Broadacre City was an urban or suburban development concept proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright throughout most of his lifetime. He presented the idea in his book The Disappearing City in 1932. A few years later he unveiled a very detailed twelve by twelve foot (3.7 3.7 m) scale model representing a hypothetical four square mile (10 km) community. Wright's ideal community was a complete rejection of the American cities of the first half of the 20th century. According to him, cities would no longer be centralized; no longer beholden to the pedestrian or the central business district. Broadacre City was a thought experiment as much as it was a serious proposalone where the automobile would reign supreme. It was a truly prophetic vision of modern America.
The Plan
Broadacre City was the antithesis of a city and the apotheosis of the newly born suburbia, shaped through Wright's particular vision. It was both a planning statement and a socio-political scheme by which each U.S. family would be given a one acre (4,000 m) plot of land from the federal lands reserves, and a Wright-conceived community would be built anew from this. In a sense it was the exact opposite of transit- oriented development. There is a train station and a few office and apartment buildings in Broadacre City, but the apartment dwellers are expected to be a small minority. All important transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can exist safely only within the confines of the one acre (4,000 m) plots where most of the population dwells.
Broadacre Citywas largely a romanticized fantasy, dreamt up by a self-serving narcissist. Laid out over a number of different articles and talks as well as three books, The Disappearing City (1932), When Democracy Builds (1945), and The Living City(1958), Wright's utopia was ultimately an extension of the things that made him personally comfortable: open spaces, the automobile, and not surprisingly, the architect as master controller. Wright and his crew took the model to New York Citythat loathsome metropolis that represented everything Wright thought was wrong with America. The model was displayed at Rockefeller Center and was seen by roughly 40,000 visitors, according to an estimate by theNew York Times. From there it would then go on tour in different American cities, spreading the Broadacre gospel. Among some of the features of the Broadacre City, too numerous to list in full include little farms,music gardens, flight service, vineyards and orchards, schools, cinemas, gas stations, general merchandising and markets, little factories and so forth. Also listed in the Broadacre City's official description are general guidelines or rules. Among the more relevant are: No private ownership of public needs, no landlord or tenant, no traffic problems, an acre of ground minimum for the individual, Broadacre City makes no change in existing system of land surveys, has a single seat of government for each county, and architectural features determined by the character and topography of region.
At Broadacres center were one-acre land units meant for nuclear families. Expanding from this center, Wright designated distinct areas that included: little farm units; luxurious type (non-farm) housing; orchards; hotel; sanitarium; music garden; zoo; aquarium; little factories; scientific and agricultural research; and a small school for small children. On one panel of the Rockefeller Model were a series of Orwellian negations that included: No Slum. No Scum No traffic problems No glaring cement roads or walks Broadacre isn't a city; it is a landscape. Decentralised in organisation it is self-sufficient in supply, republican in constitution, and populated by auto - mobile citizens. , the single family house. There is no administration - no bureaucracy - but the architect, who plans the city and settles its affairs. He arranges who may own how many acres of land and where roads start and lead to, thus preventing property speculation as well as congestion.