This book traces the development of Lewis Mumford's ideas and his work as founder of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), and then explores the relevance of Mumford's vision to today's urban and environmental problems.

In the first part of the book, Mark Luccarelli excavates the intellectual sources of Mumford's ideas. Instead of standing against modernity, Mumford linked this tradition to the potential of science for recovering a healthy relation to nature within the rubric of a participatory democracy. The value of Mumford's approach, the author argues, is his attempt to make his ideas speak to America, and to the possibilities for ecological planning inherent in the American civic tradition. Mumford proposed regional planning that would shape human life in response to the influences and critical forces of regional ecosystems; recontextualize cities in relation to nature; take advantage of natural economies rather than economies of scale.

Exploring what happened when Mumford attempted to put his thoughts into practice, chapters examine the founding of the RPAA, as well as the debates about planning and politics that ensued from the early 1900s through the 1960s. The story of the RPAA, its innovative and moderate approach to planning, and its ultimate demise is an important one: it shows the possibilities--and the difficulties--in finding and using the intellectual and cultural materials of the American experience for social and environmental reform.