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The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

Book by Lewis Mumford · 4 quotes · Housing, Pollution, Britain

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The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects Quotes

“What was atrocious was the fact that, like every other building in the new towns, they were dumped almost at random; the leakage of escaping gas scented the so-called gas-house districts, and not surprisingly these districts frequently became among the most degraded sections of the city. Towering above the town, polluting its air, the gas tanks symbolized the dominance of 'practical' interests over life-needs.”

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Book:The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects
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“In both the old and the new quarters a pitch of foulness and filth was reached that the lowest serf's cottage scarcely achieved in medieval Europe. It is almost impossible to enumerate objectively the bare details of this housing without being suspected of perverse exaggeration. But those who speak glibly of urban improvements during this period, or of the alleged rise in the standards of living, fight shy of the actual facts: they generously impute to the town as a whole benefits which only the more favored middle-class minority enjoyed; and they read into the original conditions those improvements which three generations of active legislation and massive sanitary engineering have finally brought about.”

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Book:The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects
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