The City Reader

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C01n1nents on the first edition "An excellent, wide-ranging, stimulating reader; attractively presented and easy to read." Brian Whalley, Department of Built Environment, De Montfort University

THE CITY READER

"A comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies, old and 'new. " Jamie Peck, Department of Geography, University of Manchester

Second edition

"An excellent overview, real breadth of coverage. Particularly valuable as a collection of key contributions which give a real flavour for the temporal development of Urban Studies." David Valler, Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield "An excellent comprehensive overview of urban development and source material." Allan Bryce, School of Architecture, University of Dundee "This volume is a most welcome collection, without precedent in range and quality." Alan Simpson, Urban Design Associates "An excellent bringing together of the most important papers and ideas that are relevant to the study of the urban environment." K. J. Bussey, Department of Land Economy, Paisley University

edited by Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout

"A real achievement. This book brings together 99 percent of the prominent names in Urban Studies. " lan Robert Douglas, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, USA "An excellent range of texts. The City Reader gathers together some central classics of urban theory; with a few surprises and a number of other pieces which can be difficult to acquire. Editors' comments are consistently illuminating." Nick Freeman, Department of English, University of Bristol "This is an essential reader for teaching about the cities and Urban Planning in developing countries. " Horng-Chang Hsieh, Urban Planning Department, Taiwan University "I think this is a splendid selection of writings which illustrate the development of modern thinking on urban problems. This is by far the best book of its type." Dr Tom Begg, Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh "Provides an international overview of urban design issues and an historical perspective on visionary planners who have shaped thinking about development. " Andrew McCafferty, Department of Built Environment, Northumbria University

London and New York

"

First published 1996 by Roudedge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Second edition published 2000 Reprinted 2000, 2001 (twice), 2002

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 1996, 2000 Selection and editorial matter Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout Typeset in Sabon by Solius (Bristol) Ltd, Bristol Printed and bound in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recotding, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The city reader / edited by Richard T. LeGates & Frederic Stout. - 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Urban policy. 2. Cities and towns. 3. City planning. 1. LeGates, Richard T. H. Stout, Frederic. HT151.C586 1999 99·31896 307.76-dc21 ISBN 0-415-19070-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-19071-1 (pbk)

Cover photo: Centre Pompidou Plaza, Paris, France. From Cityscapes by Algimantas Kezys (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988). Copyright © Algimantas Kezys. Reproduced with permission of Algimantas Kezys and Loyola.University Press.

To Courtney Elizabeth LeGates and Amy Catherine Stout They are the future

CONTENTS "

List of plates Acknowledgements Introduction

xii xiii xv

PROLOGUE KINGSLEY DAVIS

1965

"The Urbanization of the Human Population"

3

Scientific American

1 THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES Introduction V. GORDON CHILDE

1950 "The Urban Revolution"

17

22

Town Planning Review

H. D. F. KITTO

1951 "The Polis"

31

from The Greeks

HENRI PIRENNE

1925 "City Origins" and "Cities and European Civilization"

37

from Medieval Cities

FRIED RICH ENGELS

1845 "The Great Towns"

46

from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844

W. E. B. DU BOIS

1899 "The Negro Problems of Philadelphia," "The Question of Earning a Living" and "Color Prejudice" 56 from The Philadelphia Negro

HERBERT J. GANS

1967 "Levittown and America"

63

from The Levittowners

SAM BASS WARNER, JR.

1972 "The Megalopolis: 1920-"

69

from The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City

ROBERT FISHMAN

1987 "Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb" from Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia

PLATE SECTION: THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES

77

viii

I CONTENTS

CONTENTS

2

LEWIS MUMFORD

1937

Introduction

89

"What Is a City"

92

Architectural Record

LOUIS WIRTH

1938

"Urbanism as a Way of Life"

1994

SASKIA SASSEN

URBAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY

"

1961

"The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety" from The Death and Life of Great

106

JOHN MOLLENKOPF

1992

American Cities

WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON

1996

"From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos" from When Work Disappears:

1984

"Choosing a Future" from Losing Ground: American Social Policy

1994

MARGIT MAYER

122

FREDERIC STOUT

1995 1999

"Whose Culture? Whose City?" from The Cultures of Cities

SHERRY ARNSTEIN

1969

131

JAMES Q. WILSON AND GEORGE L. KELLING

1982

JOHN BRINCKERHOFF JACKS ON

1952

MIKE SAVAGE AND ALAN WARDE

1993

MICHAEL E. PORTER

WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI

1995

170

1989

"Taking Los Angeles Apart: Towards a Postmodern Geography" from Postmodern Geographies:

1990

"Fortress L.A." from City of Quartz: Excavating the

RICHARD T. LEGATES AND FREDERIC STOUT

1992

"Social Justice, Postmodernism, and the City" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

240 253

"Cities and Uneven Economic Development" from Urban Sociology, Capitalism,

264

1998

295 299

1870

"Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns"

314

American Social Science Association

EBENEZER HOWARD

199

278

"Modernism and Early Urban Planning,

1870-1940"

180

193

"The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City"

from Early Urban Planning, 1870-1940

1898

PATRICK GEDDES

1915

LE CORBUSIER (CHARLES-EDOUARD JEANNERET)

1929

Future in Los Angeles

DAVID HARVEY

"Broken Windows"

Introduction

The Reassertion of Space in Critical. Social Theory

MIKEDAVIS

"A Ladder of Citizen Participation"

5 URBAN PLANNING HISTORY AND VISIONS

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

a New World

EDWARDSOJA

229

Harvard Business Review

162

Landscape

"The New Downtown" from City Life: Urban Expectations in

1995

149

"The Growth of the City: An Introduction 153 to a Research Project" from Robert Park et al., The City "The Almost Perfect Town"

"Post-Fordist City Politics" from Ash Amin (ed.), Post Fordism:

and Modernity

3 URBAN SPACE 1925

219

Atlantic Monthly

PLATE SECTION: VISIONS OF A NEW REALITY

ERNEST W. BURGESS

"How to Study Urban Political Power" from A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise

Journal of the American Institute of Planners

"Visions of a New Reality: The City and the 143 Emergence of Modern Visual Culture"

Introduction

215

A Reader

1950-1980

SHARON ZUKIN

Introduction

and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics

112

The World of the New Urban Poor

CHARLES MURRAY

208

4 URBAN POLITICS, GOVERNANCE, AND ECONOMICS 97

American Journal of Sociology

JANEJACOBS

"A New Geography of Centers and Margins: Summary and Implications" from Cities in a World Economy

I

"Author's Introduction" and "The Town-Country Magnet" from Garden Cities of To-morrow

321

"City Survey for Town Planning Purposes, 330 of Municipalities and Government" from Cities in Evolution 336 "A Contemporary City" from The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning

ix

x

I CONTENTS

CONTENTS

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

1935

PETER CALTHORPE

1989

"Broadacre City: A New Community Plan" Architectural Record

"The Pedestrian Pocket" from Doug Kelbaugh (ed.), The

WlLLIAM H. WHYTE

1988

ALLAN JACOBS AND DONALD APPLEYARD

1987

DOLORES HAYDEN

1981

344 350

Pedestrian Pocket Book "

1996

PETER HALL

359

"The City of Theory" from Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual

362

ALEXANDER GARVIN

1995

"Twentieth Century Land Use Planning: A Stalwart Family Tree" "A Realistic Approach to City and Suburban Planning" and "Ingredients of Success" from The American City: What Works,

1995

375

"Planning in the Face of Conflict"

1987

PAUL DAVIDOFF

1965

STEPHEN WHEELER

1998

"Planning Sustainable and Livable Cites"

LEONIE SANDERCOCK AND ANN FORSYTH

1992

"A Gender Agenda: New Directions for Planning Theory"

396

410

KEVINLYNCH

1960

Introduction

531

"The Post-City Age"

535

"Arcology: The City in the Image of Man" and "The Characteristics of 540 Arcology" from Arcology: The City in the Image of Man

ANTHONY DOWNS

1989

"The Need for a New Vision for the Development of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas"

545

Saloman Brothers

434

MANUEL CASTELLS

1993

446 STEPHEN GRAHAM AND SIMON MARVIN

463

466 478

"European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy"

557

Journal of Economic and Social Geography

1996

7 PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN DESIGN "Author's Introduction," "The Relationship Between Buildings, Monuments, and Public Squares," and "The Enclosed Character of the Public Square" from The Art of Building Cities "The City Image and its Elements" from The Image of the City

519

PAOLO SOLERI

423

American Planning Association Journal

1889

"An Introduction to Ecological Design" from Ecological Design

1969

PLATE SECTION: URBAN PLANNING

CAMILLO SITTE

503

1968

Journal of the American Institute of Planners

Introduction

"What Would a Non-sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work" from Catharine R. Stimpson et al. (eds.),

Daedalus

American Planning Association Journal

"Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning"

491

MELVIN M. WEBBER

What Doesn't

JOHN FORESTER

"Toward an Urban Design Manifesto"

8 THE FUTURE OF THE CITY

American Planning Association Journal

1996

483

Women and the American City

SYM VAN DER RYN AND STUART COWAN

History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century

EDWARD J. KAISER AND DAVID R. GODSCHALK

"The Design of Spaces" from City: Rediscovering the Center American Planning Association Journal

6 URBAN PLANNING THEORY AND PRACTICE Introduction

I

DAVID CLARK

1996

"The Transformation of Cities: Towards Planetary Urban Networks" and "Telecommunications and Urban Futures" from Telecommunications and the City "The Future Urban World" from Urban WorldlGlobal City

Illustration credits Copyright information Index

568 579

590 592 597

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PLATES "

The Evolution of Cities (between pages 86 and 87) 1 Palace of Sargon II of Khorsabad 2 Theater of Dionysus, Athens, Greece fifth Century BeE 3 Medieval marketplace, Monpazier, France 4 The nineteenth-century industrial city 5 Birds-eye view of La Crosse, Wisconsin, showing the principal business street 6 Levittown, New York, 1947 7 The auto-centered metropolis 8 Technoburbia. Microsoft Corporate Headquarters, Redmond, Washington Visions of a New Reality (between pages 146 and 147) 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Unknown artist, "Music in the Street, Music in the Parlor" (1868) Sol Eytinge, Jr., "The Hearth-stone of the Poor" (1876) C. A. Barry, "City Sketches" (1855) Unknown artist, "Bicycles and Tricycles - How They Are Made" (1887) George N. Barnard, "Burning Mills, Oswego, New York" (1853) Edward Anthony, "A Rainy Day on Broadway" (1859) Jacob Riis, "Bandits' Roost, 39% Mulberry Street," New York (1889) Lewis Hine, ElIis Island immigrant portraits (ca. 1910) Alfred Stieglitz, "The Steerage" (1907) Dorothea Lange, untitled (roadside sign) (1939) Charles Sheeler, "Ford Plant, Detroit" (1927) Weegee (Arthur Fellig), "The Critic" (1943) King Vidor, still from The Crowd (1926) Fritz Lang, still from Metropolis (1929) Urban Planning (between pages 460 and 461)

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Central Park, New York 1863 Arturo Soria y Mata's plan for a linear city around Madrid, 1894 Ebenezer Howard's plan for a Garden City, 1898 Plan for Welwyn Garden City, 1909. Public domain Le Corbusier's "Plan Voisin" for a hypothetical city of three million people, 1925 Plan for Radburn, New Jersey, 1929 Frank Lloyd Wright's plan for Broadacre City, 1935 Paseo del Rio, San Antonio, Texas Quincy Market, Boston, Massachusetts Peter Calthorpe's plan for a pedestrian pocket

Many people contributed to this anthology. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to Sarah Lloyd, our editor at Routledge, for her enthusiasm, encouragement, and insightful comments on the manuscript at every stage in its development. Sarah Carty at Routledge ably assisted Ms. Lloyd and solved innumerable problems along the way. Tristan Palmer, our original Routledge editor, deserves much of the credit for the success of the first edition. His helpful advice and editorial suggestions continue to exert a strong influence on this edition. The contents and underlying pedagogy of the anthology were shaped by the extremely helpful comments of a distinguished panel of advisors consisting of Eugenie L. Birch, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania; Karen Christiansen, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley; Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett Professor of City Planning at University College, London; Robin Hambleton, Associate Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of the West of England; Nancy Kleniewski, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Judith Martin, Professor of Urban Studies and Director of the Urban Studies Program, University of Minnesota; Leonie Sandercock, Professor of Planning, Policy and Landscape and Chair of the Department of Planning, Policy, and Landscape, Royal Melbourne Instiof Technology; Steven V. Ward, Professor of Planning, Oxford Brookes University; and David Wilmoth, Vice-Chancellor of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. We received constant encouragement and

many valuable suggestions, both for selections to include and for approaches to critical commentary, from our colleagues. We wish particularly to thank Rufus Browning, Roger Crawford, Rich DeLeon, William Issei, Deborah LeVeen, Christopher McGee, Raquel Pinderhughes, Norman Schneider, Genie Stowers, and David Tabb at San Francisco State University; Paul Turner, Leonard Ortolano, and James L. Gibbs, Jr. at Stanford University; Cheyney Ryan at the University of Oregon, Chester Hartman at the Poverty and Race Research and Action Council, John Mollenkopf at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Julia van Haaften of the New York Public Library. Jay Vance of the University of California, Berkeley, Alexander Garvin of Yale University, Peter Calthorpe of Calthorpe Associates, and Chris McGee of San Francisco State University were generous in sharing their insights about what visual images to include and their own copies of images they had assembled over the years. Many others, too numerous to mention, made helpful suggestions. All errors and infelicities are, of course, ours. A number of people helped us with technical support throughout the writing and editing process. Particularly helpful were Alex Keller, LaVonne Jacobsen, Thoreau Lovell, and Andrew Roderick at San Francisco State University and Stephanie Bazirjian of the Stanford University Center for Teaching and Learning. Tiffany Haas, also of CTL, was especially helpful, supportive, and resourceful in many moments of deadline-crashing crisis. For unfailing courtesy and helpfulness we thank the staffs of the Cecil H. Green Library

IACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and the Henry Meyer Memorial Library at Stanford, the J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Public Library, and the University of California, Berkeley, College of Environmental Design, Institute of Governmental Studies, Bancroft, and Doe libraries. We also wish to thank the staffs of the Museum of the City of New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the George Eastman House. As always, Joanne Fraser, Courtney LeGates, and Lisa Ryan provided moral support and were unfailingly patient, often in difficult circumstances.

Finally, this project grew out of years of classroom teaching, and we would be severely amiss if we did not thank the many students of the Stanford Program on Urban Studies, the San Francisco State University Urban Studies Program, and the University of California, Berkeley, Department of City and Regional Planning who ••ead and commented on the selections included as well as on many that did not meet their high standards. Students are the intended audience of this book, and they were the ultimate judges of what readings made the final cut as "essential."

INTRODUCTION

During the last thirty years our students in urban studies and city planning courses at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and the University of California, Berkeley have often asked us what is the best writing on a given topic or what single new writing will let them know what is happening in a given area right now. Since there was no one source to which we could refer them, we both accumulated photocopies of what we consider to be essential writings and bibliographic references to many more. As time passed our colleagues began to come to us for suggested course readings, and we in turn added to our list other selections that they have found most useful. We realized that a systematic organization of the best writings we use to meet both requests would make a good anthology to introduce students of urban studies and city planning to the field and to supplement course texts used in these and other courses concerned with cities. Accordingly we set to work on The City Reader, which was published by Routledge in 1996. The selections in the anthology represent both kinds of essential readings - enduring writings we use consistently and the most exciting new writings to which we point our students. We have been very pleased with the reception of The City Reader. It has become required reading in many courses related to cities throughbut the world. This second edition retains the basic concept of the first edition, but adds more material, including new writings published in the intervening three years. Based both on our own experience of using the first edition and the most helpful feedback we received from a

distinguished group of reviewers, we added many new selections so that this second edition has far more material than the first edition. Entirely new photo sections add visual material to the anthology. This edition also has important changes in emphasis. We have created a new section on urban space and pay more attention to geographical material throughout. We have reorganized and supplemented the material on urban planning. The twenty selections on urban planning in Parts 5, 6, and 7 of this edition could serve as the basis for a course in urban planning. Throughout this edition of The City Reader there is a new emphasis on and substantial new material related to sustainable urban development. The book focuses on essential writings. We picked enduring issues in urban studies and planning across different cultures and times. In our courses we have found that H. D. F. Kitto's "The Polis" raises fundamental questions about individuals' relations to their communities that are as relevant today as they were 2,400 years ago; that Louis Wirth's sixty-year-old essay on "Urbanism as a Way of Life" speaks to our students trying to understand contemporary urban violence, economic dislocation, homelessness, and anomie; and that our students are excited by William Julius Wilson's theories on the Black underclass and Manuel Castells' reflections on the rise of the network society. Most writings in this edition of The City Reader are from twentieth-century writers, and almost half were written very recently. This is an international anthology. In an increasingly global world, students must learn from writers beyond the borders of their country of origin. In addition to writers from

I INTRODUCTION the United States, the second edition now and gender issues in cities, both in the selection contains writings by scholars from Austria, of wntmgs and introductions. Diversity Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, characterizes many cities throughout the world Germany, Greece, Scotland, and Spain. Some and writings need to include the situation, of the writers included are world citizens contributions, and perspective of women and whose countries of birth, academic training, people of color as an integral part of the and current residence are all different and writing. To produce balanced coverage of whose perspective is truly global. Space issues of race "l.nd gender we have included limitations precluded including material whose essential writings by and about women and primary focus is on African, Asian, or South people of col or. We also include consideration American cities, but many of the urban realities of diverse groups in our introductions to the and urban processes are applicable everywhere writings. Any anthology of essential writings on precisely because they have become so intercities should have a flexible organization. nationalized. This is an interdisciplinary anthology. The There is no one best way to organize material disciplines represented in the anthology on cities. The content of urban studies and city include anthropology, architecture, archaeology, planning courses varies widely and courses are city planning, classics, culture studies, demo- organized in as many different ways as there graphy, economics, geography, history, land- are courses. This dictates a flexible structure scape architecture, photography, political for the book. Readings are grouped into eight science, and sociology. But many of the writers broad categories: The Evolution of Cities; blend insights from more than one discipline. Urban Culture and Society; Urban Space; Urban And some of the best writing in the anthology, Politics, Governance, and Economics; Urban such as Castells' writings about the infor- Planning History and Visions; Urban Planning mational city and Dolores Hayden's writings Theory and Practice; Perspectives on Urban on non-sexist cities, don't fit in conventional Design; and The Future of the City. Part 1, The Evolution of Cities, is chrondisciplinary boxes at all. The writings in this anthology seek to com- ological and works as a unit in the sequence in bine theory and practice. "Urban studies" is which the selections are presented. Some the term commonly used to refer to the aca- teachers may pick and choose selections from demic study of cities. Knowledge about cities this section or use some selections as part of generated by social scientists and others is courses that do not have a chronological sometimes taught in a single program, some- evolution section. The three sections on urban times dispersed among academic departments. planning and design contain twenty selections The goal of these courses is primarily to teach in all and could form the core readings for an students to understand cities, only secondarily entire course in urban planning. The other to empower them to change cities. On the groupings work well if selections are read in other hand, professional city planning, town the order in which they are presented, but planning, and regional planning courses different sequencing may work better in the explicitly train students to work as city planners. context of a given course. Professors experiOften planning courses are taught as part of ment; students enjoy! One goal in picking the selections was to graduate or undergraduate professional degree programs; sometimes as part of geography, expose students to great scholarship. Almost architecture, or departments in the social everything written on the emergence of cities sciences. This anthology blends both the goal acknowledges a debt to the meticulous empiriof understanding cities and the goal of plan- cal research and creative theory building of ning them. We feel planning should be informed Australian archaeologist V. Gm·don Childe, on by understanding and that understanding can the Greek cities to H. D. F. Kitto's delightfully written interpretation of the polis, or on be enhanced by studying planning. This anthology includes material on race medieval cities to Belgian historian Henri

INTRODUCTION

Pirenne's provocative theories on the relationship between the revival of trade and the emergence of medieval cities. Students can learn a great deal from the way Childe, Kitto, and Pirenne think and write beyond the substantive content of the work. The anthology begins with The Evolution of Cities. We have found that even our brightest and most experienced students bring time- and place-specific cultural concepts to their study of cities. We warn them, and other readers of this anthology, against too quickly assuming what a "suburb," a "slum," an "ancient city" or any other urban settlement is. Some of our San Francisco Bay Area students who grew up in the affluent, predominantly white, residential suburb of Palo Alto think of Palo Alto when they think of a suburb. Material on the evolution on cities enriches their understanding that there were suburbs in medieval European cities composed of traders free from the medieval guilds, suburbs where Manchester's bourgeoisie fled the pollution and stench of industrial Manchester in the 1840s, and a proliferation of streetcar suburbs as nineteenth century technology, entrepreneurship, and public tastes made them possible. These students may be surprised to realize there are a great range of suburbs today - including working-class suburbs, Black suburbs, and technoburbs. Study of the evolution of cities sharpens awareness of these differences. And understanding is the key to successful city planning. Part 2, Urban Culture and Society, reflects our own interest in the relationship between w:ban history and urban culture studies. It is placed near the beginning of the anthology we feel these materials lay a good ,tOlln