“While a great many other ideas and measures are of prime importance for the good life of the community, that which concerns its architectural expression is the notion of the community as limited in numbers, and in area... To express these relations clearly, to embody them in buildings and roads and gardens in which each individual structure will be subordinated to the whole - this is the end of community planning.” IdeasEndsWholeIndividualCommunityNumbersBuildingExpressionAreasConcernGardenImportanceRelationStructureNotionArchitecturePlanningGreat MenPrimeGood Life Author:Lewis Mumford
“Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.” MeanEndsTurnsGoalWealthEconomyFashionIndustryBuiltMachinesProductionsScalesGoodsLeisureDevotedConsumptionReplacedExpansionOutputObsolescence Book:THE CITY IN HISTORY Source: THE CITY IN HISTORY
“In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage.” IfsWantRealEndsWould BeFormNamesProcessCommunityEconomyAchieveMankindCenturyHigherThousandLimitsStandardsLaborFunctionSpeedSavingCollectivesDevicesWasting TimeStableDogmaEfficiencyConsumerismCagesNineteenth CenturyFutilityOverconsumptionExtravagantStandards Of LivingSquirrels Author:Lewis Mumford
“Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal."” MeanEndsTurnsGoalEconomyExpansion Book:THE CITY IN HISTORY Source: THE CITY IN HISTORY
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.” EndsOrderIssuesFinalsProductivityNativeMeaninglessFactoriesNeurosisDocileMeaningless Life Author:Lewis Mumford
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.” MenWorldEndsHardLastsThreeCenturyPossibilityDisciplineMoonMachinesSurfacePracticalsCyclesBarrenComing To An End Book:The Culture of Cities Source: The Culture of Cities
