IV.

Cities and Suburbs

The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and the 19th centuries that brought forth advances in materials and technology was also responsible for large-scale changes in patterns of living and working, and for the rapid growth of cities. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population of cities such as Paris, London, and New York City numbered well over a million people. Such population concentrations created demand for new roads, railroads, bridges, and subways, and for a wide range of new buildings, including railroad stations, department stores, opera houses, and covered public markets. Perhaps the most troubling feature of the Industrial Revolution was the squalor created wherever factories were found. Reformers throughout the 19th century struggled to change laws and customs in order to improve working conditions and provide decent and sanitary housing for the new urban masses.

Among the reformers were those who dreamed of using architecture to create industrial utopias that would help control the unchecked urban growth and keep the working classes themselves in line. In 1901 French architect Tony Garnier submitted designs for an imaginary city where workers would live in lushly landscaped residential areas and commute by streetcar to clean and pleasant factories (published as Cité Industrielle, 1917). Although his plans went unrealized, such utopian projects exerted a powerful force on architects and governments at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1928 the Congrès Internationaux de l'Architecture Moderne (International Congress of Modern Architecture, or CIAM) was founded to promote social justice and modern architecture. In 1933 this group issued the Athens Charter, which recommended simple, clear urban-planning schemes that would separate leisure, work, housing, and traffic. Unfortunately, by separating these functions, many of these plans eliminated any sense of community. Governments and private enterprise sponsored new towns based on these guidelines, which assumed that people living in the right environment would be more likely to behave in accordance with the dictates of society. Much urban planning in the 20th century was devoted to decentralizing cities and setting up self-sufficient garden suburbs.