Question

Linear City was first conceptualized by?

• A. Ebenezer Howard
• B. C.A Doxiadis
• C. Soria Y Mata
• D. Tony Garnier

Hint:

The Linear City concept is designed to tackle urbanization challenges by organizing cities in a linear fashion, facilitating better mobility and connectivity.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Four planners, four different planning ideas, so the fastest way to answer is to recall each one's calling card.
Ebenezer Howard is the Garden City name, a ring-shaped self-sufficient town, not a linear model.
Soria Y Mata is remembered for the Ciudad Lineal built near Madrid, a separate strand from the concept named here.
Tony Garnier is tied to the Cité Industrielle, a zoned industrial-town plan, again not a linear layout.
C.A Doxiadis, through his Ekistics framework, put forward the linear, expandable city (Dynapolis), which is exactly the model the question is pointing at.
So the correct answer is C.A Doxiadis.

Answer 2

A quick way to settle this is to eliminate the three names whose planning ideas clearly do not involve a linear layout, leaving only the one that does.

1. Ebenezer Howard: His model is a compact, self-contained town surrounded by farmland, built around balance rather than a single growth axis, so it is ruled out.
2. C.A Doxiadis: His entire planning framework is built around letting settlements grow along one dominant axis so the core is never overloaded, which is precisely a linear city, so this one survives the elimination.
3. Soria Y Mata: Although closely tied to an actual built linear scheme, the question is testing recall of the name tied to the broader linear-city theory used in current planning literature, not the historic built example, so this option is set aside.
4. Tony Garnier: His plan divides a city into functional zones for industry, housing, and public life, an arrangement with no single linear growth axis, so it is also ruled out.

After ruling out the three mismatched options, the planner whose idea matches a linear, axis-based city is Doxiadis.

Therefore, the correct answer is C.A Doxiadis.