Camillo Sitte

Camillo Sitte (born April 17, 1843, Vienna, Austria—died Nov. 16, 1903, Vienna) was an Austrian architect and town planner who propagated many ideas similar to those that the so-called Garden City advocate, Sir Ebenezer Howard, was advancing at the same time in England. Sir Raymond Unwin in England and Daniel Hudson Burnham in the United States were among the later town planners influenced by German and Austrian theorists, of whom Sitte was the most articulate.

Sitte directed the Vienna State Polytechnic School, and, shortly before his death, he founded the periodical Der Städtebau (“City Building”; first issue 1904). His ideas are summarized and their influence is traced in Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City Planning (1965), by George Roseborough Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins, who also translated his major book, Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (1889; 5th ed., 1922), as City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1965).