Deurbanism

a trend in 20th-century urban planning and construction that denies the positive social role of large cities and preaches the dispersal of the population beyond their limits. Deurbanism arose as a result of the exacerbation of contradictions between the city and the countryside and the crisis of capitalist cities. The idea of deurbanism had appeared as early as the beginning of the 19th century in social utopias (small communes in natural surroundings). At the end of the 1920’s deurbanism came to influence the work of some Soviet architects (including M. Ia. Ginzburg and M. O. Barshch); in his theoretical articles the sociologist M. Okhitovich suggested constructing stretches of housing developments, consisting of one residential unit per person, along highways. Deurbanism was most consistently expounded in F. L. Wright’s The Disappearing City (1932) and his plan for a city (1935) that called for laying out residential and public buildings in agricultural lands. After World War II (1939-45), deurbanism was partially reflected in the planning of satellite cities.