Architecture cp

Can Our Cities Survive? An ABC of Urban Problems, Their Analysis , Their Solutions

1942 · 578 — Cambridge and London, Harvard UP / Oxford UP, 1942. First edition. An oblong hardcover book, title and author's names embossed on the front cover and spine, Bradel-style hinges, 31,5 x 23,5 cm, 258 pp. fully illustrated with black and white pictures and maps. Text written on two columns. 15 chapters: Town-Planning or Our Cities and Their Problems, Dwelling as The First Urban Function, Work, Week-End and Vacation Recreation and so on. A manifesto for the reform spirit criticizing the nineteenth-century city as inadequate do massive car use and overcrowding. The author puts forward various ideas: separating various functions throughout spaces, insisting on adequate transportation, verticalization and local zoning (schools, shops, hospitals) as smaller communal units within the city, etc. Published in the midst of the Second World War, this urban planning book criticizes 19th-century cities as "inadequate" and puts forward numerous proposals to adapt them to the automobile and to populations of several million inhabitants. Some of its ideas proved very influencial in many postwar projects.