Page 151 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1928 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Selection from Lewis

Mumford’s The City
in History
urban-industrial core regions of western Europe and the
We must now conceive the city accordingly, not
northeastern United States.
primarily as a place of business or government,
Contemporary observers recognized that something
but as an essential organ for expressing and actu-
dramatic had happened. Adna Weber, the chronicler of
alizing the new human personality—that of “One
the changes, wrote in 1899 that the most remarkable
World Man.” The old separation of man and na-
social phenomenon of the nineteenth century was the
ture, of townsman and countryman, of Greek and
concentration of population in cities. The tendency
barbarian, of citizen and foreigner, can no longer
toward concentration, he said, was all but universal in the
be maintained: for communication, the entire
Western world.The change involved a process whereby,
planet is becoming a village; and as a result, the
as societies modernized, their market mechanisms
smallest neighborhood or precinct must be
expanded in scope and influence.The size of production
planned as a working model of the larger world.
units increased, as did the number and complexity of pro-
Now it is not the will of a single deified ruler, but
duction decisions. Increased division of labor and
the individual and corporate will of its citizens,
increased specialization, the necessary concomitants of
aiming at self-knowledge, self-government, and
increased productivity, became forces promoting further
self-actualization, that must be embodied in the
population concentration and the shift in the occupa-
city. Not industry but education will be the cen-
tional structure of economies from agriculture and
ter of their activities; and every process and func-
resource extraction to factory-floor jobs and white-collar
tion will be evaluated and approved just to the
occupations. New institutions were created and old insti-
extent that it furthers human development, whilst
tutions were radically altered, especially the financial
the city itself provides a vivid theater for the spon-
and market institutions that contributed to the accumu-
taneous encounters and challenges and embraces
lation of social and economic overhead that made further
of daily life.
high-level productivity increases in cities possible.There
Source: Mumford, L. (1961). The city in history (p. 573). New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World. were widening radii of global change as demands for
food and raw materials increased and as environments
were modified by the unrestricted discharge of effluents,
Demand for labor was fed by rural-to-urban migration as but because of the limitations of foot and horse, the new
feudal villages were reshaped by enclosures that released cities grew, as H.G. Wells put it in 1902, as “puff-ball
surplus labor to the towns. swells—dense concentrations within a limited radius of
Subsequent bursts of technological change built on their central business districts. The combination of size,
this first surge of industrial revolution to create a new high density, and immigrant-derived heterogeneity had
kind of city that was built on productive power, massed distinctive social consequences: greater individual free-
population, and industrial technology. By the end of the doms and opportunities for social and economic ad-
century, this new city has been credited with the creation vancement, but also inequality, alienation, and deviance.
of a system of social life founded on entirely new princi-
ples. By 1900, the level of urbanization had reached 80 Twentieth-Century
percent in Britain, exceeded 60 percent in the Nether- Urban Growth
lands and newly industrializing Germany, reached 50 During the twentieth century, the urbanization level in eco-
percent in the United States, and climbed to 45 percent nomically advanced nations leveled off at 80–90 percent
in France. Sixteen cities now exceeded 1 million in pop- but rapid urban growth diffused to most other parts of the
ulation, there were 287 exceeding 100,000, and the world. By 2000, half the world’s population lived in urban
world economy had been reshaped around the great areas and virtually all population growth was occurring