Mumford on the city

This book traces the connection of ecology, regionalism and civilisation in the life's work of Lewis Mumford. The argument demonstrates Mumford's ecological regionalism as being grounded in a moral sense of place, Mumford offering an ecological civilisation as an alternative to the false imperatives of the megamachine. Mumford is shown to offer an alternative future based on organic plenitude as against the 'aimless dynamism' of endless material quantity within the megamachine.

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies

The critique of the city is an almost obligatory cliché of the 20thcentury cultural criticism. This paper offers a parallel critical analysis of the conceptions of American ecologist Lewis Mumford and Hungarian historian István Hajnal. They were contemporaries, and their approaches had been inspired by interwar cultural criticism. Mumford did not hate the city: it was, for him, the engine of history, a reservoir of cultural creativeness. The theory of Hajnal, from many aspects, runs parallel with Mumford’s – moreover, the Hungarian historian gives a detailed theory on the types of European city. What connects them is an ecological approach.

The Federalist Debate, 2016

There is a sense of great opportunity and hope that a new world can be built in which social and economic progress, environmental protection and better standards of living can be realized through global solidarity and cooperation. Nowhere can these goals be better demonstrated than through the quality of living conditions in our settlements…We are committed to a political, economic, environmental, ethical and spiritual vision of human settlements based on the principles of equality, solidarity, partnership, human dignity, respect and cooperation…We believe that attaining these goals will promote a more stable and equitable world that is free from injustice and conflict and will contribute to a just, comprehensive and lasting peace.

2012

""LEWIS MUMFORD AND THE MORAL ARCHITECTONICS OF ECOLOGICAL CIVILISATION This book traces the connection of ecology, regionalism and civilisation in the life's work of Lewis Mumford. The argument demonstrates Mumford's ecological regionalism as being grounded in a moral sense of place, Mumford offering an ecological civilisation as an alternative to the false imperatives of the megamachine. Mumford is shown to offer an alternative future based on organic plenitude as against the 'aimless dynamism' of endless material quantity within the megamachine. The book seeks to develop the moral and critical purpose at work behind the varied writings of Lewis Mumford. The attempt is made to identify the contours of Mumford’s ideal city as a city of human dimensions enabling and encouraging a vigorous reciprocity and interaction between inhabitants as citizens; a city which brings the touch, sense and smell of the countryside into the core market life of the city, brings neighbourhoods in close connection with each other, brings all city dwellers within close walking distance of parks and green spaces. Mumford’s objective, it is shown, is to make the city a communal theatre, a collective experience in which city dwellers are actors rather than mere spectators in the unfolding drama of urban life. Mumford is shown to offer a unique insight into the myriad political, social, cultural, urban, moral, psychological and ecological problems of a rationalised modernity. Reason has not brought freedom in the modern world. In many ways, human beingshave come to be enslaved to their own powers, institutions and ideas. Mumford offers a means of explaining this paradox of bondage through liberty. The solutions that Mumford articulates bring the soundest features of past cities to bear upon present forms. The awareness of the past enables Mumford to address thefundamental problems of rational modernity. Although Mumford wrote on a wide variety of topics, his purpose possessed a unifying thread concerning the mode of life within modern technological society. This book emphasises Mumford's concern to put the constituents of modern urban life on a sustainable basis in relation to new technologies and techniques. The key to Mumford's vision is the scaling of social life to human dimension and proportion, thus producing a life of balance and harmony with respect to the moral and technical capacities of human beings. ""

Americans sense that something is wrong with the places where we live and work and go about our daily business." So begins a recent jeremiad by author Howard Kunstler on the "environmental calamity" we call the suburbs [Kunstler, 1996, p. 43]. Critics point to fundamental aspects of post-war planning, such as zoning, highway dependence, and decentralization, as the determinants of our current suburban landscape. But how did business come to the suburbs, and how did zoning create the "Edge Cities" we have come to both love and hate? Long before urban renewal, the interstate highway program, Levittown and Edge Cities, a coherent altemafive to the "congested city" already dominated popular, professional, and political discourse. The new ideal of the "regional city" projected a rationally planned and zoned city which segregated residential, commercial, and industrial uses, as well as social classes. The new metropolis would be anchored by a concentrated central business district, connected by expressways to concentric, low-density residential and industrial suburban tings. Most importantly, the whole ensemble would be ordered according to a comprehensive regional plan. It was out of the debates over "regionalism" during the 1920s that this new urban vision emerged.

2020

Revisiting the classic urban studies book, originally published in 1925 - reviewed by Andrew Karvonen

This essay, published as the final chapter in Peter Clark (ed.), Oxford Handbook to Cities in World History (2013), assesses the role that urban development has played in major theories of world history, and analyses the elements of continuity, slow change and dramatic upheaval that are contributing to global urbanisation. This process has become one of humanity's greatest achievements, creating a global web of cities which are 'pulsing with creative organisation and disorganisation - and alive'.

2020

The City. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (with a new foreword by Robert J. Sampson). University of Chicago Press. 2019. Every academic discipline has classic texts that introduce new perspectives or challenge dominant ideologies. These books are required reading for those who aspire to be experts in a particular field of study and serve as common currency when engaging with other scholars. Within the diverse and ever-expanding field of urban studies, the shortlist of foundational volumes often includes Ebenezer Howard's