Evolution of Aesthetics, Culture and

Technology

Lisha Bendre
February 2021 Architect | Urban Planner
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Content

Unit 1: Fundamentals of Arts

Unit 2: Fundamentals of Aesthetics

Unit 3: Role of Culture and Technology in Planning

Unit 4: Aesthetics, Culture and Technology in India

Unit 5: Asian, European and American Aesthetics, Culture and Technology

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THE CULTURE OF CITIES BY LEWIS MUMFORD

Brief
A visionary survey of urbanism from the Middle Ages to the late 1930s

Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford—a prolific historian,

sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New
Yorker—The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to “rebuild the urban
world on a sounder human foundation.”
First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is
based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as
extensive historical and technological research.
Mumford takes readers from the compact, worker-friendly streets of medieval
hamlets to the symmetrical neoclassical avenues of Renaissance cities. He
studies the squalor of nineteenth-century factory towns and speculates on the
fate of the booming twentieth-century Megalopolis—whose impossible scale,
Mumford believes, can only lead to its collapse into a “Nekropolis,” a
monstrosity of living death.
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Role of Culture and Technology in Planning

CONTENT
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

Content

1. Stripping off the medieval myth

2. The need for protection

3. The "increase of population and wealth“

4. Domination of the church

5. The service of the guild

6. Medieval domesticity

7. Hygiene and sanitation

8. Principles of medieval town planning

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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

1. Stripping off the medieval myth

• It was believed that the medieval age (5th to

the late 15th century) was described as an age
of poverty, brutality, insensitiveness and filth.
• Life back then was filled with ignorance and
superstitions.
• Although these factors existed, they were not
as prominent to describe and characterise the
civilisation.
• Describing the reality, Medieval Age was very
rich in managing industries, building cities, art
of laying towns and the perfection of the same.
• There was social bondage in all sectors of the
civilisation.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

2. The need for protection

• Life grew and expanded rapidly after the

development of various social institutions.
• However, along with progress, increased the
insecurity among people.
• Slavery began on a wide scale. Attacks from
outside led to increased fear amongst the
people.
• One solution to this building wooden palisades
or a stone wall around the village and
monasteries to protect them from attack.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

3. The "increase of population and wealth”

• The centre of urban progress during the medieval age was

not the isolated markets but the monastery.
• Initially, a regular market would work under the influence
of feudal lords. However, later, these market regulations
came under the monastery and finally, special market laws
came into being with a proper jurisdiction over the traders.
• As supply and demand increased due to rising trade,
settlements became secure and commerce helped stimulate
growth, luxuries had to be paid in form of money.
• All these factors, including wide extension of the
agricultural bases and enormous increase in power led to
population growth.
• The region between the Rhine and the Moselle increased its
population tenfold between the tenth and the thirteenth
century.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

4. Domination of the church

• In Western Europe after the

fall of Rome, the church
was an important and
universal institution. By
itself, the local church
would often be a "museum
of Christian faith," as well
as a house of worship.
Medieval culture,
constantly "in retreat," had
its claustrum, where the
inner life could flourish.

Throughout The Middle Ages, the Christian churches of Europe advanced both art and architecture by building
larger, grander churches called cathedrals
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

5. The service of the guild

It is said that man is a social animal. He always requires

a company to survive. To exist even during the middle
ages, he had to belong to some association, manor,
monastery, or a guild.
The guild was the universal representative of the
society. They ate and drank together, formulated
regulations to conduct their crafts, made schools and
built chapels.
There were two types of guilds:
a) The merchant guild – it was a general body which
looked at the organizing and controlling of the town as
a whole.
b) The craft guild – they were an association of masters
who worked together and established the standards of
workmanship.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

6. Medieval domesticity

The medieval family unit did not consist of only the

people having a blood relation, but also the industrial
workers whose relationship was that of the secondary
members of the family. The members ate together,
worked together, slept in the same dormitory. Family
then was not just a private unit. Houses were built in
rows. They constructed courtyards too. The materials
required for the construction came from local soil and
they differed from region to region. Initially the houses
consisted of small windows covered with cloth. And
later, they were changed to glass windows as the people
began manufacturing it. As time passed, the radical
change of developing a sense of privacy was
introduced. This desire for privacy marked the
beginning of classes.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

7. Hygiene and sanitation

• As cities and its population density increased, new sanitation difficulties arose.
• During the twelfth and thirteenth century, breeding places for disease were more congested than the city itself.
• Leftovers were eaten by dogs, chickens and pigs which were considered to be the local scavengers.
• Non-edible waste was difficult to dispose.
• Other important issues were the drinking water supply and bathing. Public baths appeared since as early as the thirteenth
century.
• Supply of drinking water to the town was a collective function. However, as city size increased, there was increased
demand of water and thus collection had to be done on a larger scale.
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1. Protection of the Medieval Town

7. Principles of medieval town planning

• The layout of the medieval town followed the same

general patterns as the village. There were street villages
and street towns: there were crossroads villages and
crossroads towns; there were circular villages and
circular towns.
• The plans of houses varied from region to region.
• There were more interior rooms, a kitchen and small
room on the ground floor, a heating room above the
kitchen and the toilets were placed one above the other
on different floors.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

Content
• The Afterglow of the Middle Ages
• Territory and City
• Instruments of Coercion
• War as City-Builder
• The Ideology of Power
• Movement and the Avenue
• The Shopping Parade
• The New Divinity
• Bedroom and Salon
• The Muddle of Speculative
• Overcrowding
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

1. The Afterglow of the Middle Ages

Between 15 th & 18 th century new cultural

traits took place. The new pattern of
existence sprang out of
new economy that of mercantilist
capitalism, new political framework of
despotism . But all changes were taking
place only in EUROPE.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

2. Territory and City
From the beginning of middle ages two powers had been
jockeying for leadership in western Europe.
• One was Royal & other Municipal
• To achieve despotic power over neighbours , the cities
allowed the loss of their own internal freedom
• In early middle ages the court was mobile camp, the Royal
ministers, the whole apparatus of govt was mobile, authority
was maintained by personal supervision
• But during 14 th personal supervision became difficult and so
came parliamentary system
• This system gave rise to Capitalism
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

3. Instruments of Coercion
• The reason for rise of despotism was
Gunpowder
• The old city was divided into blocks
and squares and then surrounded by wall
• Due to growth in population the city
had to expand to a great extent & then it
started to expand vertically
• This increased the land values in
capital cities
• This resulted the population in slum
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

3. Instruments of Coercion
• The reason for rise of despotism was
Gunpowder
• The old city was divided into blocks
and squares and then surrounded by wall
• Due to growth in population the city
had to expand to a great extent & then it
started to expand vertically
• This increased the land values in
capital cities
• This resulted the population in slum
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

4. War as City-Builder
• In the middle ages the soldier had been forced to
share his power with the craftsman, the merchant, the
priest.
• But now due to MARTIAL LAW whoever could
finance the city was capable of becoming master of
city.
• The army recruited for permanent soldiers who in
turn demanded special forms of housing
• With their residence comes parade grounds and
requires a lot of space. So this led to replanning of
city
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

4. The Ideology of Power

• To increase the boundaries of the state , was to increase the taxable population, increasing population
of the capital city resulted in the increase of the rent.
• Capitalism in turn became militaristic , it relied on arms when it could no longer no bargain.
• Behind the immediate interests of new capitalism, with its abstract love of money an power , a
change in entire conceptual framework took place.
• At first ,new conception of space and second ,use of time for research and patent.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

5. Movement and the Avenue

• The avenue is the most important symbol of the Baroque city.

• It was during 16 th century that carts and wagons came into more general use within cities.
• This introduction of wheeled vehicles was registered.
• Nevertheless , the spirit in society was on the side of rapid transportation.
• Thus the urgent demand of wheeled traffic in 17 th century raised the need off avenues in the city.
• Alberti , the chief of baroque city distinguished between main and subordinate streets.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

5. Movement and the Avenue

• The first he called Viace military or military streets, he required that to be straight.
• Palladio after Alberti, proposed the avenues to be wide and regular to show their richness and so that there
is enough space for carts.
• He distinguished them from non military roads by pointing out that they pass through the middle of the
city and lead from one city to another and that they serve for the common use of the passengers.
• The building stand on each side so that spectators can have a nice view if the parade on the street.
• In medieval town upper and lower class had to adjust on this street but now the dissociation of upper and
lower class was very easy.
• Rich road along access of avenues while poor are off- centre. Eventually a separate strip is provided for
pedestrians.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

5. Movement and the Avenue

THE MAIN STREET THE SIMPLE ROADS

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2. Court, Parade and Capital

6. The Shopping Parade

• Military parade had its feminine counterpart.

• The old open market restricted itself only in the poorer quarters.
• Market squares had no longer place in new urban layout
• The open air shops tended to disappear.
• The new type of shops took shape with glass windows.
• People started to hang display to impression their taste.
• Fashion was also important for parade
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

7. The New Divinity

• The number of churches grew in

medieval period.
• The worship was started by
aristocrats & slowly whole
population started.
• Religious festivals became
important, birthdays and
weddings were celebrated in
church.
• And slowly it gained power.
• The Nave was selected by King.
• Aristocrats were given preference
and they in turn started
exploiting.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

8. Bedroom and Salon

• The influence of court was effective in the city.

• The change in constitution of household
manifested itself in various ways.
• 1 st by gradual divorce at home.
• Furniture was also very important in baroque
period.
• Privacy was considered luxury
• With all this luxurious look city was unable to
maintain hygiene.
• Dirt diseases flourished in this period
• With crowding water shortage became a major
problem in 18 th century
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

9. The Muddle of Speculative Overcrowding

• Expansion of upper class was at the expense of lower

class.
• This over congestion would have stopped, if rural
economic conditions have been improved, if new cities
have been found, if upper class have been deprived of
their monopoly.
• Due to this overcrowding the land prices raised & this
created poverty.
• Overbuilding of lands & over occupation of houses
caused sanitary problems.
• Slum properties earned much higher returns than
investments.
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2. Court, Parade and Capital

9. The Muddle of Speculative Overcrowding
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3. The insensate industrial town

1. The Displacement Of Population

• The major influence on cities were that of

bankers, the industrialists and the
mechanical inventors. They were
responsible for what was good and almost
all that was bad.
• Most cities had characteristics similar to
the town described by Charles Dickens in
his book known as Coketown.
• There was high rate of insecurity amongst
the labour class, establishment of open
market for labour class and goods and
foreign dependency for raw materials.
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3. The insensate industrial town

1. The Displacement Of Population

• In 1900s the population in countries

like England, Germany and USA
increased five fold.
• Urbanisation increased in direct
proportion to industrialisation.
• The movement of people and
colonisation of territories had two
forms ;land pioneering and industry
pioneering.
• This land migration brought new
energy crops like maize, potato and
tobacco.
• But congestion denied even
progressive metropolise light and air
which even backward villages
possessed.
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3. The insensate industrial town

2. Mechanisation

• In this era of mechanisation people lost an essential connection

with the social complex.
• The spread of mining was accompanied by general loss of form
throughout society.
• In mining towns the characteristic of ‘abbau’ – mining or
unbuilding was at its purest form.
• Along with the invention of universal postal system, fast
locomotion and telegraph system, forests were being slaughtered,
soils were mined and animal species were being decimated.
• It was considered that utilitarians had taken over who sought to
reduce governmental functions and have a free hand in making
investments , building industries and buying land and workers.
• Business classes continued to exploit the workers and labour class
wand were often scared of uprising.
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3. The insensate industrial town

2. Mechanisation

• Water was important for any industry to flourish and hence

woollen industry flourished in Yorkshire.
• By the end of the 18 th century London , Paris and Berlin provided
ideal conditions . Hence people piled up in these places and
showed human tolerance for this obnoxious environment.
• The two main elements of any urbansettlement were factories and
slums both of which together formed a town.
• The transformation of rivers into open sewers was a characteristic
of paleotechnic economy which poisoned aquatic life and
destructed food.
• Living quarters were often placed between factories and sheds
amongst the filth and dirt .
• Housing for poor was on land filled with ashes or on a permanent
pile of coal and slag
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3. The insensate industrial town

2. Mechanisation
• Houses had no direct sunlight. Rubbish was thrown in the
streets and it remained there no matter how vile and
filthy.
• There was a dire lack of toilets. 1 toilet was used by 212
people.
• Cellars were used as dwelling places. Even in the present
decade there are 20,000 basement dwellings in London
marked by doctors as medically unfit human occupation.
• Evolution of cities was measured by slum, semi slum and
super slum.
• After the age of in invention facilities like iron piping and
improved water closet reached the upper classes .
• Now the middle class got used to dirt and filth and even
in his new housing carried a little of his filth , confusion
and chaos.
• This was a major problem to decentralisation.
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3. The insensate industrial town

2. Mechanisation
• Lack of food had caused various diseases in people.
• Things improved with better and enough supply of food.
• Wider use of soaps made possible personal hygiene in
people.
• Children were taught to eat fruits.
• But still the gap between rich and the poor was very high
which led to many revolts and uprisings from the labour
class.
• In bleak industrial towns , national politics became drama
, battle and sport.
• The workers utmost success still meant only a life
possible in this paleotechnic prison.
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3. The insensate industrial town

2. Mechanisation
• Cities were slowly planned . They were in the shape of
rectangular blocks which proved out to be inefficient.
• Traffic arteries were not wide enough and others were
excessively wide.
• The engineers streets often swept through swamps and
dump-heaps. Ventilation was not kept in mind.
• There was no separation between commercial, residential,
industrial and civic sections in plan.
• There was no open space left for schools, universities and
offices.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

Content

The New Coalition

The Tentacular Bureaucracy
Shapeless Giantism
Amsterdam – Organic Planning
The Blighted Area
Defacement of Nature
The Paper Dream City
Routine and Relaxation
The Poison of Vicarious Vitality
Phenomena of the End
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

1. The New Coalition

• The point of maximum accumulation, the focus of past achievements and present activities, is the metropolis.
• One may distinguish roughly between producing cities and consuming cities(New York, Paris, Berlin). Beginning
in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the center of gravity shifted from the producing towns to the capital
cities.
• A coalition of land, industry, finance, and officialdom was formed in almost every country in order to effect the
maximum amount of financial exploitation.
• The agents of power, the aristocracy, the political bureaucracy, and the army began to direct "national interests"
toward the service of the industrialist.
• The basis for metropolitan agglomeration lay in the tremendous increase of population that took place during the
nineteenth century.
• By 1900 ,after London and Paris, eleven metropolises with more than a million inhabitants had come into existence,
including Berlin, Chicago, New York, Calcutta etc.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

2. The Tentacular Bureaucracy

What changes and developments furthered the process of urbanisation?

• Development of transportation which brought an endless flow of raw materials and foods into the metropolis.
• New Inventions - Remote control, Typewriter, means of instantaneous communication etc.
• Everyone experienced, throughout the financial and political world, the difficulty of getting things done by direct
action.
• The formation of offices and the residential suburbs caused transportation back and forth transportation to work,
within a limited time-span, raised one of the difficult technical problems that confronted the city planner and the
engineer.
• A new trinity dominated the metropolitan scene: | Finance | Insurance | Advertising |
• Many financial changes happened in this period.
• Bankers got a powerful position in the society.
• Insurance companies entered the stage and started to control a large amount of pecuniary resources.
• Advertisement becomes the “ spiritual power “ of this regime.
• Land rents also increased in this era.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

3. Shapeless Giantism

• Circle over big cities in an airplane. As the eye stretches toward the hazy periphery one can pick out no definite
shape, except that formed by nature.
• The growth of a great city is amoeboid.
• The city has absorbed villages and little towns and reduced them to place names.
• Here and there in the mass one may partly trace the outline of a city: hut the mass itself is not a city, in a functional
sense, any more than the immediate countryside that surrounds it is a rural area.
• To conclude, big cities expanded organically with hazy boundaries , still the concentration at the centre kept
increasing.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

4. Amsterdam –Organic Planning

STAGE ONE STAGE TWO

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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

4. Amsterdam –Organic Planning

STAGE THREE STAGE FOUR

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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

5. The Blighted Area

• The land which was once a green land, was now crowded with low economic strata who used this
land to live.
• Then the blight starts, everything gets more and more congested and unhygienic.
• Green grounds get converted in either slum or get covered with torn paper, discarded boxes, broken
iron etc.
• All working class neighborhoods are by sheer poverty in a state of blight because, in the more
outlying areas, the cost of the utilities that connect them with the center has have increased
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

6. Defacement of Nature

• Meanwhile, the urban agglomeration produces a similar depletion in the natural environment.
• The cement jungle kept on increasing and it increased up to the rural hinterlands causing a drastic
effect in the culture.
• The metropolitan life affected the rural life cycle in many ways.
• Though the physical radius of the metropolis may be only twenty or thirty miles, its effective radius
is much greater.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

7. The Paper Dream City

• Paper became an inevitable resource of the metropolitan lifestyle.

• All the major activities of the metropolis are directly connected with paper; and printing and
packaging are among its principal industries.
• In every domain of society like literature, drama, official work etc. paper became the most important
commodity.
• Mutual direct contact between people reduced.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

8. Routine and Relaxation

• The early definition of relaxation and pleasure completely changed in the new metropolis.
• The restaurants, the cafes, the saloons and pubs came into picture.
• The concrete jungle also nurtured many rackets and criminal activities in its heart.
• This era saw different heights of drug addiction and prostitution.
• Hence, a professional form of surveillance by an organized police grew in the city of strangers.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

9. The Poison of Vicarious Vitality

• People began to see their happiness in other people or in other things rather than concentrating on
themselves.
• This was the time when the modes of entertainment such as boxing matches, wrestling bouts bicycle
races and dance marathons etc. came into picture.
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4. RISE AND FALL OF MEGALOPOLIS

10. Phenomena of the End

• The metropolis is economically weakened by the fact of growth and its own magnified expenses
which gives rise to the threat of bankruptcy.
• There is always a military vulnerability. Conditions after the first World War presented almost
unbearable difficulties to the harassed and starving metropolises, while out in the countryside, in
many regions, the peasant remained relatively secure and well-fed.
• In recreation, there is a serious lack of sufficient space for play, and for lack of play areas.
• As every aspect of a city grew, its fare also increased. After a certain point, one may say that urban
growth penalized itself.
• Immigration of people can also be a cause of death of the city. After a certain degree of
concentration, the community fails to cope up with its members.
• But in actual life, these threats they come together and reinforce each they can easily be the cause of
the end of the entire civilization
Thank You

Ar. Lisha Bendre