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The Fine Print

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Comments

Airminded

Good post -- thanks for this! I came across the plan in your 4th and 5th pictures early in my research, but didn't make a note of it and could never remember who was responsible. I knew he was French but I was thinking Le Corbusier (who also dabbled), but now I see it was Paul Vauthier. It's interesting that all these examples seem to be sourced from overseas (France, Germany, USSR). I found very few examples of such radical redesigns of the city by British urban planners and architects. In fact the ones I did find weren't very radical at all, eg http://airminded.org/2008/07/29/architects-of-preservation/

BTW, I apologise for being pedantic but the Zeppelin raids on Britain (which I forgot to post about, doh!) weren't the first bombing of cities: that was Venice in 1849. They weren't the first Zeppelin raids on cities either -- Antwerp was bombed in the first months of the war, and Paris later in 1914. Also, a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on Dover on Christmas Eve 1914 (it supposedly hit a cabbage patch).

Ray Girvan

Yes, very good. The prevalent belief that wars would be played out through a twin emphasis on aerial bombing and gas warfare - I guess extrapolated from World War I - is well-exemplified in HG Wells' "Things to Come".

John F. Ptak

True, though Wells saw through to a post-apocalyptic future (governed by Technocracy types) that would've eliminated wars. I wrote about this a little two weeks ago (with a film clip!), though I was much more interested in the Moon Canon than anything else. http://tinyurl.com/yk9tsnj

John F. Ptak

Airminded: mea culpa! I knew as soon as I wrote "first" that I should've changed it immediately to "extremely early" but then forgot. Thanks so much for pointing all of this out!

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