The Culture of Cities
by Lewis Mumford
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon
Buy on BN.com
Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Mar 08 2016 | Archive Date Jun 08 2016
Description
A visionary survey of urbanism from the Middle Ages to the late 1930s, with a new introduction by Thomas Fisher
Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford—a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker—The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to “rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation.” First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as extensive historical and technological research. Mumford takes readers from the compact, worker-friendly streets of medieval hamlets to the symmetrical neoclassical avenues of Renaissance cities. He studies the squalor of nineteenth-century factory towns and speculates on the fate of the booming twentieth-century Megalopolis—whose impossible scale, Mumford believes, can only lead to its collapse into a “Nekropolis,” a monstrosity of living death.
A civic visionary, Mumford is credited with some of the earliest proposals for ecological urban planning and the appropriate use of technology to create balanced living environments. In the final chapters of The Culture of Cities, he outlines possible paths toward utopian future cities that could be free of the stressors of the Megalopolis, in sync with the rhythms of daily life, powered by clean energy, integrated with agricultural regions, and full of honest and comfortable housing for the working class. The principles set forth by these visions, once applied to Nazi-occupied Europe’s razed cities, are still relevant today as technological advances and overpopulation change the nature of urban life.
Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford—a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker—The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to “rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation.” First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as extensive historical and technological research. Mumford takes readers from the compact, worker-friendly streets of medieval hamlets to the symmetrical neoclassical avenues of Renaissance cities. He studies the squalor of nineteenth-century factory towns and speculates on the fate of the booming twentieth-century Megalopolis—whose impossible scale, Mumford believes, can only lead to its collapse into a “Nekropolis,” a monstrosity of living death.
A civic visionary, Mumford is credited with some of the earliest proposals for ecological urban planning and the appropriate use of technology to create balanced living environments. In the final chapters of The Culture of Cities, he outlines possible paths toward utopian future cities that could be free of the stressors of the Megalopolis, in sync with the rhythms of daily life, powered by clean energy, integrated with agricultural regions, and full of honest and comfortable housing for the working class. The principles set forth by these visions, once applied to Nazi-occupied Europe’s razed cities, are still relevant today as technological advances and overpopulation change the nature of urban life.
Advance Praise
“Mumford finds the disintegrating forces of civilization at their peak in our cities; he analyzes the evils—speculative building, the will-to-profit, etc.—and he points the way out. . . . A challenging book.” —Kirkus Reviews
“To widen one’s horizons to cover practically the whole of civic culture . . . requires a very broad vision, an encyclopedic intelligence, and the labour of years. All these have gone to the making of this book. . . . From the Renaissance onwards the anti-social effects of capitalist economics are thus outlined and then underlined. . . . It is undeniably impressive, and—in the aesthetic sense—true.” —Town Planning Review
“To widen one’s horizons to cover practically the whole of civic culture . . . requires a very broad vision, an encyclopedic intelligence, and the labour of years. All these have gone to the making of this book. . . . From the Renaissance onwards the anti-social effects of capitalist economics are thus outlined and then underlined. . . . It is undeniably impressive, and—in the aesthetic sense—true.” —Town Planning Review
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781504031349 |
PRICE | $0.00 (USD) |
Readers who liked this book also liked:
None Is Too Many
By Irving Abella and Harold Troper Foreword by Richard Menkis Afterword by David S. Koffman
History, Politics & Current Affairs
By Irving Abella and Harold Troper Foreword by Richard Menkis Afterword by David S. Koffman
History, Politics & Current Affairs
The Colossal Book of Incredible Facts for Curious Minds
Nigel Henbest; Simon Brew; Sarah Tomley; Ken Okona-Mensah; Tom Parfitt; Trevor Davies; Chas Newkey-Burden
Entertainment & Pop Culture, Humor & Satire, Nonfiction (Adult)
Nigel Henbest; Simon Brew; Sarah Tomley; Ken Okona-Mensah; Tom Parfitt; Trevor Davies; Chas Newkey-Burden
Entertainment & Pop Culture, Humor & Satire, Nonfiction (Adult)
Breaking Canadians
Nili Kaplan-Myrth | Foreword by Brian Goldman | Afterword by Sue Robins
Essays & Collections, Health, Mind & Body, Politics & Current Affairs
Nili Kaplan-Myrth | Foreword by Brian Goldman | Afterword by Sue Robins
Essays & Collections, Health, Mind & Body, Politics & Current Affairs
The Certainty Illusion
Timothy Caulfield
Business, Leadership, Finance, Health, Mind & Body, Self-Help
Timothy Caulfield
Business, Leadership, Finance, Health, Mind & Body, Self-Help