Politics: Urban Planning

Question 1

Paris

Answer 1

• Haussmanisation: in centre of paris erecting large buildings that took up a lot of space but acted as large public buildings e.g. police, hotel etc.
• broad avenues easily recognisable e.g. Boulevard St-Germain - extremely wide to accommodate larger volume of traffic and also to deal with revolutions (smaller winding streets made it easier for citizens to build barricades to block military, wider streets harder to create barricades and can accommodate larger numbers of troops)
• large apartemnt blocks by Haussman > uniform in design, replaced many older buildings in paris
• commercial establishments on ground with apartments above that, this type of building makes up most of Paris architecture today
• Avenue de opera: terminates at entrance to opera house

Question 2

Regent Street

Answer 2

• Connecting two crown properties > Carlton House- wanted to improve ‘slum’ areas around House
• Regent street created and given more processional quality (broader streets etc.), symmetrical layout, stepping forward and stepping back on either side > replaced previous layout which had poor navigation etc
• connecting with all souls church > long colonnades created by other buildings lining the street
• provides continuous route, smaller individual businesses arranged in rows

Question 3

Washington DC

Answer 3

• Plan for Washington DC by Peter Charles L’Enfant and Andrew Ellicott
• not built to walking scale, monumentality of the plan means it is harder to walk great distances > opens up for automobile traffic and led to introduction of the subway system
• National Mall: planned to be winding, picturesque space full of tree-filled gardens >> put together by landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing >> looked like plan until around early C20
• McMillan Plan, Washington DC, 1901-2: reconfiguration of area around capital >> central Lincoln memorial with axial arrangement surrounding it > plan never formally adopted but elements slowly incorporated into city

Question 4

Brasil

Answer 4

• Plans by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer
• Brasilia plan: relocation of capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia > familiar with plans of Corbusier and had great influence on the design
• two monumental axes with cruciform plan - Costa compared it to a butterfly >> monumental axis contains most of the government buildings
• large superquadra apartment blocks (similar to Corbusier L’Habitation) intended to house people of differing classes etc. > most of area around Brasilia has developed into slums