Author: Le Corbusier, Fredrick Etchells (Translation)

Year: 1929

Introduction:

The city of tomorrow and its planning criticizes

European cities for their poor chaotic design,
inadequate housing and inefficient transportation
due to unplanned jumble of the medieval cities,
explaining the reasons for the same. He is trying to
break the dogma of the city planning of the
European cities and tries to establish new paradigm
of planning of modern cities. Le Corbusier proposes
schemes for urban reconstruction of the medieval
towns to keep them functioning in the future.
"Voisin" scheme for the centre of Paris, and his more
developed plans for the "City of Three Million
Inhabitants," which envisioned, among other things,
60-story skyscrapers, set well apart, to house
commercial activities, and residential housing
grouped in great blocks of "villas."

Le Corbusier presents what he calls technical solutions to the existing problems of the early twentieth
century. He not only highlights the problems and issues of that era but also foresees the future
problems and proposes solution for it, trying to establish new principles of town planning and
emphatically justifying the deconstruction of all that had come before to build anew. Here I have tried
to summarise his principles and pathologies unrolled in planning the city of tomorrow. “Decorative art
is dead. Modern town planning comes to birth with a new architecture. By this immense step in
evolution, so brutal and so overwhelming, we burn our bridges and break with the past. (xxv)”. Here
corubsier is trying to say that past is not quiet dead but we must kill it glorious. We must establish
institution of new beliefs.

In the early twentieth century, the major problem was the advent of the motorcars and issues related
to parking and highways planned to cater horse carts. The need to replace what he calls “Pack
Donkey’s way” with straighter, faster motorways. He admires the works of the Americans planners for
the use of grids in town planning. He admits that the great cities of the world are so located because
this is where they should be. Rather than proposing new cities be built elsewhere, he suggests that
the centre of the great city needs to be pulled down and rebuilt. History will be preserved in large
gardens, as if a peaceful cemetery or an art gallery, but otherwise, the value of such history is over-
stated when one considers the appalling conditions, the tuberculosis, and so on, that inhabit the relics
of the past. He offers several solutions to address the issues

 Decrease the congestion in the city center

 Increase the density of population in the city centre
 Diversify ways of transportation
 Expand green area
 Increase of the building height in the city centre to enhance the density

Based on these basic principles Le Corbusier Paris city centre as an example and put forwards sketch
of “Contemporary city for the three million people”. Le Corbuier has created a rational and functional
city by zoning based on usage.

Le Corbusier is the representative of functionalism and rationalism. His depicture of the outlines of
the city and housing were too abstractive that people usually cast doubt on that he was too rationalism
that might betray the freedom and humanity. However, we can interpret his rich of freedom from the
creative and energetic space he designed inspired by the traditional elements and the industrial
science. Le Corbusier's high-density and large capacity of transportation freed the city by technic
means. In his ideal city congestion would no longer exist and people can live and commute safely and
conveniently not trapping in the narrow space between buildings. By building skyscrapers in the center
of the city– exclusively for commercial use – and that the area occupied by these should be no greater
than 5 percent, the remaining 95% can leave for the parks with trees. In this city people can enjoy a
peaceful urban environment and neighbors can build communication in the public space while at the
same time keep their own private space. The space gets maximum freedom by clear and reasonable
ordering. As Le Corbusier said, “Once the unified order has dominated the basic units, confusion will
be avoided, scene will be organized and ease will come”.