strengthen structures and increase their lifespan.
This is one key development is very important since it affected the whole
community as they go along with the changes in the era. In conclusion, these
economic developments started the growth of the economy of each area, and are
very essential as these discoveries start to spread out of the whole world.
Both cities were able to enjoy the benefits that a great city wall can give in
their different ways. But among all of these, there is this one most important
thing that was developed among the people. It's possible that humans needed walls to
deal with the psychological stress of living in bigger groups; they gave people separate
spaces where they could cool off from conflicts or share their feelings without social
judgments. In conclusion, all these improvements and enhancements what the
great city walls have brought for the community. Moreover, there is one very
important connection or one very important consideration that we can see in
all of these happenings, it is certain that because of these walls, people
were able to live a very private life inside these walls, free of war and
invasion, and thus were able to have freedom doing their own stuffs and were
also able to think of certain advancements that can lead them to continuous
prosperity.

7 Girard, L.F. "Toward a Smart Sustainable Development of Port Cities/Areas: The Role of the “Historic
Urban Landscape” Approach. Sustainability 2013, 5, 4329–4348
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/10/4329/pdf

8. Peter J. Wilson. "The Domestication of the Human Species." Yale University Press (January 23, 1991).
38

According to the research study, there are three aspects of economic

development experiences were identified with regards to the utilization of
city walls. First, these walls helped to maximize its retention while meeting
the needs for urban transportation. Second, city walls can provide
agricultural help especially for crop growth for the people. Furthermore,
integrating city walls definitely enhanced the infrastructure technology
construction of the people. All of these factors are the roles of these
defensive walls for the developments of the cities involved. Moreover, other
researches have stated the sustainability of city walls is through integrating
social activities into the historical space and to bring people closer to the
heritage, which is the core content of its sustainable conservation. What
constitutes a city’s unique self-identity is precisely its unique history and
culture, and the character of the city formed on this basis. Taking city walls
as an example, the important historical landscape makes it a bridge between
the public and the urban spirit.
Shusheng Wang 1,2,*, Yuan Jiang 2 , Yuqian Xu 1,2, Linjie Zhang 1,2, Xinpeng Li 1,2 and Ling Zhu 1,2
Sustainability of Historical Heritage: The Conservation of the Xi’an City Wall
State Key Laboratory of Green Building in Western China, Xi’an University of Architecture and
Technology
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/740/pdf

Bibliography
Vallet, Élisabeth. “Borders, Fences and Walls: State of Insecurity?” Ashgate
Publishing, ed. 2014.

Peter J. Wilson. "The Domesication of the Human Species." Yale University

Press (January 23, 1991).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308013130_Elisabeth_Vallet_ed_Borders
_Fences_and_Walls_State_of_Insecurity .
Zhang, Y.H. “History of Chinese City walls.” China Friendship Publishing
Company (2009).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332163416_The_historical_process_of_t
he_masonry_city_walls_construction_in_China_during_1_to_17_centuries_AD.
Bandarin, F and Oers, R.V. “Reconnecting the City: The Historic Urban
Landscape Approach and the Future of Urban Heritage.” John Wiley & Sons:
Oxford, UK (2014).

https://www.academia.edu/38051424/Characterization_of_the_wall_paintings_in_La
_Casa_de_los_Grifos_of_Roman_city_Complutum.
Girard, L.F. “Toward a Smart Sustainable Development of Port Cities/Areas:
The Role of the “Historic Urban Landscape” Approach. Sustainability 2013, 5,
4329–4348. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/10/4329/pdf.
Shusheng Wang and Yuan Jiang. “Sustainability of Historical Heritage: The
Conservation of the Xi’an City Wall” State Key Laboratory of Green Building
in Western China (Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology).

List of figures
Fig. 1.Nanjing City Wall of the Ming Dynasty. Accessed on May 15, 2019.
https://www.gonanjingchina.com/places-to-go-nanjing-china/attractions-nanjing-
travel/nanjing-city-wall-of-the-ming-dynasty
Fig. 2. Roman City Walls in Hugo. Accessed on May 15, 2019.
http://www.spainisculture.com/en/monumentos/lugo/murallas_de_lugo.html