Barcelona: The Civic Stage

Barcelona: The Civic Stage
by Robert Goldston

Mr. Goldston is enormously sensitive to the look and feel and life style of Barcelona and his first few pages are tantalizing. But his purpose is not simply to exalt "a congeniality, satisfaction and inner order which is to be found in practically none of the world's other large cities"; he intends that its past should be a lesson to it, that its near-present should be a lesson to us, that its future should be a universal concern--and along the way the argument falters. After surveying the history of the city, he focuses on the amenities of each historic quarter and the factors which together distinguished Barcelona--which is all well and good if hardly novel (the terms of analysis are as old as Lewis Mumford's 1938 The Culture of Cities and some go back to Camillo Sitte [1889]) or unique--as he concedes later, similar conditions existed elsewhere. The late arrival of Barcelona to the modern world is his strongest point but now that it has arrived, the bulwarks of a humane existence are crumbling (as they have elsewhere), which he also acknowledges: "Religious forms and influence. . . are facing disintegration"; "the economic 'stand-off' between those eager to exploit the city for their profit and those who have seen in the city's preservation their principal means of protecting themselves against exploitation is coming to an end too"; "and Catalan apartness, the sense of Barcelona's civic independence which has preserved so many cultural forms and activities. . . is also vanishing." What is the remedy? The book's greatest weakness is that Mr. Goldston not only evinces no acquaintance with the more sophisticated solutions of modern city planning (decrying the encroachment of the car, he offers no alternatives) but also that he holds to the "villain" theory of urban development; if capitalist exploitation is to be countered, the city will need to adapt as well as preserve. Mr. Goldston knows the good life when he sees it but he doesn't show how Barcelona can hold on to it or how the rest of us can attain it. And of course there may be some people who prefer punctuality and supermarkets. . . but this review is too long already.