building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

the garden towns and of the satellite towns had failed, Wright’s “rural
urbanism” is not any longer wordplay but a civil message that has to be
pondered. 90
In other words, the lesson learnt from Broadacre would suggest that neither the
agricultural fields nor the application of an abstract model can give a good answer
to densely populated territories. An opportunity for landscape design lies in the
management and planning of these processes.
Today’s landscapes of urban sprawl, invading what were once considered
agricultural and/or natural territories, now act above all as a warning. Recently, too
many politicians and project designers have, perhaps unknowingly, been unable to
handle a situation which has transformed the city and our customary conception of
it. Suburbs stretching for hundreds of kilometres, according to a plan found in
various European and American regions, have not merely become a symptom of
how dispersive the city can be, but they also demonstrate our inability to make a
phenomenon, which was taking place at the beginning of the twentieth century,
worthwhile. If these common forms of dwelling are often referred to as the cancer
of town planning, it should be stressed that they have wormed their way into the
folds of legislative and town planning tools which, in theory, should have protected
the city from losing its grounds. Wright had understood that there was no need to
oppose dispersion. On the contrary it was better to manage it, and identify its
aesthetic significance.
Although Broadacre appears to express Wright’s talent, it is not resigned to suffer
congestion passively and at the same time, offers an advanced analysis of the
phenomena of dispersion already under way in America in the 1930s.
90 ZEVI, Bruno, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1979, pp. 142‐144 [translation by the editor
from Italian]; A totally different interpretation about Broadacre is to be found in Giorgio Ciucci essay
“La città nell’ideologia agraria e Frank Lloyd Wright. Origini e sviluppo di Broadacre”. [The town in
agrarian ideology and Frank Lloyd Wright. The origins and development of Broadacre]:
published in CIUCCI Giorgio, DAL CO Francesco, MANIERI ELIA Mario, TAFURI Manfredo, La città
americana dalla guerra civile al New Deal, [The American city from the Civil War to the New Deal]
Laterza, Bari, 1973, p. 340 [translation by the editor from Italian];
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