The 2006 mockumentary “Radiant City” is a jab at modern city planning and city sprawl. The central point of this film is that the planning behind cities that sprawl is the absence of any intelligence in design. “Radiant City” repeatedly makes the point that city sprawl, suburban homes, and modern strip malls are, as the narrator says, the worst allocation of resources in world history.
When I first saw the trailer for “Radiant City” I had never heard of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City. Le Corbusier and the Radiant City is a response to a group of thinkers called the Decentrists, who believed the primary result of regional planning would be to decentralize great cities, thin them out, and disperse their activity into smaller, separate cities or, better yet, towns. Even though Le Corbusier also had some very backwards views on urban planning, he made much more progress than the Decentrists.
The Decentrists were considered the experts. They were the educated planners who were given authority to introduced many devastating ideas into city and regional planning. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs says:
But in the schools of planning and architecture, and in Congress, state legislatures and city halls too, the Decentrists’ ideas were gradually accepted as basic guides for dealing constructively with big cities themselves. This is the most amazing event in the whole sorry tale: that finally people who sincerely wanted to strengthen great cities should adopt recipes frankly devised for undermining their economies and killing them.
Most of America’s infrastructure has been built within the last sixty years or so, and unfortunately, the planning and architecture is not going to last. Most of the neighborhoods are turning into glorified slums that are traps for energy consumption. But now for stunning news from the White House: we actually have a US president who understands the connection between land use patterns and energy use. Several months ago President Obama gave an interview to five columnists aboard Air Force One en route to Chicago:
I would like to see some long-term reforms in how transportation dollars flow, and I’ll give you just a couple of examples. I think right now we don’t do a lot of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to transportation. That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done, but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use. If we can start building in more incentives for more effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good transportation policy, it’s good energy policy. So we’ll be working with transportation committees to see if we can move in that direction.
I can’t wait any longer to become involved. My decision to go back to school for urban planning (M.U.P.) has been finalized by my resignation at my current job. My biggest fear, however, is turning into something like the Decentrists. Some planners are as bad as the SEO experts and Marketing gurus that scour Twitter. A planner is not necessarily an authority on a city but most planners love cities enough to try to understand how they work. I’ve got a lot to learn. Wish me luck.
A radiant city
The 2006 mockumentary “Radiant City” is a jab at modern city planning and city sprawl. The central point of this film is that the planning behind cities that sprawl is the absence of any intelligence in design. “Radiant City” repeatedly makes the point that city sprawl, suburban homes, and modern strip malls are, as the narrator says, the worst allocation of resources in world history.
When I first saw the trailer for “Radiant City” I had never heard of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City. Le Corbusier and the Radiant City is a response to a group of thinkers called the Decentrists, who believed the primary result of regional planning would be to decentralize great cities, thin them out, and disperse their activity into smaller, separate cities or, better yet, towns. Even though Le Corbusier also had some very backwards views on urban planning, he made much more progress than the Decentrists.
The Decentrists were considered the experts. They were the educated planners who were given authority to introduced many devastating ideas into city and regional planning. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs says:
Most of America’s infrastructure has been built within the last sixty years or so, and unfortunately, the planning and architecture is not going to last. Most of the neighborhoods are turning into glorified slums that are traps for energy consumption. But now for stunning news from the White House: we actually have a US president who understands the connection between land use patterns and energy use. Several months ago President Obama gave an interview to five columnists aboard Air Force One en route to Chicago:
I can’t wait any longer to become involved. My decision to go back to school for urban planning (M.U.P.) has been finalized by my resignation at my current job. My biggest fear, however, is turning into something like the Decentrists. Some planners are as bad as the SEO experts and Marketing gurus that scour Twitter. A planner is not necessarily an authority on a city but most planners love cities enough to try to understand how they work. I’ve got a lot to learn. Wish me luck.