Word: superblock
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...kick off the idea, architects are now seeking sites for two "superblocks." The name, conjuring up images of massive new construction is misleading; the plans are modest. Two or three blocks will be joined together by closing a street or two to through traffic. Abandoned buildings will be demolished for vest-pocket parks, and the parks will be connected to form walkways through the superblock. The closed off streets will be used in part for parking, in part as malls, with benches, fountains, sandboxes or whatever residents recommend. A building in the middle of the area will be purchased...
...superblocks there will be an intensive effort to encourage residents to get loans for just about anything they want in the way of renovation. The idea is to talk with block clubs in the immediate area, following their suggestions in the detailed planning and hiring, local people to do the work. Ground-breaking on the first superblock could begin as early as this summer. Planners figure that once they have a couple of blocks to point to, money and community enthusiasm for more of them won't be any problem...
Dowling of New York, successful developer of Pittsburgh's Gateway Center and Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, came to the rescue. Called in by the railroad as a consultant, he approved the superblock with underground connections to the rail transit outlets ? the Pennsylvania suburban station and a stop on the Market Street subway ? and added the idea of a bus terminal at the west end of Penn Center to anchor...
During the last ten years Le Corbusier has also designed Chandigarh, the new capital city of India's Punjab province, and large superblock apartment houses in Marseilles and Nantes; these three projects embody the radical concepts of city planning which Le Corbusier first developed in the 1920s...
...same concept of a self-contained community is displayed in Unite d'Habitation, the Marseilles apartment block completed in 1952. At the opening ceremony in October of that year Le Corbusier described the superblock as "the first manifestation of an environment suited to modern life...