Mumford, Lewis

Mumford, Lewis (1895–1990), social philosopher, architectural critic, and moral reformer.Mumford was born in New York City and educated in its public schools. In a succession of bold and brilliant books, beginning with The Story of Utopias (1922), and in his Sky Line column for the New Yorker Magazine, he did more than any other American writer to heighten awareness of the role of architecture, cities, and technology in history and everyday life.

His two landmark works on urban civilization, The Culture of Cities (1938) and The City in History (1961), helped establish the city as a subject of scholarly concern. An activist as well as an intellectual, Mumford played a central role in some of the leading public‐policy debates of the later twentieth century, including those on highways and urban renewal, nuclear weapons, and the problems and promise of technology. As a founder of the Regional Planning Association of America in 1924, he fashioned a program of regional development that resulted in the building of two model communities: Radburn, New Jersey, and Sunnyside Gardens, Queens. One of the outstanding public intellectuals of his era, Mumford produced a body of writing unmatched in modern American letters for its range and richness.
See also Highway System; Regionalism; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Donald L. Miller , Lewis Mumford, A Life, 1992.
Donald L. Miller, ed., The Lewis Mumford Reader, 1995.

Donald L. Miller