Sustainability, Victor Gruen, and the Cellular Metropolis: Fid-Bau Portal

Sustainability, Victor Gruen, and the Cellular Metropolis

Hill, David R.

While well-known as a practitioner of planning and architecture, and sometimes ambivalently remembered as the father of the shopping center, Victor David Gruen (1903-1980) also contributed significantly to the theory of good urban form. He argued that a world system of medium-sized, dense, urbane, cellular metropolises would improve considerably both human happiness and global ecological sustainability. This article first places Gruen's prototype in the contemporary literature on global sustainability, and outlines his life and work as a practitioner theorist. Then, after detailing his metropolitan ideal, the study comments on its value in planning thought and practice. Gruen's position, though seriously incomplete, is an important middle-left synthesis in planning theory. As an integrated transit/auto concept, his prototype is conceptually useful for automobile cities planning to add more mass transit, and for mass transit cities planning to add more freeways.