The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Decentrists are urban planners who advocate extending the Garden City concept into a regional approach. Their ultimate goal is to decentralize cities. Jacobs describes them as “a group of extraordinarily effective and dedicated people, among them Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, the late Henry Wright and Catherine Bauer” (19), who followed the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes.

Eminent domain is the right of governments to expropriate private property for public use in exchange for compensation. Housing projects are often built on land purchased using eminent domain.

The Garden City Movement is an approach to urban planning initiated by Ebenezer Howard in England in 1898. Garden cities are planned, self-contained communities surrounded by greenbelts. They contain proportionate areas of dwellings, industry, and agriculture. The broad aim of the movement is to replicate the benefits of the countryside and the city, while avoiding the disadvantages of both.

A greenbelt is a swathe of undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding an urban area. 

A gray belt is a low-density zone surrounding a city. They generally lack diversity, commercial structures, and public life.

Mixed-use, also called mixed primary uses, refers to a type of urban development that combines residential, commercial, institutional, and cultural uses into one building or area. Mixed-use developments are often physically and functionally integrated.

The modern or modernist architectural movement emerged in the first half of the 20th century and remained dominant until the 1980s. Modernist architects employed new and innovative technologies of construction, making ample use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete. The architecture tends to be minimalistic and devoid of ornamentation. 

Also known by its French name, Ville radieuse, the Radiant City is an unrealized urban project designed in 1930 by the French architect, Le Corbusier. It is among the most influential and polemical projects of European modernism. Its broad, utopian aim is to reunite humans with an ordered environment.

The Radiant City is linear. It is modeled on the human body, with an abstract head, spine, arms, and legs. Within this general form are high-rise blocks, pathways for circulation, and green spaces. The housing blocks, laid out in long lines that step in and out, are glazed on their south sides, elevated on piers, and contain roof terraces with running tracks.