The City (1939): A World's Fair City of the Future

Lately we have been watching documentaries proposing a new "sustainable" city where human and nonhuman nature can live interdependently. The premise of these films is that nature is necessary, not only because its resources help us meet our basic needs; but also because communing with nature provides emotional benefits.   

Urbanized (2011)

The 2007 documentary The Sustainable City, highlights how sustainable architecture (green architecture) aims to minimize the negative impact of buildings on the environment by enhancing efficiency and moderating the use of materials, energy, and space. The short-lived PBS series, Design E² (2007-2009) profiles a variety of sustainable urban programs around the world, for example. Urbanized (2011) showcases multiple ways to create livable and environmentally friendly cities, especially in affluent Western countries. Yet none of these documentaries explores the documentary history underpinning their arguments. Instead of making new assertions, these documentaries (and others from the last decade) primarily seem to expand on the arguments made in The City, a 1939 New Deal documentary produced for the City of the Future exhibit at the World's Fair in New York City. 

Like more recent documentaries, The City contrasts the horrors of urban blight with the possibilities of a sustainable "green" city of the future. The documentary follows a historical sequence that showcases a variety of locations. The film begins in an idyllic rural 18th Century New England community where children commune with the natural world but moves quickly into the industrial City of Smoke prompted by modernization and the industrial revolution.

Pittsburgh serves as the model hell hole portrayed in this segment. From the 19th Century City of Smoke, the documentary moves into the Metropolis of Manhattan for the Men into Steel segment that highlights the isolation humanity feels in the vast modern city.

Car culture underpins the next segment, The Highway: The Endless City, in which commuters from New York and New Jersey suburbs battle traffic congestion.

The last segment, The Green City, provides an antidote to these horrific portraits of the city. With film footage from Greenbelt, Maryland and Radburn, New Jersey--two New Deal small cities that stress interdependence with the natural world, local food production, and community.

Although recent documentaries suggest the sustainable city is a 21st Century ideal, The City illustrates its roots in The Green City and Lewis Mumford's urban plans.