Planning and
RegionalisDl in the
Early Thought of
Lewis MUDlford
by Mark Luccarelli
T
he planning of urban space is an ancient phenomenon,
apparent, for instance, in the layout of streets in the cities
of the Indus Valley which are among the earliest known
to archaeology. The classic urban functions of trade and
administration required the organization of central places according
to a preconceived design; and the most prosperous residents preferred the amenities made possible by planning. In the 19th century,
however, the dramatic transformation of western cities created by
industrialization was unplanned, and the entire urban fabric was
unravelled by vast numbers of new urban residents and by the need
for modernizing industries to deterlnine the use of space. The result
was the rise of vast conurbations in formerly rural areas and the
creation of sprawling factory districts surrounding old urban centers.
Planning revived as the middle classes demanded amenable residential settings. Whether the new planned settings were located
in the center of the metropolis (Haussmann's Paris) or on its periphery (the Anglo-American suburb), they shared an attitude and
expectation of exclusivity: their purpose was to create oases in an
otherwise degraded urban environment. By the end of the century,
however, a radically different conception of urban planning surfaced.
It sought nothing less than the transformation of the entire city for
the benefit of all its inhabitants. It questioned the necessity of vast
urban agglomerations and proposed the restoration of coherent and
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1
compact urban places. It sought also to re-establish visible urban
connections to the rural world. The most influential early expression of this idealist planning tradition was formulated by Ebenezer
Howard, an otherwise obscure English clerk. Howard's "garden
cities" were conceived to create a balance of residence, commerce
and industry and to incorporate rather than destroy the existing
rurallandscape. 1
A
young American journalist and intellectual, Lewis Mumford
became one of the most convincing proponents of the garden city
approach. For Mumford, the creation of planned cities not only
offered a solution to the urban ills of western civilization, but provided an important bridge to linking urban society to revitalized
regional cultures and to an ecological understanding of the natural
world. Early in the 1920s, Mumford helped found a small advocacy
group dedicated to promoting the cause of this new "regional planning." For ten years, 1923-1933, the Regional Planning Association of
America (RPAA) developed plans ·for the reconstruction of urban
America along regional lines, permitting the redevelopment of agriculture and industry and the creation of new garden or "regional"
cities. Regional planning would make possible both the survival of
rural landscapes and their incorporation into the life of the urban
dweller. As Mumford explained, only planning for an entire "regional
complex" can create a new balanced life: "While metropolitan planning regards the surrounding open country as doomed to be swallowed up in the inevitable spread and increase of population, the
regional planner seeks to preserve the balance between agricultural
and primeval background and the urban environment." By beginning with the "region as a whole" and seeking to "bring every capacity
of the region up to its fullest state of cultivation or use," regional
planning could redirect the growth of urban areas and provide an
infrastructural basis for the reawakening of cultural regionalism.
Mumford recognized that the only way to accomplish ibis was to
break the established patterns of urban growth. Rather than filling
in the landscape with an "undifferentiated urban mass," the overpopulated metropolis would spin off regional centers, new garden
cities, which could absorb the growth in population.2
Mumford envisioned urban and regional planning as a means of
promoting economic and social reconstruction, but he rejected it as
a tool for social engineering. Regional planning would avoid local
2
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bureaucratic manipulation by virtue of its larger context. It would
be an element of a wider cultural reawakening which would transform the civilization in part through the rebirth of regional folk
cultures and of an organicist tradition in American letters, and in
part by using the very technologies and techniques which the civilization had devised. Thus planning was integrally related to the other
components of Mumford's thought: his sociology of communities,
his critique of "American Civilization," and his search for an alternative American cultural past.
Mumford searched for a way to adapt civilization to the balance
of nature. Particularly in his early career, he identified his work as
the search for a means to restore the human connection to nature
within the context of a "mechanized" civilization. The key was the
recovery of the persistent human memory of culture balanced with
nature and its application through the tool of regional planning.
Mumford's optimism-particularly his near-utopian faith in science
and technology-may now seem naive. Yet our survival as a species
may depend upon accomplishing the synthesis which he projected.
Mumford sought to extend the influence of a scientific technics;
yet he argued that its value would depend, paradoxically, on our
creating a culture different from that which created science and
manifested itself in the Enlightenment tradition. For Mumford, the
culture of early New England and the writings of Emerson, Thoreau,
Hawthorne and Melville would serve as a source of this divergent
tradition. Unlike many critics, he saw the Transcendentalists in the
context of an extant folk culture influenced by its regional geography and environment. Their writings were a creative response to
the possibilities and necessary limitations of nature. In The Golden
Day, Mumford argued for the continuation of their work; the development of an American letters which would further organic values
and would look to the experiences afforded by nature in particular
locales and regions for inspiration and direction. This would lend
perspective to the debunking of "American Civilization" and help
redirect technics toward the task of creating a new regional economy
and society.
In this paper I intend to examine the origin of Mumford's thinking by tracing the beginnings of his thought to the collapse ofliberal
progressivism after the First World War and by focusing on the influences exerted by Thorstein Veblen, Van Wyck Brooks, and Patrick
Geddes. Secondly, I will uncover Mumford's attempt to fit his ideal
of planning in the context of his advocacy of regionalism. Finally,
I will evaluate Mumford's synthesis and suggest that the continuing
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3
value of his work depends upon a more accurate assessment of the
role and power of existing institutions and the development of an
appropriate political expression of his ideals.
I
The immediate context of Mumford's thinking about social theory
was the collapse of pragmatic liberalism during the First World War.
The new liberalism of the progressive period, characteristically that
of Herbert Croly and his New Republic, had been rooted in Deweyan
pragmatism, especially in its capacity to visualize science as an instrument for social reconstruction. Pragmatism freed liberals from
the repudiated idea that science could supply a teleology which
implied a "natural" form of social organization (natural law theory).
The way was opened to a post-mechanistic understanding of science
as an instrument for human betterment. Scientific method and technics provided the means for continuing social evolution toward the
realization of freedom. Thus the liberal values of freedom and
democracy were restored as social ends.
Yet the substance of freedom and democracy were not well defined;
they were associated by the new liberal theorists with I} social democracy, 2} cultural, and 3} political nationalism, and 4} State management of capitalism. The new liberalism proved viable as long as all
four elements remained compatible. War ended that compatibility.
Croly understood well the primary significance of the third and fourth
goals for those liberals in power. Thus the Wilson administration
decided that economic and national interests mandated entrance
into the War. The liberal coalition disintegrated over the war issue.
Among those who were a part of the coalition was a group of
cultural nationalists-including Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and
Randolph Bourne-involved in the little magazine, The Seven Arts.
Bourne became the spokesperson for those who rejected thei. liberal compatriots' decision to intervene. Significantly, he criticized
what he called the "pragmatic acquiescence" on pragmatist grounds.
Those liberals who supported the war effort, he explained, had confused means with ends; though they were "equipped with all the
administrative attitudes and talents necessary," they had "never learned
not to subordinate idea to technique ...." The functioning of the
system had become an end in itself; efficiency was enthroned. In his
post-mortem, Liberalism in America (1919), Harold Steams summa4
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rized the views of former liberal progressives: the war had been an
appalling and meaningless exercise in "butchery; the Wilson administration had been manipulated at Versailles; liberals supporting the
War had done the work of chauvinists and militarists, thereby exposing the reality of nationalism; the national government had been
proven useless as an instrument of liberal reform; politics was tainted
by the exercise of power and proven incompatible with intellectual
and artistic pursuits. 3
This anti-liberal sentiment in leftish, artistic circles exerted great
influence on the young Mumford. Bourne's ideas were particularly
influential. Originally a Wilsonian liberal, Mumford rejected liberalism and lost interest in politics. Initially, he supported the War
both to establish a "new footing of peacedom," and to instill a sense
of national solidarity and social purpose, but he reacted negatively
to the administration's use of the Sedition Act to repress dissent.
Characterizing Wilson's pronouncements as an appeal to a "patriotism
of blind faith" which feeds the mentality of the "herd" (Bourne's
words), Mumford rejected nationalism with its demand of"subservience to that large and jealous corporation called the state." Even
more fundamentally, he considered his earlier disposition to support
those who "patch and tinker" with the "machinery of the political
state" as misdirected. Liberalism had failed because it did not see
that change required addressing more fundamental questions than
those addressed by politics. The State is only a "machine" and more
real change requires a reorientation of human relations, not the
adjustment of a mechanism. 4
His rejection of liberal politics, implying as it did a lack of faith in
the parliamentary institutions of bougeois democracy, led him to a
more fundamental critique of "industrial civilization." The mechanistic metaphor was applicable to the social and economic realm.
For Mumford the entire civilization resembled nothing so much as a
gigantic machine which seemed to function apart from the interests
of humanity and nature. The failing is basic: a lack of spiritual life.
The industrial revolution (so-called) confirmed the direction of a
culture which valued accumulation over genuine human association and connection to nature. This was the essential problem, and it
could not be addressed by "palliatives." He found a compelling contrast in the work of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin whose Factories,
Fields and Workshops was one of Mumford's favorite works. The prospect of masses of workers deserting the mega-cities for associational
life in industrial villages provided him with a lasting vision of social
transformation. 5 Kropotkin's vision was important to Mumford, but
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5
he was anxious to avoid the fate of those utopians who create beautiful but inherently unrealizable visions of the good society. Still a
pragmatic thinker, Mumford wanted to make decentralism a viable
alternative for an evolving post-industrial society. To do this he needed
a new vocabulary and a further understanding of society. Toward
this end, Veblen's social theory was a crucial first step, for it provided
Mumford with an understanding of the relationship between technology and social institutions.
II
Veblen and Mumford became colleagues in 1919 when both
received appointments to the Dial. Veblen quickly churned out a
series of articles later published as The Engineers and the Price System
which suggested the possibility of a revolution led by the engineers,
supported by the workers, and aimed at the overthrow of the business class. A new industrial economy would maximize economic
growth by avoiding business downturns, making possible the redistribution of wealth.
Veblen's analysis hinged on his distinction between business and
industry. Exclusive concern with "pecuniary values" characterized the
business class, connecting it with other ruling classes which throughout history have depended on theft, plunder, and exploitation. On
the other hand, the industrial arts depended on the instinct of workmanship present among the productive classes. The most crucial
group of producers was the engineers, for they oversaw the process
of technological innovation which propelled the industrial system. 6
As a radical critic of the business culture, Veblen confirmed
Mumford's feelings about the failings of industrial civilization. But
by separating the greed of the business class from the positive instincts
of the producing classes, Veblen suggested that the productivity
unleashed by the industrial revolution could be utilized for human
ends. The effect of this distinction, then, was to permit Mumford to
embrace the vitalism of the industrial -system. He was reminded, too,
of the value of productivity as a means of liberating human beings
from material want. Veblen also theorized that institutions were not
directly shaped by the rationality which underlies technology. Atavistic
social mores and values continue to determine the purposes ofinstitutions, long after these values cease to serve any human purpose. In
short, Veblen found that the productive, human values inherent in
6
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the culture ("instincts") of the producers and in the process of production itself (even the "machine" production of the 20th Century),
were obfuscated by the institutional and cultural power wielded by
the bourgeoisie. This is the inherent contradiction of capitalism: a
conflict between the values of productivity and growth, on the one
hand, and those of predation and stagnation, on the other. For Veblen
the resolution of this conflict demands the creation of a socialist
society lead by the technicians. The other alternative would be a
despotic regime which would maintain the present economic order
through appeal to chauvinistic nationalism. Liberal capitalism, he
predicted, would not survive far into the 20th Century.
Mumford borrowed Veblen's understanding of technics and, more
particularly, his severance of the productive system-the fuctories,
machines, technicians and workers-from the wider socio-economic
and cultural context in which it evolved, i.e. the hierarchies of power
in a class society. So while Veblen and Mumford agreed with Marx
that an industrial society with the benefits of an advanced technics
but without capitalist institutions was possible, there was fundamental disagreement about the relationship between the productive system and the socio-economic hierarchy. By viewing the productive
system as intrinsically unrelated to the socio-economic structure,
Veblen isolated reason from power. For Veblen, industrialism has
developed its methods, rationale, and technics independent of the
arbitrary political, social and cultural power exerted by the business
class. Indeed the latter presented an obstacle to the rational, efficient
functioning of the economy. Against this arbitrary power, technicians would martial the forces of reason. Social change would occur
when efficiency and productivity-represented by and embodied in
the engineers-triumphed over greed and predation-represented
by the businessmen. Apparently, Veblen viewed technics as inherently
removed from the dynamics of power. Whether he intended to
develop an extra-political theory of social change is not clear. It did
not occur to him that technicians might take on the characteristics of
self-serving technocrats either after his revolution or, as happened,
in co~unction with the reigning social order. It is clear that Mumford
read Veblen as a proponent of change who found a full treatment of
the dynamics of political and social power unnecessary.
Mumford borrowed Veblen's view of technology because, as I've
suggested, its plasticity permitted the easy conclusion that the industrial system might be absorbed wholesale and directed to some other
purpose. This was a crucial limitation of Mumford's analysis to which
I shall return. Yet Mumford also advanced a criticism of Veblen (and
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7
parenthetically of the later Marx) which anticipated post-Marxist criticism. For Mumford, Veblen failed to explore the possibilities of a
post-capitalist culture more fully. His concern with productivity as an
end in itself seemed limited. Mumford wondered whether Veblen's
technocratic utopia of plenty would really be a drastic change of the
contemporary order. Recalling the reasoning of Bourne's argument
against the war liberals, Mumford asked: "what [does it matter] if
industrial society is run efficiently, if it is run in the same blind alley
which humanity finds itself today?'" Much to his credit, Mumford
raised the issue of cultural ends. Technology may create change, but
the establishment of the purpose and direction of that change cannot be left to the technician or to a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Mumford recognized the sterility of modernization and economic
growth as cultural goals. What good is development if it only serves
to permit the purchase of an ever increasing number of things.
Modernization depends on a vast system of organization and control
and upon systematic procedures for production; such a system needs,
at the very least, a set of defined social and cultural ends or it will
continue-despite changing rulers-along a path of meaningless accumulation and accompanying destruction of the natural world.
III
Explaining the need to develop and apply a teleology for the
direction ofa post-industrial technics absorbed Mumford's attention
throughout the twenties. His conclusions that ecological regionalism
may provide an old/new cultural context for Western Civilization
and that regional planning constituted the essential technique for its
development, owed much to the British geographer Patrick Geddes.
Mumford met Geddes in 1920 when he accepted his invitation to
come to England to serve as acting editor of the Sociological Review.
Geddes asserted that all societies responded to one constant geography. Their responses, as mediated by technology, vary. Yet in an
important way, societies are extensions of the geographic locale or
"region." All societies, then, reflect the inter-relatedness of life within
a region as established by such factors as geologic and climatic conditions. Somehow industrialization has made possible a process of
urbanization which has thrown the balance of long-established
regions into disarray. Forms of social organization which evolved in
the context of the natural region (such as the family and "commu8
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nity") were displaced by a vast, impersonal society which mirrors the
grotesque urban agglomerations which Geddes termed "conurbations".
Mumford found Geddes' social theory appealing partly because it
confirmed his sense that "community" is a "natural" form of human
association lost in modern urban societies. Small, intimate communities, of course, are as much a creation of culture as urban society.
Just as there is nothing "natural" about community as a form of
human association (which is not to say that, historically, the rural
environment of many small communities may have permitted a closer
association with nature), urban societies are not inherently antiassociational. Indeed, community and family life may prosper within
an urban context. s There is, however, a linkage between cities and
social disorganization. It is not a consequence of the size of urban
societies but rather of the increased vulnerability of people within
them. With the coming of the industrial revolution, new economic
structures led to the imposition of a harsh regime upon the population. By absorbing Geddes' view that human association had changed
from "natural" communities to artificial societies, Mumford did not
consider in his social calculus, the important influence exerted by
these institutional forces (see related criticism below). In essence he
depoliticized the issue. 9
Instead Geddes emphasized the role of technics in righting these
natural-social imbalances. The industrial age constituted a "paleotechnic" era; coal-burning steam plants and railroads encouraged
centralized production, creating conurbation and its attendant social
malaise. The coming "neotechnic" era, by contrast, would depend
on electricity. Consequently, industry would be diffused and new
forms of decentralized social organization would replace the industrial city. For Mumford, these ideas confirmed his earlier notion
regarding the centrality of technics.
Geddes' "sociobiology" gave Mumford both a biological and sociological basis for his regionalism. Geddes presented the natural region
as a biological "fuct," the ecological basis of all life. Its interconnections
of climate, terrain and plant and animal life underlie existence. Its
influence was essential, not only to an understanding of nature, but
also to social organization. Humankind is not above this nexus. Rather
human activity has been shaped in response to it. Whether or not
regional conditions are understood and adhered to, societies depend
on the vitality of natural regions. For Mumford, as for Geddes, the
region with all its natural and human activities was imbued with all
the qualities of what is now called an "eco-system." It stood as a system,
sufficient in itself. Though, of course, social and economic activity
Planning and Regionalism
9
cannot be fully explained in this context, Mumford adopted it to
emphasize the ideal of human activity reconciled with nature and to
show just how far Western Civilization had moved from this ideal.
Indeed, the tragedy of Western Civilization is that it proceedseconomically, socially, culturally-with a total lack of awareness of
the ecological reality on which it depends. It has created powerful
and highly productive machines, yet these technologies have destroyed nature. Mumford argued that the relative success of these
tools must account for their environmental impact, particularly on
the integrity of regions. Given the destructiveness of the technologies
developed by the industrial revolution, Mumford asked whether they
served humankind as well as the "ecotechnics" which powered preindustrial Europe.
By contrast, Mumford found that most (rural?) cultures have
reflected the ecological influence exerted by regions. These cultures
engage nature, shape the environment-most visibly through landscape-as they are shaped by it. In this process, culture helps define
the boundaries of regions: "If one adds man to the picture ... the
differences between (regions) becomes finer and finer, for it is no
longer a matter of physical facts, but also of social heritage." Thus the
region is both a natural geographic entity and a creation of culture.
Regionalism, accordingly, may develop as a movement when latent
expressions of regional identity find conscious expression. Tracing
the beginning of regionalism as a movement to the 19th-Century
Felibrigists who began the recovery of the culture of Provence,
Mumford was determined to find and illuminate the "unconscious
regionalisms" of North America. lO
At the same time, Mumford proceeded to develop an implicit
historiography. His starting point was the social impact of technics.
Each historical era appeared to be governed by social and cultural
forms derived from its technics, particularly its energy sources. This
was derived from Geddes' sociology and became an essential element of Mumford's thought. Geddes had also shown that a new technics was evolving based, or so it seemed, on the awakening of science
to ecological reality. It appeared, therefore, that the very civilization
that had carried out the destruction of myriad regions in a runaway
rush to modernize had also generated the new techniques (biology,
geography, and urban planning, among others) and technologies
(electric generation and new alloys) which might enable the re10
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generation of regions. Mumford interpreted this to mean that the
evolutionary transformation of the culture could begin within the
framework established by its technical processes, and by inference
within the scope of its on-going historical development.
The new civilization would assume a decentralized, regional form
of organization in which a new balance between nature and culture,
between rural and urban, between small community and large society would be achieved. In Technics and Civilization, Mumford suggested
that the on-going development of "neotechnics" prefigured this cultural and social evolution.l1 The clean technology of the new era,
based on electricity and metal alloys, would permit the diffusion of
the functions centralized in the industrial city. Recognizing that electricity could be generated from a number of sources, Mumford
predicted that the new technology would end the centralizing influence of "paleo technics," dissolving the "inchoate industrial city," and
leading to a new social and cultural configuration.
This analysis suggests the limitation of Mumford's work to which
I alluded earlier. In fact, capitalist institutions were not transformed
by scientific technology; rather the institutions managed to appropriate the technology. Mumford was not an historical determinist.
He did not expect the new technology would inevitably create a new
society. Social change, he felt, would require a change of mind. Nor
did Mumford hope to transcend history. He did not consider the
development of neotechnics a triumph of reason over history. As
I've suggested, he saw the development of the new technology as the
beginning of a new historical era: Consequently, institutions would
have to change in order to function in accordance with the new
technical facts. Though the final form of this transformation was
by no means assured (it would depend on the culture, i.e. on the
mentality of the new era), Mumford viewed technological change as
creating the primary historical context for socio-cultural transformation. Clearly, Mumford attached too much historical significance to
neotechnics. The "purely rational" and scientific basis of the new
technology seemed a clear departure from the past. Consequently,
he lauded "scientific investigation" which might finally "come into
its own" at the point when the "basis of Western Civilization" reached
a crisis of "uncertainty." Following in the tradition of Comtian positivism and clearly influenced by both Geddes and Veblen, Mumford
thought that the development of scientific technology established
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11
the crucial historical frameworkY As an element of a scientific technics, regional planning would become an objective tool practiced by
technicians in the interest of the whole society.
Obviously Mumford miscalculated; the institutional dynamic established over the pas( five hundred years proved very durable and
resistant to fundamental change. Lacking a connection with an influential political and social movement, scientific technics-and urban
planning-had little effect on the structure of social organization.
Instead, science, already by the 1920s in the process of being
bureaucratized, soon became a powerful element in the consolidation of corporate powerY Consequently, when the infrastructural
diffusion that Mumford predicted did occur, its form was in line
with the institutional interests which emanated from, and sought to
extend the power of, the elite-dominated metropolitan centers. The
RPAA's genuine program of cultural and economic decentralization
did not even receive a serious hearing.
Mumford's understanding of history was flawed. Yet he recognized
that the power of any historical explanation would be useful only if
it were connected to a critique of the culture considered apart from
its historical development. This was a fundamental contribution.
Mumford sought to uncover a radical cultural context for change.
He wanted to return culture to the center of the story; ideas, ethos,
and value were essential to any great paradigmatic shift. Thus for
Mumford the real impetus for change would arise in a transvaluation of values. Beneath the civilization lies a vast cultural geography,
a resource of different paths, different memories which can provide
sources for the recovery of nature-in-culture.
IV
Mumford was determined to exert influence on the embryonic
urban planning profession. Back in New York, he began by writing
articles for theJournal of the American Institute of Architects. At the same
time, he explored the origin of what he thought was Western Civilization's great capacity for self-deception. He began in this direction
by participating in a collective project of cultural criticism; the writing of Civilization in the United States. Organized by Harold Steams
and Van Wyck Brooks and published in 1922, the book was an anthology of thirty essays united in their denunciation of America as
"spiritually defective," affording little room for creativity. But there
12
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was sharp disagreement regarding the appropriate response of art
and criticism to the American condition. On the one hand, Steams
andJ.E. Spingarn advocated the elevation of "aesthetic thinking" over
intellectual and social concerns. Steams found in the ris.e of the
youth culture a "restless" energy destined, perhaps, to flower into an
"America of our natural affections."14
While authors such as Steams and Spingarn advocated a kind of
vitalism rooted in immediate sense perception and isolated from
social concerns, Brooks and Mumford insisted that fully realized
self-expression requires a social dimension. Only by seeking the integration of the polarities of self and society, intellect and action, the
ideal and the practical, will the critic contribute to the creation of a
genuine culture. Brooks had already written an essay for the Dial in
which he called for the discovery of a "usable past" to guide the
formation of culture. But he had long doubted whether America's
past was suitable. In The Wine of the Puritans (1908), Brooks contrasted
the organic cultures of old Europe-there people are "molded by
the special traits of climate, natural elements and properties of their
lands"-with the "purely intelligent," i.e. rationalistic, culture of North
America. European America had no early period of organic growth:
"the old Puritan days were not the childhood of our race (culture)
but the first episode of our history." America was purely a product of
ratio, lacking in an emotional life, without a mythology ("childhood")
from which to draw images and feelings. American culture manifested
itself in two equally unsatisfactory ideal types: the "Puritan" and the
"pioneer." Both were unwilling to "cultivate life for its own sake," and
both were instrumental in creating America's controlling psuedoideal of progress. Worshipping the idols of growth and "success,"
America had created psuedo-heroes: self-made men. This was hardly
fertile ground for the search for a usable past. I5
Mumford found Brooks' work useful in two respects. First his characterization of America became central to Mumford's understanding
of "American Civilization." But given his theory of regional culture,
Mumford would discover, that which Brooks had hoped to find (an
"organic native culture") did lie hidden beneath the American cultural mainstream. Second, Brooks stimulated Mumford's thinking
about the uses of the past. Agreeing with Brooks, Mumford found
fault with those younger writers whose search for pure experience
led to mere "enjoyment and satisfaction." This he suggested was the
consequence of their failure to ground experience in memory.
Mumford now sought to clarify his generation's "special relations
with its past," to find a grounding from which it might "gain the
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13
ability to select the qualities which it values ...."16 This use of the
past, more mythological than historical, depended upon cultivating
memory. Mumford sought to project the self back to recover past
cultures, recalling their values and ideals in the search for possibilities. In the process, he sought to integrate, for himself, experience
and memory, and to construct an existential basis for genuine culture.
Opening the past required a willingness to bracket historical questions. As Mumford explained in "The Case Against Time," to imagine
"all relations as contemporary: there is no shifting time perspective,
with parts fading out and foregrounds emerging; all successive points
in linear time are projected on a surface." Thus the past becomes
a vast geography, a spatial dimension available to experienceP
This creates possibility, opening the opportunity to imagine different outcomes, choose ideas and values which are more suitable
expressions of the human condition. It represents imaginative freedom from history. There are cultures outside the mainstream, places
beyond the reach of a "machine civilization." In The Golden Day,
Mumford sought to explore some of those possibilities. By reviving
the Emersonian tradition in American letters and connecting it to
the regional culture of early New England, he hoped to further the
expression of America's previously "unconscious" regional cultures.
v
Brooks portrayed Emerson and Thoreau as unrepentant individualists, products of the "pioneer culture." But Mumford understood
that the "individualism" of the Transcendentalists was not the acquisitive egotism of the pioneer or entrepeneur. Emerson and Thoreau
cultivated an "inner habitat"; Emerson called it "self-culture," which
encouraged openness to experience, a willingness to sense, according to Mumford, "what the aboriginal Indian had absorbed from
the young earth." Far from the kind of "possessive individualism"
which finds its objective in the acquisition of things within a social
context, Transcendentalism sought to encourage a direct relationship between the individual and nature. As George Kateb pointed
out, this individualism posits a relation between self and world
which transcends "the social altogether, even if only in moments,
so that one may enter what Emerson calls 'an original relation' to
reality." It is an "impersonal" individualism seeking moments in
which self "escapes rootedness in social life" in order to seek a
14
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"radical spiritual equality that in certain respects is shared with all
natural existence."18
But for Mumford, the crucial thing was that Transcendentalist
thought-focused as it was on the direct experience of the individualarose within a peculiarly un-American social context established, in
part, by the "thoroughly socialized existence of the New England
town." America created a culture of disconnected individuals; early
New England, by contrast, had developed organic communities.
Mumford saw the Transcendentalists in the context of this "organic"
culture. Their individualism was just one expression of a culture
that developed its institutions and sense of community as extensions
of its rootedness in nature. For Mumford it was, therefore, an indigenous regional culture. Its distinctive aesthetic qualities-the architecture and other folk arts-were expressions of human adaptation
to the regional environment. Its "eotechnics" was in harmony with
the balance of nature. It was a democratic culture, an expression of
common people seeking equitable social arrangements and expressive of a willingness to live together. Consequently it developed the
earliest expression of American town planning (a fact given prominent attention in Mumford's account of American architecture, Sticks
and Stones). Growing beneath the official culture of Puritanism, this
regional culture achieved a cohesive social structure, an aesthetic
sensibility and technics expressive of the natural character of the
locale. To this, Transcendentalism added an openness to the individual's imaginative freedoms. 19
Mumford had created his mythic culture of origin. It was "mythic"
because it sought an understanding that reached deeply into the
imaginative self As he expressed it: we cannot "make the ways of
other cultures our ways . .. , (but) by entering into their life, our ways
will become more deeply humanized, and will, in fresh modes, continue the living past." Though recent studies have more accurately
assessed the historical reality of the New England town and culture
and found a greater continuity with its European origins, Mumford's
portrayal of a culture connected to its immediate environment is not
without truth. 20 Of course, Mumford was not writing history. I am
certain that he did not wish to contradict history or set myth against
history. (Actually his portrait of early New England corresponded
with his understanding of social structure and historical development).
Rather his purpose was to find a deeper truth, to undergo what
Stanley Diamond called a "conscious search in history for a more
deeply expressive, permanent, human nature and cultural structure."21 In The Golden Day, however, Mumford missed an opportunity
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to explore the texture of the "invisible roots, the profoundest meanings" of that regional past. Had he done so, he might have found
Thoreau's never completed "Kalendar," a record of the natural features and human association of the Concord area. He would have
written a book about the particularities of place, a poetic exploration of self in relation to place. Perhaps he would have reconsidered
the value of cultures and peoples that inhabitated North America
prior to the European "settlement."22
Instead The Golden Day read as a polemic, perhaps a necessary
one, aimed at contrasting the culture of provincial New England
with that of "American Civilization." Mumford traced the latter to
the breakdown of medieval culture that accompanied the Protestant
revolution and the development of science. By emphasizing reason
and individual autonomy, Western civilization created the foundation for the acquisitive individualism which flowered in the 19th
Century. The "settled culture" of the medieval synthesis gave way to
the "impermanent" culture of the modem era. American Civilization
was nothing but an extension of this culture; the greatly ballyhooed
American exceptionalism-the culture of the "frontier" and "opportunity"-was only a social and spiritual consequence of acquisitive
individualism set loose in the most unrestrained of circumstances.
For the pioneer, nature did not matter; it was alternately an obstacle
to progress (something to define yourself against) and a set of resources
to exploit. What lay at the root of American identity was, as Charles
Olson later explained, "not the will to be free but the will to overwhelm nature."23 Americans had developed a penchant for escaping
time (and convincing themselves that they could escape history)
through the conquest of space. Mumford wanted a new sense of time
and space, not an escape from history but its imaginative redirection,
not the conquest of space but its embrace. The regional culture that
he celebrated had developed a genuine spatial dimension, a true
sense of place. Only through the development of cultural regionalisms and the implementation of planning could this dimension of
human experience be recovered. This was Mumford's work.
VI
Mumford stands among those critics of the culture who accurately saw that the Western tradition derived from the Enlightenment
was both liberating and destructive. In response, he sought, in some
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measure, to restore those premodern, organicist values which he
found essential to the development of a "settled culture." Mumford
was a critic, finding in the past sources for the imaginative recovery
of a balance between culture and nature; he was a planner who
advocated the progressive revitalization of the civilization. Both critic
and planner, he attempted to mediate this polarity; this was his most
distinguishable intellectual characteristic as well as the source of
his vision.
Some have recently dismissed his work as contributory to the mystification of our institutions. 24 But Mumford's limitation here, really
a failure to grasp history, should not cloud our appreciation of his
wider vision. I would include his attempt to apply an ecological
understanding to culture, his insight into American cultural history,
and his attempt to incorporate the look back to a more suggestive
past with the thrust forward. His sense of the profound interconnection between humanity and the earth, as mediated by culture
through landscape and urban design, should be recovered and
reapplied as a fundamental measure of the civilization. D
Notes
1. Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, London: Sonnenschein, 1902.
2. Mumford, "Regional Planning," (8 July 1931, Address to Round Table on
Regionalism, Institute of Public Affairs, University of Virginia), reprinted in Planning the Fourth Migration, pp. 199-208, ed. by Warren I. Susman (Cambridge: MIT,
1976). The RPAA included Benton MacKaye, forester and originator of the Appalachian Trail, Stuart Chase, economist, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, architects
and planners, among others. See Roy Lubove, Community Planning in the 1920's
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1963); Susman's excellent over-view of the RPAA
ideas in Planning the Fourth Migration; and Luccarelli, "The Regional Planning Association of America," unpub. diss. (Iowa City, Ia.: University oflowa, 1985).
3. On progressive liberalism see Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism (New
York: Oxford University, 1961); and David W. Levy, Herbert Croly of the New Republic
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University, 1985). Steams, Liberalism in America (New York:
Boni & Liveright, 1919); Bourne quoted in Levy, p. 261.
4. Mumford, "Abandoned Roads", Freeman, 12 April 1922. 101-102.
5. Mumford, "Reflections on Our Present Dilemmas," in Findings and Keepings
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1975), pp. 200-209.
6. On Veblen see, John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery (New York: Seabury,
1978); Leonard A. Dante, Veblen's Theory of Social Change (New York: Arno, 1977); I
found Paul M. Sweezy, "Veblen on American Capitalism," in Thorstein Veblen, ed.
Douglas F. Dowd (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1958), particularly useful.
7. Mumford, "If Engineers Were Kings," Freeman, 23 November 1921, 261-262.
8. A substantial literature on urban families and communities substantiates my
point An overview of the developments in the history of the family is provided by
Tamara Hareven, "Family History at the Crossroads," in Family History at the Crossroads,
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ed. by Hareven (Princeton: Princeton University, 1987). In her essay (p. ix) she
noted three studies that have "demonstrated the central role of kin in organizing
migration from rural areas to industrial cities, in facilitating settlement in the urban
community, and in adaptation to new conditions." The persistence of community
sentiment, traditions and organization within the 19th-Century American working
class is a major theme of Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing
America (New York: Knopf, 1976).
9. In his later work, The Pentagon of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace,Jovanovich,
1970), Mumford recognized the influence of what he called a "power complex"; but
he was less interested in the specific means by which power was exerted by different
institutions under various regimes, than in a denunciation of a general ideology of
power which "underlies all ... institutional structures."
10. Mumford, "Regionalism and Irregionalism," Sociological Review 19 (October
1927): 277-288; "The Theory and Practice of Regionalism," Sociological Review 20
(January 1928): 18-37, and (April 1928): 131-140.
11. Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934).
12. Mumford, "Sociology and Its Prospects in Great Britain," Athenaem, 10
December 1920, 815-816. In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I should add
that with the publication of the three volume Myth of the Machine, the later Mumford
broke with his earlier faith in scientific technics. As I've noted, volume three of
the series, The Pentagon of Power, contains a sharp critique of science and the
"power complex," arguing for the restoration and continued development of the
varied eotechnics of the past. Nonetheless, Mumford was no closer to formulating
a theory of history which could explain the development of technology within
a wider socioeconomic context established by institutional structures. He maintained his historicism ("man lives in history; he lives through history . . ."), but
continued to imbue technology with a "formative" role in creating "human culture
as a whole."
13. An excellent study of the use of science by corporate America is David F.
Noble, America By Design (New York: Knopf, 1977).
14. Spingarn, "Scholarship and Criticism," and Stearns, "The Intellectual Life," in
Civilization in the United States, ed. H. Stearns (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922).
15. Brooks, The Wine of the Puritans (London: n.p., 1908); reprinted in Van Wyck
Brooks, ed. Claire Sprague (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). See also Brooks, Three
Essays on America (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1934). Brooks' essay, "On Creating a Usable
Past" published in the Dial 64 (April 1918): 337-341, was of fundamental importance
to Mumford's work both in directing him to explore the 19th Century, and to consider the past as a source of values and images for the present. The place of Brooks'
thought concerning the influe nce of the frontier in American history is considered
in Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians (New York: Knopf, 1969), pp. 87-88; and
Susman, "The Frontier Thesis and the American Intellectual," in Culture as History
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 27-38.
16. Mumford, "The Collapse of Tomorrow," Freeman, 13 July 1921,414-415; "The
Emergence ofa Past," New Republic, 25 November 1925, 18-19.
17. Mumford, "The Case Against Time," review of Time and Western Man by
Wyndam Lewis, in the New Republic, 7 March 1928, 102-103.
18. Kateb, "Thinking About Human Extinction (II): Emerson and Whitman,"
Raritan 6 (Winter 1987): 1-22.
19. Mumford, The Golden Day (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926); Sticks and Stones
(New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924).
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20. See Sumner Chilton Powell, Puritan Village (Middletown, Cn.: Wesleyan University, 1963); Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Toum (New York: Norton, 1970);
Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms (New York: Knopf, 1970).
21. Diamond, "The Uses of the Primitive," in Primitive Views of the World (New
York: Columbia University, 1963), xvii.
22. On Thoreau's "Kalendar," see Serman Paul, The Shores of America (Urbana, III.:
University of Illinois, 1958), pp. 389-400.
23. Olson, Call M e Ishmael (San Francisco: City Lights, 1947), p. 12.
24. Mumford and the RPAA were given an unsympathetic reading by Jane Jacobs
in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); she
argues, wrongly I think, that regionalism was a contributory cause of the chaotic
diffusion of post-War American cities. More recently M. Christine Boyer, Dreaming
the Rational City (Cambridge: MIT, 1983) launched a deconstructionist critique of the
planning profession, characterizing its discourse as a "utopian disciplinary order"
obviously disconnected from social reality; Mumford and the RPAA are dismissed
as some of the worst offenders.
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