Idea · Treatise

Une Cité Industrielle

1904 / 1917 · Western Europe · Tony Garnier

What it is

Une Cité Industrielle was a comprehensive design for a model industrial town by the French architect Tony Garnier, drafted from around 1901, exhibited in 1904 and published in full in 1917. It separated the town into clearly defined zones for housing, work, public functions and transport, anticipating later functional zoning. Garnier specified reinforced concrete throughout for houses, public buildings and infrastructure, and dispensed with surrounding walls in favour of open, green, sunlit settings. No churches or police stations appeared, reflecting his socialist assumptions about the future city.

Why it matters

It prefigured the functionalist separation of urban uses and the use of concrete that the Modern Movement would adopt. Garnier's scheme is widely seen as a direct precursor to Le Corbusier and to twentieth-century zoning practice.

Plans it shaped

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