Urban Planning Urban Planning: Chapter Outline

CHAPTER 5
Urban Planning
Chapter Outline
• The Ideal City: Urban Planners’ Reactions to the Industrial City
• Daniel Burnham and the City Beautiful Movement
• Ebenezer Howard: The Garden City Movement
• Experiential Activity 5.1: Magnets and Cohesive Forces
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City
• Le Corbusier: Cities without Streets
• Experiential Activity 5.2: Automobile or Elevator?
• Implementations of Urban Planning
• Radburn, New Jersey, and the Greenbelt Towns of the 1930s
• The Three Magnets Revisited
• Futurama: General Motors and the 1939–1940 New York’s World Fair
• Experiential Activity 5.3: Design Your Own “City of the Future”
• Robert Moses: The Power Broker—New York City and Portland, Oregon
• Edmund N. Bacon: The Redevelopment of Philadelphia
• Experiential Activity 5.4: Prohibited Activities
• Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Experiential Activity 5.5: Known Strangers
• Conclusion
• Study Questions
The distinctive design of

Washington, D.C. is depicted
in this birds-eye view of the city
in 1901. Source: Shutterstock
© Everett Historical.
HUTTER 9781138851603 PRINT.indb 107 10/11/2015 11:09

108 Part II: Disciplinary Perspectives
A city’s shape and form can be seen as a reflection of society’s values and cultures.
Geographers, sociologists, architects, and planners all agree that while the
physical environment is not the sole determinant of our behavior in the world,
it certainly influences and constrains our actions through the interactive effects
of environment, values, and behavior. In the examination of the work of urban
visionaries and planners, one can gain a better understanding of how the city’s
environment impacts its residents.
This being the case, essential to our study of experiencing cities is the work
of city planners and visionaries and their views of how the future city should be
constructed. Their conceptualizations of future cities are reflections not only of
how specific aspects of the built environment will affect people but also, on a more
general level, of their underlying worldview and value system.
Leonard Reissman (1970), in his examination of the “urban process,” observes
the contribution of visionaries and their underlying ideas about the nature of the
city, which provide important information about the urban environment. The
complexity of that environment is often realized by the limitations and naïveté of
the planning schema. For example, Reissman notes that visionaries often fail to
fully acknowledge the importance of human motivations and human needs. The
assumption that all people prefer to live in small communities and want to get
back to nature is not an established fact, and visionaries should not assume that it
is. The sociologist’s knowledge of social values and social norms would be of great
benefit to the visionary. But, Reissman also observes, sociologists often allow their
own unwarranted assumptions and naïveté to bias their work. The anti-urban bias
that was inherent in many of the theories of the early urban sociologists, as well as
a personal nostalgia for a return to a rural way of life, clouded their judgment of
the city.
Reissman argues that the works of visionaries, even when unsuccessful, are
useful in illuminating the underlying values that lie at the core of city life. “The
studies of utopias are sociologically relevant not because of an interest in utopias,
but because of an interest in the reasons why they fail. A morbid conclusion,
perhaps, but true” (Reissman 1970:68).
To overcome the perceived problems of the city and to realize the potential for
the betterment of city life, the planners of the twentieth century offered myriad
proposals. While differing radically, these proposals were tremendously influential
in determining urban development policies.
THE IDEAL CITY: URBAN PLANNERS’ REACTIONS

TO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY
The dawn of the twentieth century was seen as the beginning of the age of the
city, fed by industrialization and commercial expansion. Further, the labor-saving
mechanization of agriculture required fewer people to work the farms and thus led
to the further growth of cities. In 1870 approximately 60 percent of the American
labor force worked on farms; by 1900 that figure was reduced to 37 percent (Hine
1979). Urbanization seemed to be the “inevitable wave of the future” (Teaford
1986:1). While some saw this future in a positive manner, more viewed it with

Chapter 5: Urban Planning 109
acrimony and alarm. The problems of the city were seen to far outweigh its
promises. Urban historian Jon Teaford catalogued these problems:
Most Americans at the turn of the century also agreed, however, that the city was the overriding
problem of the present and the future. With its striking contrasts between wealth and poverty, its
debilitating congestion, its ethnic diversity, and its crime and vice, the city was the nation’s greatest
social problem. (Teaford 1986:2)
Sir Peter Hall (2014) observed that the 1890s were years of intense introspection
in urban America. The nation’s social reformers and planners viewed the increased
growth of the city, even with its myriad problems, as the site for the development of
cities that could surpass any that were built before—ideal cities.
Social historian Carl Smith (1994) investigated cataclysmic events in Chicago,
the “shock” city of the late nineteenth century, and their perceived linkage to
social disorder and social reality. He studied the great Chicago Fire of 1871, the
Haymarket bombing of 1876 and the subsequent “anarchist” trial, and the model
town of Pullman (a “company town” within the city limits of Chicago’s South Side)
and its labor strike. These events and the public’s perception of them were highly
influential in shaping America’s view of the “dangerous” city. Smith argued that
many people saw social and cultural disorder as an inevitable consequence of urban
growth and social change. To combat the threat of the emerging city and its “alien”
population of immigrants and migrants, many felt that “the best thing to do with
the city was to remake it, or at least reduce its influence on the rest of the country”
(Smith 1994:261).
Most suggestions on how to do this in one way or another involved programs to slow or even
reverse the movement of population to American’s urban centers, whether from rural America or
abroad. Besides restricting immigration, one of the most popular “solutions” offered . . . was the
old proposal that the discontented and unstable urban population should be sent out onto the vast
bosom of the American countryside, where, in harmony with the land these unproductive and
disorderly city-dwellers would be transformed into solid and responsible citizens. (Smith 1994:261)
In the early twentieth century, during what came to be called the Progressive
Era, city governments established city planning departments charged with
developing immediate solutions to everyday infrastructure problems such as
road congestion, air pollution, and substandard housing. Some municipalities
also developed long-range and comprehensive plans for urban development and
renewal. Compared with the cities of Europe, American cities suffered particularly
acute problems, as much of their growth occurred with no comprehensive plan.
The suddenness of that growth, especially with governments following a laissez-faire
economic policy which gave free rein to business and industrial concerns, led to
many problems in both the physical and social environment.
Social reformers saw the need to solve urban problems, which included various
forms of social disorganization such as high rates of crime, juvenile delinquency,
and dislocated families. The built environment was in shambles: overcrowded
housing, filthy streets, inadequate sewage systems, air pollution, and severe traffic

congestion. Poor healthcare and high mortality rates were the norm. Urban
planners and visionaries saw the need to replace the chaotic, unplanned city
with models reflecting a better way of life for its inhabitants. Many of the urban
visionaries felt that the only plan for the urban future would be a reworking of the
economic and political structures of the city.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, large landscaped parks, like
New York’s Central Park, were created as part of an overall plan to not only beautify
cities but also to encourage the development of civic interest and pride. Those who
frequented this newly designed public realm would also be instructed through
example—by witnessing how the upper classes, with their decorum and orderliness,
used the park. By the end of the century, landscape architecture merged with the
civic-oriented professions of architecture and planning to create the City Beautiful
movement, whose basic goal was to improve life within cities by enhancing civic
design. Urban historian Paul Boyer (1978) asserts that the fundamental premise of
the City Beautiful movement was the conviction that the creation of monumental
buildings, boulevards, and civic centers as part of an attractive and livable urban
environment would improve the moral condition and generate civic loyalty of
the urban populace. In turn, it would increase civic responsibility in the urban
community. Further this surge of civic loyalty “would retard or even reverse the
decay of social and moral cohesiveness which seemed so inevitable a concomitant of
the rise of cities” (Boyer 1978:284).
An inherent bond was seen to exist between a city’s physical appearance and its
moral state. The City Beautiful movement sought to change the built environment
to stimulate civic idealism and pride. Initially, the City Beautiful movement saw
the necessity for municipal improvements, beautifying existing streets through
trash pickups; the planting of trees, plants, and shrubbery; and environmental
quality projects, including the control of factory pollution and the construction
of underground telephone and electricity lines. Eventually, the movement saw the
necessity for more comprehensive city planning.
Daniel Burnham and the City Beautiful Movement

Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood.
Daniel Burnham (1846–1912)
The City Beautiful movement had as its leader Daniel H. Burnham, a prominent
Chicago architect who, with his partner John Root, designed some of the classic
early skyscrapers, including the Reliance Building in Chicago and the Flatiron
Building in New York City. His city planning admonition to fellow architects and
planners was put forth in The Plan for Chicago (1909):
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not be realized. Make
big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once rewarded
will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing
insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let
your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. (Burnham quoted in Hall 2014:202)

Burnham and other influential architects of the late nineteenth century,

including the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, believed
that the true source of civic beauty was the Renaissance and Baroque cityscapes
based on the classicism of ancient Greece and Rome. For American architecture to
achieve international greatness and recognition they believed that it must borrow
and build on the achievements of the neoclassical great monuments of Europe.
Burnham was inspired by the boulevards and promenades of Haussmann’s
reconstruction of Paris under Napoleon III, by the classical architecture of Rome,
and by the construction in Vienna of the Ringstrasse, with its electric streetcars
encircling the city and its broad boulevards graced with new monumental buildings.
He envisioned a city of wide, tree-lined avenues where civic buildings, city halls,
theaters, libraries, and museums built in the classical style would reflect the progress
of human civilization in general and of modern industrial America in particular.
The impetus for the implementation of their ideal city was the World’s
Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. In a national competition for the
federal government’s granting the right to commemorate the four hundredth
anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Western Hemisphere, Chicago was the
winner. This gave Burnham and his architectural
compatriots their opportunity to build the ideal
city, albeit a temporary one. In the aftermath of the
devastating fire of 1871, Chicago was in the forefront
of architectural achievement and was becoming the
personification of the new American city. The World’s
Columbian Exposition, also popularly called the Chicago
World’s Fair or the “White City,” “came to symbolize
the rise of the city in American life” (Glaab and Brown
1983:260).
On the land set aside for the fairgrounds the
White City—so named because of the white color
of its buildings and monuments—was constructed
very quickly of lath and plaster. It followed a Beaux-
Arts European neoclassical architectural plan which,
ironically, ignored the contemporary innovations
of architects such as Louis Sullivan. Sullivan’s
Transportation Building, which adhered to his “form
follows function” dictum of modern architectural design,
was the notable exception. The layout of the grounds
was characterized by broad boulevards with grand vistas
and magnificent landscaping, majestic pools ornamented
with gargantuan sculptures and statues, and monumental
buildings designed to replicate Greek and Roman
temples or Renaissance grand structures. Pedestrians on a bridge at
The clean, orderly, and urbane White City sought to give a positive preview to the “White City,” World’s
what was possible in the future city. Its use of telephones and electric transportation Columbian Exposition,
systems and its dramatic nighttime electrical lighting stood in stark contrast to the Chicago, 1893. Source: Library
industrial city of the day. of Congress.

The fair opened on schedule, despite the United States having plunged into a
steep economic depression with its attendant unemployment and strikes. During
the fair’s seven-month run, millions of people—the official attendance was more
than 27 million—visited the White City and were awed by its splendor, as well
as being entertained by the unofficial midway situated outside the White City’s
gates. The midway included all sorts of popular amusements, including quasi-
anthropological exhibits of “primitive and exotic” people; the belly dancer known
as “Little Egypt”; and its Ferris Wheel, which provided a thrilling bird’s-eye
sweeping view of the fairgrounds. Most importantly, the White City provided a
dramatic sense of the possibilities of city planning, heightening the desire for civic
improvements and exemplifying the appropriate civic character. The urban social
historian Roy Lubove states: “The ephemeral White City stimulated a mood of
dissatisfaction with the ‘awful monotony of ugliness’ which reigned in the real
cities where people lived and worked. This mood the City Beautiful translated into
a quest for communities planned as works of art” (1967:10). Historians Glaab
and Brown (1983) share a similar positive assessment: “The symbolic value
of the magnificent fair can hardly be overstated: it encouraged people to
think about their cities as artifacts, and to believe that with sufficient effort
and imagination they could be reshaped nearer to images of civilized living”
(1983:261).
The White City was the prototype for the monumental neoclassical architectural
style of the City Beautiful movement, which flourished through the first two
decades of the twentieth century and was the inspiration for monumental public
buildings across the country. New York’s Municipal Hall is a prime example, as
were civic centers such as the one in San Francisco. In some instances it generated
projects that embraced a broader city scope. In 1900, several of the White City
architectural teams were involved in the creation of the mall between the United
States Capitol and the Potomac River as part of an overall plan to beautify
Washington, D.C.
In Chicago, Burnham’s 1909 plan shaped the development of not only
downtown areas but the city as a whole for the next 50 years and is considered
a landmark in urban planning. Burnham’s plan was to create a “well-ordered,
convenient, and unified city” (Burnham cited in Chudacoff and Smith 2000:199).
The emphasis was on a harmonious and ordered city: “Chicago in common with
other cities realizes that the time has come to bring order out of chaos incident to
rapid growth, and especially to the influx of people of many nationalities without
common traditions or habits of life” (Burnham quoted in Teaford 1986:42).
Burnham’s plan called for the redevelopment of the entire Chicago area. It
specified a metropolitan system of parks and boulevards, including a 20-mile park
along the shore of Lake Michigan. A grandiose civic center was planned, a new
railroad terminal was to be built, and an east–west boulevard was to be constructed.
Many of its proposals were accepted, including the construction of the lakefront
park. Although the expansiveness of the project led to the cancellation of some of
its more elaborate proposals, most of the proposed constructions were eventually
built. As Chudacoff and Smith observe: “Its scope and innovation aroused national
fascination” (2000:199–200).

In Philadelphia, the wide and scenic Benjamin Franklin Parkway was created
through the destruction of a dense and overcrowded neighborhood. The Parkway
extended from the huge Victorian city hall, crowned by the statue of William Penn,
to the Philadelphia Art Museum, which stood on top of a hill with a sweeping view
of the city center. (For those familiar with the movie Rocky, it was this museum’s
steps that the “heroic” boxer climbed triumphantly.)
Ultimately, however, the City Beautiful movement was destined to have
limited importance. Its most significant contribution was the incorporation of the
landscape city park movement into twentieth-century planning. Urban geographer
Edward Relph provides a concise assessment of Burnham and the City Beautiful
movement: “city governments had neither the inclination nor the funds to carry out
pretty master plans, especially while there were pressing needs for social reform, for
the improvement of basic living conditions, for paving roads and for the installation
of sewerage systems” (Relph 1987:55). While it did provide the impetus for a
number of civic improvements, it did not address itself to more fundamental urban
problems, including addressing the needs of all a city’s citizens.
Ebenezer Howard: The Garden City Movement

A more important planning agenda than the City Beautiful movement, and one
that would have profound social implications for contemporary urban form, had its
origins in England and in its prophet, Ebenezer Howard. Howard proposed what
was to be known as the Garden City movement in his 1898 book, To-Morrow! A
Peaceful Path to Real Reform (later re-named and well known as Garden Cities of
To-Morrow [1902/1965]). At the time that he wrote the book, which would prove
so influential for urban planning, Howard was not an architect or a planner but
a shorthand stenographer in the London courts. Howard was reacting against the
modern industrial city, the divisions between the rich and the poor who lived there,
and the overcrowded conditions resulting from the increasing number of people
who moved to the city for economic opportunities and jobs. The biggest cities
would continue to grow because they continued to generate the most jobs. Echoing
Georg Simmel, Howard also alluded to the social psychological character of city
life—the “isolation of crowds” (Howard 1996:347).
The private ownership of land was held responsible for exorbitant property
values in center cities, which in turn led to outer city sprawl. The surrounding
countryside, while having a much better physical environment with open fields and
fresh air, did not have the economic foundation—too few jobs—or viable social
amenities. Howard was motivated to answer the question of how to merge the
benefits of city life with those of the countryside so that people could enjoy both
without suffering the disadvantages of either.
Howard proposed the establishment of autonomous “garden cities” in rural
areas, reflecting the nineteenth-century British tradition of community planning.
These garden cities would combine the attractive qualities of both city and rural
life without suffering the negative consequences of either one. Howard’s plan was
to sustain “a healthy, natural, and economic combination of town and country life
by balancing city and countryside, industry and agriculture, and work and leisure”

Exhibit 5.1 Ebenezer Howard’s Three Magnets.

Source: Ebenezer Howard. 1898/1956. To-Morrow! A Peaceful Path to Real Reform.
London: Swann Sonnenschein.
The Three Magnets
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(1898/1956:51). Howard’s schema of the “Three Magnets” conveys his objective

(see Exhibit 5.1). While the famous diagram reflects dated language and archaic
style (the figures are hand-drawn with Victorian lettering by Howard), “it is a
brilliant encapsulation of the virtues and vices of the late Victorian English city and
English countryside” (Hall and Ward 1998:18).
In Howard’s “Three Magnets” diagram, the respective appeal of the town
magnet and countryside magnet are contrasted with the proposed new town–
country magnet, which combines the urban benefits of employment and
entertainment with the rural ones of healthy and spacious living.
There are in reality not only, as is so constantly assumed, two alternatives—town life and country
life—but a third alternative, in which all the advantages of the most active and energetic town life,
with all the beauty and delight of the country, may be secured in perfect combination; and the

certainty of being able to live this life will be the magnet which will produce the effect for which we
are all striving—the spontaneous movement of the people from our crowded cities to the bosom of
our kindly mother earth, at once the source of life, of happiness, of wealth, and of power. (Howard
1898:7 quoted in Hall and Ward 1998:19)
Howard’s proposed Garden Cities were based on principles of cooperative

ownership. A company would hold the land for the common good and would
thus control real estate speculation; any increases of property values would be to
the benefit of the community as a whole. Howard’s plans were to control growth
to a maximum of 30,000 people who lived in neighborhood centers (wards) of
5,000, with each ward in essence being a small town or community. The garden
cities would be self-sufficient, possessing their own industrial base, local businesses,
schools, and shops, as well as other community amenities. A permanent greenbelt
would be located within walking distances of all inhabitants. This greenbelt would
allow people to enjoy the benefits of open space, and it would also prevent the cities
from taking the land over for further growth. Housing within the wards would vary
in design, some having common gardens and cooperative kitchens. All would be
located on tree-lined avenues.
Howard saw the cities as being anchored by two cohesive forces located in the
city’s public realm (Fishman 1982). Howard proposed a “Central Park” located in
the center of the town that would provide recreational opportunities, including a
large park area and theaters. The “Crystal Palace,” an arcade adjacent to the park,
would be the site for the sale of manufactured goods and other forms of shopping.
The Central Park would also be the location for the second cohesive force, “civic
pride.” It would be here—with the city’s town hall, library, museum, concert and
lecture halls, and hospital—that “the highest values of the community are brought
together—culture, philanthropy, health, and mutual cooperation” (Fishman
1982:44).
Experiential Activity 5.1: Magnets and Cohesive Forces

Visit the places in your community, or a community of your choice, that serve
as “magnets” (nature, social opportunities, commerce) and “cohesive forces”
(park, theaters and shopping, civic center). Where are these located in relation
to one another? Does their layout reflect the philosophy of any of the planners
discussed in this chapter? Do you think their layout is successful? Why or why
not?
As a garden city prospered, new towns would be formed instead of expanding

or further congesting existing ones. In time, the towns were conceived of as
components of cities—cluster cities—that would enable residents to move freely
within the network of component towns and stay within easy distance to the
surrounding countryside. The individual garden city would become part of a much
larger cluster of garden cities around a central city, all interconnected and sharing
leisure facilities and services.

Roy Lubove (1967) observes that the underlying principles of the Garden City
movement are as follows:
1. urban decentralization;
2. the establishment of cities limited in size, but possessing a balanced agricultural-industrial
economy;
3. use of a surrounding greenbelt to help limit size, and to serve as an agricultural-recreational area;
4. cooperative landholding to insure that the community rather than private individuals benefited
from appreciation of land values;
5. the economic and social advantages of large-scale planning. (Lubove 1967:11)
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

The outcome of the cities will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and
anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy.
Wright n.d.
New town planning in the twentieth century was influenced by two underlying
theories (Calthorpe 1994). One was the Garden City movement first elaborated by
Ebenezer Howard. The second was the modernist approach, developed by Frank
Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, both
Le Corbusier and Wright developed town plans that called for the segregation of
spatial uses, including specified areas for industry, residences, and all buildings
separated from pedestrian-oriented streets. Both adhered to the fundamental
modernist principles of “segregation of use, love for the auto and dominance of
private and public space” (Calthorpe 1994:xv).
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was probably the greatest American architect
of the twentieth century. He had strong opinions about the industrial city, what
should be done to remedy its perceived fundamental deficiencies, and what was
necessary to keep the agrarian way of life viable. He likened the large industrial city
to the cross-section of some “fibrous tumour” and the symbol of the exploitation of
humankind. His ideas were formulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century when the United States was undergoing its dramatic transformation
from a more rural to a highly industrial urban society, but when the principles of
homesteading and the tradition of “the good life” being anchored on working the
land still held romantic sway.
Wright’s answer was what he termed Broadacre City, a concept that reflected his
emphasis on individualism and his love of nature. Wright echoed Thomas Jefferson’s
view that true democracy can only be achieved when everyone is a landowner. He
sought the integration of the city into the countryside and the development of
a decentralized city that stressed agrarian living anchored in the family. Wright’s
Broadacre City personified the ultimate suburb, which reflected Jeffersonian
agrarian individualism. Modern technology and especially electricity and the
automobile would make it possible.
Wright rejected what he perceived as the unnatural and inhumane urban
environment. He put the blame for the city’s evils on the capitalist economy and
its stress on land rent, money, and profit, and on government and bureaucracy

(Reissman 1970). Wright’s solutions were an end to the high-density industrial city,
a return to the land and honest labor, and living in the dispersed city of the future
under the guidelines of Jeffersonian democracy.
Infinite possibilities exist to make of the city a place suitable for the free man in which freedom can
thrive and the soul of man grow, a City of cities that democracy would approve and so desperately
needs. . . . Yes, and in that vision of decentralization and reintegration lies our natural twentieth
dawn. Of such is the nature of the democracy free men honestly call the new freedom. (Wright
quoted in Reissman 1970:60)
Wright’s Broadacre City was appropriately named, as it reflected his “prairie

school” of horizontal design. It was an ultra-low density city that called for a
completely decentralized grid system of plots of land, each plot being about one
acre in size. Modern technology and especially electricity and the automobile would
make it possible. Small farms, industries, and schools would be dispersed over the
landscape. Housing would be designed for individual families and would
represent the basic economic unit of his society. People would work on their
farms and would also work part-time in the small factories and industries or the
shops and offices that dot the landscape. Sir Peter Hall sees Broadacre City as a
culmination of not only Wright’s philosophy but of Wright’s “weav(ing) together
almost every significant strain of American urban—more precisely, anti-urban
thinking” (2002:312). Wright’s model combined the individualistic views of
Jeffersonian thought with the new technological forces to “re-create in America
a nation of free independent farmers and proprietors: Edison and Ford would
resurrect Jefferson” (Hall 2002: 312 quoting Fishman 1982:123).
The houses that Wright proposed also reflected a
horizontal layout. These “Usonian” houses were the
forerunners of suburban ranch-style houses, which
emphasized open space and a functional design
appropriate for modern life. “Automobilization”
would make Wright’s suburban “sprawl” ideal city
viable in the future because people would no longer
need to live in close proximity to each other in urban
centers. The automobile on superhighways would
allow for travel over long distances freely and quickly.
As Wright puts it, this new sprawling city could now
be located “nowhere yet everywhere” (cited in Stern
1986).
Wright’s ideal city rejects the traditional urban
community in favor of a dispersed landscape of independent house-owning families A “prairie” house designed by
living private lives. As Stephen V. Ward notes, city planners in the 1930s were Frank Lloyd Wright was the
weary of Wright’s abandonment of urban communities. Yet, Wright anticipated a perfect low-rise building, spaced
view of suburban dispersal that would be shared by many Americans after World far apart, that would be built
War II (Ward 2002). However, the overall design so desired by Wright would not in Wright’s Broadacre City.
be realized in that suburban and exurban sprawl that characterizes much of the Source: Shutterstock © Henryk
contemporary landscape. Sadura.

Broadacre City was also Wright’s diametrically oppositional response to the

Radiant City proposals of Le Corbusier (discussed next). Rather than build
up, Wright sought to build out; this view was epitomized by his opinion of the
contrasting growth potentials of the elevator and the automobile in the quote that
opened this section of the chapter. Yet, near the end of his career, and possibly with
tongue in cheek, he proposed the building of a mile-high skyscraper in recognition
of the fact that continuous population growth would
ultimately consume what earlier appeared to be
limitless land supply.
Taliesin West, Wright’s home and office complex
built in 1937–1938 in the Arizona desert at
Maricopa Mesa, Paradise Valley, was itself the victim
of urban sprawl. Wright carefully selected the site,
located about 10 miles from downtown Phoenix,
with great care and forethought, thinking that
suburban expansion would never affect him. It was
built on a hill with sweeping vistas. However, rapidly
developing Phoenix constructed pylons that carried
electricity to its outer reaches and marred the view
of the landscape. Wright sued the city to prevent
Aerial view of Taliesin West the inevitable—and lost—after which he moved
and the McDowell Mountains the entrance to the rear of the main building. The architectural critic Herbert
in Scottsdale, Arizona. When Muschamp found great irony in this:
built, Taliesin West was far
from Phoenix; now sprawl has Didn’t the Adventurer in Wright want to roar with laughter at the thought that the greatest architect
brought the city closer. Source: of all time had made possible the conversion of America’s natural paradise to an asphalt continent
Shutterstock © Tim Roberts of Holiday Inns, Tastee-Freeze stands, automobile graveyards, billboards, smog, tract housing,
Photography. mortgaged and franchised from coast to coast? (Muschamp quoted in Hall 2014:346)
Le Corbusier: Cities without Streets

The skyscrapers of New York are too small.
Le Corbusier 1947
This startling proclamation was made by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887–1965),

a Swiss-born architect who spent most of his life in Paris and became a French
citizen, achieving worldwide fame under the enigmatic pseudonym “Le Corbusier.”
In 1930 Le Corbusier visited New York, where he made the observation that there
were too many skyscrapers and they were packed too closely together. Further,
he was especially angered by the busyness of New York’s streets. New York City
urbanist Marshall Berman (1999) observes that while Le Corbusier said he loved
New York’s skyscrapers, he despised the way they were linked to the street:
Streets were his special obsession: they made him foam at the mouth. Again and again his writings
declared in effect, “We must kill the street!” Against modern urban street life, he would celebrate “a
titanic renaissance of a new phenomenon, TRAFFIC! Cars, cars, fast, fast!” He would clear all the

streets and reorganize space into endless rows of great concrete-and-glass slabs, each one a separate
world with its own underground garage; the slabs would be linked to each other by broad highways,
each slab “a factory for producing traffic,” landscaped with plenty of trees and grass. He called his
new model “the tower in the park.” (Berman 1999:537)
Le Corbusier was reacting to his own experience in Paris and what he saw as
a similar situation in New York. Downtown areas of cities were highly congested.
Buildings occupied by business offices stood adjacent to slum areas racked with
filth and disease. Ground transportation often found itself gridlocked. The key for
Le Corbusier was his famous paradox: the centers of cities must be decongested by
increasing their density (Hall 2002). This paradox would be resolved by building
high skyscrapers over a small part of the total ground area. These skyscrapers would
be surrounded by green open space linked to one another by a rapid underground
and elevated transportation system. To accomplish this vision, Le Corbusier
proposed the demolition of chaotic, congested downtowns and their replacement
by what he subsequently called the “Radiant City” ( Ville Radieuse) (Le Corbusier
1967).
Most significantly, Le Corbusier believed that the city was encumbered by its
historical past, with its unplanned growth and its failure to adapt to the conditions
of a new modern age. Le Corbusier’s model of the Radiant City called for the
elimination of both the historical city and the pedestrian-oriented street in the new
modern city: “It is the street of the pedestrian of
a thousand years ago, it is a relic of the centuries:
it is a non-functioning, an obsolete organ. The
street wears us out. It is altogether disgusting!
Why, then, does it still exist?” (quoted in Gold
1998:48).
Le Corbusier’s vision of the city is represented
in his Plan Voisin for Paris designed in 1925. His
“city” comprises a group of 60-story uniformly
designed office buildings set in open space and
linked to surrounding standardized residential
apartment houses by means of high-speed
transportation routes. The total population
would be three million people. Le Corbusier
superimposed his plan on the then-rundown
Right Bank center of Paris. He proposed tearing down the historic quarters of Paris, Le Corbusier’s elaborate plans
filled with buildings viewed as obsolete and unsanitary, while preserving only a for the rebuilding of cities—the
few central monuments. The various functions that the historic core had provided Radiant City—is composed of
would now be contained in standardized uniform structures. His plan, therefore, residential and business high-
was to obliterate the historical city with all its variety and complexity. rise towers that are connected
The immediate response of Parisians was shock and dismay. Le Corbusier was by roadways. The towers sit
seen as a “barbarian” who would substitute a cold, sterile, and lifeless city in place in park-like settings. Source:
of their beloved Paris. Architectural historian Ada Louise Huxtable (2004) believes Ullstein Bild/The Granger
that if the 1925 Plan Voisin had been carried out, the result would have been a Collection NYC—all rights
disaster. reserved.

Seductive in the context of a decade infused with a belief in the perfectability of society through
radical renewal, the plan would have replaced the intimate, event-filled humanity and historic
and cultural diversity of one of the richest urban accretions in the world with a scaleless limbo of
relentlessly imposed order and epic sterility. (Huxtable 2004:200)
Lewis Mumford (1975) observes that the impact of Le Corbusier’s work was
his ability to integrate two dominating conceptions of early twentieth-century
architecture and city planning. The first was the utilization of bureaucratization
and standardization toward modern technology to develop a machine-made
environment. The second was to offset the building of dense high-rise skyscraper
cities with the utmost utilization of wide-open space to provide sunlight, views, and
areas of green.
While Mumford recognizes Le Corbusier’s contribution, in a scathing
criticism he argues that three main misconceptions are prevalent in his work. The
first mistake is the overvaluation of the bureaucratic ideals of standardization,
regimentation, and centralized control. To Corbusier skyscrapers were of
extravagant heights because they were technologically feasible. They could be
placed over vast areas of open space because modern transportation systems could
temporally shrink distance. But they would still be spatially isolated with no
common public gathering grounds for people.
The second mistake was in Le Corbusier’s “contempt for historic and traditional
forms” that ignored the historical “past in all its cultural richness and variety”
(Mumford 1975:119, 117). Le Corbusier’s image was to remove the past from the
city. His was a city of ahistorical design in a cultural vacuum that overemphasized
the present without allowing it to benefit from the errors of the past—indeed,
threatening with destruction whatever permanent values the present might create.
Mumford refers to this error as the “disposable urban container” (1975:120).
The third mistake was the extravagant use of open space for parks. Mumford
felt that the parks were, by and large, sterile sites that ignored the variety of human
needs and the complexities of human associations. Le Corbusier wanted to avoid
the worse cases of overcrowding witnessed in urban slums, but by distancing
activities through extreme spatial segregation he destroyed the essence of human
character. While he created visual open spaces of views and greenery, he forgot the
nonvisual purposes of functional open spaces—“for meeting and conversation, for
the play of children, for gardening, for games, for promenades, for the courting of
lovers, for outdoor relaxation” (Mumford 1975:120).
Mumford concludes that this model of the “city in a park” fails because its
aesthetic monotony reflects social regimentation, uniformity, and conformity.
“Neither high-rise structures, vertical transportation, spatial segregation, multiple
expressways and subway, or wholesale parking space will serve to produce a
community that can take advantage of all the facilities modern civilization offers
and work them into an integrated urban form” (Mumford 1975:120). It is
necessary to recognize the diversity of the human community with its freedom,
family intimacy, and spontaneous and creative use of the physical environment.
Le Corbusier built few buildings, let alone the cities that he envisioned. Yet,
he was one of the most highly influential architects and urban planners of the

twentieth century. As an example, the Futurama

exhibition presented by General Motors at the
New York World’s Fair of 1939–1940 (discussed
later) was inspired by Le Corbusier’s ideas for the
city of the future that is so dependent upon the
automobile. From the late 1950s to early 1960s
he was involved with planning for Chandigarh, a
regional capital in the Punjab region of India which,
in its realization, bears out some of the criticisms
of his work. The urban design does not reflect the
cultural heritage of India nor is it applicable to the
environmental climate. Successful buildings such as Brasilia, the capital of Brazil,
Punjab University are underutilized and are surrounded by slums in which people was built according to Le
live without electricity and heat. Brasilia, the futuristic capital of Brazil, was built by Corbusier’s principles. Source:
his students in the 1950s and follows Le Corbusier’s principles. Brasilia startlingly Shutterstock © gary yim.
juxtaposes modern buildings and highways with the Brazilian favelas, or squatter
settlements, growing unabated in its periphery.
Le Corbusier was part of the modernist movement in early twentieth-century
architecture. He and fellow architects such as Walter Gropius and Mies Van der
Rohe disdained the traditional city characterized by nonuniformity in its urban
layouts and the diversity of structures in its built environment, which reflected
different historical periods in its growth. Their architecture, initially scorned and
ridiculed, became the basis of an international design that set the standard for
what the modern office building and skyscraper should look like. Shorn of any
ornamentation, the modern skyscraper, with its
stripped form and functionality, became the standard
for post-World War II American cities. Further,
Corbusier’s vision of the city of the future consisting
of high-rise towers connected by roadways became
the model for urban redevelopment programs in the
post-World War II United States. The mass housing
of the urban poor in “projects” became the standard.
Architectural historian William J. R. Curtis
(1996), in his summation of Le Corbusier and
Wright, observes that both reacted to the problems
of their time period by believing in the power of
architecture to re-link individuals and societies into a
new form of natural order and a new form of
civilization. They were mistaken: This photograph is of a high-rise
building-in-a-park that was
Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier regarded themselves as latter-day versions of the under construction. While
philosopher-king, who enshrines the constitution of a perfect society in the form of an ideal city. attractive it may ultimately
Despite obvious differences between their respective urban models, they addressed similar questions: be unsuccessful because there
how to overcome the schisms resulting from the division of labour, how to employ the machine yet are few gathering places for
maintain a sense of wholeness socially and visually, how to reintegrate man and “nature” . . . The residents to mingle. Source:
dusty model of Broadacre city and the fading drawings of the Ville Radieuse remained the property Shutterstock © Sergey Baykov.

of their creators: two individualist artist-thinkers who optimistically, but mistakenly, imagined that
architectural form could fashion a new integrated civilization. (Curtis 1996:327)
Experiential Activity 5.2: Automobile or Elevator?

Visit the downtown area of your city, or a city of your choice, and observe the
extent to which the automobile or the elevator dominates the urban design. Are
there certain planners who had a strong influence on the design of this city?
What theories of planning are manifest in the built environment you see?
IMPLEMENTATIONS OF URBAN PLANNING

In the first section of this chapter the works of Burnham, Howard, Wright, and
Le Corbusier were presented as being most influential in the thinking on the
nature of the city and the suburb, and on new town planning. In this section, we
return to the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and their influence on the growth of small
towns and ultimately of suburbia; we then look at post-World War II America as
initially conceptualized by General Motors’ exhibit, Futurama, at the 1939–1940
New York’s World’s Fair. New York City’s urban planner from the 1920s into
the 1960s was Robert Moses. Known as the Power Broker, Moses was a major
practitioner of Le Corbusier’s ideas on the nature of the city. He proved to be a
highly articulate and most influential spokesperson of city planning through the
middle of the twentieth century. Edmund Bacon had a similar influential position
in Philadelphia, especially after World War II.
Radburn, New Jersey, and the Greenbelt Towns of the 1930s

Ebenezer Howard’s vision was that of a small town of around 30,000 inhabitants
surrounded by a greenbelt; it was seen to combine the best of country and town
living. The vision followed the traditional urban pattern dominated by civic spaces
and surrounded by village-scale centers.
Howard’s ideas on the creation of new towns to meet all of people’s needs were
instrumental in forming the Garden City movement. In England, Howard himself
was very influential in the establishment of two English garden cities, Letchworth
(1902) and Welwyn Garden City (1920). Both turned out to be more practical
garden suburbs than the utopian garden city envisioned by Howard. They were to
have a profound worldwide impact on the thinking about urban planning and were
the stimulus for a city planning movement.
In the United States, Howard’s ideas influenced a number of planners and
architects. For the most part, they never fully articulated a new conception of
community. Instead, his ideas were reflected in the development of what variously
became called “garden villages,” “garden suburbs,” and “garden homes” after 1910
(Glaab and Brown 1983). A more comprehensive attempt to bring Howard’s garden
city to the United States was attempted by the planners of Radburn, New Jersey, in
the late 1920s and by the greenbelt towns in the 1930s.

In 1928–1929, just prior to the Great Depression, American architects

Clarence Stein and Henry Wright created Radburn, New Jersey, a town that gained
national attention as a “town for the motor age” (Jackson 1985:162). Stein felt that
“Dinosaur” cities like New York and Chicago were outdated as a consequence of
modern technology. These cities required vast amounts of financial expenditures
for transit and utility systems. They were overly congested and required intensive
land utilization that resulted in highly inflated property values. An endless spiral
of speculative real estate investments led to more intensive land use and even more
congestion (Lubove 1967).
The alternative was seen in the concept of the “regional city” proposed by Stein
and Wright and their associates at the Regional Planning Association of America
(RPAA). The RPAA was organized in 1923 and saw the application of their ideas
in Radburn, New Jersey. This model town, located in suburban northeastern New
Jersey, 17 miles from New York City, with a projected size of 28,000 people, was
conceived following Howard’s guidelines. However,
unlike Howard, who was a champion of social
integration, Radburn was designated as a community
for the more affluent; in addition, restrictive
covenants prohibited the selling of houses to Jews
and to African Americans. Its advocates were bowing
to the pressures for privacy, exclusivity, and safety
and protection that were so prevalent then and that
became increasingly an inherent characteristic of
post-World War II suburbia.
This “town for the motor age” was designed
to minimize the requirement for automobiles,
which were relegated to main arterial streets on
the periphery. Pedestrians were able to wander
through the local parks and pathways without
worry of traffic, and underpasses were built under
major streets. “Superblocks” were created covering 23 acres with shared parklands. Radburn, New Jersey: “a town
Features of Radburn’s design like the separation of main streets from cul-de-sacs, for the motor age.” In this
local parkways, and rural-like settings and houses, became features of subsequent photograph the automobiles
suburban development plans. Unfortunately, the depression of the 1930s prevented are parked by houses in alley
the full development of this planned community. However, as historian Jon ways in a manner that would
Teaford assesses, “the scheme excited many professional planners and influenced not intrude upon the separated
their work. Moreover, the Radburn project was indicative of the growing concern walk paths that connected
for minimizing the discomfort and dangers posed by the automobile” (1986:68). houses. Automobiles were
Radburn also became the inspiration for a series of new towns that would be relegated to main arterial streets
undertaken by the federal government during the Great Depression. that were on the periphery,
In the 1930s, the federal government was influenced by the beliefs of thus enabling the separation of
sociologists and urban planners that the unimpeded growth of cities would only pedestrians from automobiles
foster social disorganization and depersonalization. The government also sought parked in driveways and
to regulate and control unplanned urban sprawl by implementing a Resettlement vehicle traffic. Source: Dmadeo,
Administration that would alleviate both the need for affordable housing and http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
provide employment for thousands of workers who lost their jobs during the fdl.html

depression. Headed by Rexford Guy Tugwell, the Resettlement Administration had

intellectual affinity to the Garden City ideals of Ebenezer Howard, which “included
a belief in planning as a device to implement a broader social and economic
restructuring of society” (Schuman and Sclar 1996:437).
The remedy for overcoming the evils of city life would be the building of 3,000
planned suburban communities—termed “greenbelt cities”—set in permanent
green parks, outside major cities. The initial plans of the greenbelt program called
for the building of 25 towns of limited size containing about 10,000 people.
Conveniently located near employment opportunities, they would also provide
pleasant surroundings for their inhabitants. At the same time, they would relieve
slum congestion, provide low-cost housing, and foster community cohesion
(Chudacoff and Smith 2005). The underlying policy behind this plan was stated by
Rexford G. Tugwell, a government official under the Roosevelt administration: “My
idea is to go just outside centers of population, pick up cheap land, build a whole
community and entice people into it. Then go back into the city and tear down
whole slums and make parks of them” (quoted in Chudacoff 1975).
Only three greenbelt cities were actually built. They provided work for between
20,000 and 30,000 people (Schuman and Sclar 1996). These towns—Greenbelt,
Maryland, on the countryside outside of Washington, D.C.; Greenhills, Ohio,
on farmland near Cincinnati; and Greendale, Wisconsin, three miles southeast
of Milwaukee—contained many of the design elements of the Garden City
movement, including the use of “superblocks” and a “greenbelt” of undeveloped
land surrounding the community. Depression budgetary concerns, pressure from
private real estate developers who were fearful of the economic consequences to
their industry, and governmental supporters who viewed this community
planning project as socialistic led to the abandonment of government garden
city planning initiatives. After these three towns were built, the Resettlement
Administration was abolished, and after World War II Congress authorized the
sale of greenbelt land and buildings to nonprofit organizations with sale
preferences to existing residents and returning veterans (Chudacoff and Smith
2005; Schuman and Sclar 1996).
The Three Magnets Revisited

Sir Peter Hall (2002), eminent English urban historian and critic, in his important
intellectual history of urban planning, Cities of Tomorrow, argues that it is vital to
understand Ebenezer Howard more as a social visionary than as an urban physical
planner. He says of Howard and his Garden City followers that their “vision
. . . was not merely of an alternative built form, but of an alternative society,
neither capitalist nor bureaucratic-socialistic: a society based on voluntary co-
operation among men and women, working and living in small self-governing
commonwealths” (Hall 2014:3).
Together with Colin Ward (1998), Hall assesses the legacy of Ebenezer Howard
and the Garden City movement, updating Howard’s Three Magnets schematic. A
century after Howard, they examine the startling differences in the nature of the
“town” and of the “country” magnets found in England. Howard’s Three Magnets

Exhibit 5.2 Ebenezer Howard’s Three Magnets revisited. Howard’s famous statement
of advantages and disadvantages was rephrased for the conditions of the 1990s by
Hall and Ward. The town has been sanitized and the country has been given urban
technology, but both still suffer problems; and, still, towns set in the country offer an
optimal lifestyle.
Source: Peter Hall and Colin Ward. 1998. Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer
Howard. New York: Wiley.
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schematic of advantages and disadvantages is reformulated by Hall and Ward to

reflect contemporary conditions (see Exhibit 5.2).
The town is now seen to have taken on some of the negative attributes associated
with the country of a hundred years ago. It is now the site for dying industries as
competition from abroad, a consequence of the global economy, has resulted in high
unemployment. Cities have become the centers for global informational services.
The consequences are a new form of inequality with higher educated and skilled
jobholders found in the city along with a large number of low-educated individuals
searching for less-skilled jobs. Industrial fog from burning coal has been replaced by

photochemical smog, while traffic remains as congested as ever. Unchanged is the

perception of the town as a deprived, crime-ridden, and problematic place not fit to
raise children, a place with inadequate schools where desire to move elsewhere for a
better life is always present (Hall and Ward 1998).
Hall and Ward observe that the countryside has been transformed as well.
Improvements in technology and transportation, particularly electricity and
the automobile, provide opportunities. The telephone and e-mail enhance
communication. Further lifestyle improvements, from central heating to television
to the Internet, have turned the home into a center for entertainment and
instruction—inconceivable in Howard’s time. Hall and Ward conclude,
“The remarkable fact is that over the intervening century, we have turned the
English countryside into a version of Howard’s town-country on a vast scale”
(1998:105).
Hall and Ward report that in the last 50 years there has been a re-population
of the English countryside. The British government, particularly after World War II,
saw the necessity for building new housing and communities to replace the
war’s destruction and to alleviate the population pressures of its metropolitan
centers, particularly London. The 1946 New Towns Act of England was created,
which became a keystone of long-term government policy under which more
than 35 new towns were built following some of the guiding Garden City
principles.
People’s migration to these new towns has been fostered by both “push” and
“pull” factors. They have been both “pushed by what they saw as the bad things
about living in the cities—the familiar litany, however exaggerated, of bad schools,
crime, danger, poor environment—and pulled by their relative absence in the
small towns and the villages” (Hall and Ward 1998:105). However, Hall and
Ward do report some important differences in the contemporary “town-country”
magnet that do not reflect Howard’s vision. The growth has been in the more
rural areas of England and not in the new-town districts. More importantly,
Howard would have been most displeased that the growth process has been
economically and socially restrictive and exclusive. Lower income groups have
remained in the cities, often residing in ghettoized public housing estates
(projects). Further, Howard would have been disturbed by the dependence on
the automobile and the necessity to travel long distances to work and to
entertainment.
Futurama: General Motors and the 1939–1940 New York

World’s Fair
At the New York World’s Fair in 1939, General Motors had an exhibit that
many consider the highlight of the fair. In its Highways and Horizons building,
General Motors constructed a miniaturized scale model of a United States of the
future—the United States of 1960. Futurama was designed under the direction of
Norman Bel Geddes, a very prominent industrial designer, and was built under
the supervision of George Wittbold. The scale model consisted of a half-million
individually designed buildings and houses; thousands of miles of multilane

highways; more than a million trees and shrubs of 18 species; rivers, streams, lakes,
and mountains; bridges; industrial centers; college and resort towns; great towering
cities; and 50,000 scale-model motor vehicles. A moving conveyor carrying 552
“sound-chairs” along a winding track a third of a mile long had a capacity of
transporting 2,150 people per hour, or a total of approximately 28,000 people a
day, through this 35,000-square-foot multilevel exhibition area (General Motors
1939, 1940). From an aerial perspective, the viewer saw the future city of towers
and highways inspired by Le Corbusier’s vision.
What captures one’s attention
is the depiction of the city of the
future—a miniaturized realization of
Le Corbusier’s Radiant City and the
integral role that General Motors foresaw
for the automobile in that future.
In the introduction to the Futurama
brochure, Alfred P. Sloan, the chairman
of General Motors, articulated the view
that the progress of civilization is tied
to advancements in transportation. The
success of future communities rests on the
development of better and more efficient
ways of moving people and materials. In
another promotional brochure, this view
was also expressed:
The ‘Futurama’ is presented not as a detailed
forecast of what the highways of the future may
be, but rather as a dramatic illustration of how, General Motors’ Futurama
through continued progress in highway design and construction, the usefulness of the motor car model of the city of the future
may be still further expanded and the industry’s contributions to prosperity and better living be exhibited at the New York
increased. (General Motors 1939) World’s Fair (1939–1940)
The following is the text of the voiceover narration heard as one proceeded on was highly influenced by Le
the conveyer past the city of tomorrow: Corbusier’s ideas of the Radiant
City. Source: © Bettmann/
In 1940 this American city actually existed. Its population then was approximately a million CORBIS.
persons. Today—in 1960—it is much larger, divided into three units, residential, commercial and
industrial. Nine miles out from the city is a vast airport.
Here is an American city replanned around a highly developed modern traffic system, and, even
though this is 1960, the system as yet is not complete. Whenever possible the rights of way of
these express city thoroughfares have been so routed as to displace outmoded business sections and
undesirable slum areas. (General Motors 1940)
September of 1939, the same year that the World’s Fair opened, marked the
outbreak in Europe of what would soon become World War II. The fair continued
on schedule for another year. The total fair attendance exceeded 45 million people.
It was not until after the war that the vision of Futurama became the sought-for
reality for American cities and suburbs.

Experiential Activity 5.3: Design Your Own

“City of the Future”
Suppose you and your classmates were to design an exhibit of the “city of the
future.” What research questions would you need to answer to help determine
your design? What would the result look like, and to what extent do you think
the general public would appreciate it and want to see it built?
In his fascinating account of the World’s Fair, David Gelernter (1995) alludes to
commentary by the political analyst Walter Lippmann on the Futurama exhibit and
the role of private enterprise in the building of the future America. “GM has spent
a small fortune to convince the American public that if it wishes to enjoy the full
benefit of private enterprise in motor manufacturing, it will have to rebuild its cities
and highways by public enterprise” (Lippmann quoted in Gelernter 1995:362).
Lippmann’s comment became part of a larger debate on the role of the automobile
in general, and GM’s influence in particular, in the building of post-World War II
America and on urban renewal, interstate highways, and suburbia.
Part of the debate was on the extent of an interstate highway system—what
Geddes called a transcontinental superhighway—and its role in that future. Some,
including New York City Park Commissioner Robert Moses, a chief decision
maker in the building of highway systems to serve the city, felt no need for
transcontinental superhighways. Nevertheless, Futurama, in a very real sense,
became the prototype for the urban reconstruction of New York, and ultimately
for innumerable city planners in many American cities, especially after World War
II. The historian Max Page observes, “Not only Le Corbusier but also New York’s
city builders and imaginers, its developers and preservationists, had come to believe
that the remaking of the city was not only desirable but possible—and perhaps
inevitable” (1999:19).
Robert Moses: The Power Broker—New York City and

Portland, Oregon
Robert Moses (1888–1981) epitomized governmental involvement in the
development of the twentieth-century American city from the 1920s through the
1960s. Moses was a political scientist, not a trained planner, and though he never
won elective office, he wielded tremendous power through the many appointive
offices he held in New York City and State. In fact, he “once occupied 12 positions
simultaneously, including that of New York City Parks Commissioner, head of
the State Parks Council, head of the State Power Commission and chairman of
the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority” (Goldberger 1979). Among his
achievements were the Long Island Expressway, the Triborough and Verrazano
Bridges that link the boroughs of New York City with interconnecting highways,
the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the World’s Fair of 1963–1964.
The Long Island Expressway, built in the 1930s, opened the then-rural areas of
Long Island for the middle classes in New York City and provided access for city
dwellers and suburbanites alike—provided they had cars—to the beaches of Long

Island: Jones Beach, a massive seashore park, was a

most impressive accomplishment. The subsequent
expansion of highway systems in and around the city
played an important role in suburban development
and the ultimate exodus of much of New York City’s
middle class to suburbia.
However, the controversial Cross Bronx
Expressway, built in the late 1950s and early 1960s
and called “Heartbreak Highway” by its opponents,
destroyed not “slum” areas but a viable, economically
stable urban village. Sixty thousand people, mostly
working-class and middle-class Jews as well as Blacks,
Italian-Americans, and Irish-Americans, were legally
evicted from their homes by eminent domain. The The David H. Koch Theater,
controversy that developed in the destruction of this community for a highway Lincoln Center, New York
system ultimately was the beginning of the end of the massive urban renewal and City. The site of Lincoln
urban highway-building period in New York City. Marshall Berman, a political Center was previously occupied
scientist and urbanist, witnessed the shattering of his neighborhood by the building by “slum” housing. This
of the Cross Bronx Expressway from his personal vantage point as a boy growing up demolished neighborhood
in the Bronx. He comments: “Thus depopulated, economically depleted, emotionally was where West Side Story
shattered—as bad as the physical damage had been the inner wounds were worse— was filmed. Source: WPPilot,
the Bronx was ripe for all the dreaded spirals of urban blight” (1988:293). Wikimedia Commons, http://
In a New York Times article, Alan Feuer (2002) reports that the East Tremont creativecommons.org/licenses/
and Morris Heights neighborhoods never recovered from the construction of the by/4.0
Cross Bronx Expressway, which split their communities. Furthermore, to this day
residents suffer filth and nausea from the polluting effects of hydrocarbon fumes.
While some still argue that the highway serves as a vital commercial link from Long
Island and New England through the Bronx to New Jersey and points west, it has
proven to be a traffic nightmare, earning the reputation as one of the most “savage”
roads in New York City. Hampered by poor lighting, poor drainage, poor ramps,
and poor lines of sight, it still carries nearly 180,000 vehicles a day. In 2000, the last
year when statistics were available, it was the site of 2,622 accidents, of which five
were fatal (Feuer 2002).
Robert Moses’s influence extended beyond New York City to many other
American cities as well. A case in point is Portland, Oregon. In 1943, Robert
Moses visited Portland and recommended the construction of highways and
the elimination of ethnic neighborhoods on the southside for the sake of urban
renewal. His plans, endorsed by the city government, were entitled “Freeway
City” and were quickly implemented. The major highway that was built, “Harbor
Drive,” followed the bank of the Willamette River and replaced what may have
been the largest concentration of historic cast-iron buildings in the country outside
of the SoHo district of New York City (Breen and Rigby 2004). Disassembling a
once-vital urban downtown area, the city constructed an unattractive auditorium,
nondescript middle-income housing, and office towers.
It was not until the 1970s that Portland began the urban redevelopment projects
that have revitalized its downtown. These redevelopments include a light-rail transit

system integrated with an extensive bus system utilizing redesigned one-way streets
and a low-fare downtown zone. The resultant light automobile traffic downtown
has helped transform it into an attractive, pedestrian-friendly area characterized by
both parks and stores, overturning the “Moses-bred direction Portland had been
taking since World War II” (Breen and Rigby 2004:177). Riverwalk parks on both
sides of the Willamette provide additional urban amenities. Immediately adjacent
to downtown is the Pearl District, containing condominium residential units, art
galleries, restaurants, and the flagship location of the unique, locally based Powell’s
Book Store. Massive inside with an irregular floor plan spread over a one-block
area, Powell’s has become both an oasis for the city populace and also a major
tourist attraction. The Pearl District was created by both 30 year olds and members
of the older baby-boom generation, all attracted to the “gritty character of the
neighborhood” (Breen and Rigby 2004:180).
The Portland metropolitan area has been in the forefront and has served as the
model for smart growth policies regarding urbanization. Smart growth is both an
urban and suburban planning theory that emphasizes both the redevelopment of
inner cities and the containment of suburban sprawl. It advocates the
revitalization of neighborhoods as well as the immediate surrounding older
suburbs. The Portland metropolitan area has also been an advocate of new
urbanism precepts. New urbanism (discussed in more depth later in this book)
advocates walkable communities, mixed-use neighborhoods, public transit and
bicycle-friendly roads. The ultimate goal is to increase the social interaction among
community residents.
Sociologist Bruce Podobnik (2011) has conducted a very interesting study of
the social and environmental impact of new urbanism in Portland and its environs.
He compares lifestyles of a new urbanist community, Orenco Station, located in
Portland with two long-established neighborhoods and a traditional suburb. He
finds that Orenco Station has a higher level of social interaction. Residents also have
a strongly favorable reaction to living in carefully planned and denser communities.
He sees this in part because it is a more walkable community with a greater reliance
on mass transit than in the more traditionally designed communities. His overall
assessment is that his study “lends support to the assertion that New Urbanist
communities can foster more socially cohesive and healthier lifestyles within urban
environments” (Podobnick 2011:107).
The Portland experience serves as a refutation of many of Robert Moses’s ideas.
An examination of Robert Moses’s projects reveals his intellectual alignment with
the Radiant City ideas of Le Corbusier; the two have been described as loving the
abstract public interest but as disdaining people (Campbell and Fainstein 1996).
William H. Whyte refers to their ideas on the city as anti-cities:
Everybody, it would seem, is for the rebuilding of our cities . . . with a unity of approach that is
remarkable . . . But this is not the same thing as liking cities . . . Most of the rebuilding underway
. . . is being designed by people who don’t like cities. They do not merely dislike the noise and the
dirt and the congestion, they dislike the city’s variety and concentration, its tension, its hustle and
bustle . . . The results are not cities within cities, but anti-cities. (Whyte cited in Burns, Sanders and
Ades 1999:494, italics added)

Le Corbusier’s and Moses’s version of the city is often referred to as the city of
highways and towers, or of towers in the park. The towers, separated by park areas,
are divided by highways instead of traditional streets. Such cities are devoid of the
street and the myriad ways of street life.
Edmund N. Bacon: The Redevelopment of Philadelphia

Philadelphia: “the worst, most backward, stupid city that I ever heard of . . . That come hell or high
water, I would devote my life’s blood to making Philadelphia as good as I can.”
Edmund N. Bacon quoted in Salisbury and Boasburg 2005:A5
Edmund N. Bacon (1919–2005) was one of the most prominent urban planners
in the twentieth century—Philadelphia’s counterpart to New York City’s Robert
Moses. His prominence was reflected in his picture being on the cover of Time
magazine in 1964 in a featured story on urban renewal. (His other claim to fame
is that he is the father of the actor Kevin Bacon.) Bacon, however, did not have the
same political or economic clout in Philadelphia as Moses—who had control of
hundreds of millions of dollars—had in New York City. From 1949 to 1970, Bacon
served as the executive director of Philadelphia’s City Planning Commission, a very
influential position but without power to bring about change on its own. Yet, the
modern Philadelphia cityscape was a result of his personal urban vision, his tenacity,
and the support he received from powerful reform-minded politicians, most notably
two of Philadelphia’s post-World War II mayors, progressives Joseph Clark and
Richardson Dilworth (Hine 1989, 1999). Bacon tried to combine both the ideas
of Le Corbusier and Robert Moses with the sensitivity in fostering the growth of a
walkable city with high patterns of social interaction.
Inga Saffron (2005), architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, points out
that Bacon grew up in a city characterized by crowded slums, horse-drawn vehicles,
and fetid sewers. He was influenced by the urban planners of his day, including Le
Corbusier. Saffron comments, “Like Le Corbusier and other socially progressive
modernists of his time, Bacon was committed to bringing order, hygiene, open
space, and twentieth-century automotive technology to dense, dark, industrial-era
cities” (2005:1).
Similarly to Robert Moses and Le Corbusier, Bacon saw the automobile as
a key urban transportation medium. To that end, he misguidedly advocated the
demolition of the busy South Street retail district in favor of a crosstown expressway
that would have linked the Schuylkill and Delaware interstate expressways. The
resultant political protest prevented this from occurring. As a consequence,
South Street, famous in song as a place where “hippies” meet, today is a vibrant
commercial shopping area composed primarily of locally owned stores that cater to
a wide variety of customers.
Penn Center was an urban project that showed the influence of Le Corbusier’s
twentieth-century urban planning. As originally conceived by Bacon, this high-
rise office building complex would include many shops and restaurants. It was a
replacement for a railroad yard with a huge stone viaduct known as the “Chinese
Wall,” which blockaded Center City from the Schuylkill to City Hall. The resultant

Penn Center, a vast improvement over the Chinese Wall, ushered in a wave of
downtown renewal. Unfortunately, many of Bacon’s conceptual ideas for Penn
Center were not realized, as many urban amenities were discarded in favor of more
office space in the name of economic expediency. Its design flaws, including the
failure to incorporate a pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare, have turned it into a
rather sterile complex of office buildings.
Bacon was also influential in the building of a huge suburban mall-like
shopping center called the Gallery in downtown Philadelphia. It has been a partial
economic success, but it reflects more of suburban mall thinking than the character
of urban downtown shopping. Virtually no use is made of the street; stores are
confined in a multilevel mall of privatized retail space. Yet the Gallery is linked to
the new Convention Center and serves as the terminus for railway links to the rest
of the city.
However, what sets Bacon apart from Robert Moses and other urban planners
in the post-World War II period is his image of the experienced city. The prevalent
viewpoint of urban planners was that the best way to save old communities—
“slum” communities—was to destroy them and replace them through urban
renewal projects. Bacon had another vision: “Slum clearance was the architects’
delight . . . It was considered a liberal enlightened policy, but of course it was
foolish” (quoted in Hine 1989:1H). In the late 1950s, Bacon was responsible for
the rehabilitation of Society Hill, an historic neighborhood in Philadelphia, at a
time when innovative renovations of such neighborhoods were virtually unheard of.
A dilapidated section of the city, Society Hill
contained a wholesale fruit-and vegetable-market
as well as structurally sound historical row homes,
many dating from the colonial era. Rejecting federal
monies that were used to level such historic areas in
other cities, Bacon saw Society Hill as salvageable.
The market was moved elsewhere; built in its place
were three high-rise apartment buildings designed
by Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei that
became the homes of affluent residents. The adjacent
housing, most of it in deplorable condition, was
selectively rehabilitated through local government
programs that encouraged urban homesteading. The
Victorian structures were demolished and replaced by
The renovated Society Hill colonial-style buildings; the colonial buildings were rebuilt. This gives Society Hill
community in Philadelphia. a somewhat arrested colonial appearance that does not reflect its actual architectural
The houses have been restored history (Saffron 2005).
to reflect an eighteenth-century More importantly, influenced by an earlier visit to Shanghai, China, Bacon
cityscape. Observe, however, the designed a winding network of small, mid-block pedestrian walkways and vest
car in the background emerging pocket parks for Society Hill. Thomas Hine, a former architecture critic for the
from a hidden parking garage Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote, “Not only did this system produce some delightful,
located on the streetfront. intimate spaces; it also helped convince people about to invest money in Society
Photograph courtesy of Mark Hill that there was public support for creating a uniquely desirable neighborhood”
Hutter. (1999:88). Today, Society Hill is a very affluent community and a constant

reminder of old Philadelphia as a premier “walking city.” Further, it has impacted

on the revitalization overflow of nearby residential areas.
Bacon was also a long-time and leading advocate of the “gentlemen’s agreement”
that no structure in Philadelphia would be taller than Billy Penn’s hat on the
statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia’s massive Victorian city hall. As a result
Philadelphia, one of the most populated cities in the United States, had a center
city without a high central business district population density. Walking in Center
City Philadelphia, even during rush hour, one never feels the overwhelming sense
of vast crowds that is common in so many other, denser cities. In subsequent years
the city has built taller buildings than City Hall, most notably One Liberty Place
and Two Liberty Place. Interestingly, these skyscrapers designed by Helmut Jahn
were originally intended for Houston, Texas, but that city declined to construct
them because it was experiencing a recession. However, these skyscrapers do not
overwhelm the Philadelphia skyline; City Hall is still prominent and the downtown
character of the city remains intact.
Bacon also designed Dilworth Plaza and John F. Kennedy Plaza (nicknamed
“LOVE Park” for its famous modern sculpture comprising the four letters “L-O-
V-E”), adjacent to City Hall. Soon after its opening, LOVE Park began to attract
skateboarders who found its concrete layout most suitable. It is a paramount
example of how people can redefine and reinterpret the built environment and use
it in ways that the builders never anticipated. In the early 2000s, the mayor’s office
sought to ban skateboarding on the rationale that it would adversely affect other
park users. Bacon, at the time in his 90s, donned a helmet and briefly skateboarded
in the park in a celebrated appearance televised on every local newscast. He
declared: “Show me a skateboarder who killed a little old lady and I’ll reconsider.”
His advocacy of skateboarding was a vivid demonstration of both his often
cantankerous demeanor and, more important, his belief that the built environment
must reflect the needs of the urban populace.
Experiential Activity 5.4: Prohibited Activities

Visit a city location where a recreational activity, such as skateboarding or
bicycle riding, is not allowed but where people might be tempted to engage in
that activity. Do you see anyone engaging in the prohibited activity? What are
the consequences, implied or explicit, of disobeying the rule? Based on your Edmund N. Bacon, 92
impressions of the people using this location and the characteristics of the space, years old, skateboarding in
is the prohibition warranted? Philadelphia’s LOVE Park,
October 28, 2002, as a protest
In 1989, Bacon declared, “Philadelphia has been a marvelous taskmaster. It has against the decision to ban
accepted my gifts and it has rejected them. I’m grateful for what it has accepted and skateboarders from the park.
just as grateful for what it rejected” (Hine 1989:16H). However, architecture critic Bacon was the Philadelphia
Inga Saffron expressed a contrary opinion shared by many: “It is ironic that Bacon’s “power broker” responsible for
greatest projects—Society Hill, Penn Center, the Gallery—are flawed. It’s one of the renaissance of Society Hill
the things that makes it so infuriatingly hard to evaluate his historic legacy. He was and other areas of the city in
imperfect, but it is hard to imagine what Philadelphia would be like without those the late 1960s. Copyright 2015
imperfections” (Saffron 2005:2). ushistory.org

Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.
Jacobs 1961:4
Jane Jacobs (1916–2006) was the leading advocate of a city with viable
neighborhoods and high levels of social interaction, a precursor of the new
urbanism movement, who had no formal architectural or sociological training. A
social activist residing in the Greenwich Village section of New York City in the
1950s and 1960s, Jacobs became the leading voice in both the theoretical fight
against Le Corbusier’s view of the city and the practical fight against modern urban
planning under the leadership of Robert Moses. In her profoundly influential
masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jacobs sought to
demolish the intellectual foundation of urban renewal practices and to advocate the
virtues of small-scale diverse communities like Greenwich Village. She vehemently
argued against the urban renewal of her day:
Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social
hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which
are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life.
Luxury housing projects that mitigate their insanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural
centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone
but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are
lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no
place to nowhere and have no promenadors. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the
rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities. (Jacobs 1961:4)
Her book is concerned with the effects of spatial patterns and the built
environment on the quality of social life in the city. Jacobs’s importance lies in
convincing us that city culture depends on the relationship between personal
interaction and public space. She contrasts the spontaneous interaction patterns
that characterized diverse, unplanned high-density, mixed-use neighborhoods
with the planned utilization of urban spaces such as high-density segregated
projects, examining variations in the social texture of different neighborhoods.
Jacobs is concerned with the small-scale diverse and mixed neighborhoods and
is fundamentally antagonistic to large-scale government-imposed expressways,
housing projects, and downtown redevelopments.
Jacobs also argued that there are other virtues to small-scale diversity, such as
the watching eyes in mixed neighborhoods restraining crime. In this context we can
see parallels between Jacobs’s advocacy of the small neighborhood and William H.
Whyte’s (1988) advocacy of small parks and crowded streets in the public sphere.
Both argue on the importance of diversity as an essential quality of city life.
Jacobs’s fundamental problem with Le Corbusier’s view of the city is that
it seeks to dictate how people would live in the Radiant City. It denies the fact
that individuals don’t simply react to their environment; rather, people act on
their environment and redefine it in appropriate ways for their personal benefit.

Thinking of my experience growing up in the

Bensonhurst community in Brooklyn and the
various street games that children played, the truth
of this point is evident. Boys, playing stickball or
punchball, redefined the manhole cover (“sewer”)
in the middle of the street as home plate and the
one further down the block as second base. First
and third bases were the tires of parked vehicles.
Girls transformed the sidewalk squares into games
of “hit the penny” and “potsy.” The front steps
(“stoops”) of row houses became places for people
to congregate or for children to play innumerable
games like stoopball. Rooftops served as “tar beaches”
for soaking up sunshine. Neighborhood stores
were sites for people to meet and exchange gossip
as well as to shop. Streets were seen as linkages to
neighborhoods and not simply as a conduit to get
through neighborhoods to some distant place. Robert
Moses and other urban practitioners and “master
builders” failed to see the viability of life in the
areas that he defines as slums. Jacobs was a leading
antagonist in the battle against Robert Moses, who
advocated building an expressway through the heart
of Chinatown, SoHo, Greenwich Village, and the
Lower East Side.
In his account of the destruction of the Bronx
community by the Cross Bronx Expressway,
Marshall Berman (1988) drew on the ideas of
Jane Jacobs. He notes that Jacobs’s city is a world
of small neighborhoods characterized by personal
relationships and involvements with family, friends, neighbors, storekeepers, and Zito’s bakery was a local
even with the strangers who become familiar over periods of time as one encounters landmark in Greenwich
them regularly on the public streets. He considers Jacobs’s view a feminist Village throughout most of the
reflection: twentieth century. It closed in
2005, much to the dismay of
She writes out of an intensely lived domesticity . . . She knows her neighborhood in such precise residents. Photograph courtesy
twenty-four hour detail because she has been around it all day, in ways that most women are of Mark Hutter.
normally around all day, especially when they become mothers, but hardly any men ever . . . She
knows all the shopkeepers, and the vast informal social network they maintain, because it is her
responsibility to take care of her household affairs. She portrays the ecology and phenomenology
of the sidewalks with uncanny fidelity and sensitivity, because she has spent years piloting children
(first in carriages and strollers, then on roller skates and bikes) through these troubled waters, while
balancing heavy shopping bags, talking to neighbors and trying to keep hold of her life. Much of her
intellectual authority springs from her perfect grasp of the structures and processes of everyday life.
She makes her readers feel that women know what it is like to live in cities, street by street, day by
day, far better than the men who plan and build them. (Berman 1988:322)

Experiential Activity 5.5: Known Strangers

Identify the strangers you “know” from having seen them regularly as you go
about your typical day. Have any of these “known strangers” become closer
acquaintances, either because they introduced themselves to you or vice versa?
Did you discover that you have other friends or acquaintances in common with
the stranger? What is it about the physical layout of your neighborhood that
promotes, or inhibits, such “known stranger” relationships?
Berman observes that, although Jacobs never uses expressions such as ‘feminism”
and “women’s rights” (terms not yet in vogue at the time of her writing), her
perspective on the city was in the forefront of the later feminist movement that
sought to “rehabilitate the domestic worlds, ‘hidden from history,’ which women
had created and sustained for themselves through the ages” (Berman 1988:322).
Berman shares Jacobs’s view that the city and its local neighborhoods of family,
home, and street involvements and relationships were being destroyed by what
Berman calls the “expressway world.” Berman’s praise of Jacobs is based on their
shared vision:
Jacobs is celebrating the family and the block . . .: her ideal street is full of strangers passing through,
of people of many different classes, ethnic groups, ages, beliefs, and lifestyles; her ideal family is one
in which women go out to work, men spend a great deal of time at home, both parents work in
small and easily manageable units close to home, so that children can discover and grow into a world
where there are two sexes and where work plays a central role in everyday life. (Berman 1988:322)
Jacobs’s (1961) amalgamation term Radiant Garden City Beautiful attacks the
underlying ideologies common to all centralized urban planners. All are seen as
being fearful of the unplanned emergent quality of city life. All the models have
at their core a desire for control and manipulation of people. “From beginning to
end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment on urban-renewal law,
the entire concoction is irrelevant to the workings of cities. Unstudied, unrespected,
cities have served as sacrificial victims,” she laments (Jacobs 1961:25).
CONCLUSION
Sociologists and urban planners agree that a city’s shape and form not only
influence social action but also reflect society’s values and cultures. The built
environment does not determine human behavior, but it does affect it in many
important ways. In a reaction to the perceived problems of the industrial city,
city planners and urban visionaries developed models on the ideal city. Four key
planners of the twentieth century were Daniel Burnham, whose City Beautiful
movement was based on the belief that the creation of monumental buildings,
boulevards, and civic centers could help generate civic involvement and loyalty;
Ebenezer Howard, whose Garden City movement attempted to combine the best
aspects of country and town life; Frank Lloyd Wright, whose conceptualization

of Broadacre City was a model of a decentralized, low-density city of individually

owned homes; and Le Corbusier, whose Radiant City proposals featured cities
without streets characterized by a densely packed urban center with towering
skyscrapers.
The implementation of the ideas of these planners included the “town for the
motor age” of Radburn, New Jersey and the greenbelt towns of the 1930s. General
Motors was greatly influenced by Le Corbusier in its exhibit, Futurama, at New
York’s 1939–1940 World’s Fair. The work of Robert Moses in New York City as well
as his influence on Portland, Oregon, and of Edmund Bacon in Philadelphia, stand
as examples of government-aided urban renewal. The criticisms of Jane Jacobs,
notably in her The Death and Life of Great American Cities, argue for preserving and
reviving the character of unplanned, diverse, mixed-use city neighborhoods.
Study Questions
1. What is the purpose of studying the works of urban planners and visionaries?
2. Who designed the White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition of
1893? What was its significance for urban planners in the early decades of the
twentieth century?
3. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Daniel Burnham’s City Beautiful
movement?
4. Briefly describe Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City movement and his model of
the Three Magnets. How do these apply today?
5. How does Frank Lloyd Wright’s idea of Broadacre City relate to the
contemporary concern of suburban sprawl?
6. What three major faults does Lewis Mumford find with Le Corbusier’s plans
for the rebuilding of cities—the Radiant City?
7. Why did planners call Radburn, New Jersey the “town for the motor age”?
8. What is the vision of the city put forth by General Motors’ Futurama exhibit at
the 1939–1940 New York’s World’s Fair?
9. Who was Robert Moses? Name some of the projects that left his mark on New
York City and Portland, Oregon.
10. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Edmund Bacon’s designs for
Philadelphia?
11. Briefly describe the ideas of Jane Jacobs regarding the nature of cities and her
assessment of what she called the Radiant Garden City Beautiful beliefs of urban
planners.

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CHAPTER 5

The distinctive design of

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THE IDEAL CITY: URBAN PLANNERS’ REACTIONS

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Daniel Burnham and the City Beautiful Movement

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Burnham and other influential architects of the late nineteenth century,

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Ebenezer Howard: The Garden City Movement

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Exhibit 5.1 Ebenezer Howard’s Three Magnets.

The Three Magnets

try ty o Lyin w. Fo ents.

Slums & Gin P y Sky . Co of U

Where will they go?

(1898/1956:51). Howard’s schema of the “Three Magnets” conveys his objective

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Howard’s proposed Garden Cities were based on principles of cooperative

Experiential Activity 5.1: Magnets and Cohesive Forces

As a garden city prospered, new towns would be formed instead of expanding

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

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Wright’s Broadacre City was appropriately named, as it reflected his “prairie

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Broadacre City was also Wright’s diametrically oppositional response to the

Le Corbusier: Cities without Streets

This startling proclamation was made by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887–1965),

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twentieth century. As an example, the Futurama

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Experiential Activity 5.2: Automobile or Elevator?

IMPLEMENTATIONS OF URBAN PLANNING

Radburn, New Jersey, and the Greenbelt Towns of the 1930s

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In 1928–1929, just prior to the Great Depression, American architects

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depression. Headed by Rexford Guy Tugwell, the Resettlement Administration had

The Three Magnets Revisited

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The Three Magnets

un Fac ural Lab e.

try tor Und oure

G les ols olenc Ho Ai . C n

al mpl pen llutio e Housi

Where will they go?

schematic of advantages and disadvantages is reformulated by Hall and Ward to

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photochemical smog, while traffic remains as congested as ever. Unchanged is the

Futurama: General Motors and the 1939–1940 New York

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Experiential Activity 5.3: Design Your Own