“I am glad Suzanne proposed this title for my talk because what we are talking about today as the dysfunctional city is nothing more than what used to be called the ‘Functional’ city.”
In 1921, Corbusier, who, Ettore reminds us, was sponsored by the automobile manufacturer, Voisin, created a vision of a utopian city of 3 million inhabitants, based on the automobile. In 1925 he drew up plans for the destruction of what he considered the ‘dysfunctional’ Marais district of Paris, replacing it with a ‘Functional’ grid plan arrangement of tower blocks and highways, shopping malls and office blocks designed on the ‘car scale’ called ‘Plan Voisin’. In 1931, CIAM, with Corbusier a dominant voice in that group, proposed a vision of the Functional City, based on the idea of zoning.
