Amanda (and I paraphrase): Yuck! Straight lines? Grids? Exactly 24 skyscrapers? ALL THE SAME HEIGHT? Barf out! Gag me with a spoon! I'd rather kill myself than live in that city! It's completely unnatural!
Josh (Lankoff): I don't think the plan was to adhere to that EXACT model. He says that he's "avoid[ing] all special cases... assum[ing] an ideal site to begin with" (164). It's not that a construction crew is going to march in and build the exact same plan in every continent. This is just a jumping off point. There's obviously going to be variance. Also, what's wrong with grids? Have you ever tried driving in Boston or DC?
Amanda insisted that it'd never work anyway, so I've decided to apply the least rigorous, least scientific test to Le Corbusier's idealized city that I can: building it in Sim City 4 and seeing what happens.
Here's what we're dealing with:
This is pages 174-75. I've colored it pink to get around copyright laws. If I'm still in violation, contact me and I'll take this picture down.
The jist: Transportation hub in the center. It's surrounded by commercial skyscrapers. These are surrounded by medium-density housing which commutes to work primarily through train, monorail, subway, and other public transportation. This is all surrounded by the "park lands," public parks and forests. The plan goes into far more detail, which I will try to incorporate into my Sim City model as much as possible.
An important question: Sim City obviously isn't the perfect tool to do this, but does it hold ANY legitimacy? I'd like to think so. Its traffic simulations, at least, are highly realistic, especially using user-created plugins that more accurately simulate citizens' route planning to and from their jobs. Here is an article about a middle school in Rhode Island that used Sim City as part of its fifth and sixth grade curriculum.
Regular updates on the model Le Corbusier city to come.
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