Broad acre City Concept
Frank Lloyd wright
• Broadacre City was an urban or suburban development
concept proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright throughout
most of his lifetime. He presented the idea in his
book The Disappearing City in 1932. A few years later he
unveiled a very detailed twelve by twelve foot (3.7 × 3.7
m) scale model representing a hypothetical four square
mile (10 km²) community.
• Wright's ideal community was a complete rejection of
the American cities of the first half of the 20th century.
According to him, cities would no longer be centralized;
no longer beholden to the pedestrian or the central
business district. Broadacre City was a thought
experiment as much as it was a serious proposal—one
where the automobile would reign supreme. It was a
truly prophetic vision of modern America.
• Broadacre City was the antithesis of a city and the
apotheosis of the newly born suburbia, shaped through
Wright's particular vision. It was both a planning
statement and a socio-political scheme by which each
U.S. family would be given a one acre (4,000 m²) plot of
land from the federal lands reserves, and a Wright-
conceived community would be built anew from this. In a
The Plan sense it was the exact opposite of
transit-oriented development.
• There is a train station and a few office and apartment
buildings in Broadacre City, but the apartment dwellers
are expected to be a small minority. All important
transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can
exist safely only within the confines of the one acre
(4,000 m²) plots where most of the population dwells.
• Broadacre City—was largely a romanticized fantasy, dreamt up by a self-serving narcissist. Laid out
over a number of different articles and talks as well as three books, The Disappearing
City (1932), When Democracy Builds (1945), and The Living City(1958), Wright's utopia was
ultimately an extension of the things that made him personally comfortable: open spaces, the
automobile, and not surprisingly, the architect as master controller.
• Wright and his crew took the model to New York City—that loathsome metropolis that represented
everything Wright thought was wrong with America. The model was displayed at Rockefeller Center
and was seen by roughly 40,000 visitors, according to an estimate by theNew York Times. From there
it would then go on tour in different American cities, spreading the Broadacre gospel.
• Among some of the features of the Broadacre City, too numerous to list in full include little
farms,music gardens, flight service, vineyards and orchards, schools, cinemas, gas stations,
general merchandising and markets, little factories and so forth.
• Also listed in the Broadacre City's official description are general guidelines or rules. Among
the more relevant are: No private ownership of public needs, no landlord or tenant, no traffic
problems, an acre of ground minimum for the individual, Broadacre City makes no change in
existing system of land surveys, has a single seat of government for each county, and
architectural features determined by the character and topography of region.
• At Broadacre’s center were one-acre land units meant for nuclear families. Expanding from
this center, Wright designated distinct areas that included: little farm units; “luxurious” type
(non-farm) housing; orchards; hotel; sanitarium; music garden; zoo; aquarium; little
factories; scientific and agricultural research; and a “small school for small children.” On one
panel of the Rockefeller Model were a series of Orwellian negations that included:
• No Slum. No Scum
No traffic problems
No glaring cement roads or walks
• Broadacre isn't a city; it is a landscape. Decentralised in organisation it is self-sufficient in
supply, republican in constitution, and populated by auto - mobile citizens. , the single
family house.
• There is no administration - no bureaucracy - but the architect, who plans the city and
settles its affairs. He arranges who may own how many acres of land and where roads start
and lead to, thus preventing property speculation as well as congestion.
Questions?
Let’s Have a
Great Semester!
