City Reform

This week, we will take a look at three different historical approaches to city planning that each aimed to addressed different issues and inevitably had drastically different outcomes: the City Beautiful Movement, the Garden Cities of Tomorrow, and the City of Towers.

The City Beautiful Movement was greatly inspired by the 1893 World’s Expo in Chicago, which built upon the city’s neo-classical architecture to create white facades that would hide the lesser attractive reality of the city’s state.  In this period of American history, there was an influx of people moving into cities, resulting in dirty, crowded placed that made living conditions unpleasant.  With the increased population came the decrease of public spaces for people to enjoy.  Hence, the City Beautiful movement introduced a network of green spaces, a railway to improve circulation and connectivity, and roads extending from a civic center.  Though effective in addressing aesthetic appeal and physical needs of a city, this movement failed to address social and economic issues that would arise in the future.

The Garden Cities movement was established by Ebenezer Howard, a British urban planner.  It aimed to provide a place to work, live, and play by combining the advantages of both town life and country life.  In essence, it would be a self-sustaining community.  An ideal Garden City would limit its size in order to reduce the density often found in towns, and it would be connected by train to ensure economic success. Additionally, a sense of place would be emphasized through neighborhood and community pride.  This would also be encouraged by the many spacious parks meant for the community.  The downside of this approach was that it was not applicable to existing cities; it was a model that could easily be replicated, but would mean relocation or square one for many.

The last city reform movement we’ll look at is Le Corbusier’s City of Towers.  Le Corbusier was a French-Swiss architect famous for what we consider now as modern architecture.  His idea of the City of Towers stems from the human need for three things: sun, space, and verdure.  With the advance of technology that allowed the construction of skyscrapers, le Corbusier suggested that the “towers” be set on stilts so that the ground had more room for green space.  The criticism he faced surrounding this fell heavily on the need to remove low-income area housing or “diseased quarters” as they called it.  This raised debate surrounding who gets to decide on affairs that would displace people.

Evidently, city planning is more complex and multi-faceted than one would initially think.  Each of these movements, though benign in intent, had set backs that would not allow their development.  Even today, it is difficult to find existing or future solutions to city planning that address all concerns for all people.