Contrast between Le-Corbusier and Scott, James C’s Thoughts on Modern City Planning

The contrast between Le-Corbusier and Scott, James C’s Thoughts on Modern City Planning

Anqi Yang

Originally published on July 12, 2013

Directed by Dr. Patrick Haughey

The modernism in city planning has influenced all over the world for a long time, and there is no doubt that Le-Corbusier is the modern city, spiritual leader. Although his plans were only adopted and implemented in the project of Chandigarh, in fact, that many of the modern city plans in the world in twenty century were more or less influenced by Le-Corbusier’s modern city thoughts. From Former East Germany to the Former Soviet Union to China, from Northern Africa to Mid-east, from America to South America, many people could not get rid of the shade of the modern cities. Le-Corbusier’s philosophy on modernism city planning has many common points with the nationalism, and this is why his modern city plans are very popular in socialism countries.

Le-Corbusier has made huge effects on modern city planning theories and practices all around the world. He criticized the facts of traditional and aged urban cities, such as Paris. The people lived in the crowd neighborhoods which were darkness, moisture, chaos, dirty. There were no enough green lands for those people, and many people could not enjoy the sunlight in their homes. The facilities were old, out of dates, and people could not share the convenient, comfortable, safety, economic, efficient daily lives brought from the mechanical Age.


Le-Corbusier was really willing to do something which could change that serious situation of the urban city of Pairs, and he pointed out four points for the planning of the modern city: exchanging the crowd traffic systems, promoting the density of the urban area of city, transportation system improvement, increasing the greening areas. In the book “The Radiant City”, Le-Corbusier believed that the poor social systems and the people’s vulgar values brought the cities in the wrong way. Le-Corbusier believed that a real modern city would appear under the ideal social ideology. As he said in “The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning”, “[m]an walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it.” In order to support this point further, he also argued in this book that “the right angle is the essential and sufficient implement of action because it enables us to determine space with absolute exactness.”

Le-Corbusier summarized a group of terms in his theory systems: order, straight lines, grids, organized areas, powerful concept, huge mass, uniform, and ideal forms, logical layout, minimalism, geometry, networks, clear lines, zoning, classical order, module, standards and codes, rationalism,  living machine-the city, and the architecture as a living machine. Le-Corbusier explained that the modern city shall be arranged in grids, and several straight wide streets separate the city in the different hierarchy and distinguish areas. The residential areas could be considered as the human body, the political and commercial areas could be considered as the human’s head. The residential areas were separated into many secondary habitat zones, which have their own primary schools, middle schools, department stores, theaters or cinemas, physics yards and gyms, and clubs. Those habitat areas have a very high greening rate per person, and the residential buildings applied identical rooms for each family.

Le-Corbusier even used mathematics tools to find out the ideal model of the city which could balance the economic condition and minimalism requirements for human beings. In this ideal planning of the modern city, the crowd and narrow streets were replaced with the broad and straight streets; the private commercial nets were replaced by the public community commercial centers, the mixed mode of transport of people and vehicles were replaced by the mode of total separation. In all, as Le-Corbusier depicted the sense of the modern city, it shall base on the concept of simple, clear, machine, equal, nature, order, noble quality of life, and the ideal social system.

However, modernism in city planning was boycotted by more and more people in many countries after the 1950s, in Scott, James C book “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”, he illustrated numbers tangibles of twenty-century city plans to prove the failure of high modernism cities’ plans. Authoritarianism, High-Modernist, Utopia, Great Leap Forward, Metis, Urban planning, High modernism were the terms Scott used in the book.
Scott pointed out that the typical characters of the modern cities were huge, machine-age style, hierarchical, centralized urban areas. Voisin for Paris, Business City for Buenos Aires have stupendous forms, but those forms need to be appreciated by the people on the airplanes. Also, there are no connections between the historical context and the new planning. The habitat buildings are quite identical and neutrality, which contraries to the variety of life and people. The Planning of Brasilia was largely influenced by the ideas of Le-Corbusier’s modern city, and it shall be an example of an ideal city, while things went oppositely. People could not really enjoy and use the great green land in the center of the city; also people have to drive if they go anywhere. After all, compared to the human, the scale of the city is too large. Furthermore, there is no street corner for commercial and entertainment activities, and the traditional space was abandoned completely. People have to adopt a totally new lifestyle, which has nothing to do with the past. As Scott pointed out in this book, “Brasilia reflected the social and political commitments of the builders and their patron, Kubitschek”, which means this plan didn’t reflect the people’s life icons.

In fact, the poor people live near the boundary of the city, rich people live far away from the urban city; the habitat areas were separated by social class rather than the original ideas. There are two Brasilia, two kinds of lifestyles, a life of order and life out of order. Events and daily life are primate elements of the city. A city planning is unmeasurable rather than measurable; a city contains organic, changeable, occasionally, and various lives, also those elements have a very complex relationship and one cannot use the ideal model to clarify A city cannot be the art project, it is life and events themselves; the city shall be life, not a dead, stable object. It is synthesized, multidimensional, and shall not limit the people in a typical area of the city; city planning is not preparing specimens. City planners could not find out the ideal model from the appearance of the ideal concept for city planning. Actually, a system of a city is far more controversial than we thought, and all the events of daily lives consist of the parts of the city’s system. As Pragmatism and functionalism

Reference
Scott, James C. . Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed . New Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Le Corbusier, . The city of to-morrow and its planning. New York : Dover, 1987.