Chicago

1700s

1829

Stacey’s Tavern at 5 Points, 1840

1990

1853

1871

Great Fire, 1871

Area of debris infill on Lake Michigan after the fire greatfire.html

1880s

Haymarket Riot,

1893 Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition; White City)

Little Egypt

Hull House

Plan of Chicago

Daniel Burnham, father of American Planning, Director of the Columbian Expo, creator of the Plan of Chicago: “Make no small plans!”

Riverside C:\Documents and Settings\hinese\My Documents\1 Classes\GGY 270\Images\Chicago\Riverside, IL - Google Maps.mht C:\Documents and Settings\hinese\My Documents\1 Classes\GGY 270\Images\Chicago\Riverside, IL - Google Maps.mht C:\Documents and Settings\hinese\My Documents\1 Classes\GGY 270\Images\Chicago\Riverside, IL - Google Maps.mht C:\Documents and Settings\hinese\My Documents\1 Classes\GGY 270\Images\Chicago\Riverside, IL - Google Maps.mht

Le Corbusier (Corbu) and the Radiant City to Cabrini-Green

Corbu’s vision for Paris, Plan Voisin

Corbu was an architect and a city planner. "Modern town planning comes to birth with a new architecture," he wrote in a book titled simply Urbanisme. "By this immense step in evolution, so brutal and so overwhelming, we burn our bridges and break with the past." He meant it. There were to be no more congested streets and sidewalks, no more bustling public squares, no more untidy neighborhoods. People would live in hygienic, regimented high-rise towers, set far apart in a parklike landscape. This rational city would be separated into discrete zones for working, living and leisure. Above all, everything should be done on a big scale — big buildings, big open spaces, big urban highways.

He called it La Ville Radieuse, the Radiant City. Despite the poetic title, his urban vision was authoritarian, inflexible and simplistic. Wherever it was tried — in Chandigarh by Le Corbusier himself or in Brasilia by his followers — it failed. Standardization proved inhuman and disorienting. The open spaces were inhospitable; the bureaucratically imposed plan, socially destructive. In the U.S., the Radiant City took the form of vast urban-renewal schemes and regimented public housing projects that damaged the urban fabric beyond repair. Today these mega-projects are being dismantled, as super-blocks give way to rows of houses fronting streets and sidewalks. Downtowns have discovered that combining, not separating, different activities is the key to success. So is the presence of lively residential neighborhoods, old as well as new. Cities have learned that preserving history makes a lot more sense than starting from zero. It has been an expensive lesson, and not one that Le Corbusier intended, but it too is part of his legacy.

Le Corbusier’s Radiant City plan for Paris, which didn’t happen

Cabrini Green, Chicago

Looking toward Goose Island from Cabrini Green

Cabrini Green, 2007

Radiant City Public Housing, Lower East Side, Manhattan