TERM PAPER -02

“DESCRIBE WITH RELEVANT ILLUSTRATION THE FOLLOWING

INTERVENTIONS DEVISED TO IMPROVE THE STATE OF THE 19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIALISED CITY:
HAUSSMANNISATION OF PARIS
AMERICAN CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT.”

PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE URBANISM

M.ARCH 2016-2018

RUBY MATHEW
M.ARCH
16001506012
HAUSSMANNISATION OF PARIS
INTRODUCTION

During a time of industrial change and cultural advancement, Paris became the new home for many,
overcrowding the ancient districts and spreading disease. The city, which had been untouched since
the middle Ages, was in dire need of reflecting the new modern ways and putting an end to the
spreading medical epidemics. The city was on the point of becoming uninhabitable. Its population
was suffocating in the tiny narrow, putrid, and tangled medieval streets in which it had been
dumped. And neighbourhoods of slums, as a result of this state of affairs, everything suffered:
hygiene, security, speed of communication and public morality.
The tight confines of Medieval Paris were hindering the city’s potential for growth and desire to
transform into a well-organized urban center. Napoleon III set about bringing order and structure to
the chaotic, cramped city and putting an end to its'
identity crisis

When Louis-Napoleon, nephew of the infamous emperor

Napoleon I, took control of France in 1848, he sought to
create a city worthy of empirical glory. For this task, he
appointed Prefect of the Seine Baron Eugène-Georges
Haussmann to bring his vision to life. His tasks were to
bring light, air, order, cleanliness and safety to the French
capital, and he was “charged with transforming the entire
social and material makeup of Paris.” Louis-Napoleon
desired massive monuments and wide boulevards along
which to march military processionals.insipired by the
mid -17th century design of Versailles and Baroque city planning in the cities such as rome, Baron
Haussmann rapidly changed paris over the following decades after his hiring

REASONS OF HAUSSMANNIZATION
 In the middle of the nineteenth century, the centre of Paris
was overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy.
 The street plan on the ÎIe de la Cité and in the neighbourhood
called the quarter des Arcis, between the Louvre and the Hotel
de Ville, had changed little since the Middle Ages.
 The population density in these neighbourhoods was
extremely high, compared with the rest of Paris; in the
neighbourhood of the Champs-Élysées, there was one resident
for every 186 square meters; in the neighbourhoods of Arcis
and Saint-Avoye, in the present Third Arrondissement, there
was one inhabitant for every three square meters.
  In these conditions, disease spread very
quickly. Cholera epidemics ravaged the city in
1832 and 1848. In the epidemic of 1848, five
percent of the inhabitants of these two
neighbourhoods had died.
 The under-classes in paris wer fed up with
dictorships and frequently held uprising againt
the nobility of paris and the emperor, instead of
addressing these grieances,napoleon III decided
to clear away the problem and prevent them
from reemerging.
 Traffic circulation was another major problem. The widest streets in these two
neighbourhoods were only five meters wide; the narrowest were only one or two meters
wide. Wagons, carriages and carts could barely move through the streets.
 The center of the city was also a cradle of discontent and revolution; between 1830 and
1848, seven armed uprisings and revolts had broken out in the centre of Paris.

PLANNING AND EXECUTION

PLAN OF PARIS

-Haussmann moulded the city into a geometric grid, with new streets running east and west, north
and south, dividing Medieval Paris into new sections. His plan brought symmetry to the city.

-During a time when the city was filled to the brim with people, disease was a large risk. The
widening of the streets would relieve the cramped city and allow for the people to get around more
easily.

-It also allowed for an increase in height of the buildings, providing more room for the people of
Paris to live and thrive in.

-Running alongside the new roads, which had been widened to accommodate the rising number of
people living within the city limits, were rows of chestnut trees, which allowed Haussmann to
maintain the geometric and symmetrical aesthetic that he had created with the new roads.

-Where he struggled to maintain his visual order, new public spaces and monuments were erected.

-He was also responsible for isolating Notre-Dame from the city, emphasizing its’ importance to the
city.
-The next step in Haussmann’s plan for the new Paris was to divide the city into arrondissements, or
districts.
-The districts started inward, on the banks of the Seine, and spiralled outwards.

-The plan “implied the destruction of the old, heterogenous quarters in the city center and the
creation of large new quarters implicitly dividing the population by economic status.”

-With the division of the city into arrondissements came the need for a new water and sewer system.
Aided by his chief engineer Eugene Belgrand, Haussmann developed and began construction
in 1857 on a larger sewer system that could handle the large amounts of wastewaters coming from
the growing city that would be funneled into the Seine downstream from Paris.

-With the growing popularity of water closets, particularly in the richer Parisian districts, came a
need to funnel human waste into the sewer system as well. The proposal to channel human faeces
into the sewers that would mix with the storm water and flow into the Seine was an idea Haussmann
objected to.

-To maintain the order of the water and the urban space, Haussmann viewed it as necessary to keep
the clean water separate from the dirty water.

-Also by utilizing the new sewer system for human waste, the city would become cleaner and more
sterile, eliminating the smell of rotting waste and lowering the threat of disease from living in
cramped, contaminated quarters.
-To accompany the new streets and provide visual unity to theentire city, Haussmann and his team of
architects constructed a unifying architectural façade that changed the shape of Paris.

-As well as coating the city with a unifying style, they also constructed new public buildings, such as
L’Opéra , as well as many other buildings.

-With the widening of the Parisian streets, Haussmann and his crew were able to add an extra story
of height to the buildings that lined the roads. The additional height increased the amount of living
space within the city limits, easing up on the overcrowding, but not changing the affordability of the
housing.

-They are noted by their simple decoration and adherence to theclassical style. An emphasis on the
horizontal can be seen in the façade, following the horizontal of the streets they sat next to,
adding to the symmetry and geometric unity that Haussmannwanted the new Paris to have.

-Haussmann also created twenty-four new squares; seventeen in the older part of the city, eleven in
the new arrondissements, adding 150,000 square meters of green space.
BOULEVARD
Haussmann molded the city into a geometric grid, with new streets running east and west, north and
south, dividing Medieval Paris into new sections. His plan brought symmetry to the city

The widening of the streets would relieve the cramped city and allow for the people to get around
more easily. It also allowed for an increase in height of the buildings, providing more room for the
people of Paris to live and thrive in. Running alongside the new roads, were rows of chestnut trees,
which allowed Haussmann to maintain the geometric and symmetrical aesthetic that he had
created with the new roads. And where he struggled to maintain his visual order, new public spaces
and monuments were erected.
Haussmann

THE THICK LINES REPRESENT HAUSSMANN BOULEVARD

ROADS
Haussmann brought symmetry to the city
• Haussmann wanted all main roads to pass major buildings and monuments
• The new streets were laid out in a grid running east to west north to south with diagonal
connections radiating out
• Perhaps most importantly the wide avenues would be hard to barricade and allow fast access for
troops.
• The construction and widening of streets required the expropriation and demolition of many
buildings
GREEN SPCAE- PARKS & GARDENS
 Created four large parks
 Redesigned and replanted the city's older parks, including parc monceau, and the jardin du
luxembourg.
 Altogether, in seventeen years, they planted six hundred thousand trees and added two thousand
hectares of parks and green space to paris.

Haussmann built the Parc des
Buttes Chaumont on the site
of a former limestone quarry
at the northern edge of the
city.
The Square des
Batignolles, one of the
new squares that
Haussmann built in the
neighborhoods annexed to
Paris in 1860.
Parc Montsouris (1865–1869)
was built at the southern edge
of the city, where some of the
old catacombs of Paris had
been.

-The Bois de Vincennes (1860–1865) was (and is
today) the largest park in Paris, designed to give
green space to the working-class population of east
Paris
Parc Monceau, formerly the property of
the family of King Louis-Philippe, was
redesigned and replanted by
Haussmann. A corner of the park was
taken for a new residential quarter
(Painting by Gustave Caillebotte).
BUILDINGS
The most famous and recognizable feature of Haussmann's
renovation of Paris are the Haussmann apartment buildings
which line the boulevards of Paris. Street blocks were
designed as homogeneous architectural wholes. He treated
buildings not as independent structures, but as pieces of a
unified urban landscape.
The reconstruction of the rue de Rivoli was the model for
the rest of the Paris boulevards. The new apartment
buildings followed the same general plan:

 ground floor and basement with thick, load-bearing

walls, fronts usually parallel to the street. This was
often occupied by shops or offices.
 mezzanine or entresol intermediate level, with low
ceilings; often also used by shops or offices.
 second, piano nobile floor with a balcony. This floor, in
the days before elevators were common, was the most
desirable floor, and had the largest and best apartments.
 third and fourth floors in the same style but with less
elaborate stonework around the windows, sometimes
lacking balconies.
 fifth floor with a single, continuous, undecorated
balcony.
 mansard roof, angled at 45°, with garret rooms
and dormer windows. Originally this floor was to be
occupied by lower-income tenants, but with time and
with higher rents it came to be occupied almost
exclusively by the concierges and servants of the people
in the apartments below.

SEWERS

Pre-Haussmann: Bruneseau's underground system intermixed

sanitary and unsanitary water
• Haussmann engineered a new underground sewer system:
Separation of drinking water and waste
• Iron piping and digging techniques from Industrial Revolution
became a tourist attraction post sanitation 1859 below the Rue
Royale
• In 1878, the system expanded to 360 miles long
REFERENCE:

 Lecture notes dated on -26-09-2016

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris
 Wide Urban World blog
AMERICAN CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT
INTRODUCTION

The 1890s and the early years of the twentieth century were a turning point in American
society. In America, cities and towns were rapidly expanded in an unplanned fashion as a
result of heavy industrialization. New york city had long outgrown its original colonial
settlement in lower Manhattan, its subsequent Federal period growth and the urban
expansion of the Canal era was soon to be eclipsed by the suburbs expansion of horse-drawn
streetcar suburbs along the endless grid running north up the island. This new industrial
development with smokestacks, water polluting policies and associated dense worker
housing tenements was unlike anything that cities had experienced- not even with water
powered mills at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Without planned development,
the city would choke on its own industrial might.
The City Beautiful Movement was an attempt by the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century architects and planners to establish a sense of order and dignity in
American urban planning at a time when the land-use decisions were exclusively dictated by
local, often provincial, urban traditions. Daniel Burnham typified the new kind of architect
and planner who felt that large-scale , rational planning initiatives were imperative if
American cities wanted to create better urban environments for all of their citizens.

The City Beautiful Movement emerged in response to the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. The fundamental idea expounded at the fair was that the city was no
longer a symbol of economic development and industrialization, but could now be seen as
enhancing the aesthetic environment of its many inhabitants. The fair, coordinated by
architect Daniel Burnham, deeply impacted the way that Americans saw the urban
landscape, and brought the United States to the level of its European predecessors in terms
of architectural design. New York architects such as Richard Morris Hunt and McKim,
Mead and White, together with the Chicago school of architects such as Louis Sullivan and
Daniel Burnham created an ideal city made up of classically designed monumental
buildings. The “magical white city” that Chicago embodied demonstrated for the first time
that cities could be planned. Artists and architects were deeply impacted by the beautiful
designs at the fair that upon returning to major cities like New York, Detroit, and
Washington, D.C., they took notice of the austere and cluttered landscape in their own cities.
During the height of the Industrial Revolution, technological advancement paid little
attention to the visual elements of urban cities. Smoke billowed from factories, soot covered
buildings, and streets were merely symbols of progress.

Once visitors returned to their cities and they realized that it was essential to the public
welfare of the people to take heed of the urban landscape, many American cities embarked
on public building and art projects in order to beautify their cities. Its influence was most
prominent in cities such as Cleveland, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

CITY BEAUTIFUL MOMENT OF WASHINGTON, D.C

In Washington, D.C., this led to the creation of the McMillan Plan (named after Senator
McMillan), the first governmental plan to regulate aesthetics. The plan included the major
players behind the planning of the Chicago World’s Fair: Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law
Olmsted, Jr., Charles F. McKim, and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

Axial plan of The Mall, Washington, D.C.: the Reflecting Pool and Lincoln Memorial extend
the central axis

They revived Pierre L’Enfant’s original city design plans for Washington, D.C. The results
can still be seen today. The McMillan Plan led to the construction of the tree-lined National
Mall, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.
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as a by-product of French Beaux Arts neoclassical architecture. As opposed to just the

architectural design of building structures, the Beaux Arts school also paid attention to urban
landscaping emphasizing focal points such as grand plazas, wide avenues with terminating
landmarks, symmetrical design, and huge monumental structures.
 CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT OF CHICAGO

Edward Bennett’s Chicago plan of 1909 truly reflected there: “Make No Little plan.” This
regional redevelopment, which included a totally modern highway plan, a cross-county park
system, and a new enlarged civic and business center. In term of revamping the business
centre itself, Burnham and Bennett proposed sweeping changes, including the widening of
twelfth street, extending Michigan Avenue to New suburbs north and south of the existing
central business area, rerouting rail lines and terminals away from the lakeshore to west of
Michigan Avenue, and creating a civic center south of the Chicago River.
The Chicago plan also proposed an expanded commercial district for Michigan Avenue
north of the Chicago river. Specifically, the plan called for the construction of Neo-Classic
super-block on both sides of Michigan Avenue from the Civic Center to the Watertower. Of
uniform height, these super-blocks were to flank a modern, treelined Michigan Avenue. The
proposed building height restrictions were never enacted; however, the adoption of the
setback and zoning laws in the 1920s helped to create the intended “Champs Elysees”
impression throught this urban district.

The six categories, as laid out by Burnham and Bennett in the final chapter of the Plan of Chicago,
are as follows:

1. The improvement of the lake front.

2. The creation of a system of highways outside the city.
3. The improvement of railway terminals, and the development of a complete traction system
for both freight and passengers.
4. The acquisition of an outer park system, and of parkway circuits.
5. The systematic arrangement of the streets and avenues within the city, in order to facilitate
the movement to and from the business district.
6. The development of centers of intellectual life and of civic administration, so related as to
give coherence and unity to the city.
IMPROVEMENT OF THE LAKEFRONT

The plan recommended expanding the parks along the Lake Michigan shoreline with landfill, which
was done in the early 20th century.

A REGIONAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM

The plan considered Chicago as the centre of a region extending 75 miles (120 km) from the city centre.
IMPROVEMENT OF RAILWAY TERMINALS
plan for competing railroads to pool usage of tracks for greater efficiency in freight handling.

NEW OUTER PARKS

The plan includes those proposals and also calls for the expansion of the city's park and boulevard
system,
Systematic arrangement of streets
New wider arterials were prescribed to relieve traffic congestion and beautify the fast growing
city, including a network of new diagonal streets
Civic and cultural centers
The most iconic image of the plan was the new civic center proposed for the area around
Congress and Halsted Streets.

REFERENCE:

 Lecture notes dated on -26-09-2016

 https://buildingchicago.wordpress.com/
 sarah wysong design studies: form + function summer 2014
 An overview of the city Beautiful Movement as reflected in Daniel Burnham’s
vision by Richard Klein