
Le Corbusier’s Algerian Fantasy: Blocking the Casbah - tintinnabula
https://assets.bidoun.org/articles/le-corbusier-s-algerian-fantasy
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jhpriestley
I find that 95% of the material I read that touches on urban design takes a
particular viewpoint: small-scale, accretive, "human", heterogeneous,
walkable, urban spaces are good; large-scale, top-down, "inhuman", car or
transit-focused, urban spaces are bad. Le Corbusier is a villain, Jane Jacobs
a hero.

Does anyone know a good source for the counterargument? It seems like there
must be another side to the story. Moscow is full of concrete superblocks and
it's actually pretty nice. San Francisco is all eclectic little urban micro-
neighborhoods and it has very serious problems with public nuisances and
crime. Maligned modernist projects like Pruitt-Igoe were often used to house
the very poor, and it seems like sometimes the architecture is blamed for what
may be just an association between poverty and crime. According to at least
some studies, tearing down project housing relocated a lot of crime to the
suburbs, only modestly decreasing overall crime rates
[http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/The-312/April-201...](http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/The-312/April-2012/Did-the-Destruction-of-Chicagos-Public-Housing-
Decrease-Violent-Crime-Or-Just-Move-It-Elsewhere/)

~~~
theoh
> large-scale, top-down, "inhuman", car or transit-focused, urban spaces are
> bad

You are combining a few different strands there. There are people who think
brutalist megastructures are dehumanizing but who are generally pro-car.
Likewise you shouldn't conflate car-friendly and transit-friendly approaches
to planning: they are very different. Top-down planning is ever-present to
varying degrees.

Jacobs' nemesis Robert Moses wanted to do extremely serious surgery on
Manhattan, with the assistance of the architect Paul Rudolph. Luckily it
didn't happen, though other major projects went ahead. It was part of the
whole post-war prioritization of the car (in Europe and America) which is now
seen a mistake, and you will not find serious theorists defending it.

You ask for a counterargument to Jacobs' ideas, but I think that invites a
dualistic framing of the problems. See e.g. this article:
[https://archpaper.com/2016/05/best-use-abuse-criticize-
jane-...](https://archpaper.com/2016/05/best-use-abuse-criticize-jane-jacobs/)

In terms of examples of successful modernist planning which are seen as a
desirable model today, Neave Brown's Alexandra Road estate in London might be
of interest. It's a megastructure, concrete, alongside a major railway line,
with uncompromising modernist aesthetics.

There is parkland, but not an ocean of space which isolates blocks from
circulation routes. (This is a common criticism of the Zeilenbau/Corbusian
approach to planning, which has to be weighed against the benefits of having
greenery between blocks).

It is an immense "gesture" of structure which follows the curve of the
railway, but faces away from it to control noise levels.

I'm mentioning all this because it is the particular architectural decisions
and strategies that make the difference. It's not a result of picking one side
or the other in the Moses/Jacobs debate. You could perhaps argue that it
represents a third way, but there are many possibilities.

If there is a meaningful countercurrent to Jacobs' ideas, it's the idea of
pursuing architecture/planning itself rather than an ad-hoc folksy urbanism.

~~~
stickfigure
The Riverwalk in San Antonio is a decent example of successful modernist
planning. It's a bit touristy, but in a way that I wouldn't mind seeing
repeated in other urban centers.

------
eecc
I fail to see Feminine in a concrete curtain so bit it would obscure the Sun.
But then I may just be biased by this article I recently read:
[https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-
totalitarian-132...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-
totalitarian-13246.html)

~~~
astrodust
Brutalism is a cancer of architecture. So many of these buildings are anti-
human on so many levels, reducing people to nothing but unthinking, uncaring
agents in a machine.

~~~
dogecoinbase
Brutalism is about truth in architecture -- buildings look like what they're
made of, and what they do. People are agents in the machine everywhere.
Brutalism just exposes it.

~~~
eecc
Well, there’s also truth and material exposure in beautiful brickwork... imho,
brutalism is more about wwii ptsd (and general postwar rebuilding effort and
no money to waste on frills

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mcguire
" _...a general disillusionment with technology in the face of the market
crash of 1929 and the rise of Fascism and Nazism (all frightful by-products of
a collective faith in progress)._ "

No. Just no. Progress, or even a "collective faith in progress", had nothing
to do with the market crash of 1929, the subsequent depression, or the rise of
Fascism and Nazism (although they get bonus points for recognizing a
difference between the two).

~~~
Apocryphon
Both fascism and communism are Industrial Age ideologies that had faith in
certain aspects of progress (modern efficiency and order, economic
modernization, shiny steel war machines, etc.). Certainly fascism and Nazism
had a lot of Romantic, anti-modern reactionary ideals, but it was synthesized
with a lot of the trappings of progress. The Italian Futurists were compatible
with Italian Fascism, after all.

Not sure how the market crash applies to progress, unless the Roaring Twenties
were supposed to be an unprecedented time of irrational economic exuberance
that foreshadowed our modern credit-driven economy.

------
twic
> the market crash of 1929 and the rise of Fascism and Nazism (all frightful
> by-products of a collective faith in progress)

Oh come _on_.

