THE CITY I.

ANCIENT CITIES The religious and cosmic symbolism of the city reaches back to the early stages of human culture. It seems that in none of the great archaic cultures have cities been understood simply as settlements, arbitrarily established at a certain place and in a given form; both the placing and the shape of cities were conceived as related, in a hidden or manifested form, to the structure of the universe. The most common form of this symbolism is the belief that the cities have astral or divine prototypes, or even descend from heaven; sometimes they were believed to have a relationship to the underworld. In both cases, however, they refer to an extraterrestrial reality. Babylonian cities were believed to have their proto types in the constellations: Sippar in Cancer, Nineveh in Ursa Major, Assur in Arcturus. Sennacherib had Nineveh built according to the form... delineated from distant ages by the writing of the heaven-of-stars. This model, situated in a celestial region, antedates the terrestrial city. The terrestrial city, usually with the sanctuary at its center, is a copy of the divine model, executed according to the command of the gods. This is still reflected in the Wisdom of Solomon 9:8Thou gavest command to build a sanctuary in thy holy mountain, and an altar in the city of thy habitation, a copy of the holy tabernacle which thou preparedst

aforehand from the beginning. Similar ideas are found in India. Royal cities are believed to have been constructed after mythical models. The relationship between model and copy sometimes implies an additional meaning: in the age of gold the Universal Sovereign dwelt in the celestial city; the earthly king, residing in the terrestrial city built after the celestial prototype, promises to revive the golden age. Somewhat similar ideas are also found in Greek philosophy. Plato's ideal city also has a celestial prototype (Republic 592; cf. 500). The Platonic Forms are not patterned after the planets, but they, too, are situated in a supra-terrestrial, mythical region, and at times reference is made to astral bodies (Phaedrus). In the Western tradition, the best known example of a city with a celestial prototype is Jerusalem. According to several sources it was created by God before it was built by men. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch II (4:2-7) suggests that the celestial Jerusalem, graven by God's own hands, was shown to Adam before he sinned. The Heavenly Jerusalem inspired the Hebrew prophets and poets (e.g., Isaiah 60ff.; Tobit 13:16ff.). Ezekiel is transported to a high mountain to be shown by God the city of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 40:2). According to the Apocalypse 21:2ff. the new Jerusalem actually descends from heaven. I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. In later

Jewish traditions the divine city was actually the starting point of creation. According to Yoma, the world was created beginning from Zion, the holy city. Adam, too, was created and buried in Jerusalem, and therefore, according to well-known Christian traditions, the blood of the crucified Christ could drip down on him and redeem him. The spot on which the city is placed may also have cosmic significance. In the Near East the city was sometimes believed to mark the meeting ground of heaven, earth, and hell. Babylon was a Bab-ilani, a gate of the gods, for it was there that the gods descended to earth. But it had also been built upon Page 428, Volume 1 the Gate of the ApsuApsu designating the waters of chaos before Creation. In the Roman world, the mundusi.e., the trench dug around the place where a city was to be foundedconstitutes the point where the lower world and the terrestrial world meet. Macrobius (Saturnalia I, 16, 18) quotes Varro as saying that when the mundus is open it is as if the gates of the gloomy infernal gods were open. Another common form of granting significance to the city's location is to assume that it marks the center of the world. In some Indian cities the foundation stone is said to have been placed above the head of the snake which supports the world; in other words, it is placed exactly at the center of the world. The map of Babylon

shows the city at the center of a vast circular territory bordered by a river, precisely as the Sumerians pictured Paradise. This belief persisted into later periods. It has rightly been said that the pilgrimages to holy cities (Mecca, Jerusalem) are implied pilgrimages to the center of the world (see M. Eliade). The shape of actual ancient cities (as excavated in archaeological campaigns) does not always conform to the vast body of religious symbolism. Some basic concepts of city planning go back to the third millennium B.C. The earliest pattern of a planned city, the gridiron scheme (i.e., straight parallel streets crossing other straight parallel streets at right angles) is found, in a slightly irregular form, in India (Mohenjo-Daro, roughly 2500 B.C.). This pattern probably emerged from the practice of orientation, i.e., the establishing of a connection between man-made structures and celestial powers. The grid pattern is also found in Mesopotamia, and in Egypt King Akhnaton followed it in building his capital (ca. 1370 B.C.). In Greece, ideas on town planning do not appear before the fifth century B.C. The acropolis, the original nucleus of the Greek town, developed from a fortified place of refuge, and usually consisted of an accumulation of irregularly shaped and dispersed volumes. Greek architectural thought was focused, as most scholars agree, on the individual building rather than on the town as a whole. Similarly Greek artists were more deeply interested in the volume and structure of bodies

than in the space surrounding the figures. The decisive step towards a regular layout of the city as a whole is traditionally connected with Hippodamus of Miletus (active ca. 470-430 B.C.), a halflegendary Homer of city planning. The Hippodamic system is basically the gridiron scheme with particular emphasis on space classification, and a tendency towards symmetry. Aristotle contrasts the Hippodamic system distinctly with the archaic procedure of building without plan. Originally the system may have been influenced by the mathematical thought of the period, and perhaps also by some symbolic religious traditions; in the diffusion of the system, however, economic advantages and practical hygienic considerations seem to have played a more important part. In Greece, no ritual laws seem to have existed for the foundation and layout of new settlements. The Romans evinced a deeper concern for the city as a whole, and made significant and lasting contributions to town planning. Roman towns developed mainly from the castrum, basically a gridiron pattern subdivided into four major parts by two main axes, the cardo and decumanus. A square was placed at the crossing of the two axes. Both the major buildings and the square proper had an axial location. In laying out military settlements with permanent fortifications, which were established along the expanding frontiers, the Romans followed the same pattern (the so-called castra stativa). Another characteristic feature of the

Roman town is that it was set off from the landscape surrounding it (contrary to the transition from town to landscape in Greece). Although functional considerations clearly played an important part in establishing this pattern, the town plan and the foundation of cities did not lose their symbolic significance. The historian Polybius and the geographer Hyginus Gromaticus (early second century A.D.) describe the standard layout of the castrum town, but also discuss in detail the orientation of the towns and the consecration rites of newly established settlements. According to Pliny, measurements and proportions of the castrum were based on sacred numbers, but so far no conclusive archaeological evidence has supported his statement. The major Roman contributions to city building, the feeling for strict regularity, the organization of the city in large areas, and the firm shaping of space (best expressed in the patterns of squares), declined with the decline of the Empire. II. MEDIEVAL ORGANIC TOWN The medieval approach to the city, emerging in a period in which urban culture broke down, is complex and ambivalent. One of the characteristic features of the early medieval attitude is a disconnection between the notions of the celestial and the terrestrial city. Probably the most explicit expression of this attitude is to be found in Saint Augustine's famous work, The City of God. In this work, the image of the city be-

comes highly metaphorical, the term denoting a community rather than a material city. Even in his metaphors Augustine rarely refers to the city plan, to architectural elements (walls, gates, squares, etc.), or to actual cities (with the exception of Rome and Jerusalem, both of which assume a highly symbolic Page 429, Volume 1 significance). The basis of cities is moral values or metaphysical ideas: the foundation of the terrestrial city is the love of self while the celestial city is based on the love of God (XIV, 28; cf. XI, 1 and X, 25). The two cities, the terrestrial and the celestial, are not only unrelated to each other, but there is a contradiction between them. The City of God is a pilgrim on the earth (XVIII, 54); the citizen of the Heavenly City is by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above (XV, 1); Cain is described (based on Genesis 4:17) as the founder of a terrestrial city, while Abel, who was conceived as a prefiguration of Christ, being a sojourner, built none (XV, 1). Like the Near Eastern thinkers, Augustine conceived of a celestial and a terrestrial city. But while in the Near East the city on earth is believed to be a copy of the one in heaven, Augustine sees the two as alien to each other. In moral terms they are even mutually exclusive: one belongs to either one or the other. Thus the hostile attitude towards the (terrestrial) city, an attitude that was to play a major part in medieval

thought, is already clearly articulated at this early stage. This attitude may be understood as an expression of a broad historical process which is probably also reflected in the development of the actual medieval town, and in the iconography of the city in medieval art. It is significant that in a period as permeated by symbolism as were the Middle Ages not much thought was given to the symbolism of the city plan, as far as actual cities are concerned. The organization of the town as a whole was, as a rule, neither understood nor desired by medieval builders. This lack of interest led to the well-known irregular shapes of medieval towns. Even in cities which developed from Roman towns, the additions and changes which originated in the Middle Ages were made without consideration for the original Roman layout. The medieval town thus provides an almost perfect example of the city that has grown versus the planned city. The narrow, winding streets (ruelles, Gassen) of medieval towns and their beautiful but unpredictable vistas could be taken as an expression of organic life, as the writers of the romantic period, in fact, characterized medieval life. Organic growth as an overall characterization of the medieval town is not radically challenged by the fact that, especially in the thirteenth century, some new cities (villes neuves) were built according to a preconceived plan, and do in fact display some regular

features (e.g., Aigues-Mortes, founded in 1240 by Saint Louis; Montpazier, established in 1284 by Edward I of England). These new cities remained exceptions. In contrast to the irregularity of actual medieval towns, the innumerable representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem and of other holy cities in the art of the Middle Ages frequently show a regularity and symmetrical arrangement which strongly suggest the image of a planned city. In early Christian representations (e.g., the fifth-century mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore and in SS. Pudenziana), the Heavenly Jerusalem is reduced to a simple round wall, but in later renderings (see Santa Cecilia) it becomes more elaborate, sometimes adorned with towers, gables, and columns. However, in spite of the inclusion of such actual architectural elements, the overall shape of the sacred city retains a remarkable regularity. Thus, in a ninth-century mosaic in San Marco in Venice, the city of Bethlehem has a clear oval shape. Even when representing the earthly Jerusalem (representations which are certainly symbolic rather than documentary records), the medieval artists tended towards clearly laid out, regular forms. The iconography of the city in medieval art has not yet been systematically studied, but a review of the rich material pertinent to this theme suggests that the hostile attitude towards the city has had a formative influence on artistic imagery. Since the eleventh or twelfth centuries the city is symbolically portrayed not

only by architectural motifs (walls, gates, towers) but also by secular, inherently vicious figures and scenes, considered typical of urban life. The view of the city as a place of carnal temptation, debased entertainment, and avarice is visually portrayed by figures of jugglers and acrobats, loose women, misers, and, in the late Middle Ages, by scenes of gambling seen against an urban background. In medieval art, cities are often inhabited by demonic creatures. Such figures and scenes, sometimes appearing in the margins of sacred texts, frequently anticipate the specific realism of a burgher art. III. RENAISSANCE IDEAS OF THE CITY The city, both as a social reality and as an architectural environment, played an important part in Renaissance thought and art. This may be partly explained by the fact that Renaissance culture developed in cities, and was an almost completely urban phenomenon (even the newly discovered affection for the rustic life of the villa attests to its basically urban character). The acquaintance with ancient literary sources further intensified the interest in the city; the polis became an object of study and imitation. But although Renaissance authors often referred to the polis, they usually attributed its characteristics to the Italian city-states of their own period. Thus Leonardo Bruni, in his Laudatio Florentiae urbis as well as in other writings, describes Florence as a model of an

Page 430, Volume 1 ideal city of justice, a city well-ordered, harmonious, beautiful, governed by taksis and kosmos. Bruni proclaims that Florence is rational and functional in her institutions as well as in her architecture: Nothing in her [Florence] is confused, nothing inconvenient, nothing without reason, nothing without foundation; all things have their place, not only definite but convenient and where they ought to be. Distinguished are the offices, distinguished the judgements, distinguished the orders. The architectural structure corresponds to the rationality of the social and political structure. The city is built along a river, a module of urbanism is consistently applied in her architecture. As in a polis, in the center of Florence are the Palazzo dei Signori and the Temple, i.e., the Duomo. In this early stage we encounter already a characteristic feature of Renaissance urbanistic thought: the ideal city can, at least in part, be identified with a real one. Historians have remarked that the fifteenth century, instead of producing utopias, gave rise to many laudationes of actual cities, investing them with all the virtues of utopian settlements. Venice and Florence were described as embodiments of the political thought of the ancients. Probably the earliest expression of the Renaissance spirit in actual town planning is to be found in Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria, written between 1450 and 1472. Alberti's civic convictions as well as

his aesthetic and moral values are clearly reflected in his treatise. The novelty of Alberti's method is that he proposes a scheme for the building of an entire town. Although he carefully considers the problems of architecture for private and for ecclesiastical purposes, in his city plan every detail is subordinated to the design of the town as a whole. He strongly criticizes the medieval habit of each family's building a palace and a tower of its own without any consideration of its neighbors, except that of rivalry (VIII, 5). Alberti stresses rational and functional elements. The site of the town must be healthful, in temperate climate, conveniently placed for water supply, and easy to defend. Convenience and clarity are the ruling principles of his city plan. The town should be clearly laid out, and the main streets conveniently connected with the bridges and gates; the streets should be wide enough not to be congested but not so wide as to be too hot (IV, 5). The predominant aesthetic principle is that of symmetry, particularly visible in the relation of the shapes of the two rows of houses on both sides of the street (VIII, 6). Although Alberti probably was the first modern author to articulate this attitude, similar tendencies can be discerned in actual Italian architecture of his period. In the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a standard design had been repeated around a square, and a similar procedure can be found in the square in front of the SS. Annunziata in Florence. The same spirit also

governs Pius II's plans for Pienza, and Nicholas V's idea for linking Saint Peter's with the Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome (but in the latter project Alberti was personally involved). Closely related to Alberti, and probably influenced by him, is Filarete, whose Trattato di architettura was composed in 1460-64. It is written in a somewhat romantic form which, as scholars have noted, brings it into close relation to the Hypnerotomachia polifili (written a few years later), and on ground of which the author has sometimes been called a romantic. Part of the treatise describes an imaginary city, Sforzinda. Filarete depicts the pageantry accompanying the founding of the city, the time of which is chosen according to astrological observation. But behind these romantic details there is a rational spirit which reaches its clearest expression in the outlining of the town plan. Filarete's ideal city has the overall shape of an octagonal star with a round piazza at its center from which a radial system of streets emerges. Filarete is wholeheartedly antimedieval, i.e., he is a radical critic of the city that has merely grown. In his treatise great emphasis is placed on regularity and on the importance of having large squares. To the author's mind, however, the proposed city is no artificial structure; Filarete believes that Sforzinda, the ville radieuse of the Renaissance, is beautiful and good and perfectly in accord with the natural order. At the same time,

Sforzinda is designed to meet the economic and social needs of the community. Moreover, the town plan of Sforzinda, although perfectly in accord with the natural order, translates into stone the political and social order of the Italian city-states of the fifteenth century. Cosmic and religious symbolism appears in the central buildings of Sforzinda. The dome of the Cathedral is covered by a mosaic representation of God in the form of a resplendent sun that lights all the dome with its rays of gold, surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints. On the pavement beneath the dome there is a map of the lands and waters, surrounded by the symbols of the seasons and the elements (Book IX). In several of his notes Leonardo da Vinci (who in this case was interested mainly in problems of engineering) sketches an interesting model of an ideal town: the healthful city is built near the seashore or along a river (so that the dirt may be carried away by the water), and is constructed on two planes connected to one another by stairs. On the upper level live the gentlemen (gli uomini gentili ), on the lower level the poor (la poveraglia). Traffic and services are conPage 431, Volume 1 centrated on the lower plane. The aesthetic principles governing the town plan are largely functional. The beauty of the city follows from its functional form and its mathematical foundations. Thus, a given proportion should dictate the height of the houses and the width

of the streets. At the same time, the city should be built according to human measure, a well-known concept in the Renaissance which, in the context of urban planning, is already found in Filarete's treatise, and was later fully expressed by Francesco di Giorgio. In sum, then, in fifteenth-century thought the ideal city is, first of all, a rational structure (and even in studying ancient models the rational elements are emphasized). Further, Quattrocento thought of the model city, although containing some elements of cosmic symbolism, is mainly concerned with problems of civil life, of how to make justice and wisdom work effectively in the community and be clearly expressed by urban architecture. Finally, the ideal city of the fifteenth century is altogether on earth; it is neither merged with, nor juxtaposed to, a heavenly city. In the sixteenth century urbanistic thought undergoes a significant transformation: different types of symbolism acquire a greater significance in the outlining of the town plan than they had in the fifteenth century, and the ties between the ideal and the real city are less close. Although this process takes place under the impact of the Counter-Reformation, there is no return to medieval attitudes or models. Humanistic symbols prevail, but they are often transformed, given a new meaning and transplanted into a new realm. The most original contribution of this period is found in utopian town planning. The cities described in the utopias are separated from real cities; they are

not placed in heaven, but are located in distant regions. Geographical isolation is a persistent characteristic of utopian descriptions. Civic functions, although described in detail, are usually less important than symbolic aspects in the outlining of the overall shape of the utopian town plan. The architecture usually is of an abstract regularity. Utopian literature abounds in references to the ideal town, but the most detailed description of the town plan is given in Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun, written in 1602 and first published, in a Latin version, in 1623. Although Campanella was a monk trained in the Dominican convent of Naples, his utopian city (which he locates in a distant isle) is governed by a solar religion, and an astral cult performs in it. For both the town as a whole and the central building Campanella accepts the round form as the most perfect. The overall shape of the City of the Sun is round. The houses are arranged as circular walls, or giri, concentric with the central circle in which the temple is located. The temple itself, Campanella says, is perfectly round, free on all sides, but supported by massive and elegant columns. This dome, an admirable work, in the center or `pole' of the temple ... has an opening in the middle directly above the single altar in the center.... On the altar is nothing but two globes, of which the larger is a celestial, the smaller a terrestrial one. The round form, an old symbol of perfection, has

an interesting history in utopian town planning, and frequently occurs both in the form of a radiating center and as a concentric arrangement. Its immediate source in Renaissance and baroque periods is the central plan in religious architecture. Campanella's City of the Sun is an encyclopedic system with a celestial principle of organization. On the walls of the temple are depicted all the stars of heaven with their relation to things below. The walls of the houses bear depictions of mathematical figures, animals, and the different occupations of man; on the outermost circle or wall are exhibited statues of great men, moral leaders, and founders of religions. The City of the Sun has indeed been understood (in accordance with Campanella's intentions) as a book and has had a significant influence on pedagogic thought. Comenius' Orbis pictus is clearly patterned after Campanella's City of the Sun. Utopian thought in general has frequently been interpreted as implying a criticism of the society in which the utopia was written; what the author feels as bad, or as missing, in his own social environment is corrected, or supplied, in his utopia. This may also hold true of the utopian town plan. The rigidly planned and perfectly regular utopian town constitutes a criticism of the naturally grown cities in which the authors lived. The narrow streets and confused arrangement of most medieval cities are criticized by depicting their opposite as ideal and perfect. In this

respect, utopian town planning represents another chapter in the history of the debate between the planned and the grown city. The rational and easily comprehended plan of the imaginary town is also related to the authors' views on the desirable structure of society as a whole. Particularly in the case of Campanella, the city plan seems to express the perfectly regulated and completely centralized structure of society which he envisaged. The utopian town plan thus becomes a mirror image of the utopian society. IV. MODERN CITY PLANNING The hectic social transformations and the rapid increase in urban population in modern times led to a heightened awareness of the social and economic Page 432, Volume 1 problems of the city. There also emerged moral attitudes towards the urban settlement; it was criticized as a place of vice or hailed as the promise of a radiant future. Such thoughts and attitudes were expressed, and modified, in actual town planning. The Enlightenment conceived of the city as a place of virtue. Voltaire considered London, the typical modern city of his time, as the fostering mother of social freedom and mobility as against the fixed hierarchy in rural society. He noticed that even the aristocracy, traditionally connected with land, moved into the cities, bringing culture to the hitherto uncouth towns-

men. Adam Smith, whose attitude to the city was more ambivalent than Voltaire's, also defended the city in relationship to the country. But he did see some of the moral deficiencies of town life, particularly its unnaturalness and dependence. The nostalgia for rural life that was to characterize significant parts of English social thought of the nineteenth century is already expressed by Adam Smith. In Germany, where no large cities existed, the radical humanists exalted the communitarian ideal of the Greek city-state; but also the medieval town appeared to the early romantics as a culture-forming agent, and as the seat of virtues like loyalty, honor, and simplicity. German thinkers of the early nineteenth century (Schiller, Fichte, Hlderlin) fused the characteristics of the Greek polis and the medieval town into the image of a burgher-city as a model of an ethical community. In the town planning of the period the ideal of the planned city clearly prevailed, although in actual fact most cities were not built, or expanded, according to an overall plan. The emerging science of city planning was challenged to provide rationally for the necessities of a progressively more industrialized and mechanized society. This led to the conception that the city as a whole is architecture. Its spatial relationships, its organization, and the forms and levels of activity in it require that a city be built. At a very early stage of the modern period the visionary architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806)

drew an elaborate plan for a built city. A project, begun in 1773 when he was asked to propose some improvements in the residential quarters of a small, salt-producing town, continued all his life and resulted in the publication of L'Architecture considre sous le rapport de l'art, des moeurs, et de la lgislation (1804). Ledoux planned five volumes, but completed only one. Filled with enthusiasm for J. J. Rousseau and the hope for an improved social order, Ledoux envisioned his ideal city and drew plans for it, thereby boldly combining traditional patterns with original motifs. The shape of his ideal town is a semicircle, with the factory at its center and the important buildings on the rings. He thus anticipated both Ebenezer Howard's garden city and Le Corbusier's cit radieuse. Ledoux's poetic gifts become particularly evident in his plans for individual buildings which, although designed in the form of simple geometric shapes, are permeated by a personal, subjective symbolism. Ledoux's starting point was comparatively modern (the salt-producing plant of Chaux) but the solutions he proposed place him within the tradition of utopian town planning. Like Campanella and other authors of utopias he emphasized the principle of the planned city and like them he preferred the round form. The vision of an ideal city continued to exercise its fascination in the later nineteenth century, but more attention had now to be paid to problems arising from economic and technical conditions. One specific type

of built city was proposed by Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), a London architect who was deeply influenced by an extended visit to the United States. In order to counteract the industrial congestion of modern cities (mainly in England), Howard evolved the concept of the garden city. He published his proposals in his work Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform (1892), reprinted as Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902). Howard envisaged a self-contained town of strictly predetermined size (approximately 35,000 inhabitants) and plan. A well-balanced proportion between the urban area and agricultural land is essential. Any increase in population would be met by the creation of satellites, none nearer than four miles to the original city. The town plan of the garden city owes much to Ledoux, and through him to the utopian tradition. Howard's imagined city is round; factories and houses are placed on belts of open land to combine town and country advantages. (In this particular feature Howard is perhaps preceded by some English and American industrialists who moved their factories into the country and established villages around them.) Of particular interest in Howard's plan is the fact that he paid attention to, and made provisions for, the specific joys of urban life. Thus, in a wide glass arcade (significantly called Crystal Palace) near a large park, that kind of shopping is done which requires the joy of deliberation and selection. Howard's garden city allows large space for nature (not more than one sixth of the general

area should be covered by buildings), but it is a built town, with rigidly prescribed boulevards, distribution of buildings, etc. Even nature is planned, being fundamentally recreation ground. Howard's close relation to what is known as the English garden is obvious. Town planning in the twentieth century, although it largely remains on paper, shows the profound changes in urbanistic thought. Most of the problems of contemporary town planning were anticipated by Page 433, Volume 1 Tony Garnier (1869-1914) in his first project for an industrial town, designed in 1901-04. In his further projects and commissions, and in his book Une cit industrielle (1917) he discusses his plans in great detail. Clearly distinguishing between the different functions of the city (living, work, leisure, education, traffic), Garnier undertakes to design a town which will fully serve the needs of man in an industrial age. A bold innovator in the use of materials and in the shape of individual buildings (preferring an ascetic geometry), he is also highly original in the disposition of the town as a whole: he separates vehicular and pedestrian traffic, designs a residential district without enclosed courtyards but featuring continuous green areas, and plans a community center that anticipates contemporary social centers. Another architect and town planner who anticipated the problems and shapes of the modern city, Antonio

Sant' Elia (1880-1916), was sometimes associated with the Futurists. Sant' Elia was greatly attracted by some features of North American civilization, particularly by the romantic aspects of its technical development and by the progressive expansion of an industrial metropolis. His grandiose project for a Citt Nuova was shown in Milan in 1914. In the catalogue to the exhibition Sant' Elia published a manifesto on the need of breaking with the past. The New City should correspond to the mentality of men freed from the bonds of tradition and conventions. In his many drawings a major theme is the architecture of a metropolis which is the result of a technological and industrialized society. In designing towering buildings with exterior elevators, multi-level road bridges, and imaginary factories (monuments of the city of the future), Sant' Elia raised these modern forms to the level of symbols. Garnier and Sant' Elia influenced Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier's work in urbanism consists of a large number of articles and books, and an impressive number of projects for town planning. Only a small part of these projects has materialized (of particular importance is the so-called Marseille Block of 1952). Le Corbusier took a decisive step beyond Garnier and Sant' Elia. While Garnier still thought of small towns, limited to 35,000 inhabitants who are all engaged in industry, and Sant' Elia's visions remained in bare outline, Le Corbusier planned in detail for a city of 3,000,000 inhabitants. From the outset he steered to-

wards the problems of the change-over town (as he later called it), a metropolis with diverse functions which must be disentangled. A significant part of Le Corbusier's theoretical inquiry into the urban problem is a critical appreciation of cities of the past, particularly of the recent past, and of the solutions that have been proposed to this problem. Without ever allowing himself to be moved by local color or aestheticism, he denounced the blemishes of modern cities, that is, those aspects of the city not well enough adapted to their various functions. He also rejected the utopian ideas of limiting the size of cities, and contrary to Frank Lloyd Wright, who advocated the diffusion of urban communities, was opposed to horizontal spreading of the urban complex. Le Corbusier's work in urbanism bears the mark of both rationalism and a philosophical image of man. His rationalism leads to an analysis of the city's different functions, and to an allocation of distinct spaces to each function. The establishing of an orderly relationship between traffic lanes, on the one hand, and living and working zones, on the other, is of primary importance in this context. A famous result of this approach is Le Corbusier's famous hierarchy of roads (the 7 V system), starting with 1 V, an artery carrying international and inter-urban traffic, and ending with 7 V, a fine capillary system in the zone reserved for children and schools. The analytical character is expressed even in small details. So great is Le Cor-

busier's need for logical organization that, having to lay out the vast capital of Candigarh, he divides the vegetation to be used into six categories, each of which receives a precise function (F. Choay, p. 16). Le Corbusier combines the analysis of the city's functions with a philosophical image of man, for whom the city is built. Although he emphasizes the specifically modern conditions of urban life (millions of inhabitants in one metropolis, the decisive role of traffic) and proposes specifically modern solutions (the Cartesian skyscraper, the zoning of traffic), he is deeply indebted to the humanistic tradition. The thought of the utopians (especially of Charles Fourier) was of particularly great importance for his work. This is reflected even in his language: terms such as radiant city, architecture of happiness are both frequent in his writings and characteristic of his ideas and attitudes. In his work, both in individual buildings and in town planning, he tries to achieve an adaptation to the human scale: in individual buildings by applying the Modulor (his own invention of a scale of architectural proportions related to the proportions of the human body), in the designing of the city as a whole by assuming an hour of walking as the basic unit of town planning. In his town planning he emphasizes the city's center: on a small scale it is a community center (as in St. Di, 1945-46), on a monumental scale it is a capitol (as in Candigarh, the metropolis of

Punjab, begun in 1950). Under Le Corbusier's influence the Athens Charter was published by the international architectural organization (CIAM) in 1933, setPage 434, Volume 1 ting out data and requirements connected with the planning of modern cities under five headings (Dwellings, Recreation, Work, Transportation, Historic Buildings). Le Corbusier's work makes it evident that in the twentieth century, as in former periods, town planning is not only a highly complex technical task but involves philosophical ideas and the creation, or application, of traditional, symbolic forms. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. General. Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Town and City Planning (London, 1944). Joseph Gantner, Grundformen der europischen Stadt (Vienna, 1928). Pierre Lavedan, Histoire de l'urbanisme, 2 vols. (Paris, 1926, 1941). Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York, 1938); idem, The City in History: Its Origin, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York, 1961). Camillo Sitte, The Art of Building Cities (New York, 1945). Paul Zucker, Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (New York, 1959). For bibliographies, see: George C. Bestor and Holway R. Jones, City Planning: A Basic Bibliography of Sources and Trends (Sacramento, 1962); Philip Dawson and Sam B. Warner, Jr., A Selection of Works Relating to the History of Cities, in Oscar Handlin and John Burchard, The Historian and

the City (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 270-90. 2. Antiquity. India and the Near East: B. B. Dutt, Town Planning in Ancient India (Calcutta and Simla, 1925); Mircea Eliade, Centre du monde, temple, maison, Le symbolisme cosmique des monuments religieux (Rome, 1957), pp. 57-82; Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (Baltimore, 1959), with a good bibliography; Francis John Haverfield, Ancient Town Planning (Oxford, 1913); Stuart Piggott, Some Ancient Cities of India (London, 1945); Earl Baldwin Smith, Egyptian Architecture as Cultural Expression (London, 1933). Greece: Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis: The Ancient City (New York, 1955); M. Erdmann, Zur Kunde der Hellenistischen Stdtegrundungen (Strasbourg, 1879); Knud Fabricius, Stdtebau der Briechen, in Pauly, Realencyclopdie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, revised by Georg Wissowa (1929); A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940); Roland Martin, L'urbanisme dans la Grce (Paris, 1956). Rome: R. C. Bosanquet, Greek and Roman Towns, Town Planning Review (1914); William Warde Fowler, Social Life in Rome at the Age of Cicero (London, 1908); Lon Homo, Rome impriale et l'urbanisme dans l'antiquit (Paris, 1951); Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg, ber die Grundformen der Italisch-Rmischen Struktur, 2 vols. (Munich, 1944, 1950). 3. The Middle Ages. R. Borrmann, Vom Stdtebau im islamischen Osten, Stdtebauliche Vortrge (1914). A. E. Brinckmann, Sptmittelalterliche Stadtanlagen in SdFrankreich (Berlin, 1910). Edith Ennen, Frhgeschichte der

europischen Stadt (Bonn, 1953). Karl Gruber, Die Gestalt der deutschen Stadt: Ihr Wandel aus der geistigen Ordnung der Zeiten (Munich, 1952). Christoph Klaiber, Die Grund rissbildung der deutschen Stadt im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1912). Achille Luchaire, Les communes franaises, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1911). Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities (Princeton, 1925). Earl Baldwin Smith, Architectural Symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1956); idem, La citt nell'alto mediovo (Spoleto, 1959). 4. Renaissance and Utopian Town Planning. Wolfgang Braunfels, Italienische Stdtebaukunst (Berlin, 1950). Andr Chastel, Cits idales: Marqueteurs italiens du XVe sicle, L'oeil (Dec. 1957). Horst de la Croix, Military Architecture and the Radial City Plan in Sixteenth Century Italy, The Art Bulletin, 42 (1960), 263-90. S. Lang, The Ideal City from Plato to Howard, Architectural Review, 112 (1952). Robert Klein, L'urbanisme utopique de Filarete Valentin Andreae, Actes du Colloque international sur les utopies la Renaissance (Brussels, 1963), pp. 209-30. Georg Mnter, Idealstdte: Ihre Geschichte vom 15.-17. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1957). Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London, 1949). 5. Modern. Giulio C. Argan, Il pensiero critico di Antonio Sant' Elia, L'arte (Sept. 1930). Jean Badovici and Albert Morance, L'oeuvre de Tony Garnier (Paris, 1938). Franoise Choay, Le Corbusier (New York, 1960). Yvan Christ, Projets et divagations de Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (Paris, 1961). Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London, 1962).

Frederick Gibberd, Town Design (London, 1953). Roland Rainer, Stdtebau und Wohnkultur (Tbingen, 1948). MOSHE BARASCH [See also Astrology v1-20 ; Enlightenment v2-10 ; Iconography v2-57 ; Organicism v3-52 ; Renaissance v4-18 v4-19 v4-20 v4-21 ; Romanticism in Literature v4-25 ; Technology v4-48 ; Utopia. v4-62 ] The Dictionary of the History of Ideas Electronic Text Center PO Box 400148 Charlottesville VA 22904-4148 434.924.3230 | fax: 434.924.1431 Maintained by: The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library 2003 the Gale Group All Rights Reserved Last Modified: Thursday, May 1, 2003