A slight disorder, perhaps more than a slight disorder, in the
city's dress is what sociologist Richard Sennett argues for in this
very readable view of the sickness of our cities. Sennett feels
that there is a prevailing philosophy of purity in Americans, one
not unrelated to the Puritan ethic, but based now on a society of
abundance in which each isolated middle-class family can retreat to
its insulated high-rise apartment or house in the suburbs. This
purity manifests itself in isolation and avoidance of conflict. It
is a don't-touch-me attitude based on fear. If instead, when the
conflict of exploration versus self-protection first occurs in
adolescence, youth were encouraged to explore and to learn that
there are no simple answers, the result would be a maturing
quality. With the discovery of one's own vulnerability comes that
of the vulnerability of others - I can't control him but he can't
control me either. Translating these existential ideas to the urban
setting, Sennett suggests that the very last thing one wants is to
have city planners organize a city along functional lines, erasing
variety and substituting simplistic monotony. There was much virtue
in the old neighborhoods where people met face to face and
occasionally hand to hand, Sennett believes. Naturally he would not
restore them - he is no slum romantic - but what he dreams of is a
return of power to the citizen, a sense of commitment and
involvement. His ideas of how to achieve this sense are strongly
anarchic in flavor and probably shocking to many, but the basic
description of the illness and prescription seem very sound indeed.
(Kirkus Reviews)
"Utopian in the best sense—it tries to define a radically different future and to show that it could be constructed from the materials at hand." —Kenneth Keniston, New York Times Book Review The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults—both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents—into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life.
"We are prompted to think and dream and question old and tired clichés and some more recent ones, too, by an author whose mind is rich, wide-ranging, and, best of all, not afraid of life's ambiguities, not tempted to banish them all with ideological rhetoric." —Robert Coles
"An important contribution. . . . Sennett illustrated with concrete, humane and telling instances a truth which I consider vital: that in this last part of the twentieth century it is not disorder but an excess of order . . . which threatens our society." —Denis de Rougemont
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