ABSTRACT
Le Corbusier’s concepts of urban form were the target of heavy criticism from their first appearance at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1922.1 Nearly 80 years later, they are still criticised, often in much the same terms, and it is safe to say that they now have very little influence, if any at all. In the UK, however, we are now again examining the question of urban form in light of the projected massive demand for new housing, particularly in the South East, and the fear of consequential further encroachment on the countryside. High density urban living is widely promoted as the solution, and suitable models are sought. Le Corbusier was an advocate of highdensity urban living (even if his later proposals for linear industrial cities imply partial dispersal), and his ideas concerning urban form are certainly worth re-examining, together with the criticisms levelled at them. In this paper I propose to do so with particular reference to two schools of criticism, which I shall label the ‘Cambridge’ school (based on the theoretical work of Professor Sir Leslie Martin and his circle there from the 1960s) and the ‘New York’ school (based on the writings about New York of the architect/planner Rem Koolhaas of the late 1970s, with roots in those of the author Jane Jacobs 20 years earlier). These may be characterised as criticisms founded respectively on mathematical and on emotive grounds.
