The Modern Urban Landscape

292 Pages·2016·14.855 MB·English

by  Edward Relph

Routledge Revivals
The Modern Urban Landscape
First published in 1987, this book provides a wide-ranging account of
how modern cities have come to look as they do - differing radically
from their predecessors in scale, style, detail and meaning. It uses many
illustrations and examples to explore the origins and development of
specific landscape features. More generally it traces the interconnected
changes which have occurred in architectural and aesthetic fashions, in
economic and social conditions, and in planning - which together
have created the landscape that now prevails in most of the cities of the
world. This book will be of interest to students of architecture, urban
studies and geography.
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The Modern Urban
Landscape
Edward Relph
Firstpublishedin1987
byCroomHelm
Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2016byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon,OX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©1987E.Relph
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
knownor hereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin any
informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
publishers.
Publisher’sNote
Thepublisherhasgonetogreatlengthstoensurethequalityofthisreprintbut
pointsoutthatsomeimperfectionsintheoriginalcopiesmaybeapparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondencefromthosetheyhavebeenunabletocontact.
ALibraryofCongressrecordexistsunderLCcontrolnumber:87003809
ISBN13:978-1-138-66769-3(hbk)
ISBN13:978-1-315-61886-9(ebk)
ISBN13:978-1-138-66775-4(pbk)
THE
MODERN URBAN
LANDSCAPE
EDWARD RELPH
CROOM HELM
London & Sydney

Contents
Preface
1. In trod uction 1.
2. Looking Back at the Future: Late Twentieth-century
Landscapes in the 1890s 11
Victorian inequalities 12
Socialism and new technologies 13
Edward Bellamy's Boston in 2000 19
William Morris's future English landscape 20
Utopian realities 22
3. Old Styles and New Forms in Architecture:
1880-1930 25
Victorian architecture 26
The decline of the last classical revival 29
Building big and building tall 33
Early skyscrapers in Chicago 35
Skyscraper styles to 1930 37
The origins of downtown 43
4. The Invention of Modern Town Planning:
1890-1940 49
Precedents for modern town planning 49
City beautiful and master planning 52
Garden cities 55
The landscape of garden cities 57
Neighbourhood units 62
The Radburn principle 65
Zoning 67
Unrealised ideal city plans: Radiant City
and Broadacre 69
Comments on the invention of town planning 74
5. Ordinary Landscapes of the First Machine Age:
1900-40 76
Parkways and expressways 77
Mechanical streets and the municipal landscape 79
Early commercial strips and the decline of
main street 83
Conspicuous mass consumption 89
Invidious scientific management 93
6. Modernism and Internationalism in Architecture:
1900-40 98
Sources of modernism 99
Functional futurism 102
An interlude - World War I 105
The Bauhaus 106
Modernist housing projects 109
Le Corbusier 112
Principles of modernism in the work of
Mies van der Rohe 114
The international movement 117
7. Landscapes in an Age of Illusions: 1930 to the Present 119
Microscopic manipulation and
anonymous expertise 120
Visible effects of new technologies 122
Adaptability, mimicry, opacity, ephemerality 126
Imagineering 129
The megamachine with its electronic eyes
on the street 130
Nuclearism 133
8. Planning the Segregated City: 1945-75 138
Standardised planning procedures and
planning by numbers 140
Clean-sweep planning and urban renewal 144
Pedestrian precincts, plazas and tunnels 150
State and corporate new towns 153
Highway design and the demise of the street 158
How to recognise a planned place 162
9. The Corporatisation of Cities: 1945- 166
Manifestations of corporatisation 167
Towers of conspicuous administration 168
Levittown and the corporate suburb 172
Corporate malls 178
Commercial strips - from casual chaos to
television road 181
Corporatisation, planning and architecture 185
Commodification and the seductive corporate city 187
10. Modernist and Late-Modernist Architecture: 1945- 190
Mies van der Rohe and the skin and bones style 191
Le Corbusier and the concrete cage 195
No-frills modernism and new brutalism 198
Expressionism 201
Late-modernist architecture 202
11. Post-Modernism in Planning and Architecture: 1970- 211
The old is new again 213
Commercial and residential gentrification 215
Heritage planning and preservation 221
Post-modern architecture 224
Urban design 229
Community planning 231
Late twentieth-century eclecticism 236
12. Modernist Cityscapes and Post-Modernist
Townscapes 238
Design phases in twentieth-century townscape 239
Qualities of modernist cityscapes 242
Qualities of post-modern townscapes 252
A modernist or post-modernist future
landscape? 258
A unity of disunity - concluding comments 259
Bibliography 268
Index 274