zondag 28 augustus 2011

Constant's New Babylon Nord improved


Constant's maps for cluster cities and labyrinthine towns (collectively known as New Babylon) are visually wonderful, but, as the above plan for 'New Babylon Nord' clearly shows they would practically be worse than the grandest schemes ever concocted by fascistects like Le Corbusier. Imagine the social and environmentally disastrous effects of a never ending cluster city too big to circumnavigate and wilfully too undifferentiated to humanize. Constant also obviously never heard of desire paths because all those gently curving paths take you a great distance away from where you want to go before closing in on them again. In the city of eternal play getting around is hard work. Perhaps that is what meant with social realism: straight paths. Constant's plan here cries out for the flowering of a million desire lines and in the above I have taken the liberty to ink some of them in.

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