The nature of cities

Urban Ecology, 5 (1980/1981) 141-153 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam -Printed

in The Netherlands

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Book Reviews NATURE OF CITIES

The Nature of Cities. K.R. Schneider. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, CA, 1979. 352 pp., US$ 14.95, ISBN 0-87589-391-O. If you believe a book’s title should bear a close relation to its content, this one will give you cause for complaint. It is, apart from a brief diversion to South American fringe settlements, concerned only with American cities, their pathology, and possible cures. The author’s title for a previous book ‘Autokind vs Mankind’ would be closer to the mark, since for him the most virulent plague destroying America’s cities, environmentally and socially, is the automobile. ‘If land is used consumptively . . . the need grows for more vehicles, more parking, more boulevards and freeways, we also propel the need for more land, more buildings, and more facilites. Commerce and industry respond vigorously and happily, multiplying the machines and products required by the urban functionalism.’ This also illustrates one feature of Schneider’s writing, its quotable style. However, in this book, this theme is part of a broader complaint, which appears to be, basically, that in the rush of technological progress, the city has been regarded as expendable. As a result, American cities have become ‘technological rats’ nests, affluent, over-consumptive, brash, harsh, inhuman, detached, socially bestial, polluted and characterized by a frenzied movement with no clear objective’. His thesis hinges upon concepts of what constitutes progress, and the role the city should play in it. Two widely assumed ingredients of progress that he has quickly abandoned are technological growth and a detached house on its own spacious lot for every citizen. It should be said at this point that the book is essentially philosophical, with, despite the dust-jacket claim, little empirical support for arguments, and a small and out-of-date bibliography. However, the book does take a sweeping, broad look at American cities, and what attitudes are required to overcome their problems. For Schneider, it appears that progress of a nation is the progress of its cities, ‘the nature of cities largely defines the nature of civilization’. They provide the ‘human environment that organizes behaviour and virtually designs the circuit of our mind, as well as determining our uses of nature’. Environmental determinism at its purest, unadulterated by facts. One can’t live a satisfying life in a dirty inconvenient and graceless city. The first eight chapters dwell at length on this theme as it applies to cities. Chapter 9 diverts our attenti.on to the chaotic squatter settlements fringing cities in underdeveloped countries, for instance, the barriados of South America, and uncontrolled settlements around Ibadan, Allahabad and Davao. This Chapter is

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virtually the only evidence that the author ‘has an extensive international background in city planning’ as claimed on the flyleaf. European cities are not considered. So what is his Utopian city? It meets the requirements of human ecology - conservation and regeneration of the human habitat, and of humanism full development of the human potential within that habitat. These goals must replace those of ‘thoughtless profit’ and ‘escalating rude materialism’. We would like to comment on these ‘apple pie and motherhood’ goals. They are hardly new or to be quarrelled with, but must be brought down to earth, and confronted with competing goals of profit and material desires, which cannot be expunged completely from hearts and minds, and must therefore be accommodated. If a person wants more material goods, wants a house on its own spacious lot, wants a big automobile and is happy to drive it some distance, either to show it off or enjoy its advantage, or merely to fill in time, how is he going to be persuaded toward other goals except by necessity or Procrustean strategies? How are the political difficulties going to be overcome? Further, Schneider’s humanism appears to be concerned mostly with aesthetic, creative and social pleasures, and he skips very quickly over the vast inequalities in opportunities and constraints, such that many citizens are struggling to eat, fend off attack, accident or illness, and keep dry and warm, let alone live a companiable, aesthetic, creative life. There are no entries in the Index under Poverty, Employment, Unemployment or Wages, and few allusions in the text to poverty and inequalities associated with the blighted areas of cities. In the only reference to poverty and inequality we could find, he denies that poverty and inequality are due to class struggle, and says that they ‘both arise more powerfully from economic and social chaos than from class suppression’. That is, it seems, some ordering or correction of the market economy is required, but markets should be retained ‘for freedom itself’. No discussion on the latter point or of the tolerable extent of constraint and redirection seems to be necessary. Further, Schneider seems to be suggesting a relationship such that if you can cure the cities you can cure the nation’s economic and social ills rather than a reverse causal relationship, or one involving a common cause. One might ask, how should constraint be exercised to prevent a city competing with others for a large industrial or governmental project at the expense of the environment or social well-being of its own citizens? Thus, Schneider’s main answers to the question “Why are American cities deteriorating environmentally and socially’ are as follows: - the market economy vitiating planning - unbridled production and consumption - waste of land due to the universal preferences for a detached house on its own spacious lot, and automobile transportation - lack of recognition that the city is the key to civilization. His cures follow from these. Broadly, he looks for two revolutions, one to-

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wards a human ecology, with conservation and regeneration of man’s habitat, and the other towards humanism within created environments and institutions, and full development of human potential within the habitat. (Incidentally, he consistently misspells the name of a key reference source on this subject, Ian McHarg.) Schneider calls for (1) subordination to planning and design based on ecology and humanism of the market economy, technical development and production and consumption; and (2) substitution of planned high density for the single-family dwelling on its own. More specific (and familiar) recommendations are: - integrated three-dimensional cluster development - instead of zoning for separation, integration of the various work and nonwork activities to increase efficiency of transportation - rationalization of mobility - use of the open space saved from clustering to ‘multiply nature in the city’ - diverse, vibrant centres - emphasis on the human scale (the over-worked community concept) - local self-determination - ‘rebuild grass-roots democracy’ Schneider emphasizes the importance of two instruments that city governments have at hand to influence development, namely zoning and tax structures. He wants zoning used to integrate activities rather than merely separate them as he claims it is used now. Then he points out that ‘every tax dollar collected in taxes is an invisible hand influencing how and where five or ten private dollars will be invested’. Another element in his program would be to constrain public services and institutions such as universities, hospitals and large public service offices to assist rather than hinder proper development of cities, by consulting planners about location, transportation, etc., to avoid huge, isolated and specialized sites. The value of this book lies in its attempt to get to the heart of the problems besetting American cities, going beyond statistics and economics to consider the psychology and underlying economic and political realities causing bad cities. If he gets through to high-level decision makers with his message, it might give their decisions a slight bias in the ‘right’ direction. However, his treatment is Utopian and polemic rather than program orientated. Further, his values are essentially professional middle class, not aligned sufficiently with the values of the many whose life in the city is a struggle for material necessities and security, and who have a long way to go before they are likely to be interested in experiencing as broad or profound a range of civilization as possible, and displaying great spontaneity and creativity in integrating that experience each into his or her own being. The book should appeal to professional planners, researchers and students seeking a view on the failure of American cities to cope with planning ideals and technological progress. It is easy to read and full of superb quotations.

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Those interested in Schneider’s topic may wish to compare it with the recent book by Huth, “The Urban Habitat: Past, Present and Future” which also calls for a more effective planning approach to overcome ‘the inhuman living conditions prevailing in American cities’. W. MCKENZIE (Melbourne, PAST, PRESENT,

AND FUTURE

The Urban Habitat:

and R. SHARPE

Vie., Australia)

OF THE CITIES

Past, Present,

and Future.

Inc., Chicago, IL, 1978, 305 pp., US$l5.95,

Mary Jo Huth. Nelson-Hall ISBN O-88229-333-8.

With her book, Mary Jo Huth, professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, has done a great favour to all those who will get comprehensive information about the history and present tendencies of urbanization and town planning in Europe and the United States. In the book little attention is paid to specific ecological aspects of urban development, but this omission does not diminish the quality of its interdisciplinary, especially sociological, politological, and ideological approach. For both European and American readers, the comparisons between European and American conceptions, experiences, and tendencies in town planning and government, in residential policy and housing sociology are particularly interesting and useful. The book is subdivided into two main parts: Part I deals with Theoretical and Part II with Practical Perspectives of the Urban Habitat. Part I includes the following topics, which also form the Chapter headings: (1) Phenomenon of Urbanization, (2) Major Sociological Perspectives on the Urban Community, and (3) Concepts of the Ideal City: from Antiquity to the Present. Part II treating practical and workable solutions of the problems associated with urban growth in Europe and the United States occupies two thirds of the book. Its Chapter headings are: (4) Urban Planning Policies and Programs: the Experience of Western Europe, (5) The American Experience, (6) The Formula for a More Human Urban America: a National Urban Policy and New Towns. Part I summarizes the history of the worldwide urbanization process, the major sociological perspectives on the urban community which have emerged in response to this process, and a history of various concepts of the ideal city. Confronting such a broad range of issues, the authoress is more successful in treating the practical than in evaluating the theoretical and ideological approaches of the urbanization policy and city development. The classification of urban critics after their responses to the urban-industrial environment as archaists (Coleridge, Ruskin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), as futurists (Engels, Marx, and Mumford) and as fatalists (Spengler) is dubious, as is the statement that the philosophy of Enlightment of the eighteenth century led to the view of