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Are you interested in the city as the theatre for social action?

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Our summary today works with the article titled What is a city? from 1937 by Lewis Mumford, from the Architectural Record. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the city can be understood beyond the usual suspects of people, infrastructure and networks. This article presents Mumford’s propositions about city planning and the human potential, both individual and social, of urban life.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Most of our housing and city planning has been handicapped because those who have undertaken the work have had no clear notion of the social functions of the city. And they did not suspect that there are problems which can’t be set right by merely building sanitary tenements or straightening out irregular streets. The city as a purely physical fact has been subject to numerous investigations. But what is the city as a social institution? Despite earlier answers from Aristotle and Robert Owen for example, most contemporaries do not inspect this problem.

However, Mumford summed up the sociological concept of the city as the related collection of primary groups, like family and neighbourhood, and purposive associations, which are especially characteristic of city life. The essential physical means of a city’s existence are the fixed site, durable shelter, permanent facilities for assembly, interchange and storage, and the essential social means are the social division of labour, which is not just economic but a cultural process. The city in its complete sense then is a geographic plexus, an economic organisation, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity. The city fosters art and is art, the city creates the theatre and is the theatre. In this city are humans’ purposive activities focused and achieved through conflicting and cooperating personalities, events, groups, into more significant culminations.

Without the social urban drama there is not a single function performed in the city that could not be performed in the open country. The physical organisation of the city may enhance or obstruct this social drama, or make it more richly significant through education, politics and art. The beauty or ugliness of a city qualify human’s social activities. If urban dwellers are reluctant to leave their shelters for the urban area, then that is a sign of social disharmony and conflict. The city creates the drama – let it be good or bad.

One may describe the city in its social aspect as a special framework directed toward the creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and significant collective drama. Due to their diversity, the citizens become the players in this drama presenting their various interests, aptitudes, selections. Here lies the possibility of personal disintegration and the need for reintegration through wider participation in a concrete and visible collective whole. What humans cannot imagine as a vague formless society, they can live through and experience as citizens in a city. Their unified plans and buildings become a symbol of their social relatedness. When the physical environment itself becomes disordered and incoherent, the social function that is harbors becomes more difficult to express.

Therefore, social facts are primary and the physical organisation of a city, its industries and its markets, its lines of communication and traffic must be subservient to its social needs. In the development of the city during the last century we expanded the physical plant carelessly and treated the essential social nucleus as a mere afterthought with government, education and social services. It is time to treat this social nucleus as the essential element in every valid city plan, respecting the interrelations among schools, libraries, theatres, community centres and alike. In this way, the integrated city can be laid down.

With this sociological answer to the question what the city is, other questions gained some replies. The desirable size from the physical stance can grow indefinitely, but from a sociological perspective, if the city is a theatre of social activity, there are definite limitations on the size for a city. The size of an urban unit is a function of its productivity and opportunities for social interactions and culture, supporting such limitations. Without such limits, overcrowding and overbuilding are the result. However, what is important is not an absolute figure for population or area even though these aspects are also important for reproduction of the city, for example.

What is more important is to express size always as a function of the social relationships to be served. There is also an optimum area of expansion beyond which further urban growth tends to paralyse rather than further important social relationships. Transportation changes and communication via phones and radio expand the physical limitations, and the urban unit has grown from the Middle-Ages half a mile to the region. But the region cannot function effectively as a well-knit unit if the entire area is densely filled with people. Since their very presence will clog its arteries of traffic and congest its social facilities.

Limitations on size, density and area are absolutely necessary to effective social interactions. Therefore, they are the most important instruments of rational economic and civic planning. These limitations are necessary to break up the functionless, hypertrophied urban masses of the past. Under this mode of planning, the planner proposes to replace the mononucleated city with a new type of polynucleated city with adequately spaced and bounded cluster of communities. Twenty such cities in a region with adequate planning would have all the benefits of a metropolis that help a million people without its ponderous disabilities. The emerging sources of power, transport and communication do not follow the old highway network at all. In their network no single centre will like the metropolis of old become the focal point of all regional advantages. The region becomes open for settlement. Within the next generation this dissociation and decentralisation of urban facilities will go even farther.

Plans for the polynucleated city must result in a fuller opportunity for the primary group, humans to live their social lives. More complicated patterns and more comprehensive life for the region need to be born from such approach, because for the first time, a region can be treated as an instantaneous whole for all the functions of social existence. Instead of trusting the mere population growth to produce the theatre, we must seek these results from deliberate action. To embody these possibilities in city life from better technical organisation and acuter sociological understanding and to dramatize the activities in urban and individual settings are the tasks for the coming generations.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. The city in its complete sense then is a geographic plexus, an economic organisation, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity.
2. Social facts are primary and the physical organisation of a city, its industries and its markets, its lines of communication and traffic must be subservient to its social needs.
3. Instead of trusting the mere population growth to produce the theatre, we must seek these sociological results from deliberate action.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. How has urban planning lived up to the article in the last century?
2. How do you see your city as a theatre?
3. What is missing from your city to enable such social interactions?
4. How can we help the city to become more of a social theatre beyond being the physical stage?

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