Visions and Urban Structures

Abstract

During the last century shifting ideals and modes in urban planning have had a strong influence on western city development, even though the financial, technical and institutional conditions have decided what was finally built. Thus the unprecedented transformation and expansion of the Swedish cities starting in the ­mid-1900s was supported by ideals and visions that sought with minimal critical thinking to satisfy nearly all structural societal changes. “Accept”, meaning accept societal development, was the name of the ambitious program for Swedish architects in 1931 and where the all-pervading theme was a new modernist architecture, in Sweden called functionalism, and the dissociation from the traditional city and its block and street pattern. The consequences for urban planning was even clearer at the influential international city planning conference in Athens 1933 where the Charter of Athens was promulgated. Its focus was the division and zoning of the city into separate areas for work, residence, recreation and central city functions. The future car society was welcomed by traffic separation, for instance regional highways and bypasses firmly separated from local streets. The urban structure presented was also the one that later was more or less implemented in the entire industrially developed part of the world, sometimes, and especially in Sweden, supplemented with ideas about neighborhood units, New Towns and satellite towns. The latter laid emphasis on social contexts, but at the same time contributed to the mono-centric and hierarchic order of the urban structure.

Chapter written by Bosse Bergman.