Why Live Together in Cities?
People are dependent on each other.
People like company.
Life is a constant inter-relationship in work and in play.
People are dependent on mutual assurance and defense, on mutual law and mutual order.
People are mutually dependent. They serve others and are served by others again. They are mutually dependent in the purchasing and use and servicing of goods.
People are drawn together also by likes and by dislikes.
People are drawn together for the mutual celebration of life, in ceremonies or state and of church, in ceremonies of births, weddings and death.
For better or worse, most people, by choice or necessity, live in cities, the places of great multitudes.
Yet there are efforts to break out of cities, often caused by a loss of simplicity, a loss of nature, a loss of innocence.
Establishments of “Utopias” or “Communes” often fail through lack of superimposed discipline, such as that which exists in cloisters or monasteries, they fall apart through pursuit of individuality, or they disperse in time back into the old-fashioned “family” type agrarian units.
Others, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Usonia”, failed by destroying nature and landscape through the sprawl of individual (selfish) “Estate houses” and the ensuing sprawl of commuter roads.
It is not the scope of this book to assess the many historical facets of origin, growth, and diversification of individual cities.
This book proposes to deal with some design possibilities such as:
- Compacting urban sprawl and waste of land
- Compacting travel and infra services by bringing places of work and living closer to each other
- Bringing nature and relaxation into the city
- Augmenting food supplies by city gardening
- Providing necessary play-space in very dense cities