Sublime

Mumford, who was an expert on cities and architecture, publishing the monumental The City in History in 1961, had a unique insight into the way that technics operated in an urban environment. His essay is concerned with how technical systems, from ancient times to today, have the propensity to enable or resist authoritarianism. As he writes:

While he was consumed with the administrative details of the work he undertook, he was always aware of the Big Picture. He had the anthropologist’s ability to stand back, gather information, and make independent judgments based on the facts. This was perhaps his strongest character trait. Whether he was laying out a university or a municipal park s... See more

“The existence of a public realm,” Arendt observed, “and the world's subsequent transformation into a community of things which gathers men together and relates them to each other depends entirely on permanence.”

Why do American cities feel less "alive" than their European counterparts? It's because of something called the "missing middle". A century ago, American cities looked completely different... (thread) 🧵 https://t.co/zwNWejfx4L

All of these thinkers opposed bigness and prescribed a greater humility about one’s unavoidable ignorance. No one could fully understand all the facts of the dynamic market any more than one could weigh the true costs of introducing a vast new flow of traffic through neighborhoods like New York’s SoHo and West Village, which had developed organical

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