Imagine a community that was sterile, tidy, quiet, reserved and regimented. A neighborhood that said goodbye to noisy streets, chaotic markets, and invading neon. A residency that cultivated hygienic, strategic and standardized dwellings so that all the world was harmonious and uniform. Sounds like a sci-fi flick to me ( enter zombies here). This was the premises of La Ville Radieuse, the Radiant City by Le Corbusier. It was his answer to all of the workers who needed adequate residency that was not in the heart of the city. Promoting a ‘big scale’ it was a collection of units in big buildings with big open park and big urban highways. This inhospitable and socially destructive building failed, but it lead the way for community design planers to create new urban schemes and regimented housing projects. This spreading of economic cookie cutter housing is rapidly creating a serious backlash of misused resources, community disassociation, physical de-appreciation, and highway congestion to say but a few. This is ‘urban sprawl’. Corbuiser lead the way with Radiant City, which is a satiric film on the subject should fittingly be named the same. Radiant City the film is a documentary about suburban sprawl that is both funny and educational.

Radiant City is a brilliant look on suburban family life with a surreal twist. The documentary follows the lives of a typical Suburban family, showing all the ironic angles of the ‘benefits’ of living in such a big house outside of the city. This eradicates the boundaries of fact and fiction by using actors for the ‘fake’ documentary but using real life issues. As a result you get caught up in the film very quickly and it does not come off as an amateurish interview but a well filmed satire about a real community design issue.

I highly recommend the film. Urban sprawl is an issue that is constantly eating up our planet in the name of progress, business or comfort and yet the reality of it is it is none of these things. The domino effect of having a huge home on the outskirts of town in a dollhouse community is extensive and destructive. Putting aside the long commute, endless transmissions, and ridiculous infrastructures needed to support these communities, there are also the problems of social isolation. Gone are the streets with people and children, filled instead with garages and manicured lawns. When you get used to having no one to deal with but yourself, you get intolerant to the world around you.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of having my own get away with a little piece of yard away from the city. Where these places go wrong is that there is simply too many divisions. Here are the houses in a row, over there are the businesses, and just across the highway are the corporations. It is not a community, it is a chart. If they could bring it all together, mix it up, then perhaps the communities could be self supportive and not have to spread out endlessly in monotonous horizontal lines.

Anywho, just a thought. Go and see Radiant City and tell me what you think. It is a great film and as you can see, very provoking.

K