Planning the Modern City: De Functioneele Stad (1935)

In 1935, the Dutch modernist group De 8 en Opbouw put a bold question before the public: what should a city be for? Its exhibition, De Functioneele Stad (“The Functional City”), offered an answer shaped by architect and urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren. A city, the exhibition argued, should be planned around the needs of everyday life—not simply allowed to grow as a crowded collection of streets and buildings.

Van Eesteren was a leading figure in the international modernist movement and in CIAM, the Congresses Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. He worked closely with planner Theo van Lohuizen, and their ideas were reflected in Amsterdam’s General Extension Plan, developed in the 1930s and approved in 1935. The exhibition brought this new way of thinking about urban planning into public view.

The functional city organised urban life around four main activities: living, working, recreation and transport. Instead of mixing everything together in dense, often unhealthy neighbourhoods, planners could map each activity, study what it required and arrange the city accordingly.

This way of thinking relied on analysis and visual communication. Maps, diagrams and plans could show where people lived and worked, how they travelled, and where they had access to parks and leisure. The city became something that could be studied as a whole—and redesigned according to clear principles.

For Amsterdam, that approach promised a healthier future. New residential districts could offer more light, air and green space. Workplaces and homes could be linked by planned transport, while parks and open areas would give residents room to relax. The aim was not merely to create striking modern buildings, but to shape better conditions for daily life.

The exhibition appeared at a pivotal moment. Amsterdam was growing, and the city needed a plan for expansion beyond its historic centre. Van Eesteren’s work on the General Extension Plan proposed a carefully organised framework for that growth. The plan helped shape major developments in the decades that followed, particularly the expansion of Amsterdam to the west and south.

De Functioneele Stad therefore did more than present an architectural style. It promoted a method: observe the city, gather information about how people use it, and design its future around those needs. In this vision, urban planning was a public responsibility and a practical tool for improving everyday life.

The functional approach was ambitious, but it also raised questions that remain relevant. Separating homes, workplaces, traffic and recreation could make planning clearer and improve living conditions. Yet strict separation could also produce districts that felt single-purpose or empty at certain times of day. A city is more than an efficient arrangement of functions: it also depends on chance encounters, active streets and the varied life of neighbourhoods.

That tension is part of the exhibition’s lasting significance. De Functioneele Stad captured the optimism of modernism—the belief that careful design could help build a healthier and fairer society—while pointing toward debates about what might be lost when urban life is organised too neatly.

Nearly a century later, Van Eesteren and De 8 en Opbouw’s proposal still invites us to ask: how should a city balance planning and freedom, efficiency and liveliness, the needs of the whole and the experience of the individual?

www.ftn-books.com has now the publication DE FUNCTIONEELE STAD available.