People love to dump on Corbusier for all the ills of 20th C city planning. Worth noting - These congresses were groups of architects (generally of private hous

People love to dump on Corbusier for all the ills of 20th C city planning. Worth noting - These congresses were groups of architects (generally of private houses) struggling to come to terms with how to plan massive cities. At a time of population explosions, new ways of living, modern construction technology etc. City planning really didn't exist as a discipline. No hard science or social science around cities. Etc. You cant really blame them for not getting things right. - Much of this work led to postwar quickly and cheaply built social housing. Which was much needed in the postwar world however turned worse later especially when public housing became segregationist ghettos for lower classes in the late 20th C. You cant really blame these early modernists for that. - Corbusier in fact had many of the ideas that did stick (as opposed to many of the other attendees) - the unitee d'habitation was an incredible system. He obviously didn't understand streets or social interaction in a way that Jane Jacobs did much later but he did understand mass production, concrete and internal apartment planning in ways that led the world.