Modernistic Town Planning, Suburbanization, and Urban Sprawl

Vocabulary flashcards covering modernist town planning concepts, Le Corbusier's principles, high-rise projects, suburbanization, urban sprawl, racial policies, and key urban critics.

Modernistic Town Planning

An urban planning approach arising as a reaction to the industrial city, characterized by a belief in objective science, functionalism, rationalism, separation of functions, and mass-produced architecture.

Le Corbusier

A Swiss-French architect ($1887$-$1965$) and co-founder of CIAM who advocated for functional segregation, standardized mass production of buildings, and the "skyscraper in the park" urban model.

CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture)

An organization founded in $1928$ by prominent modern architects, including Le Corbusier, to promote modernist architectural principles and functional city planning.

Makeability

The belief that planners and experts can intentionally shape and improve human society through the physical design of the built environment.

Separation of Functions

The zoning principle of organizing cities into distinct, single-use areas for residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, and infrastructural purposes.

Separation of Modalities

The spatial segregation of different transport modes—such as pedestrians, bicycles, cars, buses, trams, and trains—onto distinct pathways and traffic levels.

Contemporary City (Ville Contemporaine)

Le Corbusier's $1925$ theoretical master plan designed for $3\text{ million}$ inhabitants, featuring symmetrical geometrical skyscrapers spaced within open parkland.

Radiant City (La Ville Radieuse)

An ideal modernist urban design by Le Corbusier emphasizing strict functional zoning, high-rise housing towers, and complete physical separation between pedestrian and motorized traffic.

Pruitt-Igoe

A modernist high-rise public housing project in St. Louis opened in $1954$ as an urban renewal effort, which rapidly suffered social decline, crime, and eventual demolition.

Bijlmermeer (Bijlmer)

A high-rise modernist residential district in Amsterdam opened in $1968$, designed around hexagonal honeycomb gallery flats, large green spaces, and grade-separated transit flows.

Seagram Building

A skyscraper in New York City built of steel and glass, serving as an iconic example of modernist flagship corporate architecture.

Suburbanization

A process wherein an increasing % of the population live in areas of the city that are expanding away from the central city yet still relates to it through commuting

Sprawl

A certain type of suburbanisation/ Sprawl is defined by low-density, predominantly car oriented expansion of the built-up area around a core city

Interstate Highway Act

US federal legislation that funded the construction of $42,500\text{ miles}$ of highways with 90\text{\null}\null\text{\%} taxpayer backing, accelerating suburban expansion and automobile dependency.

White Flight

The post-World War II demographic movement of white middle-class residents away from dense urban centers into surrounding suburbs.

Redlining

The systematic discrimination by mortgage lenders, insurers, and government bodies that designated non-white or socioeconomically lower-income urban districts as high-risk, denying them financial investment.

Lewis Mumford

An urban critic who condemned suburban sprawl as an inflexible, uniform, and treeless communal waste that fosters social conformity.

Robert Bruegmann

An architectural historian who defended sprawl as the natural byproduct of democratic choice, rising incomes, and personal freedom.

Robert D. Putnam

The author of Bowling Alone who contended that sprawling low-density suburban development and long commutes contribute significantly to the erosion of civic engagement.

Social Capital

The networks of trust, mutual obligations, and meaningful human connections that sustain healthy civic communities.

String Street (Ribbon Development)

A commercial spatial pattern where drive-thru stores, gas stations, motels, and retail outlets cluster along major suburban highways.

Modernism

the period in which modernistic town planning became a dominant influence on the built environment