Le Corbusier ( The Contemporary City / Radiant City

Paul Goldberger, an American architectural critic once quoted, “Urbanism works when it creates the journey as desirable as the destination.”

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

Despair sometimes becomes the basis of inspiration in which we live out our lives. The "City of One: A Memoir" by Francine Cournos is a testament to this notion by basing her desire to study medicine and psychoanalytic as a result of her wanting to understand her mother’s death. "City of One: A Memoir" is a story of triumph and inspiration through the notion that while an individual’s life may be difficult there is always something greater to live for. Francine Cournos life gives insight into how vicious separation within the attachment cycle can be and while early attachment theorists may say one thing about how it can affect the way we function later in life there is always a chance to stand against it.

Plato’s Republic proposes numerous, intriguing theories ranging from political idealism to his contemporary view of ethics. It is because of Plato’s emerging interpretations that philosophers still refer to Plato’s definitions of moral philosophy as a standard, universally. Plato’s most argued concept could be said to be the analogy between city and soul in Book IV, and I will discuss how this could possibly due to key flaws in his assumptions, as well as failure to be specific in his definitions. In spite of this, Plato’s exposition on ethics is still relevant for scholars and academics to study, due to his interpretive view of morality and justice.

The developments in planning and design of urban cities inform the argument surrounding the unsuitability of grids to carfree cities, whose medieval patterns provided efficient radial routes for centrally located goods, services, and transport. The emergence of city planning as a profession borrows significantly from the long and complex history of planning, whereby all cities display variations in forethought and conscious designs that define their layout and functioning. The paper uses Rome as a case study to analyse and critique the concepts and principles in the history of urban planning and design, and their

Imagine a city where no green space can be found. Where concrete and steel buildings rise up and block the sun. Where streets are chaotic and gridlocked and citizens are stuffed in cramped, dirty and unsanitary apartments. This was the world of 19th-century cities where human health and happiness were disregarded for economic gain. These horrid conditions shaped the lives and ideas of three very influential men: Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They took their own experiences and redesigned the sprawling metropolis to improve the lives of the residents. Each man created urban utopias that included green spaces, farms, and parks to improve air quality and the livelihoods of the people. Despite theses similar views, each design differed from the others. Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright all completely reimagined the urban city in differing ways based on scale, distribution of land and technology. Their design concepts have been adapted across the globe and implemented into modern urban planning everywhere.

Urbanism was developed in the early 19th century. Within architecture discourse, the characteristic of urbanism is the interaction of town and city dwellers with the built environment. The concept was explained as the association of the social, civil and cultural with the environment.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

His first comprehensive city plan was La Ville Contemporaine (the Contemporary City) a project to house three million inhabitants designed in 1922. This was Le Corbusier’s first attempt to reconcile man, nature and machine (Fishman, 189). The city starts at the center with a transportation hub for busses, trains, cars and planes. Surrounding this hub there will be an organized cluster of 24 60-story skyscrapers. These glass and steel skyscrapers are cross-shaped. Each individual skyscraper is to be set within a large rectangular green space. The skyscrapers house the “brain” of the city. The city is beautifully geometric and symmetrical. Placing the skyscrapers in the city center reinforces the emphasis on capital as a means of creating a successful city. Because of the shape and mass of each skyscraper, they have more usable space than an entire neighborhood but also relieves density and congestion because of the organization (Frampton, 46).

The mixture of buildings of different conditions are necessary to public life because it otherwise would be neither interesting nor fascinating. But the main reasons are because they ensure low rent yields, encouraging the growth of small enterprises. Large swatches of new construction would only prevent income since not many would afford it, and the demand for it would not be as large as it would need to be.

As a result of a booming development of the nineteenth century city, “progressive” architects of the time started to deliberate and conceive opinions to create long term solutions. Known for his radical cultural manifestos, Le Corbusier is one of the architects that epitomizes the change in ideal of the Machine Age. He introduced ideas of living in completely analogous, planned, designed, and then built, cities. Le Corbusier 's proposition for the City of Tomorrow had in its roots the intention of creating a series of fundamental principles that would become the skeleton of any modern city plan. However, considerations that were not applied during that period of time, are the cause of its unsuccessful development.

It was one of the largest efforts to rebuild the centre of a city since ancient times. While there was the glamour of the many entertainments in the city, there was also a darker side of poverty, crime and prostitution. "The city - with its pristine exterior, its soiled underside, its hollow entertainments - provided the makings of an enormous duality: a two-sided mirror...a spectacle and secret life." (Bromber 1996: 62) One of the key parts to this design by Haussmann were the wide tree lined avenues, which replaced the smaller streets that had previously existed in the city. "Haussmann's grand design for the reconstruction of Paris was being carried forward by the Third Republic, and the city was now laced with wide, tree-lined avenues." (Schneider 1972: 134) In fact, the modern city of Paris is based on the city that was built by Haussmann and the modern perception of Paris as being the artistic and cultural centre that it is known for, is chiefly based on Haussman's design and re-modelling of the city.

Designing a city from scratch is a remarkable thought experiment but ultimately fails at implementation because we always approach it from the perspective of “how can we create a new city that solves problems of existing cities.” It’s less a process driven by design and more by critique. Urban living has paved its way into modern society, yet the vision for a city has changed over time. Large settlements need planning to grow; yet differences in minds is what leads to the modifications of a city, in return makes a city so unique. Alterations in opinions are what thrives urban life, still these differences are what skews the view of how others see a city compared to myself. They say the eye of the beholder deems beauty; this could explain

The garden city movement, a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard, had a significant influence on urban planning. The theory of urban planning has envolved over the past hundred years, some have attempted to emulate theories from the garden city movement, while others have been revised based on Howard’s original ideas. The Garden City concept spawned many ideas of urban planning. Among these ideas, the Garden Suburb, Satellite City, the New Towns Movement and the New Urbanism are all significant theories in the history of urban planning and had their influence to this day. The integration of town and country, the separation of conflicting land uses and modes of travel, and the ideas of growth management are all elements of the Garden City concept that have made made their ways into plans of most major Western cities.

As per the authors definition of what urban design should be he discusses three aspects of cities, control and process, activities of humans and also the physical form of the city. As a planner or urban designer one should pay attention to all these aspects which forms a better