• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

The Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants, exhibited for the first time at the Salon d´Automne in Paris in 1922,was Le Corbusier’sfirst urban project. It is a theoretical proposal, with no defined location, in the way of an ideal city, suggested as a concentric city, with a centre where tertiary activities are condensed, and around which residential neighbourhoods are located. The use of the reticle in its streets and of the skyscrapers in the centre is a clear tribute to the North American city, which fascinated Le Corbusier.

The centre is defined by a large building that houses all means of transport (train, underground, highways and airport) and by the skyscrapers of the so-called “business city”. Around this nucleus are located the areas that comprise the immeubles-villas à redents and the closed building blocks, two types of housing blocks for the middle class. The proletariat was separated by a green belt in the outskirts of the city. Nature was an essential element in his proposal, assuming the role of construction of the public space for its inhabitants.

This modern urban system was soon adapted to the particular case of the city of Paris, bringing about the so-called Plan Voisin in 1925, thus named in gratitude to the financial support given for its exhibition in the L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion by Gabriel Voisin’s automobile business, interested in how Le Corbusier understood motorized traffic in the cities as what motivated its necessary transformation.