The Culture of Cities was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1938, the second volume of the “Renewal of Life” series. It preceded The City in History by twenty-three years and was in many ways its first draft — a comprehensive study of urban development that established Mumford as the most important American urbanist of his generation.
The book traces the city from the medieval commune (which Mumford admires for its human scale, its integration of work and life, and its organic relationship to its surrounding region) through the baroque capital (built for display and military power rather than human habitation), the industrial coketown (sacrificing everything to production), and the contemporary metropolis (suffering from gigantism, congestion, and the loss of community).
Mumford’s prescription — regionalism, decentralization, the garden city, the reintegration of urban and rural life — drew on Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, and his own observations of European cities. He argued that the unlimited growth of the modern city was pathological rather than progressive, that human communities have optimal sizes beyond which they become dehumanizing, and that planning must begin with the region rather than the city center.
The book was enormously influential on post-war urban planning — though Mumford would later argue that his ideas had been misappropriated by suburban developers who took his decentralization argument without his insistence on community, public space, and cultural institutions.
Collecting The Culture of Cities
First edition (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1938): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $60–$200
- Without jacket: $15–$40
- Signed copies: $100–$300