Recommended to Czarny by: Everyone. It was a huge success in its day. Shelves: political-theory. Lewis Mumford's "The City in History" is great fun to read. He provides a dazzling show of erudition moving from De Tocqueville to Gilgamesh to Frederick Law Olmsted to Proust and to Vitruvius with dazzling speed somehow always tying his eclectic stable of references into a coherent narrative history. In my case the pleasure of was greatly enhanced by the fact that my prejudices in most instances with those of Mumford which are: 1.
The Urban Sprawl of the twentieth century was out of control with profoundly detrimental effects on the environment and the spiritual needs of mankind 2. The current urban sprawl is the result of the tendency noted by De Tocqueville for modern, democratic man to focus only on his personal needs as opposed to the needs of the community 3.
The primary role of the city in society is be a "sacred space" in the sense used by Mircea Eliade when man's cultural and scientific power can flourish 4. The history of our cities has been calamitous. The cities are laid with one purpose in mind and then develop in a different historical context. The perpetual contradiction between vision and reality leads to a perpetual cycle of growth, decay and destruction. Mumford argues that cities grew from an innate desire for man to have a central, sacred place for burial.
Nomadic societies all tended to create special holy places for this purpose. Hence the first cities were for the dead rather than the living.
When man the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary existence, the former sacred places became the first cities. Kingship as an institution appeared at the this time. Accordingly the first cities were laid out with wide avenues and elevated temples as a political statements endorsing kingship. The trading cities of classical Greece produced a great age in which cities were designed for the citizens.
There was a great deal of thought about the optimal population and physical dimensions of cities. By setting these two parameters correctly the Greeks believed that cities would foster prosperity and cultural development.
The period of Classical antiquity produced the greatest urban planning of human cities. Cities were hygienic, prosperous and culturally rich. In the dark ages, cities become fortresses. True urban planning suffered. Public hygiene and sanitation suffered. The poor were forced into tenements.
A long era of catastrophic plagues and epidemics set in. During the age of the enlightenment, the orientation turned towards showiness. Huge overgrown urban plans like the Place de la Concorde in Paris or the l'Enfant Boulevard in Washington were created.
The age of industrialism in the nineteenth century created the blighted urban concentrations we now live in. The needs of the transportation system first trains and then cars came before the needs of the people. Cities became extremely noisy. Air quality deteriorated rapidly due to the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.
In a rapidly, growing industrial societies sprawled created massive conurbations with no centre. Mumford concluded that at the time of his writing in the s the situation was simply out of control. The urban expansion was accelerating. Cities no longer generated a sense of community and man's cultural development was being suffocated.
More than 50 years, later Mumford's description of our urban society still seems to hold. The problems which were once most visible in North America and Western Europe have simply become global. Unfortunately, Mumford really does not offer much of a solution.
He appears to believe that urban planning could be implemented on a national scale so that instead of one massive conurbation, nations would be composed of a network of smaller optimally sized cities. However, there is no road map for getting to this ideal state. Presumably it is the duty of this generation to make such a road map. The main criticism of this book is that it is based on eclectic, hodgepodge of readings running from Saint Augustine to Daniel Burnham to Marcel Proust and essentially lacks any sort of methodology.
It can then be dismissed out of hand as being nothing more than the expression of an opinion, albeit a very erudite one. Despite agreeing with Mumford on most issues, I myself wished at times that he could prevent or more systematic defense of his case. Shelves: re-read , history , library-has-it , nba-winners , best-books-read-in His descriptions include economic, religious, military and ethnic factors that influence the development of citi Copyright Harvest Book by Harcourt, Inc pages Summary: The author describes the design of cities in Europe and the USA as a place for humans to live by periods: ancient pre-historical Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete , classical historical, Greece and Rome medieval 8th to 16 centuries , baroque th centuries, the industrial revolution , suburbia and contemporary up to His descriptions include economic, religious, military and ethnic factors that influence the development of cities and their design.
Needless to say, most cities through most of history have not been successful in this regard. Social interactions in the city are deemed essential for the social development of one's self. Predictably, Athens is portrayed as a high point, generating the familiar great Greeks such as Sophocles and Socrates. Venice and Amsterdam also win high praise as does the townships and villages of New England.
The village is his ideal community size for social development. Community religious pageants are considered very important. In several chapter sections, he opines about democracy and the gap between the rich in control and the poor workers. He is very realistic but his sympathy is definitely for the exploited workers.
Most of the grand monuments and structures that we visit today were built on the exploitation of ignorant workers inured to tyranny. Spaciousness, especially green space, as in parks has his recommendation and approval.
His vision: The purpose of the city: "That magnification of all the dimensions of life, through emotional communion, rational communication, technological mastery, and above all, dramatic representation, has been the supreme office of the city in history. It is well-written but somewhat verbose and his opinions are somewhat repetitious.
These are opinions about the gap between the rich and the poor, exploitation of the workers and democratic governance. He detests ostentatiousness and conspicuous waste of wealth. The palaces, cathedrals and monuments were built with taxes from the common people. The narrative heats up with some passion at these points which roused me on several occasions in agreement.
He has a refreshing evaluation of the Greek culture as exemplified in Athens: Athens was a democracy only for free men, not for women nor slaves. It also was piratical, subjugating other Greek cities to get tributes taxes , instead of forming a confederation as equals for mutual defense and aid.
His ideal city is rather vague: discussing suburbs he likes openness and greenery and variety of design but complains that they are too insulated from the problems and social interactions of the city.
Describing inner cities, he complains that they need green space and more privacy. The ideal still seems to be the prehistoric village. So his criteria seems to shift somewhat from one case to another. One glaring deficiency seems to be total disregard for efforts to tolerate and assimilate other cultures within neighborhoods..
His vision is limited to homogenous neighborhoods where a common religion is shared. I imagine that he would support assimilation if he were alive today. But I don't see how the envisioned communal-self can be achieved with large cultural and religious differences. Credentials: Lewis Mumford was not a historian on a collegiate faculty, but rather a journalist, serving as an architectural critic for the New Yorker magazine for 30 years.
He is the author of many books about design and cities. This book was the National Book Award winner in He is very well-read in this field as his bibliography testifies. Rating: I rated it 4 stars mostly due to vision and scholarship. I did not give it a 5 because of verbosity and some repetition. Actually, 4. This is a very thought-provoking read, causing me to reflect on my own life and how to achieve my maximal potential. Jul 08, Piotr Smolnicki rated it it was amazing. It's an obligation to read this book for every urban researcher to know what innovative thoughts are just reinventions of ones in the past.
Feb 19, Matt rated it it was amazing. Possibly the most valuable book I have read. An education in what a city should be. At a basic level, the book largely consists of the ramblings of a technophobe advocating the humanization of technology as if there were anything more eminently human than technology. Solutions to the city's woes housing, congestion are not provided, nor even suggested, but criticism is freely dished out. As others have pointed out, Mumford was an advocate of the medieval city, and a more "organic" approach to city planning, as opposed to the more formalistic baroque, and indeed contemporary At a basic level, the book largely consists of the ramblings of a technophobe advocating the humanization of technology as if there were anything more eminently human than technology.
As others have pointed out, Mumford was an advocate of the medieval city, and a more "organic" approach to city planning, as opposed to the more formalistic baroque, and indeed contemporary, method of planning cities. Some interesting points are made regarding the direct relationship of population densities and transportation congestion, or the role of the citadel and city walls in ancient cities.
However, unfortunately, the book manages to branch out to topics only tangentially related to the history of urbanism as well. This includes the university tenure system, the inconveniences of nuclear war, or the monastic movement.
Overall, I would say that although the book contains interesting points, they are diluted in the hundreds of pages of ramblings where one cannot easily distinguish opinion from fact. For, though the author was an academic and the book ends with a copious bibliography, "The City in History" does not reference other works by means of footnotes or endnotes once in all its pages.
Thus, I would only recommend this work to those that, like Mumford, feel that significant improvements to the city will only come through applying art to the city's central human concerns pg. To those actually looking for solutions, I would suggest they look somewhere else. View 1 comment. A book definitely not meant for the casual reader. This is an understandably long and ponderous trek through the history of man's efforts at building cities. If this is a subject you're interested in then this is a fascinating journey.
If it isn't your cup of tea then Uncle Mumfie, as he was affectionately called by my classmates and me, will bore you to tears. An epic, grandiose history of human civilization. Its imperfections, generalities, Western bias and axe-grinding are easy to forgive. Mumford will have you dreaming about cities.
Sep 17, Daniel B-G rated it did not like it Shelves: socsci , dnf , history. Ponderous, dull, meandering, unsubstantiated. Jun 15, Louw Van rated it really liked it. Lewis Mumford - , American writer, historian, social commentator, architectural critic, student of cities The book was and still is an intimidating tome: pages of small print in hard bound format.
As a student, I never read the whole book; only selected passages from it, where I then thought were the most relevant content to the essay to be submitted! Just before Christmas Lewis Mumford - , American writer, historian, social commentator, architectural critic, student of cities Just before Christmas , I decided: this is nonsense!
As a student and practitioner of spatial design, the planning of regions and towns, I just cannot retire if at all before reading the book. So, there! Uncle Lewis impressed me immensely with his grasp of the grand historical palette: he places his description of the character and development of cities through the ages in context of the socio-political-technological essence of each age.
He has profound insight in the human-settlement system - a complete systems-thinker. What I initially found strange - him being an American - was his aversion to capitalism.
The City in History was published in This dates Mumford as one of the early agitators against pollution and ecological damage of the modern industrial consumer economy. The City in History is not a walk-in-the-park-reading; sometimes it is heavy going but other passages read like a novel. A profound book, I would say. Feb 22, Jon rated it liked it. Lewis Mumford tells us about the spiritual and cosmic origins of the city so that we can get a handle on how we can best forge the city of tomorrow.
To do that, he must scope out all of Western history, denoting where the city has been and what it could possibly become. All that said, this was a long and often laborious read that has left me in many ways a bit more befuddled than illuminated. Mumford's own words often take off in poetic flights of fancy that are heroic or elegiac; they are beaut Lewis Mumford tells us about the spiritual and cosmic origins of the city so that we can get a handle on how we can best forge the city of tomorrow.
Mumford's own words often take off in poetic flights of fancy that are heroic or elegiac; they are beautiful, but such is not something I'm accustomed to reading in serious sociological nonfiction--and it rarely helps to make the message clearer. The book starts off especially slowly, because Mumford starts essentially at the dawn of man. Most of this information is prehistory, so there's some archeology and anthropology and a whole lot of conjecture.
For Mumford, early cities start with death, with graveyards--places where people go to visit their ancestors. It's these ancient rituals that gather people together and make, eventually, for civilization.
An interesting theory, but one based largely on the fact that it's graveyards that mostly survive. What of the things that did not survive? And is all human history rooted in such spiritualism? Is the more secular instinct merely one of modern man? I could not wait for Mumford to get to the time when there were written records, so that I could read about actual city planning and theory.
Although he talks a bit about the Egyptians, it is really only when we get to Greek society that such discussion takes off. Here, several different ideas of the Greeks are unfolded. Interestingly, we learn that the Greeks are among the first to have created checkerboard plans for cities, laying out straight streets on a grid pattern.
More interestingly, we learn of various ideas that Greek philosophers had about the ideal city, which was not to be more than about five thousand inhabitants there's is some question as to whether than included women, children, and slaves--probably not ; beyond this, the city became too large to manage, unable to serve its purpose. Mumford seems to agree that cities can be too large, that size does not a better city make. From there, Mumford follows the development of the Roman city, and in one passage writes elegantly of Rome's incredible debauchery with its coed baths where sex was not uncommon.
But where the book really picks up is with the Middle Ages. It is in the city, as it came to exist after Rome's fall, that Mumford seems to find an ideal.
With the destruction of a central government, people looked to the church for protection and to various nobles and dukes that would eventually become kings. The walled city was reintroduced as a means to protect people--to keep people out, to keep people in.
But these cities were nicely sized and able to function much better than most historians have given them credit for. Streets were often laid out by function, winding with geography.
It is in the baroque city, what comes after the medieval city, that Mumford begins to find displeasure, for in it he sees the beginning of the modern city. The baroque city came to be as kings gained greater power. With that also came the desire for grand architecture and monumentation. No longer was function the height of city "planning"; rather, it was glory.
Streets were straightened or widened to show off military might and government power and to aid with the quick movement of troops.
We might see similarities to more contemporary cities with their focus on the capitalist and profit-making machine, wherein people are secondary to the function of business.
Indeed, modern cities are criticized for just that by Mumford. And for their gargantuan size, which cuts people off from their surroundings. Mumford sees much hope in Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities. Rather than letting suburban sprawl eat up all the surrounding land, adding forever to traffic, Howard sets out a plan for smaller towns surrounded by green zones. Mumford's account of the creation of the suburb is interesting in its own light.
It was, of course, founded in the idea of letting people get back to nature. The suburb was at first something for the upper class, so that it could avoid the dirt and grime of the city proper. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Bibliography: p. Sanctuary, village, and stronghold -- 2. The crystallization of the city -- 3. Ancestral forms and patterns -- 4.
The nature of the ancient city -- 5. Emergence of the polis -- 6. Citizen versus ideal city -- 7. Helleinistic absolutism and urbanity -- 8. Megalopolis into necropolis -- 9. Cloister and commnity -- Medieval urban housekeeping -- This compelling portrait of Mumford, written in an accessible style, and exploring highly controversial, timely issues, makes a substantial contribution to the rapidly growing interest in the interaction of technology and culture, and is must reading for students of the history and sociology of science and technology, American studies, and American intellectual and cultural history.
Lewis Mumford was one of America's leading cultural critics and international authorities on architecture and urbanism. The author of more than 20 books, his writings bridged the seemingly disparate disciplines of architecture, technology, literary criticism, biography, sociology, and philosophy. Sidewalk Critic collects over 50 of Lewis Mumford's writings from to which focus on the New York metropolitan area and provide an unusual glimpse into one of the most formative decades in the city's history.
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