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Babel and Babylon

Babel and Babylon

Aztec cities

Aztec cities

Heavenly Jerusalem

Heavenly Jerusalem

The Fujian Tulou

The Fujian Tulou

Utopia

Utopia

Romorantin, capital of a kingdom...

Romorantin, capital of a kingdom...

The city of brotherly love

The city of brotherly love

Saint Petersburg, Peter's great city

Saint Petersburg, Peter's great city

Industry, socialism and utopia

Industry, socialism and utopia

Taking technology to new heights

Taking technology to new heights

Home sweet home

Home sweet home

A towering challenge...

A towering challenge...

New towns

New towns

Conjuring capitals

Conjuring capitals

Auroville: "divine anarchy"

Auroville: "divine anarchy"

Private cities

Private cities

Dubai: miracle or mirage?

Dubai: miracle or mirage?

All eyes on the horizon

All eyes on the horizon

The city of brotherly love

Europe, however, had no room for utopias: the continent already boasted its fair share of cities and constructions. More adventurous spirits therefore turned their attentions to the terra incognita of the New World in a bid to see through their dream projects. Driven by their religious convictions, they set their sights on a new, perfectly organized city.

Philadelphia, also known as the "city of brotherly love", was founded in 1680 and was the archetypal American city. Turning their backs on the centrist model with its seat of government as the hub, the newcomers dreamed of an egalitarian lifestyle (at least as far as the colonists were concerned) where people could enjoy freedom of worship. They chose to apply the Hippodamian model (or grid plan), invented in Asia Minor two thousand years earlier. The grid layout brought a number of advantages: it was easy to construct, it was easy for real-estate developers to sell, and it did not stamp a center on cities, allowing them to expand in all directions.

GPS: getting around (and round and round)

In US cities, the gridiron layout made it easier to find buildings. In New York, for instance, the streets and avenues are numbered in ascending order, providing easy coordinates to locate the different blocks.

Numbering is more complex in cities with less regular layouts. In Paris, for instance, building numbers were only introduced in 1805 after initial tests under the reign of Louis XVI.

Japan relies on neither numbers nor addresses, making finding your destination something of a feat! True to their penchant for technology, many Japanese enter the telephone number of the place they want in their GPS and find it that way!

As these urban areas grew, the use of horse-drawn trams became more common, creating a network that defined city centers. The grid-plan approach quickly became the bread-and-butter design for North American urban planners, regardless of geographical limitations.

Map of Philadelphia and the surrounding area
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
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New York City I

Mondrian was captivated on seeing the city of New York in 1940. Its bright, geometric, colorful design was a direct reflection of his own research. There, he came to discover jazz and boogie-woogie, which also made a strong impression on the artist. This source of inspiration can be seen in a number of works, such as Broadway Boogie-Woogie and New York City I (1941-1942), which capture careful attention to rhythm and are now kept in the Pompidou Centre, Paris.

Pieter Cornelis Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (aka Mondrian) was a pioneering figure of the abstract movement, born in the Netherlands in 1872. Like Van Gogh, he was torn between a career as a preacher and his vocation as a painter. He eventually chose the latter: after training at the School of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, he began to explore every aspect of avant-garde art. His encounter with cubism in 1912 had dramatic results: Mondrian, who was first and foremost interested in the construction of his canvases, began to shift towards more abstract works featuring strong geometric lines and solid colors. His artwork went hand in hand with some intense theorizing influenced by theosophy (an esoteric doctrine popular among his generation). As it did with many artists, the Second World War had a strong impact on his career: after leaving Paris in 1938 and witnessing the London bombings in 1940, he moved to New York, where he died in 1944.

© BnF
© Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN / Philippe Migeat - HCR, Warreton USA

Philadelphia

Philadelphia, which literally means the "city of brotherly love", was founded by William Penn in 1681. The King of England gave Penn land (which would later become Pennsylvania) to pay off a debt incurred by his father. A Quaker, Penn set off for America to build a community based on freedom of worship. Although he owned the land, he chose to buy it from the native Indians to help foster smoother relations. The city was built in a grid layout between the Delaware River and one of its tributaries. Philadelphia quickly grew to become the second-largest city in the country by 1700.

Seen as the country's intellectual capital (home to booming education and publishing sectors), Philadelphia played a crucial part in the American Revolution and played host to the Second Continental Congress, which led to the signing of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Philadelphia then enjoyed a long period of growth in industry, business and population, boosted by nearby mining operations in the Appalachian Mountains. The city's economic decline, beginning in the 1950s, led to a number of social problems that pushed the middle classes out towards the suburbs.