On the search of a lost urban planning modernity: throughout the legacy of Lewis Mumford

SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 433 On the search of a lost urban planning modernity: throughout the legacy of Lewis Mumford Josep T. Muntañola Thornberg, Magda Saura Carulla Introduction It is with great satisfaction that we write this article for the new international journal of the also new “Territorialist” Association founded in 2011 in Florence, a city, indeed, with a very important historical legacy on architecture and urban planning…. Some new theories and practices in planning are strongly needed today, and it is just for this characterization of “new” theories, that we link our text to Lewis Mumford’s legacy, books and articles that introduced architects and urban planners during the twentieth century A.C. into a new world of modern ideas, opening, at the same time, the planning practices for the next centuries, as he himself wrote in 1975 (MuMford 1980): …the astrophysicists must reckon with the possibility that their outer world is only our inner world turned inside out. So perhaps with a further twist the impenetrable Black Hole might prove the shadow of a brighter sun. Even the notion of an ‘explosion’ and an ‘implosion’, a ‘beginning’ and an ‘ending’, may be only a very human metaphor, which the universe for reasons of its own, neither recognizes, nor exhibits. On that ultimate skepticism my own faith blithely flourishes. LET THE CURTAIN RISE ON THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY - AND AFTER! … So, let us open the curtains for the play… 1. First act: “the egg of the snake” Taking into account the metaphorical idea of Bergman in the known film “The Egg of the Snake” pointing out to the dark origins of fascism in Germany and in Europe, we will expand this metaphorical meaning to those dark origins, to the fundamental theoretical and practical urban planning mistakes that have produced the catastrophic situation today in a lot of countries and more specifically in Spain, a complete paradigm of these mistakes that Lewis Mumford forecast in such a clear manner.1 The first ‘egg’, and the first mistake, deals with ‘free trade’ and takes into account the word ‘free’. Modern urban development has been tied for centuries to healthy urban trade. The ‘egg’ of free trade has been related with social and urban development as a 1 More than two million of empty houses, and more than half a million of people who need social housing, show the total social ignorance of urban planning procedures. Mumford insisted upon the fact that this ‘blind social’ condition of planning is related with a wrong use of technologies and financial powers. © 2014 Firenze University Press ISSN 2284-242X (online) n. 2, 2014, pp. 433-444 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 434 basic component for space construction. The ‘egg’ began to develop into a poisonous snake when we forgot that free trade cannot survive ecological destruction or social control by gigantic financial networks, as Lewis Mumford insisted upon for years and years. Then, education is converted into a rigid rule, like these days in Barcelona where children in the schools build high skyscrapers because ‘they want to be as rich as their parents’. This is not modernity at all, this is fascism. The second ‘egg’ is also very significant. Urban systems and technologies are totally needed in planning, both in design, in building and in dwelling. However, these tools become a dangerous egg when they confound neutrality with freedom. Then, architecture and planning become unlimited networks of freeways without historical and geographic interfaces. Urban systems are not neutral as Walter Benjamin claimed when he saw the eggs of the snake in the “glass culture” and found no modernity at all. A third ‘egg’ is when ecology and participation is manipulated for political purposes of very small healthy social groups, and this produces deep misunderstandings. Lewis Mumford analyses very carefully these three ‘eggs’ and he was accused of old-fashion behavior and of reformism, a big mistake and, again, a poisonous snake. In 1980 he sent to us his last book My Work and My Days, where it is possible to find the following thoughts: … we discussed DH Lawrence together… you had actually seen him in Italy. His letter from Germany was written in 1924 (and it was not published until after the war). Here he wrote (prophetically) “... Germany is very different from what it was two and a half years ago … the great leaning of German spirit, is once more eastwards, towards Russia, towards Tartary … THERE IS A SENSE OF DANGER. IT ISN’T THE PEOPLE. THEY DON’T SEEM DANGEROUS. OUT OF THE VERY AIR COMES A SENSE OF DANGER, A QUEER, BRISTLING FEELING OF UNCANNY DANGER…” (from a letter to Frau V. talking about a meeting in Lubeck in 1934). And Mumford follows: all of these prophecies by Lawrence, has come to pass in our time, what masses of men felt in their souls was already declared in the self-conscious doctrines of Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Junger and Oswald Spengler, who provided new symbols for everything in the German soul that was dark, repressive and alien to the rest of the world…. End of the first act. 2. Second act: Lewis Mumford’s legacy A serious analysis of Lewis Mumford’s legacy will need some books, so we will use a long private interplay of letters with Josep Muntañola, taking place since a personal visit to the old professor in Albany (New York) in 1963.This interplay is summarized here in three different diagrams. The first - diagram I - is the last letter he sent, dated 6 of July 1981, when he was 86 years old; it is a somewhat sad letter, but full of deep considerations. The second - diagram II - is a multidisciplinary mix of texts, in order to grasp the complete range of understandings he had. The third - diagram III - gathers some opinions and ideas about the questions that the research by Josep Muntañola arose into his mind. You should keep into consideration that there was a difference of age of 45 years, however this was never a barrier for a long friendship and mutual concern. Each diagram carries its own comments with it. SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 435 Diagram I - Letter, 6 July 1981 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 436 In relation to this first diagram, his last letter in 1981, it is important to point out the significance for him of the new ecological trends, especially in the recent generations. He was active and with a lot of invitations, but he also felt to be misunderstood by intellectuals and more specifically by architects. The idea that he was considered an ‘old fashion’ urban planner depressed him deeply. Diagram II - Letter, 2 June 1970 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 437 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 438 In relation to diagram II, the selection of professionals is linked to the proposition of the correspondent about studies on the interaction between psycho-sociological research and architecture. The inclusion of professor J. L. Moreno, of German origin, and his “theatre of spontaneity”, a very difficult book to find (Moreno 1934), was a proof of his modern vision, since the connections between theater and architecture, and their psychoanalytical implications, have been uncovered many years later by the theoreticians of architecture and urban planning. So the multidisciplinary perspective of Lewis Mumford was not simply erudition, but a deep understanding of the design and planning innovations in relation to science and arts in general. And, of course, the same can be detected in their ecological view points, very different from Patrick Geddes’ previous orientations, in spite of the deep reverence to his master mixed with a need to take distance from what he evaluated as an excess of arrogance and self-esteem.2 Diagram III, Letters, 17 September 1967, 18 October 1972 2 This is clearly stated in the autobiography (MuMford 1980), note 1. SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 439 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 440 SCIENZE DEL TERRITORIO 2/2014 pag. 441 Finally, in relation to letters in diagram III, their ideas about planning and the city are very clear. Perhaps some arguments in the letter of 17 September 1971 are the best summary. Following these short texts, two ideas worried Mumford the last years of his life: the role of technology in social wellbeing, and he wrote a lot of books and articles on that; and the second topic was the need for a criticism of the contemporary urban planning practices in relation to ecological misconceptions and wrong social practices. The two questions were related to the bad use of technologies, not to the technologies in themselves. This is the reason for the last fundamental book: “The Pentagon of Power” (MuMford 1970). And it is clear that the computer was for him a dangerous snake, hopefully for us, less poisonous than he felt it to be. We should read Mumford’s books as a basic heritage to start thinking on the best future for planning activities. In his book The Culture of Cities (MuMford 1938), he summarizes his views of a new urban planning that today still sound very modern and contemporary. 3. Third act: the course of planning Taking again some concepts from Mumford’s legacy, we have in mind the extraordinary article written in 1934 in The New Yorker (MuMford 1934), about an exhibit in the MOMA on abstract paintings by Picasso, Duchamp, etc., where he describes the power of representing reality in a modern way, in such a way that abstraction becomes closer to reality than figurative representation. The “Course of Abstraction”, which was the title of the article, means the course of art, science, and social life altogether, in an extraordinary modern manner. Following the open path by Patrick Geddes, biologist, urban planner and sociologist (see diagram IV), he was also very impressed by the ecological studies and by biosocial theories, lying outside of the scope of the present article. This is an extraordinary theoretical point, since this view on modern art destroys forever the incompatibility between the new and the old, and the local and the global, in architecture and in urban planning. Almost one hundred years after abstract art began, millions of architects still misunderstand the point. From now on, to build new buildings or to rehabilitate old frames is exactly the same, and translations or new writings are no more split into two different worlds.