From Le Corbusier to Leon Krier and New Urbanism

Contents

1. Abstract

2. Introduction : Emergent Urbanism & the phenomenon of Wikipedia

3. What is Urbanism : Some critical Terms, Definitions & Ideas

4. Modernism : Le Corbusier & the Villa Contemporaine

5. Chandigarh : A critical evaluation

6. New Urbanism : Leon Krier & other contemporaries

7. Poundbury : A critical evaluation

8. Conclusions & Insights : New Ideas & Paradigms in Urbanism

1. Abstract

This short paper seeks to distil the idea of Urban Design as clearly distinct from that of

Architectural Design. For this purpose it sets up a dialogue between varied approaches to

Urban Design as evidenced in (1) the Modernist approach (represented by Le Corbusier

and others like him) on the one hand, and, on the other hand (2) the New Urbanist

approach (represented by Leon Krier and various others), to establish how, the two are

closer in vision than we might assume at first glance.

The paper tests both approaches with the evidence of real towns and habitations based on

these two distinct manifestoes to prove that though each approach has its raison d'être as

well as flaws, yet, both share many common ideas which encapsulate the idea of

Urbanism, because Urban Design and what Urbanism comprises of, is fundamentally

different from the idea of Architectural Design, and therefore although their realized

visions in terms of architectural design may be different, their urbanistic ideas are to a

large extent convergent.

The paper will compare and contrast terms like Traditional Urbanism, New Urbanism,

suburban sprawl, dense sprawl, TNDs etc., evaluating and validating their significance in

the urban order of the 21st century.

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The paper also reflects on the polemic of ‘Planning-Free’ cities – how successful is an

urbanism totally free of any framework? Conversely, how relevant is an urbanism which

is framed within a rigid manifesto? The argument will converge on the need for a fresh

look at Urbanism – the need to rethink the creation of urbanity – the need for ‘Emergent

Urbanism’.

2. Introduction : Emergent Urbanism & The phenomenon of Wikipedia

Iconic and respected architects and urban designers like Leon Krier and Le Corbusier

have written manifestoes about how cities should be designed and what a city means. Le

Corbusier wrote ‘Towards a New Architecture’, in which he defined not only his vision

for the architecture of the future, but his vision of urbanism as he envisaged after the

advent of the car. Similarly, Leon Krier has written ‘Architecture : Fate or Choice’ and

has lamented the follies of modernist design, and sought to be inspired by towns and

cities of the pre-modernist era. Both these manifestoes are deeply thought and profound

documents, they elucidate unique approaches to making cities, but their flaw is that they

are personal visions of city-making, whereas a city is a vast fabric composed and wrought

out of millions of interventions. An individual howsoever perceptive or brilliant cannot

draw up ‘the sum total of a perfect and complete’ city.

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Fig. 01 : An old edition cover of Vers Une Architecture, A 1985 Edition translation – Towards a New

Architecture by Dover Publications, & the Cover of ‘Architecture – Choice or Fate’ by Leon Krier

Source : http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/gfx/Exhibitions/Ruins/lecorb.jpg ; http://studiodcode.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/towards-new-arch.jpg ;

http://www.carfree.com/cft/i008_krier.jpg

Another critical idea emerging from this review is that though architecturally the ideas of

Leon Krier and Le Corbusier may be very different, the former favouring low rise

pedestrianized architecture, the latter emphasizing tall towers with large green spaces

interspersing, in terms of Urban Design, the inner clarity of the ideas seem convergent

(not least in their desire for a more habitable city). One specific convergence is about the

car and its relationship to the city. Krier hints at the car being a necessary evil, whereas

Corbusier praises it as a great technological marvel and boon. However both realize the

importance of the car and its drastic impact on urban fabric. Krier wants to keep the car

out of the core of the living area, as does Corbusier, though their approaches are very

different. Corbusier wants to segregate pedestrian streets from the network of vehicles by

placing them at different levels or in different rings. He envisages a pedestrian plaza and

street network raised above the vehicular network at the ground level in the Plan Voisin.

Krier uses a different method. He proposes a sort of ring of vehicular traffic encircling

the city with arms reaching into the pedestrian zones, keeping the core pedestrian area

completely car-free.

This one example elucidates that urbаniѕm is an amalgam of different socio-economic

and technological forces and hаѕ а significantly diffеrеnt initiation роint frоm that of

аrchitеcturе. Just like the advent of the car completely changed our cities, and its impact

could not be fully designed, it just happened, its utility being gradually realized over a

period of time and interventions being made sporadically in cities towards its integration,

similarly, thе creator/artist is not an omnipotent God who has control over every aspect of

urbanism. Myriad aspects of the city hарреn аt оncе, еvеrywhеrе and at the same time.

Attеmрts tо control and direct thiѕ dynamism completely may lead to disarray.

The fount of urbаniѕm ‘coincides’ with “the ѕtаrting роint thаt thе fоundеr оf Wikiреdiа,

Jimmy Wаlеѕ, ѕеt fоr himѕеlf whеn hе еѕtаbliѕhеd thе Intеrnеt’ѕ nоw mоѕt indiѕреnѕаblе

wеbѕitе.” (Helie, 2008 [online])

Inѕtеаd оf рubliѕhing the research of еxреrts and ѕреciаliѕtѕ in еncyclорaеdic format on

the internet and thereby cоmреting with similar рrint editions (а vеnturе in which Wales

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had previously invested much effort and finances, and failed), he decided to bаѕе hiѕ

ѕyѕtеm оn thе thеоriеѕ оf the cоmрlеxity ѕciеntiѕt аnd еcоnоmiѕt Friеdrich vоn Hаyеk.

Hаyеk postulates that ѕреcific knоwlеdgе exists which is possessed оnly by individuаlѕ,

аnd this knowledge cаn bе utilizеd only with thеir cоllaboration. Based on this

postulation, Wаlеѕ set about accumulating and structuring thiѕ knоwlеdgе intо оnе

articulate, systematic and interconnected ѕyѕtеm, which we all know and use daily as

Wikipedia.

Thе Internet or wоrld-widе-wеb is a giant knоwlеdgе nеtwоrk of hyреrlinkеd and

intermeshed information, thаt еvеryоnе contributes information to. Before Wikipedia, the

world web was an incoherent and confusing smorgashbord of knowledge, most of this

knowledge unverifiable and unreferenced. Organizing and cataloguing this knоwlеdgе in

an orderly manner was deemed impossible. But Wales wanted to do something about this

unusable and untested knowledge. A fresh perspective was needed on how hyperlinks

and webpages were created. Wikiреdiа, as an information network for end-users became

this interface successfully. Within а yеаr of its commencement, Wikiреdiа saw

exponential and explosive growth. “Mаking infоrmаtiоn еаѕiеr tо crеаtе аnd аccеѕѕ hаd

mаdе it роѕѕiblе fоr thе ѕum tоtаl оf еncyclореdic knоwlеdgе tо bе rарidly cоnѕtitutеd.”

(Helie, 2008 [online])

There are however many conformities that have to be followed to let Wikiреdiа be

continuously accessible and legible to all its users. Although anyone can upload

information to the project, thе website strictly defines ‘the fоrm’ thаt this cоntеnt will

tаkе оn ѕcrееn. Thiѕ iѕ imperative in оrdеr tо maintain continuity and cohesiveness within

the increasing cоmрlеxity оf thе ѕyѕtеm. ‘Thе dеѕign’ therefore remains constant in

Wikiреdiа аcrоѕѕ pages, so that one can quickly nаvigаtе thrоugh a large sequence of

knowledge withоut the need tо continuously rеlеаrn thе rulеѕ fоr еvеry page.

Nonetheless, clicking оn а link tо а Wikiреdiа раgе, is never without its share of

surprises and new discoveries. Thе framework for the design, does not cоnѕtrаin thе

cоntеnt, but rather acts as ‘an еnаblеr’ to thе cоntеnt. A multiplicity of information is

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resolved and organized into a cohesive whole – yet, each piece of information holds its

own magic and uniqueness.

The Wikimеdiа fоundаtiоn (which runs Wikipedia) рrоvidеs thе ѕtructurе and design

framework essential tо thе creation of knowledge by its uѕеrѕ, but on the flipside,

Wikipedia has to truѕt its uѕеrѕ, that the information they create and upload is authentic

and genuine. While hundreds of thousands of articles cannot be monitored and validated

one by one, Wikipedia has instituted the peer-validation system, where other users can

report inaccurate content or approve and verify uploaded content.

Thus in summation, these are the contours of an Emergent System, which constantly

evolves and grows, but within a framework.

Thе lеѕѕоnѕ Wikiреdiа holds for us, are аlѕо in evidence in thе rich and varied history of

urbаn design. In the past, thе mоѕt vibrant and outstanding citiеѕ were not those thоѕе that

hаd thе lеаѕt рlаnning but those that had the ‘mоѕt еnаbling’ рlаnѕ. Thе early 1800’s

Mаnhаttаn Plаn for instance, facilitated thе еxtеnѕiоn оf а ѕtrееt grid in a supple manner

withоut intеrfеring in whаt cоuld bе built within thе blоckѕ, thereby еnаbling an

urbаniѕаtiоn of a scale and pace never before seen in hiѕtоry.

Thе negative ѕidе оf thiѕ model hаѕ bееn thе crеаtiоn оf unfavourable or harmful city

dеѕignѕ thаt nо оnе found any joy in living in. No city, can bе completely рlаnning-frее,

it has to have some dеѕigned components – Hоuѕtоn being a classic example. Thоugh the

city hаѕ nо zоning bye-laws, it hаѕ а mode of planning which lays dоwn а grid оf rоаdѕ

thаt necessitates a city completely dependent on automobiles. Thеѕе rоаdѕ, by thеir vеry

articulation and structure, mаkе ѕоmе tyреѕ оf urbаniѕаtiоn difficult and others easier.

The argument is that, great cities are formed as a coming together of individual buildings

in a way where each building is unique and has something to contribute to the city, and a

lot of these individual buildings combine together to creater a larger story, but all within a

paradigm/framework that encapsulates and promotes a greater dimension/breadth of

meaning.

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3. What is Urbanism : Some critical Terms, Definitions & Ideas

This section discusses and illustrates with examples terms like natural cities and artificial

cities as defined by Christopher Alexander, Traditional Urbanism, New Urbanism,

suburban sprawl, dense sprawl, Traditional Neighbourhood Developments (TNDs) and

various other terms which play a critical role in a discourse on Urbanism.

(a) Natural Cities & Artificial Cities – Christopher Alexander calls those cities which

‘have arisen more or less spontaneously over many, many years as natural cities’.

In contrast he calls those cities artificial ‘which have been deliberately created by

designers and planners’. Thus looked at in this light, both Chandigarh by Le

Corbusier, and New British Towns like Poundbury by Leon Krier are artificial

cities. (Alexander, 1965)

(b) New Urbanism - it is an urban design movement, promoting walkable

neighborhoods containing diverse and varied housing and job types. ‘It arose in

the United States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real

estate development and urban planning’. (Wikipedia, 2010)

(c) Suburban Sprawl – It involves the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to

its outskirts endlessly with no clear defining line between urban and rural, with

residential developments based on the personal ownership of cars, coversion of

arable rural land to housing, and various layout features that increasingly make

the city periphery low density and spread out. As a result, sprawl leads to the need

for long commutes to places of work, inadequate infrastructue in terms of

cultural, health, entertainment, recreational facilities and higher per-person

infrastructure costs. (US Bureau of Census data on Urbanized Areas, 2007)

(d) Traditional Neighbourhood Developments (TNDs) - the planning of a complete

neighborhood or town using traditional town planning principles. TND may be

implemented in infill urban settings and involve the adaptive reuse of existing

urban fabrics, but often it involves ground up construction on previously

undeveloped greenfield sites; a TND includes a diversity of residential

developments, a network of connected streets and blocks, humane &

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pedestrianized public spaces, and amenities such as stores, schools, and places of

worship within walking distance of houses. (The Town Paper, 2008)

Although TND is an American coinage the European idea of an Urban village

could be loosely implied as a TND. By that coin, Poundbury would be counted as

a TND.

4. Modernism : Le Corbusier & the Villa Contemporaine

This section describes Le Corbusier’s conception of an ideal city, with the ‘Villa

Contemporaine’ or his ‘City of Three Million Inhabitants’.

In a vast diorama at the Paris d’Automne in 1922, “A Contemporary City for Three

Million People” was presented. It proposed “great blocks…of flats opening up on every

side to air and light, and looking, not on the puny trees of …boulevards today, but upon

greensward, sports grounds, and abundant plantations of trees”. (pg. 59-61, Le Corbusier,

1927/1985)

In the centre of the proposed city was the cité (the business district), with plus- shaped

towers blocks of offices, surrounded by lower entertainment and other commercial

buildings. Surrounding this central high-rise ensemble, on a diamond plan, would be the

apartment blocks on the angled linear redent principle. At the corners were more

apartment blocks, enclosing courtyard-like spaces. The city would be bisected by

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Fig. 02 : City of Three Million Inhabitants, Le CorbusierSource : http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2005/05/reinventing_pub.html

elevated highways 40 metres wide for fast traffic, where other main roads would cut

across the grid. In-between, the ground would be reserved for pedestrians.

The blocks were proposed to be lifted up on stilts (Corbusier called them piloti), and to

be linked by a gridded network of elevated highways and ground level service roads.

Corbusier called the modern street “a new type of organism, a sort of stretched-out

workshop…The various stories of this stretched-out workshop would each have their

own specific functions”. (pg.167, Le Corbusier, 1929/1971)

The four functions oriented about the axis of the street, like housing, recreation, work and

traffic – would be strictly separated. This would not allow for the enclosure of spaces in

the traditional manner of city-making. The street, in a way, would be isolated from the

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Fig. 03 : The City for Three Million Inhabitants (The Villa Contemporaine) – plan & perspective ;Source : http://www.hbp.usm.my/CAD/LectureNotes/RPK%20332/FotoK2/Contemporarycity01.jpg

buildings. At that time, Corbusier’s proposal was revolutionary. It was a time when

automobiles, by our standards, used to crawl through city streets – “upto 1923 in

Germany, for instance, the legal maximum speed in dense city districts was 9 miles per

hour or 15 kilometres per hour”. (pg. 233, Kostof, 1992)

In ‘A Pattern Language’ we seem to get both approval and criticism of Corbusier’s ideas

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“The net-like pattern of streets is obsolete. Cars can average 60 miles per hour on free-

ways, but trips across town have an average speed of only 10 to 15 miles per hour.” (pg.

127, Alexander, 1971)

“Cars give people wonderful freedom and increase their opportunities. But they also

destroy the [urban] environment, to an extent so drastic that they kill all social life”.

(pg.64, Alexander et al., 1977)

With these contadictory statements, it becomes clear that there can be no single magic

solution for urbanism. A hybrid and continuously evolving solution is needed. But before

we discuss that paradigm, let us see, how Corbusier sought to implement his ideas of the

Villa Contemporaine in Chandigarh.

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Figure 04 : Chandigarh Master Plan : Network of Linear RoadsSource : Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Bahga & Bahga, Galgotia Publishing Company, New Delhi (2000)

5. Chandigarh : A critical evaluation

This section looks at a realised vision of Corbusier’s city – Chandigarh, in the Indian

state of Punjab, developed in the early 1950’s. The section highlights the main features of

Chandigarh, but also elucidates the primary failures of the city at various levels (Figure

04).

On the invitation of the first Prime Minister of free India, Corbusier set forth to design

Chandigarh (the citadel of the Goddess Chandi) on the plains of the state of Punjab in

north India. Although the city was envisaged to be low-rise in keeping with the existing

urban traditions of Indian city-making, the network of roads and circulation was in

keeping in Corbusier’s ideas of segregation and separation of functions into neat

categories. Due to the low rise nature of the city, instead of the vertical segregation of the

roads as proposed in his ‘City of Three Million’, he chose a horizontal sgregation model

based on the 7Vs.

Figure 05 shows a sketch by Corbusier, in which he defines roads on a hierarchy from V1

to V7. This was defined as the System of Roads (7Vs) symbolising the structure of a tree,

hierarchically and progressively branching out from the stem to the leaf and

proportionately reduced in size in accordance with the quantum of life juices to be

carried. V1 were regional highways leading into the city from outside. V2 roads

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Fig. 05 : Corbusier Sketch of Streets V1-V7, and Drawing of Evolving Road JunctionsSource : Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Bahga & Bahga, Galgotia Publishing Company, New Delhi (2000)

connected to the V1s in the city periphery and form the main axes of the city. The V3

roads surrounded the sectors forming the grid pattern of the city. These were meant for

fast moving traffic with least interruptions and no openings on them. The V4 were

shopping streets bisecting the sectors. These were meant for mixed traffic. The V5 loop-

roads intersected the V4s at 2 points in each sector. The V5s ensured the distribution of

slow traffic inside the sector. The roads V6 gave access to the doors of individual

residences. These would not receive transit traffic. Finally, V7s were the pedestrian and

cycling streets running through the park belts of the city. Figure 06 shows Sector 22 in

the city, with the V roads implemented in a hierarchical manner.

On the negative side, the complete segregation of streets has led to an un-lively city with

many dead pockets in the last 50 years. Growth of the city has been skewed and restricted

to certain pockets, discouraging inclusive and homogeneous development. The cross-

fertilization and interactions between different activities and actions in the city, which

feed each other and fuel growth of a city, have been actively discouraged in Corbusier’s

Chandigarh. In the Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote – “To

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Fig. 06, Sector 22, Chandigarh showing the hierarchy of the V7sSource : Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Bahga & Bahga, Galgotia Publishing Company, New Delhi (2000)

understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not

separate uses, as the essential phenomena.” (pg. 144, Jacobs, 1961). In this aspect

Chandigarh has struggled to a large extent, due to the planning segregations built into the

design. It has failed to generate the buzz of multiple activities happening at the same time

on a vibrant city street, that is the want of all great urban centres.

6. New Urbanism : Leon Krier & other contemporaries

Many years before Leon Krier of his contemporaries spoke of New Urbanism, urban

designers and architect-philosophers like Raymond Unwin (Britain), Camillo Sitte

(France) & Daniel Burnham (Chicago, United States) were trying to find ways and means

to take the idea of the traditional European city and update it for the Industrial/post-

Industrial framework. The proposals thus marrying traditional European Urban design

ideals to modern automobile driven city-living resulted in the conception of the the

Garden city movement, the proposals of ‘city beautiful’ schemes. The layouts of

Hampstead Garden Suburbs and Letchworth were a direct result of these exertions.

This section looks at the theories of revivalists such as Leon Krier, Rob Krier & Quinlan

Terry and how they have sought to look to the past for ideas of city making. We discuss

this approach in some detail.

Leon Krier is best known for the development of Poundbury in Dorset, UK, under the

patronage of the Prince of Wales. Krier's message is heroic – it calls for us to choose

better surroundings and a better life than the widespread car dependent suburban living of

our time. He exhorts that we need no longer remain sufferers to botched-up ideologies of

suburbia.

Krier begins his tirade against the contemporary anti-city or non-place with the

description of the tragedy of present day zoning - the systematic ripping apart of civic

complexity into more and more fragmented segments. Zoning may have started as a

practical reply to the hodgepodge and filth of newly industrialized cities of the 18th

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century, but it ultimately degenerated into a theoretical framework which had no

resonance with the real needs of the city or daily life, making car enslavement,

compulsory. Due to the inflexible logic of zoning, vibrant activities like shopping are

given the same handling as assembly line manufacture, disconnected from the places

where people live, with the result that many cities (especially in the United States) have

degenerated into large parking lots.

 

Krier recognizes, with due-diligence, that an appraisal of this chaos is unproductive

without a feasible counter-vision, and he presents a powerful set of ideas, beginning with

drawings of master plans for the restitution of numerous City Centers in Europe and the

United States, a striking design for the ‘capping’ of Washington, D.C., touching finally

upon the actual project of Poundbury which has been under construction for quite a years

now, beginning to be inhabited to an extent in recent years.

Where Corbusier’s idiom was a direct challenge to Traditionalism, Krier’s oeuvre is a

direct challenge to Modernism. Thus the clock has come a full circle.

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7. Poundbury : A critical evaluation

The town of Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorchester, in Dorset, funded by Prince

Charles, the Duchy of Cornwall, and designed by Leon Krier forms the crux of the debate

in this section. Issues of relevance and effectiveness of such an urban model as

Poundbury (and other such new towns in England) is discussed in detail.

Poundbury is actually a western extension of the medieval town of Dorchester. It grew

from the area outlined by the red line. There is a sharp demarcation on this map (figure

07 above) between town and country. Leon Krier wanted to keep this abrupt boundary in

his design by leaving out the suburban sprawl that banishes the countryside to a remote

distance accessible only by car. Thus the enlargement of Dorchester was envisaged here

shown by a heavy black outline. The core of Poundbury (the first phase) has been built

and is shown in red. It is a swathe of land of 35 acres, less than the dimension of many a

suburban shopping mall’s parking lot.

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Fig 07: The Development Extents of Poundbury Source : http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3799

The phase one development (at least) was envisaged to be a traditional high-density

urban pattern (see figure 08), not a suburban one (which is less dense), focussing on

harbouring a mixed use community of shops, private and social housing and businesses,

with no zoning. The planners wanted to design the development around people rather

than cars, and they aimed to provide a quality environment, from the selection of

materials to the architecture, and the landscaping.

To some degree, the project exhibits similarities to the contemporary New Urbanism

movement in the USA, except that the design paradigms are European. The design of the

houses are in traditional architectural styles, with various period features.

The masterplan was developed towards the end of the 1980s and implementation /

construction began in 1993. Krier's plans were criticised for mixing too many

architectural styles and for the use of building materials brought from outside Dorset,

which was not consistent with the building traditions of Dorchester. It was anticipated

that the four plan phases would be implemented over 25 years with a total of 2,500

residential units and a populace of 6,000 or thereabouts.

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Fig. 08 : Sketch of Poundbury by Leon Krier & Layout of Phase One

Source : http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3799

The positives were there for everyone to see – there was a sense of community, and large

areas were pedestrianized leading to a more humane and walkable ‘neighbourhood’

concept. Since there was no zoning, many businesses, places of work and places of living

exist side by side, engendering a vibrant and dynamic town fabric.

The negatives were often not in keeping with expectations. For instance, in keeping with

the New Urbanism principle, Poundbury was envisioned to dramatically reduce

dependency on the car and encourage public transport, walking & cycling. However, a

study conducted after the completion of phase one indicated that automobile use was

significantly higher in Poundbury than in the neighbouring district of West Dorset.

(Watson et.al, 2004). Reasons for this needed to be researched.

Also, the average speed of vehicles in Poundbury was noted to be around 10 kilometres

per hour. Although the distances within the town of Poundbury were not great, these

vehicular velocities were akin to the crawling speeds in German towns in the pre-first

World War era. (See argument on page 9 of this paper).

Also, although the layout was commendable and fostered a healthy living community, the

architectural styles harked back to a vernacular and pre-industrial age. The development

of Poundbury however failed to demonstrate that it was possible to design a traditional

settlement, with a time honoured town layout, yet be of this present time by embracing

contemporary architectural styles, construction methods and materials.

8. Conclusions & Insights : New Ideas & Paradigms in Urbanism

This section brings to a grand table all the ideas put together in the earlier sections and

strings it together into a cohesive argument for a new approach to Urban Design,

Planning and Urbanism, indicating the commonalities and divergences in the visions of

Leon Krier and Le Corbusier.

Both these luminaries strived to create a paradigm that sought to solve the prevalent

problems of Urbanity of their time and space. Corbusier was militating against the chaos

and squalor of Industrial London and Paris, where narrow streets and lack of light and air

were making living conditions in cities progressively unbearable and unhygienic. Also he

knew that the automobile would soon become a powerful and necessary mode of personal

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and private transport in the city, where-in at that time, the urban layouts were ill-equipped

to deal with the advent of automobile. Thus Corbusier’s solution was the Plan Voisin or

City of Three million inhabitants wide roads and high-rises, with large green areas and

everyone receiving light and ventilation in full measure, where the car was no longer

trapped to crawl and slither through the narrow alleyways of a city, but would zoom on

the linear motorways specifically created for it. Corbusier had solved many problems of

his day and age with his grand vision, but what he did not realise was that he had created

many problems for the future.

The large and wide roads of his scheme would cut-off parts of the city from each other in

the future. People living in tall towers would have splendid views of greens, and enough

light and sunshine, but they would be living in ivory towers, isolated from their

communities and in small glass house tenements in the air. They would lose touch with

the ground and with acitivities which can and only happen best at ground level.

The strict segregation of activities would rob the city of those precious cross-exchanges

between different activities and trades and multi-tasking, which is the life-blood of a

vibrant urbanity. The impulse motives of street flaneuring would all melt into

nothingness. People would go about their work and lives as though they were automatons

or machines, just like the cars they were driving.

The increased mobility afforded by the car would allow the city to become sparse, and

more and more spread out, leading to the phenomena of present day urban-sprawl and

Suburbia. Everything would be further and further away, and walking was no longer a

viable alternative to go from point A to point B. The great pleasures of walking would die

a slow death.

The countryside would no longer remain a country-side, the city would no longer remain

a city, it would all become one vast extended low density suburbia.

Leon Krier stepped into this paradigm and sought to arrest this trend. He wanted to revive

the traditional city model of the medieval and ancient past, where distances were

walkable, different trades and activities interacted with each other in the city, people

actually met each other accidentally in the market and cinema hall while sauntering,

rather than just driving to these places at pre-ordained times. He knew that Suburbia had

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killed the city, and he wanted to redensify the cores of cities which were slowly dying.

He too, like Corbusier, was grappling with urban issues of his time and age and trying to

find a suitable paradigm that would solve all problems in one fell swoop. But his ideas,

although they led to many solutions, also created various problems in their wake. In

emulating the models of ancient and medieval cities, it cannot be emphasized enough that

these old cities were for thousands, whereas present day megapolises are populated by

millions. How can a model which fitted a community of thousands answer the

requirements of tens of millions of inhabitants? Clearly there is a mis-match. Also,

although at micro-scopic levels, New Urbanism probably works well, quite beautifully in

fact, as the experiment at Poundbury proves quite substantially, yet such ideas will be

extremely difficult (if not entirely) impossible to implement at the scale of cities like

Tokyo, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur or Mumbai, which are the densest and some of the

largest and most dynamically growing urban agglomerations of the twenty-first century.

What is the most significantly flawed aspect in the approach of both Krier and Corbusier

is that like master artists, they wish to paint a canvas in one go, filling in all the details

and making a master-piece. But as already discussed in the opening section of this essay

(page 3), such individuals seek to think about the planning process as an orchestra, where

each piece is fine tuned and fitted into position. But such careful calibration and

orchestration is not the reality of present day urbanism. It is ever changing and fluid nad

therefore planning principles and approaches must constantly adapt and transmogrify

themselves to meet the challenges of a specific place, time and problem. This brings us

back to the discussion about Wikipedia.

Wikipedia proves that we do need some sort of over-arching framework for the growth of

a system, yet the system must have enough flexibility and scope for dynamism and

change, such that individuals and entities (various stake-holders in the urbanity process)

can contribute to the growth and development of the system.

This idea find a strong advocate in the voice of Christopher Alexander. Although the

term ‘Emergent Urbanism’ has been recently coined and Alexander has been a voice we

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have been familiar with for atleast two score years now, he was an advocate of this idea,

long before it became fashionable to talk about Emergence.

In the Article titled – A City is not a Tree, Alexander outlines the fact that all the cities of

the present modern and post modern age have been designed as though there are linear

relationships between different components of cities. In truth , he says, the relationships

are overlapping circles, and these circles are constantly morphing and changing so that

one circles overlaps with another or becomes the subset of a larger circle. This

phenomenon he calls a semi-lattice. Thus Emergence creates semi-lattices, not trees. A

tree can be designed, but a semi-lattice can only be provided for with a framework.

(Alexander, 1965)

Emergence is a process dictated by morphology, in that it is the exact reverse of design,

where actions lead to form, instead of actions being orchestrated to bring a form to

fruition. In the first half of the 21st century, complexity science is finally reaching some

maturity with two scientific tomes on the subject, Stephen Wolfram’s ‘A New Kind of

Science’ and Christopher Alexander’s ‘The Nature of Order’. Jane Jacobs first hinted at

the fact that Urbanism was a sort of Emergent system, but it is only now that we are

beginning to realise this to a greater extent. In emergent cities, economic & social

networks grow more complex with greater scales and more density. A fully-realized city,

as a result of its complexity, can only come to pass through emergence. Modern urban

planning and design has successfully eliminated complexity, leaving an unfulfilling and

linear cityscape for us to deal with. Urbanism and urban design are different not in shape

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Fig. 09 : An evolving semi-lattice & A rigid linear treehttp://www.rudi.net/images/3681 & http://www.rudi.net/images/3682

but in dimension. While urban design necessitates the control of a designer or single

developer to achieve its desired effect, urbanism connects a multitude of actors into a

shared marketplace. This is complexity science, Urbanism cannot be designed, it can be

provided for, that is the stark reality of the 21st century.

Thus we need a hybrid of a ‘Planning –Free’ approach with a ‘Structured’ approach, a

system which points towards ‘Emergence’ – an Emergent Urbanism, which constantly

evolves and assimilates, and does not stick to a single dogma or idea. The days of rigid

manifestoes are long over.

9. References

Alexander, Christopher (1997), A Pattern Language, Oxford University Press, New

York

Alexander, Christopher (1965), ‘A City is not a Tree’, in Architectural Forum, Vol 122,

No 1, April 1965, pp 58-62 (Part I) & Vol 122, No 2, May 1965, pp 58-62 (Part II)

Helie, Mathieu (2008) Emergent Urbanism [online], Available at :

http://emergenturbanism.com/tag/leon-krier/ , (accessed on 08-12-2009)

Jacobs, Jane (1961/1992 – revised) The Death and Life of Great American Cities,

Vintage Books, Random House Inc., New York

Jencks, Charles & Kropf, Karl (ed.)(1997) Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary

Architecture, Academy Editions, john Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex

Krier, Leon (1998), Architecture : Choice or Fate , Andreas Papadakis Publishers,

Berkshire, UK

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Kostof, Spiro (1992), The City Assembled :The Elements of Urban Form through

History, Little Brown & Company (Thames & Hudson Imprint), London

Le Corbusier (1927) (1985 – translated into english by Frederick Etchells). Towards a

New Architecture or (Vers une Architecture), Dover Publications, New York

Le Corbusier (1929) (1971 – translated into english by Frederick Etchells). The City of

To-morrow& Its Planning, Dover Publications, New York

North Carolina Department of Transportation (2000) Traditional Neighbourhood

Development Guidelines [online], Available at :

ntl.bts.gov/lib/22000/22600/22616/tnd.pdf , (accessed on 07-12-2009)

The Town Paper (2008) What is a TND? Available at :

http://www.tndtownpaper.com/neighborhoods.htm , (accessed on 25.01.2010)

US Bureau of Census data on Urbanized Areas (2007) What is Sprawl? [online],

Available at : http://www.sprawlcity.org/hbis/wis.html , (accessed on 25-01-2010)

Watson, G., Bentley, I., Roaf, S. and Smith, P., (2004) Learning from Poundbury, Research

for the West Dorset District Council and the Duchy of Cornwall, Oxford Brookes University

Wikipedia (2010) New Urbanism [online], Available at :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism , (accessed on 25-01-2010)

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