The city, as we have inherited it from theancient Greeks, is both an institution and a way of life, onecoterminous with the civilization of Europe. The confluence ofstrangers in a single place and under a single law, there to livepeacefully side by side, joined by social networks, economiccooperation, and friendly competition through sports and festivals, isamong the most remarkable achievements of our species, responsible formost of the great cultural, political, and religious innovations of ourcivilization. Nothing is more precious in the Western heritage,therefore, than the cities of Europe, recording the triumph ofcivilized humanity not only in their orderly streets, majestic facades,and public monuments, but also in their smallest architectural detailsand the intricate play of light on their cornices and aperturesAmerican visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparingwhat they see with what is familiar from their own continent, willrecognize how careless their countrymen often have been in theirattempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routesprescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris ismiraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not beenable to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going theway of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surroundedfirst by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the suburbs, towhich those who work in the city flee at the end of the day.Admittedly, nothing in Europe compares with the vandalism thatmodernists have wreaked on Buffalo, Tampa, or Minneapolis {to takethree examples of American cities that cause me particular pain}.Nevertheless, the same moral disaster is beginning to afflict us—thedisaster of cities in which no one wishes to live, where public spacesare vandalized and private spaces boarded up.Until recently, European architects have either connived at theevisceration of our cities or actively promoted it. Relying on thespurious rhetoric of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they endorsed thetotalitarian projects of the political elite, whose goal after the warwas not to restore the cities but to clear away the “slums.” By“slums,” they meant the harmonious classical streets of affordablehouses, seeded with local industries, corner shops, schools, and placesof worship, that had made it possible for real communities to flourishin the center of our towns. High-rise blocks in open parkland, of thekind that Le Corbusier proposed in his plan for the demolition of Parisnorth of the Seine, would replace them. Meanwhile, all forms ofemployment and enjoyment would move elsewhere. Public buildings wouldbe expressly modernist, with steel and concrete frames and curtainwalls, but with no facades or intelligible apertures, and noperceivable relation to their neighbors. Important monuments from thepast would remain, but often set in new and aesthetically annihilatingcontexts, such as that provided for Saint Paul’s in London.Citizens protested, and conservation societies fought throughoutEurope for the old idea of what a city should look like, but themodernists won the battle of ideas. They took over the architectureschools and set out to ensure that the classical discipline ofarchitecture would never again be learned, since it would never againbe taught. The vandalization of the curriculum was successful: Europeanarchitecture schools no longer taught students the grammar of theclassical Orders; they no longer taught how to understand moldings, orhow to draw existing monuments, urban streets, the human figure, orsuch vital aesthetic phenomena as the fall of light on a Corinthiancapital or the shadow of a campanile on a sloping roof; they no longertaught appreciation for facades, cornices, doorways, or anything elsethat one could glean from a study of Serlio or Palladio. The purpose
www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-leon_krier.htmlwww.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-leon_krier.html