Urban Form and Design - Debating the American City

PLAN 4003: Urban Form & Design

Week 4: Debating the American City

Anuradha MukherjiAssistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

MORDERN PLANNING & LE CORBUSIER

- Critiques traditional physical structure of cities

- Utopian vision of modern city geared towards the car

- Not grounded in how people live, interact, and enjoy cities

- Enamored with products of industrialization – car, mechanization, standardization

CORBUSIER’S ARGUMENT

PACK DONKEY’S WAYVS

MAN’S WAY

Man: Governed by reason, intelligence, experience, goals

Pack Donkey: Comfort, convenience, lack of concentration, meanders, line of least resistance

Haussmannization of Paris (Transformation of a Medieval City)

Camillo Sitte, Study of Medieval Plazas

This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)

Piazza Del Campidoglio (Rome, Italy)/Capitoline Hill, Michelangelo, 1537, Italian Renaissance

This image is attributed to Giulio Menna @ 2010 (CC BY-ND 2.0)

CAMILLO SITTE’S IDEAS

- Straight lines are unnatural, do not follow terrain

- Need both art and function to make cities appealing

- Lack of urban public space in cities

- Isolated block of buildings, and no unifying factors, boring spaces

This image is attributed to United States Geological Survey

Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing Complex, St. Louis, Missouri

CORBUSIER’S IDEAS

- Modern city functions along straight lines – sewers, tunnels, highways, traffic circulation

- Divided into grid system, no need for curves

- Stress on functionality, no artistic tradition

- Bare, efficient, functional – main purpose of carrying traffic, gas, water, electric lines

- No discussion of street as a public space –crooked streets as pack donkey’s way

CORBUSIER’S IDEAS

- High-rise vertical towers with lots of leftover space in-between

- Standardized super blocks using repetition, mechanization, and industrialization of construction

- Dense city center comprising business and residential towers with garden cities on periphery

- Technical, civil engineering project

BRASILIA, Capital of Brazil

This image is attributed to www.urbanity.es, Accessed February 2013

BRASILIA

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to www.skyscraperlife.com, Accessed February 2013

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to www.skyscraperlife.com, Accessed February 2013

Construction Phase, National Congress, BRASILIA

Built upon 20th century principles of urbanism as expressed by Le CorbusierApplied to the scale of a capital city, only other example is Chandigarh, India

This image is attributed to www.oesquema.com.br, Accessed February 2013

Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to m.feher.pestana @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA

This image is attributed www.urbanity.es, Accessed February 2013

Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to www.indirameza.wordpress.com, Accessed February 2013

Central Monumental Axis, BRASILIA

HAUSSMANN’S PARIS

HAUSSMANN’S PARIS

HAUSSMANN’S PARIS

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Felipe Venancio @ 2008 (CC BY 2.0)

Ministry Buildings, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Diogo Diniz Garcia Gomes @ 2010 (CC BY-NC 3.0)

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Julio Cesar Barbosa @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Presidential Palace, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to gtavares @ 2010 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Palace of Justice, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Sergio Lang @ 2012 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Metropolitan Cathedral, BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Olivier Peyre @ 2007 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

BRASILIA

This image is attributed to Marco Mugnatto @ 2010 (CC BY-NC 3.0)

CORBUSIAN CITY

- Theoretical top-down design, gigantic at eye level, not to human-scale

- No sensitivity to local contexts

- Forgot how people lived for centuries – need a car in a Corbusian city

- Centralized and controlled by designer, no input from people

NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT

This image is attributed to New York Regional Survey @ 1929

- Growing congestion and traffic

- New plans for regional expansion

- Idea of a self contained neighborhood unit

- Centered on school and community center

- Bound by arterial roads

- No vehicular traffic through neighborhood

- Unit – school, residential, shops, parks

- Codified by FHA into sub-division standards