3 million person city
Le Corbusier was revolutionary in the sense that he really wanted to minimize horizontal space. Ecologically speaking this idea is wonderful. I grew up in Portland, Oregon and although the city did not Le Corbusier’s approach, they work hard to minimize urban sprawl and I appreciate this!
So, Le Corbusier was a little radical, but his overall idea was to house 3 million people. How else could you go about housing that many people and not be so radical? His idea of open spaces was great except for the fact that most of the open spaces were spaces that couldn’t be used by pedestrians. The Central Station was a prime example of this because although this large open area existed, helicopters and airplanes were expected to land there and prevented people from walking. The fact that there would be little interaction between the skyscraper inhabitants would be problematic. Le Corbusier wanted to get away from the “slums of the city” idea but the fact that he allowed for no communication or sidewalk interaction (as Jane Jacobs would point out) would be detrimental to community. To segregate the dominant class by placing them in big hotel type residences and the proletariats in the periphery would cause too much direct segregation.
The sixty story buildings would be built of glass and steel. I don’t know why it would be appealing to have 24 huge skyscrapers all glass and steel!
In addition, he claims that “through the gridiron arrangement of the streets every 400 yards (sometimes only 200) is uniform (with a consequent ease in finding ones’ way about) no two streets are in any way alike” (323). I don’t see how this is possible. I was looking at some pictures and the only way that streets, in my opinion, could be different was if there were different flowers in the garden or something because each street would carry a similar (if not the same) function.