concurrently modifies what in this sentence?

Concurrently is an adverb, which means it should be modifying "modified" but the sentence just does not make sense to me. (wanders off, scratching head)

There are mistakes in the sentence.

There's a comma missing.

Almost every reason for the growth of the cities, concurrently with the growth
of civilization, has been profoundly modified.

The other mistake is that concurrently should be concurrent because it modifies growth.


The answer to your question, bluesblue, is that the growth of the cities is concurrent with the growth of civilization.

Thank you Eclectic and Roberta!
----------------------------------------
The whole passage is here:

Each civilization is born, it culminates, and it decays. There is a widespread testimony that this ominous fact is due to inherent biological defects in the crowded life of cities. Now, slowly and at first faintly, an opposite tendency is showing itself. Better roads and better vehicles at first induced the wealthier classes to live on the outskirts of the cities. The urgent need for defence had also vanished. This tendency is now spreading rapidly downwards. But a new set of conditions is just showing itself. Up to the present time, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this new tendency placed the home in the immediate suburbs, but concentrated manufacturing activity, business relations, government, and pleasure in the centres of the cities. Apart from the care of children and periods of sheer rest, the active lives were spent in the cities. In some ways the concentration of such activities was even more emphasized, and the homes were pushed outwards even at the cost of the discomfort of commuting. But, if we examine the trend of technology during the past generation, the reasons for this concentration are largely disappearing. Still more, the reasons for the choice of sites for cities are also altering. Mechanical power can be transmitted for hundreds of miles, men can communicate almost instantaneously by telephone, the chiefs of great organizations can be transported by airplanes, the cinemas can produce plays in every village, music, speeches, and sermons can be broadcast. Almost every reason for the growth of the cities, concurrently with the growth of civilization has been profoundly modified.

(New Concept English, Book 4, Lesson 30, L. G. Alexander)

Any more comments?

It is a poorly written paragraph, and is not well-founded in logic. I could pick apart the entire paragraph, but rather than take all that time, i would just point out that the author makes a series of statements from authority, but does not provide the authority on which the statements are based, nor even a plausible argument for those statements. It is typical of such passages in pedagogic works, but as the statement of an idea, it is a long exercise in begging the question implicit in the first sentence.

Each civilization is born, it culminates, and it decays.

When people become successful in creating the means by which they survive in groups larger than small families, and those means of survival are common throughout the larger group, they can be said to have created culture. Civilizations are not born, people don't sit around and figure out how to survive, and then create a civilization full-blown--if for no other reason, that is true because they'd starve before they had figured it all out. They create culture by the process of accumulating the most effective means of surviving, and from culture, civilizations arise as the most successful expressions of culture spread across larger groups (clans, bands and tribes). Therefore, i don't agree that civilizations are "born," they arise. The verb culminate means to reach the highest point in a process. Culture is the process, and survival is the goal. Civilizations don't necessarily have a goal, since the goal was survival, and culture had achieved that before the civilization arose, so i don't accept the verb culminate in reference to a civilization. The notion that civilizations "decay" is also dubious, and is a common 19th century European idea which is based on a set of flawed assumption about what civilizations are and how they operate. The Roman empire may be gone, but many European languages are based on Latin, and the legal systems of many European nations are based on Roman legal code. The Han may be gone, but Chinese civilization is indelibly stamped with the culture which allowed the Han to flourish and spread through the valleys of the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers, and although the civilization they created has changed, it is unreasonable to suggest that it ever "decayed."

The original sentence which states the premise is not supported by references to expert opinion, nor by plausible, logical statements. It is possible to argue against it on a logical basis. Therefore, i consider the original sentence suspect, and that all which follows it constitutes begging the question, because it assumes that the original sentence is correct, but does not offer logical reasons to believe it.

The rest of the paragraph also suffers form a series of unsupported statements from authority, for which neither evidence nor plausible argument is offered. It may be typical of such paragraphs to be found in textbooks, but that just serves to prove how poorly textbooks are written. It is a poorly written paragraph, and it is a poorly reasoned idea which it attempts to express.

It would take pages to point out all the flaws in the paragraph in terms of language, and all the flaws in terms of logic and evidence. So i'll just say that it is badly written, and badly reasoned.

Thank you Setanta, your argument is eloquent and helpful!


^-^
Blues