On the Nature of Cities: Toward Enduring and Creative Human Environments

Why, as more and more people inhabit cities, are individuals (and families) increasingly isolated and alienated from the world around them? Why do private living conditions materially improve, while public settings-neighborhoods and city centers-rapidly deteriorate? Why do American cities consume more land than any other cities in the world yet exist without true spaciousness and strangle in congestion? Why has desire for private, single-family homes worked against the development of effective urban systems?In his original analysis of modern American cities, Kenneth Schneider carefully evaluates the causes and effects of these paradoxes. Schneider shows that current city conditions are destructive to the happiness and well-being of people and demonstrates that much of the failure of cities stems from their basic form and structure, from outmoded traditions of citymaking, and from persistent urban policies based on economic growth and technological development. He present a new approach to the understanding of cities ? ecological humanism-that combines concern for the well-being of both the city habitat and its inhabitants and thus provides one of the first genuinely social bases for reorganizing cities and their institutions.