the city center in early modern planning - fau -...

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The City Center in Early Modern Planning

Carlos Feferman

Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, UFRJ

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

The nineteenth-century urban debate is often characterized around the

attempt to reconcile rural and urban life. The search for an equilibrium

involving density, size, morals and culture culminates in the Garden City,

widely recognized as the most systematic and comprehensive expression of that

debate. Modernism builds many of its principles upon its underlying concepts a

synthetic, autonomous proposition, having a subdued density, which allowed

for distinct territorial separation and the creation of a controlled social

environment. A concurrent and not so evident debate remained open,

nonetheless. It concerns the development of large cities, mainly capitals, and

constitutes a divergent line, equally important for early modern planning. This

debate, which begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, will surface

in early twentieth century through a wide-ranging discussion on the

characteristics of modern life and the peculiar space which breeds it. The city

center is its main structuring element and symbolic expression.

Understanding the role of the city center within the growing metropolis

becomes a main issue in early twentieth century planning. In Cause and Effect

in the Modern City, presented at the Town Planning Conference (1910), H. V.

Lanchester investigates the center’s gradual displacement and re-

accommodation as a result of city growth. The new center represents

burgeoning life in large cities and the increasing administrative and financial

importance of the metropolis. In the mid 1910’s, Auguste Perret envisions a

monumental center containing high-rises and large open spaces. This image will

inspire Le Corbusier to review his outlook on urbanism and to accommodate the

new center within a large-scale plan. He addresses the issue specifically in Le

Centre des Grandes Villes, presented in Strasbourg (1923). A similar effort can

be seen in H. G. del Castillo’s adapted version of the Spanish linear city (1919),

where the addition of a larger center aims to align the original model,

proposed by Arturo Soria y Mata in the 1880’s, with the contemporary debate.

For these authors, the city center plays a key-role in urban differentiation and

should coordinate the spatial equation.

The metropolis thus presents a singular problem, setting itself apart from the

smaller scale planning modeled upon the Garden City. The new character of

urban life, so sharply portrayed by Georg Simmel, needed a new planning

response. Our work proposes to investigate how the modern planners above

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C i t i e s , n a t i o n s a n d r e g i o n s i n p l a n n i n g h i s t o r y

responded to the new urban phenomena, mainly through their understanding of

the role of the city center.

The nineteenth-century urban debate is often characterized around the

attempt to reconcile rural and urban life. The search for an equilibrium

involving density, size, morals and culture culminates in the Garden City,

widely recognized as the most systematic and comprehensive expression of that

debate. Modernism builds many of its principles upon its underlying concepts: a

synthetic, autonomous proposition, having a subdued density, which allowed for

distinct territorial separation and the creation of a controlled social

environment. A concurrent and not so evident debate remained open,

nonetheless. It concerns the development of large cities, mainly capitals, and

constitutes a divergent line, equally important for early modern planning. This

debate, which begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, will surface

in early twentieth century through a wide-ranging discussion on the

characteristics of modern life and the peculiar space which breeds it. The city

center is its main structuring element and symbolic expression.

In many ways, the Garden City represents the climax of a long series of

empirical investigations which dominated the second half of the nineteenth

century and aimed at identifying and rearranging the fundamental elements of

the existing city. As is well-known, the model presents a clear reordering of

those elements, providing a vision of unity while keeping each territory distinct

within the plan. As a planning strategy, it presents itself in opposition to the

existing cities and proposes a shift towards autonomous settlements. Since its

arrangement was so tightly conceived, a transition from old cities to Garden

City would involve gradually abandoning the former.

There is a growing perception, in the first two decades of the twentieth

century, that differences in urban scale generate different urban problems. In

terms of scale, the Garden City lies halfway between rural settlements and the

Metropolis. Howard’s choice of a median scale is determinant of its structure.

The Garden City’s population limit (32,000) is well established and plays a

fundamental role in the overall control of spatial and social development.

Though the model tries to mediate between the urban phenomena of large

cities and the more controlled, low-density rural life, it gradually became

evident that it could not respond to some of the more dynamic aspects of the

metropolis.

Howard’s intention of bringing together the positive qualities of rural and urban

life missed out on the emerging character of life in large cities. The common

reinterpretation of the garden city as garden suburb, in the 1910’s, reflects the

perception that its scale was very similar to that of the residential suburbs.

Such adaptation of the original principles to the growing metropolis will prompt

Howard’s criticism of the suburbanization of his ideas, as portrayed in his


articles in the Garden City Review during the 1910’s. Though Howard was

correct in seeing this as a fragmentation of his original model from a structural

standpoint, its median spirit was integrally present in the garden suburb.

An investigation of scale and its relationship to the different forms of

socialization can be found in Georg Simmel’s Soziologie (1908). In the chapter

the quantitative determination of the group, Simmel observes that the historic

socialist experience pertains to smaller, more controlled environments, while

the large city is associated with individuality and new social relations: “Thus,

we can observe that socialist and near-socialist orders were only viable in very

small circles and that they have invariably failed in larger ones”. [SIMMEL,

Soziologie, p. 47] This correlation between scale and social ideal places the

utopian plans in new perspective and reflects the growing awareness of the

metropolis as a place which breeds peculiarity. Simmel goes on to describe the

different measures, forms and organs [Massregeln, Formen und Organe] which

must be developed when the social group attains a certain size. He sees growth

as generating “unavoidable differentiation (Differenzierung) of the individual

functions and demands”. [SIMMEL, Soziologie, p. 48] These observations

correlate with the spatial differentiation observed in the large European cities.

Five years earlier, in Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), Simmel had already

observed the peculiar qualities of the large city, its effect on the individual and

its consequences on social form. The metropolis thus presents a singular

problem, setting itself apart from the smaller scale plans modeled upon the

Garden City. The new character of urban life, so sharply portrayed by Simmel,

needed a new planning response.

Though the rural-urban equation no longer responded to the new complexity of

the early twentieth century debate, a renewed interest in the peculiar qualities

of the Metropolis and its relationship to the city center evokes the nineteenth

century empirical analysis of urban phenomenon. In Cause and Effect in the

Modern City, presented at the Town Planning Conference (London, 1910) Henry

Vaughan Lanchester suggests a critical investigation into the “causes that have

resulted in the various types of cities”. [LANCHESTER, p. 232] He describes the

dynamic phenomena which shape large cities:

We have the original city gradually taken up by commerce and exchange, the

residential districts filling up by degrees the spaces between the star points

composed of mills or factories, and the retail traders following along the main

radial arteries. The most attractive district will naturally be selected by the

wealthy, and the others will secure occupants on a basis of necessity or

convenience. The governing or official centre, unless firmly fixed by tradition,

will slip into a position between the commercial centre and the wealthy

quarters, while the leading places of entertainment will gravitate in the same

direction. (LANCHESTER, 1910, p. 233)


The analysis suggests that the existing city is not a static entity: the expressions

filling up by degrees; gradual taking up; slipping into position and gravitation

describe a dynamic territorial transformation. These phenomena, which

determine spatial structure, might be harnessed towards planning.

Lanchester’s analysis is synthesized in a diagram much similar to Howard’s

Garden City representations. [IMAGE 01] The overall vision which characterized

Howard’s diagrams is transferred to the representation of the existing city. The

center plays a key role in the dynamic transformation.

IMAGE 01 LANCHESTER: diagram representing forces that shape the city: growth, gradual displacement of the center and transformation of the suburbs. (1910) SOURCE: LANCHESTER, in. Transactions of the Town Planning Conference.

Like Simmel, Lanchester emphasizes the relationship between the new

dynamics and a communal ideal: “for the distribution of its component parts

and the subdivision of purpose that distinguishes the modern city one must

admit an economic basis, but the subsequent way in which these parts are

handled depends, as previously stated, on the quality of the ideal, or rather on

the resultant of the many ideals appertaining to the community”.

[LANCHESTER, p. 233]. His analysis of the gradual displacement of urban

territories is both wide-ranging and specific. It presents a sophisticated

example of early urban modeling: one which unites distinct parameters, such as

scale (the metropolis), relative territorial position (the center; industrial zone;

residential zone), and social profile (the liberal strata emerging in the larger

European cities).

The transformations presented by Lanchester do not belong to just any city.

They are typical of large cities, mainly capitals, and are related to

administrative, cultural and financial functions. The growth of a liberal class is

the main distinction between the Metropolis and the medium and small sized

agglomerations. In Simmel, the subject is portrayed mainly through the


discussion of individualism, while in Lanchester, through the theme of mobility

in its different forms: not only transport (from the residential suburb to the

financial center) but also mobility as territorial displacement, such as the

gradual reaccommodation of the residential areas, mainly within the suburbs.

Mobility is represented in its relationship to social profile and has the center as

referential element.

The city center is thus brought back into the equation with new structural

significance. Though Howard’s model has a center – a well-defined one,

geometrically – its importance is mainly administrative and unchanging. And,

despite its overall order based on social unity and functional separation, the

Garden City would have seemed static when compared to the burgeoning life of

the metropolis described by Simmel, or to the phenomenal transformations

modeled by Lanchester. Within this new and changing context, the Garden City

will remain an important reference precisely because of its stable qualities and

its median scale, allowing planners to gauge the transformative forces of

different urban phenomena.

The city center is thus identified by some planners as a key element which

distinguishes the small and medium-sized ideal city types (such as proposed by

Howard) from the large-scale city. During the 1910’s and early 1920’s important

efforts will be made to capture the essence of the new center and to

understand its role in planning. In the mid-1910, a remarkable vision is

presented by Auguste Perret: a monumental center with high-rises and large

open spaces rationally disposed. [IMAGE 02] It tries to capture the new spirit

identified by the authors examined above.

The symbolic significance of Perret’s monumental center will have great impact

on Le Corbusier. He will attempt to transpose it to an autonomous plan, the

Ville Tours of ca. 1915. [IMAGE 03] The result is unrefined: a center with high-

rises “grafted” into a lower density medium, which historians identify with the

Garden City. The operation reinforces the idea that the monumental center is

an element which had been overlooked, and is brought into an equation still

largely dependent on Howard’s model.


IMAGE 02 Auguste Perret: city center with high-rises (cités-tours). SOURCE: http://eras3.free.fr/html_fr/perret.html

IMAGE 03 Le Corbusier, Ville Tours. (ca. 1914-1915) SOURCE: TURNER. La Formation de Le Corbusier, p. 149.

A more refined attempt is made in the Ville Contemporaine (1922), a plan for 3

million inhabitants. There, Le Corbusier distinguishes between the liberal strata

of the population and the working class, mainly according to their daily

displacement.

A.) The urban, those living in the center (cité) that have business and reside in the city.

B.) The suburban, those who work in the periphery, in the industrial zone and that do not go to the city (ville); they live in the garden-city (cité-jardin).

C.) The mixed, those who offer their work in the city center (cité des affaires) but who raise their family in the garden city.

To class a, b, c (and by classing, we mean the virtual transmutation of known

species) is to attack the problem of urbanism at its root, for it entails the

placing of the three units and their extensions, consequently posing and solving

the problem of the:

1. Cité, business center and urban residences.


2. The industrial city, and the garden-cities (transports).

3. The garden-cities and the daily transport.

(Le Corbusier, 1924, p. 159)

Interestingly, Le Corbusier reserves the term urban precisely for those who

have a freer spatial fruition and work in the city center, justifying its character.

The industrial workers, by contrast, are termed suburban, and have more rigid

mobility needs, associated mainly with the industries in the outskirts. The

financial center (cité des affaires), a typical feature of the Metropolis, has a

clear structuring role and is directly linked to the movement of a liberal class.

The subdivision into urban, suburban and mixed denounces the difficult task of

combining two distinct city types: the industrial city, with its more rigid

routines, and the metropolis, with its cosmopolitan character.

A similar arrangement had been proposed three years earlier by the Hilarión

Gonzalez del Castillo, a Spanish diplomat/planner, who worked closely with

Arturo Soria y Mata in the development of the Linear City theory. Soria y Mata’s

model had been criticized for having an essentially anti-urban character and the

linear development was said to be dispersive, mostly due to the absence of a

recognizable center. During the 1910’s Castillo will try to respond to this

problem through an investigation of the city center and its economic and

cultural role. In 1919, he presents his own version of a linear city: the Cité

Linéaire Belge, having as main characteristic the addition of a fully functional

center. [IMAGE 04]

IMAGE 04 H. G. del Castillo: Cité Lineaire Belge (1919). SOURCE: George Collins. Arturo Soria y la Ciudad Lineal, pp. 32-33.

Castillo’s description of the Cité Linéaire Belge’s city center shows its

importance in structuring the entire plan. Its social and economic profile

conforms to the contemporary metropolis:


All urban agglomeration is a living organism. As the human organism has a

heart that pumps blood and carries activity, life and movement to the whole

body, so the city needs a center of activity that irradiates urban life and

business life. The planned heart of the Cité Linéaire Belge, which I have named

Forum, will have, like the ancient roman forum, a triple aspect of place of

amusement, center of public life and business center. (H. G. del Castillo, 1919,

p. 14)

Castillo also refers to his city center as the “urban zone”, as would Le

Corbusier, in 1923, and distinguishes it from the “industrial zone”. He divides

the population into urban, suburban and rural and presents a similar synthesis

between industrial city and the contemporary metropolis.

The problem of city growth and extension under discussion throughout Europe

revolved mainly around the suburban territory, often restricted by the still

remaining fortified walls – as was the case in Paris, until early in the twentieth

century. Spanish urbanism brings to the debate its experience in city

extensions: the ensanches. This nineteenth century idea has an important

characteristic: it is both autonomous in structure and interdependent of the

existing city. Though Cerda’s Barcelona and Madrid plans are often seen as

quasi-autonomous objects, a closer look reveals intricate relationship to the

existing city and its center. The Barcelona plan, for example, absorbs the old

city and port areas as symbolically and economically-specific parts of the

integral plan, and preserves their centrality. The same can be observed in Soria

y Mata’s Ciudad Lineal around Madrid, with its development anchored on the

Spanish capital, despite claims of independence.

By the early twentieth century the linear development around Madrid had

consolidated its own peculiar characteristics. It borrowed the character and

importance of the existing center (the capital, Madrid) integrated within the

development of the plan. The Ciudad Lineal development is, therefore, very

distinct from the image of an autonomous plan, which the linear city came to

be associated with during modernism. Though Soria y Mata insisted that this was

only a provisional and partial manifestation of his idea – its true conception

would be a fully autonomous development – it is precisely this hybrid solution

which approximates the Spanish linear city to the early twentieth century

debates concerning the large city phenomena.

The linear city allowed for new strategies of extension based on its peculiar

geometric structure – seemingly, ones which could deal with the restrictive

character of the suburban ring. A system for uniting existing urban

agglomerations is one of the theoretical forms of the Spanish linear city

proposed by Soria y Mata and refined by Castillo. The strategy can be observed

both in the Cité Linéaire Belge and in Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin (1925). [IMAGE

05] Though the result seems maladroit, it is part of the investigative process of


alternative positioning of the center in relationship to the larger plan, while

allowing for future growth.

IMAGE 05 Comparison between new plan and existing city in the Cité Linéaire Belge (1919) [LEFT] and Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin (1925) [RIGHT]. Similar strategies can be observed, such as the type of transition between old tissue and extension plan, as well as internal patterns. SOURCE: CASTILLO. Cité Linéaire Belge; LE CORBUSIER ; Pierre Jeanneret. Oeuvre Complète de 1910-1929, p. 110.

The Plan Voisin and the Cité Linéaire Belge point, furthermore, to the still

important role of the existing city. These radical interventions, which take into

account the tissue of the existing city, reinforce the debate which gained

momentum in the two preceding decades, with Simmel and Lanchester among

others. To take into account the forces within the growing Metropolis went one

step beyond the idealized, somewhat frozen plan proposed by Howard. We thus

see that the development from the rural-urban debate toward the modernism

of the 1930’s is not a constant progression towards autonomy, or a constant

distancing from the existing city. A continued review of the large city

phenomenon revealed new forces and social manifestations still to be fully

understood.

Despite its limitations, the linear extension is an alternative to the concentric

development, largely based on the suburb, and partly responds to the new

growth dynamics sought by planners. Castillo’s new center builds upon the

logic of extension developed by Soria y Mata. The city center appears as a

fundamental element from which the structural lines extend. A similar

structure can be observed in Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine. The two

examples seem to have attained a structural precision comparable to Howard’s

Garden City, without the restrictiveness of the concentric rings. [IMAGE 06]


IMAGE 06 Comparison between diagrams showing the fundamental structure of the Cité Linéaire Belge (Castillo, 1919) [LEFT] and the Ville Contemporaine (Le Cobusier, 1922) [RIGHT]. Despite differences in size, strategies are similar: accommodation of a liberal center; positioning of the residential areas; transport structure; and an open and linear extension pattern. SOURCE: CASTILLO. Cité Linéaire Belge; LE CORBUSIER: Urbanisme (plan).

The linear city theory had been brought to France by George Benoit-Levy, who

presented the publications containing Soria y Mata’s and Castillo’s Linear City

developments to Le Corbusier, during the late 1910’s. [FEFERMAN, ch. 4] The

importance of the Spanish strategies for Le Corbusier go beyond physical

similarities. They present well-structured alternatives – even if in theory – to

the vegetative growth on the suburban borders, which took place in many

European cities. They also presented an alternative relationship to the existing

city and to the role of the city center.

Between the Ville Contemporaine and the Plan Voisin, Le Corbusier presents

the study Le Centre des grandes Villes in the Strasbourg congress Où en est

l’Urbanisme en France et à l’Etrange (1923). The study, which would become a

chapter in his Urbanisme, examines the role of the center in countering urban

dispersion:

The municipalities and the mayors of large cities worry over the problem of the

suburbs and seek to attract the population that invades our capitals outward.

These efforts are praiseworthy, but incomplete. They do not breach the main

subject: the city Center. One takes care of the athlete’s muscles, but does not

realize that his heart is sick (…). It is good to attract the population to the

periphery, but one must remember that each day, at the same time, the

hordes that would be better lodged in the cités-jardins, will have to enter the

city center. (Le Corbusier, 1923)


For Le Corbusier, during the 1920’s, the fundamental problem in articulating

the overall structure of the plan remains that of the role of the center and its

position relative to the population movement. This fundamental problem will

lose some importance with the Ville Radieuse, a plan of the early 1930’s, where

the administrative center is displaced from its central position, and acquires a

subdued role similar to the Garden City center. Interestingly, this change aligns

itself with the socialist criticism of the center as representing the capitalist

city, as appears in the 1929-30 debates collected by Anatole Kopp. As we have

seen, this is well justified by the association of city center and business

district/liberal strata which characterized the portrayal of the metropolis in the

early twentieth century.

The socialist urbanist Nikolai Ladovsky referring directly to the Strasbourg

presentation, criticizes Le Corbusier, classifying his plans as essentially static.

“The fortress cities of the Middle Ages, Howard’s Garden City, Unwin’s

satellite-city system, Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris, all these planning

schemes can be grouped, despite the apparent differences in form and

function, within a single type: the static form”. [LADOVSKY, 1930, p. 211] He

calls for a dynamic urban structure associated by some with the linear city. The

problem, though, is not necessarily that of a linear plan, but of the removal of

the center from the linear structure.

Not surprisingly, many of the socialists will attack the notion of a city center in

the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. The “disurbanist” propositions are a literal

translation of an entirely non-hierarchic plan. They propose not only

decentralization, but the complete abolishment of the city center. Their

position acquires metaphoric contours: the center would be described as the

epitome of capitalist culture and a breeding ground for undesired individualism.

The removal of the city center, proposed by some socialist urbanists as a way

toward a more dynamic development will be accompanied by a regression in

density and scale, often beyond that which had been established in Howard’s

Garden City.

Thus, urbanists sought to investigate the character of the large scale center

while trying to attach social significance to it, in the first decades of the

twentieth century. These pre-CIAM debates portray the city center as a

phenomenon which had to be investigated empirically. They represent a gradual

awareness of the relationship between city scale and social vision, and are part

of an attempt at large scale planning which would encompass the cosmopolitan

life emerging in some of the European cities of the early twentieth century.

The historic role of the city center is key to the gradual construction of a

discourse against the existing city which came to be associated with


modernism. As the modern idea of an autonomous plan became more and more

consolidated, so would the original relationship with the existing city be

repressed. The debate remains latent and the original role of the center will

reemerge in different ways within modernism, ultimately including attempts to

recreate the diversity characteristic of the existing city.

REFERENCES: CASTILLO, Hilarion G. del. Projet de Cité Linéaire Belge. Madrid, Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal, 1919. FEFERMAN, Carlos. A Cidade Linear: representações de um modelo no início do século XX. Rio de Janeiro, PROURB-FAU, UFRJ, 2007. [Thesis] LADOVSKY, Nikolaj Aleksandrovitch. La Structure Urbaine Dynamique. (1930) In : KOPP, Anatole. Architecture et Mode de Vie, textes des années vingt en U.R.S.S. Grenoble, PUG, 1979 LANCHESTER, H. V. “Cause and Effect in the Modern City”. In: Transactions of the Town Planning Conference, 1910. LE CORBUSIER. Le Centre des grandes Villes. In : Où en est l’Urbanisme en France et à l’Etranger. [247-257] Strasbourg, 1923. LE CORBUSIER. Urbanisme. Éditions Crès, Collection de "L'Esprit Nouveau", Paris, 1924. SIMMEL, Georg. Sociologie : Études sur les formes de la socialisation. Paris, PUF, 1999.

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