Urban development – Theories and impacts of city growth and development
/Urban development – Theories and impacts of city growth and development
By Rob Cottignies for Whalerjack
Expansion, growth and development is baked into our DNA as human beings. If we are not progressing we see ourselves as stagnant, stale and dull. Whether it be personal, communal or even inanimate growth; birth, life and death is a cycle replicated all around us every day, this cycle is the clock that alerts us to the passing of time. When we think about personal growth and development the parameters and variables are somewhat limited and fixed, usually by time, availability and inherent foundation-level ability. However, when we think about the scope of city development, how should we approach the necessary expansion and growth that inevitably arrives as we grow within its’ current limitations?
As a species we have always congregated together in cities and that trend is set to continue and form several ‘super cities’ by 2025 of over 10 million. (Source : https://www.thinglink.com/scene/629117572817616896)
Wikipedia defines Urban planning as; “a technical and political process concerned with the development and use of land, planning permission, protection and use of the environment, public welfare and the design of the urban environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications and distribution networks”. Although this is a brief overview of what planning city development can entail, it gives us some idea of just how broad and all encompassing the task can become. To be responsible for how all those affected will live their daily lives and their access to services will manifest, could easily become overwhelming. It requires a sense of scope, human psyche and behavioral knowledge that one imagines few possess. Urban planners also consult with architects, landscapers and engineers to reach strategic, policy and sustainability goals. Although urban planners now go through their own training and education specialties to qualify, they must still consult with these individual experts to encompass the best of all worlds.
An illustration showing the many interactions involved in assessing town/urban planning decision making and policy. (Source: https://www.slideshare.net/ctlachu/introduction-to-town-planning)
Although there is evidence to suggest urban planning and community design took place as far back as 3000BC, it was believed to be the Romans, following on from the Greeks, who really implemented grid pattern planning in their cities. The Romans admittedly implemented city planning primarily for military defence and public convenience, however as their empire spread, so did the scope of city planning. As the Roman empire waned, a lot of these practices went the same way. Preconceived planning decisions were observed in many European cities between the 12th and 14th centuries, but it was from the 15th century onward, that urban design and those involved was consistently recorded.
The arrival of industrialized cities in the 19th century meant that rates of growth exponentially increased, prioritizing the concerns of private business rather than inhabitants. Issues surrounding urban life for the working poor increasingly became a concern for the general public. A new wave of Liberalism, promoting the importance of the poor and disadvantaged, led to theorists developing urban planning models to mitigate the consequences of the industrial age, by providing citizens with healthier environments. Urban planning became more organized and professionalized during this time, with the Town and Country Planning Association being founded in 1899 and the first academic course being offered by the University of Liverpool in 1909.
An infographic comparing day and night populations of the city of New York. The drastic swing would also need to be a consideration for urban planners against infrastructure.
(Source: https://rampages.us/urbansociologysocy625/2015/09/)
The resulting rise of professionalised urban planning services has allowed us to better coordinate multiple services, industries and infrastructure requirements, within growing communities, to effectively and efficiently answer problems of growth, as and when they occur. Although this has undoubtedly streamlined the process of growth and renewal for developing cities, as was intended through legislation and policy, it has also caused issues relating to over-simplification and creating areas of sterility within cities and communities. The need to create an over-arching policy system to standardize development, has led to some of the intricacies and foibles of community life being shelved or de-prioritised in the name of growth. This has led to protests and occasional uprisings of neighborhoods against the apparently desensitized, centralized system, which can forget the users at ground level. One great example of this was Jane Jacobs, who became a neighbourhood martyr of sorts, for opposing the system and calling into question the policies established to standardize urban planning and development.
Jane Jacobs: A case study in countering past traditional urban development
During the 1960’s a landmark case became a very public battle about the institutionally accepted methods of urban renewal and development of Lower Manhatten. At this time, Robert Moses was a respected public official who simultaneously held 12 titles of office and was considered the “master builder” of mid 20th century New York City. His belief that cities were nothing without a steady flow of traffic led to the creation of the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects and urban planners.
Her hypothesis was built on the idea that cities should be built ‘by’ the people not ‘for’ the people. What she surmised by this was that the best way to plan a city was to observe how people use it today, presently. Looking at its’ functional strengths with a view to exploiting and reinforcing them. She suggested logic cannot be superimposed on a city, people make the city, and it should be to them, not the buildings, that a plan should be formulated. During a time when urban planning was trying to simplify and distil urban development and renewal to individual construction solutions, Jacobs was highlighting the structure of functional cities as being far more expansive, like a complex ecosystem.
She wrote that; “seeing complex systems of functional order, as order, and not as chaos, takes understanding. All these systems would be seen as chaotic without comprehension, but once seen as systems of order, they do in fact look different to the viewer”. This was built on the belief that great neighborhoods establish from the bottom up, when thousands of different actors (inhabitants) spontaneously come together, in an uncoordinated but meaningful way, to create the personality of individual neighborhoods. This was not planned, but was much more a question of organized complexity. This went against the grain at the time, when the very forms of urbanism she was extolling, were the very things that urban renewalists sought to destroy.
An example of the exact flyers prepared by Jane Jacobs to counter the modernist planning approach which impacted her neighborhood of New York. (Source: http://www.preservationsacramento.org/jane-jacobs/)
The problem was that post war urban planning was not concerned with the way people actually used cities, but the way that they should use them, concentrated on the utopian and the ideal. This was the central ideology that Jacobs stood against. The ideology of Le Corbusier and modernists after him was still the central tenant of urban planners; of clean, segregated, isolated and efficient functionality. Separating residential, commercial and recreational was seen as visionary and forward thinking to increase efficiency. However, in implementation these methods had been shown to actually create more problems than they solved. Communities became far more fragmented and crime actually became more of an issue in the new, modernist developments, than in the dilapidated housing they replaced. Jacobs won her localized battle and went on to write verhemently on the subject of urban planning, causing questions to be raised, and policy to be amended. We may still plan cities in a similar vein, but thanks to Jacobs and others like her, considerations of community and personal use are now a much higher priority than they were before her.
Looking to the future of cities: Masdar, Songdo and beyond..
Cities constructed in the last 20-30 years adhered to the guidelines established in the preceding half century. These parameters were built on an automobile friendly, energy inefficient system, that can no longer be considered progressive or sustainable, and was likely 20 years out of date when applied. To say that we must stop building cities because they are wasteful and uncoordinated is foolhardy. We need cities. They are the beacons of human civilization and the centres of achievement and invention for our species. Also, with an ever-burgeoning population, the birth and growth of cities is an inevitable by-product of our development.
Photographs comparing development of the main strip of Dubai in just 13 years. There has been a huge amount of further development in the 14 years since the second photo as well. (Source: http://www.boredee.com/rare-pictures-of-uae.html#.WYkYsMbMyCQ)
Pioneering case studies and alternative methodologies are being deployed throughout the globe to find the best strategies and implementations to allow for sustainable city growth and urban renewal, but as with so many arguments involving the human condition, it is a race against time due to irresponsible finite resource management.
Two examples of these pioneering case studies are currently constructed in Dubai and South Korea. The cities of Masdar and Songdo implement a combination of old-school energy saving technologies, and cutting edge scientific methodologies. Masdar was initially created to prove against the backdrop of Dubai, just next door geographically, that these methods and technologies could improve quality of life and reduce our ecological impact simultaneously, even in the harshest of environments.
Masdar is a city created in partnership with Foster architects and the Abu Dhabi government, to combine state-of-the-art technologies with traditional Arab settlement principles. The goal is to further the advancement of renewable energy sources, waste reduction and clean technologies for a life beyond oil, when the finite resource inevitably runs out. The city itself will be the first modern community in the world to operate without fossil-fuelled vehicles at street level. With a maximum distance of 200 metres to the nearest rapid transport links and amenities, the city is designed to encourage pedestrianism, along with the shaded streets and courtyards (provided through close proximity building design principles), which reduce climactic extremes and uncomfortable environments.
Further information on the development can be found on the fosterandpartners website. The city is still in the early stages of implementation and functioning well, but the biggest challenge is encouraging people to move away from Dubai to live there. Populating the city has been a surprisingly difficult challenge for the local government, which circles back around to illustrating how human behavior is also such an important facet of any urban planning intentions.
Aerial photograph of the city of Masdar, developed and designed in conjunction with Foster architects, uses many pioneering technologies to reduce human impact in the area.
(Source: http://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/masdar-development/)
Another high profile example of pioneering city development at this point would be Songdo, a new smart city constructed on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land, 65 kilometers South West of Seoul in South Korea. The largest private real estate development in history, Songdo was planned to contain 80,000 apartments, 50,000,000 sq ft of office space and 10,000,000 sq ft of retail space. However, much like Masdar, despite state-of-the-art technologies implemented throughout, and incentives to encourage businesses to move from Seoul, the struggle continues to entice retailers and residents to relocate to Songdo.
Though not yet completed, Songdo is home to 106 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings that fall under 22 million sq ft of LEED-certified space. It also utilizes a pneumatic waste disposal system which negates the need for garbage cans on street corners of trucks of any kind. Underground pipes suck the garbage to a centralized sorting and processing plant that automatically recycles waste. It remains to be seen whether this smart city of the future can entice residents and retail, but the building blocks for an environmentally conscious, forward-thinking city have been laid.
As we look toward the future of our species and how we will grow our population and our cities responsibly and safely, the centralized theme seems likely to be integration. We must all recognize that our symbiotic impact on the environment has be the utmost priority in expanding urbanized areas of the future. As a result of this, finding a way to bring together so many individual elements of mitigation is going to be the key to advancing city development and human expansion going forward. The list of required technologies will include renewable energy sources, infrastructure overhauls, smart lighting and communication systems and a host of waste processing and recycling initiatives, as well as considered construction and redevelopment. All these improvements to environmental impacts will have to be balanced against the forming and maintaining of communities, and the movement and comfort of residents. Jane Jacobs was right. Cities should be built by the people, not for the people.
-------
Reference and Sources:
“Urban planning” www.wikipedia.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning
“Positive and Negative effects of an urban development” http://peopleof.oureverydaylife.com http://peopleof.oureverydaylife.com/positive-negative-effects-urban-development-9619.html
“Learning from Jane Jacobs, who saw today’s city yesterday” www.nytimes.com https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/nyregion/jane-jacobs-citizen-jane-film.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FJacobs%2C%20Jane
“The article that made Jane Jacobs a superstar” www.cityclock.org http://www.cityclock.org/jane-jacobs-influence-on-modern-urban-planning/#.WZtHT60ZOt9
“Robert Moses” www.wikipedia.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses
“How Jane Jacobs changed the way we look at cities” www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/04/jane-jacobs-100th-birthday-saskia-sassen
“Robert Moses vs Jane Jacobs” www.fastcodesign.com https://www.fastcodesign.com/3029308/robert-moses-vs-jane-jacobs-a-saga-fit-for-the-opera
“Masdar development” www.fosterandpartners.com http://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/masdar-development/
“Looking at smart cities of the future” www.wired.com
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/design-issue-future-of-cities/
“Citizen Jane: Battle for the city” Documentary released 2016 by Matt Tyrnauer