Pre-Modern Urban Design and Modern Architecture?

The urban tracé of Copacabana, my home neighborhood, 
squeezed between the sea and the hills, displays a kind of clear thinking we seem to have consigned to oblivion: it is made of roads parallel to the sea and roads perpendicular to the seashore, heading either to the sea or to the hills. 
The result is a full connection to the site. 

Another interesting detail is that the urban plan is pre-modern, but it was filled with mostly modern architecture, an extremely important experiment that went relatively unnoticed.

While modern architecture has its advantages and disadvantages, modern urban design is a perfect disaster.
​Maybe this pre-modern-urban-but-modern-architecture model could be used a way to accommodate the positive side of modern architecture?
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