it. His ideal was the medieval city, which he argued had been unjustly ma- ligned.
Our images of plague-ridden city dwellers clad in filthy rags come from a later era, Mum- ford argued. He insisted that life in the medi- eval city was generally healthy and fulfilling, rich in architectural beauty and civic life. Most important to him was the openness to nature that the cities' "clustered" housing made possi- ble. "Gardens and orchards, sometimes fields and pastures, existed within...