Abstract
Students of the so-called urban crisis have often made the observation that the urban problem is related more to problems in the city rather than the problem of the city. While the author would tend to agree with this statement within the context in which it was made, one may still wonder whether there exists, in real or imaginary terms, a problem of the city. Perhaps, there is not so great a dichotomy between the two perspectives, since our contemporary problems of the city may be or seem all the more intractable and difficult to deal with as a result of sentiments and predispositions that many of us hold about cities and urban life in general. If such is the case, the problems in the city, real as they may be, may function as a reification of negative images about city life in general, forcing many to see the urban way of life as less perfectible than it may be and to opt for departure at the earliest opportunity.
Originally published as “The Roots of Anti-Urbanism,” The Institute of Public and Urban Affairs, San Diego State University, January 1978.
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Notes
E. Gordon Ericksen, “Some Historical Perspectives on the Anti-Urban Bias,” in Jeffrey K. Hadden, Louis H. Masotti, and Calvin J. Larson (eds.), Metropolis in Crisis (Itasca, IL: Peacock, 1967), 176–177.
Carl E. Schorske, “The Idea of the City in European Thought,” in Oscar Handlin and John Burchard (eds.), The Historian and the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963), 99–114.
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964)
Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)
Morton White and Lucia White, The Intellectual Versus the City (New York: Mentor, 1963)
Iving Howe, “The City in Literature,” Commentary (May 1971): 61–68.
Morton White, “The Philosopher and the Metropolis in America,” in Werner Z. Hirsch (ed.), Urban Life and Form (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 1963), 81–96.
Paul Wheatley, The City as Symbol (London: H.K. Lewis, 1967).
Florence Ladd, “Black Youths View Their Environments: Some Views on Housing,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 38 (2) (March 1972): 111.
Gunilla Lonoeus, “80% of Youth Say ‘No’ to City,” Sweden Now (July/August 1971): 24–25.
Joyce O. Hertzler, The Social Thought of Ancient Civilizations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936), 298–306.
J. Ellul, The Meaning of the City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970)
Harvey Cox, The Secular City (New York: Macmillan, 1965)
Leo Marx, “Pastoral Ideal and City Troubles,” in The Fitness of Man’s Environment (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1968).
Jeffrey K. Hadden and Josef J. Barton, “An Image That Will Not Die: Thoughts on the History of Anti-Urban Ideology,” in Louis Massotti and Jeffrey Hadden (eds.), The Urbanization of the Suburbs (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1973), 87–88.
Cox, The Secular City, and Michener, The Source (New York: Random House, 1965).
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative (New York: Atheneum, 1966)
Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966)
Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
Cf., for example, John Cassel, “Health Consequences of Population Density and Crowding,” in Robert Gutman (ed.), People and Buildings (New York: Basic Books, 1972), 249–268.
Lawrence Haworth, The Good City (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), 19.
Melvin Webber, “Order in Diversity: Community Without Propinquity,” in Lowden Wingo (ed.), Cities and Space (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), 23–54.
C.W. Griffin, “The Frontier Heritage of Urban America,” in Melvin I. Urofsky (ed.), Perspectives on Urban America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 23–42.
Claude S. Fischer, “Urban Malaise,” Social Forces 52 (2) (December 1973): 224.
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© 2009 Michael J. Thompson
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Clapp, J.A. (2009). The Origins of Antiurbanism. In: Thompson, M.J. (eds) Fleeing the City. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101050_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101050_4
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