The theme of death and transfiguration recurs as a leit-motiv throughout the long history of sociological speculations about the city. Each time, so it seems, just as one particular manifestation of urbanism has approached its terminal stage, a theorist has hastened to equate its matured form with the essence of urbanism sui generie, and ideologists have responded, each according to his values, to eulogize the lost or to rejoice.
