ABSTRACT
A city of reason is somehow expected to be organized on the basis of some spatial order, which some have found in geometrical regularity. A longstanding tool of city design since the ancient times has been the use of regular geometrical forms to give some spatial and functional order to the city. In particular, after the Renaissance in Europe, a specific rationalist tendency emerged that put geometry at the top of its agenda, and was able to transform cities across the world. This paralleled a new definition of reason based on human intuition, and the development of modern science and technology that has inspired people to imagine the world as a machine. In this chapter, we explore the approach adopted by Renaissance and Baroque thinkers and designers, with the urban geometry that it created, followed in the next chapter by the new form of rationalist design in the twentieth century and its faith in technology.
