Wright's Broadacre City was by no means a formless sprawl. It was more organized than it at first appears, and it was to be under the benevolent eye of official architects. His model of the city is organized by a flexible grid masked and distorted in various ways, with similar uses of land grouped in long ribbons parallel to the highway that runs at the edge of the model.
A third of the land area is given over to non-residential uses. Because he wanted to include in the model many buildings that he had designed but not been able to build, Wright put a large number of public buildings and other architectural events within the four square miles represented by the model.
The linear sectors of the model are: the highway, then industrial and commercial-cultural buildings, then agricultural land associated with the markets, then residential, then civic buildings, then recreational areas and larger homes. The model puts together in new ways expanded functional areas taken from rural small towns and their surroundings. Functional areas found in large cities are either disaggregated (manufacturing, commerce) or done away with (low income housing, central stations, office concentrations).
Though it may look at first to be similar, Wright's pattern is not the same as current suburbs.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001