Broadacre City Analysis

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“We live now in cities of the past, slaves of the machine and of traditional building.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright
The Broadacre City - Relevance to Phoenix Today
In 1932, Frank Lloyd authored an essay entitled The Disappearing city in which he proposed a solution that he called the Broadacre City. He was against the classical architecture and its repetition in cities and proposed a modern architecture approach to city development. His distaste of city life was developed during his period in Chicago and hated the squalor like condition of the city, pollution, traffic, advertisements, no freedom of space or individuality. This lead him to the concept for a new way of living entirely, with the central notion of being decentralized. He called it the Broadacre City.
In another reading that I came across, it was suggested that the great depression was also one of the key reasons why he thought of coming up with a concept of Broadacre that he thought every man deserved with the economic and technological advancements since then.
The core idea of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City is that every man has one acre of land for living. An acre of land for a man and his family was sufficient enough for them to live individually. This would be accomplished by the decentralization of cities over spans of hundreds of miles. Rather than one large city crammed with millions of people. An idealistic merge of Urban and Rural - a self sufficient city covering broad spans offering the comforts of and conveniences of the city and the open space of the rural. Broadacre city exists independently of any major city, though there may be dozens of Braodcare Cities clustered together. He also favored the machine, by way of new means of communication via the telep...

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...nd solid waste.
6. Healthy Food System - local food stores, restaurants, community gardens, and other food productions.
7. Community Facilities and Programs - to generate high quality activities that encourage the interaction of neighborhood residents.
8. Economic Development - opportunities for investment, businesses, and employment that will, in turn, support an economically diverse and prosperous community. A range of commercial (office and retail) facilities should be offered to maximize working and shopping opportunities. Well-designed density is vital to a strong economic foundation in any neighborhood as it brings a critical mass of local employees and customers to support a variety of community needs.
Although some of Frank Lloyd Wrights Concepts touched on the terms of self sufficiency, the growing world today will be unable to sustain these concepts.

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