A new documentary called Radiant City paints a peculiar portrait of contemporary suburbia.
"Taking its title from Le Corbusier's 1935 manifesto on the ideal factory-inspired urban design, the semi-documentary Radiant City juggles conventional wisdom and deception in what amounts to an entertaining if peculiar cinematic exercise. Although this National Film Board-produced film is promoted as a documentary, it's really a combination of essay and drama about that favourite bugbear, suburbia.
Superficially, Radiant City, co-directed by CBC broadcaster Jim Brown, is a straightforward critique of urban sprawl. A roll call of architects, planners and academics recites variations on the reigning orthodoxy that modern suburbia is a travesty of the idea of community, as well as a soul-destroying, aesthetically stunted, impractical, inefficient and unhealthy way of living."
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Ada County Highway District
Charles County Government
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
City of Cambridge, Maryland