Frank Lloyd Wright, Enemy of the City

Katherine Don looks back at Broadacre City, Wright's attempt to replace the modern industrial city once and for all.

1 minute read

April 9, 2010, 1:00 PM PDT

By Tim Halbur


The design for Broadacre City was a rebuttal to Le Corbusier's Radiant City. Wright called for "a new standard of space measurement-the man seated in his automobile."

Don writes, "Even in the 1930s, urban planners were disgusted by Broadacre. Its philosophy was deeply individualistic; its layout was conspicuously wasteful. Liberals of the time who emulated the socialist spirit of Europe classified Wright as an anti-government eccentric, which indeed he was. In 1938, Marxist art historian Meyer Schapiro condemned Broadcre City as 'perfectly consistent with physical and spiritual decay.'"

Thursday, April 8, 2010 in Next American City

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