“What is a city?” by Lewis Mumford, “A Contemporary City” by Le Corbusier, “Broadacre City: A New Community Plan” by Frank Lloyd Wright, and “The City Image and its Elements” by Kevin Lynch all had a futuristic feel to the writing. While the first selection strived to put a city into meaningful words, the next two readings explored what a city could or should be – presenting specific visions, and the last one offered technicalities of a city.  

Usually when one thinks of a city, a cluster of buildings comes to mind but Mumford expels this misconception and presents a unique description, “a city is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity.” This definition covers the city on many levels such as geographic, economic, and social. Another characteristic that comes to mind when thinking of a city is overpopulation. To deal with this problem, Le Corbusier presents his seemingly contradictory but logical vision which is to augment the density of people yet have open spaces. Although I am not sure how this is possible, I did like his idea of separating traffic since “a city made for speed is made for success.” 

Author Kevin Lynch made an interesting point about making sense of a city through its landmarks. Come to think of it, so many times when we decide to meet up with a friend, we specify the location in relation to a landmark. “Let’s meet up by the clock in Union Square!” might be one of the many phrases you used or have heard of before. In general, these four readings gave a nice overview and set the tone of future material!