Looking at the above it could be said �is there anything which modernity isn�t?� It can be seen as a unifying theory of the modern world which glories in the fact that the area is so large and complex that all that can be usefully said is that it is in a continuous and impossible to understand state of flux. Although some would say that this state of affairs fits into the post-modern era . It can also be argued that modernity is a thing driven by technology, global capitalism and industrialisation . Modernism as defined by Berman is �visions of modernity� or the artist or planers interpretation of what modern society is or wants .
In many ways the most obvious difference between the modern age and the traditional society which went before it is industrial and mechanisation There have been those who have celebrated this such as the Futurists of early Twentieth Century Italy who �carried out the celebration of modern technology to a grotesque and self destructive extreme� by throwing themselves into the grotesque killing machine of the First World War with fatal enthusiasm. Later examples of this enthusiasm for the ways of the modern world being a panacea can be seen in the later part of the century in this piece from American social psychologist, Alex Inkles� essay �The Modernisation of Man�:
A factory guided by modern management and personnel policies will set its workers an example of rational behaviour, emotional balance, open communication, and respect for the opinions the feelings and the dignity of the worker, which can be a powerful example of the principles and practices of modern living.
With completely the opposite view Max Weber writing at he beginning of the century saw the �mighty cosmos of the modern economic order as an iron cage " alluding to being trapped by the constraints of modern capitalism and the artificial machine like environment created by the industrial process. This rejection of modern society was echoed in the 1960s by Marcuse who suggested that class and social struggle were redundant and that a solid state of �total administration� had replaced it. He embellishes this idea with the view that modern people are hollow shells obsessed only by their possessions and the often meaningless busy work (such as the one hundred miles an hour idleness of the man in the photograph below) which they need to pursue to obtain them.
Berman however argues that this perspective is wrong and that continued dialectic exists in all areas.
With this complexity of definition and the sometimes diametrically opposed views of those who write about modernity the flippant answer to what effects it has had on the environment could be everything and nothing. Its not like asking �what effect has the motor car had?� but encompasses as in the opening quote everything which is modern. From this the most obvious route is to look at part of the artificial landscape created by the changes created in modern industrial, mechanised capitalist society.
In nineteenth century England many of the new building designed for the growing working class, especially in industrial areas was of a haphazard and unsound nature. No British Architects seem to have been sufficiently interest in this until Parker and Unwin who �were in revolt against anything which was ugly and poor in life around them� at the turn of the century. Their early work was in the direct creation of a better environment for the whole community and it helped to convince the government of the need to subsidise housing for the working class. This was the first time that any architect had concentrated completely on improving not only the dwellings but by planning for community improving the well-being of the individual and local community of working class people. There practical impact was to replace terracing with low density twelve to the acre houses with gardens which were previously rarely provided for working class housing . The concept which they encouraged was based upon their own ideals of co-operation and community. They did not stop at the planning of overall community however and pioneered the building in of internal toilets and bathrooms into this form of housing. They became accepted as the first modern town planners and pioneered the process of �Survey-Analysis-Plan� which they borrowed from Patrick Geddes. The influence they intended to have on government began to pay off with the 1909 Town Planning Act This was limited in its effects but constituted a change of attitude to improve the health and well-being of the working class inhabitants of towns. After the war came the 1919 Town Planning Act which stipulated compulsory town planning for councils with over 20,000 inhabitants. In the Town Planning Act of 1925 these powers were consolidated and strengthened. As a result between the wars 1.8 million houses were built by private and public sector, which was 19% of the total amount. Although this was all essentially needed houses the planning was without imagination or skill and resulted in �endless anonymous estates� of semi-detached dwellings at regulation intervals and no standards were laid down for shops, community buildings, schools, halls, pubs, or open spaces. Therefore few if any were provided. This was far from the ideals upon which Unwin and Parker had based their plans. In fact their �pioneering and radical ... approach� had to wait a long time to be more generally accepted. It was not in fact until the 1980s when public building of housing was coming to an end that the principles of community housing were seriously taken on.
The ethos of British construction tended towards the �functional� process of putting a roof over peoples heads rather than as should have befitted a rich nation that of housing human beings in the sort of dwellings and communities which lead to individual and social well-being. Perhaps in fact some of the worst housing intended for working class people was that built in the 1960s. Seen as space age and futuristic dwellings for the modern age these streets in the sky became real �cages of iron� for their inhabitants. This amongst other things led to public dissatisfaction with the imposition of someone else�s grandiose dreams. As Sherlock opines:
public dissatisfaction brought to an end the high-rise industrialised building of the 1960s and led eventually to the suburban housing densities in the local authority development plans of the 1980s
This sort of total change over a relatively short period of time seems to underline Berman�s argument that this need for change is the driving force behind the modern age.
It is in this image of the readiness of modern society to say �out with the old and in with the new� when enough pressure is applied that it could be argued lies the relative success of modern culture. It could also be argued that this is merely the death throws of a tired old �civilisation�s� ruling class casting this way and that to hold back the forces of change which are exerted upon and against it.
PHOTO OF TOWER BLOCK
Much of the discussion around modernity is about how or whether it would be beneficial to stop what is termed as decay. Sherlock who is overall quite optimistic in his appraisal of the artificial landscape is pessimistic about the attitudes of society towards it. His contribution is important in that he focuses upon how what we have got can be used to the best and what needs to be done to sort it out. In looking at the most modern of modern environments The City he postulates that
It is commonly assumed that the trouble with British cities in the 1990s is that they are still overcrowded. This is not so, because they were able to dispense with fortified walls long before their European counterparts, they have never been so crowded as most cities. In fact decline of population threatens cities
It is not therefore the amount of population or overcrowding which is the problem in British city dwellers lives but the way in which the society in which its inhabitants live, make them behave. So the type of housing and transport (individual car use and ownership and inadequate public transport) creates the sort of inhuman environment which leads to some of the problems facing the community today.
PHOTO OF TEPEE
Not all of society has been covered by those who take a positive or fatalistic view of the effects of modernity. A few rebels (or social inadequates depending on the viewpoint) make attempts to escape the �iron cage�. For example see picture of Tepee Village, Wales. The success or failure of such ventures is dependent upon the individual aspirations and experience of those taking part. Those who would simply like to �exit stage left� from the rat race of modernity have on the whole been sadly disappointed as the tendrils of modernity are far reaching and when they need to be all encompassing. Those (such as direct action road protesters ) who have set up full force against the edifice of modernity (and consequently the ruling class which reaps most of modernity�s benefit) can be seen to have had some success in their single aims but in some ways these forced changes strengthen the modern structures rather than weaken them. As in the old trick of giving a dog the bone its been begging for while sitting down to Sunday dinner undisturbed.
In conclusion modernity in its attempt to totally understand and envelope the whole of society cannot help but become lost in the impossible infinity of its own brief. It explains nothing by attempting to unify and explain everything. In its noting that all things are completely in touch it misses the point that it is dealing with large numbers of individual human beings who have a certain amount of power especially when acting collectively to change the whole of that supposedly overall inevitable envelope of modernity.
William Asworth, The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1954
Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air, Verso, 1982
Kenneth Clark, Budget Speech, 26 November 1996
Ed. Stuart Hall, David Held and Gregor McLennan, Modernity and its Futures, Polity Press, 1992
David Jary and Julia Jary, Collins Dictionary of Sociology, HarperCollins, 1995
Harley Sherlock, Cities are Good for Us, Paladin, 1991
Ed. Anthony Sutcliffe, British Town Planning: the Formative Years, Leicester University Press, 1981