A quote from Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961):
To see complex systems of functional order as order, and not as chaos, takes understanding. The leaves dropping from the trees in autumn, the interior of an airplane engine, the entrails of a dissected rabbit, the city desk of a newspaper, all appear to be chaos if they are seen without comprehension. Once they are understood as systems of order, they actually look different.
It’s sort of ridiculous for me to presume to have insights here — but I assume that any citizen has the obligation to muse about the mess, wherever it is, as it is always closer to home than we think. Possible quick action — a way to take immediate action rather than forming a committee: begin running 24-hour public transport to and from the city to the banlieues. To all parts, from all parts. Immediately begin job programs and job training for unemployed youth. Require employers throughout the country to hire on merit and fine them severely if they discriminate. Show that this is being enforced.
None of these require large infrastructures or years of planning and construction.
The French bourgeois will hate all this — their whole idea was to admit cheap workers to France but confine them to the outlying areas and shut down any access they might have to the City of Light after a certain hour, effectively isolating them. To preserve their idea of what it means to be French.
Long-term solution: Tear the damn things down. Admit that Le Corbusier and his legions of pseudo-followers were wrong, and fund people to build human-scale communities. THE SAME SHOULD BE DONE EVERYWHERE. N.Y., St Louis, Boston, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Brussels.
Here is a Le Corbusier plan for PARIS:
Here is another. Looks exactly like some projects on the east and west sides on Manhattan, dead dangerous places:
And below, a ground plan view of the above — like something out of a science fiction novel — or Star Wars Coruscant (bottom), but without the flying vehicles and fantastic architecture:
Some articles have suggested that Le Corbusier has been unfairly maligned, and that his one well-realized building of this type is now a coveted residence in Marseille. Living proof that this sort of housing can work. The implication being that if done right these vast utopian “machines for living” are light, clean, and efficient, and that people actually like them… and that it was the subsequent developers and politicians who perverted the great Corbu’s ideas, and THAT is why they don’t work — it’s NOT that the ideas were bad. Just as communism’s supporters claimed that it was never properly implemented when they were confronted by its perversions and excesses. And every demagogue claims that if his policies were given just a little more time and weren’t always compromised by those damned do-gooders their true worth would be evident. “Let me just finish the job and you’ll see.” (How many times will we hear that said about Iraq?)
How much is architecture to blame and how much is policy the culprit? Well, policy often creates the architecture, just as tax incentives make it financially advantageous to buy an SUV in the U.S. The government supports GM and the oil industry and the results are everywhere. I walk out the door and see policy manifested in 3 dimensions. Housing and architecture are shaped by the results of loan policies, zoning, public transportation policies and local services — not just the aesthetics of an architect.
Yes, there is a high rise not too far from me that is desirable — the building on 43rd and 9th whose desirability is bolstered by a special discount for theater folk — and by a swimming pool and shops and restaurants and work being within walking distance. Others near Lincoln Center and NYU have similar policies and are similarly desirable. But the vast fields of projects that stretch along the East river and parts of the Hudson are failures, just like the French ones.
Here is a project proposed for Dayton, Ohio called Victory City:
And here is the man who designed it and is seeking investors — Orville Simpson II:
In my opinion there is nothing inherently wrong with tall buildings. A limited number of anything is like genetic diversity; it’s of value to the species as a whole. I can, however, see that these residences are definitely top-down design — there is no room for the evolution and mutation of function, form, use — it’s all planned in advance. The creators all assume the inevitable victory of science, reason and logic over messy instinct, intuition and impulse.
The legacy of the Enlightenment rears its ugly head. Well, maybe the Enlightenment shouldn’t be blamed for all of it — it simply added scientific confidence to our existing religious moral foundations and presumptions — those of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, that see humans as the masters of the Universe and Godlike caretakers of the planet. The assumptions is that with our technology, knowledge and superior intellect we can overcome any difficulties, solve any problems and apply sense and reason to any part of life, any aspect of life, and make it more productive and “better”.
This hubris is often our undoing — the belief that our art and science can allow us to make grand designs that will, if done rigorously and “properly”, will allow us to sort out this messy world. Whether it be (sometimes) well-intentioned urban planning, genetic engineering or child rearing, our denial of our animal part creates true monsters. The desire to escape from the base “animal” is in fact a quick shortcut to beastie hell. The demon, like Orville, a nice man with white socks and a telephone, only wants us to have a better life and a better world.
France, the home of Cartesian logic, the encyclopedia and geometric and orderly gardens, might have to stop laughing at the decades of hapless American attempts to deal (or more often not deal) with race, immigration, the legacy of slavery, cheap workers and identity and realize they’re in the same boat.
A French garden — in Australia:
