The conclusions of the fourth CIAM congress on “the functional city”: the city analysed into four functions (dwelling, work, recreation and circulation), each to be planned for on its own terms, with high, widely spaced housing in green space.
The fourth congress of CIAM was held in 1933 largely on board a ship between Marseille and Athens, where delegates compared analyses of some thirty cities drawn to a common method. Le Corbusier published his own edited version of the conclusions ten years later, in occupied Paris, as La Charte d’Athènes; it runs to some ninety-five numbered points.
The Charter diagnoses the existing city as chaotic and unhealthy and prescribes zoning by function; dwellings placed in the best sites, with sun, air and green space, built high and far apart; work places near the dwellings but separated from them by green belts; recreation space in every district; and streets classified by speed, with fast traffic separated from pedestrians. Its influence on post-war planning was enormous, and so was the reaction against it from Team 10, Jane Jacobs and the New Urbanists.
The book, part by part
I The four functions
Dwelling, work, recreation, circulation.
Rules: The four functions of the city · Build high, and far apart · A zone for work, beyond a green belt