Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City: A Vision of Decentralized Urbanism
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City
Lesson 6: The Planning of Frank Lloyd Wright
1. Anti-American Urbanism
Wright, already renowned for his pioneering American modern architecture, launched Broadacre City in 1935. This utopian model presented a decentralized city, interpreting a romantic movement tied to rural tradition. It emphasized the natural environment, individual artisanship, family, patriarchal authority, and Protestant ideology. Wright called for a return to nature, villa life, and a lifestyle nostalgic for the pioneer era. He built upon the town-country integration ideas of utopian socialists and Ebenezer Howard’s garden city, incorporating the organic and spatial particularization of Camillo Sitte, while embracing technology and universality of the rationalist model. Despite reflecting a petty bourgeois lifestyle that resonated with traditionalist sectors of the haute bourgeoisie and landowners, the naturalistic model couldn’t reverse metropolitan concentration, manifesting only in suburban forms.
2. Critique of the Megalopolis
Extraordinary industrial and agricultural development propelled the U.S. to a major world power, fueled by technological innovations like agricultural machinery, transportation, and assembly lines. Financial and industrial concentration in cities like Chicago and New York led to speculation, optimizing land use and enabling skyscrapers through elevators and iron structures. However, this also resulted in individual alienation, anonymity, submission to production, and excessive enrichment. The harmful consequences of capitalist development, exacerbated by the 1929 crisis, included unemployment, urban violence, and poverty. Wright’s naturalist model aimed to restore lost individuality and compensate for submission to production through the isolated villa.
3. The Broadacre City Program
Broadacre City, an acentric urbanization model without geographical boundaries, eliminated not only the megalopolis but the very concept of the city. The population would be scattered on plots of at least 4 acres, intended for single-family dwellings where occupants could engage in agriculture, industrial work, tertiary work (in workshops, labs, or private offices), or leisure. Homes would be connected to retail, shopping, and services distributed spatially within a complex communication network of highways, telephones, airstrips, and railways. Neighborhoods were designed so no residence would be more than a 10-minute drive from a shopping center or school. The system included a loop road of endless highways. The architecture would be integrated with the landscape, reflecting the topography, preserved nature, and soil type. Supply would be direct from producer (farmer) to consumer in local markets. Recreational facilities and community centers (clubs) would be located along roads, and schools would be in parks.
4. Liberty or Liberalism?
Wright’s notion of democracy emphasized extreme individual freedom—the right to do as one pleases. This individualism opposed the sovereignty of the collective will, prioritizing individual over collective interest, and neglecting the social compact. It envisioned only a local government focused on mere administration.
5. Contradictions and Limits
The aversion to conurbation clashed with the model’s reliance on communication technology, which depended on economies of scale and the existence of universities, research labs, and large industries. Working-class housing would consist of standard units, gradually expandable. However, how would they afford land and cars? Where would they find livelihoods? On farms?
