Mumford consistently argued that the physical design of cities and their economic functions
were secondary to their relationship to the natural environment and to the spiritual values of
human community.
The city, he writes, is a “theater of social action,” and everything else - art, politics,
education, commerce - only serve to make the “social drama … more richly significant, as a
stage-set, well-designed, intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action
of the play.”
Most of our housing and city planning had been handicapped because those who have
undertaken the work have had no clear notion of the social functions of the city.
The city is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations: the first, like
family and neighborhood, are common to all communities, while the second are especially
characteristic of city life. These varied groups support themselves through economic
organizations that are likewise of a more or less corporate, or at least publicly regulated,
character; and they are all housed in permanent structures, within a relatively limited area.
The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an
institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity.
One may describe the city, in its social aspect, as a special framework directed toward the
creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and a significant collective drama.
Limitations on size, density and area are absolutely necessary to effective social intercourse;
and they are therefore the most important instruments of rational economic and civic
planning.
were secondary to their relationship to the natural environment and to the spiritual values of
human community.
The city, he writes, is a “theater of social action,” and everything else - art, politics,
education, commerce - only serve to make the “social drama … more richly significant, as a
stage-set, well-designed, intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action
of the play.”
Most of our housing and city planning had been handicapped because those who have
undertaken the work have had no clear notion of the social functions of the city.
The city is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations: the first, like
family and neighborhood, are common to all communities, while the second are especially
characteristic of city life. These varied groups support themselves through economic
organizations that are likewise of a more or less corporate, or at least publicly regulated,
character; and they are all housed in permanent structures, within a relatively limited area.
The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an
institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity.
One may describe the city, in its social aspect, as a special framework directed toward the
creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and a significant collective drama.
Limitations on size, density and area are absolutely necessary to effective social intercourse;
and they are therefore the most important instruments of rational economic and civic
planning.
