Urban Modernization of the 20th Century

Urbanization is a concept that is growing in relevance by the day. As our population grows the number of urban areas increases. The beginning of the 20th century marked a true explosion in the global population, in 1900 the population was just short of 2 billion people, today it is just under 8 (Lecture). This increase saw the immediate obligation for established cities to completely redesign their layout. The ideas that were brought about from this movement have been categorized as modernism. The movement of modernism had one main goal in mind, functionality (lecture). The modernistic movement sought to eliminate any forms of frivolous design that did not serve a purpose in the facilitation of an efficient city. This functionality focused on things like uniformity, efficient waste management (prior to the 20th century the concept of hygiene was non-existent), and areas of great space to emulate a more open environment. This movement was seen as progressive for its time, however not long after this movement caused more damage than good. In the mid-20th century, a prominent urban planner named Robert Moses sought to make traffic through cities as efficient as possible. His plan to accomplish this was to abruptly build massive causeways through densely populated urban areas, these causeways would intentionally direct people to regions which were planned to have heavy amounts of commercialization. Moses tried to implement this plan in New York, his plan came to fruition in areas that were of low income due to a financial inability to protest these massive developments (Lecture). His plan did, however, fail in areas of higher income such as Manhattan. Plans of modernization such as these aimed at hyper-efficacy, however, they did not take into account the fluidity of people. Rather than study the paths of movement people already used, Moses aimed to create an entirely new form of transportation regardless if people thought it to be an upgrade. Because of this, many “modernization” projects of the early to late 20th century are now being reversed to emphasize a more “grass-roots” idea of the urban environment. Modernization began as a beneficial progressive movement that benefited every persons quality of life, however, over time it became forceful and disrupted the natural fluidity of people.

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