Just a moment ago, we experienced a heated discussion that was later to be classified as the biggest fuck-up moment of our family trip. At first sight it was about tidying up, but from the parents' perspective it was also about attentive and warm togetherness.

Then, on the roof of the Cité Radieuse, our teenage-parent bond was not quite restored, but with the view over the city, the Mediterranean and the mountains, we newly found to a relaxed nonchalance. Up there, the two chimneys, the stage of the open-air theatre and the small sports hall rise into the deep blue sky like a wonderfully poetic collection of sculptures. 

Le Corbusier built his first Unité d'habitation in Marseille from 1947-52. On huge concrete pillars, pilotis, he designed over 330 maisonettes with a shop passage on the upper floor, studios, library, restaurant, hotel, laundry and a kindergarten on the very top. A vertical city.

That was already 70 years or three generations ago, after the war, when many refugees were striving for the cities and flats were needed once more. There is so much power in this building, so much utopia and vision! On the roof terrace, I am almost shocked by the radicality and willpower of his ideas. 

However, some things did not work out. The beautiful garden around the building is now parked over with hundreds of cars. And the playground on the roof is no longer populated by children, but by visitors looking at beautiful chairs in a small museum. 

Even though the restaurant is struggling on the third floor, an Aperol Spritz is served on the terrace. The shops are also still open and sell souvenirs to tourists. The building has been respectably renovated and was included in the World Heritage List in 2016. 

This raises the question for me, what actually prevents today's planners from being similarly visionary and building a better neighborhood? What are today's fuck-up moments that planners experience? And how could things be better?

Timidity
Unlike after the Second World War, I can't see any sense of optimism despite the many current opportunities. The enormous opportunities that undoubtedly exist in the great upheavals are being used far too timidly at all levels. Most are content with the meagre as it is and what is on offer.

Quantities
That is why today the construction of neighborship, with respect to both private and public development companies, is primarily about quantities. It’s about the number of flats that are built and their costs. In the interest of private developers, it’s about as much as possible to be just sold as condominiums for the highest prices. In the view of public development companies it’s about building in the “aesthetics” of social housing, so that no one would get the idea that too much public money might have been spent. Clearly, that has to change.

Home
Because these are neighborhoods where people live, work and play together. This is where neighborship and the feeling of being at home are created. For contemporary societies, neighborhoods are the soup kitchens where belonging and friendships develop and trust in political contexts grows. If that doesn't work here, it will not work on a larger scale either. 

Dense
For this to happen, today's neighborhoods need to become denser. It simply requires more people to facilitate regular encounters. Over the years, when light, air and views have been the decisive urban planning parameters, as in Le Corbusier's work, neighborhoods have become increasingly airy and chance human encounters increasingly rare. Much loneliness and depression are the consequences of this undesirable development. Smaller restaurants, cafés and service providers where people could meet cannot settle if too few customers pass by. 

Mix of uses
Ecological, economic and social issues can be solved much better at the neighborhood level than in individual buildings on a smaller scale or in the city on a larger scale. It is precisely here where an environment can be created, which enables a good life for all. Mixed uses can be implemented much more easily than in a single building. Living, working, training, production, sales and repair can thus be brought closer together without creating complicated ownership structures. 

Mobility 
In good, mixed neighborhoods, many journeys by car can be avoided. Because shopping facilities, the workplace, the kindergarten, the café or the school are all within 15 minutes’ reach. Moreover, cars belong in garages on the outskirts, if at all. Public spaces are thus reserved for people, animals and plants. Here, Le Corbusier saw things differently.

Ecology
Climate neutrality can only be achieved by combining the immobile and the mobile. The local production of energy and its storage, for example in the batteries of the vehicles, can contribute to this. Stationary sharing offers for working or staying overnight, for cargo bikes, scooters or cars can also help.

Discussions are questioning again and again of the road blocks, the fuck-up moments that prevent neighborhoods from getting better:
It is the toxic cocktail of too many and too rigid, often nonsensical, fear-driven structures (pseudo-participation) and regulations (on parking spaces, fire protection, uses, noise, distance areas, eaves heights, etc.), too long approval periods (understaffed, underqualified, unloved offices) and forms of organization that lead to nonsensical prioritization (quantities instead of qualities, self-will instead of the common good). 

At a level above this, there is usually a lack of social and urban visions. 

I met Le Corbusier's successors in Aarhus, who show how things can be done better. There, the former harbor is being converted into a new city quarter. The building heights range from single-storey wooden sheds to 140-metre skyscrapers. Grain-covered, with large viewing terraces, greened and populated. I also find a generation house, a swimming pool in the harbor basin, a sailing school, a water sports centre and a theatre close together. Although many things are still unfinished building sites, Aarhus realizes even at this stage of development a temporarily housing of pubs, bars and restaurants in containers because they don’t want to be without. Le Corbusier 2.0.

Two kilometers further south, I see how the same can be done in an old town. The outdated Salling department store in the pedestrian zone has been given a new lease of life with restaurants, cafés, gardens and a stage on the roof with a view over the whole city. 

Aarhus has its architect Stephen Willacy to thank for this. The charismatic Briton has been guiding the urban destiny here since 2012 in an inventive and visionary way. Appointing an innovative, inspiring architect as city architect and granting him or her influence seems like a good idea.

Le Corbusier would probably have liked that.

All building is made for people. They argue and get along again. And they love nothing more than coming together and being on the road together. That works so much better in lively and friendly neighborhoods.

Quarters

Just a moment ago, we experienced a heated discussion that was later to be classified as the biggest fuck-up moment of our family trip. At first sight it was about tidying up, but from the parents' perspective it was also about attentive and warm togetherness.

Then, on the roof of the Cité Radieuse, our teenage-parent bond was not quite restored, but with the view over the city, the Mediterranean and the mountains, we newly found to a relaxed nonchalance. Up there, the two chimneys, the stage of the open-air theatre and the small sports hall rise into the deep blue sky like a wonderfully poetic collection of sculptures. 

Le Corbusier built his first Unité d'habitation in Marseille from 1947-52. On huge concrete pillars, pilotis, he designed over 330 maisonettes with a shop passage on the upper floor, studios, library, restaurant, hotel, laundry and a kindergarten on the very top. A vertical city.

That was already 70 years or three generations ago, after the war, when many refugees were striving for the cities and flats were needed once more. There is so much power in this building, so much utopia and vision! On the roof terrace, I am almost shocked by the radicality and willpower of his ideas. 

However, some things did not work out. The beautiful garden around the building is now parked over with hundreds of cars. And the playground on the roof is no longer populated by children, but by visitors looking at beautiful chairs in a small museum. 

Even though the restaurant is struggling on the third floor, an Aperol Spritz is served on the terrace. The shops are also still open and sell souvenirs to tourists. The building has been respectably renovated and was included in the World Heritage List in 2016. 

This raises the question for me, what actually prevents today's planners from being similarly visionary and building a better neighborhood? What are today's fuck-up moments that planners experience? And how could things be better?

Timidity
Unlike after the Second World War, I can't see any sense of optimism despite the many current opportunities. The enormous opportunities that undoubtedly exist in the great upheavals are being used far too timidly at all levels. Most are content with the meagre as it is and what is on offer.

Quantities
That is why today the construction of neighborship, with respect to both private and public development companies, is primarily about quantities. It’s about the number of flats that are built and their costs. In the interest of private developers, it’s about as much as possible to be just sold as condominiums for the highest prices. In the view of public development companies it’s about building in the “aesthetics” of social housing, so that no one would get the idea that too much public money might have been spent. Clearly, that has to change.

Home
Because these are neighborhoods where people live, work and play together. This is where neighborship and the feeling of being at home are created. For contemporary societies, neighborhoods are the soup kitchens where belonging and friendships develop and trust in political contexts grows. If that doesn't work here, it will not work on a larger scale either. 

Dense
For this to happen, today's neighborhoods need to become denser. It simply requires more people to facilitate regular encounters. Over the years, when light, air and views have been the decisive urban planning parameters, as in Le Corbusier's work, neighborhoods have become increasingly airy and chance human encounters increasingly rare. Much loneliness and depression are the consequences of this undesirable development. Smaller restaurants, cafés and service providers where people could meet cannot settle if too few customers pass by. 

Mix of uses
Ecological, economic and social issues can be solved much better at the neighborhood level than in individual buildings on a smaller scale or in the city on a larger scale. It is precisely here where an environment can be created, which enables a good life for all. Mixed uses can be implemented much more easily than in a single building. Living, working, training, production, sales and repair can thus be brought closer together without creating complicated ownership structures. 

Mobility 
In good, mixed neighborhoods, many journeys by car can be avoided. Because shopping facilities, the workplace, the kindergarten, the café or the school are all within 15 minutes’ reach. Moreover, cars belong in garages on the outskirts, if at all. Public spaces are thus reserved for people, animals and plants. Here, Le Corbusier saw things differently.

Ecology
Climate neutrality can only be achieved by combining the immobile and the mobile. The local production of energy and its storage, for example in the batteries of the vehicles, can contribute to this. Stationary sharing offers for working or staying overnight, for cargo bikes, scooters or cars can also help.

Discussions are questioning again and again of the road blocks, the fuck-up moments that prevent neighborhoods from getting better:
It is the toxic cocktail of too many and too rigid, often nonsensical, fear-driven structures (pseudo-participation) and regulations (on parking spaces, fire protection, uses, noise, distance areas, eaves heights, etc.), too long approval periods (understaffed, underqualified, unloved offices) and forms of organization that lead to nonsensical prioritization (quantities instead of qualities, self-will instead of the common good). 

At a level above this, there is usually a lack of social and urban visions. 

I met Le Corbusier's successors in Aarhus, who show how things can be done better. There, the former harbor is being converted into a new city quarter. The building heights range from single-storey wooden sheds to 140-metre skyscrapers. Grain-covered, with large viewing terraces, greened and populated. I also find a generation house, a swimming pool in the harbor basin, a sailing school, a water sports centre and a theatre close together. Although many things are still unfinished building sites, Aarhus realizes even at this stage of development a temporarily housing of pubs, bars and restaurants in containers because they don’t want to be without. Le Corbusier 2.0.

Two kilometers further south, I see how the same can be done in an old town. The outdated Salling department store in the pedestrian zone has been given a new lease of life with restaurants, cafés, gardens and a stage on the roof with a view over the whole city. 

Aarhus has its architect Stephen Willacy to thank for this. The charismatic Briton has been guiding the urban destiny here since 2012 in an inventive and visionary way. Appointing an innovative, inspiring architect as city architect and granting him or her influence seems like a good idea.

Le Corbusier would probably have liked that.

All building is made for people. They argue and get along again. And they love nothing more than coming together and being on the road together. That works so much better in lively and friendly neighborhoods.