[pjc50]

The picture that perhaps explains it best is Le Corbusier's "plan for paris": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Voisin

"Demolish the centre of Paris and replace it with tower blocks" is exactly the sort of failure of high modernism that the article talks about.

Present day examples of legibility center around ID (cards, Aardhar, biometrics, cameras etc) but also financial legibility (KYC), surveillance, and so on.

[Juliate]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa... is also a good illustration (which also shows in retrospect that there's both good and bad in it).