BOOK REVIEW

THE IDEAL CITY

IN ITS ARTCHITECTURAL EVOLUTION

BY HELEN ROSENAU

SUBMITTED BY :
Name : MEGHA SAXENA
Subject: Planning Studio-I
Class: Masters in Planning (Urban Planning)
1 st Yr./1 st Sem
 AUTHOR -Helen Rosenau
• Aspiring Art Historian and Archaeologist
• Rosenau traces the progress of the concept from biblical sources through the
Hellenistic and Roman empires to the Renaissance and the later Age of
Enlightenment, when the emphasis shifted from religious to social considerations.
• She goes on to discuss the resultant nineteenth-century ideal planning, when the idea
of social betterment was approached with a specific and conscious effort.
• Dr Rosenau charts the tensions and interactions between real and ideal architecture
from the Greeks to the present. Her revised edition is still a slim volume and is
sometimes indigestibly encyclopaedic; many architects get only a few paragraphs,
insufficient for the novice and unsatisfying for the expert.
• Her definition of an Ideal City is remarkably elastic at times, yet excludes post-
revolutionary Soviet architecture completely. But the book's main strength lies in its
author's synoptic vision and her exposition of the relation between philosophical ideals
and architectural forms.

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 ABSTRACT
• The concept of the 'ideal city' is, perhaps, more important today - when planners and
architects are so firmly confined by considerations of our immediate environment -
than ever before. Yet it is a concept which has profoundly influenced the western
world throughout history, both as a regulative model and as an inspiration.
• This third edition of The Ideal City is necessitated by frequent requests for an
unobtainable book, and even more by a changed intellectual situation. The first
edition appeared when the climate of opinion was optimistic and planning well
regarded, the second when the limitations of overall planning had come to be
questioned, and the present text is based on the fact that an attitude of pessimism
now prevails.

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 SUMMARY
• In order to survey the development of ideal planning in Western Europe it is necessary to
consider the ancient traditions upon which this evolution is based. In classical Greece with its
cities states, and the Hellenistic and roman empires, that a significant and gradual change with
regard to overall planning took place, although the early stages of these developments are still
largely unknown, pending unforeseeable results of future excavations. The two basic
mathematical forms, the square and the circle are found in juxtaposition. These elements,
universally seen in all civilization, remained the ‘trace’ regular in the sense in which le corbusier
uses the term right up to the contemporary period. The fact that Plato mentions the plain is
significant, not only because of its regular form, but also because p planned environment is more
easily realized in a flat region, whereas mountainous sites largely superimpose their own shape
on the human matrix. Hellenistic cities, when planned, belonged to the chequer-board type, as
seen in millets, priene, and also originally in the Piraeus, as built by Hippodamus of Miletus. From
these facts it appears that Plato’s sources are not found in observations regarding hisa
environment, but spring from traditions of a magical or cosmological nature; they are used in a
formalized manner, expressing primarily aesthetic concepts of regulation and order, which in turn
may well be indented to the Pythagorean tradition. The combination –architect and planner –
found in the person of Hippodromes was to become a characteristic feature in European
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• In roman tradition Vitruvius’s main preoccupation is eight formal and structural considerations the Varity of the building programme, including
civic structures, is variety of the buildings a sensible arrangement, which has been almost universally followed by later writers. Votaries
stipulated that the market- place should be the center of the town, but erected near the harbor in a seaport. The city was to enclose by a
protecting circular wall reinforced by towers for strategic reasons. The radial arrangement of the assumed eight directions of the prevailing winds
was to be avoided for hygienic purposes by the eight streets bisecting them. Vituuvius was aware of the irregularity of actual winds, and thus
added that further currents of air and breezes existed, the latter originating in local conditions. Between man and the universe, and it appears
significant that Vitruvius’s town is equally by the direction of the eight winds, and the streets located between them. Vitruvius, like Plato,
designed his idea city not on the basis of actual surroundings but in order to satisfy by a circular form conception of harmony, regularity and
enclosure. The division of the city into eight or sixteen compartments is a division from Plato, who favored twelve divisions in his Laws. Vitruvius
here applies the natural of the city scales in multiples of four, whilst Plato’s arrangement is reminiscent of reminiscent of the twelve subdivision
of the square, used in calculating the lunar year. The arrangement of houses according to the wealth or the moderate means of the owners, and
showed interested in farms and the requirements of the merchants. Vitruvius’s ideal city is therefore no social Utopia, but a formal pattern,
characteristic of the own period. His clear classification of designs into ground plan, ichnographia, elevation, orthographic, And perspective view,
scaenographia, had a lasting influence on medieval art.
• In the early Middle ages is clearly illustrated in the legend connected eith, or based on the founding of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in
Rome. These traditions imply a continued awareness of planning in spite of a loss of techniques and combined with the prevailing belief that the
execution of plans required more than human ability. The plan of St. Gall was intended as a model is not only seen from the comprehensiveness
of the needs catered for, but also from the fact that measurements of a smaller scale were added to the church design at a later date,
measurements, which do not correspond to the building as outlined. The basic rectangularity and regularity of the general layout is indebted to
the classical heritage of Roman fort and camps. The city is ornamented by precious stones, symbolizing priceless value. The outline of plan,
reminiscent of medieval cloisters, the twelve gates and angels, the jeweled paving stones, the Angeles with the measuring rod and the figure of
St.John, are all based on Revelation. During the middle ages the celestial city seems to come down on earth quite literally, because the abstract
images are slowly replaced by more realistic interpretations. The township consisted of parallel streets between these the market square; the
main church and fornications were outstanding. In newly built towns, the towers fortifying the walls are usually similar in shape, not only for
defensive reasons, but also because the Gothic style stressed regularity and uniformity, rather than creation and individualism. Florence, as a
prototype of the Italian medical town, gains its very perfection by a principle different from that of that of the royal patronage, operating in
Aigues- Mortes; the conscious abstentious aesthetic efforts of its leading citizens. Two main trends appear, which, apparently contradictory,
supplement and enhance each other.
•

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CRTICAL ANALYSIS

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 CONCLUSION
• Utopia as interpreted by Karl Mannheim presupposes violent change,
whilst the planner of ideal cities is a reformer within his given society
and locality.
• Perhaps the most doubtful feature of contemporary planning is over-
rigid zoning, which in effect separates the place of work from housing
and in this way breaks up the continuity of life, well- balanced
although asymmetry may be appear satisfying, but a basic human
urge is reflected in a desire for symmetry, which is based on the
human form. The larger the scale the motes this necessity is
pronounced.
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