How an idea from 1932 may be the answer for the future of work, cities, and happiness

In April of 2020, there was an exodus from American cities. The United States Post Office reported that 81,000 mail-forwarding requests came from New York City residences.* COVID-19 thrives in close quarters and densely populated areas. The virus doesn’t care if the stock market is doing well, or if you’re tired of cooking, it’s showing no signs of slowing. Which begs the question—what is the solution for those who can’t pack up and leave? The answer was proposed 80 years ago by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is part of a larger story titled “Squandered Skylines: The Future of Real Estate in a Post-Pandemic Society” available at Barn Burnt Down.

The City of the Future circa 1932

Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, has evidence of his legacy all over the world, from New York, Chicago, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. The man who built the Guggenheim Building left his mark in prominent cities. But he despised cities.

Cities, in Wright’s mind, lack all sensibility and are impossible to live comfortably in. Elements such as space, light, air, and silence are totally absent. He would spend his life designing nearly impossible urban plans to solve the problem of the city. Wright felt it was an architect’s duty to build a connection between people and their community.

His most ambitious project was Broadacre City. Wright presented the idea in his 1932 book The Disappearing City and three years later constructed a large-scale model expanding on the ideals from Jefferson and Hamilton. A 1935 clipping from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called the idea The City of the Future.?

This design imagined space for everyone, regardless of economic standing. Broadacre City was an intentional departure from the transit-oriented cities.? He felt people should be able to walk around a city or use their own car. Naturally, it didn’t work. The design was economically unfeasible in 1930. Wright didn’t have technology on his side. Today we do.

Wright embraced the concept of sprawl, which is used today as a pejorative. I get it. Suburban sprawl is repulsive. Long roads with unimpressive big box stores, car dealers, and chain restaurants. But let’s take those preconceived notions for a moment, and store them on a shelf we can’t reach.

“The city should be everywhere and nowhere.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

Cornelia Brierly, Wright’s first female apprentice, summed up Wright’s motivations in an interview for the Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly:

“With today’s modern technology, trans-portation and com-munications sys-tems, Mr. Wright felt that there was no longer any need for people to huddle together in cities as they did in the dark ages. He felt that the whole idea of space was so im-portant that people should be out in the air and light.”§

There are plenty of companies that may never return to office in the way they once were. Google pulled out of a deal recently to acquire two million square feet of new office space.? Coupled with the unfriendly business legislations in California and Washington State, corporations will be looking to cut costs anyway possible. Maybe that’s a good thing.

If more people are able to work remote it opens up the possibility to spreading wealth across the country. The family in Short Hills, New Jersey who no longer wants to commute on NJ Transit and instead wants to raise llamas on a farm can now do that. They can move to Sedona or Lancaster, causing their income to spread through the local economy. Sprawl, the good kind of sprawl, can spread and stimulate forgotten communities.

With more capital available, local architects can make their communities elegant, and slowly change what sprawl looks like today.

Every Family Deserves Space

Frank Lloyd Wright felt every family deserved a home and at least an acre of land. Manhattan has 108.5 people per acre according to census data.** Maybe we don't need a whole acre, but perhaps some space for a vegetable garden and a fast internet connection.

Wright predicted how technology would flourish throughout America. He believed offices don’t need to be in the center of cities because of “electrical inter-communication.”?? Zoom, Slack, and DocuSign allow us to thrive in a distributed work environment. In fact, there are elements of Broadacre City that have been brought to fruition though they’re not cleanly organized as Wright would like.

In the book Frank Lloyd Wright: The Essential Texts, he took all of life’s common interests and miniaturized them. (Emphasis Wright’s) “Little farms, little homes for industry, little factories, little schools, a little university going to the people mostly by way of their interest…”??

Farmers markets are our version of little farms. Google and Facebook have gone on to build “little homes for industry” for their employees.§§ “Little factories” today are makerspaces or companies that use local labor like Shinola and Filson. “Little schools and little universities” are MasterClass to the Alt-MBA to traditional online college learning. Slowly but surely, we’re embracing Wright’s vision.

Wright also saw the confluence of drone use. Delivery drones will have their moment this decade. Companies like Matternet, Amazon’s Prime Air, Google Wing, Zipline, Flytrex, Flirtey are battling for the skies. You can see the drones in his 1930s sketches, which look eerily similar to Dubai today.??

The Obligation Companies Have Today

Wright planned to fill Broadacre City with his affordable home design called Usonia, an upgrade from his Prairie style. The first Usonia home was built in Wright’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin in 1936 for $5,500, that’s $95,000 in today’s dollars.?

If Broadacre City was built and Usonian homes dotted the landscape, they “would automatically end unemployment and all its evils forever.” According to Wright.??? I know, I know, it sounds too idealistic, but this is Frank Lloyd Wright, not shyster WeWork co-founder Adam Newman.

Companies today have an obligation to do what’s best for the employee and the community. If that means distributing offices outside of the city to better protect new mothers who want to return to work, that’s the right thing to do.

We have to embrace change. We have to allow ourselves to leverage technology and plan for the future instead of running around trying to find normal. “Normal” is gone. As Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” We simply cannot return to normal. Normal is ever fleeting, like smoke in the wind.

Do you really want to get back on the crowded subway and hustle to the dense office? Or maybe, just maybe there’s something better waiting for us. Wright left us the plans. It’s up to us what happens next.

Read the more about the future of real estate in Barn Burnt Down's debut feature Squandered Skylines.

* Paybarah, Azi, Matthew Bloch, and Scott Reinhard. 2020. "Where New Yorkers Moved to Escape Coronavirus." The New York Times. May 17. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/16/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-moving-leaving.html

? Nevius, James. 2017. "Is the world ready for Frank Lloyd Wright’s suburban utopia? Inside the architect’s overlooked plan for Broadacre City." Curbed. January 4. https://www.curbed.com/2017/1/4/14154644/frank-lloyd-wright-broadacre-city-history.

? Wright, F. L. (1951). When Democracy Builds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (link to book)

§ Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. (2017, September 8). Revisiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Vision for “Broadacre City”. Retrieved from Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation: https://franklloydwright.org/revisiting-frank-lloyd-wrights-vision-broadacre-city/

? Weinberg, Cory. 2020. Alphabet Leads Tech Retreat on Real Estate Deals. April 21. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/alphabet-leads-tech-retreat-on-real-estate-deals.

** https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/planning-level/nyc-population/census2010/t_pl_p5_nyc.pdf Table PL-P5 NYC: Total Population and Persons Per Acre, 2000 and 2010 New York City and Boroughs

?? Nevius, 2017.

?? Wright, Frank Lloyd. 2009. Frank Lloyd Wright: Essential Texts. Edited by Robert C. Twombly. W. W. Norton & Company. (link to the book)

§§ Stangel, Luke. n.d. "Google and Facebook are building the ultimate perk: housing." CXO Magazine. Northeastern University. https://medium.com/cxo-magazine/google-and-facebook-are-building-the-ultimate-perk-housing-3ec8ba3c4f6b.

?? Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1932. The Disappearing City. W.F. Payson. (link to the book)

Image source for Dubai drone: Ong, Thuy. 2017. Dubai starts testing crewless two-person ‘flying taxis’. September 26. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16365614/dubai-testing-uncrewed-two-person-flying-taxis-volocopter.

? Sergeant, John. 1984. Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Houses: Designs for Moderate Cost One-Family Homes. Watson-Guptill. (link to the book)

??? Wright, 1951. pg. 262.

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