ancient cities

84 Broadacre City
his ideal community: Broadacre City. As a critic of
centralized urban development that characterized
pre–World War II urban America, Wright believed
that the large cities of his time dehumanized values,
robbed people of their individuality, and
jeopardized their democratic yearning. People
would reap the full benefits of the machine age
only by returning to the land.
This entry starts with a review of Wright’s philosophy
of Broadacre City, continues with an
outline of its central design features, identifies
some limitations of the concept and how Broadacre
City compares to other utopian forms of the
times, and offers a prospective role for Broadacre
City in shaping the American exurban landscape.
Philosophical Foundations
Through Broadacre City, Wright expressed his
principles of urban decentralization, economic
self-sufficiency, and individualism. The traditional
city, with its masses of buildings, was replaced by
small houses dotting the rural landscape. In
Broadacre City, the built environment would be
distributed over open countryside and would be
organically constructed to harmonize with natural
surroundings. Each lot would be inwardly oriented,
thereby promoting a domestic, family-
oriented lifestyle where every person would be at
least a part-time farmer. Indeed, the notion of individualism
was a crucial element of Wright’s vision
of Broadacre City. He owed much of this vision to
the Jeffersonian ideal of rural self-reliance.
Broadacre City would provide for the universal
ownership of land and a society of individual proprietors.
There would be no rent, landlords, or tenants,
and no private ownership of land. Everyone would
have the skills and knowledge to be a part-time
farmer, mechanic, and intellectual—much as
Jefferson was. Goods would flow directly from the
producer to the consumer with no intermediary.
Industry in Broadacre City would be privately or
cooperatively owned. Local government would be
the only local public administrative group within the
city. Like modern conservative economists, the sole
purpose of national government would be the regulation
of natural resources, the provision of national
defense, and the compilation of information.
Despite Wright’s penchant for communal ownership,
however, his “democratic decentralization”
would allow every person to own at least one acre
of land in Broadacre City. The resulting urban pattern
would greatly decentralize population and
replace the city’s concentration of wealth and
power with a society where the means of production
would be widely held.
Design Features
Broadacre City was publicly displayed in print media
and in a showing of a model from 1934 to 1935.
The version of his plan published in Architectural
Record in 1935 is conceptualized in Figure 1.
Broadacre City would cover an area of 4 square
miles or 2,560 acres and would support a population
of approximately 5,000 people living in 1,400
homes. Each person regardless of age would be
provided at least 1 acre of land. The typical residential
lot configuration would be 165 feet by 264
feet, or precisely 1 acre. The lot would allow for a
garden or small farm next to the house. Families
would also live in small apartments, single-family
cottages, worker quarters above shops, or larger
hillside houses. Scattered throughout would be a
dozen or so 15-floor towers, each with 33 apartments.
Everyone would be within walking distance
of work, and vehicular transportation would be
used primarily to travel between cities.
Among the small farms would be factories,
schools, stores, professional buildings, hospital, cultural
centers, and other institutions. The local government
buildings would be in a single high-rise
building by a lake, but it would not be the focus of
the community. A single freeway and railroad system
would provide access to other Broadacre Cities.
Using the modern rule of thumb for a familyoriented
household size of three, the population
base of Broadacre City would be about 4,200 people.
The density is slightly more than 1,000 people
per square mile, which is comparable to that of the
nation’s most densely populated state, New Jersey,
or roughly equivalent to the population density of
Kansas City, Missouri. Broadacre City would
clearly qualify as an urban place according to the
U.S. Census. In effect, Broadacre City would be an
oasis of settlement set in a rural landscape.
Limitations and Relation to Garden
Cities and the Neighborhood Unit
The population base of Wright’s Broadacre City is
the same as Clarence Perry’s Neighborhood Unit