o.b.e. 4: city in the sky
Le Corbusier may have been considered ahead of his time during the period he was writing within, but I found a fair amount of ignorance in his lofty plans for the city in the sky. Le Corbusier’s presentation of the ‘vertical city’ attempts to address the problems of both densely populated urban centers and the need for open spaces of recreation and nature. In his proposal to create an ideal city for three million people, building literally from the ground up seems to neglect the anticipated social segregation that occurs within neighborhood and residential settings. Corbusier’s plans seem to write the script for horizontal suffocation of the poorer lower class and vertical mobility for those more affluent urban dwellers as opposed to providing the opportunity for upward expansion and horizontal freedom for all. Positioning people’s homes and workplaces in a vertical fashion does not eliminate the economic, social and cultural divisions that permeate nearly every aspect of our lives. In fact, if nothing else, I feel that Le Corbusier’s design for ‘the city of three million’ encourages the unhealthy and unmanageable densities of cities that Engels discussed and creates an environment of strictly utilitarian and secondary relationships as addressed by Wirth. The motives behind his plan, while seemingly seeking to pursue a new definition of ‘urban,’ reek of capitalist interests. Compacting residential, commercial and occupational in singular vertical ‘neighborhoods’ allows capitalist interests to permeate all aspects of people’s lives without social or physical distance. Engels and Wirth would certainly feel that such an environment lends a hand to dangerous density and the deterioration of primary connections in favor of secondary interactions.
An additional point of ignorance comes in the statement ‘city of three million.’ What Le Corbusier apparently fails to realize is the city of three million will not, unfortunately, remain a city of three million for eternity. Here, Le Corbusier’s suggestions begin to prelude a social collision. With the natural phenomenon that is reproduction, this vertical city will experience conflicts on how to appropriately address accommodations for the increasing numbers of people. While there are limits horizontally, the limits for building vertically are certainly more significant and will present the necessity for some sort of densification of housing. Social implications within the vertical neighborhood structure have the potential to subject those of lower status and income to a much less spacious portion of the vertical high-rise and eventually create overcrowding, just as it occurs in horizontal development. As vertical crowding increases, the ‘unused’ horizontal space that these lower class citizens were originally moved out of will become one of the few arenas in which new homes can be built. Because of the desire to reserve open space for those higher class residents, however, the accommodations for the less prominent citizens will be sub-standard and foster the vices of dense urban life that Corbusier is attempting to combat with his vertical plan, except on a much more significant scale. Le Corbusier’s idea for the city in the sky is clearly unrealistic in the logistical sense for his time, but the notion that building up will allow for societies to transcend the racial, social, economic and cultural issues that have prohibited equality for so long is a notion that is simply ignorant.