Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in their
respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness [Page: 115], the
current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an
awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of
its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of
these--not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or
classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which
followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, of
the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black
Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and
adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and
the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic
discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we
have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his
speaking in prose.
But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments not
be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed or
forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I
believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt to
justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the
practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as
yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still
working within the grasp of natural conditions.
To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is
thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable
to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must
avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism.