The mind-blowingly curious and versatile Lewis Mumford – the founder of the New Yorker’s Sky Line column – was obsessed by the city and its humanistic functions that he sounds in this old film he made like a modern-day urbanist.Before the end of 1961 the New York publishing company Harcourt, Brace and Co. had the first edition of Lewis Mumford’s highly successful book The City In History ready for publication. Two years later, in 1963, the National Film Board of Canada funded the production of six documentaries, each lasting 27 minutes, for a series entitled Mumford On The City. The closing titles confirm that the material for the films, based on The City In History, was prepared by Mumford himself.The short film – with a score by Aaron Copeland – focuses on family life through the lens of the chaotic industrial and commercial city. The urban areas depicted in the film subsequently give way to the idyillic “new city” – and New Deal project – of Greenbelt, Maryland. Produced for the the 1939 New York World’s Fair as part of the “City of Tomorrow” exhibit, the film’s producer, Catherine Bauer, originally intended to work with the MoMA to commission a full-scale mini neighborhood on a 10-acre site to showcase innovative housing design and community planning, but the plan was dropped for lack of time and resources.There are longer clips on YouTube.