Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937-69

(Yale University Press)  This book traces how members of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) developed the discipline of urban design from the 1940s to the 1960s.  CIAM proposed a type of architecture that focused on efficiency and rational city planning.  Mumford challenges the idea that this modern urbanism only resulted in the clearing of historical neighborhoods in favor of unsuccessful public housing.  He argues that CIAM goals were instrumental in forming the field of urban design, and it was the rejection of these goals by politicians and bureaucrats that led to the lamentable results of urban renewal and metropolitan sprawl.  Mumford is professor of architecture and art history at Washington University in St. Louis.