The Myth of the City

As a part of its forthcoming special issue on The City, Lapham's Quarterly features an essay by the journal's founder Lewis Lapham on the "myth of the city," which examines historical, literary and contemporary views on the City. In this preview on Alternet, Lapham writes:

"[I]n whose name is it being built, and what gods does it serve? The way in which a city is seen or approached, by whom and from what vantage point, invests it with the moral and emotional roofing.

...The city stands willing to sell, at a steep discount and on an hour’s notice, last year’s priceless truth or next week’s incomparable celebrity, at the same time offering to buy, at fair market price, new lyrics for an old song. The city instills the habit of forbearance, teaches the lessons of civility, [and] encourages the practice of democracy.

As was true of their Puritan forbears in the New England wilderness, the nation’s ruling and explaining classes regard the urban temperament as the port of entry for all things foreign and obnoxious...The projectors of the urban future meanwhile define the Internet as the civilizing agent that replaces the need for the New York Stock Exchange and the Broadway theater, and the great, good American place."