Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier were both visionary architects and urban planners. Wright and Le Corbusier both hated the state of modern cities and both wished to transform the nature of cities. Wright once said, "To look at the plan of any great city is to look at the cross section of some fibrous tumor." Their ideas on how this transformation should be achieved, however, were completely different. The solutions they found to practical problems of urban planning reflect their differing social theories and value systems.
Le Corbusier was born in Switzerland, while Wright was born in America. Both architects grew up away from the great urban centers that they ended up revolutionizing. Frank Lloyd Wright's ideal city was called the Broadacre City, and he presented the first complete plan of it in The Disappearing City, published in 1932. Le Corbusier's ideal city started out as the Contemporary City but soon became the Radiant City. Le Corbusier's first theories on this ideal city appeared in Urbanisme, published in 1924. The Industrial Revolution was one of the main factors that inspired the planning of these ideal cities. Modern technology was making available new materials and new methods of production. Steel framing and curtain wall construction ushered in a new era in high-rise construction, and prefabrication held the promise of faster, less expensive construction for conventional as well as high-rise structures. Both saw industrialization leading to a new era and believed that "this era would commence with the replacement of all existing cities by new forms of community suited to the new age."
Le Corbusier wanted planned cities. One expert described the Radient City:
The city of the future would be a Radiant City of glass-and-steel skyscrapers set in parks; it would be an efficient and beautiful center for the great bureaucracies whose total administration of society would bring the order and h...