Lewis Mumford and the ecological region

Well known for his column in The New Yorker and his visionary political and ecological ideas, Lewis Mumford is widely regarded as one of the foremost urban critics of the century. Mumford's work, which spanned the 1920s through the 1960s, addressed the environmental, aesthetic, and social dimensions of American culture. Clearly a man ahead of his time, he advanced a conception of regional development that balanced the needs of the social world with those of the natural ecosystem. This book first traces the development of his ideas and his work as founder of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), and then explores the relevance of Mumford's vision to today's urban and environmental problems. In the first part of the book, Mark Luccarelli excavates the intellectual sources of Mumford's ideas. He shows how Mumford's notion of ecological regionalism reflected a tradition of ecological thinking that was most eloquently elaborated in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Instead of standing against modernity, Mumford linked this tradition to the potential of science for recovering a healthy relation to nature within the rubric of a participatory democracy. The value of Mumford's approach, the author argues, is his attempt to make his ideas speak to America, and to the possibilities for ecological planning inherent in the American civic tradition. Mumford proposed regional planning that would shape human life in response to the influences and critical forces of regional ecosystems; address over-urbanization and recontextualize cities in relation to nature; and take advantage of natural economies rather than economies of scale. . Exploring what happened when Mumford attempted to put his thoughts into practice, chapters examine the founding of the RPAA, as well as the debates about planning and politics that ensued from the early 1900s through the 1960s. In following these debates, the author recreates the intellectual setting centered around Mumford in dialogue with supporters and antagonists. The story of the RPAA, its innovative and moderate approach to planning, and its ultimate demise is an important one: it shows the possibilities - and the difficulties - in finding and using the intellectual and cultural materials of the American experience for social and environmental reform. Readers come away with a deeper understanding of the plight of today's cities as well as our current environmental dilemma.