Aristotle's Politics, compiled around 335 BCE, analysed the Greek polis as the natural community within which human beings achieve the good life, describing the citizen, the household and the constitution. Drawing on a survey of many existing constitutions, Aristotle discussed the ideal size and siting of a city, its water supply, defensibility and the arrangement of public and private space. He criticised the rigid geometric schemes attributed to Hippodamus while accepting that regular layouts had advantages for newer quarters. The work treated the city as a political and ethical institution, not merely a physical settlement.
It established the city as the basic unit of political life in Western thought and linked questions of size, layout and citizenship to good government. Its discussion of the optimal scale and self-sufficiency of cities recurs in planning debates down to the present.