Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life (Morningside Book Series) [Paperback]

Percival Goodman (Author), Paul Goodman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231072996 | ISBN-13: 978-0231072991 | Publication Date: July 25, 1990

-- Lewis Mumford

Editorial Reviews

Review

Rich in splendid observations, many of which foreshadow issues which have become all the more urgent today.

(Paul Goldberger )

About the Author

Paul Goodman was the author of Growing Up Absurd and many other books.Percival Goodman was an artist, illustrator, sculptor and painter as well as an architect and author.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (July 25, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231072996
• ISBN-13: 978-0231072991
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant after fifty years, important after 9/11., September 13, 2002

By 

DJ Rix (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life (Morningside Book Series) (Paperback)

For some reason, this visionary book has kept its relevance for over fifty years (revised early Sixties). A work of Goodman's youth, around the time he taught at Black Mountain College, Communitas is by turns common sensical, prophetic, poetic, absurdly idealistic, & frequently (deliberately) hilarious.

What was so terribly dehumanizing about American cities (the model here is New York) in the Forties has not been corrected in any major way. In the aftermath of 9/11, with that horrible, gaping hole where the Towers stood, one turns again to Communitas & reads about banning cars from New York, making the the city's avenues pedestrian & bike friendly, preserving good neighborhoods with indigenous personalities, & transforming other harsh, declining or gentrifying areas into safe, humane areas that are welcoming & which provide homes, schools & shopping areas that erase racial & class divides.

The Goodmans eagerly to take on Frank Lloyd Wright, Bucky Fuller, the international & all the other various schools of designs for living then current. They reach back to earlier American, British & European models of community that showed promise through their partial successes.

This is a deeply felt & humane call for holistic, human-sized communities within our cities. Ultimately, the solutions may not be so grandiose as some of those suggested here. But the World Trade Center Towers, awesome as they were, were coldly & absurdly beyond human scale; symbols of our subservience to a system of economics that is usually blind to basic human requirements; gigantic obstacles to the simple warmth of an afternoon's sunshine. I suspect Paul Goodman despised them.