This phrase has quite a lot of resonance in modern urban planning theory and I think it refers to the idea of the city conceived as a machine. Back in 1937, Gaston Bardet published an article entitled "La Cité Machiniste est-elle une cité radieuse ?", and this presumably refers to Le Corbusier's "ville radieuse" of 1933 (Le Corbusier thought of a house as a machine for living in):

"La ville radieuse. Elements d'une doctrine d'urbanisme pour l'equipement de la civilisation machiniste, Boulogne, éditions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1933 "
http://www.olympiabookfair.com/antiquarian-books/d/la-ville-...

"Ville Radieuse, the Machine City
French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier had big plans for the ideal city."
http://io9.gizmodo.com/10-failed-utopian-cities-that-influen...

More recently Françoise Choay has developed this idea in her studies of the modern city, and the phrase "l’aménagement de la cité machiniste" is actually hers.

The city as a machine is a widespread idea:
"Lec 3: Normative Theory II: The City as Machine
Lecture Summary
The concept of the city as analogous to a machine has a lengthy history."
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-241j-theory-of-cit...

Kevin Lynch has written influentially on this in his Good City Form:
https://books.google.es/books?id=flJdgBoKQHQC&pg=PA81#v=onep...

"In Good City Form Lynch diagrammed the Machine City as an open system designed like a computer chipboard"
https://books.google.es/books?id=bviCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT412&lpg=P...

"Lynch looks at connections between human values and the physical forms of cities, sets requirements for a normative theory of city form, reviews earlier physical images of what utopian communities might be, sees what is to be learned from hellish images, and helps us place city forms into one or another of three theoretic constructs: cosmic or ceremonial centers, the machine city, and the city as an organism."
https://www.amazon.com/Good-City-Form-MIT-Press/dp/026262046...

The idea is normally expressed as "machine city" or "the city as (a) machine" or sometimes "urban machine".

https://books.google.es/books?id=W_0YDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT109&lpg=P...

"Machine city" comes in this list of modern phrases for types of city (p. 175):
https://issuu.com/departure/docs/cb14_century-of-the-bed_low...