The growing influence of the car and its effect on the ideas of the role and position of mobility in the city of the future

Abstract

The projects: Plan Voisin, Broadacre City and Futurama, of the three architects: Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Norman Bel Geddes, are all three based upon the criticism the architects had on the design of their contemporary city’s and the mobility within these urban structures. The coming up of the automobile had consequences for the city and its traffic, and the three architects called the contemporary cities no longer suited for this new mode of transport. With the coming up of the automobile, the ordinary man is able to travel with the units of the new standard, and it is this new standard that laid the groundwork for all three projects. It is in this architectural history thesis that the development of the vision for the future of mobility between 1925 and 1940 is investigated. The research question that was used in this thesis was the following: What effect did the growing influence of the car have on the ideas of the role and position of mobility in the city of the future? The chronological first of the three is Le Corbusier, he envisioned the automobile to travel at speeds never seen before, and it is this speed that gives a city its success. Within his Plan Voisin, verticality is used to create space. The separation of pedestrian and motorised vehicles creates the opportunity for superhighways to give the automobiles the possibilities to connect city and country with speed. Wright later reacted to this verticality, blaming the liveability of the city. Stating with his Broadacre City that with the automobile and the highways, it is should not be speed but space that must be achieved for the ordinary man. Space, the decentralization due to the technology of the times, gives the ordinary man the possibility to prosper, and therefore create a successful urban design. Norman Bel Geddes and his Futurama came back with the verticality and the centralization of the city, but expresses that the speed of the automobile, with its highways, had no place in the urban structures. Where there is space, there is speed, according to Geddes, so the highway systems should be designed outside of the city, in order to efficiently connect the country with the city and vice versa. Thus, the coming up of the car influenced the mobility and the plans for the city of the future, over time in different ways. It was the speed of the automobile that first gave incentive for this change in urban design. This speed was later used to create space outside of the city, to pursue what could not be found within the city. But it is due to this mobility of the automobile that finally gave incentive to return the interest back to the city. By implementing efficient highways the connection between city and country could be restored, and it is this restoration of the city and its traffic that influenced the ideas for the plan of the city of the future.