Urban Imaginations

It is easy to think of 20th Century planning purely in terms of Modernism, itself strongly related to images of urban renewal such as high-rise housing, highways, and segregated city functions. Parker argues that movements espousing traditionalism are not as far removed from Modernism as we might assume. For example, Le Corbusier’s famous imaginings of dense residential apartment blocks surrounded by open space take ideas from the garden city (density, parkland, healthful fresh air) to their logical extreme. New Urbanism espouses anti-Modernist ideals of dense, walkable, mixed-use urban centres, but as Parker argues, it is “anti-metropolitan in practice” (p. 66). Like many of the goals of utopian visions that preceded it, New Urbanism’s lofty ideals of inclusiveness and infill have been thwarted by the influence of economically powerful groups, and are instead segregated places characterised by homogeneity and privilege (an insularity further reinforced by private governance). This shifting ideal of where and how people aspire to live reflects a constant tension between the core and the periphery of cities, but is also very much a product of interventions by people with means (the bourgeoisie, the policy-maker) prevalent in this week’s readings who shape city space.