Le Corbusier's Radiant Cities or Super Blocks

In th 1920's a French architect named Le Corbusier created a new concept of city building called the 'Radiant City.' He envisioned cities with large blocks of park or grassland with many buildings on that parcel of land. Each building would be extremely tall and even be entirely self-sustainable in terms of shopping, etc. This picture is Le Corbusier's concept of how he believed Paris should be. Paris is one of the world's most beautiful cities because it has maintained much of its efficient medieval form. This concept would have made Paris look like just another North American city.

This is Regent Park, a community built on the Radiant City concept. As you can see the buildings are set far from the street and create no interaction. Half a century ago Toronto planners and architects embraced Le Corbusier's ideas to an extent. Thus we see communities throughout the city designed on a city block with a number of buildings on the land and surrounded by grass. They are often given names that reflect their park-like setting like Moss Park, Regent Park, Don Mount Court or Parkway Forest. Today they are referred to as 'super blocks' because they have extremely high densities but barely any of the buildings embrace the streets or sidewalks. {January 13th, 2006}

This is Moss Park at Parliament and Shuter. It too was built on the Radiant City design. In Toronto the super block communities only exist for rental accomodation and rarely for condominiums. Not necessarily in correlation, these communities often become down and out neighbourhoods and become known for crimal activities. Sociologists would say these designs produce deviant behaviours {January 20th, 2006}

This is St Jamestown on Wellesley Street between Parliament and Sherbourne in Toronto. It is one the most extreme examples of Le Corbusier's Radiant City design. This neighbourhood has the highest population density in all of Canada. Such neighbourhoods create problems for residents such as not having a street address or because traffic does not travel through the neighbourhood it blocks out the outside community from such a large and diverse population. The roadway in this picture is not a public street, it is only a driveway leading into the community which leads to each individual building {January 13th, 2006}