About three years ago, the sociologist Richard Sennett asked his friend and colleague Joan Clos, the executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Program, if he had ever read the Athens Charter, by the architect Le Corbusier. Published in 1943, the charter shaped the design of European and American cities for decades after the Second World War. It presented a set of ninety-four tenets that cities should follow to become functional and efficient. (No. 29: “High-rise apartments placed at wide distances apart liberate ground for large open spaces.”) Clos had indeed read it. “He said he found it a fiction,” Sennett recalled.

The Athens Charter was rigid—it proposed a strict formula for all cities to follow with no regard for geography or local culture—and aimed to simplify how cities worked, rather than to promote more complex ways of living. Over the years, Le Corbusier’s ideas have been credited with destroying neighborhoods and street life, but they have also continued to influence city design, from the growth of gated communities to car-centric city streets.....Continue Reading

Top image: The barrio Petare in western Caracas, Venezuela. Image © Christopher Anderson / Magnum

> via New Yorker