Urban design by Le Corbusier, 1922 Exhibited in 1922 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, the Contem-porary City for Three Million Inhabitants was Le Corbusier’s first comprehensive urban-planning project. Accompanied by a 100-square-meter diorama, it consisted of a rigidly geometric, centralized orthogonal plan with monumental axes, uniform modern buildings, vast expanses of open space covering 85 to 95 percent of the surface, and a system of highways. The project was seen simultaneously as a breathtaking modern vision and as the destruction of the familiar urban setting. Influence on the project ranged from American gridded cities, Peter Behrens’ work, and Tony Garnier’s Une Cité industrielle (1901–04, 1917; An Industrial Town) to Bruno Taut’s Utopian Die Stadtkrone (1919; The City Crown). By 1922 Le Corbusier was one of the major figures of the Modern movement, and the Contemporary City marked a high point in a period of extraordinary activity. It incorporated two ideas that he had been...