ABSTRACT
We think it’s time for a new urban design manifesto. Almost 50 years have passed since Le Corbusier and the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) produced the Charter of Athens, and it is more than 20 years since the first Urban Design Conference, still in the CIAM tradition, was held (at Harvard in 1957). Since then the precepts of CIAM have been attacked by sociologists, recently by architects themselves. But it is still a strong influence, and we will take it as our starting point. Make no mistake: the charter was, simply, a manifesto – a public declaration that spelled out the ills of industrial cities as they existed in the 1930s and laid down physical requirements necessary to establish healthy, humane, and beautiful urban environments for people. It could not help but deal with social, economic, and political phenomena, but its basic subject matter was the physical design of cities. Its authors were (mostly) socially concerned architects, determined that their art and craft be responsive to social realities as well as to improving the lot of man. It would be a mistake to write them off as simply elitist designers and physical determinists.
