Dictionary of the History of Ideas Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas |
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V. | THE CITY |
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
THE CITY
I. ANCIENT CITIES
The religious and cosmic symbolism of the city
reaches back to the early stages of human culture. It
seems that in none of
the great archaic cultures have
cities been understood simply as
settlements, arbitrarily
established at a certain place and in a given
form; both
the placing and the shape of cities were conceived as
related, in a hidden or manifested form, to the structure
of the universe.
The most common form of this sym-
bolism is
the belief that the cities have astral or divine
prototypes, or even
descend from heaven; sometimes
they were believed to have a relationship to
the under-
world. In both cases, however,
they refer to an extra-
terrestrial
reality.
Babylonian cities were believed to have their proto
types in the constellations: Sippar in Cancer, Nineveh
in Ursa
Major, Assur in Arcturus. Sennacherib had
Nineveh built according to the
“form... delineated
from distant ages by the writing of the
heaven-of-stars.”
This model, situated in a celestial region,
antedates the
terrestrial city. The terrestrial city, usually with the
sanctuary at its center, is a copy of the divine model,
executed according
to the command of the gods. This
is still reflected in the Wisdom of Solomon 9:8—“Thou
gavest command to build a sanctuary in thy holy
mountain, and an altar in
the city of thy habitation,
a copy of the holy tabernacle which thou
preparedst
aforehand from the beginning.”
Similar ideas are found in India. Royal cities are
believed to have been
constructed after mythical
models. The relationship between model and
copy
sometimes implies an additional meaning: in the age
of gold the
Universal Sovereign dwelt in the celestial
city; the earthly king, residing
in the terrestrial city
built after the celestial prototype, promises to
revive
the golden age.
Somewhat similar ideas are also found in Greek
philosophy. Plato's ideal
city also has a celestial proto-
type (Republic 592; cf. 500). The Platonic
“Forms” are
not patterned after the planets, but
they, too, are
situated in a supra-terrestrial, mythical region, and
at times reference is made to astral bodies (Phaedrus).
In the Western tradition, the best known example
of a city with a celestial
prototype is Jerusalem. Ac-
cording to several
sources it was created by God before
it was built by men. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
II (4:2-7) suggests that the
celestial Jerusalem, graven
by God's own hands, was shown to Adam before
he
sinned. The Heavenly Jerusalem inspired the Hebrew
prophets and
poets (e.g., Isaiah 60ff.; Tobit 13:16ff.).
Ezekiel is transported to a
high mountain to be shown
by God the city of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 40:2).
According
to the Apocalypse 21:2ff. the new
Jerusalem actually
descends from heaven. “I John saw the holy
city, new
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,
prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband.” In later
Jewish traditions the
divine city was actually the start-
ing point
of creation. According to Yoma, “the
world
was created beginning from Zion,” the holy city.
Adam,
too, was created and buried in Jerusalem, and there-
fore, according to well-known Christian traditions,
the
blood of the crucified Christ could drip down on him
and redeem
him.
The spot on which the city is placed may also have
cosmic significance. In
the Near East the city was
sometimes believed to mark the meeting ground
of
heaven, earth, and hell. Babylon was a Bab-ilani,
a
“gate of the gods,” for it was there that the
gods
descended to earth. But it had also been built upon
of chaos before Creation. In the Roman world, the
mundus—i.e., the trench dug around the place where
a city was to be founded—constitutes the point where
the lower world and the terrestrial world meet.
Macrobius (Saturnalia I, 16, 18) quotes Varro as saying
that “when the mundus is open it is as if the gates
of the gloomy infernal gods were open.”
Another common form of granting significance to
the city's location is to
assume that it marks the center
of the world. In some Indian cities the
foundation stone
is said to have been placed above the head of the
snake
which supports the world; in other words, it is placed
exactly
at the center of the world. The map of Babylon
shows the city at the center
of a vast circular territory
bordered by a river, precisely as the
Sumerians pic-
tured Paradise. This belief
persisted into later periods.
It has rightly been said that the pilgrimages
to holy
cities (Mecca, Jerusalem) are implied pilgrimages to
the
center of the world (see M. Eliade).
The shape of actual ancient cities (as excavated in
archaeological
campaigns) does not always conform to
the vast body of religious symbolism.
Some basic con-
cepts of city planning go back
to the third millennium
B.C. The earliest pattern of a planned city, the
gridiron
scheme (i.e., straight parallel streets crossing other
straight parallel streets at right angles) is found, in a
slightly
irregular form, in India (Mohenjo-Daro,
roughly 2500 B.C.). This pattern
probably emerged
from the practice of “orientation,”
i.e., the establishing
of a connection between man-made structures and
celestial powers. The grid pattern is also found in
Mesopotamia, and in
Egypt King Akhnaton followed
it in building his capital (ca. 1370 B.C.).
In Greece, ideas on town planning do not appear
before the fifth century
B.C. The acropolis, the original
nucleus of the Greek town, developed from
a fortified
place of refuge, and usually consisted of an accumula-
tion of irregularly shaped and
dispersed volumes. Greek
architectural thought was focused, as most
scholars
agree, on the individual building rather than on the
town as
a whole. Similarly Greek artists were more
deeply interested in the volume
and structure of bodies
than in the space surrounding the figures.
The decisive step towards a regular layout of the
city as a whole is
traditionally connected with Hip-
podamus of
Miletus (active ca. 470-430 B.C.), a half-
legendary “Homer of city planning.” The
“Hip-
podamic
system” is basically the gridiron scheme with
particular
emphasis on space classification, and a ten-
dency towards symmetry. Aristotle contrasts the “Hip-
podamic system” distinctly with
the archaic procedure
of building without plan. Originally the system
may
have been influenced by the mathematical thought of
the period, and perhaps also by some symbolic religious
traditions; in the diffusion of the system, however,
economic advantages
and practical hygienic consid-
erations
seem to have played a more important part.
In Greece, no ritual laws seem
to have existed for the
foundation and layout of new settlements.
The Romans evinced a deeper concern for the city
as a whole, and made
significant and lasting contri-
butions to
town planning. Roman towns developed
mainly from the castrum, basically a gridiron pattern
subdivided into four major
parts by two main axes, the
cardo and decumanus. A square was
placed at the
crossing of the two axes. Both the major buildings and
the square proper had an axial location. In laying out
military settlements
with permanent fortifications,
which were established along the expanding
frontiers,
the Romans followed the same pattern (the so-called
castra stativa). Another characteristic feature of
the
Roman town is that it was set off from the landscape
surrounding
it (contrary to the transition from town
to landscape in Greece).
Although functional considerations clearly played an
important part in
establishing this pattern, the town
plan and the foundation of cities did
not lose their
symbolic significance. The historian Polybius and the
geographer Hyginus Gromaticus (early second century
A.D.) describe the
standard layout of the castrum town,
but also
discuss in detail the “orientation” of the towns
and
the consecration rites of newly established settle-
ments. According to Pliny, measurements and propor-
tions of the castrum were based
on “sacred numbers,”
but so far no conclusive
archaeological evidence has
supported his statement.
The major Roman contributions to city building, the
feeling for strict
regularity, the organization of the city
in large areas, and the firm
shaping of space (best
expressed in the patterns of squares), declined with
the
decline of the Empire.
II. MEDIEVAL “ORGANIC” TOWN
The medieval approach to the city, emerging in a
period in which urban
culture broke down, is complex
and ambivalent. One of the characteristic
features of
the early medieval attitude is a disconnection between
the
notions of the celestial and the terrestrial city.
Probably the most
explicit expression of this attitude
is to be found in Saint Augustine's
famous work, The
City of God. In this work, the
image of the city be-
comes highly metaphorical,
the term denoting a com-
munity rather than a
material city. Even in his meta-
phors
Augustine rarely refers to the city plan, to
architectural elements (walls,
gates, squares, etc.), or
to actual cities (with the exception of Rome
and
Jerusalem, both of which assume a highly symbolic
metaphysical ideas: the foundation of the terrestrial
city is the “love of self” while the celestial city is based
on the “love of God” (XIV, 28; cf. XI, 1 and X, 25).
The two cities, the terrestrial and the celestial, are not
only unrelated to each other, but there is a contra-
diction between them. The City of God “is a pilgrim
on the earth” (XVIII, 54); the citizen of the Heavenly
City is “by grace a stranger below, and by grace a
citizen above” (XV, 1); Cain is described (based on
Genesis 4:17) as the founder of a terrestrial city, while
Abel, who was conceived as a prefiguration of Christ,
“being a sojourner, built none” (XV, 1).
Like the Near Eastern thinkers, Augustine conceived
of a celestial and a
terrestrial city. But while in the
Near East the city on earth is believed
to be a copy
of the one in heaven, Augustine sees the two as alien
to
each other. In moral terms they are even mutually
exclusive: one belongs to
either one or the other. Thus
the hostile attitude towards the
(terrestrial) city, an
attitude that was to play a major part in
medieval
thought, is already clearly articulated at this early
stage.
This attitude may be understood as an expression
of a broad historical
process which is probably also
reflected in the development of the actual
medieval
town, and in the iconography of the city in medieval
art.
It is significant that in a period as permeated by
symbolism as were the
Middle Ages not much thought
was given to the symbolism of the city plan,
as far
as actual cities are concerned. The organization of the
town as
a whole was, as a rule, neither understood nor
desired by medieval
builders. This lack of interest led
to the well-known irregular shapes of
medieval towns.
Even in cities which developed from Roman towns,
the
additions and changes which originated in the
Middle Ages were made without
consideration for the
original Roman layout. The medieval town thus pro-
vides an almost perfect example of the city
that has
“grown” versus the
“planned” city. The narrow, wind-
ing streets (ruelles, Gassen) of
medieval towns and
their beautiful but unpredictable vistas could be
taken
as an expression of “organic life,” as the
writers of the
romantic period, in fact, characterized medieval life.
“Organic growth” as an overall characterization of
the
medieval town is not radically challenged by the
fact that, especially in
the thirteenth century, some
new cities (villes
neuves) were built according to a
preconceived plan, and do in
fact display some regular
features (e.g., Aigues-Mortes, founded in 1240 by
Saint
Louis; Montpazier, established in 1284 by Edward I
of England).
These “new cities” remained exceptions.
In contrast to the irregularity of actual medieval
towns, the innumerable representations of the
“Heavenly Jerusalem” and of other holy cities in the
art of the Middle Ages frequently show a regularity
and symmetrical
arrangement which strongly suggest
the image of a
“planned” city. In early Christian rep-
resentations (e.g., the fifth-century
mosaics in Santa
Maria Maggiore and in SS. Pudenziana), the Heavenly
Jerusalem is reduced to a simple round wall, but in
later renderings (see
Santa Cecilia) it becomes more
elaborate, sometimes adorned with towers,
gables, and
columns. However, in spite of the inclusion of such
actual
architectural elements, the overall shape of the
sacred city retains a
remarkable regularity. Thus, in
a ninth-century mosaic in San Marco in
Venice, the
city of Bethlehem has a clear oval shape. Even when
representing the earthly Jerusalem (representations
which are certainly
symbolic rather than documentary
records), the medieval artists tended
towards clearly
laid out, regular forms.
The iconography of the city in medieval art has not
yet been systematically
studied, but a review of the
rich material pertinent to this theme suggests
that the
hostile attitude towards the city has had a formative
influence on artistic imagery. Since the eleventh or
twelfth centuries the
city is symbolically portrayed not
only by architectural motifs (walls,
gates, towers) but
also by secular, inherently vicious figures and
scenes,
considered typical of urban life. The view of the city
as a
place of carnal temptation, debased entertainment,
and avarice is visually
portrayed by figures of jugglers
and acrobats, loose women, misers, and, in
the late
Middle Ages, by scenes of gambling seen against an
urban
background. In medieval art, cities are often
inhabited by demonic
creatures. Such figures and
scenes, sometimes appearing in the margins of
sacred
texts, frequently anticipate the specific realism of a
burgher
art.
III. RENAISSANCE IDEAS OF THE CITY
The city, both as a social reality and as an architec-
tural environment, played an important part in
Renaissance thought and art. This may be partly ex-
plained by the fact that Renaissance culture developed
in
cities, and was an almost completely urban phe-
nomenon (even the newly discovered affection for the
rustic life
of the villa attests to its basically urban
character). The acquaintance
with ancient literary
sources further intensified the interest in the city;
the
polis became an object of study and imitation. But
although
Renaissance authors often referred to the
polis, they usually attributed
its characteristics to the
Italian city-states of their own period. Thus
Leonardo
Bruni, in his Laudatio Florentiae
urbis as well as in
other writings, describes Florence as a model
of an
beautiful, governed by taksis and kosmos. Bruni pro-
claims that Florence is rational and functional in her
institutions as well as in her architecture: “Nothing in
her [Florence] is confused, nothing inconvenient,
nothing without reason, nothing without foundation;
all things have their place, not only definite but conve-
nient and where they ought to be. Distinguished are
the offices, distinguished the judgements, distinguished
the orders.” The architectural structure corresponds to
the rationality of the social and political structure. The
city is built along a river, a module of urbanism is
consistently applied in her architecture. As in a polis,
in the center of Florence are the Palazzo dei Signori
and the “Temple,” i.e., the Duomo.
In this early stage we encounter already a character-
istic feature of Renaissance urbanistic thought:
the
ideal city can, at least in part, be identified with a real
one.
Historians have remarked that the fifteenth cen-
tury, instead of producing utopias, gave rise to many
laudationes of actual cities, investing them with
all
the virtues of utopian settlements. Venice and Florence
were
described as embodiments of the political thought
of the ancients.
Probably the earliest expression of the Renaissance
spirit in actual town
planning is to be found in Leon
Battista Alberti's De
re aedificatoria, written between
1450 and 1472. Alberti's
civic convictions as well as
his aesthetic and moral values are clearly
reflected in
his treatise. The novelty of Alberti's method is that
he
proposes a scheme for the building of an entire
town. Although he carefully
considers the problems of
architecture for private and for ecclesiastical
purposes,
in his city plan every detail is subordinated to the
design
of the town as a whole. He strongly criticizes
the medieval habit of each
family's building a palace
and a tower of its own without any consideration
of
its neighbors, except that of rivalry (VIII, 5).
Alberti stresses rational and “functional” elements.
The site of the town must be healthful, in temperate
climate, conveniently
placed for water supply, and easy
to defend. Convenience and clarity are
the ruling prin-
ciples of his city plan. The
town should be clearly laid
out, and the main streets conveniently
connected with
the bridges and gates; the streets should be wide
enough not to be congested but not so wide as to be
too hot (IV, 5). The
predominant aesthetic principle
is that of symmetry, particularly visible
in the relation
of the shapes of the two rows of houses on both sides
of the street (VIII, 6).
Although Alberti probably was the first modern
author to articulate this
attitude, similar tendencies can
be discerned in actual Italian
architecture of his period.
In the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a standard design
had been repeated around a square, and a similar
procedure can
be found in the square in front of the
SS. Annunziata in Florence. The same
spirit also
governs Pius II's plans for Pienza, and Nicholas V's
idea
for linking Saint Peter's with the Castel Sant'
Angelo in Rome (but in the
latter project Alberti was
personally involved).
Closely related to Alberti, and probably influenced
by him, is Filarete,
whose Trattato di architettura was
composed
in 1460-64. It is written in a somewhat
romantic form which, as scholars
have noted, brings
it into close relation to the Hypnerotomachia polifili
(written a few years later), and on
ground of which
the author has sometimes been called a
“romantic.”
Part of the treatise describes an
imaginary city,
Sforzinda. Filarete depicts the pageantry accompany-
ing the founding of the city, the
time of which is chosen
according to astrological observation. But behind
these
“romantic” details there is a rational spirit
which
reaches its clearest expression in the outlining of the
town
plan.
Filarete's ideal city has the overall shape of an
octagonal star with a
round piazza at its center from
which a radial system of streets emerges.
Filarete is
wholeheartedly antimedieval, i.e., he is a radical critic
of the city that has merely “grown.” In his treatise
great emphasis is placed on regularity and on the
importance of having
large squares. To the author's
mind, however, the proposed city is no
artificial struc-
ture; Filarete believes that
Sforzinda, the ville radieuse
of the
Renaissance, is “beautiful and good and perfectly
in accord with
the natural order.” At the same time,
Sforzinda is designed to
meet the economic and social
needs of the community. Moreover, the town
plan of
Sforzinda, although “perfectly in accord with the nat-
ural order,” translates into stone
the political and social
order of the Italian city-states of the fifteenth
century.
Cosmic and religious symbolism appears in the central
buildings of Sforzinda. The dome of the Cathedral is
covered by a mosaic
representation of God in the form
of a “resplendent sun that
lights all the dome with its
rays of gold,” surrounded by a
hierarchy of angels and
saints. On the pavement beneath the dome there is
a
map of “the lands and waters,” surrounded by
the
symbols of the seasons and the elements (Book IX).
In several of his notes Leonardo da Vinci (who in
this case was interested
mainly in problems of engi-
neering)
sketches an interesting model of an ideal town:
the healthful city is built
near the seashore or along a
river (so that the dirt may be carried away by
the
water), and is constructed on two planes connected to
one another
by stairs. On the upper level live the
“gentlemen”
(gli uomini gentili), on the lower level
the poor (la poveraglia). Traffic and services are
con-
governing the town plan are largely functional. The
beauty of the city follows from its functional form and
its mathematical foundations. Thus, a given proportion
should dictate the height of the houses and the width
of the streets. At the same time, the city should be
built “according to human measure,” a well-known
concept in the Renaissance which, in the context of
urban planning, is already found in Filarete's treatise,
and was later fully expressed by Francesco di Giorgio.
In sum, then, in fifteenth-century thought the ideal
city is, first of all,
a rational structure (and even in
studying ancient models the rational
elements are
emphasized). Further, Quattrocento thought of the
model
city, although containing some elements of cos-
mic symbolism, is mainly concerned with problems of
civil life, of
how to make justice and wisdom work
effectively in the community and be
clearly expressed
by urban architecture. Finally, the ideal city of
the
fifteenth century is altogether on earth; it is neither
merged
with, nor juxtaposed to, a “heavenly” city.
In the sixteenth century urbanistic thought under-
goes a significant transformation: different types of
symbolism
acquire a greater significance in the outlin-
ing of the town plan than they had in the fifteenth
century, and the
ties between the ideal and the real
city are less close. Although this
process takes place
under the impact of the Counter-Reformation, there
is no return to medieval attitudes or models. Human-
istic symbols prevail, but they are often transformed,
given a
new meaning and transplanted into a new
realm. The most original
contribution of this period
is found in utopian town planning. The cities
described
in the utopias are separated from real cities; they are
not
placed in heaven, but are located in distant regions.
Geographical
isolation is a persistent characteristic of
utopian descriptions. Civic
functions, although de-
scribed in detail, are
usually less important than sym-
bolic aspects
in the outlining of the overall shape of
the utopian town plan. The
architecture usually is of
an abstract regularity.
Utopian literature abounds in references to the ideal
town, but the most
detailed description of the town
plan is given in Tommaso Campanella's City of the
Sun, written in 1602 and first
published, in a Latin
version, in 1623. Although Campanella was a monk
trained in the Dominican convent of Naples, his
utopian city (which he
locates in a distant isle) is
governed by a solar religion, and an astral
cult performs
in it. For both the town as a whole and the central
building Campanella accepts the round form as the
most perfect. The overall
shape of the City of the Sun
is round. The houses are arranged as circular
walls,
or giri, concentric with the central circle
in which the
temple is located. The temple itself, Campanella says,
“is perfectly round, free on all sides, but supported
by massive
and elegant columns. This dome, an
admirable work, in the center or 'pole'
of the temple
... has an opening in the middle directly above the
single altar in the center.... On the altar is nothing
but two globes, of
which the larger is a celestial, the
smaller a terrestrial one.”
The round form, an old symbol of perfection, has
an interesting history in
utopian town planning, and
frequently occurs both in the form of a
radiating center
and as a concentric arrangement. Its immediate source
in Renaissance and baroque periods is the central plan
in religious
architecture.
Campanella's City of the Sun is an encyclopedic
system with a
“celestial” principle of organization. On
the walls
of the temple are depicted all the stars of
heaven with their relation to
things below. The walls
of the houses bear depictions of mathematical
figures,
animals, and the different occupations of man; on the
outermost circle or wall are exhibited statues of great
men, moral leaders,
and founders of religions. The City
of the Sun has indeed been understood
(in accordance
with Campanella's intentions) as a
“book” and has had
a significant influence on
pedagogic thought. Comen-
ius'
Orbis pictus is clearly patterned after Campanel-
la's
City of the Sun.
Utopian thought in general has frequently been in-
terpreted as implying a criticism of the society in
which the
utopia was written; what the author feels
as bad, or as missing, in his own
social environment
is corrected, or supplied, in his utopia. This may
also
hold true of the utopian town plan. The rigidly planned
and
perfectly regular utopian town constitutes a criti-
cism of the “naturally grown” cities in which
the
authors lived. The narrow streets and confused ar-
rangement of most medieval cities are criticized by
depicting their opposite as ideal and perfect. In this
respect, utopian
town planning represents another
chapter in the history of the debate
between the
planned and the grown city.
The rational and easily comprehended plan of the
imaginary town is also
related to the authors' views
on the desirable structure of society as a
whole. Partic-
ularly in the case of
Campanella, the city plan seems
to express the perfectly regulated and
completely
centralized structure of society which he envisaged.
The
utopian town plan thus becomes a mirror image
of the utopian society.
IV. MODERN CITY PLANNING
The hectic social transformations and the rapid in-
crease in urban population in modern times led to a
heightened
awareness of the social and economic
tudes towards the urban settlement; it was criticized as
a place of vice or hailed as the promise of a radiant
future. Such thoughts and attitudes were expressed, and
modified, in actual town planning.
The Enlightenment conceived of the city as a place
of virtue. Voltaire
considered London, the typical
modern city of his time, as the fostering
mother of
social freedom and mobility as against the fixed hierar-
chy in rural society. He noticed that
even the aristoc-
racy, traditionally
connected with land, moved into the
cities, bringing culture to the
hitherto uncouth towns-
men. Adam Smith, whose
attitude to the city was more
ambivalent than Voltaire's, also defended the
city in
relationship to the country. But he did see some of
the moral
deficiencies of town life, particularly its
“unnaturalness and
dependence.” The nostalgia for
rural life that was to
characterize significant parts of
English social thought of the nineteenth
century is
already expressed by Adam Smith. In Germany, where
no large
cities existed, the radical humanists exalted
the communitarian ideal of
the Greek city-state; but
also the medieval town appeared to the early
romantics
as a culture-forming agent, and as the seat of virtues
like
loyalty, honor, and simplicity. German thinkers
of the early nineteenth
century (Schiller, Fichte,
Hölderlin) fused the characteristics of
the Greek polis
and the medieval town into the image of a burgher-city
as a model of an ethical community.
In the town planning of the period the ideal of the
“planned” city clearly prevailed, although in actual
fact most cities were not built, or expanded, according
to an overall plan.
The emerging science of city plan-
ning was
challenged to provide rationally for the
necessities of a progressively
more industrialized and
mechanized society. This led to the conception
that
the city as a whole is “architecture.” Its
spatial rela-
tionships, its organization,
and the forms and levels of
activity in it require that a city be
“built.”
At a very early stage of the modern period the
visionary architect
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806)
drew an elaborate plan for a
“built” city. A project,
begun in 1773 when he was
asked to propose some
improvements in the residential quarters of a
small,
salt-producing town, continued all his life and resulted
in the
publication of L'Architecture considérée
sous le
rapport de l'art, des moeurs, et de la
législation (1804).
Ledoux planned five volumes, but
completed only one.
Filled with enthusiasm for J. J. Rousseau and the
hope
for an improved social order, Ledoux envisioned his
ideal city
and drew plans for it, thereby boldly com-
bining traditional patterns with original motifs. The
shape of his
ideal town is a semicircle, with the factory
at its center and the
important buildings on the rings.
He thus anticipated both Ebenezer Howard's “garden
city” and Le Corbusier's cité
radieuse. Ledoux's poetic
gifts become particularly evident in
his plans for indi-
vidual buildings which,
although designed in the form
of simple geometric shapes, are permeated by
a per-
sonal, subjective symbolism.
Ledoux's starting point was comparatively modern
(the salt-producing plant
of Chaux) but the solutions
he proposed place him within the tradition of
utopian
town planning. Like Campanella and other authors of
utopias he
emphasized the principle of the “planned
city” and
like them he preferred the round form.
The vision of an ideal city continued to exercise its
fascination in the
later nineteenth century, but more
attention had now to be paid to problems
arising from
economic and technical conditions. One specific type
of
“built” city was proposed by Ebenezer Howard
(1850-1928), a London architect who was deeply in-
fluenced by an extended visit to the United States. In
order to
counteract the industrial congestion of modern
cities (mainly in England),
Howard evolved the con-
cept of the garden city.
He published his proposals
in his work Tomorrow: A
Peaceful Path to Reform
(1892), reprinted as Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902).
Howard envisaged a self-contained town of strictly
predetermined size
(approximately 35,000 inhabitants)
and plan. A well-balanced proportion
between the
urban area and agricultural land is essential. Any in-
crease in population would be met by the
creation of
satellites, none nearer than four miles to the original
city. The town plan of the garden city owes much to
Ledoux, and through him
to the utopian tradition.
Howard's imagined city is round; factories and
houses
are placed on belts of open land to combine town and
country
advantages. (In this particular feature Howard
is perhaps preceded by some
English and American
industrialists who moved their factories into the
coun-
try and established villages around
them.) Of particular
interest in Howard's plan is the fact that he paid
atten-
tion to, and made provisions for,
the specific joys of
urban life. Thus, in a wide glass arcade
(significantly
called “Crystal Palace”) near a large
park, that kind
of shopping is done “which requires the joy of
deliber-
ation and
selection.” Howard's garden city allows large
space for nature
(not more than one sixth of the general
area should be covered by
buildings), but it is a “built”
town, with rigidly
prescribed boulevards, distribution
of buildings, etc. Even nature is
planned, being funda-
mentally recreation
ground. Howard's close relation
to what is known as the “English
garden” is obvious.
Town planning in the twentieth century, although
it largely remains on
paper, shows the profound
changes in urbanistic thought. Most of the
problems
of contemporary town planning were anticipated by
industrial town, designed in 1901-04. In his further
projects and commissions, and in his book Une cité
industrielle (1917) he discusses his plans in great detail.
Clearly distinguishing between the different functions
of the city (living, work, leisure, education, traffic),
Garnier undertakes to design a town which will fully
serve the needs of man in an industrial age. A bold
innovator in the use of materials and in the shape of
individual buildings (preferring an ascetic geometry),
he is also highly original in the disposition of the town
as a whole: he separates vehicular and pedestrian
traffic, designs a residential district without enclosed
courtyards but featuring continuous green areas, and
plans a community center that anticipates contem-
porary social centers.
Another architect and town planner who anticipated
the problems and shapes
of the modern city, Antonio
Sant' Elia (1880-1916), was sometimes
associated with
the Futurists. Sant' Elia was greatly attracted by
some
features of North American civilization, particularly
by the
romantic aspects of its technical development
and by the progressive
expansion of an industrial me-
tropolis. His
grandiose project for a Città Nuova
was
shown in Milan in 1914. In the catalogue to the exhibi-
tion Sant' Elia published a manifesto on the need
of
breaking with the past. The “New City” should
corre-
spond to the mentality of men
freed from the bonds
of tradition and conventions. In his many drawings
a
major theme is the architecture of a metropolis which
is the result
of a technological and industrialized soci-
ety.
In designing towering buildings with exterior ele-
vators, multi-level road bridges, and imaginary fac-
tories (“monuments of the city of the
future”), Sant'
Elia raised these modern forms to the level of
symbols.
Garnier and Sant' Elia influenced Le Corbusier. Le
Corbusier's work in
urbanism consists of a large
number of articles and books, and an
impressive num-
ber of projects for town
planning. Only a small part
of these projects has materialized (of
particular
importance is the so-called Marseille Block of 1952).
Le
Corbusier took a decisive step beyond Garnier and
Sant' Elia. While Garnier
still thought of small towns,
limited to 35,000 inhabitants who are all
engaged in
industry, and Sant' Elia's visions remained in bare
outline, Le Corbusier planned in detail for a city of
3,000,000
inhabitants. From the outset he steered to-
wards the problems of the “change-over town” (as
he
later called it), a metropolis with diverse functions
which must be
disentangled.
A significant part of Le Corbusier's theoretical
inquiry into the urban
problem is a critical apprecia-
tion of
cities of the past, particularly of the recent past,
and of the solutions
that have been proposed to this
problem. Without ever allowing himself to be moved
by
“local color” or aestheticism, he denounced the
blemishes of modern cities, that is, those aspects of the
city not well
enough adapted to their various functions.
He also rejected the utopian
ideas of limiting the size
of cities, and contrary to Frank Lloyd Wright,
who
advocated the diffusion of urban communities, was
opposed to
horizontal spreading of the urban complex.
Le Corbusier's work in urbanism bears the mark of
both rationalism and a
philosophical image of man.
His rationalism leads to an analysis of the
city's differ-
ent functions, and to an
allocation of distinct spaces
to each function. The establishing of an
orderly rela-
tionship between traffic
lanes, on the one hand, and
living and working zones, on the other, is of
primary
importance in this context. A famous result of this
approach
is Le Corbusier's famous hierarchy of roads
(the 7 V system), starting with
1 V, an artery carrying
international and inter-urban traffic, and ending
with
7 V, a fine capillary system in the zone reserved for
children
and schools. The analytical character is
expressed even in small details.
“So great is Le Cor-
busier's
need for logical organization that, having to
lay out the vast capital of
Candigarh, he divides the
vegetation to be used into six categories, each
of which
receives a precise function” (F. Choay, p. 16).
Le Corbusier combines the analysis of the city's
functions with a
philosophical image of man, for whom
the city is built. Although he
emphasizes the specific-
ally modern
conditions of urban life (millions of inhab-
itants in one metropolis, the decisive role of traffic)
and proposes
specifically modern solutions (the
“Cartesian
skyscraper,” the zoning of traffic), he is
deeply indebted to
the humanistic tradition. The
thought of the utopians (especially of
Charles Fourier)
was of particularly great importance for his work.
This is reflected even in his language: terms such as
“radiant
city,” “architecture of happiness” are
both
frequent in his writings and characteristic of his ideas
and
attitudes.
In his work, both in individual buildings and in town
planning, he tries to
achieve an “adaptation to the
human scale”: in
individual buildings by applying the
“Modulor” (his
own invention of a scale of architec-
tural proportions related to the proportions of the
human body), in
the designing of the city as a whole
by assuming an hour of walking as the
basic unit of
town planning. In his town planning he emphasizes
the
city's center: on a small scale it is a community
center (as in St.
Dié, 1945-46), on a monumental scale
it is a capitol (as in
Candigarh, the metropolis of
Punjab, begun in 1950). Under Le Corbusier's
influence
the “Athens Charter” was published by the
interna-
tional architectural
organization (CIAM) in 1933, set-
planning of modern cities under five headings (Dwell-
ings, Recreation, Work, Transportation, Historic
Buildings).
Le Corbusier's work makes it evident that in the
twentieth century, as in
former periods, town planning
is not only a highly complex technical task
but involves
philosophical ideas and the creation, or application,
of
traditional, symbolic forms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. General. Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Town and City
Planning (London, 1944). Joseph Gantner, Grundformen der
europäischen Stadt (Vienna,
1928). Pierre Lavedan, Histoire
de
l'urbanisme, 2 vols. (Paris, 1926, 1941). Lewis Mumford,
The Culture of Cities (New York, 1938); idem, The City in
History: Its Origin, Its Transformations,
and Its Prospects
(New York, 1961). Camillo Sitte, The Art of Building Cities
(New York, 1945).
Paul Zucker, Town and Square: From the
Agora to the
Village Green (New York, 1959). For bibliogra-
phies, see: George C. Bestor and Holway R.
Jones, City
Planning: A Basic Bibliography of Sources
and Trends
(Sacramento, 1962); Philip Dawson and Sam B.
Warner, Jr.,
“A Selection of Works Relating to the History
of Cities,”
in Oscar Handlin and John Burchard, The Historian and
the City (Cambridge, Mass.,
1963), pp. 270-90.
2. Antiquity. India and the Near East: B. B. Dutt, Town
Planning in Ancient India (Calcutta and Simla, 1925);
Mir-
cea Eliade, “Centre du
monde, temple, maison,” Le sym-
bolisme cosmique des monuments
religieux (Rome, 1957),
pp. 57-82; Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of
the Ancient Orient
(Baltimore, 1959), with a good bibliogra-
phy; Francis John Haverfield, Ancient Town
Planning
(Oxford, 1913); Stuart Piggott, Some
Ancient Cities of India
(London, 1945); Earl Baldwin Smith,
Egyptian Architecture
as Cultural Expression
(London, 1933). Greece: Fustel de
Coulanges, Numa
Denis: The Ancient City (New York, 1955);
M. Erdmann, Zur Kunde der Hellenistischen Städtegrun-
dungen (Strasbourg,
1879); Knud Fabricius, “Städtebau der
Briechen,” in Pauly, Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, revised by Georg Wissowa (1929);
A. H.
M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to
Justinian
(Oxford, 1940); Roland Martin, L'urbanisme dans la Grèce
(Paris, 1956). Rome:
R. C. Bosanquet, “Greek and Roman
Towns,” Town Planning Review (1914); William Warde
Fowler, Social Life in Rome at the Age of Cicero
(London,
1908); Léon Homo, Rome
impériale et l'urbanisme dans
l'antiquité (Paris, 1951); Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg,
Über
die Grundformen der
Italisch-Römischen Struktur, 2 vols.
(Munich,
1944, 1950).
3. The Middle Ages. R. Borrmann, “Vom Städtebau im
islamischen Osten,” Städtebauliche
Vorträge (1914). A. E.
Brinckmann, Spätmittelalterliche Stadtanlagen in Süd-
Frankreich
(Berlin, 1910). Edith Ennen, Frühgeschichte
der
europäischen Stadt (Bonn, 1953). Karl
Gruber, Die Gestalt
der deutschen Stadt: Ihr Wandel
aus der geistigen Ordnung
der Zeiten (Munich, 1952).
Christoph Klaiber, Die Grund
rissbildung der deutschen Stadt im
Mittelalter (Berlin, 1912).
Achille Luchaire, Les communes françaises, 2nd ed.
(Paris,
1911). Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities
(Princeton, 1925). Earl
Baldwin Smith, Architectural
Symbolism of Imperial Rome
and the Middle Ages (Princeton,
1956); idem, La città
nell'alto
medioèvo (Spoleto, 1959).
4. Renaissance and Utopian Town Planning. Wolfgang
Braunfels, Italienische Städtebaukunst (Berlin,
1950). André
Chastel, “Cités
idéales: Marqueteurs italiens du XVe siècle,”
L'oeil (Dec. 1957). Horst de la Croix,
“Military Architecture
and the Radial City Plan in Sixteenth
Century Italy,” The
Art Bulletin,
42 (1960), 263-90. S. Lang, “The Ideal
City
from Plato to Howard,” Architectural
Review,
112 (1952).
Robert Klein, “L'urbanisme
utopique de Filarete à Valentin
Andreae,” Actes du Colloque international sur les utopies
à la Renaissance (Brussels, 1963), pp. 209-30. Georg Münter,
Idealstädte: Ihre Geschichte vom 15.-17.
Jahrhundert (Berlin,
1957). Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age
of Humanism
(London, 1949).
5. Modern. Giulio C. Argan, “Il pensiero critico di
Antonio
Sant' Elia,” L'arte (Sept. 1930). Jean
Badovici and
Albert Morance, L'oeuvre de Tony
Garnier (Paris, 1938).
Françoise Choay, Le Corbusier (New York, 1960). Yvan
Christ,
Projets et divagations de Claude-Nicolas
Ledoux
(Paris, 1961). Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London, 1962).
Frederick Gibberd, Town Design (London, 1953). Roland
Rainer,
Städtebau und Wohnkultur
(Tübingen, 1948).
MOSHE BARASCH
[See also Astrology; Enlightenment; Iconography; Organ-icism; Renaissance; Romanticism in Literature; Technology;
Utopia.]
Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||