In the late 19th century and early 20th century, when modernization drastically changed people's life in Europe and North America. The new ways of transportation, communication, and production were introduced. The new science and technology sped up the tempo of people's daily life; they created massive daily movement of people within urban areas. The urban population grew rapidly, and the cities were expanding at a fast rate. Unlike the pre-modernized living communities such as small towns and villages, people in urban area were mixed together with different backgrounds. The massive streamline factories became the main method of industrialized production; low-cost and efficiency were the goals for such method, which is achieved through regulated and repetitive actions of the machines as well as the workers. While the modernization brought benefits to people's daily life, negative impacts were also created and magnified by the old urban plannings. Paris, for example, as one of the old "pre-mechanical" cities, had potential to be a site of a magnificent urban civilization; however the unfitting condition for the Machine Age made it an unpleasant place to live in the early 20th century. The business center was cramped and noisy, which enormously slowed down the efficiency; the old building codes and regulations limited the modern methods construction and aesthetic, the automobile rode on the roads that were meant for pedestrians and carriages "threatened to choke completely the city's arteries and thus to destroy its economy and obliterate its beauty". Many Modernist architects and urban utopists strove for changes to these conditions by replanning the city according to Modern principles. Le Corbusier, with his two unbuilt projects Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse, is one of the most influential architect and urban planner in that era. In order to bring chaos out of the industrial cities, extreme rationality and order that reflect the needs of Modern society are the fundamental planning principles for Le Corbusier's urban utopia.
        The rationality is reflected in the zoning of the plan according to functions. Ville Contemporaine, which was first exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1922, is blatantly divided into different zones. At the core of the city is the airport, railway station, and four roads radiating out; the inner zone consist of twenty-four cruciform office skyscrapers; the outer zone is for the residential blocks. There are also a park on the west and industrial factories to the east. Unlike most historical cities, which usually have monumental buildings such as Cathedrals at the core of the city, the center of Ville Contemporaine is the intersection of all methods of modern transportation that merely serves people in motion because Le Corbusier believes that "the city that achieves speed achieves success". The existence of such intersection and its location within the city would maximize the efficiency of transportation. Le Corbusier makes no compromise to the existing urban zoning and historical context. This idea was explicitly shown in his sketch of Plan Voisin scheme, which accompanied Ville Contemporaine in the exhibition. It proposed a replanned future Paris. In the plan, only few historical monument are kept, and the rest of the city is meant to be erased and rebuilt because of it was irrational for the functional requirements of contemporary way of living.
        The zones and the blocks of la Ville Contemporaine is divided and defined by straight streets and right angle intersections. Le Corbusier has said, "pure formal order is a pre-condition of efficiency." Unlike non-orthogonal or non-gridded city plans, which would easily create confusion for directions and slow down the traffic, the extremely rationalized grid of streets would not only increase the efficiency of transportation but also bring clear order to the city. Just like streamline machines, as I have mentioned paragraphs above, the geometry of Le Corbusier's Modern city plan also uses the principle of regulation and repetition. As Francesco Passanti commented, "the regularly spaced towers, great infrastructures providing the collective identity of the city, a centralized and closed orthogonal plan, an affirmation of order and unity." The plan reflects the idealistic social order during Modernization, which believes in standardization and simplification in oppose to anarchic individualism.
        The hierarchy embedded within the orders of Le Corbusier's urban plans also properly reflects the rationale of daily urban life during Modernization. He embraces huge machine-age hierarchical centralized city with a vengeance. Not unlike the ancient Chinese cities such as Ch'ang'an in Tang dynasty, which was rigorously planned according to the hierarchy of feudal society, with the more important buildings such as the palace compound at central north, markets at the middle, and orthogonally gridded residential area for the general population at south, Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse in 1933 is also planned in a north-south hierarchy with a extremely similar form. Instead of the palace compound in Ch'ang'an, sixteen cruciform skyscrapers that houses offices take place at a similar location as the brain of the city They also symbolize the city's identity as a Modern business city. Le Corbusier pictured "the Radiant City skyscrapers to be an efficient and beautiful center for the great bureaucracies whose total administration of society would bring the order and harmony." South to the business center is the area for hotels and embassies, and south to such is the residential blocks and then industrial area. A clear hierarchy of Modern city is shown through the planning.
        Although neither Ville Contemporaine nor Ville Radieuse has been built due to their extremely progressive ideas during the time, they greatly influenced later urban planning, especially after World War II. Karl Marx once stated, "Bourgeroisie can not exist without constantly revolutionizing the instrument of production." Cities, as the sites for industrial production during modernization, had to change in order to fit with the ever-changing society. Appropriate urban planning definitely has the ability to bring harmony to the society if it truly reflects the needs and values of its time.

References

Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture (Oxford History of Art). New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2002.

Fishman, Robert. Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

Frampton, Kenneth. "The rise and fall of the radiant city: Le Corbusier 1928-1960." Oppositions (Winter 1980): 2-27.

Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982): “Introduction: Modernity—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” 15-36.

Passanti, Francesco. "The skyscrapers of the Ville Contemporaine." Assemblage (October 1987): 52-65. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, EBSCOhost (accessed May 3, 2009).

Scott. Seeing Like a State: Ch. 4, “The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique,” 103-146.

Not long ago, maybe a week or two, when I just came back from the US, I got really bored and, with hesitation, picked up the book Eragon by Christopher Paolini, which was given me 3 years ago by Linda and Tamara. (OMG I read like juvenile fantasy too like I know it’s like crazy like OMG.) It was quite an interesting book considering Paolini started writing it at age 15. Well, I admit, it’s so interesting for me that I bought Eldest and Brisingr in the eBook format (without hesitation this time), which are the next two books in the series and read them both. To my disappointment, the used to be Inheritance Trilogy now became a four book series because of the drag in the plotline in Brisingr. So the misfortune for me and for the other readers is a year or two of waiting and 30 extra bucks to spend. Let’s pray it would be worthwhile.

Anyway, for Eragon, despite its lack of originality in the plotline (I mean, wow, he was 15, give him a break, of course he’s gonna write something like… Star Wars) and the embarrassing, disastrous, and my two-year-old-nephew-can-do-better movie that happened to be named Eragon (Please, DON’T watch it if you haven’t, whether you have already read the book or not), it’s still an exciting book for time killing on a vacation. The setting of the fantasy world is well developed; the magic system is methinks very unique and original. The language is mature and unlike most teenagers’. The characters do have flesh and blood and real feelings, which is so much better than all the YY novels in China (wait what is YY? Eh… Anyways…) I found myself really understanding Eragon’s feeling towards Arya (you can guess why because I’m not gonna tell you here); I can imagine it must came from Paolini’s own experience.

If Eragon is very much like the original Star Wars, then Eldest is somewhat like LoTR. However, I don’t think Paolini copied either one on purpose. In fact, I think he’s trying very hard to avoid the clichés. I believe the variety and the brilliancy in plotlines directly depends on the writer’s life experience. Because of Paolini’s inexperience in life and with SW, LoTR being his biggest inspiration and motivation, it should very much be expected and understood that clichés would appear here and there throughout the book. Paolini improved noticeably on his command of the Language as well as the design of the plot in Eldest. I think this is his best work so far.

Paolini probably cared a lot about what the critics said about his first two books, so Brisingr is I think very original. However, without the guide from the precedent, Paolini’s first attempt on creating an entirely original plot was not so successful. In fact, it seemed to me that he became somewhat timid in his imagination because he tried so hard to avoid the clichés. His writing, especially in the first half of the book, became only for the sake of originality. The first three quarters of the book was so dragging that almost bored me down to tears. Whatever he was trying to do there, he didn’t make it work. This is the main reason the series has to be a four book cycle instead of a trilogy. I hope he didn’t do this for commercial reasons. Well, the good thing is that he finally sped up the rhythm at the end of Brisingr and made it exciting again and left me eager to read the next one.

O wow I wrote a lot… But it’s a good series. Read it if you haven’t yet. Before you buy the books, check with your cousin/nephew because I bet they’ll probably have some. It’s not on the NY Time’s bestsellers for no reason…

越靠下画得时间越早。一开始扫描的效果甚是不理想，后来又弄了一下就好多了。

两周前访问时照的照片

早知道之前应该把头发剪了。发现自己最近挺不上镜的：（

昨天晚上又停电拉。Charlotte真是一个很爱停电的地方。昨天是因为下雨。我可从来没有见过这么大的雨，大到好像是电影里用高压水龙头塑造氛围的一样。向窗户外看去，路灯的灯光里，雨水看上去好像大风里晾的床单似的一抖一抖得。然后呢，几道闪电过来，一阵雷声，一切都变得黑暗了。

这时候我笔记本电脑的优势就显现出来了。听了会儿歌，电力还是没恢复。很晚了可还有些作业，于是把书摊开在键盘上，把屏幕折过来，然后就开始读。读了一会才意识到纸上五颜六色的，因为壁纸太花哨了。我打开了记事本，这样就都变成白光了。自鸣得意，自鸣得意。

世界和平，人人健康。