"THE GREAT TOWNS" m

and despair of the urban poor remains valid to the present day. The urban parks movement and the construction
of ideal company towns - Saltaire and Port Sunlight in the UK, Lowell and Pullman in the United States - as well
as more recent attempts at inner-city redevelopment, all address issues first identified by Engels.
The conditions described by Engels form the basis for the social realist tradition in literature, a tradition
i[1 England and is continued in the works of Upton Sinclair and
that begins with Charles Dickens and Mrs Gaskell
"The Great Towns'' Theodore Oreiser in the United States.
See Chapter 10 of Sir Peter Hall's Cities in Civilization (New York: Pantheon, 1 998) "Manchester 1760-1840"
from The Condition of the Working Class m England for more on early Manchester. Hall's chapter contains a bibliography of source material on economic and social
in 1844 (1845) conditions in early Manchester.
Other significant investigations of urban poverty in England include Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the
London Poor (four volumes, 1851-1862), Charles Booth's Conditions and Occupation of the People in East
Friedrich Engels London and Hackney (Journal of the Royal Historical Society, 1887), Jack London's People of the Abyss
(New York: Macmillan, 1903), and George Qf'\o\lell's Down and Out in Paris and London (London: Seeker and
Warburg, 1933).
In America, key works include Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Scribners, 1 903) and a
Editors' Introduction II whole series of reports on conditions in the African-American ghettos such as W .E. B. DuBois's The Philadelphia
Negro (p. 119), St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton's Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
It was the peculiar fate of Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) to live most of his adult life in the shadow of his better- 1945), and William Julius Wilson's When Work Disappears (p. 126).
known friend and partner Karl Marx and to be remembered as a fiercely bearded icon of International Communism. For a sampling of Engels's most important writings as well as those of his lifelong friend Karl Marx, see Robert
lt was, however, a more humanly accessible Engels who, full of youthful idealism at the age of only 24, came C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Na,rton, 1978). For an excellent summary of nineteenth-
face to face with the social horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Young Engels was sent by his industrialist century urban poverty conditions, consult "'The City of Dreadful Night" in Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow (London:
father to leam business management in the factories of Manchester in the English North West. The unintended Basil Blackwell, 1988). For further information on Engels's Manchester, and its connections to an emerging social
consequences of that particular paternal decision was The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 realism in fiction, consult literary historian Steven Marcus's magisterial Engels, Manchester, and the Working
(1845), a book that ranks as one of the earliest masterpieces of urban sociology. Class (New York: Random House, 1974). Also of interest is Robert Roberts's extraordinary The Classic Slum
By 1844 the Industrial Revolution had transformed conditions in many English cities. Manchester, England, (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1971), a first-person account of growing up in Salford during the
which Engels observed in detail, was emblematic of what the new industrial cities were like. Plate 4 from Augustus early years of the twentieth century.
Welby Pugin's Contrasts (1841) contrasts the skyline of a fifteenth-century city dominated by church steeples to
the same town in 1840. In the second view mills, factories, and a huge prison dominate the scene.
In the selection "'The Great Towns" reprinted here, Engels employs a peripatetic method. Although he
summarizes the socialist theory of the origin and historic role of the industrial working class, and although
he quotes from many contemporaneous sources to bolster his analysis, Engels constructs the bulk of his argument A town. such as London, where a man may wander for himself. but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness
by merely walking around the city and reporting what he sees. Quickly growing impatient with telling his readers hours together without reaching the beginning of the before he sets foot upon English soil.
about the social misery of working-class life, Engels begins showing them the horrors of industrial urbanism end, without meeting the slightest hint which could But the sacrifices which all this has cost become
by conducting them on a tour of Manchester's working-class districts. As in Dante's Inferno, the tour descends lead to the inference that there is open country within apparent later. After roaming the streets of the capital
deeper and deeper into the filth, misery, and despair that constitute the greater part of the Manchester conurbation. reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centrallzation, a day or two, making headway with difficulty through
Engels wrote just as the first daguerreotypes of cities were being produced, but unfortunately he did not this heaping together of two and a half millions of the human tunnoil and the endless lines of vehicles.
illustrate his book with actual pictures of the conditions that he described. Later in the nineteenth century Jacob human beings at one point, has multiplied the power after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realizes
Riis, Lewis Hine, and other photographers were to document slum conditions. The response of these and other of this two and a half millions a hundred-fold: has raised for the first time that these Londoners have been
photographers to the new reality of the nineteenth-century city is discussed in the selection by Frederic Stout, London to the commercial capital of the world. created forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human
"Visions of,a New Reality" (p. 147). the giant docks and assembled the thousand vessels nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilization
No one can read The Condition of the Working Class without acknowledging that Engels had come to know that continually cover the Thames. I know nothing which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which
the various neighborhoods of proletarian Manchester - Old Town, Irish Town, Long Millgate, and Salford - more imposing than the view which the Thames slWTibered within them have remained inactive, have
intimately and that his observations were acute and objective. Of particular interest are his descriptions of the public offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. been suppressed in order that a few might be devel-
health consequences (in terms of air and water pollution) of unrestrained overbuilding. Engels also observed that The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides, oped more fully and multiply through union with those
the fal(ades of the main thoroughfares mask the horrors that lie beyond from the eyes of the factory owners and especially from Woolwich upwards. the countless ships of others. The very turmoil of the streets has something
the middle·cfass managers who commute into the city from outlying suburbs. Plate 5, from Frank Leslie's Illustrated along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer repulsive, something against which human nature
Newspaper in 1887, contrasts the belching factories and slums that comprise the bulk of the city with a spacious together, until. at last, only a narrow passage remains rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and
main thoroughfare in the city. in the middle of the river. a passage through which ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human
The entire' tradition of twentieth-century urban planning, capitalist and socialist alike, owes an enormous debt hundreds of steamers shoot by one another; all this beings with the same qualities and powers, and vvith
to Engels. The connection he draws between the physical decrepitude of the urban infrastructure and the alienation is so vast. so impressive, that a man cannot collect the same interest in being happy? And have they not,
[]) FRIEDRICH ENGELS
in the end. to seek happiness injhe same way, by the
same means? And still they crowd by one another as
though they had nothing in common, nothing to do
with one another, and their only agreement is the
tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pave-
ment, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the
crowd. while it occurs to no man to honour another
vvith so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the
unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest
becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more
-these individuals are crowded together. within a limited
space. And. however much one maybe aware that this
isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking is
the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it
is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced. so self~conscious
as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dis-
solution of mankind into monads, of which each one
has a separate principle and a separate purpose, the
world of atoms. is here carried out to its utmost
extreme.
Hence it comes, too, that the social war. the war of
each against all, is here openly declared .... , people
regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits
the other. and the end of it all is. that the stronger treads
the weaker under foot. and that the powerful few, the
capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to
the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence
remains.
What is true of London. is true of Manchester,
Binningham. Leeds, is true of all great towns. Every·-
where barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one
hand. and nameless misery on the other, everywhere
social warfare, every man's house in a state of siege,
everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection
of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed
that one shrinks before the consequences of our social
state as they manifest themselves here undisguised,
and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still
hangs together
Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the
means of subsistence and production, is the weapon tomonow,
with \Vhich this social warfare is carried on, it is clear
that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon
the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern.
of a range of hills, which stretch hither from Oldham.
Cast into the whirlpool. he must struggle through
their last peak. Kersallmoor, being at once the race-
as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work. i.e.
course and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester
if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich itself
proper lies on the left bank of the lrwell, between
by means of him. wages await him which scarcely
that stream and the two smaller ones. the Irk and
suffice to keep pody and soul together; if he can get no
the Medlock. which here empty into the lrweiL On the
work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or
right bank of the lrwell. bounded by a sharp curve of
"THE GREAT TOWNS" !ITMi
star.;e, in which case the police will take care that he
~he ri~er.lles Salford. and farther westward Pendleton; of business. without ever seeing that they are in the
does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. During my
residence in England. at least twenty or thirty persons
~~rthvmrd from the lrwell lie Upper and Low.er midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and
Broughton; northward of the Irk. Cheetham Hrll; the left. For the thoroughfares leading from the
have died of simple starvation under the most revolt-
south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Charlton Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on
ing circumstances. and a jury has rarely been found
on Medlock; still farther, pretty well to the e.ast both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops.
possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the
of Manchester, Ardwick. The whole assemblage'· of and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower
matter. Let the testimony of the witnesses be never so
buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains bourgeoisie, which, out of self~interest. cares for a
c!ear'and unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the
about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more decent and cleanly external appearance and can care
jury is selected, always finds some backdoor through
than Jess. The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a for it. True. these shops bear some relation to the
which to escape the frightful verdict. death from
~rson may live in it for years, ~nd go in ~nd out dail.y districts which lie behind them, and are more elegant
starvation. The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in
vvlthout coming into contact With a working-peoples in the commercial and residential quarters than when
these cases, for it would speak its ovm condemnation.
quarter or even with workers; that is, so long as he they hide grimy working-men's dwellings: but they
But indirectly, far more than directly. many have died
confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. suffice to conceal from the eyes of the wealthy men
of starvation, where long continued want of proper
This arises chiefly from the fact. that by unconscious and women of strong stomachs and weak nerves the
nourishment has called forth fatal illness. when it has
tacit agreement. as well as with outspoken conscious misery and grime which fonm the complement of their
produced such debility that causes which might other-
determination. the working-people's quarters are wealth. So. for instance, Deansgate, which leads from
wise have remained inoperative. brought on severe
sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved the Old Church directly southward. is lined first with
illness and death. The English working-me; call this
for the middle class; or, if this does not succeed, they mills and warehouses, then with second-rate shops
social murder, and accuse our whole society of
are concealed with the cloak of charity. Manchester and alehouses; farther south. when it leaves the com-
perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?
contains. at its heart, a rather extended commercial mercial district. with less inviting shops, which grow
True. it is only individuals who starve. but what
district. perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, dirtier and more interrupted by beerhouses and gin
security has the working-man that it may not be his
and consisting almost wholly of offices and ware- palaces the farther one goes, until at the southern end
tum tomorrow? VVho assures him employment. who
houses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by the appearance of the shops leaves no doubt that
vouches for it that. if for any reason or no reason his
dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night only workers and workers only are their customers. So
lord and master discharges him tomorrow. he can
watchmen and policemen traverse its narrow lanes Market Street running south east from the Exchange;
struggle along with those dependent upon him, until
with their dark lanterns. This district is cut through by at first brilliant shops of the best sort. with counting-
he may find some one else "to give him bread"? Who
certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast traffic houses or warehouses above; in the continuation,
guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to
concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined Piccadilly, immense hotels and warehouses; in the
obtain work, that uprightness. industry, thrift, and the
wrth brilliant shops. In these streets the upper floors farther continuation. London Road. in the neighbour-
rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie,
are occupied, here and there, and there is a good deal hood of the Medlock. factories, beerhouses. shops for
are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows
of life upon them until late at night. With the exception the humbler bourgeoisie and the working population;
that he has something today, and that it does not
of this commercial district, all Manchester proper. all and from this point onward. large gardens and villas of
depend upon himself whether he shall have something
Salford and Hulme, a great part of Pendleton and the wealthier merchants and manufacturers. In this way
tomorrow. He knows that every breeze that blows,
Charlton, two-thirds of Ardwick. and single stretches any one who knows Manchester can infer the adjoining
every whim of his employer, every bad tum of trade
of Cheetham Hill and Broughton are all unmixed districts, from the appearance of the thoroughfare, but
may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which
working-people's quarters. stretching like a girdle, one is seldom in a position to catch from the street a
he has temporarily saved himself. and in which it is
averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the glimpse of the real labouring districts.! k'Ilow very well
hard and often impossible to keep his head above
commercial district. Outside. beyond this girdle. lives that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to
water. He knows that. though he may have the means
the upper and middle bourgeoisie, the middle bour- all great cities; I know, too. that the retail dealers are
of living today, it is very uncertain whether he shall
geoisie in regularly laid out streets in the vicinity of the forced by the nature of their business to take possession
working quarters, especially in Charlton and the lower- of the great highways; I know that there are more good
[.. J
lymg portions of Cheetham Hill; the upper bourgeoisie buildings than bad ones upon such streets everywhere,
Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope
m remoter villas with gardens in Charlton and Ardwick and that the value of land is greater near them than in
or on the breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton remoter districts; but at the same time I have never
and Pendleton. in free, wholesome country air. in ftne, seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class
comfortable homes. passed once every half or quarter from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of
hour by omnibuses going into the city. And the finest everything which might ai!Tont the eye and the nerves
part of the arrangement is this. that the members of this of the bourgeoisie. as in Manchester. And yet. in other
money aristocracy can take the shortest road through respects. Manchester is less built according to a plan.
the middle of all the labouring districts to their places after official regulations, is more an outgrowth of
m FRIEDRICH ENGELS
accident, than any other city; arfd when I consider in degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in compari-
this connection the eager assurances of the middJe- son with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which
class, that the working-class is doing famously, I cannot access can be gained only through covered passages
help feeling that the liberal manufacturers. the "Big in which no two human beings can pass at the same
Wigs" of Manchester. are not so innocent after all, in time. Of the irregular cramming together of dwellings
the matter of this sensitive method of construction, in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in
I may mention just here that the mills almost all which they are 'crowded literally one upon the other,
adjoin the rivers or the different canals that ramify It is impossible to convey an idea. And it is not the
throughout the city, before I proceed at once to des- buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester
cribe the labol!ring quarters. First of all. there is the Oldwhich are to blame for this: the confusion has only
Town of Manchester [Figure 1]. which lies between the recently reached its height when every scrap of space
northern boundary of the commercial district and left by the old way of building has been filled up and
the Irk. Here the streets. even the better ones, are patched over until not a foot ofland is left to be further
narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, occupied.
Withy Grove, and Shude Hill. the houses dirty. old, and [... ]
tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and
utterly honible. G~ing fmm the Old Church to Long between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this d€clivitous
Millgate. the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned hillside there are planted three rows ofhouses, of which
houses at the right. of which not one has kept its original the lowest rise directly out of the river. while the
level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill
Manchester, whose former inhabitants have removed in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river:
with their descendants into better-built districts, and in short, the method of construction is as crowded and
have left the houses, which were not good enough for disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate.
them. to a working-class population strongly mixed Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead
with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised from the main street into numerous courts, and he
working-men's quarter, for even the shops and beer- who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting
houses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a trifling grime the equal of which is not to be found- especially
in the courts which lead down to the Irk and which
contain unqualifiedly the most honible dwellings
which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there
stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the
covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that
the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only
by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and
excrement This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie
Bridge - in case any one should care to look into
it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries
which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench
of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only
entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow
dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first
court below Ducie Bridge, knovm as Allen's Court.
was in such a state at the time of the cholera that
the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and
disinfected with chloride oflime. Dr. Kay gives a tenible
description of the state of this court at that time. Since
then it seems to have been partially tom away and
rebuilt: at least looking down from Ducie Bridge, the
passer~by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris
Figure 1
vvith some newer houses. The view from this bridge,
mercifUlly concealed from mortals of small stature by
a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the
whole district. At the bottom flows. or rather stagnates,
the Irk. a narrow. coal-black. foul-smelling stream full
of debris and refuse. which it deposits on the shallower
right bank. In dry weather, a long string of the mOst
disgusting. blackish-green, slime pools are left standing
on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of
miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench
unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above
th~ surface of the stream. But besides this. the stream
itself is checked every few paces by high weirs. behind
which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick
masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and
gasworks. from which all drains and refuse find their
way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of
all the neighbouring sewers and privies. it may be easily
imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream
deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of
debris. the refuse. filth. and offal from the courts on the
steep left bank: here each house is packed close behind
rts neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black.
smol.y. crumbling, ancient. with broken panes and
wmdow-frames. The background is furnished by old
barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right bank
.stands a long row of houses and mills: the second house
being a ruin without a roof. piled with debris: the third
stands so low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable,
and therefore without windows or doors. Here the
background embraces the pauper burial-ground. the
station of the Liverpool and Leeds railway. and, in
the rear of this. the Workhouse, the "Poor-Law-Bastille"
of Manchester. which. like a citadel. looks threateningly
down from behind its high walls and parapets on the
hilltop. upon the working-people's quarter below.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more
flat and the right bank steeper. but the condition of the
dwellings on both banks grows worse rather than
better. He who turns to the left here from the main
street, Long Millgate. is lost; he wanders from one court
to another. turns countless comers, passes nothing
but narrow. filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few
minutes he has lost all clue. and knows not whither to
tum. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings. some
of them actually uninhabited, which means a great deal
here; rarely a wooden or stone floor to be seen in the
houses. almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting windows
and doors. and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of
debris. refuse. and offal: standing pools for gutters. and
a stench which alone would make it impossible for a
"THE GREAT TOWNS" IEIJil
human being in any degree civilized to live in such a
district. The newly~built extension of the Leeds railway.
which crosses the Irk here. has swept away some of
these courts and lanes, laying others completely open
to view. Immediately under the railway bridge there
stands a court, the filth and horrors of which surpass
all the others by far, just because it was hitherto so shut
off. so secluded that the way to it could not be found
without a good deal of trouble. I should never have
discovered it myself. without the breaks made by the
railway, though I thought I knew this whole region
thoroughly. Passing along a rough bank, among stakes
and washing-lines. one penetrates into this chaos
of small one·storeyed. one-roomed huts, in most of
which there is no artificial floor: kitchen. living and
sleeping room all in one. In such a hole. scarcely five
feet long by six broad. I found two beds - and such
bedsteads and beds! - which. with a staircase and
chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several
others I found absolutely nothing, while the door stood
open. and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere
before the doors refuse and offal: that any sort of
pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only
felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection
of cattle~sheds for human beings was surrounded
on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the third
by the river. and besides the narrow stair up the bank.
a narrow doorv.ray alone led out into another almost
equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings.
Enough' The whole side of the Irk is built in this way,
a planless. knotted chaos of houses. more or less on
the verge ofuninhabitableness. whose unclean interiors
fully correspond with their filthy external surroundings.
And how could the people be clean with no proper
opportunity for satisfying the most natural and ordinary
wants? Privies are so rare here that they are either
filled up every day. or are too remote for most of the
inhabitants to use. How can people wash when they
have only the dirty Irk water at hand. while pumps
and water pipes can be found in decent parts of the
city alone? In truth. it cannot be charged to the account
of these helots of modem society if their dwellings
are not more clean than the pig-sties which are here
and there to be seen among them. The landlords are
not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars
on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors
of which stand at least two feet below the low-water
level of the Irk that flows not six feet away from
them; or like the upper floor of the comer-house on
the opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the
 FRIEDRICH ENGELS
"THE GREAT TOWNS"
- __ __
-~ ' "_"_, ,
~---,--

ground-ftoor, utterly uninhabitajlle, stands deprived of

courts, he will find this piggery repeated at every ' . d on · without reference to the health hor passage leads from one side. The cottages ·which face
all fittings fOr doors and windows, a case by no means tvventy paces_ up carne _
fort of the inhabitants, w1th sole reference to _t e this back street command least rent. and are most
rare in this region, when this open ground-floor is used
as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of
Such is the Old Town of Manchester. and on re- ~:est possrble pro At on the principle that no hole IS so neglected. 'These have their rear \Valls in common with
reading my description. I am forced to admit that bad but that some poor creature must take tl who can pay the third row of cottages which face a second street,
other facilities!
instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black and command less rent than the first row and more
If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on _ ror notMng betler.
enough to convey a true impression of the filth. ruin, J [. l " than the second. The streets are laid out some\vhat
the opposite side from Long Millgate into the midst
and uninhabitableness. the defiance of all considera- , lt may not be out of place to make some gen~ral as in [Figure 2I
of the working-men's dwellings, vve shaH come into a
tionS of cleanliness, ventilation. and health which obscr.;ations just here as to t~e customal}' construc~on
somewhat ne\ver quarter. which stretches from St.
characterize the construction of this single district of working-men's quarters m Manchester. We ~ave
Mrchael's Church to Withy Grove and Shude HilL Here
containing at least tw·enty to thirty thousand inhabi- seen how in the Old Town pure accident detennmed
- .there is sommvhat better order. Jn place of the chaos
tants. And such a district exists in the heart of the . th-e grouping of the houses in general. Every house
of buildings, we find at least long straight lanes and
second city of England, the first manufacturing city of is built without reference to any other, and the scraps,
alleys or courts. built according to a plan and usually
the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space of space betvveen them are called courts f?r v•mnt of
square. But if, in the fanner case, every house was built
a human being can move. how llttle air- and such air] another name. In the somewhat n~wer po~Ions of the
according to caprice. here each lane and court is so
-he can breathe. how little of civilization he may share
built. without reference to the situation of the adjoining sam e quarter. and in other workmg-men . s quarters,
..
and yet live. it is only necessary to travel hither. True, dating from the early days of industna 1 acuvrty, a
ones. The lanes run now in this direction. now in
this is the Old Town, and the people of M_anchester somewhat more orderly arrangement. may .be found.
that. while every two minutes the v:anderer gets into
emphasize the fact whenever any one mentions to The space between two streets is divlded mto more
a blind alley, or, on turning a comer, finds himself back
them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth: but regular. usually square courts.
where he started from; certainly no one w·ho has
what does that prove? Everything \ovhich here arouses These courts were built in this 'Nay from the
not lived a considerable time in this labyrinth can find
horror and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to beginrling, and communicate with the streets by me~ns
his way through it. Street
the industna/ epoch. The couple of hundred houses, of covered passages. If the totally planless constructron
If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district.
which belong to old Manchester, have been long since is injurious to the health of the workers by pr~ventmg
the ventilation of these streets and courts is. in con-
abandoned by their original inhabitants: the industrial ventilation, this method of shutting them up m courts
sequence of this confusion, quite as imperfect as in
epoch alone has crammed into them the swanns of surrounded on all sides by buildings is far more so. The
the Irk region; and if this quarter may. nevertheless. be
workers whom they now shelter; the industrial epoch air simply cannot escape: the chimneys of the houses. By this method of construction, comparatively good
said to have some advantage over that of the Irk. the
alone has built up every spot between these old houses are the sole drains for the imprisoned atmospher,e of ventilation can be obtained for the first row of cottages,
houses being ne\ver and the streets occasionally having
to vvin a covering for the masses whom it has conjured the courts, and they serve the purpose only so long as and the third row is no worse off than in the former
gutters. nearly every house has. on the other hand,
hither from the agricultural districts and from Ireland: fire is kept burning. Moreover. the houses surro~nding method. The middle row, on the other hand, is at least
a cellar dwelling, which is rarely found in the Irk district,
the industrial epoch alone enables the owners of these such courts are usually built back to back havrng the as badly ventilated as the houses in the court~, nnd ~e
by reason of the greater age and more careless
cattlesheds to rent them li:rr high prices to human rear wall in common: and this alone suffices to prev~nt back street is always in the same filthy, d1sgustmg
construction of the houses. As for the rest the filth.
beings, to plunder the poverty of the workers. to anv sufficient through ventilation. And. as the P?hce. condition as they, The contractors prefer this method
debris, and offal heaps, and the pools in the streets are
common to both quarters, and in the district now under
undermine the health of thousands, in order that they ch~rged with care of the streets does not trouble rtsell because it saves them space, and furnishes the means
alone, the owners, may grow rich. In the industrial about the condition of these courts, as evei)Tthmg offteecing better-paid workers through the higher rents
discussion, another feature most injurious to the
epoch alone has it become possible that the worker quietly lies where it is throvm. there is no cause for of the cottages in the first and third rows. 'These three
cleanliness of the inhabitants. is the multitude of pigs
scarcely freed from feudal ser:itude could be used as wonder at the filth and heaps of ashes and offal to be different forms of cottage building are found all over
walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the ofl'al
mere material. a mere chattel; that he must let himself found here. I have been in courts. in Millers Street, at Manchester and throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire.
heaps, or kept imprisoned in small pens. Here. as in
be crowded into a dwelling too bad for every other. least half a foot below the level of the thoroughfare, often mixed up together, but usually separate enou.gh
most of the working-men's quarters of Manchester, the
which he for his hard-earned wages buys the right to let and without the slightest drainage li:rr the water that to indicate the relative age of parts of towns_ Th~ th1rd
pork-raisers ·rent the courts and build pigpens in them
go utterly to ruin. This manufacture has achieved. accumulates in them in rainy weather! More recently system. that of the back alleys, prevails largely rn the
In almost every court one or even several such pens
which, without these workers. this poverty. this slavery another different method ofbuilding was adopted, and great working-men's district east of St. Georges Ro~d
may be found into which the inhabitants of the court
could not have lived, True. the original construction has now become generaL Working*men's cottages are and An coats Street. and is the one most often found m
tlu ow all refuse and offal. whence the swine grow fat
of this quarter was bad, little good could have been almost never built singly, but always by the dozen or the other working-men's quarters of Manchester and its
and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly
made out of it; but, have the landowners, has the score: a single contractor building up one or two streets suburbs.
corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable sub-
municipality done anything to improve it when re- at a time. These are then arranged as follows; One front [. l
stances_ Thr;Jugh this quarter, a broad and measurably
building? On the contrary. wherever a nook or comer is formed of cottages of the best class, so fortunate as Such are the various working-people's quarters
decent street has been cut. Millers Street. and the
was free. a house has been run up; where a superfluous to possess a back door and small court. and these of Manchester as I had occasion to obse1vc them
background has been pretty successfully concealed.
passage remained, it has been built up: the value ofland command the highest rent. In the rear of these cottages personally during twenty months If we briefly formu-
But if any one;should be led by curiosity to pass through
rose with the blossoming out of manufacture. and the runs a nartow alley, the back street, built up at both late the result of our wanderings, we must admlt that
one of the numerous passages which lead into the
more it rose, the more madly was the work ofbullding ends, into which either a narrow roadway or a covered 350,000 working-people of Manchester and its envrrons
m FRIEDRICH ENGELS

live, almost all of them. in WJ'etched, damp, filthy ventilated. damp, and unwholesome. The inhabitants \
cottages, that the streets which surround them are are confined to the smallest possible space, and at least
usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid one family usually sleeps in each room. The interior
out without the slightest reference to ventilation. with arrangement of the dwellings is poverty-stricken in
reference solely to the profit secured by the contractor. various degrees, down to the utter absence of even the
In a word. we must confess that in the working-men's most necessary furniture. The clothing of the workers,
dwellings of Manchester. no cleanliness. no con- too, i, generally scanty, and that of great multitudes is
venience, and consequently no comfortable family life
is possible; that in such dwellings only a physically
in rags. The food is. in general, bad; often almost unfit l
for use. and in many cases, at least at times, insufficient
degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, in quantity, so that. in extreme cases, death by starvation

I
'!educed morally and physically to bestiality, could feel results. Thus the working-class of the great cities offers
comfortable and at home.
a graduated scale of conctitions in life, in the best cases
[.. l a temporarily endurable existence for hard work and

II
To sum up briefly the facts thus far cited. The good wages. good and endurable, that is, from the
great towns are chiefly inhabited by working-people. worker's standpoint; in the worst cases, bitter want,
since in the best case there is one bourgeois for two reaching even homelessness and death by starvation.
workers. often for furee, here and there for four: these The average is much nearer the worst cas~ than the
workers have no property whatsoever of their own. and best. And this series does not fall into fixed classes. so
live wholly upon wages, which usually go from hand that one can say, this fraction of the working.cJass is E
to mouth. Society, composed wholly of atoms, does well off, has always been so. and remains so. If that is
not trouble itself about them; leaves them to care for the case here and there. if single branches of work have v.
themselves and their famllies. yet supplies them no in general an advantage over others, yet the condition N<
means of doing this in an efficient and permanent lrn
of the workers in each branch is subject to such great
manner. Every working-man, even the best, is therefore fluctuations that a single working-man may be so placed al!
constantly exposed to loss of work and food, that is, to as to pass through the whole range from comparative
death by starvation, and many perish in this way. The eJct
comfort to the extremest need. even to death by po
dwellings of the Workers are everywhere badly planned. starvation, while almost every English working· man can
badly built, and kept in the worst condition, badly tell a tale of marked changes of fortune. sig
tee

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!
t~~"3 EBENEZER HOWARD
This plan, or. if the reader be Pleased to so tenn it
this absence of plan. avoids the dangers of stagnatio~
~~ de.ad level, and. though encouraging individual
:nltlatlve, permits of the fullest co-operation. while the
mcreas~d rents which follow from this form of
competition are common or municipal property, and
by far the larger part of them are expended in
permanent improvements.
. While the town proper, with its population engaged
JQ -vanous trades. callings. and professions, and with
a store or depot in each ward. offers the most natural
market to the people engaged on the agricultural
estate. masmuch as to the extent to which the tovms-
people demand their produce they escape altogether
any railway rates and charges; yet the fanners and
others are not by aey means limited to the town as their
only market. but have the fullest right to dispose of
thetr p~oduce to whomsoever they please. Here. as in
every feature of the experiment. it will be seen that it is
not the area of rights v;hlch is contracted. but the area
of choice which is enlarged.
This principle of freedom holds good with regard
to manufacturers and others who have established
~em~elves in the town_ These manage their affairs
m.the!r own way, subject, of course, to the genera! law
of the land. and subject to the provision of sufficient
space_forworkmen an9 reasonable sanitary conditions_
Even m r_egard to such matters as water, lighting. and
telephomc communication- which a municipality. if
efficient and honest. is certainly the best and
natural body to supply- no n·g,·,d Clf absc11ulte rno:Joc'~j:;;.<
IS sought; and if any private corporation or
individuals proved Itself capable of supplying 00
advan:ageou~ tenns. either the :vhole town or a section
of It, WJth these or
- any commodities the supp! yow
was taken up by the corporation • this would b ea ll owed.
N~ re.ally sound system of actwn is in more need r.f
artJficJal su~po~ ~an is any sound system of thought
The _area of mumcipal and corporate action is probably
destmed
. .
to become greatly enlarged·· but • ,.f 1.t.Istobe .
so, .It will be because the people possess faith .m
act!on,_ and that faith can be best shown by a \Vide
extension of the area of freedom.
Dot.ted abou~ ~e e_sta:e are seen various charitable
and philanthropic InstitutiOns. These are not underth-
control of the municipality, but are suppe1Tted an~
managed by vanous public-spirited people who have
~ee~ l~VJte~ by the municipality to establish these
mstitutJons m an open healthy district. and on land
let to ~~m at a pepper-com rent. it occurring to the
authonties that they can the better afford to be thus
generous. as the spending power of these institutions
greatly benefits the whole community. Besides, as
those persons who migrate to the tovvn are among its
:nost energetic and resourceful members, it is but
JUSt and right that their more helpless brethren should
be able to enjoy the benefits of an experiment which
IS designed for humanity at large.
f h''ch
,"
-;
·Le Corbusier
Editors' Introduction
Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was one of the founding fathers of the Modernist movement and of what has come
to be known as the International Style in architecture. Painter, architect, city planner, philosopher, author of
revolutionary cultural manifestos - Le Corbusier exemplified the energy and efficiency of the Machine Age. His
was the bold, nearly mystical rationality of a generation that was eager to accept the scientific spirit of the twentieth
century on its own terms and to throw off all pre-existing ties - political, cultural, conceptual - with what it
considered an exhausted, out-moded past.
Born Charles-Eduouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier grew up in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, noted for
its watch-making industry. He took his famous pseudonym after he moved to Paris to pursue a career in art and
architecture. From the first, his designs for modern houses- he called them "machines for living"- were strikingly
original, and many people were shocked by the spare cubist minimalism of his designs. The real shock, however,
came in 1922 when Le Corbusier presented the public with his plan for "A Contemporary City of Three Million
People." Laid out in a rigidly symmetrical grid pattern, the city consisted of neatly spaced rows of identical, strictly
geometrical skyscrapers as illustrated in Plate 37. This was not the city of the future, Le Corbusier insisted, but
the city of today.lt was to be built on the Right Bank, after demolishing several hundred acres of the existing urban
fabric of Parisi
The "Contemporary City" proposal certainly caught the attention of the public, but it did not win Le Corbusier
many actual urban planning commissions. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, he sought out potential
patrons wherever he could find them- the industrial capitalists of the Voisin automobile company, the communist
rulers of the Soviet Union, and the fascist Vichy government of occupied France - mostly without success. Le
Cmbusier's real impact came not from cities he designed and built himself but from cities that were built by others
incorporating the planning principles that he pioneered. Most notable among these was the notion of "the
skyscraper in the park," an idea that is today ubiquitous. Whether in relatively complete examples like Brasilia and
Chandigar, India (where new cities were built from scratch), or in partial examples such as the skyscraper parks
and the high-rise housing blocks that have been built in cities worldwide, the Le Corbusier vision has truly
transformed the global urban environment.
Le Corbusier's "Contemporary City" plan has often been contrasted to Frank Lloyd Wright's "Broadacre"
(p. 325), and the comparison of a thoroughly centralized versus a thoroughly decentralized plan is indeed striking.
Le Corbusier's boldness invites comparison with the original optimism of the post-World War II reconstruction
and redevelopment efforts and even with the work of such visionary megastructuralists as Paolo Soleri. Jane
Jacobs (p. 114) may be counted as one of the severest critics and grassroots opponents of Corbusian city planning
pnnciples, and Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard's "Urban Design Manifesto" (p. 437) deliberately takes the
form of a Le Corbusier pronouncement but rejects his program, opting instead for lively streets, participatory
planning, and the integration of old buildings into the new urban fabric. Beneath all the sparkling clarity of Le
 rn:J LE CORBUSIER "A CONTEMPORARY CITY" fffl
Corbusier's urban designs are questions, which must forever remain conjectural: How would delnocraticpo'iitics• Vte must have some rule of conduct (a) Citizens are of the city those who work and live
be practiced in a Corbusian city? What would social relationships be like amid the gleaming towers? We must have fundamental principles for modem in it.
Le Corbusier's writings include The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (New York: Dover, 1987) (lransfE1tori town planning. (b) Suburban dwellers are those who work in the outer
by Frederich Etchells from Urbanisme [1929]), Concerning Town Planning (translated by Clive Entwistla from industrial zone and who do not come into the city:
Propos d'Urbanisme [1 9461, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), and L 'Urbanisme des i;ois they live in garden cities.
Etablissements Humaines (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1959). (c) The mixed sort are those who work in the business
Excellent accounts of Le Corbusier's ideas may be found in Robert Fishman's Urban Utopias in the Twentieth A level site is the ideal site [for the contemporary city parts of the city but bring up their families in garden
Century(New York: Basic Books, 1977), Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), and Kenneth (Flgure !)].In all those places where traffic becomes cities.
Frarilpton's Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century (New York: Abrams, 2002, with photographs by over-intensified the level site gives a chance of a
, -Roberto Scbezen), For a closer look at some of Le Corbusier's most important urban planning projects, consUlt nonnal solution to the problem. Where there is less To classify these divisions (and so make possible
Vikramaditya Prakash's Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Seattl~; traffic, differences in level matter less. the transmutation of these recognized types) is to
University of Washington Press, 2002) and Klaus-Peter Gast and Arthur Ruegg, Le Corbusier: Paris-Chandigarh The river flows far away from the city. The river is attack the most important problem in town planning,
(Birkhauser, 2000). a kind of liquid railway, a goods station and a sorting for such a classification would define the areas to
house. In a decent house the servants' stairs do not go be allotted to these three sections and the delimitation
through the drawing room - even if the maid is of their boundaries. This would enable us to formulate
charming (or if the little boats delight the loiterer and resolve the following problems:
t- - Jeamng on a bridge).
The existing congestion in the centre must be eliminated A CONTEMPORARY CITY OF The City. as a business and residential centre,
The use of technical analysis and architectural THREE MILLION INHABITANTS 2 The Industrial City in relation to the Garden Cities
synthesis enabled me to draw up my scheme for a Population
(i.e. the question of transport).
contemporary city of three million inhabitants. The Proceeding in the manner of the investigator in his This consists of the citizens proper; of suburban 3 The Garden Cities and the daily transport of the
result of my work was shown in November 1922 at laboratory, I have avoided all special cases, and all that dwellers: and of those of a mixed kind. workers.
the Salon d'Automne in Paris. It was greeted with a may be accidental. and I have asswned an ideal site to
sort of stupor: the shock of surprise caused rage in begin with. My object was not to overcome the existing
some quarters and enthusiasm in others. The solution state of things, but by construcling a theoretically water~
I put forward was a rough one and completely un- tight formula to arrive at the fundamental principles of
compromising. There were no notes to accompany the modem town planning Such fundamental principles, if
plans, and. alas! not ~verybody can read a plan. I should they are genuine, can serve as the skeleton of any
have had to be constahtly on the spot in order to reply system of modem town planning; being as it were the
to the fundamental questions which spring from the rules according to which development will take place.
very depths of human feelings. Such questions are We shall then be in a position to take a special case, no
of profound interest and cannot remain unanswered. matter what: whether it be Paris, London. Berlin, New
When at a l~ter date it became necessary that this York or some small town. Then, as a result of what we
book should be written. a book in which I could formu- have learnt, we can take control and decide in what
late the nevi principles of Town Planning, I resolutely direction the forthcoming battle is to be waged. For the
decided first ofall to find answers to these fundamental desire to rebuild any great city in a modem way is
questions. I have used two kinds of argument: first. to engage in a fonmidable battle. Can you imagine
those essentially hwnan ones which start from the mind people engaging in a battle without knowing their
or the heart or the physiology of our sensations as a objectives? Yet that is exactly what is happening. The
basis; secondly, historical and statistical arguments. authorities are compelled to do something, so they
Thus I could keep in touch with what is fundamental give the police white sleeves or set them on horseback,
and at the same time be master of the environment in they invent sound signals and light signals, they pro-
which all this takes place. pose to put bridges over streets or moving pavements
In this way I hope I shall have been able to help under the streets: more garden cities are suggested,
my reader to take a number of steps by means of which or it is decided to suppress the tramways, and so on.
he can reach a sure and certain position. So that when And these decisions are reached in a sort of frantic
I unroll my plans I can have the happy assurance that haste in order. as it were, to hold a wild beast at bay.
his astonishment will no longer be stupefaction nor his That beast is the great city. It is infinitely more powerful
fears mer~ panic. than all these devices. And it is just beginning to wake.
[.. I What will to-morrow bring forth to cope with it? Figure 1

LE CORBUSIER
- ~- -----------------------
Our first requirement \;,.'ill be an organ that is com·
pact, rapid, lively and concentrated this is the Crty
\vith its well organized centre. Our second requirement
will be another organ, supple. extensive and elastic;
this is the Garden City on the periphery. Lying between
these two organs, we must require the legal establishment
of that absolute necessity. a protective zone which
allows of extension, a reserved zone of woods and fields,
.a fresh-air reserve.
Density of population
The more dense the population of a city is the Jess
are the distances that have to be covered. The moral.
therefore. is that we' must increase the density ofthe centres
of our dties, where business affairs are cam·ed on
Lungs
W ark in our modem vmrld becomes more intensified
day by day, and its demands affect our nervous system
in a way that grows more and more dangerous_
Modem toil demands quiet and fresh air. not stale air.
The towns of to-day can only increase in density
at the expense of the open spaces which are the lungs
of a city.
We must increase the open spaces and diminish the
distances to be covered. Therefore the centre of the city
must be constructed vertically.
The city's residential quarters must no longer be
built along" corridor-streets", full of noise and dust and
deprived of light.
It is a simple matter to build urban dwellings away
from the streets, without small internal courtyards and
with the windows lookjng on to large parks: and this
whether our housing schemes are of the type with ··set~
backs" or built on the "cellular" principle
The street
The street of to-day is still the old bare ground which
has been paved over, and under which a few tube
railways have been run.
The modem street in the true sense of the word
is a new t-ype of organism. a sort of stretched-out
workshop. a home for many compllcated and delicate
organs, such as gas. water and electric mains_ .It is
contrary to all economy, to all security, and to
to bury these important service mains. They ought
be accessible throughout their length. The va:am:a ,
storeys of this stretched-out vwrkshop will each
their ovm particular functions. If this type of
whrch.l have called a "workshop". is to be realized
it becomes as much a matter of construction as
the houses with which it is customary to flank it. and the
bridges which carry it over valleys and across rivers~
The modern street should be a masterpiece
engineering and no longer a job for navvies.
The "corridor-street" should be tolerated no
for it poisons the houses that border it and leads to
the construction of small internal courts or "wells",
Traffic
Traffic can be classified more easily than other things,
To-day traffic is not classified it is like dynamite
Aung at hazard into the street, killing pedestrians. Even
so, traffic does not fulfil its function. This sacrifice of the
pedestrian leads nowhere.
If we classify traffic we get
(a) Heavy goods traffic.
(b) Lighter goods traflic. i.e. vans, etc , which make
short journeys in all directions.
(c) Fast traflic. which covers a large section of the
town.
Three kinds of roads are needed, and in .
superimposed storeys:
(a) Below-ground there would be the street for heavy
traffic. This storey of the houses w·ould consist
merely of concrete piles. and between them large
open spaces which would form a sort of clearing-
house where heavy goods traflic could load and
unload.
(b) At the ground Door level of the buildings there
would be the complicated and delicate network
ofthe ordinary streets taking traffic in every desired
direction.
(c) Running north and south, and east and west, and
forming the two great axes of the city. there would
be great arterial roads for fast one·way traffic built
on immense reinforced concrete bridges 120 to
180 yards in width and approached every half-mile
or so by subsidiary roads from ground leveL These
"A CONTEMPORARY CITY" ~f'j
loop systems for suburban traffic, and below these
arteri~l roads could therefore be joined at any given
again the four great main lines serving the provinces
point, so that even at the highest speeds the town
and running north, south, east and west. These main
can be traversed and the suburbs reached without
lines would end at the Central Station, or better still
having to negotiate any cross· roads.
might be connected up by a loop system.
The number of existing streets should be diminished
tw·o-thirds. The number of crossings depends
directly on the number of streets; and cross-roads are The station
enemy to traffic. The number of existing streets was
There is onJy one station. The only place for the station
at a remote epoch in history. The perpetuation
is in the centre of the city. It is the natural place for it,
of the boundaries of properties has, almost without
and there is no reason for putting it anywhere else. The
exception, preserved even the faintest tracks and
railway station is the hub of the wheeL
footpaths of the old village and made streels of them.
The station would be an essentially subterranean
and sometimes even an avenue ... The result is that
building. Its roof, which would be two storeys above
we have cross·roads every fifty yards, even every
the natural ground level of the city, would fmm the
twenty yards or ten yards. And this leads to the
aerodrome for aero-taxis. This aerodrome (linked up
ridiculous traffic congestion we all know so welL
with the main aerodrome in the protected zone) must
The distance between two bus stops or two tube
be in close contact with the tubes. the suburban lines.
stations gives us the necessary unit for the distance
the main lines, the main arteries and the administrative·
between streets, though this unit is conditional on
the speed of vehicles and the walking capacity of services connected with all these ...
pedestrians. So an average measure of about 400 yards
would give the notlllal separation between streets.
and make a standard for urban distances My city The plan of the city
is conceived on the gridiron system w-ith streets every
The basic principles we must follow are these:
400 yards, though occasionally these distances are
subdivided to give streets every 200 yards. We must de-congest the centres of our cities.
This triple system of superimposed levels answers 2 We must augment their density.
every need of motor traffic (lorries, private cars, taxis, 3 We must increase the means for getting about.
buse.s) because it provides for rapid and mobile transit. 4 We must increase parks and open spaces.
Traffic running on fixed rails is only justified if it is
At the very centre we have the station \Vith its
in the fonn of a convoy carrying an immense load:
it then becomes a sort of extension of the underground landing stage for aero-taxis.
Running north and south, and east and west. we
system or of trains dealing with suburban traffic. The
have the main arteries for fast traffic, forming elevated
tramway has no n·ghl to exist in the heart ofthe modern city.
If the city thus consists of plots about 400 yards roadways 120 feet wide
At the base of the sl-y-scraper; and all round them
square. this will give us sections of about 40 acres in
we have a great open space 2,400 yards by 1.500 yards,
area, and the density of population will val'j from
giving an area of3,600,000 square yards, and occupied
50,000 down to 6,000, according as the "lots" are
by gardens, parks and avenues. In these parks, at
developed for business or for residential purposes.
the foot of and round the sl-y-scrapers, would be the
The natural thing, therefore. would be to continue to
restaurants and cafes. the luxury shops, housed in
apply our unit of distance as it exists in the Paris tubes
buildings with receding terraces: here too would be
to-day (namely, 400 yards) and to put a station in the
the theatres, halls and so on: and here the parking
mrddle of each plot.
Following the two great axes of the city. t\vo places or garage shelters.
The sky-scrapers are designed purely for business
"storeys" below the arterial roads for fast traffic. would
run the tubes leading to the fourfurthest points of the purposes
On the left we have the great public buildings,
garden city suburbs, and linking up with the metro-
the museums, the municipal and administrative offices
politan network . . At a still lower level, and again
Still further on the left we have the "Park" (which is
following these two main axes, would run the one~way
EJil LE CORBUSIER
available for further logical deve1opment of the heart
of the city).
On the right. and traversed by one of the arms of
the main arterial roads, we have the r.,.varehouses. and
the industrial quarters with their goods stations.
All around the city is the protected zone of woods and
green fields.
Fwther beyond are the garden cities. forming a wide
encircling band.
· . · Then, right in the midst of all these, we have the
Central Station, made up of the following elements:
(a) The landing-platform: forming an aerodrome of
200.000 square yards in area.
(b) The entresol or mezzanine: at this level are
the raised tra;ks for fast motor traffic: the only
crossing being gyratory.
(c) The ground floor where are the entrance halls
and booking offices for the tubes, suburban lines.
main line and air traffic.
(d) The "basement": here are the tubes which serve
the city and the main arteries.
(e) The "sub-basement": here are the suburban lines
running on a one~way loop.
(D The "sub-sub-basement": here are the main lines
(going north,south, east and west).
The city
Here we have twenty~four sky~scrapers capable
each of housing 10,000 to 50,000 employees: this is
the business and hotel section, etc .. and accounts for
400,000 to 600,000 inhabitants.
The reside~tial blocks, of the two main types
already mentioned. account for a further 600.000
inhabitants.
The garden cities give us a further 2.000,000
inhabitants, or more.
In the great central open space are the cafes,
restaurants, luxury shops, halls of various kinds. a
magnificent forum descending by stages down to the
immense parks surrounding it, the whole arrangement
providing a spectacle of order and vitality.
Density of population
(a) The sky-scraper: 1.200 inhabitants to the acre.
(b) The r~sidential blocks with set-backs: 120
inhabitants to the acre. These are the ltDcury
dwellings.
(c) The residential blocks on the "cellular" systen}.
with a similar number of inhabitants.
This great density gives us o~~~~~~'=:~,~~~~~::~~:g
of distances and ensures rapid ·
Note. The average density to the acre of Pans
· .
.
the heart of the tovm is 146, and of London 63:
of the over-crowded quarters of Paris 213, and
London 169.
Open spaces
Of the area (a), 95 per cent of the ground is open
(squares. restaurants, theatres).
Of the area (b), 85 per cent of the ground is open.
(gardens, sports grounds). _ The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is not
Of the area (c), 48 per cent of the ground is open
(gardens, sports grounds). · our present haphazard arrangements. which are all we
Educational and civic centres, universities,
museums of art and industry, public
services, county hall
The "Jardin anglais". (The city can extend here, if
necessary.)
Sports grounds: Motor racing track, Racecourse,
Stadium, Swimming baths, etc.
The protected zone (which will be the
property of the city), with Its aerodrome
A zone in which all building would be prohibited:
reserved for the growth of the city as laid down by
the municipality: it would consist of woods fields
and sports grounds. The fonming of a "protected zone':
by continual purchase of small properties in the
immediate vicinity of the city is one of the most
essential and urgent tasks which a municipality
can pursue. It would eventually represent a tenfold
return on the capital invested.
Industrial quarters: types of buildings
employed
For business: sky-scrapers sixty storeys high with no
internal wells or courtyards ..
"A CONTEMPORARY CITY"
. Residential buildings with "set-backs", of six double The mechanic dates back only twenty years, yet
storeys; again \vith no internal wells: the flats looking already he forms the highest caste of the working
on either side on to immense parks. world.
The mason dates ... from time immemorial! He
Residential buildings on the "cellular" principle. with
';hanging gardens~, looking on to immense parks: again bangs away with feet and hammer. He smashes up
no internal wells. These are "service·flats" of the moSt everything round him. and the plant entrusted to him
falls to pieces in a few months. The spirit of the mason
modem kind.
must be disciplined by making him part of the severe
and exact machinery of the industrialized builder's
Garden cities: their aesthetic, economy, yard.
perlection and modern outlook The cost of building would fall in the proportion
A simple phrase suffices to express the necessities of 10 to 2.
of tomorrow: WE MUST BUILD IN THE OPEN. The wages of the labourers would fall into definite
The lay-out must be of a purely geometrical kind. categories; to each according to his merits and service
with all its many and delicate implications. rendered.
[.. l The "interesting" or erratic site absorbs every
creative faculty of the architect and wears him out.
geometrical. To build in the open would be to replace What results is equally erratic lopsided abortions:
a specialist's solution which can only please other
hal'e to·day, by a unifonn lay-out. Unless we do this there sp,cia!ists.
We must build in the open: both within the city and
is no salvation.
The result of a true geometricallay~out is repetition. around it.
Then having worked through every necessary
The result of repetition is a standard. the perfect form
technical stage and using absolute ECON0,1Y, we shall
(i.e. the creation of standard types). A geometrical lay-
out means that mathematics play their part. be in a position to experience the intense joys of a
There is no first-rate human production but has creative art which is based on geometry.
geometry at its base, It is of the very essence_ of
Architecture. To introduce uniformity into the building
of the city we must industn.alize building. Building is THE CITY AND ITS AESTHETIC
the one economic activity which has so far resisted
industiialization. It has thus escaped the march of (The plan of a city which is here presented is a direct
progress, with the result that the cost ofbuilcling is still consequence of purely geometric considerations.)
A new unit on a large scale (400 yards) inspires
abnormally high.
The architect, from a professional point of view, has everything. Though the gridiron arrangement of
become a tvvisted sort of creature. He has grmvn to the streets every 400 yards (sometimes only 200) is
love irregular sites. claiming that they inspire him with uniform (with a consequent ease in finding one's
original ideas for getting round them. Of course he is way about). no tvvo streets are in any way alike. This is
wrong. For nowadays the only building that can be where. in a magnificent contrapuntal symphony. the
undertaken must be either for the rich or built at a loss forces of geometry come into play.
(as, for instance, in the case of municipal housing Suppose we are entering the city by way of the
schemes), or else by jerry-building and so robbing Great Park. Our fast car takes the special elevated
the inhabitant of all amenities. A motor-car which is motor track betvveen the majestic sky-scrapers: as
achieved by mass production is a masterpiece of we approach nearer there is seen the repetition
comfort, precision. balance and good taste. A house against the sk-y of the twenty-four sky-scrapers: to
built to order (on an "interesting~ site) is a masterpiece our left and right on the outskirts of each particular area
of incongruity- a monstrous thing. are the municipal and administrative buildings; and
If the builder's yard were reorganized on the lines enclosing the space are the museums and university
of standardization and mass production we might buildings.
have gangs of workmen as keen and intelligent as Then suddenly we find ourselves at the feet of the
first sky·scrapers. But here we have, not the meagre
mechanics.
 LE CORBUSIER
•
shaft of sunilght which so faintly illumines the dismal
streets of New York, but an immensity of space_ The
whole city is a Park The tenaces stretch out over Javms
and into groves. Low buildings of a holizontal kind lead
the eye on to the foliage of the trees_ \Nhere are now
the trivial Procuracies? Here is the city \Vith its crowds
living in peace and pure air, where noise is smothered
under th_e foliage of green trees. The chaos of New
York is overcome. Here, bathed in light, stands the
modem city [Figure 2].
Our car has left the elevated track and has dropped
· its speed of scxty miles an hour to run gently through the
residential quarters. T11e "set-backs" permit of vast
architectural perspectives. There are gardens. games
and sports grounds. And sJ..y everyv,rhere, as far as the
eye can see. The square silhouettes of the terraced
roofs stand clear against the sky. bordered with the
verdure of the hanging gardens. The unifonmity of the
units that compose the picture throw into relief the firm
lines on which the far·flung masses are constructed.
Their outlines softened by distance. the sk-y~scrapers
'~;:;:,-, :· A Contemporary city
raise Immense geometrical facades all
them is reflected the blue glory of the sky. An
whelming sensation. Immense but ""''""' "' nn
And in every direction we have a varying
our "gridiron" is based on a unit of 400 yards,
is strangely modified by architectural devices!
"set-baCks" are in counterpoint, on a unit of600 x
The traveller in his airplane, arriving
Constantinople or Pekin it may be. suddenly
appearing through the wavering lines of rivers
patches of forests that clear imprint which
city which has grown in accordance with the
man: the mark of the human brain at work.
As twilight falls the glass sky-scrapers seem
flame.
This is no dangerous futurism. a sort of
dynamite flung violently at the spectator.[t ls
spectacle organized by an Architecture which
plastic resources for the modulation of formS
in light
A city made for speed is made for success.
 "THE USES OF SIDEWALKS: SAFETY" im
Contrast Louis Wirth's theory of how population size, density, and heterogeneity in cities create a distinct
urban personality (p. 97) with Jacobs argument that these very same city characteristics may create neighborhood
vitality, social cohesion, and the perception and reality of safety. Jacobs' notion of the ustreet balletH invites
comparison with Lewis Mumford's idea of the '"urbar drama" (p. 92), William Whyte's emphasis on the importance

"The Uses crf Side\ii!aiks: of public plazas (p. 429), and Robert Putnam's er:nPhasis on usocial capital" (p. 1 05). Jacobs' community activism
in resistance to urban renewal places her within a long tradition that includes Paul Davidoff's "Advocacy and

Safetv 9' ~
Pluralism in Planning" (p. 388) and Sherty Arnstein's "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" (p. 244).
Other important works by Jane Jacobs include The Economy of Cities (New York: Random House, 1 969) and
Systems of Survival (New York: Random House, 1992). In the former book Jacobs again turns conventional
from The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) explanation on its head by arguing that the rise of cities may have proceeded, and even accounted for, rural
agricultural development. The latter is a Platonic dialogue on "the moral foundations of commerce and politics."
Max Allen, Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs (New York: Ginger Press, 1 997) is of interest, and
Jane Jacobs Robert A Care's masterful study of Jacobs's archenemy, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New
York (New York: Random House, 1975), is essential.

Editors' Introduction

Jane Ja.cobs st.art~d writing about city life and urban planning as a neighborhood activist not as a traine Streets in cities serve many purposes besides carrying upon to do. Great cities are not like towns, only larger.
professtonal. Otsmtssed as the original "little old lady in tennis shoes" and derided as a political amateur mod They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from
vehicles, and city sidewalks - the pedestrian pans of
concern_ed about p:rsonal safety issues than state-of-the-art planning techniques, she nonetheless struckr: towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these
the streets - serve many purposes besides carrying
~esponstve chord wtth a 1 ~60s public eager to believe the worst about arrogant city planning technocrats and is that cities are. by definition. full of strangers. To any
pedestrians. These uses are bound up with circulation
Jusdt asl eager to rally behtnd movements for neighborhood control and community resistance to bulldozer one person, strangers are far more common in big
re eve opment. but are not identical with it and in their own right
they are at least as basic as circulation to the proper cities than acquaintances. More common not just
in 1~h6e1 o;~th band Life of Great American Cities hit t~e world of city planning like an earthquake when it appeared
workings of cities. in places of public assembly, but more common at a
. · e ook wa.s a fron~al attack on the plann1ng establishment, especially on the massive urban renewal
A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstrac· man's own doorstep. Even residents who live near each
froJe:t~ th~ were being earned out by powerful redevelopment bureaucrats like Robert Moses in New York.
tion. It means something only in conjunction with other are strangers, and must be, because of the sheer
aco s en .ed urban .renewal as a process that only served to create instant slums. She questioned universal!
~hc~ept~d articles of faith -for example that parks were good and that crowding was bad. Indeed she suggests~ the buildings and other uses that border it, or border number of people in small geographical compass.
other sidewalks very near it. The same might be The bedrock attribute of a successful city district
a pa s were ~~en dangerous and that crowded neighborhood sidewalks were the safest places for children
is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on
~·pi~( Ja~obHs ndJculed the planning establishment's most revered historical traditions as "the Radiant Garden said of streets, in the sense that they sef\le other
1ty eautJful -an artful phrase that not only airily dismissed the contributions of Le Corbusier (p 31 7) Eb purposes besides carrying wheeled traffic in their the street among all these strangers. He must not
Howard (p. 3?9), and Daniel Burnham but Jumped them together as well! . ' enezer middles. Streets and their sidewalks. the main public feel automatically menaced by them. A city district
The selec~on from The D~ath and Life of Great American Cities reprinted here presents Jane Jacobs at her places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a that fails in this respect also does badly in other ways
very best. .In The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety,H she outlines her basic notions of what makes a neighborhood city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city's and lays up for itself, and for its city at large, mountain
a commun~ty an~ what .makes a cit.y livable. Safety - particularly for women and children - comes from "e es on streets look interesting, the city looks interesting: if on mountain of trouble.
~e :tre.et, th~.k~nd of Involved neighborhood surveillance of public space that modern planning practic:in the they look dull, the city looks dull. Today barbarism has taken over many city streets,
or USJan tra. 1t1o~ had destroyed with its insistence on superblocks and skyscraper developments A sense More than that. and here we get down to the firot or people fear it has, which comes to much the
of p~rsonal belongmg ~nd social.cohesive~ess comes from well-defined neighborhoods and narrow, ~rowded problem, if a city's streets are safe from barbarism and same thing in the end. "I live in a lovely, quiet residential
m~~tl u~e str.eets. And, finally, basJc urban VJtalit~ comes from residents' participation in an intricate "street ballet ~ fear, the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism area." says a friend of mine who is hunting another
~ ~urn Spatter~ of observable and comprehensible human activity that is possible only in places like Jacobs' ow~ and fear. When people say that a city. or a part of it, is place to live. "The only disturbing sound at night is
u son treef m her beloved Greenwich Village. dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily the occasional scream of someone being mugged."
lt ~as this last ~u~lity, her unabashed love of cities and urban life, that is Jane Jacobs' most obv· d is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks. But It does not take many incidents of violence on a city
en~~ 1_0 ~ charactenst~c. The Death ~nd Life of Great American Cities was a scathing attack on the ~~~~~n~~
1
es a IS . ment - a~d, 10 ma~y ~~ys, Jt was a grassroots political call to arms - but it was also a Iovin invitatio~
sidewalks and those who use them are not passive
beneficiaries of safety or helpless victims of danger.
street, or in a city district, to make people fear the
streets ... And as they fear them. they use them less.
~~~ e~enenc_e ~~- ~oys of cJty liv1ng that led many young, college-educated people to seek out neig~borhoods Sidewalks. their bordering uses, and their users, are which makes the streets still more unsafe.
. e .. reen~Jc Jl age as places to Jive, struggle, and raise families. In one sense the book encoura ed d active participants in the drama of civilization versus To be sure. there are people with hobgoblins in
~~~~:f~~:d~~d~~;-~la~s gentrificlat_ion of formerly working-class neighborhoods. In a~other, it found its~f oda~ly barbarism in cities_ To keep the city safe is a funda~ their heads, and such people will never feel safe no
ur . e an a~y-nos~a gJa of us~_same Street." But in all ways it was committedly urban, never sub- mental task of a city's streets and its sidewalks. matter what the objective circumstances are. But this
an~a~~:~e:!~me when mner-cJty communities were being increasingly abandoned to the forces of poverty, decay, This task is totally unlike any service that sidewalks is a different matter from the fear that besets nonnally
and streets in little towns or true suburbs are called prudent, tolerant and cheerful people who show
 5I!J JANE JACOBS
<---
nothing more than common Jf=Ose in refusing to
venture after dark- or in a few places. by day - into o th ·
streets where they may well be assauJted. unseen or
unrescued until too late_ The barbarism and the real
not imagined. insecurity that gives rise to such fear~ t
cannot be tagged a problem of the slums The problem
IS ~ost. serious, in fact, in genteel-looking "quiet
residential areas" like that my friend was leaving.
.. It cannot be tagged as a problem of older parts of
cltres. The problem reaches its most baffling dimen-
~Jons .m sam~ examples of rebuilt parts of cities,
_- ;~~ -
mcludmg supposedly the best examples of rebuilding,
such ~s middle-J~come projects_ The police precinct
captam of a natronally admired project of this kind the streets.
(admrred by planners and lenders) has recently
admonished residents not only about hanging around
outdoors after da(k but has urged the m never to
answer the.ir doors without mowing the caller. Life here
has much m common with life for the three little pigs
or the seven .little kids of the nursery thrillers. The
pr~ble~ o~ .sidewalk and doorstep insecurity is as
senous _m ~ltJes which have made conscientious efforts
at reburldmg as it is in those cities that have lagged.
Nor IS It Jllumma?ng to tag minority groups, or the poor.
or tt:e outcast Wlth responsibility for city danger. There
are Immense variations in the degree of civilization
and safety found among such groups and among the
:Jty areas where they live. Some of the safest sidewalks
m New York City, for example, at any time of day or
nrght, are those along which poor people or minority
groups live. ~nd some of the most dangerous are in
streets occupred by the same kinds of people. All this
can also be sa1d of other cities.
. [ . .]
The first thing to understand is that the public
peace~ the_sldewalk and street peace- of cities is not leave rt bhnd.
kept pnmanly by the police, necessary as police are It
IS kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscio~s
network of voluntary controls and standards amon~
the people themselves, and enforced by the people
the~seives.,In some ~ity areas~ older public housing
projects and streets with very high population turnover
a_re often conspicuous examples- the keeping of public
SJd~walk law and order is left almost entirely to the
polrce and special guards. Such places are jungles No
amount of pollee can enforce civilization where the
nonnal. casual enforcement of It has broken doVif11
. The second thing to understand is that the problem
of msecunty c"!'not be solved by spreading people out
more thmly, tradmg the characteristics of cities for the
---·--.---~--·· ·- -- ~---------
. -- ·~-------···-·····-
characteristics of suburbs. If this could solv d
e anger
n e crty streets, then Los Angeles should be
. b . aRe
crty ecause superficially Los Angeles is almost all
suburban. It has vrrtually no districts compact
o. ~O~h
o qua lr,y as dense city areas· · Yet Los Angeles cannot
any m~re tha? any other great city, evade the trurh
that, ~emg a crty, it is composed of strangers not all< r
who_m are nice. Los Angeles' crime figures are ftabbe~~
gastmg. _Among the seventeen standard metropolitan
areas With populations over a million, Los Angeles
sta~ds so pre·eminent in crime that it is in a catego .
by Itself. And this is markedly true of crimes associat~~
with personal attack, the crimes that make people fe
ar
[.. l
This is somethmg everyone already knows: A
well-used crty street rs apt to be a safe street. A deserted
crty street rs apt to be unsafe. But how does this
work, really? And what makes a city street well used or
shunned? ... What about streets that are busy part
of the trme and then empty abruptly?
A crty street equipped to handle strangers, and
to make a safety asset. in itself, out of the presence of
strangers, as the streets of successful city neighbor-
hoods always do. must have three main qualities·
Fi~st. the_re must be a clear demarcation be~een
what Js pubhc space and what is private space. Public
and p~vate ~paces cannot ooze into each other as they
do typically m suburban settings or in projects.
Sec~nd. there must be eyes upon the street, eyes
belongmg to those we might call the natural pro-
pnetors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped
to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both
residents and strangers must be oriented to the street.
They cannot tum their backs or blank sides on it and
And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly
cononuously, both to add to the number of effective
eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings
along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient
numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking
out a wmdow at an empty street. Almost nobody
does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain
themselves. off and on, by watching street activity
. In settlements that are smaller and simpler than
brg cJtJes, controls on acceptable public behavior, if not
on cnme, seem to operate with greater or lesser
s~ccess through a web of reputation, gossip, approval
drsapproval and sanctions, all of which are powerful if
people know each other and word travels. But a city's
----~·c•·-···-----------
srs)•wrrid: must control the behavior not only of the
fi of the city but also of visitors from suburbs and
who v;ant to have a big time away from the
and sanctions at home. have to operate by more
straightfonvard methods. It is a wonder cities
ha·ve :; 01·,eu such an inherently difficult problem at ~11.
/u"ldyet in many streets they do it magnificently. ·
Jt is futrle to try to evade the issue of unsafe city
by attempting to make some other features of
"~~··
a locality. say interior courtyards, or sheltered play
spaces. safe instead. By definition again, the streets of
a must do most of the job of handling strangers,
. for this is where strangers come and go. The streets
must not only defend the city against predatory
strangers, they must protect the many, many peaceable
and well· meaning strangers who use them, insuring
their safety too as they pass through. Moreover, no
nomtal person can spend his life in some artificial
haven, and this includes children. Everyone must use
the streets.
On the surface, we seem to have here some simple
aims: to try to secure streets where the public space is
unequivocally public, physically unmixed with private
or with nothing-at-all space, so that the area needing
surveillance has clear and practicable limits: and to see
that these public street spaces have eyes on them
as continuously as possible.
But it is not so simple to achieve these objects,
especially the latter. You can't make people use streets
they have no reason to use. You can't make people
watch streets they do not want to watch. Safety on the
streets by surveillance and mutual policing of one
another sounds grim. but in real life it is not grim. The
safety of the street works best, most casually, and with
least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely
where people are using and most enjoying the city
streets voluntarily and are least conscious, normally,
that they are policing.
The basic requisite for such surveillance is a sub~
stantial quantity of stores and other public places
sprinkJed along the sidewalks of a district enterprises
and public places that are used by evening and night
must be among them especially. Stores, bars and
restaurants, as the chief examples, work in several
dillerent and complex ways to abet sidewalk safety.
First, they give people - both residents and
strangers ·- concrete reasons for using the sidewalks
on which these enterprises face.
Second, they draw people along the sidewalks
past places which have no attractions to public use in
"THE USES OF SIDEWALKS; SAFETY"
themselves but which become traveled and peopled
as routes to somewhere else; this influence does not
cany very far geographically, so enterprises must
be frequent in a city district if they are to populate
with walkers those other stretches of street that lack
public places along the sidewalk Moreover, there
should be many different kinds of enterprises, to give
people reasons for crisscrossing paths.
Third, storekeepers and other small businessmen
are typically strong proponents of peace and order
themselves; they hate broken windows and hold~
ups: they hate having customers made nervous about
safety. They are great street watchers and sidewalk
guardians if present in sufficient numbers.
Fourth, the activity generated by people on errands,
or people aiming for food or drink. is itself an attraction
to still other people.
This last point, that the sight of people attracts
still other people, is something that city planners and
city architectural designers seem to find incompre-
hensible. They operate on the premise that city people
seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet.
Nothing could be less true. People's love of watching
activity and other people is constantly evident in cities
everywhere.
[. l
Under the seeming disorder of the old city,
wherever the old city is working successfully, is a
marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the
streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex
order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use. bringing
with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is
all composed of movement and change, and although
it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art fonm
of the city and liken it to the dance- not to a simple-
minded precision dance with everyone kicking up
at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off
en masse. but to an intricate ballet in which the indi-
vidual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive
parts which miraculously reinforce each other and
compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good
city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place,
and in any one place is always replete with new
improvisations .
The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each
day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my
own first entrance into it a little after eight when l put
out the garbage can. surely a prosaic occupation, but
I enjoy my part, my little clang, as the droves of junior
high school students walk by the center of the stage
lili] JANE JACOBS

dropping candy wrappers. (How do lhey eat so much sitting in the dark seeing the shadows and hearing
. candy so early in the morning?) the sounds of the sidewalk Mostly it is a sound
While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other infinitely pattering snatches of party conversatiori
rituals ofmoming: Mr. Halpert unlocking the laundry's and, about three in the morning, singing. very good
handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe singing. Sometimes there is sharpness and anger or
Cornacchia's son-in~law stacking out the empty crates sad, sad weeping, or a fturry of search for a string of UThe'l
- - ¥1
from the delicatessen. the barber bringing out his beads brqken. One ·night. a young man came roaring
sidewalk folding chair. Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils along, bellowing temble language at two girls whom he ilat
of wire whlch proclaim the hardware store is open, the had apparently picked up and who were disappointing
wife of the tenement's superintendent depositing her him. Doors opened; a wary semicircle fanned around of Ea1
chunk] 3-year-old- with a toy mandolin on the stoop,
the vantage point from which he is learning the English
him, not too close. until the police came. Out came the
heads, too, along Hudson Street, offering opinion,
,,- I
_,%9~0 0
his mother cannot speak Now the primary children. "Drunk ... Crazy ... A wild kid from the suburbs." (He
heading for St. Luke's, dribble through to the south: the turned out to be a wild kid from the suburbs. Some- from The
children for St. Veronica's cross. heading to the west, times. on Hudson Street, we are tempted to believe
and the children for P S. 41. heading toward the east the suburbs must be a difficult place to bring up
Two new entrances afe being made from the wings: children.) W.E.B. Dl
weJI-dressed and even elegant women and men with I have made the daily ballet of Hudson Street sound
briefcases emerge from doorways and side streets . more frenetic than it is, because writing it telescopes
Most of these are heading for the bus and subways. it. In real life, it is not that way. In real life, to be sure,
but some hover on the curbs, stopping taxis which something is always going on, the ballet is never at a Editors' In
have miraculously appeared at the right moment, for halt. but the general effect is peaceful and the general
the taxis are part of a wider morning ritual: having tenor even leisurely. People who know weiJ such William Edward
dropped passengers from midtown in the downtown animated city streets wiiJ know how it is. I am afraid professor, edito
financial district. they are now bringing downtowners people who do not wiiJ always have it a little wrong ethnic studies, li
up to midtown. Simultaneously. numbers of women in in their heads like the old prints of rhinoceroses Tennessee, the
housedresses have emerged and as they crisscross made from travelers' descriptions of rhinoceroses. On University, wher
with one another they pause for quick conversations Hudson Street, the same as in the North End of Boston Du Boisdefie.
that sound with either laughter or joint indignation: or in any other animated neighborhoods of great career he was a
never, it seems, anything between. It is time for me to cities, we are not innately more competent at keeping a radical pacifist
hurry to work too. and I exchange my ritual fareweJI the sidewalks safe than are the people who try to live for circulating tl
with Mr. Lofaro, the short, thick-bodied, white-aproned off the hostile truce ofTurfin a blind-eyed city. We are writers of the ur
fruit man who stands outside his doorway a little up the the lucky possessors of a city order that makes it and served as it
' street, his arms folded, his feet planted, looking solid relatively simple to keep the peace because there political figure Y.
as earth itself We nod: we each glance quickly up and are plenty of eyes on the street. But there is nothing joined the Comr
down the street then look back to each other and smile. simple about that order itself. or the bewildering At the time th
We have done this many a morning for more than ten number of components that go into it Most of those Americans in th
years, and we both know what it means: All is welL components are specialized in one way or another. intentioned Phil;;
[.. l They unite in their joint effect upon the sidewalk, in the city. Two'
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from City: Rediscovering the Center (1988)

William H. Whyte

Editors' Introduction
Puzzled by why some of New York's parks and plazas were well used while others were almost empty, the New
York City Planning Commission asked sociologist William Whyte (1918-1999) to study park and plaza use and
help draft a comprehensive design plan for the city.
Whyte's lucid writing on planning and design gave him great credibility. Hunter College appointed him a
Distinguished Professor, and the National Geographic Society gave him the first domestic ~expedition grant"
they had ever made.
Whyte worked with bright young designers and planners at the New York City Planning Department, Hunter
College sociology students, and other talented people he drew to uThe Street Life Project.~ This team produced
an exceptional study of how people use urban space and a set of urban design guidelines for New York that have
been widely praised and used in New York and many other cities.
The Street Life Project is an excellent example of how to do urban research. Whyte formed hypotheses about
how people use urban space. Then he tested each hypothesis by filming people using different plazas and parks
in New York City and carefully analyzing the films. His results were often startling. Some initial hypotheses were
validated, but Whyte found that he had to reject or modify many others that had seemed intuitively obvious. For
example, Whyte hypothesized that the number of people using a plaza would be related to the amount of space
or its shape. Big parks should have more people than little ones. A long skinny strip park should have fewer people
than a rectangular one. But Chart 1 {Figure 1) shows that is not the case. New Yorkers use tiny Greenacre Park
much more than the much larger J.C. Penny Park. One of New York's most popular parks is just a long, narrow
indentation in a building. Whyte eventually concluded that the amount of sittable space in a park or plaza was much
more important than either the total space or its shape.
Most writing on urban design ignores gender differences or is written from a male perspective with a separate
section on design implications for women. Whyte is one of the few authors to notice gender and to weave its
significance into the fabric of his study. He noticed that women are more discriminating than men as to where they
will sit and are more sensitive to annoyances. He concluded that if a plaza has a high proportion of women, it is
probably a good and well-managed one.
William Whyte's ideas have had a wide impact. The New York City Planning Commission held hearings on his
recommendations and, after much debate, adopted many of his suggestions as requirements or guidelines for new
development. Sharon Zukin (p. 136) describes how a public-private partnership inspired by Whyte's ideas tore
down walls isolating Bryant Park from the street, put in sittable space and food, and transformed a dangerous,
little· used park into one bustling with life, while at the same time evicting many homeless park uresidents" and raising
troubling questions about who should control public space and prescribe how it is to be used.
Note the similarity between Whyte's description of Seagram's Plaza as ~the best of stagesn and Lewis
Mumford's emphasis on the city as theater (p. 92). Mike Davis (p. 201) found designers in Los Angeles
!J]l WILLIAM H. WHYTE "THE DESIGN OF SPACES" [lJ]
. '' ~------~"

consciously
., . public spaces to keep people away. As Whyte comments , "it takes real work to creat eaousy
design 1 It gets ~eople into new habits- such as alfresco lunches there are double-sided ledges parallel to the street. the
plac~. Note th~ 1~portan~e ~f good public spaces in Camillo Sitte's work on The Art of Building Cities {p. 4 13} -and induces them to use new paths . inner side will usually have a higher proportion of
and rn H.O.F. Krtto s descnpt1on of the Greek polis (p. 43). The best-used plazas are sociable places, with a women: the outer. of men.
. This selection is from City: .Rediscovering the Center (New York: Anchor Books, 1988). Jn other chapters of higher proportion of couples and groups than you will Of the men up front the most conspicuous are the
C1ty, Whyte explores water, wmd, trees, light, steps and entrances, undesirables, walls, sun and shadows, and lind in less-used places. At the plazas in New York. the girl watchers As I have noted, they put on such a show
man~ other facto.rs. Wh7te produced a delightful film titled Public Spaces/Human Places based on his research proportion of people in tv.:os or more runs about 5~152 of girl watching as to indicate that their real interest is
(available from D1r.ect C1nema Limited in Los Angeles). The original report of Whyte's classic street life project has_ percent: in the least-used. 25-30 percent A h1gh not so much the girls as the show. lt is all machismo.
recently ~een repnnt~d as The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (New York: Project for Public Spaces Inc., 2001). proportion is an index of selectivity. If people go to a Even in the Wall Street area. where girl watchers are
An anthology of William Whyte's most important writings is Albert LaFarge (ed.), The Essential William Whyte place in a group or rendezvous there, it is most often especially demonstrative you will hardly ever see one
(New York: ForEiham Un1vers1ty Press, ~000). Whyte's other main book on planning is The Last Landscape because they decided to beforehand. Nor are these attempt to pick up a girL
. (Garden C1ty, NY: Doubleday, 1968). H1s best known book is The Organization Man (New York: Simon and places less congenial to the individuaL In absolute Plazas are not ideal places for striking up acquain-
Schuster, 1956) - a study of corporate culture that sold more than two million copies. numbers. they attract more individuals than do the less- tances. Much better is a very crowded street with
There are many books concerning human aspects of design. Spiro Kostoff's monumental The City Shaped· used spaces. If you are alone, a lively place can be the lots of eating and quaffing going on. An outstanding
Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991) and The City Assembled example is the central runway of the South Street
best place to be.
(London: .Thame~ and Hudson, 1992) synthesize a vast amount of material from around the world and contain The best-used places also tend to have a higher than Seaport. At lunch sometimes, one can hardly move
excellen~ lllus_trat1ons. Oscar ~ewman's influential Defensible Space (New York: Macmillan, 1972) is a study of average proportion of women. The male-female ratio for the crush_ As in musical chairs. this can lead to
the way 1n wh1ch low· rent publ1c housing project residents use space with suggestions to architects and f'fanners of a plaza reflects the composition of the work force interesting combinations. On most plazas, however,
on how to meet their security concerns. Clare Cooper and Wendy Sarkissian's Housing as if People Mattered and this varies from area to area. In midto1NI1 New York there isn't much mixing. If there are, say, tvvo smashing
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) provides practical suggestions for designing housing responsive- it runs about 60 percent male, 40 percent female. blondes on a ledge, the men nearby will usually put on
to the n.eeds of all its residents, particularly working women and children. Allan Jacobs's Looking at Cities Women are more discriminating than men as to where an elaborate show of disregard. Look closely, however,
(Cambndge, ~A: MIT .Press, 1.985) provides a stimulating discussion of how close observation like Whyte they will sit. they are more sensitive to annoyances, and you will see them giving away the pose with covert
undertook can 1nform c1ty plannmg and how to do it. and they spend more time casing a place. They are also glances.
more likely to dust off a ledge with their handkerchief. Lovers are to be found on plazas, but not where you
The male---female ratio is one to watch. If a plaza would expect them. VVhen we first started interviewing,
has a markedly low proportion of women. something people would tell us to be sure to see the lovers in
rs wrong. Conversely, if it has a high proportion. the the rear places. But they weren't usually there. They
.. Since 1961 New York City had been giving incen- [. I plaza is probably a good and well-managed one ilnd would be out front. The most fervent embracing we've
tive bonuses to developers who would provide plazas We started by charting how people used plazas. recorded on film has taken place in the most visible
has been chosen as such.
. . . Every new office building qualified for the bonus We mounted time-lapse cameras at spots overlooking The rhythms of plaza life are much alike from place of locations, With the couple oblivious of the crowd .
by providing a plaza or comparable space: in total. by the plaza . and recorded the dawn-to-dusk patterns. to place. In the morning hours. patronage will be (In a long clutch, however. I have noted that one of
1972 some twenty acres of the world's most expensive We made periodic circuits of the plazas and noted the lovero may sneak a glance at a wristwatch.)
sporadic.
open space. on sighting maps where people were sitting, their Around noon the main clientele begins to arrive. Certain locations become rendezvous points for
Some plazas attracted lots of people . gender. and whether they were alone or vvith others Soon activity will be near peak and will stay there until groups of various kinds. The south wall of the Chase
But on most plazas there were few people. In the ... We also interviewed people and found where they Manhattan Plaza was. for a while, a gathering point for
a litde before two .
middle of the lunch hour on a beautiful day the number worked. how frequently they used the plaza. and what Some 80 percent of the people activity on plazas camera bugs, the kind who are always buying new
of people sitting on plazas averaged four per thousand they thought of it But mosdy we watched what they comes during the lunchtime. and there is very litde of lenses and talking about them Patterns of this sort may
square feet of space-- an extraordinarily low figure for did. last no more than a season~ or persist for years. A black
any kind after five-thirty .
so dense a center Most of them were young office workers from During the lunch period. people will distribute civic leader in Cincinnati told me that when he wants
... The city was being had. For the millions of nearby buildings Often there would be relatively few themselves over space vvith considerable consistency, to make contact, casually. with someone. he usually
dollars of extra floor space it was handing out to from the plaza's own building. As some secretaries with some sectoro getting heavy use day in and day knows just where to look at Fountain Square ..
developers, it had every right to demand much better confided, they would JUSt as soon put a little distance out, othero much less so. We also found that off-peak Standing patterns on the plazas are fairly regular.
spaces in retuin. between themselves and the boss come illllchtime. In use often gives the best clues to people's preferences. When people stop to talk they will generally do so
I put the question to the chairman of the city plan- most cases the plaza users came from a building within When a place is jammed. people sit where they can; athwart one of the main traffic flows, as they do on
ning commission. Donald Elliott. . He felt tougher a three-block radius. Small parks. such as Paley and this may or may not be where they most want to. After streets. They also show an inclination to station them-
zoning was in, order. If we could find out why the good Greenacre, had a somewhat more varied mix of people the main crowd has left, however, the choices can be selves near objects, such as a flagpole or a piece of
places worked and the bad ones didn't and come up -with more upper-income older people- but even significant Some parts of the plaza become empty: sculpture. They like well-defined places. such as steps
with tight guidelines. there could be a new code . here office workers predominated. or the border of a pooL What they rarely choose is the
others continue to be use .
We set to \york. We began stud.ying a cross section This uncomplicated demography underscores an Men show a tendency to take the front row seats middle of a large space.
of spaces- in all, sixteen plazas. three small parks, and elemental point about good spaces supply creates and if there is a kind of gate they will be the guardians There are a number of explanations. The preference
a nwnber of odds and ends of space . demand. A good new space builds a new constituency. of it. Women tend to favor places slightly secluded. If might be ascribed to some primeval instinct: you have
fl;:l] WILLIAM H. WHYTE "THE DESIGN OF SPACES"

a full view of all comers but your rear is covered. But
this doesn't explain the inclination men have for lining
up at the curb. Typically. they face inward. with their
backs exposed to the vehicle traffic of the street.
Whatever their cause, people's movements are one
of the great spectacles of a plaza. You do not see this
in architectural photographs. which are usually devoid
of human beings and are taken from a perspective
th~t.few people ~hare. It is a misleading one. Looking
dovm on a bare plaza, one sees a display of geometry.
. done almost in monochrome. Dovm at eye level the
scene comes alive with movement and color~ people
walking quickly. walking slowly, skipping up steps.
weaving in and out on crossing patterns, accelerating
and retarding to match the moves of others. Even if
the paving and the \Valls are gray. there will be vivid
splashes of color - in winter especially, thanks to
women's fondness for red coats and colored umbrellas.
There is a beauty that is beguiling to watch, and one
senses that the players are quite aware of this them-
selves. You can see this in the way they arrange
themselves on ledges and steps. They often do so with
a grace that they must appreciate themselves. With its
brown-gray setting, Seagram is the best of stages -- in
the rain. too, when an umbrella or tvm puts spots of
color in the right piaces.like Corot's red dots.
of other good open spaces will not saturate demanct.-
They will increase it.
Given a fine location, it is difficult to design a space
that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how.·
often this has been accomplished. Our initial studv
made it, clear that \VhiJe location is a prerequisite fdr
success. it in no way assures it Some of the worst
plazas are in the best spots .
All of the plazas and small parks that we studied had
good locations; most were on the major avenues, some
on attractive side· streets_ All were close to bus-stops or
subway stations and had strong pedestrian flows on
the sidewalks beside them. Yet when we rated them
according to the number of people sitting at peak time,
there was a wide range: from 160 people at 77 Water
Street to 17 at 280 Park Avenue (Figure 1).
How come? The first factor we studied ;as the
sun. We thought it might well be the critical one, and
our first time~ lapse studies seemed to bear this oul
Subsequent studies did not. As I will note later they
show that sun was important but did not explain the
differences in popularity of plazas.
Nor did aesthetics ... The elegance and purity of
a complex's design, we had to conclude, had little
relationship to the usage of the spaces around it.
[.. l
\
_. No matter how many other variables we
checked. one basic point kept coming through. We at
last recognized that it was the major one.
People tend to sit most where there are places to sit
This may not strike the reader as an intellectual
bombshell. and now that I look back on our study I
wonder why it was not more apparent to us from the
beginning . . Whatever the attractions of a space, it
cannot induce people to come and sit if there is no
place to sit
INTEGRAL SEATING
The most basic kind of seating is the kind that is built
into a place. such as steps and ledges. Half the battle is
seeing to it that these features are usable by people.
And there is a battle. Another force has been diligently
I at work finding ways to deny these spaces Here are
sOme of the ways:
I
l ,,---ll __,JJLtU ---
!_ l ,_1~J L_
'~"- _,~
1 Horizontal metal strip with sawtooth points.
Jagged rocks set in concrete (Southbridge House.
New York City).
Spikes imbedded in ledges (Peachtree Plaza Hotel).
Railing placed to hit you in small ofback (GM Plaza.
I
"'"'-"'1"'
,_"tA8..1 '-'.C~

Let us tum to the factors that make for such places.
The most basic one is so obvious it is often overlooked:
people. To draw them. a space should tap a strong Aow
of them. This means location. and. as the old adage has
it, location and location. The space should be in the
heart of downtown, close to the 100 percent comer-
preferably right on top of it
Another factor we considered was the shape of New York City)
Canted ledges of slippery marble (Celanese
spaces. Members of the commission's urban design
group believed this was very important and hoped Building, New York City).
our findings would support tight criteria for propor-
It takes real work to create a lousy place. in addition
tions and placement They were particularly anxious
to spikes and metal objects, there are steps to be made
to rule out strip plazas: long. narrow spaces that were
steep, additional surveillance cameras to be mounted,
little more than enlarged sidewalks. and empty of

LtHd~!! Hl{ t~~! t --~-

Because land 'is cheaper further out, there is a temp~
tation to pick sites a\vay from the center. There may
also be some land for the asking - some underused
spaces. for example, left over from an ill-advised civic
a
walls to be raised high. Just not doing such things can
people more times than not .
produce a lot of sitting space.
Our data did not support such criteria. VVhile it was .
It won't be the most comfortable kind but it will
true that most strip plazas 1vere little used. it did not
follow that their shape was the reason. Some squarish
have the great advantage of enlarging choice The , .

center campus of urban renewal days. They will be
poor bargai~s A space that is only a few blocks too far
might as well be ten blocks for all the people who will
venture to walk to it
People ought to walk to it. perhaps: the exercise
would do them good. But they don't. Even within the
core of downtovm the effective radius of a good place
is about threeblocks. About 80 percent of the users will
have come from a place within that area. This does
indicate a laziness on the part of pedestrians and this
a
may change bit, just as the insistence on close-in
parking may. But there is a good side to the constrained
radius. Since usage is so highly localized. the addition
plazas were little used too. and, conversely, several of
the most heavily used spaces were in fact long, narrow
strips. One of the five most popular sitting places in
New York is essentially an indentation in a building,
long and narrow. Our research did not prove shape
unimportant or designers' instincts misguided. As with
the sun, however, it proved that other factors were
more critical.
If not the shape of the space. what about the amount
of it? Some conservationists believed this would be
the key factor. In theirvie\v, people seek open space as
a relief from overcrowding and it would follow that
places with the greatest sense of space and light and air
would draw the best If we ranked plazas by the amount
of space they provided. there surely would be a positive
correlation between space and people.
Once again we found no clear relationship, Several
of the smallest spaces had the largest number of
people. and several of the largest spaces had the least
number of people ..
Vlhat about the amount of sittable space? Here
we began to get close. As we tallied the number
of linear feet of sitting space, we could see that the
plazas with the most tended to be among the most
popular.
more sittable the inherent features are made, the more
freedom people have to sit up front. in the back. to the
side. in the sun, or out of it This means designing ledges
and parapets and other flat surlaces so they can do
double duty as seating. tables. and shelves. Since most
building sites have some slope in them. there are bound
to be opportunities for such features, and it is no more
trouble to leave them sittable than not.
[.. l
tr..f_ll WILLIAM H. WHYTE
SITTING HEIGHT
One guideline we thought would be easy to establish
was for sitting heights. It seemed obvious enough that
somewhere around sixteen to seventeen inches \Vould
probably be the optimum. But how much higher or
lower could a surface be and still be sittable7 Thanks to
slopes, several of the most popular ledges provided a
range of contmuously variable heights. The front ledge
at Seagram, for example started at seven inches at
one comer and rose to fortywfour inches at the otheL
Here was an opportunity for a definitive study, we
thought; by recording over time how many people sat
at what heights. we would get a statistical measure of
preferences.
We didn't. We had to conclude that people will
sit almost anyvvhere betvveen a height of one foot and
three, and this was the range that was to be specified
in the zoning. People will sit lower or higher, of course.
but there are apt to be special conditions- a wall too
high for most adults to mount but JUSt right for
teenagers.
A dimension that is truly important is the human
backside. It is a dimension many architects ignore.
Rarely will you find a ledge or bench that is deep
enough to be sittable on both sides ... Most frustrating
are the ledges just deep enough to tempt people to
sit on both sides, but too shallow to let them do so
comfortably At peak times people may sit on both
sides but they won't be comfortable doing it They will
be sitting on the forward edge, awkwardly.
Thus to anotl1er of our startling findings ledges and
~paces two backside, deep seat more people than
those that are not as deep .
' [... ]
Steps work for the same reason. They afford an
infinity of possible groupings, and the excellent sight
lines make all the seating great for watching the theatre
of the street ..
[.. l
Circulation and sitting, in sum, are not antithetical
but complementarY. I stress this because a good many
planners think that the two should be kept separate.
More to the point. so do some zoning codes. New
York's called for "pedestrian circulation areas" separate
from "activity areas" for sitting_ People ignore such
boundaries. CHAIRS
We felt that P\'destrian circulation through and
within plazas should be encouraged. Plazas that are We come now to a wonderful invention: the movable
sunken or elevated tend to attract low flows. and for , chair. Having a back. it is comfortable. and even more
that reason the zoning specifies that plazas be not mere
than three feet below street level or above it · The ea''
c,;er
the ftow between street and plaza the more likelythev
are to come in and tarry and sit.
This is true of the handicapped also. If a place is
planned \\ith their needs in mind, the place is apt to
function more easily for everyone. Drinking fountains
that are low enough for wheelchair users are low
enough for children. Walkways that are made easier
for the handicapped by ramps, handrails, and steps
of gentle pttch are easter for alL The guidelines make
such amenities mandatory ... For the benefit of the
handicapped, it is required that at least 5 percent of
the seating spaces have backrests. These are not segre-
gated for the handicapped. No facilities are segregated
The idea is to make all of the place useful for everyone.
BENCHES
Benches are design artifacts the purpose of which is to
punctuate architectural photographs. They are most
often sited in modular fonm, spaced equidistant from
one another in a symmetry that is pleasing in plan view"
They are not very good, however, for sitting_ There are
usually too few of them; they are too short and too
narrow; they are isolated from other benches and from
what action there is to look at.
[.. l
Watch how benches fill up. The first arrival will
usually take the end of a bench, not the middle.
The next arrival will take the end of another bench.
Subsequent anivals head for whatever end spots are
not taken. Only when there are few other places left
will people sit in the middle of the bench, and some will
elect to stand.
Since it's the ends of the benches that do most of the
work, it could be argued that benches ought to be
shortened so they're all end and no middle. But the
unu~ed middles are functional for not being used. They
provide buffer space. They also provide choice, and if
it is the least popular choice. that does not negate its
utility.
[.. l
so if it has\.annrests as well. But the big asset is mov-
ability. Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun. out
of it to move closer to someone, further away from
~ anotheL
The possibility of choice is as important as the
exercise ofit.lfyou know you can move if you want to . .,..
you can feel all the more comfmtable staying put. This
IS why. perhaps, people so often approach a chair and
then. before sitting on it, move the chair a few inches
this way or that, finally ending up with the chair just
about where it was in the first place. These moves are
functionaL They are a declaration of one's free will to
oneself, and rather satisfying. In this one small matter
you are the master of your fate.
Small moves can say things to other people. If
a newcomer chooses a chair next to a couple in a
crowded situation, he may make several moves with
the chair. He is conveying a message: Sorry about the
closeness, but it can't be helped and I am going to
respect your privacy as you \Vill mine. A reciprocal shift
of a chair may signal acknowledgment.
Chair arranging by groups is a ritual worth watching.
In a group of three or four women. one may be domi-
nant and direct the sitting, including the fetching of an
extra chair. More times, the members of the group
work it out themselves, often with false starts and
second choices. The chair arranging can take quite a bit
of time on occasion- it is itself a forrn of recreation-
but people enjoy it. Watching these exercises in civility
is one of the pleasures of a good place.
Fixed individual seats deny choice. They may be
good to look at, and in the fonm of stools, metal love
seats, granite cubes, and the like, they make interesting
decorative elements_ That is their primary function.
For sitting, however, they are inflexible and socially
uncomfortable.
[. l
Where space is at a premium- in theatres, stadia---
fixed seats are a necessity. In open spaces, however.
they are uncalled for; there is so much space around
them that the compression makes for awk.-vmrd sitting
_On one campus a group of metal love seats was
cemented to the paving with epoxy glue; in short order
they were wrenched out of position by students. The
designer is unrepentant. His love seats have won
several design awards.
[.. l
A salute to grass is in order. It is a wonderfully
adaptable substance. and while it is not the most
comfortable seating. it is fine for napping. sunbathing,
"THE DESIGN OF SPACES" ?T':';:
,,.._.__..,
picnicking, and Frisbee throwing. Like movable chairs,
it also has the great advantage of offering people the
widest possible choice of sitting arrangements_ There
are an infinity of possible groupings. but you will note
that the most frequent has people self-posttioned at
oblique angles from e<J.ch other,
Grass offers a psychological benefit as welL A patch
of green is a refreshing counter to granite and concrete,
and when people are asked what they would like to see
in a park. trees and grass usually are at the top of the
list.
RELATIONSHIP TO THE STREET
Let us tum to a more difficult consideration. With
the kind of amenities we have been discussing, there
are second chances. If the designers have goofed on
seating, more and better seating can be provided. If
they have been too stingy with trees, more trees can be
planted If there is no food, a food cart can be put in-
possibly a small pavilion or gazebo. If there is no water
feature, a benefactor might be persuaded to donate a
small pool or fountain. Thanks to such retrofitting,
spaces regarded as hopeless dogs have been given
new life.
V\That is most difficult to change, however. is what
is most important: the location of the space and its
relationship to the street The real estate people are
right about location. location, location. For a space to
function truly well it must be central to the constituency
it is to servre -- and if not in physical distance, in visual
accessibility ..
The street functions as part of the plaza or square;
indeed. it is often hard to tell where the street leaves off
and the plaza begins. The social life of the spaces flows
back and forth between them. And the most vital space
of all is often the street comer. Watch one long enough
and you will see how important it is to the life of the
large spaces. There will be people in 1DO percent
conversations or prolonged goodbyes. If there is a food
vendor at the comer. like Gus at Seagram, people will
be clustered around him, and there will be a brisk traffic
betvveen comer and plaza.
It is a great show. and one of the best ways to make
the most of it is, simply, not to wall off the plaza from
it. Frederick Law Olmsted spoke of an "interior park"
and an "outer park." and he argued that the latter- the
surrounding streets --was vital to the enjoyment of
the fanner. He thought it an abomination to separate
Q WILLIAM H. WHYTE

the two with walls or. worse yet, with a s¢iked iron
fence.~"In expression and association." he said. "it is
in the most distinct contradiction and discord with all
the sentiment of a park. It belongs to a Jail or to the
residence of a despot who dreads assassination."
But walls are still being put up, usually in the mis~
taken notion that they will make the space feel safer.
They do not ... they make a space feel isolated and
gloomy. Lesser defensive measures can work almost as
JTIUCh damage. The front rows of a space ~ whether
ledges or steps or benches - are the best of sitting
places, yet they are often modified against human
use. At the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue,
the front ledges face out on one of the greatest of
promenades. But you cannot sit on the ledges for more
than a minute or so. There is. a fussy little railing that
catches you right in the small of your back. I do not
think it was deliberately planned to do so. But it
and you cannot sit for more than a fevnrtonJer1ts !ref,1~~
your back hurts. Another ffi'o inches of clearance for
the railing and you would be comfortable. But day
day. year after year, one of the great front rows gOes·
scarcely used. for want of tv.,.· a inches. Canted Hfc
especially ones of polished marble. are another nuiH-
fying feature. You can almost sit on them ifyouk£:eo rt~h
pressing down on your heel hard enough. •
[.. l }OUJ
A good space beckons people in. and the pro~
gression from street to interior is critical in this respect
Ideally, the transition should be such that it's hard to tell All::
where one ends and the other begins. You shouldn't.
have to make a considered decision to enter; it should·
be almost instinctive . ·
[.. l Ed

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