Mumford, Lewis (1895–1990)

Lewis mumford was a humanistic intellectual, social and urban historian, urban planner, and journalist. Born on October 19, 1895, in Flushing, New York, he went on to take undergraduate courses in various subjects that interested him but never actually completed a university degree, being forced to abandon formal education after a diagnosis of tuberculosis. By the time of his death in Amenia, New York, on January 26, 1990, he had established himself and his school of thought, which examined urban morphology and city culture and experience [Page 1184]in systematic terms—the city as a human environment and a living thing in its own right.

He began writing commentaries for numerous publications, among them The Dial. In 1919 he became an associate editor of that magazine, and the ...