Discuss Amongst Yourselves

Hi Everyone,

Will Wolfe here tellin' you to lock the doggy in the barn because here comes the "Paleotechnic Paradise: Coketown!" Maybe not all of you share my enthusiasm, but hopefully everyone has at least sifted through the 36 pages of Mumford's heavyset urban critique. It's a lot to take in, given the distractions of a typical college weekend in Austin, so lets keep this simple and just try to chew the proverbial fat.

Mumford's point of view is centered on his disgust with the industrial complex. He tells a story of how people sought personal achievement by building cities and ended up creating "man-heaps, machine warrens, not agents of human association for the promotion of a better life" Is there a clear purpose in this writing, what is mumford trying to achieve by lathering us up in his logic?

He pinpoints and ridicules everything that he believes led to the creation of the Coketown. Mine work originally intended as punishment for criminals, the reliable but highly inefficient steam engine, the atomic individual's consumptive avarice, rampant and unregulated growth, the myth of the untrammeled individual, the pungent agent of relaxation and social ceremony - tobacco. He really lays into these things as if they were the trail of garbage left in the wake the paletechnic urbanization period.

Looking into this period of chaos and poverty with such scrutiny tends to draw out comparisons to our modern day city and the direction that it is headed. What aspects of the industrial era city are still carried on today, what problems have been solved, resurfaced or grown?

In all of these new industrial towns where "the most elementary traditions of municipal service were absent" Mumford hints at the idea of a necessary evil hidden in all the mess that sparked a "Counter-Attack" to the urban problems of the industrial era. The major solution seems to be the construction of a complex infrastructure built into and under the existing city. This underground city, according to Mumford in his final pages, will certainly result in total self annihilation and extermination!! Why does Mumford freak out so terribly about the migration towards underground/indoor life? With out turning back the clock and planning our cities more effectively, what "arts of life" can a typical city dweller engage in as an attempt at stopping this imminent world destruction?