Introduction: Shira Levy-Benyemini, CEO & Artistic Director, Liebling Haus – The White City Center

Geddes vs. Le Corbusier: What if Tel Aviv had been planned differently? To mark 100 years since the garden city plan for Tel Aviv, the lecture will focus on the comparison between the multidisciplinary and organic vision of Patrick Geddes and the modernist approach of Le Corbusier, raising questions about the fate of Tel Aviv had it been designed in the spirit of the latter. Thoughts on urban planning, ideal cities, and our urban space today.

Most visitors to India don’t expect to encounter a city with wide boulevards and rectangular buildings constructed from exposed concrete and featuring straight contours. Yet Chandigarh, in northern India, attracts visitors and researchers precisely because of these qualities. The city was designed and built from scratch, based on architect Le Corbusier’s beliefs about what a modern city should look like and how it should function. Now, more than 70 years later, the question is: Did it succeed?

The film seeks answers through the lives of four of the city’s residents and their relationship with their home. Chandigarh operates well, and its residents have the highest average income in India; but from the start, the project’s European planners were accused – not always rightly – of being arrogant and not understanding of the needs of Indian society. For example, one of the subjects says, large parking lots were planned for the city, but locals argued they were unnecessary because residents didn’t have cars. Seventy years later, residents complain about a lack of parking. This is just one of the film’s examples of what life and the passage of time do to great ideas.