Utopia, The City and The Machine
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Jump to navigationJump to searchMumford, Lewis. "Utopia, The City and The Machine." In Utopias and Utopian Thought. Frank E. Manuel, ed. Cambridge: Riverside & Houghton, 1966. (Augmented rpt. of article in Daedalus Spring 1965.)
Traces the rise of the "utopian" city to the institution of the army: "the collective human machine, the platonic model for all later machines." The price of the urban utopia was "total submission to a central authority, forced labor, lifetime specialization, inflexible regimentation, one-way communication, and readiness for war" (15, 17).