Talk:Broadacre City
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[edit] Contradictions
Just noticing some contradictions in the list...in your list it says that there are small apartments and small houses etc, but below...it also says No "Housing". KellanFabjance (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- The list is from Wright's, The Living City He was referring to government "housing" projects; he disliked the term "housing" as belittling to the dignity of free and sovereign citizens. Here is what he said in one place, probably referring to the Federal Housing Administration FHA:
Source: Letters to Architects*[1], p.157-8
From the Editorial, FLW edition of Architectural Forum magazine, 1/10/1938
"To The Young Man in Architecture - a Challenge" ...
... "I would rather solve the small house problem than build anything else ... But where is the small house to come from while government itself is only perpetuating the old stupidities? ... it must come from common sense ... simple and at the same time more gracious" ...
DAB (talk) 20:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Comment on Article
I find the article extremely biased and misleading, even defamatory. There is competition between Architects and a new "Urban Planning" profession which began about 1920; Wright said only Architects are trained to plan. In general, Urban Planners have little if any knowledge of the principles of building and have arrogantly turned a blind eye to this concept; admitting their own incompetence they say:
"Technically speaking, Broadacres cannot be taken too seriously, certainly not as a replacement for the core of big cities. Mr. Wright’s vision is oriented more toward suburban life, ... But planners should not expect too much of architectural city designs. The architects who fancy themselves planners have never evinced an equal concern with all elements of the big city. ... It will take a really creative planner not an architect to someday give us a complete and dynamic design for the future city." - Book Reviews, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, vol. 25 (1958) p. 163-164.
On the contrary Broadacre City has all the elements of urbanity to be found in the big city except for the criminal element, the slums, the crowded conditions and congested traffic. It rejects the big city feudal system and expresses the highest ideals of American Democracy.
DAB (talk) 20:29, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Revised Edition
As a former apprentice to Wright in 1958, I offer my view of it here in this edition of the article - Douglas Boyd, KYMAK agent:
There is no train station in Broadacre City...
Broadacre City is a concept for a decentralized City for Democracy developed by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1918*[2] to 1958. The city planning movement dated at least back to 1907 with Daniel Burnham's Chicago Plan. He first presented the idea in a book The Disappearing City in 1932. A few years later he unveiled a very detailed twelve by twelve foot (3.7 by 3.7 m) scale model representing the principles and pattern of the concept in a spaciously urbane four square mile (10 km²) at the County Seat. The model was crafted by student architects who paid for the privilege of working with Wright as his apprentices at Taliesin. Wright would go on explaining the concept in later books When Democracy Builds in 1945, The Living City in 1958 and in lectures, exhibitions and articles until his death in 1959.
The building models in the concept were designs by Wright, but are irrelevant except to illustrate principles of good building design. The idea of how to design a city for democracy was the point of the concept. Kevin A. Lynch said, "Nobody understands it, it is a linear city". It is to extend along the sides of a broad freeway (528 feet right-of-way) to each County line
Broadacre City was intended to show the principles of building Cities for American Democracy in opposition to importing archaic centralized European city concepts designed or built for Feudalism. Being misunderstood and misused, it became the apotheosis of suburbia, engendering urban sprawl. The idea of Broadacre city was shaped through Wright's empathy with the insights of the founders of our New Republic, Jefferson, Washington, and others where Independence and Liberty as well as morality is best secured by individual ownership of the means of survival, land. It was both a planning statement and a socio-political scheme by which population density would be one acre per person maintained by Land value taxation A Wright-conceived community would follow this pattern beginning at the County Seat. It opposed of the idea of concentrated massing of citizens forced to depend on transit-oriented development. There is no rail transport or train station in Broadacre City; the railroad becomes obsolete and is to be replaced by a broad freeway - the entire city was to be located within and along the old land grant railway corridor. There are office and apartment buildings in Broadacre City; but the apartment dwellers are expected to be a minority. Transport is by automobile and quiet flying radio controlled helicopter taxis; the pedestrian may use sidewalks along streets and roads as well as within the security of their broad-acres plots where most citizens will choose to dwell.
The County Engineer becomes the County Architect in order to assure expert planning and coordination of the vital work of Civil Engineers and other Design Professionals in the very complex process of City and Regional Planning. Wright, home-schooled to be an architect by his mother, studied Civil Engineering in college for lack of a course in architecture; there are well known architects who have degrees in civil engineering, e.g., Malcolm Wells and Santiago Calatrava. Presently, untrained non-architect politicians and developers are mishandling the Engineer while assuming the role of the Architect - brushing the architect aside, politicians take the role of the architect when they presume to direct the work of the engineer. This practice has put the Architect and Engineer in competition, rather than friendly cooperation with each other; this has created havoc on the landscape. Wright's master plan or one like KYMAK would have to be duly adopted locally, or better by Congress, as a basis for federal funding in order to make the idea viable for the total built environment as true Architecture must be.
Design and planning professionals now engage merely in damage control, tending to feel exasperated, being used like "window dressing" by political bosses to deceive the public. Wright referred to them as the "big money boys"; like children they are always more in a hurry to get what they want than what is best - they say, "time is money". Wright mentions Goethe who said, "For but one thought is in all, and that how to satisfy quickest Self and the need of the moment, regardless of what may come after.” Making money is their only goal; developing an intrinsic culture for our new Nation is beyond them. Seeing the prevalence of Greek and Roman architectural traditions, Wright wanted to create an indigenous American architecture to secure our own duly Constituted values of Liberty, Independence and Sovereignty of the Individual. It could be accomplished if someone specially trained to plan and coordinate the building process, as architects are, were in control of the building process – possibly as an elected official as County Architect and if people could trust the Architect as they do in fiduciary relationships with other learned professionals, such as Physicians; the principles of building are at least as complicated as brain surgery but the consequences of error are fatal to all. That architects are learned professionals is not too well understood.
Wright often chided his fellow architects about their neglected role in the building process – as in his 1949 AIA Gold Medal Acceptance Speech when he said, “I've been right about a good many things. That's the basis of my arrogance. And it has a basis - that's one thing I can say for my arrogance. We can save ourselves. We're smart. We have a certain rat-like perspicacity. But we have the same courage; and that's what's the matter. I don't know of a more cowardly...well, I'm getting too deep in here now, and I can't swear - not tonight. But we are certainly a great brand of cowardice in America. We've let all our great opportunities to live a spiritual life with great interior strength and nobility of purpose in mind go by the board... If we're ever going to get anything better, if we're ever going to come by a more honorable expression of a civilization such as the world is entitled to from us... It isn't the fault of institutions. It isn't the fault of any class. It isn't the fault of the big boys that make the money and make the blunders and shove us over the brink we spoke of a minute ago. No. How would they learn better? ...How are they going to find out? They can only find out by your disapproval. They can only find out by your telling the truth, first to yourselves, and then out loud wherever you can get a chance to tell it…. I think if we (architects) were to wake up and take a good look at ourselves, as ourselves – without trying to pass the buck without trying to blame other people for what really is our own shortcoming and our own lack of character we would be an example to the world that the world needs now. We wouldn’t be pursuing a cold war. We would be pursuing a great endeavor to plant, rear, and nurture a civilization. And we would have a culture that would convince the whole world. We’d have all the Russians in here on us, working for us - with us – not afraid that we were going to destroy them or destroy anybody else. It’s because of cowardice and political chicanery, because of the degradation to which we have fallen - as men”. Some of his fellows compared him to an Old Testament Prophet - possibly this was the main reason he was rejected by the establishment. Yet, he was a good natured man with a genuine sense of humor that could only come from one who was honest, courageous and as a matter of fact, humble.
Features of Broadacre City:
A City designed for Democracy.
Frontispiece of The Living City
1. County Annex
2. Postal Service
3. Race Track
4. Sport fields
5. Sport Complex
6. Athletic clubs
7. Lake and stream
8. Farms
9. Luxury house
10. Park
11. Music garden
12. Health spa
13. Shopping center
14. Motel
15. Factory workers homes
16. Factories with dwellings above
17. Manufacturing
18. Travel center
19. Freeway
20. Industry
21. Vineyards and orchards
22. Office buildings
23. Small homes
24. Secondary schools
25. Churches
26. Guest houses
27. Agricultural research
28. Arboretum
29. Zoo
30. Aquarium
31. Exhibitions
31a. Beacon
32. Hotel
33. Country club
34. Hospital
35. Small industry
36. Smaller homes
37. Small apartments
38. Dairy
39. Kindergarten
40. Apartment houses
41. Commodious homes
42. Water supply
43. Professional school
44. County Architect
45. Small theater
46. Cabins
47. Larger homes
48. Observation point
49. Auto repair
50. Gas station
51. Library
52. Natural preserves
No private ownership of public needs. No public ownership of private needs.
No landlord and tenant - An acre of ground per person minimum by virtue of site value tax.
No "housing". No subsistence homesteads.
No traffic problem. No back and forth haul. No railroads. No grade crossings.
No street cars. Administration by radio and flight.
No poles or wires in sight. Streets are lighted at the curb. No headlights.
No ditches alongside the roads.
Roads are concave with drainage and utilities buried in median.
Tall buildings are isolated in parks.
Building design determined by the character and topography of the region.
[edit] References
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Disappearing City.1918 - 1932 New York, W. F. Payson, 1932
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. When Democracy Builds. University of Chicago Press, 1945
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Living City. New York, Horizon Press, 1958.
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. Letters to Architects. Architectural Press, 1987.
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. An Organic Architecture, (Sir George Watson Lectures) Lund Humphreys, London, 1939.
- Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Future Of Architecture, Horizon Press, 1953.
- List: http://www.pbs.org/flw/resources/pub_yr-0.html
* Cite
Broadacre City is a concept for a decentralized City for Democracy developed by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1918*...see,
- Swaback, Vernon D. Designing the Future, p. 38, Herberger Center for Design, 1997. [3]
Illustrations -
![[6]](http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/images/fullsize/sinzimg032.jpg){kind=link}