A very interesting man, if nothing else. But what do you think of him?
Various links...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford http://www.nd.edu/~ehalton/mumfordbio.htmlhttp://www.albany.edu/mumford/About_us/chronology_lm.htmlA few extracts from
The City in History to give an impression (but no more than that) of his work, outlook and style:
"The factory became the nucleus of the new urban organism. Every other detail of life was subordinate to it. Even the utilities, such as the water supply, and the minimum of governmental offices that were necessary to a town's existence often, if they had not been built by an earlier generation, entered belatedly; an afterthought. It was not merely art and religion that were treated by the utilitarian as mere embellishments: intelligent political administration long remained in the same catagory. In the first scramble of exploitation, no provisions would be made for police and fire protection, water and food inspection, hospital care, or education".
"The Victorian industrialist, exposing his fellow citizens to soot and smog, to vile sanitation and environmentally promoted disease, still nourished the belief that his work was contributing, ultimately, to 'peace and plenty'. But his heirs in the underground city have no such illusions - they are the prey of complusive fears and corrupt fantasies whose ultimate outcome may be universal annihilation and extermination; and the more they devote themselves to adapting their urban environment to this possibility, they more surely they were bring on the unrestricted collective genocide many of them have justified in their minds as the necessary price of preserving 'freedom' and 'civilization'."
And for BRTD...
"But now that the drift to the outer ring has become a mass movement, it tends to destroy the value of both environments without producing anything but a dreary substitute, devoid of form and even more devoid of the original suburban values. We are faced by a curious paradox: the new suburban form has now produced an anti-urban pattern".
Poll
