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IN LEWIS MUMFORD'S BOOK, “The City in History,” he chronicles 15,000 years of human settlement from the primitive village to the modern megalopolis. His description of early village life is something many of us would enjoy today – without giving up the benefits of modern medicine and scientific progress of course.
The Idyllic Village
Early village-dwellers lived close to nature and studied the world around them intensely. Neolithic man made such careful selections of the plants and animals he chose to domesticate that modern man has not added a single species of major importance.
I use the word “man,” although Mumford theorizes it was probably women who domesticated plants and animals, because caring for young children kept them close to the village. The men were most likely hunters, which required organization and cooperation, skill with weapons and often long journeys and great hardships. Mumford points out that early religious icons were predominantly feminine and depicted themes of nature and fertility. Even the shapes of early buildings were round and organic and symbolically feminine. War had not yet been invented.
These village-dwellers probably spent only a fraction of their time making a living. They were able to devote their ample free time to art, music, storytelling and ceremonies. Two or three million years of human evolution had not given us any remarkable physical specialties other than large brains. As intelligent “generalists,” we humans have always been happiest when we were safe and at peace, with time for creative pursuits beyond the basic needs of animal survival.
The Oppressive City
The emergence of the city about 5,000 years ago changed village life completely. Because the earliest cities were built in the great river valleys of the world, the invention of the plow and the irrigation canal filled the granaries with huge surpluses. This led to the concentration of wealth and the need for walls and armies to defend it.
About the same time that early cities were emerging, fierce nomads on horseback erupted from the steppes of Asia, striking terror to every settlement in their path. The village hunter was forced into a new role as warrior and village defender. As military organization evolved, the top warriors competed for power and the victor declared himself king.
To maintain their power, kings had to appease potential rivals by granting them huge tracts of land. Thus a small noble class of property owners emerged and with it the concept of property ownership and property rights.
A new type of priesthood also emerged to inspire obedience to the king, and the new religious icons became more masculine and war-like. Buildings began to take on an angular, less organic and distinctly un-feminine appearance. The status of women fell drastically and has never fully recovered. The new priesthood, freed from work, was able to pursue the study of astronomy, medicine and mathematics, withholding their “magic” from the general population. Mumford theorizes that great scientific knowledge was probably accumulated and lost through secrecy, war and conquest.
Other oppressive urban institutions were soon adopted in various parts of the world, including ceremonial human sacrifice, slavery, organized war, social caste systems, the division of labor and the subjugation of nature. By the turn of the 20th century, only one or two of these practices had been completely abolished on the planet.
Throughout much of urban history, only the noble class and the priesthood had the wealth and leisure to pursue what had been commonplace in the village – art, music, literature (story-telling) and elaborate social customs.
Urban Planning in the 20th Century
Prior to the 20th century, urban planning was centered around beautification and social reform. But as the century progressed, planning began to embrace the whole range of human geography – physical, social, economic, political and environmental.
In 1919, Soviet Russia embarked on a scheme of social and economic planning, but without the benefit of public participation. As a result, planning became associated with communism and Big Brother, and was considered by many to be incompatible with the spirit of free enterprise.
The Private Automobile
Probably the most significant urban event in the 20th century was the rapid rise of the private automobile as the most popular form of personal transportation in the developed countries of the world. In the 1920s, cities and towns across the United States embarked on major road-building programs, while perfectly functional urban transit systems were bought up by the new oil and auto industries and dismantled.
One notable loss was the Pacific Electric Railroad in Southern California, whose “Big Red Cars” carried passengers along a 1600-mile rail system throughout the Los Angeles basin. And what is now the Pasadena Freeway was originally a bicycle trail.
The Great Depression
During the Great Depression of the 1930s it became obvious that the “invisible hand” of free market capitalism described by economist Adam Smith did not necessarily lead to the well-being of society. The federal government intervened by funding over a hundred urban planning studies across the nation through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) developed the first watershed plan in the country, although at that time it gave little consideration to the natural environment.
The independent citizen planning commission led to the creation of city and county planning departments. For the first time, planning studies incorporated social and economic elements along with physical design.
The Garden City Movement
One of the most innovative planning concepts of the 20th century was the “garden city,” first described in Sir Ebenezer Howard’s famous 1898 book, “Garden Cities of Tomorrow.” Howard was a mild-mannered British court reporter and inventor, but also an influential speaker and statesman. He had a vision of self-contained towns that would retain the best attributes of urban and rural living with local employment, ample open space and a spirited community life. The towns would be compact with a distinct local architecture, all surrounded by an inviolate agricultural greenbelt.
Letchworth, the first garden city, was begun in Britain in 1903, followed by Welwyn in 1919. New towns throughout the world were modeled after Howard’s garden cities, including Radburn, New Jersey in 1929. In Europe after World War II, where entire towns and cities had been destroyed, many were rebuilt following the British new town planning principles.
Post World War II Prosperity and Urban Sprawl
In his book, "The Geography of Nowhere," James Kuntsler describes the decline and deterioration of the human landscape in the United States during the 20th century, largely attributed to the private automobile.
Although U.S. cities escaped destruction during World War II, many were later destroyed by neglect as effectively as if they had been firebombed. Cheap land lured urban job centers to the suburbs, and the once-thriving inner cities were simply abandoned to crime and physical deterioration.
New bedroom communities sprawled across the countryside following the new suburban job centers. Vast areas of productive farmlands were paved over and sensitive habitats were destroyed. The traditional downtown was replaced by the regional shopping center, the commercial strip mall and the big box discount warehouse.
For several decades after World War II, urban sprawl seemed to be an engine of economic growth and progress. But as early as 1970, the enormous costs of sprawl became apparent. Housing became more expensive, roads became more congested and the air and water became more polluted.
Huge public investments in roads, sewers, water lines and power grids were required to support this sprawling pattern of growth. Furthermore, this pattern of low density development made public transportation impractical. More freeways encouraged more development which attracted more cars. Government agencies no longer had the money to keep up with the demand for public services. With all our technological progress, we now yearn for that sense of community, closeness to nature and personal fulfillment that our ancestors once enjoyed in their primitive villages.
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