Urbanism Ideals: The Automobile

The new global urbanism as defined by Kevin Lynch and Le Corbusier centered around one pivotal element: the automobile. Although the opinions offered by Lynch and Le Corb were approximately 30 years apart, they are strikingly similar. Le Corbusier was far ahead of his time in his understanding that the automobile would revolutionize transportation and the way humans move, particularly around cities. Lynch had already started to see how cars and traffic were affecting the growth and development of urban areas and how they were connected. Cars were and are mainly criticized for their noise, pollution, and traffic jams, but people use them despite their drawbacks because of their enormous convenience. Lynch and Le Corb both recognized the impact of the automobile and rather than focusing on its negative aspects, they tried to identity the huge potential for improving and integrating the automobile into society.

Le Corbusier imagined a completely redesigned notion of the city which would break completely with the non-automobile cities of the past. He saw rows of high-rise buildings arranged neatly within a function grid of streets and highways. Lynch envisioned an ideal city as one which was most pleasing when viewed in motion. I created a cutting trying to bring these two ideas together. Rows of boxes represent Le Corb’s vision of rows of skyscrapers, and the car-window shaped cut out represents Lynch’s “view from the road.”