The city and traditions of production. Since it is the city centres that are the most important centres for the consumption of goods of all kinds, as well as being distribution centres, it is enough to understand how the ancient city works in order to obtain a true overall picture par excellence of the origin of our present conception of urban society. In the city the most important technological advances take shape and overlap with indigenous traditions, constantly modelling and re-modelling the ways things are produced by the interaction of the recent and the traditional.