what is a city.doc

What is a cityEditors introduction Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) has been called Americas last great public intellectual. Beginning with his first book in 1922 and continuing throughout a career that saw the publication of some twenty-five influential volumes, Mumford made signal contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history, the history of technology and, preeminently, the history of cities and urban planning practice.编者介绍：一直以来，路易斯芒福德都被认为是美国最后一位伟大的公共知识分子。自1922年第一部著作出版了，他一生出版了25部极具分量的著述。对社会哲学、美国文学、文化史和技术史都有着重大的贡献，尤其对城市历史和城市规划产生了不可低估的影响。 Mumford saw the urban experience as an integral component in the development of human culture and the human personality. He consistently argued that physical design of cities and their economic functions were secondary to their relationship to the natural environment and to the spiritual values of human community. Mumford applied these principles to his architectural criticism for The New Yorker magazine in the 1920s, his work With the Regional Planning Association of America, his campaign against plans to build a highway through Washington Square in New Yorks Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and his lifelong championing of Garden City Ideals of Ebenezer Howard.芒福德认为，在人类文化和个性发展过程中，城市经验是必不可少的构成部分。他始终坚持，相较于城市与自然环境、城市与公众精神价值之间的关系，城市的设计和经济功能是相对次要的。在二十世纪20年代，芒福德为纽约客所写的那些建筑学批评文章就体现了他的这些原则。此外，芒福德更以此作为自己的行动理念，无论是与RPA(全美区域设计协会)的合作，50年代反对在纽约格林威治的华盛顿广场横穿高架，还是他为之奋斗了一生的挑战埃比尼兹哈佛的完美花园城市，莫不如此。 In What is a City?” Mumford lays out his fundamental propositions about city planning and the human potential, both individual and social, of urban life. The city, he writes, is “a theater of social action,” and everything else - art, politics, education, commerce - only serves to make the “social drama . . . more richly significant, as a stage-set, well-designed, intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action of the play.” It was a theme and an image to which Mumford would return over and over again. In his chapter on The Nature of the Ancient City in The City in History (1961) , He wrote that the city is “above all things a theater” and, as d commenting on the cultural conformity of the 1950s, warned that an urban civilization that has lost its sense of dramatic dialogue is bound to have a fatal last act.”在城市是什么？一文中，就城市规划和人类影响，芒福德提出了他的基本主张，涵盖了个人和社会两个部分。他写道，城市就是“社会活动的剧场，”至于其它所有的东西，包括艺术、政治、教育，商业，都是为了让这个“社会戏剧更具有影响，精心设计的舞台能够尽可能地突出演员们的表演和演出效果。”这就是芒福德不断重复的主题和印像。在历史中的城市（The City in History） (1961)一书中，芒福德在“古代城市的本质”一章中写道，城市“首先是一个剧场”。这样的说法就好像在评论50年代的文化整合(conformity)一样，同时，他也警告说，城市文化如果失去了戏剧对白的意识，那么“必然走向致命的最后一幕”。 Mumfords influence on modern urban planning theory can hardly be overstated His “urban drama idea clearly resonates with an entire line of urban cultural anaylsts. Jane Jacobs, for example, talks about street ballet (). William Whyte(p.483) says that a good urban plaza should function like a stage. Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard (p. 491) urge planners to fulfill human needs for “fantasy and exoticism. The city, they write. has always been a place of excitement; it is a theater, a stage upon which citizens can display themselves and be seen by others.”可以说，芒福德对于现代城市规划的影响是不可限量的。他所提出的“城市戏剧”理念引发了整个城市文化分析界的共鸣。比方简杰可布（Jane Jacobs）就提到了“街道芭蕾”；威廉怀特（William Whyte）提出，好的城市广场应该具有舞台的功能。阿伦杰克布（Allan Jacobs）和唐纳德阿普尔亚德（Donald Appleyard）则督促规划者要满足人们对“幻想和异国情调”的需求。他们写道，“城市早已经成为一个充满惊喜的场所，那里就是一个剧院，人们既可以在舞台上展现自己，也能被别人所欣赏。 As a historian, Mumford is the antithesis of Henri Pirenne (p 37), whom Mumford considered too much of an economic determinist despite his excellent basic scholarship. Mumfords emphasis on community values and the citys role in enlarging the potential of the human personality connects him with a long line of urban theorists that includes Louis Wirth (p 97) and many others.作为一名历史学家，芒福德站在“杰出学者”亨利皮雷纳（Henri Pirenne）的对立面，芒福德认为对方是一个经济决定论者。芒福德强调的是在人类个性潜力（potential）的扩展中的公众价值和城市角色，这使不少城市理论家们与他站在同一战线，包括路易斯韦斯（Louis Wirth）等。 The City in History (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961) is undoubtedly Mumfords masterpiece, but an earlier version of the same material, The Culture of Cities (New York:Harcourt Brace, 1938) is still of interest The Urban Prospect (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968) is an outstanding collection of his essays on urban planning and culture, and The Myth of the Machine (new York: Harcourt Brace, 1967) and The Pentagon of Power(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970; are excellent analyses of the influence of techn0109Y an human culture The magisterial The Transformations of Man New York: Harper, 1956) invites comparison with V. Gordon Childes theory Of the urban revolution p. 22). A sampling of Mumford writing are included in Donald L Miller (ed.), The Lewis Mumford Reader (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995).无疑，历史中的城市（The City in History）是芒福德的代表作，与之相比，城市文化的选材相同，但作为更早的版本并不失为一本有趣的书。The Urban Prospect是他讨论城市规划和文化的一本非常出色的合集，在The Pentagon of Power一书中，芒福德对人类文化受到的技术影响做出了精彩的分析。而且，颇有些专横的The Trasformations of Man引发了他与戈登柴尔德(V.Gordon Childe)关于城市革命理论的论争。这本书被收到了唐纳德米勒选编路易斯芒福德读本（The Lesis Mumford Reader）中。 Mumford illuminating correspondence with Patrick Geddes (p. 330; is contained in Frank G.Novak, Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes: The Correspondence (London. Routledge. 1995). Mumford is being rediscovered by the current generation of environmental planners. Examples of recent books applying his perspective to current ecological issues are Mark Luccarelli Lewis, Mumford and the Ecological Region: The Politics of Planning (New York: Guilford Press, 1997) and Robert Wojtowicz, Lewis Mumford and American Modernism: Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban planning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).芒福德和派屈克杰德斯（Patrick Geddes）之间的通信极具启发性，被收到Lewis Muford and Patrick Geddes:The Correspondence一书中。由于环境规划学的诞生，芒福德也得到了再发现。近来，许多社会生态学著作运用了他的观点，如马克L路斯（Mark Luccarelli Lesis）的Mumford and the Ecological Region:The Politics of Planning，罗伯特（Robert Wojtowicz）的Lewis Mumford and American Modernism:EtuopianTheories for Architecture and Urban Planning。 Biographies of Lewis Mumford are Donald L Millers Lewis Mumford: A Life New York: Weidenfeld &Nicolson. 1989, Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes (eds.) Lewis Mumford: Public intellectual (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990), and Frank G. Novak, Lewis Mumford (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998). A bibliography of Mumfords writing is Elmer S. Newman. Lewis Mumford: A Bibliography. 1914- 1970 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).路易斯芒福德的传记有多纳德L米勒（Donald L.Miller）的Lewis Mumford: A Life，汤姆斯P胡吉斯（Thomas P. Hughes） 和阿加莎C胡吉斯（Agatha C.Hughes）合著的路易斯芒福德：公共知识分子（Lewis Mumford:Public Intellectual）以及弗朗德G诺华（Frand G. Novak）所写的路易斯芒福德（Lewis Mumford）。Most of our housing and city planning has been handicapped because those who have under-taken the work have had no clear notion of the social functions of the city. They sought to derive: these functions from a cursory survey of the acridities and interests of the contemporaryurban scene. And they did not, apparently, suspect that there might be gross deficiencies, misdirected efforts, mistaken expenditures here that would not be set straight by merely buildingsanitary tenements or straightening out and widening irregular streets.我们现在多数的住宅和城市规划都是不完善的，因为在那些设计者的构想中，并没有考虑到城市应负担哪些社会功用，对此缺乏明确的概念。设计者们只是通过做一些非常简单的调查，比如考察一些同时代其它城市的活动及影响力，就想当然的认为这些就是城市功能。显然，他们自然从不怀疑自己的做法可能存在着许多缺漏之处，付出的努力完全可能将他们引向误区，甚至导致全局性的错误。因为，社会功能不是仅仅通过建造卫生的廉租房，或者是延展、拓宽不规则的街道，就能直接解决的。 The city as a purely physical fact has been subject to numerous investigations. Bur what is the city as a social institution? The earlier answers to these questions, in Aristotle, Plato, and the Utopian writers from Sir Thomas More to Robert Owen. have been on the whole more satisfactory than those of the more systematic sociologists; most contemporary treatises on urban sociology in America throw no important light upon the problem. One of the soundestdefinitions of the city was that framed by John Stow, an honest observer of Elizabethan London,who said:作为一个纯粹的物质存在，城市一直是被调查的对象；但作为社会的公共机构，城市又是什么呢？整体而言，早期对城市的理解各有不同，亚里士多德，柏拉图、乌托邦的作者摩尔、欧文，他们都有着对于城市的理解，并且，他们的回答远比社会学家们那些系统性很强的的回答更令人满意。在当代美国，“城市社会”并没有获得普遍的重视与关注。约翰斯透（John Stow）是生活在伊莉沙白时期的一位观察家，但是他对城市的定义是至今为止最为合理的定义之一，他说：Men an: congregated into cities and common wealths for honesty and utilitys sake. These shortly be the commodities that do come by cities. commonalties and corporations. First, men by this nearness of conversation are with. drawn from barbarous fixit7 and force. To certain mildness of manners. and to humanity and justice . . . Good behavior is yet called urbanitas because it is rather found in cities than elsewhere. In sum, by often hearing, men be better persuaded in religion, and for that they live in the eyes of others, they be by example the more easily trained to justice, and by shame fastness restrained from injury. 人们为了追求正直和利益而来到了城市和联邦，伴随着城市、民间团体和公司的诞生，自然很快就形成了商业。这时的人们已经不再使用野蛮的暴力，而是通过谈判达成协议，举止更文明、更人性化，并且更加公正。于是，良好的举止理所当然地被认为是城市化的象征，在城市中，我们显然比别的地方看到的文明现象更多些。因为个人始终生活在他者的注视下，也更易被训练得公正，并且用羞愧来抑制自己所受到的伤害。 And whereas commonwealths and kingdoms cannot have, next after God, any surer foundation than the love and good will of one man towards another, that also is closely bred andmaintained in cities, where men by mutual society and companying together. do grow to aIIiances, commonalties, and corporations.然而，联邦和王国除了坚持各种美好的愿望，强调人要热爱他人，并没有其它更明确的立场。这样的态度虽然也在城市中滋生与维持，但在城市中，人们可以通过共同的社会进行合作，组成了联盟、民间团体和法人团体。 It is with no hope of adding much to the essential insight of this description of the urbanprocess that I would sum up the sociological concept of the city in the following terms: 我并不想再强调或者描述城市的发展进程，我只想用下面几条术语来概括社会学意义上的“城市”：The city is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations: the first, family and neighborhood, are common to all communities, while the second are especially characteristic of city life. These varied groups support themselves through economic organizations that are likewise of a more or less corporate, or at least publicly regulated, character; and they are all housed in permanent structures, within a relatively limited area. The essential physical means of a citys existence are the fixed site, the durable shelter, the Permanent facilities for assembly, interchange, and storage; the essential social means are the social division of labor, which serves nor merely the economic life bur the cultural processes. The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity. The city fosters are and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It is in the city, the city as theater that mans more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and cooperating personaIities, events, groups, into more significant culminations.城市是原始集体与具有特定目的团体的合成。首先，在所有团体中，家庭、邻居是相当普遍的。第二点也是城市生活的特征，不同团体通过经济合作得以维持，其性质或者是共同自治的，或者是被公开管理的。在被限定的的区域中，这些团体都被固定在不变的结构之中。城市的存在意义就是为各种力量的聚集、内部交换、储备提供固定场所、庇护所及设施；城市的社会意义在于区分社会劳动，他所提供的不仅仅是经济生活，更是文化进程。整体而言，城市是一个集合体，涵盖了地理学意义上的神经丛、经济组织、制度进程、社会活动的剧场以及艺术象征等各项功能。城市不仅培育出艺术，其本身也是艺术，不仅创造了剧院，他自己就是剧院。正是在城市中，人们表演各种活动并获得关注，人、事、团体通过不断的斗争与合作，达到更高的契合点。Without the social drama that comes into existence through the focusing and intensification of group activity there is not a single function performed in the city that could not be performed - and has not in fact been performed- in the open country. The physical organization of the city may deflate this drama or make it frustrate; or it may, through the deliberate efforts of art, politics, and education, make the drama more richly significant, as a stage-set, well- designed, intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action of the play. It is not for nothing that men have dwelt so often on the beauty or the ugliness of cities: these attributes qualify mens social activities. And if there is a deep reluctance on the part of the true city dweller ro leave his cramped quarters for the physically more benign environment of a suburb - even a model garden suburb! - his instincts are usually justified: in its various and many-sided Life, in its very opportunities for social dis- harmony and conflict, the city creates drama; the suburb Iacks it.社会戏剧（social drama）的出现自然需要借助于各种集体活动的汇集和强化。如果没有社会戏剧的存在，即使是最单一的功能都不能在城市中得到实现。事实上，即便是在一个开放的国度中，也面临着同样的问题。城市机构总会试图降低城市戏剧的重要性，甚至阻挠其发展，否则在艺术、政治 、教育推动下，精心设计的舞台会突出演出的效果和演员们的表演，戏剧也将会承载更为重大的意义。显然，人们在城市中都有着各自的目的，但是城市的属性却限制了人们的社会活动。一位市民在城市中的住处可能是非常逼蛰的，但即使如此，如果要他离开城市到郊区去，即便郊区的生活环境更舒适些，甚至还有非常现代的花园，他也会非常不情愿、犹豫再三。因为他的直觉会立刻做出判断，城市生活是多样的、多面的，城市生活在社会的分歧和斗争中总是充满着机遇，城市创造了戏剧，而这些正是乡村生活所缺乏的。One may describe the city, in its social aspect, as a special framework directed toward the creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and a significant collective drama. As indirect forms of association, with the aid of signs and symbols and specialized organizations, supplement direct face-to-face intercourse, the personalities of the citizens themselves become many-faceted: they reflect their specialized interests, their more intensively trained aptitudes, their finer discriminations and selections: the personality no longer presents a more or less unbroken traditional face to reality as a whole. Here lies the possibility of personal disintegration; and here lies the need for reintegration through wider participation in a concrete and visible collective whole. What men cannot imagine as a vague formless society, they can live through and experience as citizens in a city. Their unified plans and buildings become a symbol of their social relatedness; and when the physical environment itself becomes disordered and incoherent, the social functions that it harbors become more difficult to express.我们可以从社会化的角度来描述城市，并将其视为一种特殊的架构。不论是普通的个体，还是那些杰出的团体，都能在城市中获得发展的机会。在各种标识和专业组织的辅助下，以社团作为间接形式，城市提供了更多人与人直接交流的机会，城市人的个性也就更为多面：显示出更专业化的兴趣爱好，更精深的受训态度，并且具有更杰出的辨别力和更广泛的选择力。就整体而言，人们在面对现实时不再呈现出顽固的传统性，个体的崩溃也就顺理成章了。这样的影响作用于具体的个人，个体就会产生参与社会活动、融入其中的需求。但是，一个城市的市民身份使人们无法想像一个模糊的、不定型的社会。各种经验、建筑被视为是社会关系的标志，一旦这些外在的环境变得混乱、不连贯，那么它们所包涵的社会功能也就很难被表达清楚了。One further conclusion follows from this concept of the city: social facts are primary, and the physical organization of a city, its industries and its markets, its lines of communication and traffic, must be subservient to its social needs. Whereas in the development of the city during the last century we expanded the physical plant recklessly and treated the essential social nucleus, the organs of government and education and social service. as mere afterthought, today we must treat the social nucleus as the essential element in every valid city planning the spotting and inter-relationship of schools, libraries, theaters, community centers is the first task in definingthe urban neighborhood and faying down the outlines of an integrated city.从城市概念出发，可以引申出意义更深远的结论，社会现实是第一位的，而城市的各种机构，包括产业、市场、信息与交通业，都是为社会需要提供辅助。然而，在近一个世纪的城市发展中，我们不顾一切地扩展工厂，却将社会核心、政府机构、教育和社会服务这些基础项目作为后续项目。如今，我们应将社会核心作为日常城市规划的必须元素：在确定城市的边界、规定城市整体的轮廓时，首要任务便是确定学校、图书馆、剧院、社团的定位及内在联系。In giving this-sociological answer to the question: What is a City? One has likewise provided the clue to a number of important other questions. Above all, one has the criterion for a clear decision as to what is the desirable size of a city - or may a city perhaps continue to grow until a single continuous urban area might cover half the American continent, with the rest of the world tributary to this mass? From the stand- point of the purely physical organization of urban utilities - which is almost the only matter upon which metropolitan planners in the past have concentrated - this latter process might indeed go on indefinitely. But if the city is a theater of social activity, and if its needs are defined by the opportunities it offers to differentiated social groups, acting through a specific nucleus of civic institutes and associations, defined limitations on size follow from this fact.如果一定要对“城市是什么”做出社会学意义上的解释，人们可能还能提出一系列类似的、非常重要的问题。明确的结论总需要明确的判断标准为基础，比如一个城市最合适的人口是多少？城市是否可能保持持续地增长，直到连绵不断的市区覆盖了大半个美洲大陆，世界的其余部分也服从于此？完全站在城市公用事业机构的立场来看：后一项过程正在悄无声息地进行中。这可能是他们唯一要关注的问题，也是都市规划者们在近期所关注的。但是，如果城市是社会活动的剧场，那么它的需求就会不断受到质疑，因为城市为不同的社会组织提供各种机会，在一些特定的核心市民协会、团体中，某些不足之处就被呈现出来。In one of Le Corbusiers early schemes for an ideal city, he chase three million as the numberto be accommodated: the number was roughly the size of the urban aggregate of Paris, but thathardly explains why it should have been taken as a norm for a more rational type of city development.在柯布西埃(Le Corbusier)早期对理想城市的构想中，他认为城市人口在300万是比较合理的数字。这个数字大概正好是巴黎的城市人口总合。但是有一点很难解释，为什么这个数字会被视为城市发展的合理标准。 If the size of an urban unit, however, is a function of its productive organization and its opportunities for active social intercourse and culture, certain definite facts emerge as toadequate ratio of population to the process to be served.如果城市单位的大小决定着城市生产组织的职能，决定着活跃的社会、文化交往的机会，那么人们又要面对一些切实的问题，如发展过程中适当的人口比率。Thus, at the present level of culture in America, a million people are needed to support a university. Many factors may enter which will change the size of both the university and the population base;在美国现有的文化状况下，一所大学的维持需要一百万的人口基数，当然还有其它的许多因素会产生影响，进而改变大学和人口基数的标准。nevertheless one can say provisionally that if a million people are needed to provide a sufficient number of students for a university, then two million people should have two universities. One can also say that, other things being equal, five million people will not provide a more effective university than one million people would. The alternative to recognizing these ratios is to keep on overcrowding and overbuilding a few existing institutions, thereby limiting. rather than expanding;, their genuine educational facilities.然而人们又会提出，既然一所大学需要有一百万人口，以保证大学有足够的生源和后备，那么两百万人口就可拥有两所大学了。以此类推，五百万人却并不能提供比一百万人口的前提下更为高效