GLOBAL SCHINDLER SCHINDLER AWARD AWARD 2015 2015 GLOBAL
GLOBAL SCHINDLER AWARD 2015
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GLOBAL SCHINDLER AWARD 2015 SHENZHEN ESSAYS
GLOBAL SCHINDLER AWARD 2015 SHENZHEN PROJECTS
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GLOBAL SCHINDLER AWARD 2015 SHENZHEN ESSAYS Edited by ETH Zurich Kees Christiaanse Fabienne Hoelzel Myriam Perret Dimitri Kron Journalist + Consultant Jessica Bridger Schindler Group Silvio Napoli Andrea Murer Neil Runcieman
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Global Schindler Award 2015 | A
TABLE OF CONTENTS – PART A ESSAYS Foreword – Essays Silvio Napoli
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Introduction – In Search of Approaches to Contemporary Urban Intervention Challenges Fabienne Hoelzel
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Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form Philipp Rode
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Rocking the Roadblock Alexander Erath
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Future Infrastructure Darryl Chen
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Preservation of the Public Jiang Feng, interviewed by Jessica Bridger
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Urban Design Models for Urban Megaprojects in a Global World Eirini Kasioumi
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Undermining the Authority Ting Chen
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Chinese Urbanization through the Lens of Da Lang Linda Vlassenrood
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Games with Frontiers Kazys Varnelis
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Afterword – Essays The Elevator: From Social Ambition to Urban Necessity Neil Runcieman
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People
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A | Foreword – Silvio Napoli
FOREWORD – ESSAYS Silvio Napoli
In many rapidly expanding cities of the developing world, mass migration has led to urban sprawl, slums, pollution, and gridlock. In the developed world, congested roads, over-crowding, and no-go areas have come to be regarded as “normal” in the urban context. The tangled interrelationships of infrastructure, housing, and industry result in spatial challenges. All of this is subject to governmental, social, and economic forces that influence their development and impact. The Global Schindler Award presents design and design-based thinking as an approach to confronting what we see as the “normal” consequences of urbanization and globalization. The mobility problems confronting the world’s cities are undeniable, fundamental challenges to making cities more livable and sustainable. Demand for the provision of public transit and shifts in mobility modes due to climate concerns are merely two of the many issues that will require innovative approaches in the 21st century. Although no consensus exists on the solutions or the costs – financial and otherwise – the scale is unquestionably enormous. As the engines of global growth, cities are responsible for generating the lion’s share of the world’s wealth as well as the bulk of waste and emissions. There is significant potential for pioneering approaches and solutions on the part of all urban stakeholders. Mobility systems can be leveraged as instruments for positive change. Mobility concerns do not begin and end with the journey: mobility is deeply integrated into urban life, affecting everything from the job opportunities for a single individual to the development of an entire country – not to mention global environmental conditions. The experience of the Schindler Group, a global mobility provider established in 1874, is that urban planners, architects, and engineers have the necessary expertise and technologies to develop inclusive models of urban development. The designers of cities can have a powerful impact on the future of our urban environments, one that can transcend the political, economic, and social spheres. Fresh ideas are needed about how the protagonists of urban development can apply their knowledge and envision their objectives within a more holistic view of the possibilities available. That is exactly what the Global Schindler Award is trying to do. Students are pushed to research and observe the dynamics of urban development in the context of a real-world example and to use design-based responses to a specific task.
Global Schindler Award 2015 | A
The award participants have to consider their project from the perspective of the people who will eventually inhabit the space. This means looking at the urban situation as a complex matrix, inclusive of basic needs such as housing, health, and welfare, with accessibility and equality in mind. As a companion to the Global Schindler Award 2015, the essays in this book present a selection of expert perspectives related to the concerns of the site and brief for the competition. This includes historical and cultural aspects, the reuse and redevelopment of city areas, the impact of technology, and more. Mobility is a recurring theme, and the focus is always on spatial conditions. The cover of this book, illustrated by architect and artist Matthias Gnehm, shows the breadth of the Global Schindler Award’s concerns. This book offers glimpses into the cutting-edge thinking in academia and practice with essays focused on specific topics – and the promise of a future generation of designers and planners invested in their shared responsibility and powerful role in creating our shared urban future.
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A | Introduction – Fabienne Hoelzel
INTRODUCTION – IN SEARCH OF APPROACHES TO CONTEMPORARY URBAN INTERVENTION CHALLENGES Fabienne Hoelzel
We live in an urban world. Globally, 54 percent of the world’s population resides in urban areas.1 Whereas the United States and Europe are close to reaching what is presumed to be the peak of their urban growth, large parts of Africa and Asia are moving into their “urban centuries.” UN Habitat describes the 21st century as the “Asian urban century”; no other region of the developing world has invested more in modern infrastructure than Asia. This has been undertaken to foster economic development through industrial expansion, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which in turn has enhanced the competitiveness of many cities in Asia.2 This publication explores the fascinating development of one of the most dynamic city regions in the world – Shenzhen, part of the Pearl River Delta in southern China – in the mirror of international trends. China has experienced rapid urbanization since the economic reforms of the late 1970s. The country’s level of urbanization has reached roughly 53 percent of the entire population, or about 712 million people.3 In comparison, to accomplish similar levels of urban development, it took 120 years in Britain and 80 years in the United States.4 Shenzhen, the location of the Global Schindler Award 2015, has not only developed from one of China’s first Special Economic Zones, created in 1980, to one of the largest cities in the world; it is also part of one of the most dynamic polycentric urban mega-regions in the world, the Pearl River Delta. The region represents both the hope and the challenges that come with urbanization. As the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said, cities can lead the way with local solutions to global problems.5 How can urban designers contribute to this? What are the current social, economic, and environmental issues to be tackled, both in Shenzhen and in other rapidly urbanizing regions in the world? What can we learn from the mistakes of the past to guarantee a better urban future? How do we successfully integrate infrastructure planning with people-centered urban design? How can new and old structures be better assembled, and how do we bring the public into long-term planning processes? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this publication, through theoretical reflection in the first part and through the results of design research conducted by student participants in the Global Schindler Award competition in the second part.
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There is a fundamental relationship between economic development and access to people, goods, services, and information in cities. Transport and urban form have strong correlations. The recognition of this interrelationship is particularly important at a time of unprecedented urban expansion, as Philipp Rode puts it in his essay. He highlights the unique policy opportunity that lies in the integration of land-use and transport planning. In urban design, there is a shift away from road-capacity-oriented street planning to a focus on finer-grain urban fabric. Smaller block sizes, higher building densities, and mixed-use development facilitate micro-accessibi lity, last-mile connectivity, walkability, and social interaction.
Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form Philipp Rode (> p. 14)
While it is obvious that classic top-down planning strategies and implementation are needed to coordinate large-scale metropolitan development, small-scale urban retrofit approaches can also greatly contribute to a more agreeable urban environment. Alexander Erath presents three examples of mobility metamorphoses, connecting these with his own personal walking experience in Shenzhen, which was planned as a car-based city, and where road designs do not offer much space, safety, or usability for pedestrians. Examples from Seoul, San Francisco, and Amsterdam show how well-designed public spaces can contribute to more livable cities. Erath’s findings are supported by UN-Habitat’s report on streets as public spaces and drivers of urban prosperity. Joan Close, UN-Habitat’s executive director, writes that when cities fail to integrate multifunctional streets, they tend to have less infrastructure development, lower productivity, and a poorer quality of life for their inhabitants.6
Rocking the Roadblock Alexander Erath (> p. 26)
On the other hand, urban transportation nodes such as the subway offer the opportunity to extend the space of pure infrastructure with social activity, local contingency, and expressive capacity. Learning from the world’s oldest underground rail system, the London Underground, Darryl Chen projects three strategies for how infrastructure can serve as an expanded public realm through better integration into daily urban life, offering spaces for local economies, networks, and stakeholders. He then extends these ideas into the Chinese context, projecting a holistic approach to thinking about future infrastructure as embedded in the life of the city.
Future Infrastructure Darryl Chen (> p. 32)
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A | Introduction – Fabienne Hoelzel
Preservation of the Public Jiang Feng (> p. 40)
As industry continually shifts out of central or centralizing places in the Pearl River Delta, Shenzhen is undergoing a transition from an industrial economy to a service economy, influenced in part by the same political will that jump-started the initial development of the city. Jiang Feng sees in this change a chance to implement a high-quality system of public spaces and address a lack of embedded cultural space. Historically, Chinese cities had a great tradition of public spaces: temples, markets, ancestral halls, ponds, bridges, and big banyan trees. Over the past four decades, urban growth has generally either ignored such spaces or sacrificed them to other urban- development concerns. Social organization, tradition, and community functions therefore lacked, and still lack, proper spatial accommodation, causing disruption and displacement. Feng calls for more holistic urbanization strategies, namely for the urbanization of life. He appeals to urban designers and planners to create social meaning, not only spatial meaning.
Urban Design Models for Urban Megaprojects in a Global World Eirini Kasioumi (> p. 46)
Urban-renewal and development strategies of tremendous speed, scale, and ambition, often in the form of so-called Urban Megaprojects (UMPs), have become the norm in the big cities of Southeast Asia and China. New high- density central areas with skyscraper clusters of sometimes iconic architecture have become popular symbols of cities like Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Singapore, just to name a few. New central business districts, new towns, or redeveloped waterfronts are supposed to be more than simple reactions to rapid urbanization: they aim at elevating the position of a given city in a globalized world marked by intense competition for international investment and a highly qualified workforce. Eirini Kasioumi sees a trend in which – learning from the mistakes of past decades – urban megaprojects in Southeast Asia and China are maturing into more sophisticated forms of planning, design, and implementation, more appropriately adapted to and accommodating of the local social and economic traditions.
Undermining the Authority Ting Chen (> p. 56)
The construction of expensive office towers and formally planned commercial urban megaprojects remains ambiguous in its intentions and effects. Too often, these profit-driven developments do not use holistic approaches to urban development for the benefit of the many; they are motivated and shaped by the desire to generate high rates of return on initial investment for the few.7 Alternative modes, with timelines that stretch beyond shortsighted profiteering, are needed. Although the incremental transformation of former industrial areas is surely not the mainstream in Shenzhen’s ongoing development, Ting Chen describes such a process. Her example of the Shangbu area shows how the existing society there and its local bottom-up economy may be as important for the sustainable economic development of the city as more formal modes. Incremental urban-design and land-ma nagement approaches could help to provide open, affordable, and flexible urban spaces, offering a variety of social and economic opportunities for all. Inclusive cities that integrate local economic actors are more economically successful over the long term.8
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Relevant institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommend a more holistic view towards economic development instead of focusing solely on economic growth.9 Professor Jing Huang from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy says that China’s central government needs to maintain economic growth in order to keep its legitimacy, raising a dilemma. The population suffers from poor air quality and severely polluted water. The government is forced to address these environmental issues quickly and effectively to avoid revolts and political crisis. Yet implementing strict environmental policies will slow down economic growth.10 One effort to achieve stability and harmony in a society and a country trying to manage a difficult phase in its development may be the deployment and support of volunteer-based initiatives and NGOs. Linda Vlassenrood looks at this increasingly popular instrument through the lens of Da Lang, a neighborhood in the outskirts of Shenzhen.
Chinese Urbanization through the Lens of Da Lang Linda Vlassenrood (> p. 66)
China has invested heavily in research and development in order to transition from cheap mass production to the development of innovative, high- quality products. For instance, the Shanghai region has recently invested 3.6 percent of its economic output into research and development. While technology has certainly already dramatically changed our lives and societies, Kazys Varnelis speculates about the impact that technological augmentation might have on the conception and function of urban and architectu ral space and on people and their networks. New forms of shared facilities could emerge as programs could be dictated by access, communicated digitally, and encouraged through flexible spatial aspects. In general, space may become more “responsive,” with more loosely defined uses and partitioning through added layers of shared use, along with information and access management. Concepts of borders, territories, and mobility routing are increasingly becoming more fluid for the individual through a redefini tion of continuity and urban experience, all enabled by the mobile phones carried by a majority of the world’s population.
Games with Frontiers Kazys Varnelis (> p. 72)
Breakthroughs in technology have not only always been milestones for research and innovation; they have also moved humanity upward The intervention of the elevator, together with the emergence of the steel frame, led to the “culture of congestion” – tall, high-density urban blocks with towers – notably described by Rem Koolhaas in his book Delirious New York, first published in 1978.11 Neil Runcieman believes that elevator technology will significantly contribute in the future to a safe, efficient, comfortable, and secure urban environment with new possibilities for life above – or below – ground level that include parks, gardens, and other public spaces. Furthermore, new technological achievements can result in much more comprehensive mobility schemes and traffic management at the human scale in smart building environments.
The Elevator – From Social Ambition to Urban Necessity Neil Runcieman (> p. 80)
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A | Introduction – Fabienne Hoelzel
It is against the backdrop of rapidly and increasingly urbanizing regions and the ever-growing influence of technology on our private and professional lives that the role and task of the urban designer to conceptualize and implement livable, sustainable, and beautiful urban spaces becomes more complex – and more important. As more and more people are born on our planet and move to our cities, society in general will grow more diverse due to mobility, migration, and globalization. The urban designers of the future will increasingly have to work, from an early stage, with local populations and other important stakeholders to consider their needs and make potential conflicts productive through smart design interventions. After all, a “good” urban world would be one in which everybody can engage and evolve, every day. This may imply the implementation of a new paradigm for planning. The constructed and built reality hardly corresponds with the plans and concepts that were drawn beforehand. There is a huge gap between the intentions and knowledge of experts – urban planners, designers, and architects – and events on the ground. One probable answer to this may be that as disciplines, urban design and spatial planning are doing projects for the people instead of with the people. This is a problem because, ultimately, people make places. It is not merely a question of top-down or bottom-up but rather how these two things can come together. The buy-in of those who live in, work in, and use these spaces is crucial when it comes to putting plans into action and caring for them further down the line from the drawing board.
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision: Highlights (New York: United Nations, 2014). 1
United Nations Human Settlements Programme, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities (Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2013).
2
World DataBank, The World Bank, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx.
3
Yue Zhang, “China: Informality in Urban Villages,” in Governing Urban Futures, eds. Ricky Burdett, Philipp Rode, Priya Shankar, Shan Vahidy (London: LSE Cities, 2014), 53. 4
Ban Ki-moon, “Secretary General’s Foreword,” in State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities (Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2013).
5
United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Streets as Public Spaces and Drivers of Urban Prosperity (Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2013).
6
United Nations Human Settlements Programme, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013. Prosperity of Cities (Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2013), 129.
7
Mark Roseland with Lena Soots, “Strengthening Local Economies,” in State of the World: Our Urban Future, ed. Linda Starke (New York/ London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 152–169.
8
The World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity: Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015 (Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ World Bank, 2015). United Nations Human Settlements Programme: Streets as Public Spaces and Drivers of Urban Prosperity. Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2013
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10 11
“Die nächsten Jahre sind sehr gefährlich,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 11, 2015.
Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978; New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994).
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A | Essay – Philipp Rode
Public transport, Public transport, walking and cycling dominates
Private motorised transport dominates
Walking and cycling (NMT) cities
Pre-1970s
Motorcycle cities
Bus/paratransit cities
Hanoi 1980s
Seoul, Manila 1970s
Increased motorisation
Rapid motorisation, low road and public transport investment
Traffic satuarated bus cities
Ho Chi Minh
Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Delhi
Modern cycling cities Amsterdam, Groningen Copenhagen, Oxford
Transit cities Restrained private cars, investment in alternatives and TOD
Continued motorisation
Car cities
Car cities in decline
Los Angeles, Houston, Dubai
Detroit
Entrenched traffic saturation Manila
Spectrum of city types between car and transit cities
Figure 1 Urban Accessibility Pathways based on Barter’s city typology and transport development paths.
Early cycling cities Shanghai, Beijing, Jinan, Zhengzhou 1980s
Slow motorisation, moderate road building, mass transit investment
Traffic satuarted motorcycle cities
Unrestrained motorisation
Early 2010s
Moderate road building, investment in cycling facilities
BRT cities Curitiba, Bogota, Jakarta, Jinan, Lagos
Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Paris, Zurich
Global Schindler Award 2015 | A
ACCESSIBILITY IN CITIES: TRANSPORT AND URBAN FORM Philipp Rode
Access to people, goods, services and information is the basis of economic development in cities. The better and more efficient this access, the greater the economic benefits through economies of scale, agglomeration effects and networking advantages. Cities with higher levels of agglomeration tend to have higher GDP per capita and higher levels of productivity. The way in which cities facilitate accessibility through their urban forms and transport systems also impacts directly on other measures of human development and well-being. Urban travel currently constitutes more than 60 percent of all kilometers travelled globally1 and, as a result, urban transport is currently the largest single source of global transport-related carbon emissions and the largest local source of urban air pollution. In any city, patterns of urban development are inseparable from the evolution of urban transport and mobility. Likewise, urban transport cannot be considered independently from urban form.2 Recognition of this interrelationship between transport and urban form is particularly important at a time of unprecedented urban expansion. Each city has developed its own unique spatial structure and transport system to provide access to people, goods and information. Nonetheless, different principal development patterns have evolved with respect to the most common combinations of urban spatial structures and transport. Given the strong path dependency of these patterns, we call these “urban accessibility pathways” (Figure 1). Exchange of people, services, and goods The first principle of achieving accessibility in cities is based on the physical concentration of people, services, economic activities and exchange. In that regard, the most defining characteristics include residential and workplace densities; the distribution of functions and degree of mixed use; the level of centralization; and local level urban design. Creating accessibility based on physical proximity implies a particular attention to planning, designing, building and managing the specific local condition at a human scale. To a certain extent, physical proximity in cities can be substituted by increasing the speed of travel through the use of rapid, motorized modes of public and private transport. It is important to note, however, that even then the overarching objective remains the provision of access to opportunities rather than mobility or movement itself. Furthermore, the type of motorized transport that is being introduced to a city has direct implications with regards to physical proximity and urban density. In short, public transport requires urban density whilst car use requires space. In most cities, this has led to extraordinary tensions as a result of the inefficient use of scarce urban space by private vehicles. Today, urban agglomerations can be based on many possible combinations of transport and urban form (Figure 2), each providing different levels of access. These combinations can range from walkable, public transport-based compact cities to sprawling car-oriented cities,3 and different types can be found
This article is shortened version of “Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form” by P. Rode, G. Floater, N. Thomopoulos, J. Docherty, P. Schwinger, A. Mahendra, and W. Fang, published in 2014 as NCE Cities Paper 03 at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which was prepared for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and its New Climate Economy Programme.
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A | Essay – Philipp Rode
ATLANTA
LOS ANGELES
Pop 5,430,549 GDP per capita US$ 54,853 580 5%
people per km (average) population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
Pop 13,035,466 GDP per capita US$ 60,881
2
8%
1,870 people per km2 (average) 12% population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
92%
BERLIN
LONDON
Pop 4,280,544 GDP per capita US$ 37,147
Pop 14,302,930 GDP per capita US$ 54,304
3,930 people per km2 (average) 33% population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
4,120 people per km2 (average) 36% population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
32%
68%
HONG KONG
MUMBAI
Pop 7,155,911 GDP per capita US$ 36,789
Pop 18,702,740 GDP per capita US$ 4,334
10,110 people per km2 (average) 40% population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
26,600 people per km2 (average) 30% population living 500 m from rail based public transport network
93%
7%
88%
33%
67%
5%
95%
Modal share in political city:
LEGEND:
urban area rail based public transport network
12%
0
15
60 km
% – Private motorised
% – Public transport, walking and cycling
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in different parts of the world at different levels of development. At the neighborhood level, density, land-use mix and street design have a signifi cant impact on the likelihood of walking.4 A particular feature of the transport-urban form relationship is their long design lives, creating considerable “lock-in” effects. Some of these lock-in effects could be overcome by innovations in transport systems and technology. Dealing with urban transport or land-use planning in isolation from their interdependencies can easily lead to adverse effects and unintended consequences. Furthermore, urban transport is more complex than other transport sectors, not just because it involves the integration of different transport systems, but also because it co-produces accessibility jointly with spatial development. The co-dependence of urban transport systems with urban form also plays a central role in the global transition to a low-carbon economy,5 and the positive correlation between energy or carbon efficiency and urban density can also be observed outside the transport sector and, together with levels of affluence, can impact on variations in carbon emissions at the national level (Figure 3). Compact and taller building types can improve heat energy efficiency at the neighborhood level by a factor of six compared to detached houses.6 Economic benefits Urban accessibility pathways based on compact and public transport-oriented urban development deliver tangible direct economic benefits compared to sprawling automobile-dependent accessibility models. Developing at higher densities uses land more efficiently and capitalizes on economies of scale to reduce operational costs per unit of land. The World Bank suggests that more compact city development in China could save up to US$1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending, equivalent to 15 percent of the country’s 2013 GDP.7 Within urban transport infrastructure provision, massive capital cost savings can be generated as a result of a shift away from private car infrastructure towards public transport, walking and cycling (Table 1).
Transport Infrastructure
Figure 2 (opposite page) Urban form and modal share (black in pie chart is private motorized) of selected cities. Table 1 (this page) Capacity and infrastructure costs of different transport systems.
Capacity (pers /h /d)
Capital Costs (US$ / km)
Capital Costs / Capacity
2,000
10 m – 20 m
5,000 – 10,000
800
2m–5m
2,500 – 7,000
Bike path (2 m)
3,500
100,000
30
Pedestrian walkway / pavement (2 m)
4,500
100,000
20
Commuter Rail
20,000 – 40,000
40 m – 80 m
2,000
Metro Rail
20,000 – 70,000
40 m – 350 m
2,000 – 5,000
Light Rail
10,000 – 30,000
10 m – 25 m
800 – 1,000
Bus Rapid Transit
5,000 – 40,000
1 m – 10 m
200 – 250
10,000
1m–5m
300 – 500
Dual-lane highway Urban street (car use only)
Bus Lane
A | Essay – Philipp Rode
A Comparison of Average Urban Densities in Large Cities and Average Carbon Dioxide Emissions per Capita from All Sources in 145 Countries, 2000 22
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Density decile averages with error bars
USA
20 CO2 Emissions per Capita in the Country (tons per year)
18
Selected countries
Australia
Canada
Other countries
16 14 12 Germany
Russia Japan UK
10 Italy
8
S. Korea
France
6
Ukraine
4 China
Brazil
2
Indonesia 0 0
20
40
60
80
100
Pakistan 120
India Philippines
140
Nigeria Bangladesh
160
180
200
220
Average Density of Large Cities in the Country (persons per hectare) Sources: Density data from Angel et al. (2012 online); and CO2 emissions per capita data from World Resources Institute (2012).
Total: 85.393 million units
Total: 87.250 million units
China
26%
UK
3%
USA
19%
France
3%
Japan
6%
Canada
2%
Germany
4%
South Korea 2%
India
4%
Others
Russia
3%
26%
China
25%
Brazil
4%
USA
13%
Mexico
4%
Japan 11%
Thailand 3%
Germany 7%
Canada 2%
South Korea 5%
Others
India
4%
21%
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Alongside infrastructure and operational costs, different urban accessibility pathways have important implications for the transport sector and associated industries. Transport-related activities represent a substantial percentage of total employment and value addition across both the developed and developing world. Automobile manufacturing has historically been the most visible and influential transport-related industrial sector. Globally, automobile manufacture is concentrated in a relatively small number of countries and regional manufacturing hubs, with China, the United States, Germany and Japan together accounting for over half of total vehicles manufactured in 2013. China is now the world’s largest automobile manufacturer and end market, accounting for over one-fifth of total cars assembled and almost a quarter of cars sold globally (Figure 4). Despite the status of the automobile industry in some economies, a recent study modeling the macroeconomic effects of policy measures to reduce traffic- related emissions of greenhouse gases, air pollutants and noise in Germany found significant positive net macroeconomic effects from reducing car use across a range of different policy packages. Measures to increase the modal share of walking and cycling were found to expand GDP, total employment and employment in transport by 1.11 percent, 1.37 percent and 4.14 percent respectively by 2030, while measures to promote increased local public transport use generated net increases of 1.56 percent, 1.76 percent and 5.29 percent respectively.8 Poverty reduction and the promotion of social equity continue to be key policy challenges in urban areas across the developed and the developing world. Growing income and wealth inequalities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing developing countries, are exacerbated by the combined effects of urban sprawl, motorization, and spatial segregation9, with almost one quarter of the global urban population living in informal settlements.10 Within both developed and developing countries there is a high level of correlation between the use of different transport modes and social class, with the poorer populations mainly (in the developed world) or almost entirely (in the developing world) reliant on public transport, non-motorized transport and walking. Dense, well-managed urban development and the provision of accessible, affordable public transport can therefore have a positive direct effect on the poor and other disadvantaged groups by increasing their ability to access goods, services, and economic opportunities,11 and by providing opportunities for participation in the supply of transport-related infrastructure and services.12 The construction and maintenance of well-designed transport infrastructure can provide large-scale opportu nities for the direct employment of the poor and generate high local and national multipliers, particularly where the use of labor-intensive techni ques and locally available materials are prioritized. Contradictory trends The World Bank has estimated that while urban populations of a representative sample of cities in the developed world grew by approximately 5 percent, their built-up area increased by 30 percent between 1990 and 2000. In China, population densities in cities have declined by 25 percent on average over the last ten years.13 In the six years from 1999 to 2005, built-up land in provincial capital cities doubled: the largest absolute increase of more than 500 square kilometers was in Beijing and Shanghai, whilst growth rates in Nanjing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou were the highest at over 150
Figure 3 (opposite page, top) Average urban densities in large cities and average carbon emission per capita. Figure 4 (opposite page, bottom) Top 10 countries in global automobile sales (left) and production (right) in 2013.
20
800
400
700
350
600
300
500
250 400 200 300 150 200
100
ASEAN ( Major Countries )
CHINA
INDIA
Total vehicles ( in Millions )
OECD North America
OECD Europe
2035
2025
2015
2005
2035
2025
2015
2005
2035
2025
2015
2005
2035
2025
2015
2005
2035
2025
2015
2005
0
2035
0
2025
100
2015
50
OECD Pacific
Motorisation index ( V / 1000 P )
Number of cities
Carsharing – 1,000+ (1987, Zurich, Switzerland)
600
Bikesharing – 500+ (1998, Rennes, France)
Complete Streets – 455
500
(1971, Portland, US)
Carfree zones – 360+ (1953, Rotterdam, NL)
400
Smart card – 250+ (1992, Oulu, Finland)
300
Metro – 188 (1863, London, UK)
Bus Rapid Transit – 160
200
(1974, Curitiba, Brazil)
Low emission zone – 210+ (2003, Tokyo, Japan)
100
Google Transit web apps – 250 (2005. Portland, US)
Year 1960
1970
1980
1990
Sustainable Transport Adoption
2000
2010
Motorisation index
450
2005
Total number of vehicles ( in Millions )
A | Essay – Philipp Rode
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percent.14 Comprehensively planned urban sprawl is most characteristic in China but also common in Korea and Thailand. Here, a formal process of land acquisition or appropriation is complemented by state-led urban infrastructure development and service provision, for which costs are recovered from private real estate development. As a result, municipalities have a strong interest in developing additional land which generates new revenues.15 In contrast, cities in China have already started to increase densities: population density in Beijing’s core has already increased by 50 percent over the past decade.16 This “return to the city” has multiple socio- economic reasons, many of which are related to the agglomeration effects discussed above. In addition, changing demographics and family structures, greater participation of women in the labor market and related lifestyle changes have all been identified as significantly reducing the attraction of suburban living.17 Over the last decade investment in public transport, including Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and rail systems, has also increased,18 indicating a shift away from primarily investing in roads as was common in earlier decades.19 Urban rail networks in China will total 3,000 kilometers in system length in 2015 and double by 2020, representing over US$645 billion of investment.20 Guangzhou is an example of a city that has started to partially redirect their accessibility pathways, with the introduction of mass rapid transit systems. Nevertheless, over the last 50 years, private motorized transport has grown rapidly in cities around the world. Between 1960 and 2010, the number of registered cars worldwide increased more than sevenfold. The recent growth in the global vehicle fleet population has been driven by emerging economies, and above all by China.21 Figure 5 shows that there will be more vehicles in China by 2025 than in North America or Europe. It should be noted that there is a considerable risk of overestimating the growth of private vehicle stock, as most growth projections simply extrapolate historic trends without adequately incorporating evidence on changing patterns of mobility and their relationship to income and economic growth.22 Fundamental technologies for urban transport have not changed substantially over recent decades, and the recent technological evolution of urban mobility has been driven largely by the innovative use of existing technologies. Among the best examples is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which has adapted conventional bus technology to a high capacity urban transport system. BRT has the potential to address the crucial challenge of the lock-in, as previously mentioned, presented by urban motorways by converting them to high capacity public transport corridors. Not surprisingly, more disruptive new technologies within the urban transport sector have emerged from outside the conventional automotive sector and in two main areas of contemporary technological innovation: digitization and electrification. The most important recent enabler for enhancing mobility systems in cities for individual users has been a combination of smart phone technologies and geo-positioning systems. Smart phone penetration has reached 71 percent in China.23 Bike sharing programs assisted by digitization have proliferated in both developed and developing cities.24 The largest schemes, with over 60,000 bicycles each, have been implemented in Hangzhou and Wuhan. Fully electric BRT technologies have been tested since 2010 in Guangzhou.
Figure 5 (top) Number of vehicles worldwide and motorization index by region (2005 and projections to 2035). Figure 6 (bottom) Global adoption of sustainable transport systems.
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Towards the compact and dense city: Planning and regulation Given the strong interrelationship between urban form and transport, the integration of land-use and transport planning represents a unique policy opportunity. Within spatial planning, the effective management of urban growth is essential to promoting compact, well-planned city forms. Further instruments include minimum density standards, mixed-use regulation and a density bonus for developers, in order to support compact city development with a hierarchy of higher density, mixed-use clusters around public transport nodes. Furthermore, human-scale urban design considera tions require a shift away from road capacity-oriented street planning to a focus on finer-grain urban fabric, including smaller block sizes, higher building densities and mixed use to facilitate micro-accessibility, last-mile connectivity, walkability and social interaction. The planning approach implied here involves engagement with the existing urban form and flows of the city in order to identify how best to sequence, coordinate and integrate various infrastructure investments with land-use development, which in turn will determine the city’s energy efficiency and competitiveness in the long term. Such planning approaches also provide an opportunity to improve social inclusion by actively prioritizing housing and infrastructure provision for lower income households. Regulatory policy instruments also play a key role in shaping urban transport performance. Measures to manage car use in cities commonly include parking regulations, emissions standards and driving restrictions. For example, many Chinese cities have started to limit the total number of privately owned vehicles through restrictions on the number of license plates issued per month, with Shanghai beginning to control the growth of private vehicle registrations as early as 1994 (one reason for the city’s considerably lower vehicle stock compared to Beijing).25 Effective fiscal policy represents a key tool for delivering equitable and sustainable urban mobility.26 Within the urban transport sector, fiscal instruments have several purposes including managing total transport demand, shifting demand to more environmentally and socially beneficial modes, and improving the performance of those modes.27 The single most important fiscal instrument related to vehicle use is fuel pricing. Transport fuel taxation has historically been a key part of government fiscal policy due to its characteristics as a stable, dependable revenue source that is easily administered, and typically has progressive characteristics.28 Other fiscal instruments for managing vehicle use (typically delegated to the city-level) include road pricing, parking charges and other user fees. Shifting cities away from carbon and resource- intensive accessibility patterns will require substantial funding, particularly for urban infrastructure which can support higher urban densities. Many of the compact city investment projects are within the reach of city governments, who can leverage national or private funds to finance initial capital investments. In addition, private finance can be mobilized through real estate developer charges and fees, property or value capture taxes, loans, green bonds and carbon finance.29 Continuing to ignore the problems intrinsic to conventional car use may no longer just lead to problems of unaccounted externalities, but could also potentially become a liability for the future-proofing of an entire industry sector. Global automobile manufacturing is now substantially overcapita lized, with underutilized production capacity in most large producer countries. At the same time, the potential for system-wide technological innova
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tion in the urban transport sector is considerable (Figure 6). Current policy does not even maximize what is already technologically possible and often incentivizes irrelevant or counterproductive forms of innovation. National industrial policies in many countries simply continue to actively support and incentivize conventional car manufacturing and use, both directly and indirectly. Overall, the optimum policy set is a blend of pricing and regula tory mechanisms and it needs to be applied at a system level of urban mobility. The policy context in which cities can play a particularly important role in assisting urban mobility innovation relates to the support and establishment of urban test beds. Besides acting as brokers of relevant pub lic-private partnerships and securing the support of the general public, cities can proactively support the establishment of technological experiments in the field by providing legal and technical assistance. Important areas for related experimentation include shared electric mobility, grid-to-vehicle technology and, in the medium term, the testing of autonomous vehicles. In addition, progressive local transport policy in individual cities has again and again proved to be an important factor in the innovation cycle. For example, local parking and congestion charging policy in London has facilitated the roll-out of electric vehicles ahead of most other European cities.
F.-J. van Audenhove, et al., The Future of Urban Mobility 2.0 (Arthur D. Little and UITP, 2014).
1
P. Newman and J. R. Kenworthy, Cities and Automobile Dependence: A Sourcebook (Aldershot: Gower, 1989). ECOTEC, Reducing Transport Emissions through Planning (London: HMSO, 1993). S. J. Houghton, 18th Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution: Transport and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). P. W. G. Newman, and J. R. Kenworthy, “The Land Use – Transport Connection: An Overview.” Land Use Policy 13(1) (1996): 1–22. H. Knoflacher, P. Rode, and G. Tiwari, “How Roads Kill Cities,” in The Endless City, ed. R. Burdett and D. Sudjic, (London: Phaidon, 2008), 340–347. H. T. Dimitriou and R. Gakenheimer, Urban Transport in the Developing World: Perspectives From the First Decade of the New Millennium (UK: Edward Elgar Pub., 2009). United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Planning and Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility: Global Report on Human Settlements 2013 (UN-Habitat, 2013). 2
E. L. Glaeser and M. E. Kahn, “Chapter 56: Sprawl and Urban Growth,” in Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, ed. J. V. Henderson and T. Jacques-François, 4th ed. (Elsevier, 2004), 2481–2527.
3
R. Erwing and R. Cervero, “Travel and the Built Environment,” Journal of the American Planning Association 76(3) (2010): 265–294.
4
R. Hickman and D. Banister, Transport, Climate Change and the City (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).
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P. Rode, “The Politics and Planning of Urban Compaction: The Case of the London Metropolitan Region,” in The Economy of Sustainable Construction, eds. I. Ruby, A. Ruby and N. Janson (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2014)
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World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014). 7
C. Doll and J. Hartwig, “Clean, Safe and Healthy Mobility Through Non-Technical Measures – Linking Individual and Public Decision Levels” (paper presented at the Transportation Demand Management – mobil.TUM2012 International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport, Munich, Institute of Transportation, Technische Universitaet Muenchen, 19–20 March, 2012).
8
OECD, Tracking Clean Energy Progress: Power Generation Figures, OECD, 2013.
9
United Nations Human Settlements Programme, State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide (UN-Habitat, 2010).
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A. Murie and S. Musterd, “Social Exclusion and Opportunity Structures in European Cities and Neighbourhoods,” Urban Studies 41(8) (2004): 1441–1459. D. Banister, “Cities, Mobility and Climate Change,” Journal of Transport Geography 19(6) (2011): 1538–1546. E.E. Boschmann, “Job Access, Location Decision, and the Working Poor: A Qualitative Study in the Columbus, Ohio Metropolitan Area,” Geoforum 42(6) (2011): 671–682. R. Sietchiping, M. J. Permezel and C. Ngomsi, “Transport and Mobility in Sub-Saharan African Cities: An Overview of Practices, Lessons and Options for Improvements,” Cities 29(3) (2012): 183–189. N. Foth, K. Manaugh and A. M. El-Geneidy, “Towards Equitable Transit: Examining Transit Accessibility and Social Need in Toronto, Canada, 1996–2006,” Journal of Transport Geography 29 (2013): 1–10. 11
G. Santos, H. Behrendt, and A. Teytelboym, “Part II: Policy Instruments for Sustainable Road Transport,” Research in Transportation Economics 28(1) (2010): 46–91.
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World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014). 13
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W. Zheng, J.-S. Liang and H. Zhang, “Comprehensive Analysis of Urban Compactness of Provincial Capital Cities in China,” China Land Science 4 (2009).
14
World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization: Supporting Reports II (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014).
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World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014). 16
A. Aguiléra, S. Wenglenski and L. Proulhac, “Employment Suburbanisation, Reverse Commuting and Travel Behaviour by Residents of the Central City in the Paris Metropolitan Area,” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 43(7) (2009): 685–691. K. Lovejoy, S. Handy and P. Mokhtarian, “Neighborhood Satisfaction in Suburban versus Traditional Environments: An Evaluation of Contributing Characteristics in Eight California Neighborhoods,” Landscape and Urban Planning 97(1) (2010): 37–48. P. Rérat, “The New Demographic Growth of Cities: The Case of Reurbanisation in Switzerland,” Urban Studies 49(5) (2012): 1107–1125. 17
O. Odenhofer, et al., IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
18
S. Owens, “From ‘Predict and Provide’ to ‘Predict and Prevent’?: Pricing and Planning in Transport Policy,” Transport Policy 2(1) (1995): 43–49. P. Goodwin, C. Hass-Klau and S. Cairns, “Evidence on the Effects of Road Capacity Reduction on Traffic Levels,” Traffic Engineering & Control 39(6 (1998): 348–354. G. Vigar, “Reappraising UK Transport Policy 1950–99: The Myth of ‘Mono-modality’ and the Nature of ‘Paradigm Shifts’,” Planning Perspectives 16(3) (2001): 269–291. S. Owens and R. Cowell, Land and Limits: Interpreting Sustainability in the Planning Process (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). 19
World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014). 20
21 S. Staniford, “Chinese Transportation Growth,” Early Warning Blog, January 2010, http://earlywarn.blogspot.de/2010/01/chinese-transportation-growth.html. M. Kutzbach, “Megacities and Megatraffic.” Access 37 (2010): 31–35. World Bank, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization: Supporting Reports II (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2014).
P. Goodwin, “Due Diligence, Traffic Forecasts and Pensions,” Local Transport Today, 594 (2012). C. Williams-Derry, “Traffic Forecast Follies – The US DOT Refuses to Learn from Recent Travel Trends,” accessed 28 May, 2014, http://daily.sightline.org/2013/12/23/traffic-forecast-follies. J. Green and K. Naughton, “Woes of Megacity Driving Signal Dawn of ‘Peak Car’ Era,” accessed 9 April, 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-24/woes-of-megacity-driving-signals-dawn-of-peak-car-era.html. 22
S. Phadke, “The Asian Mobile Consumer Decoded,” Accessed 21 May, 2014, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/the-asian-mobile-consumer-decoded0.html. 23
J. Larsen, “Bike-Sharing Programs Hit the Streets in over 500 Cities Worldwide,” accessed 11 May, 2014, http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2013/update112. 24
H. Hao, H. Wang and M. Ouyang, “Comparison of Policies on Vehicle Ownership and Use between Beijing and Shanghai and Their Impacts on Fuel Consumption by Bassenger Vehicles,” Energy Policy 39(2) (2011): 1016–1021.
25
G. Floater, P. Rode and B. Friedel, “Steering Urban Growth: Governance, Policy and Finance – Paper 2,” NCE Cities. London, LSE Cities – London School of Economics and Political Science, 2014.
26
D. Gordon, “Fiscal Policies for Sustainable Transportation: International Best Practices,” Energy Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation, 2005.
27
P. Ekins and S. Potter, “Reducing Carbon Emissions through Transport Taxation,” GFC Briefing Paper, London, Green Fiscal Commission, 2010.
28
G. Ang and V. Marchal, “Mobilising Private Investment in Sustainable Transport: The Case of Land-Based Passenger Transport Infrastructure,” OECD Environment Working Papers (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2013). D. Bongardt, et al., Low-Carbon Land Transport: Policy Handbook (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013). 29
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FIGURE 1
LSE Cities (2014). Transport Related Carbon Emissions in Atlanta and Barcelona: Updated Comparative Calculations. Working Paper. London, LSE Cities, based on ADB (2009). Changing Course: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Urban Transport. Urban Development Series. Philippines, Asian Development Bank, and R. Hickman and D. Banister, (2014). Transport, Climate Change and the City, Routledge. FIGURE 2
LSE Cities (2014). Transport Related Carbon Emissions in Atlanta and Barcelona: Updated Comparative Calculations. Working paper. London, LSE Cities (concept and information design based on A. Sorensen and P. Hess (2007). Metropolitan Form, Density and Transportation, The Neptis Foundation) FIGURE 3
Source: Angel, S. (2012). Planet of Cities. Cambridge, MA, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy TABLE 1
Source: P. Rode and C. Gipp (2001). Dynamische Raeume: Die Nutzungsflexibilisierung urbaner Mobilitaets raeume am Beispiel der Berliner Innenstadt, Technical University Berlin; T. Litman (2009), “Transportation cost and benefit analysis.” Victoria Transport Policy Institute: 1–19; L. Wright (2002). “Bus Rapid Transit, sustainable transport: A Sourcebook for Policy-Makers in Developing Cities.” Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn; W. Brilon (1994). “Traffic Engineering and the New German Highway Capacity Manual.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 28(6): 469–481 FIGURE 4
Left: OICA (2014). 2005–2013 Production Statistics. Paris, International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. 2014 Right: OICA (2014). 2005–2013 Sales Statistics. Paris, International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. 2014. FIGURE 5
Source: B. Fabian (2012). Overview on Transport Data and MRV Potential in Asia. Transport Sector and NAMAs: Assessing Data Readiness for MRV. Pasig, Philippines, Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Center (CAI-Asia Center) FIGURE 6
D. Hidalgo and H. Zeng (2013). “On the Move: Pushing Sustainable Transport from Concept to Tipping Point.” Retrieved 25th April, 2014, from http://thecityfix.com/blog/on-the-move-pushing-sustainable-transportconcept-tipping-point-dario-hidalgo-heshuang-zeng/
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ROCKING THE ROADBLOCK Alexander Erath
Walking along an alley in one of Shenzhen’s urban villages is a blissful experience. The contagious laughter of children playing in the street makes you smile; you might bump into your neighbor and have a quick chat. Fresh fruits and vegetables on display at the corner shop inspire ideas of feasts. But after a few minutes your joyful stroll comes to a sudden end: a sea of traffic blocks your passage. When you finally arrive at the other side of the road to catch your bus, you could hardly be blamed for dreaming of buying a car and moving into a condominium with ample private parking – but this would be far away from your social contacts and the next corner shop. Vast arterial roads crisscross Shenzhen about every 500 meters. Walking along or across those multi-lane roads is rather unpleasant, as they are optimized for vehicle throughput and neglect the needs of pedestrians. Noise and pollution make the sidewalks unattractive for public use, and buildings are closed off from the ugliness of the roads, resulting in a monotonous, uninspiring walking experience. Crossing from one block to the next requires either considerable patience at the traffic lights or the use of pedestrian overpasses, which are not easily accessible to parents with prams or anyone with mobility limitations. (Figure 1) Mobility metamorphoses Whether the topology of the road network is the result of organic urban growth or of an overarching urban development plan, its impact on urban mobility is profound. Amending existing roads usually requires considerable administrative, political, legal, and financial efforts, as a series of stakeholders impose a variety of often-conflicting interests. However, the following three case studies illustrate innovative approaches to how such “gridlock” can be overcome.
Figure 1 A typical urban road in Shenzhen. Fences suppress connectivity for pedestrians. (Michael van Eggermond)
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Under the bridge “Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in …” (Red Hot Chili Peppers) Elevated highways enable motorists to quickly traverse urban cores, but their urban footprint is tremendous. The pollution and visual obstruction associated with elevated highways not only impacts the buildings in their immediate surroundings, they also have a barrier effect that divides what had been well-connected neighborhoods. Common sense leads people to believe that removing these elevated thoroughfares would simply result in huge congestion and gridlock. But the examples of the erection and demolition of elevated highways in Seoul and San Francisco tell a different story. After the Korean War, there was a dramatic rise in migration to Seoul. This influx of population overwhelmed the city, and people settled along the Cheonggye River in makeshift houses. These settlements lacked proper sanitation; the river served as a waste dump, quickly becoming an urban eyesore. In 1958 the river was covered, paving the way for a massive elevated highway completed in 1976. The Embarcadero (Spanish for wharf) is the eastern waterfront district of San Francisco. Established and developed as a seaport and commercial center with the construction of an engineered seawall in 1863, it soon became the commercial center of the city. During the Second World War, the Embarcadero became a major logistics hub. The neighborhood later fell into decline, as the opening of the Bay Bridge led to a rapid falling-off in passenger ferry service and container-shipping port activities moved to Oakland. As part of a wider strategy to build urban highways, the Embarcadero Freeway was built in the 1960s, separating the waterfront from downtown San Francisco and effectively disrupting the area’s status as a centrality. In San Francisco, various political actors continually challenged the construction of urban motorways, particularly the Embarcadero Freeway. When it was planned and built in the 1960s, environmentalists and urbanists were concerned about its adverse affects, including pollution and harm to localized urban development. It was not until the freeway sustained severe damage in a major earthquake in 1989, however, that the city government considered its demolition. In Seoul, on the other hand, the construction of urban motorways was not publicly contested at all to begin with; they were seen as a sign of economic development. It was not until a group of “crazy people” dreamed up the restoration of the Cheonggye River that any opposition was voiced. A transportation planner who was part of the group set up a sophisticated model to evaluate the impact of removing the highway, improving public transport, and making some traffic-regulation adjustments. The model predicted that this would result in improved travel times, not the gridlock that many had assumed. With this evidence, the group was able to convince Lee Myung-Bak to make it a central part of his successful mayoral campaign in 2002.1 The project to tear down the highway was started during his first year in office, and the Cheonggyechon public space opened in 2005. (Figure 2) In both San Francisco and Seoul, parts of the public opposed the demolition of elevated highways, fearing that this would result in horrible traffic conditions and that nearby businesses would suffer from reduced accessibility by car. In both cases, those concerns were addressed by actively engaging
Figure 2 The Cheonggye River before (top) and after (bottom) the deconstruction of the elevated highway. (www.spacepublic.com)
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the public, promoting plans of urban renewal that could benefit both local stakeholders and the city as a whole. In San Francisco, existing tramlines were extended to provide better access to public transport, and new squares and public spaces were created. In Seoul, the former river was restored and turned into a linear park that invites strolling pedestrians. A series of new bridges ensures better connections between two formerly disconnected parts of Seoul’s Central Business District (CBD). A carefully worked-out plan of traffic-flow measures and the expansion of public transport services resulted in the improvement of traffic conditions after the removal of the highway. Given the myriad positive outcomes in both San Francisco and Seoul, critical voices soon fell silent. The projects have become precedents for the demolition of existing elevated highways to make space for people- oriented urban-renewal projects. Parking lot “Meet us in the parking lot, we’re gonna turn the speakers up.” (Nelly Furtado) The reconfiguration of mobility infrastructure also extends to a rethinking of its users and uses. In San Francisco, a local art and design studio, Rebar, started an initiative in 2005 to invite people to rethink the way urban streets are used by temporarily transforming metered parking spaces into public parks. Their original installation only stood in place for two hours – the time limit on the parking meter.2 After a photo of the intervention was widely disseminated on the web, the design studio started to receive requests to create similar projects in other cities. Rather than replicating the installation themselves, the studio decided to create a how-to manual to empower people to create their own metered-parking-space parks. This marked the birth of the Park(ing) Day movement. Since then, the movement has grown rapidly, with organizations and individuals creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts in hundreds of cities around the world. The open-source, bottom-up nature of the initiative is
Figure 3 Converted parking lot by Rebar, the inventors of Park(ing) Day. (Rebar Group)
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at the core of its success. While the Park(ing) Day movement continues to expand, participants have also broadened the scope of installations to highlight and fulfill a range of unmet social needs, drawing attention to issues that are important to the local public. Each year, on the third Friday in September, parking spaces across the globe are converted into small parks, playgrounds, art installations, and even impromptu health clinics. In the broader sense, the Park(ing) Day interventions are an effective means of questioning the perception and exclusive allocation of road space for vehicular traffic, rather than a part of the broader public realm. Motivated by the extraordinary success of Park(ing) Day in San Francisco, the city government started an official program to convert underused street space into publicly accessible open spaces.3 The program now has a well-established permitting process, including design and operation guidelines for what have become known as “parklets.” The world’s first formal public parklets were initially installed in 2010. Since then, several dozen parklets have been installed throughout the city, all funded and maintained by neighboring businesses, residents, and community organizations. These parklets enhance the public and social life of their neighborhoods, and several cities around the world have followed San Francisco’s example and are emulating the program. (Figure 3) My White Bicycle “The rain comes down but I don’t care, the wind is blowing in my hair.” (Nazareth) Mobility modes are also diversifying, influencing built elements, communi ties, and commutes. In many cities around the world, we are witnessing a renaissance of cycling as more and more governments recognize its importance as a practical mode of urban transport – one that improves the overall sustainability of transport systems and the livability of cities. The adaptations of road designs to include bicycle lanes and paths and consideration of cyclists when programming traffic lights at junctions are well-known
Figure 4 Provo activist demonstrating in front of Amsterdam police station. (Studio Cor Jaring)
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infrastructure levers that help cyclists feel more safe and comfortable when riding in urban environments. Sufficient and secure bicycle parking and things like showers at workplaces and schools further support the popularity of cycling. In cities where cycling was long unpopular, lowering the entry barrier to urban cycling helps to encourage the use of bicycles; this is often accomplished in part through bicycle-sharing programs. The first public bicycle-sharing initiative was the White Bicycle Plan, initiated in Amsterdam by Luud Schimmelpennink in 1963, in association with the counterculture movement Provo.4 Their initial proposition was to close central Amsterdam to all individual motorized traffic aside from electric taxis, while increasing public transport frequency and buying 20,000 white bicycles per year for free public use. The city authorities rejected their ideas. In a form of protest (or activism), they deployed about fifty bicycles free for public use. However, the police confiscated all of the bicycles as they were in violation of a municipal law that forbade leaving bikes on the street without locking them.5 After the bikes were returned to Provo, the group equipped them with combination locks and painted the combinations on the bicycles. Within a month, most of the bicycles had been stolen or found in the nearby canals. While this first attempt at shared individual mobility failed, it became an inspiration and model for a series of community bicycle programs. These can be seen as the predecessors of today’s hugely popular, large-scale shared bicycle programs, which have been endorsed by mayors from all sorts of political backgrounds. The next phase of programs started in 1991 in the small town of Farsø, Denmark. A small, refundable deposit was required to insure that borrowed bicycles would be returned to a sharing station. This small-scale scheme paved the way for Copenhagen’s ByCyklen program, introduced in 1995 and launched with a thousand bicycles.6 A small deposit was required to borrow a bicycle and its usage was restricted to a designated zone. The ByCyklen business model had projected that selling advertisement space on the bicycles could finance it, but without any revenue generated from the bicycle users directly, the costs of operating the system and maintaining the bicycles could not be matched. Vandalism and stolen bicycles added further costs, although the police tried to keep such mischief under control. The introduction of smart-card technology promised to overcome such los ses, making it easier to charge users based on usage and to track damaged or unreturned bicycles. A first system was launched 1995 by the University of Portsmouth in Britain, primarily catering to its staff and students. Although the scheme was later replaced by a minibus service, it marked the start of a new generation of systems that paved the way for the global success of bicycle sharing. Today, such systems are in operation in hundreds of cities around the world. The current bicycle-sharing systems are usually established as public-private partnerships, as no current program is able to cover its expenses solely from user fees or advertising sales. In some cases, however, such as the Hangzhou Public Bicycle program, urban governments are willing to substantially underwrite these systems. Loosening the Gordian knot In general, the evolution of urban mobility systems is characterized by inertia. Once road networks emerge from either gradual urban development or professional planning, their structure tends to be rigid and inflexible. They
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also directly impact the viability of different modes of urban transport. A more inclusive vision of the public realm and adaptations to road-space allocation are usually hindered by the divergent expectations of various stakeholders. As a result, the status quo endures, although it fails to meet the changing needs of the local urban context or respond to global imperatives such as climate change. The case studies presented here highlight some of the diverse conditions and approaches that can loosen this Gordian knot. In Seoul, a small group of people who envisioned a better future without an elevated highway convinced decision-makers to support the idea; in San Francisco, after a civic movement lobbied unsuccessfully for years for the demolition of the Embarcadero Highway, an earthquake finally forced the mayor’s hand. The Park(ing) Day movement exemplifies how small-scale projects can rapidly evolve into global phenomena, especially when they have a high level of public visibility and respond to the latent demand for the flexible use of urban spaces in ways unconsidered by professional planners. The example of the White Bicycles tells another story, one in which the utopia envisioned by a group of innovators might fail, but their ideas can evolve and adapt to become part of mainstream global culture. But what does this mean for the planning of new towns, the retrofitting of existing cities, and urban governance in general? First, the street plans of future cities should support the coexistence of multiple modes of transport, including walking and cycling. While this seems an obvious conclusion, the reality in most new towns planned and constructed today is a clear separation of modes. Second, decision-makers should be more willing to face political struggle when promoting measures that are controversial in the short run, but in the long run lead to positive outcomes and are widely endorsed by the public. In addition to the demolition of highways, the reallocation of road space for pedestrians and cyclists, turning parking spaces into public spaces, and the introduction of mobility pricing also fit this line of thought. Third, the governance structure should be designed to nurture civic engage ment, identify innovative ideas, and be responsive to changing needs. Direct feedback from citizens and small ad-hoc interventions can have an immediate impact and also highlight overlooked challenges and explore out-ofthe-box solutions. Conventional, large-scale interventions such as Bus Rapid Transit networks, metro systems, and integrated land-use planning certainly have a more direct and profound impact on urban mobility. But given the long planning cycles and substantial funding they require, one should not downplay the potential of bottom-up initiatives. They can initiate new mobility solutions or even be the start of processes that lead to paradigm shifts; as part of a wider strategy of continuous adaptation, they have the power to contribute to resilient urban mobility systems and responsive cities.
Kamala Rao, “Seoul Tears down an Urban Highway and the City Can Breathe Again,” Grist, April 5, 2011, http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears-down-an-urban-highway-life-goes-on/. 1
“About PARK(ing) Day,” accessed January 29, 2015, http://parkingday.org/about-parking-day/.
2
City and County of San Francisco Planning Department, “Pavements to Parks,” accessed January 29, 2015, http://pavementtoparks.sfplanning.org.
3
Roel van Duijn, “Netherlands: The Second Liberation,” in 1968: Memories and Legacies of a Global Revolt (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, n.d.).
4
Susan A. Shaheen, Stacey Guzman, and Hua Zhang, “Bikesharing in Europe, the Americas, and Asia: Past, Present and Future,” Transportation Research Record 2143 (2010): 159–67.
5
Susan A. Shaheen, Stacey Guzman, and Hua Zhang, “Bikesharing across the Globe,” in City Cycling, ed. John Pucher and Ralph Buehler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).
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FUTURE INFRASTRUCTURE Darryl Chen
Figure 1 Eduardo Paolozzi’s murals at Tottenham Court Road station in London link the underground with life above ground.
The London Underground has famously provided a conspicuous and much envied platform for art for most of its history, and nowhere is this more evident than at Tottenham Court Road metro station in Central London. There, the seminal mosaics of artist Eduardo Paolozzi’s reveal his desire to make a connection between the underground mobility infrastructure with life above ground. Through depictions of saxophones, electronics, cameras and music shops, and even student drawings from the nearby Architectural Association, his artwork is deeply rooted in the particularities of the station’s location straddling the iconic London neighborhoods of Soho, Oxford Street, Holborn and Bloomsbury. (Figure 1) “I always tried to make a bridge, to contact people on a massive scale … My ‘alphabet’ of images for Tottenham Court Road reflects my interpretation of the past, present and future of the area.” Eduardo Paolozzi1 More than just a conceptual frame for a piece of art, or a way to visually identify the station, Paolozzi’s mosaic artwork stands as a kind of manifesto. His desire to connect the station to its external environment amplifies the plain and often unrecognized fact that underground stations are part of a continuous lived experience of the city. This is in contrast to the notion that infrastructure somehow occupies a space in the city which though publicly accessible, eschews the sense of urban theatre, social interactivity or diverse experience of other public spaces. That kind of notion represents a profoundly missed opportunity analogous perhaps to the “rigid mechanical order (taking) the place of social diversity”2 that Lewis Mumford lamented in the postwar American city. Though writing in a different time and era, Mumford presented two versions of the city – one shaped by the deadening hand of modernism, the other expressed in the diverse social life of its inhabitants. With every underground station, there is the opportunity to imbue the space of infrastructure with as much social activity, local contingency and expressive capacity as the world outside the ticket barriers. In short, infrastructure can be shaped by the diversity of human experience that characterizes the urban milieu above.
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London has always accommodated and celebrated the differences of its individual places. It is, in the popular imagination, the quintessential “city of villages”. The radical readdress of infrastructure, in the form of rail stations, to its surroundings, as argued for in this essay, is appropriate to both mature cities like London and rapidly expanding metropolises like Shenzhen, China. While London’s villages provide ample source material for the diversification of the station experience through the drawing in of context, in Shenzhen, built rapidly since 1979 from a collection of villages to a metropolis of over 10 million, stations can be even more instrumental to the formation of the character of a place. In both is the idea that infrastructure itself becomes a site of intervention, an opportunity to increase the city’s performance not merely through quantitative measures like mass connectivity but also through those qualitative spatial characteristics that drive the inherent attractiveness of a city. How might a city make its infrastructure more integrated into the ecology of the city? Three conceptual operations here describe the transformation of the machine-like apparatus of mass transportation into urban places: a future infrastructure. Hybridize The London Underground network accommodates a range of people including seasoned commuters, first-time visitors, the able bodied and the physically impaired; it accommodates for peak flows and event surges. The system has integrated guards against antisocial behavior and acts of terror. As the oldest rapid transit system in the world, it is rife with eccentricities of function and space, redundancies and other markings of its long and incremental development. Given these challenges, the purpose of Transport for London (London’s transport authority) to provide “safe, reliable, clean, sustainable and accessible transport” for 4.2 million customers on a daily basis is no mean feat.3 Rail infrastructure is an example of an urban component that, because of its scale and technical complexity, has been easily problematized first and foremost as a technical project, and whose be-all and end-all is to provide the fastest, smoothest, cheapest and most efficient delivery of people and goods around its network. However a quandary lies within this drive for ever-increasing capacity and efficiency. Just as improvements are made, increased capacity then leads to further demand, and this creates the necessity for even more capacity improvements.4 The engineering-led brief of increased station capacity is a goal that forever moves into the distance. If we were to move from a paradigm of ever-spiraling functional efficiency to one that recognizes qualitative characteristics alongside the quantitative, how might we task infrastructure with an expanded role within the city? By opening up the station to other uses, infrastructure might no longer be framed in terms of solving a technical problem, rather as a platform that enriches the lives of its users. Here we imagine an idealistic future retrofit of a metro station. Five episo des enacted within Tottenham Court Road station critically portray what might constitute a brief for a future infrastructure. (Figure 2, Episodes 1–5)
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Localize Everything about where a station is located makes that station unique: its daily cycles of occupation, its commuter demographics, its homeless people, the views from its platforms, its surrounding shops, its entrance architecture, the proximity of city-wide attractions, the things that are above and below it… By connecting to the unique local context – its economies, its environmental qualities, and spatial peculiarities – a station can be both
Figure 2 Future Infrastructure: the idea of a multifunctional urban ecology of horizontal and vertical transport.
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a receptacle and an amplifier of local place. Paolozzi recognized that ticket halls, platforms and access tunnels are urban spaces in and of themselves. They are not merely neutral moments experienced en route to somewhere else, but are essential parts of the city that have the potential to engage and delight. To bring the life of the city into the station is to foster meaningful exchanges between above and below, inside and outside, and so blur the distinction between infrastructural and urban spaces.
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Episode 1 Extant wartime bunkers under Soho Square are repurposed as a business club exploiting its location within media, biomedical and other professional clusters in Central London. With the new Crossrail link providing a fast connection to Heathrow Airport, the members club boasts a city baggage check-in desk and a premium boarding fast lane onto Heathrow- bound trains. The Bunker Club is intended to be a “third space” hybrid between work suite, private Soho club and airport lounge.
Episode 2 Above ground, Oxford Street is Europe’s busiest shopping street.5 Below ground, a high-footfall segment of the tube network becomes Oxford Street’s doppelganger, the appropriately named Low Street. As high street shops respond to the competition of online retailing by offering special in-store experiences, the Low Street is an immersive retail environment that is part product place ment, part brand experience. The tube tunnels become an all-surrounding surface on which to create fantastic digital environments.
Episode 3 A greenhouse situated in Soho Square amplifies and reflects daylight back down into the station tunnels creating an environmentally enhanced “open space” underground. Warm air is recirculated upwards to heat the greenhouse and exchanged for oxygenated air, which in turn is pumped back onto the platforms. Fragrant plants add to the pleasant airborne concoction, and, just like fluoridation of public water supplies, antihistamines are released into the air to guard against dusttriggered hay fever attacks.
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Episode 4 The basements of West End theatres and Denmark Street’s legendary music studios are extended to provide extra rehearsal and performance spaces with windows into the tube system. These Performance Pits provide a platform for new bands testing repertoire, classical artists from the nearby Royal Ballet performing a loitering deterrent for youth, and specially programmed gigs providing a live Muzac channel for in-station Wi-Fi.
Episode 5 Being underground provides a refuge from modern life above. Time Out Spaces within the station provide a range of personal amenities, from powder rooms, reading lounges, a capsule hotel, and Zen meditation suites. In a future world of ubiquitous computing, Wi-Fi dead zones provide a moment of calm within a sea of instant online access.
Episodes 1 – 5 Five episodes illustrate the Future Infrastructure scheme in detail.
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Socialize Only when infrastructure is defined as more than a transportation machine can it properly become a theatre of social interactivity like other public spaces in the city. In Mumford’s words, “The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theatre and is the theatre. It is in the city, the city as theatre, that man’s more purposive activities are focused…” 6 To capture this social aspect within infrastructure is to imagine that its spaces are living and active, contingent and responsive to the social ecologies that reside in and around the station. A whole range of design and curatorial activities should be positioned and recognized as integral components. This recognition on the part of transport officials, station attendants, designers and engineers might then open up further possibilities and a holistic understanding of what constitutes the station environment. These include operational aspects (the personalities of staff), temporary interventions (a live busker), spatial dimensions (sightlines across a concourse), and programmatic elements (a familiar trader offering your favorite pickme-up). In this way, the station might assume the qualities of a truly urban space that is dynamic with the potential to foster more meaningful interactions among its users. In as much as the daily commute represents necessary downtime from work pressures and the increasingly media-saturated environment of public spaces, Time Out Spaces demonstrate that a diversification of program within the station need not mean increased intensity. Future Infrastructure: A platform for sociability for the new new world Infrastructure should provide a platform for a diverse range of human interactions in the same way that the most successful spaces of the city provide a framework for sociability. Bringing the life of the city into the station enriches both the above and belowground worlds, and thereby embeds a station more integrally in its urban place. This is applicable not only in established historic centers like London where infrastructure must work increasingly hard in order to realize the full potential of its physical asset, but also in rapidly urbanizing environments where infrastructure is not only catalytic of people movements, but can potentially activate social relations and local economies. As Shenzhen participates in China’s transition from a production to a knowledge economy, a holistic conception of its infrastructure would potentially increase its ascendency to global city status. A small clue to its ambitions lies in the naming of its metro lines descriptively rather than purely by number as with the coding of its big sister first tier cities Beijing and Shanghai. By adopting actual names (Luobao, Shekou, Longgang, Longhua and Huanzhong) Shenzhen’s system subtly associates itself with Hong Kong’s MTR and other mass transit systems further afield in Tokyo and Singapore. Intriguingly the kind of locally engaged infrastructure described here has the potential for far-reaching implications beyond meeting the targets of national plans or aiding the upward progression of party chiefs. This is pertinent to a city in China that has historically been at the vanguard of natio nal political and economic reforms; the idea that an infrastructure that is “inhabited” by local economies, that offers feedback networks and engages stakeholders can provide the spatial armature to nurture a civil society.
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It remains to be seen whether infrastructure can offer an alternative to the heavily regulated ceremonial squares and privatized retail plazas that dominate the “public” realm of the contemporary Chinese city. But any ambition for a more democratic society – even one with so-called Chinese characteristics – must engage these issues. A reimagined infrastructure as an expanded public realm in China represents Mumford’s urban theatre with a heightened sense of political aspiration. A conception of infrastructure that critiques the preoccupation with technical efficiency engages with the urban in a redefined way. Through a process of adaptation, overlay, repurposing and infill, cities can renew their infrastructure to take on that purpose. Crucially, a new conception of infrastructure identifies with the deeper and less tangible urban characteristics that align a city’s distinctive aspirations to its real lived and breathed character. When infrastructure hybridizes, localizes and socializes, we will see that happen.
Richard Cork, ed. Eduardo Paolozzi: Underground. London: Royal Academy, in association with Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986.
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Lewis Mumford, The Urban Prospect (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 49.
Transport for London. Annual Report and Statement of Accounts 2013–14. https://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/ static/cms/documents/annual-report-2013–14.pdf
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Engineering consultancy Arup projected station demand at Tottenham Court Road station at five times the amount anticipated ten years previously. Arup. The Impact of Crossrail on Visitor Numbers in Central London, 2014. http://www.arup.com/~/media/Files/PDF/News_and_Press/2014_01_January/New_ Crossrail_Report.ashx
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Greater London Authority. Rising to the Challenge: Proposals for the Mayor’s Economic Development Strategy for Greater London, May 2009. http://legacy.london.gov.uk/mayor/publications/2009/docs/ rising-challenge-may09.pdf
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Lewis Mumford, “What is a City?” in The City Cultures Reader, ed. Iain Borden, Tim Hall, Malcolm Miles, 28–32. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), Originally published in Architectural Record, November 1937, 59–62.
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A | Essay – Jiang Feng
PRESERVATION OF THE PUBLIC Jiang Feng (Interviewed by Jessica Bridger)
The historical development of the Pearl River Delta has greatly influenced the region’s situation today, from Guangzhou to Shenzhen, yet much hangs in the balance between development pressure and local life. Professor Jiang Feng of South China University of Technology School of Architecture in Guangzhou is an expert on conservation and heritage issues and their relationship with modern development in the Pearl River Delta. His base in Guangdong province, home to some of the largest urban conurbations in the world, allows him a broad view of regional development, from social structures to political influence. Can you explain the saying “Heaven is high and the emperor/central government is far,” often used to express autonomy in China? It seems like this has had an influence on development in the Pearl River Delta. Jiang Feng: If you come to Guangdong province now, you will find that it’s not like northern China – relatively speaking, people here can choose their own lives, and life is easier, people can keep their own traditions. The influence of politics is not as intense as in central or northern China. That’s why Guangdong is the experimental field of China – because the influence of business is so strong, and because it’s at least somewhat part of the global market system. People here usually have more leisure time and more choices in their lives, even in terms of something as simple as the number of TV channels. Has that influenced the development of the city? Obviously, because that means we have a strong sense of civilized society and people have more rights – we cannot say “power” – but people do have the right to join the discussion over policymaking. In the past, people had different organizations or communities, different power structures. For example, blood relationships through lineages. A lineage had jurisdiction to make and exercise its own regulations. The professional guild system was also strong, and each profession had its own god. According to those traditional power structures, the purpose of government officials was to make society calm – not so much to rule. The influence of the lineages and guilds is still a reality now. The development of the cities in this area does not only rely on the government; the influence of geography and market forces is very powerful. How has this changed as the structure of Chinese society has changed over time? Today, our government has the right of policymaking and controls most resources. But here in Guangdong province, we still have some traditions and we are still distant from the central government in Beijing (Figure 1). There has been a revival of some old traditions, like Cantonese opera and local dialects. Traditional festivals have become more popular, especially the dragon-boat festival. But if you go to the provinces closer to the central government, even though you can find many historic cities and traditional villages, the life there is less like it was in the past.
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Figure 1 Founding Father Old Site, Shenzhen. (Qin Zhiyun)
Figure 2 Dapeng Fortress, an example of a well-preserved heritage site. (Ni De’an)
Do you think that the traditions, the village life is still present, even though there’s a lot of development? During the first phase of development in Shenzhen, after 1978, people were not so interested in keeping their traditions; they were eager to have a new life in a new city. Most of the traditional villages disappeared or redeveloped. Today, after more than three decades of development, there is a growing consciousness about protecting traditions – and developing new traditions – on the part of both the government and the citizens. Some intact historic settlements like Fenghuang Village, Dapeng Fortress, and Nantou Old City have become more significant (Figures 2 and 3). I think the era of development without consideration for conservation has passed. People want Shenzhen to be a city with shared traditions and memories.
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How did other cities in the Pearl River Delta develop, ones that had longer histories as urban centers? In the PRD, Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing, and Zhongshan are designated National Historic Cities and Dongguan, Jiangmen, and Huizhou have historically designated city centers. Neither Shenzhen nor Zhuhai has an historic urban center. Unfortunately, “Historic Urban Center” is not an official status, so boundaries and regulations are not clearly defined. In many historic city centers of China, high-rise buildings stand behind lower, older buildings and streets have been enlarged into wide roads. This has changed the scale, density, and texture of the historic areas profoundly. There are similar urban landscapes in Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, and other eastern Asian cities. I think this is the outcome of a long history of dynasty- centered politics, the contemporary disruption of hierarchy, and the expression of technology and investment, which change the morphological order so easily, along with the redistribution of power and resources. How are people trying to improve urban life now that there is an economic transition from the industrial to the service sector, and what are some of the corresponding shifts in the built environment? I think the key area to improve the quality of urban life is public space. We lack sufficient spaces for collective use nowadays – historically we had many temples, ancestral halls, streets, ponds, bridges, and banyan trees as elements of public space. But they were consumed by the functional organization of industry and business. We lost the hinge of social organization and many communities disintegrated. As industry shifts out of many places in the Delta, this might create space and an opportunity to change things. We need to improve the comprehension of what urbanization means, because it is usually understood only as the urbanization of space, not as the urbanization of life. Some Chinese cities just change the official identity of residents from villagers to citizens in the hukou system. But that’s not proper urbanization. Some call this “urbanization of population,” but
Figure 3 Dapeng Fortress. (Ni De’an)
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it’s not urbanization of people. Our infrastructure obviously needs to be improved, but the most serious problem is social development, the reconstitution of public life. We lack public life partly because we lack public spaces. What kinds of public spaces do you think could create that future? In the past, there were specific relationships between certain people and certain public spaces. We need some not-so-general public spaces, maybe collective spaces. We need to know what kinds of people need to be together to communicate, like in the past with the blood relationships or certain professions – often through guilds – or people who believed in the same god. I think before public space, we need a public life and public relationships between different people. How can people live best in this context and how could architecture, planning, and so on, help build human and urban relationships? This is a difficult question. The city should be a place for strangers. But in the past, our tradition was to build a place not for strangers, but for people who were familiar, linked with each other. Today, we create public space for strangers, like a park, where anybody can enter, and that’s good, but it’s not enough. We create blank spaces as open space, spaces without meaning. We need to try to create meaning – but meaning is not just from architects. Without social meaning, you cannot create spatial meaning, so I don’t think architects can do a lot. But urban designers and urban planners have more space to contribute something. Can you explain how land was used in general, how urban planning shaped the Pearl River Delta at a larger scale? According to our land policy, there are two kinds of land in China: state- owned land, which is managed by the government, and collective land, which is managed by the people of the villages. If the government wants to develop certain areas of collective land, land acquisition must be undertaken
Figure 4 Youfang exhibition in a repurposed industrial building in Shenzhen. (Zhao Lei)
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first; this is difficult, and a lengthy negotiation is inevitable. During the 1980s and early 1990s, our land-use control was not as strict as today; we didn’t have an integrated urban-planning system yet. Development at that time was fast, because when you had a project, you could easily obtain land, and when you came here with money, you were welcomed as an investor. The city government is now careful to understand the impact of investments and projects. We have a legal code for land use now and development is generally better because there is more control over it. However, interestingly, although parcels of land are officially granted for specific functions, people here tend to create mixed-use situations within a short time. What is the status of heritage and preservation protections in the Pearl River Delta today? The Pearl River Delta is an area where traditions are well-kept in some ways, but many things have been lost or forgotten in recent decades. We now have two parallel systems of heritage conservation, official and unofficial. The Culture Bureau and the Urban Planning Bureau jointly manage the official heritage system. Unofficial or unlisted heritage elements are controlled by urban-planning measures, especially conservation and regulatory planning. Today people are also starting to talk about the idea of a modern heritage, including modernist structures and the industrial heritage of the Pearl River Delta (Figure 4). Are any of these heritage spaces, which support the public life of the city, still intact – do they influence the lives of migrants? Some of the community spaces are still intact, but many are not. In the urban villages, the original houses are often gone – demolished and rebuilt as multi-story buildings – but the community halls and temples are still there. The festivals are still largely the same as they were before. This helps to maintain some social relationships. Though for newcomers, for the floating population, it is difficult to enter into the local community. They might be accepted, but they still travel home to their original villages and towns for the traditional festivals and rituals. Does there begin to be a transition where people begin to form new communities? Yes, I think new communities are starting to develop in the Delta as outsiders come into the cities and settle there. Those who come are searching for an open city, a global city, and this influences the transformation of the cities into increasingly international places. Shenzhen is a focal point for this, and more and more people talk about the character of the city, what gives the city a unique identity. A group of people who share a hometown in China might choose to live in the same urban village in Shenzhen, and they share a sense of community and the continuity of their traditions, transplanted to a new place. Also, people from other Asian countries or from Africa tend to live in close-knit communities in Shenzhen and Dongguan; they bring their own traditions. This new generation of urban dwellers makes new communities, though they can never become new members of traditional communities – an important distinction.
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Is there a sense that people begin to have a new consciousness about what the character of the city could become? I don’t think people want to go back into history, back in time, but they do want to embed it in the future of the city. Without it, the city is perhaps not so good. I have met people who are from the original villages of Shenzhen, and there is a consciousness about the history and a desire to shape the unique character of the city. In many former industrial places, buildings were renovated to hold art museums, galleries, ateliers, restaurants, and cafeterias. Shenzhen is quite a modern city, but it also has a lot of history. Do you think that the developers and the authorities, the more formal levels, pay more attention to this now? The regulations in the Delta are changing. People are beginning to understand heritage conservation as being about society in general. They might even use heritage conservation as a frame to express ideas about larger social issues. The officials are actually more sensitive to these issues – scholars are focused on the heritage, but the politicians have a more holistic viewpoint, tied to future development. Developers are now being asked to develop or redevelop sites with a concern for the existing built environment. We have fewer and fewer tabula rasa areas for developers; they have to learn how to deal with the history of their sites. It is a government requirement to take past and present uses into account. President Xi Jinping pays a lot of attention to the cultural heritage conservation, so you know what I mean.
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A | Essay – Eirini Kasioumi
URBAN DESIGN MODELS FOR URBAN MEGAPROJECTS IN A GLOBAL WORLD Eirini Kasioumi
Figure 1 Artist’s impression of Marina Bay in Singapore, including completed and expected buildings. (William Cho)
Trends in Southeast Asia and China Visitors to Singapore will find the offices of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in the heart of the city, a stone’s throw from the city’s major redevelopment areas. To the east lies Marina Bay, an extension of Singapore’s Central Business District, which is being rapidly filled up with entertainment, hotel and retail facilities (Figure 1). To the south lies Tanjong Pagar, a still-functioning port that will be transformed over the course of the coming decades into a mixed-use waterfront city area. Upon entering URA’s ground floor hall, the visitor cannot help but marvel at the Singaporean government’s vision for these projects, presented in large posters that illustrate a clear pride in the city-state’s strategy “towards a sustainable and liveable city”.1 An immense model of the island, with colorful building blocks denoting projected development areas all over its surface, leaves no doubt that the future is envisioned large (Figure 2). The visitor may feel overwhelmed by the speed, scale, and ambition of such urban renewal strategies. But she should not: urban megaprojects (UMPs) have become the norm in the big cities of Southeast Asia and China. In response to a demand for living, working, and consumption spaces, they take many forms: from central business districts to new towns, from rede-
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veloped waterfronts to gated communities. Their most powerful incarnations are found in projects that we can term “global”:2 new high-density central areas with supra-local attractiveness, their images of skyscraper clusters, punctuated by pieces of iconic architecture, having become familiar representations of cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Kuala Lumpur, and Taipei. More than just pragmatic reactions to rapid urbanization, such key projects aim to embrace modernity and elevate the position of their respective city in the global hierarchy. Many urban scholars have identified large-scale projects of such ambition as artifacts of economic globalization as well as neoliberal urban policy, initially in Europe and North America, and increasingly in Asia and the rest of the world.3 As cities strive to attract footloose investment capital and a sophisti cated labor force, the development of new spaces for urban economies and quality infrastructure becomes key. In a recent volume, Del Cerro Santa maria signals some shared features of urban megaprojects: their perception as catalysts for growth, their promotion by urban elites, and their role in transforming the city’s image, often with the help of iconic design components.4 New high-density central districts are a type of urban megaproject particularly instrumental in establishing urban identities and mobilizing economic development in the context of global inter-city competition.5 Old practice, new approaches While urban megaprojects have proliferated widely in the rapidly growing cities of Southeast Asia and China in the last twenty years, they are neither Asia-specific nor new. Urban renewal projects, for example, were prominent in Europe and North America in the period 1960–80. Masterplanned districts during those years were often criticized for their mono-functionality and their negative environmental and social consequences.6 Since the late 1980s, the shift from an industrial to a service-based economy in Western societies led cities to become more entrepreneurial to maintain their economic edge, while releasing prev iously industrial brownfield sites close to city centers, which became the loci of new centralities. Early property-led regeneration schemes of the 1980s like the redevelopment of the London Docklands with Canary Wharf still followed a modernistic logic with functional and formal segregation that contributed to their exclusionary character.7 By the 1990s a new wave of projects was emerging, consisting of mixed-used schemes anchored in office, leisure, or tourism functions – such as in the redevelopment of Zurich West, Rotterdam’s Kop van Zuid, Hamburg’s Hafencity, or the Toronto and Baltimore Waterfronts. Compared to earlier modernist schemes, projects of this generation display a greater commitment to urbanity and sustainability and often incorporate the designs of renowned architects.8 Like in Europe and North America, the redevelopment of central districts, the transformation of old industrial zones, and the implementation of new urban transport systems have multiplied in emerging Asian economies, including China, Southeast Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, over the past twenty years. Architect Peter Rowe, in his book Emergent Architectural Territories in East Asian Cities portrays how the top-down, rational modernization of the urban landscape endorsed in East Asian countries after World War II mutated in the 1990s “from production-oriented and narrowly defined pathways … towards a much fuller embrace of broader lifestyle opportunities, improved environmental amenities, and higher standards of urban living”.9 Urban projects thus responded both to qualitative demands of
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wealthier and better-educated populations, and to the need to attract investment in a global world; compared with their counterparts in Europe and North America, they constitute less defensive actions in reaction to interurban competition, and more material manifestations of modernization and the rising power of East Asian countries.10 In any case, the sheer speed of this process in China and Southeast Asia has necessitated the adoption of urban prototypes from built projects, either derived from Western countries or the most urbanistically advanced countries in Asia, such as Japan and South Korea. Advancing into the 21st century, urban megaprojects seem to be maturing into more sophisticated forms of planning, design, and implementation. Urban designer Kees Christiaanse, drawing on experiences in projects in Europe and Asia, observes that project making is shifting from rigid masterplans towards strategic visions and flexible frameworks.11 He illustrates how, in the London Park and Hafencity Hamburg projects, the use of development frameworks enabled diversity of architecture, program, and phasing, resulting in more “openness”, and how the masterplans established these districts both as nodes in their cities and as organic ensembles of neighborhoods themselves. Can similar trends be observed in Southeast Asia and China? Christiaanse sees Shenzhen and Singapore catching up, by demonstrating a growing preoccupation with the integration of new areas in existing urban fabrics and experimen ting with hybrid forms and programs. Homogeneous urban prescriptions seem to be succeeded by greater attention to local circumstances.12 The conditions, scale and speed of urbanization in this region ask for a critical assessment of urban design models. How do “global” ideals influence UMPs? And how well do the adopted approaches fare in response to both rapid urbanization and global competition? The Western influence on urban development in the East As hinted already, modernization in China and Southeast Asia has entailed the appropriation of certain Western urban and architectural forms. The 1990s-wave of skyscraping construction in the region, with cities competing for the status of having the tallest building in the world, has been described as a “Manhattan transfer”, referring to the imitation of New York’s high-rise landscape.13 New iconic business districts like La Défense in Paris and Canary Wharf in London have also been influential. The phenomenon of UMPs cannot entirely be separated from that of skyscrapers, which, besi des being megaprojects in themselves, are commonly the anchors of mega building complexes. The Western influence does not only result from the transfer of ideas about urban form. It is also a consequence of the involvement of North American and European architecture and development firms in the building of Southeast Asian cities. The opening of the Chinese economy and the development of the free trade zones in particular have required a vast influx of out side expertise, with local governments seeking out internationally renowned architects to provide world standard designs for projects that the city leadership wanted to position as globally significant.14 This has affected architectural practice itself, which has come to be represented by a handful of large firms with a recognizable design vocabulary and with the necessary resources and expertise to perform on an international level. The result of this, so-called “global architecture” has also come to signify two almost contradictory urban forms: identical “spatial products”, which have come to be synonymous with cultural homogenization, and visually
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Figure 2 Photo of the model of Singapore exhibited in the hall of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. (Eirini Kasioumi) Figure 3 Location of Lujiazui in Shanghai; west of the Huangpu River is central Shanghai, Pudong New Area lies to the east. (Eirini Kasioumi, base material sourced from Google Earth)
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Figure 4 Photos of Lujiazui Financial District in China (left) and La Défense in France (right). (Creative Commons / Wikipedia)
daring “signature” projects with high symbolic value.15 The prevalence of globalized forms, as well as international market players, in Asian UMPs supports prevalent arguments about the “global convergence” of urban development, mostly around a North American model centered on automobile-based mobility, the commodification of housing and community, consumerism and Disneyfication of difference, with its related urban forms of sprawling suburbs, edge cities, and high-rise central business districts.16 However, this convergence has also been debated; for example professor Gavin Shatkin, based on the example of Metro Manila, argued that alongside Western influences, urban form and structure is shaped by path-dependent local actor interactions, place-specific urban geographies, cultural preferences, and social structure.17 Additionally, the sheer differences in both scale and need in the Asian context make direct comparisons problematic when reduced to generalizations. Looking at some contemporary projects Recent urban megaprojects in the Southeast Asia and China give insight into the urban design models at work. One of the earliest and most ambitious Chinese projects is the Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai (Figure 3). Lujiazui is one of the four zones of the Pudong New Area special economic zone (SEZ), centrally planned as a physical asset to attract foreign capital and ultimately transform Shanghai into an economic engine.18 From the start, design played a key role in this process, as Shanghai’s mayor at the time Zhu Rongji decided that if Lujiazui was to become a global financial center, it had to be designed and marketed as such. His main inspiration was La Défense in Paris: the powerful global imagery and comprehensive planning of the Parisian economic center impressed him.19 The development of Lujiazui was already envisaged since the mid-1980s, but it was the international design competition organized in 1991 that gave the area global visibility, while revealing the oscillation of Shanghai planners between eagerness and reluctance to adopt international models.20 Five teams were invited to submit proposals for a massive program of 3.8 million square meters, two thirds of which was office space. The teams included four international architectural firms, namely Richard Rogers (UK), Massi miliano Fuksas (Italy), Dominique Perrault (France), and Toyo Ito (Japan), and one Chinese team composed of architects from the Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute and Tongji University. According to urban designer Richard Marshall, all international teams attempted to strike a balance between global representation, signified through high-rise office towers, and an idea of urbanity in the treatment of the street grid, the pub-
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lic spaces, the relation between the building types, and the creation of community space. Conversely, the Chinese project appeared as a composition of skyscrapers with no apparent logic other than the consideration of traffic and zoning.21 The latter was nevertheless selected as the winner, after being revised to incorporate a potpourri of elements from the international schemes. The outcome was a car-oriented plan consisting of large urban blocks with small building footprints; the solitary skyscrapers were seemingly detached from adjoining streets and buildings.22 Marshall goes as far as to describe Lujiazui as “a collection of high-rise towers and an amorphous open space lacking any capacity to support urban culture”.23 At the same time, some of the towers, including Jin Mao and World Finance Center, both designed by Western architects, contributed immensely to the advancement of a “modern” urban image for Shanghai. Two observations can be made here. First, in Lujiazui, the interest of the Shanghai authorities in projecting an image of global city seems to have placed their focus on iconic architecture much more than on urban design. But as the area after construction became infamous for its monofunctiona lity and lack of human scale, commercial facilities were progressively inser ted, and recent plans for expansion focus much more on forging a legible urban structure and the provision of public space.24 Secondly, what Marshall describes as “contemporary Western view” in the international schemes, namely mixed uses, programmatic diversity, a focus on the public realm, and the prioritization of pedestrian circulation, are concepts of urbanity that were, at the time of the competition, becoming the norm in the West. It is notable that the main influence for Lujiazui was La Défense, a project that is representative of an earlier generation of urban design schemes, based on modernistic planning principles with strict zoning and a restrictive view of monumentality (Figure 4), which suffered similar deficits as the initial realization of the Lujiazui plan. High-rise large-scale projects like Lujiazui are commonly instances of “territorial reclamation”, involving re-aggregation of property and requalification of use, such as, for example, the Xinyi district in Taipei, if not literally land reclamation from water, such as Marina Bay in Singapore.25 In seeking an upward push in scale and program, these projects contrast with their neighboring districts, and often siphon off their economic and social life. Further, with their internal logic and connections limited to programmatic elements within complexes, they often acquire an enclave-like quality.26 This can be seen, to a certain extent, in Marina Bay: a result of a series of land reclamations, its development began in the late 1990s with a series of projects, consisting of groups of office skyscrapers with related commercial facilities, and collections of iconic cultural and leisure facilities. Like Lujiazui, Marina Bay was also inspired by projects from the West that Singaporean planners considered successful waterfront developments, such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Sydney’s Darling Harbour and San Francisco’s Pier 39.27 Further, there has been continuous and extensive involvement of Western planning and architecture firms, which has led to the importation of Western models.28 But here too, the most progressive ideas concern emblematic architecture, whereas in overall spatial design the monumental intention overrides small-scale, pedestrian articulation. Still, according to Rowe, Marina Bay’s developments are less introverted than elsewhere in Southeast Asia and mark a transition from Singapore’s “claustrophobic, seamless shopping enters and office towers”.29
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The Western influence in Singapore goes further than recent projects. As former British colonies, Singapore and Hong Kong were the first to adopt Western ideas before becoming examples for the region. This often meant a modernistic urban model of segregation by function and formal purity. Urban designer Matthew Carmona recognizes this issue in Hong Kong, when describing the design for the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) by the team led by Foster and Partners. Carmona explains that the site exemplified many “Western” traits that are now criticized, such as the road- dominated urban form, the insular nature of development, and the priva tization of public space. He argues that the team’s proposal attempted to explicitly differ from the prevalent Western building forms typical in Hong Kong’s skyline.30 Their design scheme at the time, in 2002 – 2006, emphasized the juxtaposition of diverse uses, permeability of the urban form and the liveliness of the public realm, while attempting to respond to place-specific factors like the subtropical climate and ultra-high density. In fact, this plan was never realized, but Foster & Partners made a comeback in 2011 with a new commission and masterplan (Figure 5) for the WKCD. It is interesting to note that in this plan, currently being implemented, the strong iconic image initially asked for by the city is much less pronounced. The urban design principles that inform the scheme focus strongly on environmental sensitivity, pedestrian friendliness, small-scale articulation and an abundance of spaces for public use. This example indicates that Southeast Asian UMPs may be gradually placing a greater focus on livability and demonstrate an increasing sophistication of urban form. Iconicity and Public Realm, and urban megaprojects For planners and designers, the proliferation of urban megaprojects in Southeast Asia and China is both an opportunity and a challenge. Their scale allows for the integrated planning of buildings and infrastructure, maximizing efficiency. Yet, by re-bundling the urban structure in and around them in a high-density format, these projects have profound effects; they require a delicate balance between differentiation from their context, by means of high programmatic ambition and iconicity through architecture, and integration in the local urban tissue, including the provision of livable urban space. Two aspects, often interrelated, merit particular attention in the discussion of their evolution: the idea of iconicity and notions of the public realm. The use of iconic buildings, such as the skyscrapers in Lujiazui, exemplifies the desire to extend the image of a “global city” and is seen as contributing to urban competitiveness by offering perceived world- class design standards to footloose investors. But are iconicity and good urban design compatible? While iconic form is not by definition antitheti cal to urbanity, an excessive focus on monumentality may divert from pragmatism over its evolving use, as well as from catering concerns for the human scale.31 This is also connected to the question of conceptions of the urban public realm, often one of the weakest aspects – and therefore ground for fundamental critique – of urban megaprojects. On the one hand, a progressively greater attention to public areas as the connective tissue of new districts can be observed. On the other hand, the dominance of private capital in the production of urban space may lead to profit-driven and/or exclusionary agendas for the civic realm, ones beyond the control of the urban designer. Often, the delivery of public spaces is contingent upon their ability to essentially “work for their living”, resulting in them being extensively “programmed” with themes and events.32
Figure 5 Winning schemes by Foster and Partners for the West Kowloon Cultural District, 2002 (top) and 2007 (bottom). (Foster and Partners)
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Although these questions are not limited to urban megaprojects in Southeast Asia and China, the explosion of urban development in this region during the last two decades, accompanied with the desire of cities there to position themselves prominently on the global scene, has produced sharper contrasts and more extreme urban forms than elsewhere. It has also necessitated the use of models for urban development, primarily of Western origin. Perhaps it is fair to say that given the speed of development, UMPs in the region managed to respond to both rapid urbanization and global competition, even though the urban forms chosen and realized may raise concerns. In any case, large-scale projects in Southeast Asia and China seem to be maturing, and a process of exchange, exportation, and adaptation seems to be superseding the direct transfer of models. Given a good twenty years of urban megaprojects in Southeast Asia and China, this appears like a good time to undertake comprehensive evaluations of the adopted practices and their outcomes. The thoughts expressed in this essay open up a lot more questions than they can answer about the specific ways in which large-scale urban project making is evolving, and how urban designers can contribute to more intelligent place-making. Among the contemporary research and practice initiatives that have started to tackle such questions, a new research project entitled “The Grand Projet: Towards Adaptable and Liveable urban megaprojects” is planned to start in 2015 at the ETHZ-FCL Center in Singapore. In recognition of critiques about UMPs, but also the inevitability of this kind of urban development, the project will set out to map the ways that projects around the world have fostered the qualities of adaptability and livability in their urban design, planning process, and management.
URA’s strategies for Singapore’s central area, including the plan for the “Greater Southern Waterfront” in Tanjong Pagar are presented on its website: http://www.ura.gov.sg/uol/master-plan/View-Master-Plan/ master-plan-2014/master-plan/Regional-highlights/central-area/central-area
1
Richard Marshall, Emerging Urbanity: Global Urban Projects in the Asia Pacific Rim (Routledge, 2003).
2
See, for example: Erik Swyngedouw, Frank Moulaert and Anantxa Rodríguez, “Neoliberal urbanization in Europe: large scale urban development projects and the new urban policy,” in Spaces of neoliberalism. Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe, ed. N. Brenner and N. Theodore (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). // Kris Olds, Globalisation and urban change: Capital, culture and Pacific Rim mega-projects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
3
Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, ed. Urban Megaprojects: A Worldwide View (Bristol: Emerald Group Publishing, 2013). 4
Swyngedouw et al, ibid. // Fernando Diaz Orueta, and Susan S. Fainstein, “The New Mega-Projects: Genesis and Impacts,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (2008): 759–67.
5
See, for example: Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, third edition (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002). // Norman Fainstein and Susan S. Fainstein, Restructuring the City: The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment (New York: Longman Group United Kingdom, 1986).
6
Susan S. Fainstein, The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) // Matthew Carmona, “The Isle of Dogs: Four Development Waves, Five Planning Models, Twelve Plans, Thirty-Five Years, and a Renaissance … of Sorts,” Progress in Planning, 71 (3) (2009): 87–151.
7
Diaz Orueta and Fainstein, ibid.
8
Peter G. Rowe, Emergent Architectural Territories in East Asian Cities. (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2011), 6.
9 10
Diaz Orueta and Fainstein, ibid.
Kees Christiaanse. “The Grand Projèt: Creating Urban Centralities in Distinct Contexts,” Harvard Design Magazine 37 (2014). 11
Peter G. Rowe, ibid.
12
Anthony D. King, “Worlds in the City: Manhattan Transfer and the Ascendance of Spectacular Space.” Planning Perspectives 11 (2) (1996): 97–114.
13
Marshall, ibid.
14
Marshall, ibid. // Donald McNeill, The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form (Routledge, 2009).
15
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See, for example: Eric Heikkila and Rafael Pizarro, eds., Southern California and the World (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002). 16
Gavin Shatkin, “The city and the bottom line: Urban megaprojects and the privatization of planning in Southeast Asia,” Environment and Planning, A 40 (2008): 383–401.
17
There have been several analyses of Pudong New Area under this lens. See, for example: Kris Olds, “Globalizing Shanghai: the ‘Global Intelligence Corps’ and the building of Pudong.” Cities, 14, no. 2 (1997): 109–123 // Fulong Wu, “Globalization, place promotion and urban development in Shanghai.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 25, no. 1 (2003): 55–78.
18
Kris Olds, Globalization and Urban Change.
19
Marshall, ibid.
20
Marshall, ibid.
21
Peter G. Rowe, ibid, 51.
22 23
Marshall, ibid, 99.
Charlie Q. L. Xue, Hailin Zhai, and Brian Mitchenere. “Shaping Lujiazui: The Formation and Building of the CBD in Pudong, Shanghai,” Journal of Urban Design, 16:02 (2011): 209–232.
24
Peter G. Rowe, ibid.
25
Peter G. Rowe, ibid.
26
27
Erica X. Y. Yap, “The Transnational Assembling of Marina Bay, Singapore,“ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Volume 34, Issue 3 (2013): 390–406.
Erica X. Y. Yap, ibid.
28
Peter G. Rowe, ibid, 109.
29 30
Matthew Carmona, “Designing Mega-projects in Hong Kong: Reflections from an Academic Accomplice,” Journal of Urban Design 11 (1) (2007): 105–24, 113.
Christiaanse, ibid.
31
Carmona, ibid.
32
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A | Essay – Ting Chen
Figure 1 A reprogrammed former industrial zone, Shangbu. (Ting Chen)
Worker‘s dorm
Cheap / Secondhand Market
Office / Storage
Affordable Housing (could be dorm)
Department Store
Institute
Electronic Trading Center
Logistics
Real Estate Housing
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UNDERMINING THE AUTHORITY The Land of State-Owned Enterprises as a Breeding Ground for Diverse Urban Powers in Shangbu, Shenzhen
Ting Chen Widely known as one of Asia’s most important markets for wholesale elec tronics elements and products, and a key retail shopping center for the city of Shenzhen, the Shangbu area has always been perceived as a space for commerce. However, in comparison with monofunctional commercial areas such as Shenzhen’s Central Business District (CBD) and other district centers planned by the local government, the organically developed, mixed-use Shangbu area is more than a purely commercialized place. It serves as an important, well-connected hub in Shenzhen, offering a range of services. To support a population flow of 500,000 per day and a total of more than 79,000 residents,1 Shangbu contains a wide spectrum of goods, services, and spaces – from hardware shops to luxury department stores; from sidewalk barbeque stands to fine-dining restaurants; from shops selling cheap knock-off clothes to boutiques selling expensive brand-name apparel; from cheesy game stalls to entertainment and leisure clubs; and from informal dormitories in industrial buildings to high-end residential towers. The area accommodates numerous people in spaces that provide room for business opportunities as well as affordable living. An incrementally changing area In the 1980s, under the pre-reform socialist regime, an industrial zone for electronics production was set up at Shangbu, close to China’s only border crossing (Lo Wu) with Hong Kong. Due to its strategic location, many state- owned enterprises (SOEs) that specialized in the production of ordnance and electronics were moved to, or newly established in, Shangbu by their supervising ministries from the central government.2 As they did in many factories built during the pre-reform era (1949 –1979) in China, these compa nies enclosed their properties in Shangbu with two-meter-high walls, not only for security but also for administrative reasons.3 Social activities were confined inside these concrete barriers, leaving the major streets between SOE compounds empty most of the time.4 This practice continued until the mid-1990s. In 1994, due to new environmental policies, many manufacturing activities were moved from Shenzhen’s urban core to the less urbanized periphery.5 In order to make use of the vacated buildings, the property holders set out to attract new tenants. Incrementally, the industrial plants and dormitories were occupied by traders of electronic components, clocks, fashion accessories, and other merchandise (Figures 1 and 2). In order to improve consumer accessibility for the new commercial activities, the SOE property holders removed the isolating compound walls, opened the exterior building walls on the ground floors, and connected separate buildings with sky bridges. The existing building stock was also subdivided, intensified, and reorganized (Figure 3). Gradually, the spaces were better connected both internally and to the external networks in multiple layers. This reorganization is still evolving today in tandem with socio-economic networking inside and outside the buildings (Figure 4). In contrast to
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Figure 2 Reuse of existing buildings and blocks in Shangbu. (Ting Chen)
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changes in the more formally planned commercial areas, the unusually slow transformation of Shangbu has resulted from particularly fragmented ownership conditions (Figure 4). Although a few financially well-off SOE landlords have managed to retain ownership of most of their properties to the present day, some money-hungry, cash-poor SOE landlords transferred their manufacturing plants and dormitories in Shangbu to public institutes, private companies, or individual families during the widespread deindustri alization of the area in the 1990s.6 Later on, some of these already privatized buildings were sold onwards in sections, floors, or even individual rooms. As the area had grown into Asia’s biggest market for electronics elements and products during the 2000s, millions of merchants, technicians, and workers gathered there to seek their fortunes. Following that migration and occupation, land values in Shangbu rocketed, and the turnover rates of the properties inside became extremely high. As a result, most properties have been sublet several times over, introducing more and more sublessors and sublessees into the booming property market. While a few SOEs from the early days are still politically influential and con tinue to be the most powerful entities in Shangbu, some influential local merchants – especially the operators of big markets and stores, but also smaller private property owners – united as merchants’ chambers or guilds and tried to make their voices heard by decision-makers in the municipal government. Lacking prior governmental background, these people were China’s earliest generation of private elites, emerging immediately after the 1990s commercialization of the domestic market. Some had been engineers, workers, or teachers from elsewhere in China, while others were just farmers from the nearby countryside. The “semi-public” sector, such as the SOEs, and private forces have come together several times to pursue common interests.7 In the field of urban planning and governance, the government found it difficult to incrementally implement a project or policy without considering the controlling commercial interests’ concerns about the area and its usage. Grand Planning vis-à-vis Local Resistance In the 1990s, when commerce started to boom in Shangbu, the government tried hard to repress it. According to the official planning strictures, commercial activ ities were to be channeled into the newly built Central Business District (CBD), while Shangbu should keep its industrial functions. However, since many SOE property owners wished to take advantage of the rising rent income from non-industrial uses – such as retail, wholesale, entertainment, and gastronomy – they helped their tenants to forcefully negotiate for their right to tenancy, resulting in the city government’s agreement to turn a blind eye.8 Beginning in the early 2000s, when Shangbu was repositioned as a key commercial center in the master plan, the government repeatedly proposed “beautifying” the area by demolishing illegally constructed floors and sky bridges and by unifying all of the buildings with a new façade scheme. In order to maximize the volume of commercial space and keep the diverse visual identity of the buildings, which offers a better commercial atmosphere, the property holders and tenants again tried hard to negotiate with the government. They were successful, and as a result, many informal additions remained untouched; public investment went instead into the improvement of infrastructure. More recently, as the leaseterms of many plots expired in the early 2010s, the government tried to take them back. Unsurprisingly, this was met with strong resistance from the
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1980s
2000s
Self-Use: Manufacturing
Rent Out – Commercial activities
One Work Unit
Land Use Right Holders
One Building
Many Property Owners
Walled Enclave
Multi-layer Networks
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Figure 3 (opposite page, top) Physical adjustment of the existing building stock to meet the demands of the new economy. (Ting Chen) Figure 4 (opposite page, bottom) Fragmentation of ownership structures (left); Transformation of pedestrian networks (right). (Ting Chen)
Figure 5 Industrial Zones planned in the 1980s transformed into multi-functional centralities, Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. (Map at the top: 1986 Strategic Plan of Shenzhen; Diagram at the bottom: Ting Chen)
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Renewals Under Construction
Proposed Renewals
Caiwuwei
Huaqiang
Dachong
Qiaochengbei
Saigerili
Shenyewuliu
Yongxing
Konka
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property holders – including both the SOEs and influential merchants – as none of them wanted to give up the profitable business opportunities they were enjoying. As the government also did not want to give up the high tax income from the area’s prosperous commercial activities, after years of tough negotiation, the land administration authority decided to compromise once again and started to make some special policies concerning landuse-right extensions. Accordingly, while large-scale renewal is driven by local-government-led planning approaches in many aging neighborhoods, where the terms “bad-looking” and “insecure” are used as excuses for demolition, Shangbu’s reevaluation shows how these kinds of former industrial zones – other examples are Chegongmiao, Nanyou, and Bagualing (Figure 5) – have managed to stay untouched and were transformed in an incremental way by balancing the interests of the local government, politically influential SOEs, and successful merchants and private property holders. As the once-uniform industrial zones have turned into arenas of numerous urban forces, their ability to resist arbitrary planning imposed by the government has significantly increased. For the majority of these non-governmental parties, which have sufficient assets on hand, their long-term economic opportunities depend on a stable business environment. Thus they offer the most determined resistance to the government’s dramatic renewal plans. With these emerging powers serving as mediators between the government planners and the actual spatial users, previously devaluated, unregulated, and neglected areas have provided affordable spaces for those who are seldom considered in official plans, including traders from different social classes, workers in various econo mic sectors, and their formal and informal businesses. Without them, Shenzhen’s private sector, widely recognized as the most active in China, would not be as prosperous as it is today.9 To renew, to renovate, or to let it go? Nevertheless, incremental transformation is not the mainstream in Shenzhen. Over the past few years, as the local government found it necessary to let the manufacturing-based urban economy move up the global value chain, it became increasingly eager to physically “upgrade” Shenzhen’s downtown area, with the aim of luring large foreign or domestic enterprises and financial concerns to transfer their headquarters to the city. The rationale for this was that these high-end headquarters would not only contribute a huge amount of tax revenue, but also take up less physical space than myriad small businesses. Motivated by the vision of a “headquarters city”, this urban-renewal approach was widely applied in Shenzhen’s center. Here the term “urban renewal” not only means replacing all of the existing buildings with brand new estates with a more fashionable appearance, but also implies pushing major segments of the city’s population and economy – lower-middle-class people and small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) – out and bringing higher-income elites and big corporations into the city center.10 Especially in recent years, large-scale renewal projects (mainly carried out by big SOE developers) prevailed across Shenzhen’s densely built downtown neighborhoods (Figure 6). During 2012, for example, 5.35 square kilometers of densely built land 11 – about 0.6 percent of the total built-up area of Shenzhen Municipality 12 – was demolished for new projects. Apart from making the city more “modern” and “beautiful”, creating visual evidence of the municipal and district government leaders’ “ability in improving the economic environment”,13 such
Figure 6 A city under dramatic renewal. (Ting Chen; Renderings: the project developers)
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projects also brought a one-off upsurge in government income: the land- leasing fee collected from renewal projects was US$1.08 million in 2012,14 about 62.7 percent of the city’s total land-leasing revenue.15 Under the influence of this renewal fever, the government currently seeks to upgrade the 20-to-30-year old industrial zones– old enough to be considered obsolete in the Chinese context. Learning from their frustrating experiences trying to renew neighborhoods with numerous diverse and powerful interests, like Shangbu, the government has been turning to new strategies. One is to push for relatively small-scale renewal of the plots owned by single SOEs. Compared with private owners relying mainly on the existing market, it is much easier to persuade powerful SOE landlords to replace their relatively- low-value properties, especially dormitories, by offering them preferential policy treatment (such as abnormally low land-use-fees for commercial land use).16 However, these properties are mainly used to accommodate migrant workers and the SMEs of the main wholesale and retail markets for particular goods (such as electronics, clothes, jewelry) of each specific area. Replacing such properties with luxury residential and office towers means depriving a large portion of the workforce and many SMEs of their affordable accommodation. Another government strategy is to forcefully push the buildings with multiple owners into undergoing façade upgrading.17 Knowing that the private property holders are strongly opposed to the demolition of their buildings, the local government spends a large amount of public revenue on renovating the façades of “unmovable” buildings, especially the former factory buildings facing the main streets. The immediate impact of this campaign is the rocketing rent prices of the property. While the government is satis fied with the fresh new appearance, such projects seldom help to improve the internal facilities or the business environment; instead, they only accelerate the rise of rents and make it increasingly diffi cult for the resident businesses to survive.18 Shenzhen stands at a crossroads. Following the 2008 global economic crisis and the subsequent decline of the manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta, the city is understandably eager to move up the value chain and make its economy more resilient. However, the construction of expensive office towers may not be a pragmatic solution. Learning from Shangbu’s incremental planning process, the government should abstain from planning an area’s economic development (following the impulses of particular politicians) without really understanding the spatial demands of either the existing industry or those that are to be attracted; this is often done by simply replacing old six-to-seven-story buildings with new high-rises. Rather than wishfully intervening too much in the economic sphere by pushing quick and fundamental changes to an area’s physical environment as well as its social and economic functions, the government should learn from the existing society and its bottom-up economy. It should investigate how incremental instrumentation of urban design and land administration could help to provide an open and affordable area that allows more flexibility. The goal should be to strengthen, rather than suppress, a further diversification of urban actors, thus enabling a more equitably accessible urban environment – both socially and economically – for all, not just the privileged few.
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Huaqiangbei Street Office, interview by author, January 2013.
1
Duan, Ya-bing, 深圳财富传奇: 占领华强北 (The Legend of Wealth: Occupying Huaqiangbei) (Beijing: People’s Press, 2012), 19. 2
Hong Qin, interview by author, May 2013.
3
Usually called “danwei,” indicating an enclosed working-living space under the autonomous governance of a single SOE or public institute.
4
Huang, Weidong and Yuxian Zhang, “市场主导下快速发展演进地区的规划应对 – 以深圳华强北片区为例 (Planning Responding to Rapidly Developing and Evolving Area with Market Orientation: A Case Study on Huaqiangbei Area of Shenzhen),” City Planning Review 34 (2010): 67–72. 5
Zacharias, John and Desmond Bliek, “The Role of Urban Planning in the Spontaneous Redevelopment of Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen,” Journal of Urban Design 13 (2008): 349–350.
6
Tang Bo (head of development for property management, Huaqiang Group), interview by author, May 2013.
7
Qing Tao, 福街的现代商人部落 (The Merchants’ “Tribe” in Fujie) (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2007), 51–61.
8
Tanhao Luo.大国诸城: 21 世纪中国城市与区域竞争 (Cities in the big country: the competition between Chinese cities and regions in the 21th century) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2012), 12.
9
10
Urban Renewal Office of Shenzhen Municipality, interview by author, May 2013.
“深圳城市更新提高综合整治比例 适度收紧拆除体量 (Shenzhen started to encourage more comprehensive treatment, while limiting demolition practices),” Nanfang Daily, December 27, 2013, http://finance.chinanews.com/house/2013/12-27/5673477.shtml. 11
The total built area in Shenzhen is 933 square kilometers. See Urban Planning Land and Resources Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, 深圳市土地资源 (Land Resources in Shenzhen), 153 (internal document).
12
This saying is widely applied in official newspapers on government achievement.
13
Urban Renewal Office of Shenzhen Municipality, interview by author, May 2013.
14
“2013深圳土地出让金暴涨334% (Shenzhen’s land-lease revenue increased 334 percent in 2013),” accessed January 15, 2015, http://news.sz.fang.com/2014-01-10/11886467.html. 15
Based on author’s interviews with several planners who have been working on urban renewal projects.
16
Anonymous officer in charge of urban redevelopment in Futian District Government, interview by author, May 2013.
17
Based on author’s interviews with merchants in areas such as Huaqiangbei, Southpetro, and Sungang.
18
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A | Essay – Linda Vlassenrood
CHINESE URBANIZATION THROUGH THE LENS OF DA LANG Linda Vlassenrood
Shenzhen is a city that has been raising eyebrows for years because of its fast development and exceptional position. However, the everyday reality in Shenzhen can be unruly. As a city, Shenzhen mainly thinks in terms of top- down strategies and simply adds new hardware – the sum of infrastructure, buildings, and industries – in order to encourage urban and therefore economic growth. It is less interested in the question of which existing social dynamics need to be accepted or improved in order to strengthen the city’s potential, let alone the socio-economic conditions that are necessary to successfully regenerate an existing neighborhood or to sustainably extend the city. Still, Shenzhen is a city where bottom-up activities flourish and where many changes happen overnight. This means that many policies are not in line with reality; there is a gap between government and society. Or at least this seems to be the case at first glance. When we look beyond the general characteristics of a top-down regulated city, relations between the Shenzhen government and society are much more closely intertwined. Social construction China has lately seen enormous growth in NGOs, volunteering, and grassroots organizations that address social issues. It is clear that the central government and local governments are withdrawing from many areas or are unable to cover social issues sufficiently by themselves, leaving room for other organizations to step in and provide services to vulnerable groups. In 2011, the United Nations Volunteers Program published a report on the state of volunteerism in China.1 According to this report, the first volunteer- based community projects started at the end of the 1980s. However, the number of organizations and volunteers only started to grow rapidly around 2001, due to increased support from the national government and more supportive legislation. Public awareness also changed distinctly, particularly in 2008, after people saw the valuable role of volunteers during the Beijing Olympics and after the Wenchuan earthquake. By 2011, 50 million Chinese people were registered in different volunteer organizations all over the country; most of these volunteers were young students, recent graduates, and low-income migrant workers. Volunteerism has become indispensable in Chinese society and is currently quite diversified, with a growing number of non-governmental organizations, including big corporations deploying volunteer activities through their own NGOs. NGOs do collaborate with local governments, but are more independent than volunteer organizations that operate directly under the government.2 Volunteerism as an instrument The central government is increasingly deploying volunteerism as an instrument to achieve a more “harmonious” urban society, with less inequality and more stability. It stated in its “National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020)” that urbanization remains an important tool for economic growth in China, but also emphasized the need for a more “human-centered
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Figure 1 16-year-old migrant worker. (Maaike Zwart)
urbanization.” By 2030, as much as 70 percent of the Chinese population will live in cities. The current rate is 53.7 percent; at least another 100 million rural inhabitants will move to the cities between now and 2020. The central government acknowledges that reforms and alternative models for urbanization are necessary to ensure and increase the livability of Chinese cities. One of these reforms should be the reorganization of the hukou household-registration system in order to provide more equal access to quality services for all citizens and to ease labor mobility from rural to urban areas, as well as between cities.3 China introduced this household-registra tion system in the 1950s; it divides and demarcates the population into urban and rural residents. People who are registered in the countryside, but live and work in the city, do not have the same benefits in healthcare, pensions, and other social welfare as city residents. The shift in focus towards the well-being of Chinese citizens, instead of concentrating only on the pursuit of economic growth, is an important sign of the times. When talking about the current social constraints in Shenzhen, researcher Li Jinkui from the China Development Institute (CDI) doesn’t see any other alternative: “(The) Chinese economy is slowing down from ‘high-speed growth’ to ‘medium-speed growth,’ and urbanization is still not completed. If China is to stay in today’s half-done urbanized situation, China will likely fall into the ‘middle-income trap.’ The core task of urbanization is to provide public goods and services needed by the new-coming urban population from the previous rural population. This requires social and institutional change, and ‘social construction.’ This is the most important issue in Shenzhen today.” 4 To understand Da Lang is to understand Chinese urbanization Da Lang is home to approximately 500,000 people, a majority of them migrants. Only 8,200 citizens are officially registered in Da Lang, which means that everybody else belongs to the so-called “floating population.” 5 The neighborhood is located in Longhua New District, just outside the
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border of the former Special Economic Zone.6 Over the past few years, it has become an interesting site for several research projects initiated by the China Development Institute and the International New Town Institute. This research is conducted in order to understand the blossoming of bottom- up activities in this part of Shenzhen, but also to understand the role of the local government and its relationship with a variety of stakeholders in providing social welfare.7 The Da Lang Government wants to create a more sustainable society by facilitating educational programs and leisure activities. To accomplish this, the Department of Cultural Affairs has been expanding cultural infrastructure since 2010, allowing volunteer organizations, NGOs, companies, and entrepreneurs to play a role. So far, these developments are in line with the national trend described above. However, Da Lang is exceptional for another reason: it represents the core of Chinese urbanization. Da Lang is a rapidly transforming rural-urban society with severe social issues and hardly any urban planning in place. Primarily a collection of urban villages and factories, it is a hard-to-reach district with few public facilities and limited green and public spaces. Furthermore, Da Lang is subject to issues related to its very young “floating” migrant society. Li Jinkui has been supporting the aims of the Department of Cultural Affairs for several years through lectures and research: “If we can successfully do something here, we will deepen our understanding of problems that occur in the process of Chinese urbanization.” More than 50 percent of the migrants in Da Lang are between 20 and 29 years old and arrive unaccompanied; the duration of their stay varies from just a few months to four or five years, and a very small number stay even longer. Born after 1980, they belong to the second generation of migrants in China. These young migrant workers come from all over the country and are full of drive, but they also face problems in adjusting to city life and workplace pressures. They encounter long working hours, low income, unstable jobs, poor living conditions, and discrimination. Moreover, they find it difficult to make friends or start families.
Figure 2 Volunteers Little Gras. (Da Lang Governmenti)
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Emancipating attitude establishes new values The Da Lang government is rather open and progressive in trying to help migrant workers become acclimated to city life. Their encouraging and therefore emancipating attitude towards migrants establishes new values that move beyond economic benefit alone. The government has invested 300 million RMB over the last couple of years in public infrastructure “hardware” such as Labor Square, built in 2007 as an entertainment area for the local inhabitants, along with bicycle lanes, eighteen community service centers, fourteen community parks, eight private schools, five libraries, and four stations for volunteers in public space.8 It has initiated various public activities, including the highly successful “Da Lang Star” singing competition, which started in 2010 and was one of the first initiatives developed by the Da Lang government. The competition provides a stage for talented young people and music fans. In the past five years, nearly 4,000 migrants have participated in the competition. The event is hugely popular in the district, and many people gather for the 39 qualifying rounds and the yearly finale with 12 participants. In the meantime, the government has helped NGOs and grassroots organizations in Da Lang improve their management and is building up a platform with national and international resources. Nonetheless, the Da Lang government has limited financial means due to its low administrative level in Shenzhen. Even though the city government is giving attention to the areas that once fell outside its borders, and although it is stimulating alternative ways to outsource social services to NGOs and volunteering groups, Shenzhen’s investments in “social construction” are still minimal compared to the attention that has been given to economic growth. Consequently, the Da Lang government is able to financially support some organizations but can generally only provide legitimacy and space to NGOs, volunteer organizations, and entrepreneurs.9 Lin Fangxi and Zheng Baojie, two young entrepreneurs, receive that legitimacy, which enables them to provide cultural activities in addition to their entrepreneurship. Both pro vide lessons to migrant workers in their music and roller-skating store, and
Figure 3 Roller-Skating Team Excellent. (Da Lang Governmenti)
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they enable access to a large social network through the organization of events, cultural performances, and competitions. They play a fundamental role in programming leisure activities at Labor Square; the social impact of these events and Zheng Baojie’s roller-skating team, Excellent, which has over 1,000 members, should not be underestimated. The Da Lang government also recently started to support KIDO – an NGO registered in Da Lang in July 2014 and located in a dormitory – by paying its rent and the salaries of its four staff members. KIDO’s major aims are to help migrant workers become accustomed to city life and to help them find their way when they face unforeseen circumstances, such as a factory closure and their subsequent loss of employment. “Vulnerability” is a term used frequently when talking about the migrant workers because of their young age and low level of education. However, the demands of second-generation migrants are markedly different from those of the previous generation, most of whom have returned to their hometowns: they come to the city to make money, but also to develop themselves by learning new skills that will help them find better jobs. Programs are therefore offered to young migrant workers to meet new people, extend their limited social networks, broaden their work opportunities, improve their communication skills, gain self-confidence, and have fun. Building bridges between public and private interests KIDO communicates between government and society, and it recently joined forces with the government to collaboratively talk to factories about their social responsibilities. The Da Lang government is trying to encourage young migrant workers to stay longer in Da Lang by educating them and by providing amenities like libraries, schools, parks and squares, and social programs. It is believed that factories share the same objective. If they have better working conditions and activities, migrant workers might choose to be loyal to their employers and keep working there longer. Many factories provide small libraries, cinemas, and basketball courts inside the factory compound, where most migrant workers also live; these facilities are primarily installed for relaxation and not for educational purposes. KIDO helps companies to improve their facilities and to set up or further develop their activity programs; KIDO also provides advice on how to recruit and manage volunteers. It is a relatively new approach and an interesting attempt to share responsibility for providing social services and education with enterprises, required in part because of the financial limitations of the local government. However, this simultaneously brings up questions about how sustainable the interest of corporations in social aims is and whether they can be called upon to fulfill public needs outside the borders of their factory compounds. Many migrant workers live in the urban villages; Da Lang still faces a serious lack of public facilities in these areas. The Da Lang government is seeking support from companies, but struggles at the same time with the question of what kind of activities and services the volunteer organizations could provide to address needs that neither the government nor the market meet. CDI argues that it should be a collaborative effort in order to stimulate the migrants’ integration into Da Lang society. This means that the local government should empower and build alliances between entrepreneurs, volunteer organizations, NGOs, and factories more extensively than it already does.10 Thinking in terms of top-down versus bottom-up strategies is clearly no longer applicable for Da Lang.
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New parameters for urban design In order to achieve a more sustainable society, it is also necessary to rethink the scattered urban context of Da Lang. Da Lang is an open and dynamic culture due to its diverse, youthful, and continually changing mix of people – it is a magnet for the floating population – and a distant but facilitating local government. These extreme circumstances and conditions, which are just as commonplace as they are considered undesirable by the city government, should be understood and nurtured in future urban planning. Simultaneously, the role of volunteer organizations in the broadest sense has become a powerful movement that can no longer be ignored when aiming for sustainable Chinese cities. While this social support system is part of the national agenda, it hardly plays a role in local developers’ or urban planners’ minds. Paying more attention to social welfare is considered to be important in Shenzhen, but developers and planners are satisfied to fulfill this ambition with nothing more than public squares and parks. New parame ters need to be put in place in order to aid the further urban development of vibrant migrant neighborhoods like Da Lang. Design proposals should accept – and embrace– Da Lang’s status as an urban area in an intermediate stage, and future plans should take temporality and flexibility as starting points. It could be one of the alternative models for urbanization to ensure and increase the livability of Chinese cities.
United Nations Volunteers, State of Volunteerism in China 2011 – Engaging People through Ideas, Innovation and Inspiration, 2011. 1
Since 2008 it has become easier to register an NGO, especially in Shenzhen, due to the simplification of the registration procedure. See He Dan, “NGOs Get Boost from Shenzhen Register Reforms,” China Daily, August 21, 2012, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-08/21/content_15690983.htm. See also Alice Lau, “More NGOs Gain Status in Shenzhen, contextChina, August 21, 2012, http://contextchina.com/2012/08/more-ngos-gain-status-in-shenzhen. 2
See “Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization,” The World Bank, 2015, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/publication/urban-china-toward-efficient-inclusive- sustainable-urbanization. 3
4
Li Jinkui, interview by author, February 24, 2015.
5
See also Linda Vlassenrood, “Da Lang Fever,” Volume 39 (2014): 58–62. Da Lang Fever was an event and small exhibition on the potential of the self-organizing migrant society in Da Lang at the UABB/Shenzhen Urbanism & Architecture Biennale 2013.
6
Da Lang became an official sub-district of Longhua in 2011. In Bao’an and Longgang, the outer districts of Shenzhen, random and chaotic developments had taken place since the late 1980s due to industrial pressure inside the Special Economic Zone, and lower land prices, speculation, and loose development control outside the boundary.
7
New New Towns: Why We Need to Rethink the City of Tomorrow Today is an international, multidisciplinary research program initiated by the International New Town Institute (INTI). New New Towns started in Shenzhen in 2012. INTI aligned with the innovative forces in Shenzhen and initiated research to understand which social, economic, and environmental factors need to be improved to strengthen the city’s potential. Da Lang has been a research area from the start. Partners in the research on Da Lang are the China Development Institute (supervisor: professor Li Jinkui), University of Amsterdam (supervisor: professor Arnold Reijndorp), Chinese University of Hong Kong (supervisor: associate professor Doreen Liu), and Delft University of Technology (supervisor: assistant professor Qu Lei).
8
In 2008, six districts of Shenzhen signed letters of intent to outsource social services to nine NGOs, making Shenzhen the second Chinese city, after Shanghai, to experiment with setting up such a system. See “Shenzhen NGOs to Provide Social Services,” China Daily, January 11, 2008, http://china.org.cn/english/ China/238958.htm.
9
The Da Lang government subsidizes the Little Grass Volunteer Association, which currently has 1,200 registered social workers and 4.400 volunteer workers.
Sjoerd Segijn, “A Home Away from Home: The Emergence and Meaning of Third Places in Shenzhen” (master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam/International New Town Institute, 2014), 53. 10
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A | Essay – Kazys Varnelis
GAMES WITH FRONTIERS Kazys Varnelis
Architecture’s greatest failing has always been its stupidity. No matter how elegantly designed the building, how parametrically complex its form, or daring its structure, a building is a mere pile of matter, inert and vacant, no smarter than a stone. Millennia ago, architecture made its greatest mistake when it abandoned the tents of the nomads, and its instantly responsive construction. But now, as William Gibson concludes, cyberspace is “ever ting”, spilling forth from the space inside the computer onto the space of the world, not so much augmenting space as reshaping it for its own purposes.1 Technology claims that soon architecture will be roused from its inertness. Just as one traverses from site to site over the Web, the world is to become one unbroken path, with streetlights, escalators, elevators, and even border crossings doing – or at least claiming to do – your bidding. Magnetic door locks produce a barely audible soft click and with it, the future is facilitated and all that is solid melts into air. If anyone understood the dumbness of buildings, it was Victor Hugo: “… (S)mall things overcome great ones! A tooth triumphs over a body. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the building!”2 The small things in our lives today have, in turn, killed the book as we turn to our smartphones, tablets, and e-readers to imbibe infor mation. But those same small things have the potential to give life to buildings, to animate them like never before. The embedding of biometric techno logy and Near Field Communications (NFC) into smartphones and wearables has the potential to transform our idea of space dramatically (Figure 1). With biometrics a device is permanently linked to an individual, making it secure and theft-proof, impossible to unlock and trackable by authorities whenever it connects to the network. The smartphone or wearable becomes a means of verifying identity with an unprecedented degree of security. Already, the use of mobile payment systems is skyrocketing and the days of physical currency seem numbered, but it is the reconfiguration of our experience of space that will be portable networked technology’s most radical and lasting impact on society. Technology forces us to rethink space and how we experience it. Severing the telephone from its wire tethers at the end of the 20th century created a radical change in addressability. Previously, reaching someone was dependent on the addresser knowing the addressee’s physical location. If the addressee was not at a fixed landline number or address and forwarding information was not available, contact stalled. Now a phone number no longer indicates where one calls one’s primary residence or even any fixed location at all and, with number portability available in many countries, an area code can be more of an indication of a person’s past or even a marker of status, such as obtaining a 212 prefix New York City number in lieu of a local area code for their actual residence.3 Individuals and places are decoupled; we enter the regime of “Wherever you go, there you are.” 4 In turn, the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology embedded into these devices makes it possible for us to know where we are at all times. Being lost in an unfamil-
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Figure 1 A sign in Shenzhen, China hints at alternative spatial relationships. (Vesna Middlekoop / Flickr)
iar place becomes a matter of choice or, perhaps, poor battery management. The result is that we dwell simultaneously in physical space and in two-dimensional space, tracking ourselves as dots moving through Flatland along a path toward some destination.5 Take the popular mapping application Waze (Figure 2). There navigating becomes a game with our avatars moving on map space roads like so many Pac-Men making their way around their labyrinth while Waze’s notification system gives users points for letting each other know about police speed traps and potholes along the way. A partnership was announced in early 2015 between the City of Boston, USA and Waze to handle traffic management and inform future transportation planning using data gleaned from Waze – and its users.6 But two-dimensional mapping is only one aspect. Three-dimensional mapping and directions
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are coming to the fore, being folded into new forms of notation, as Google Maps does in Hong Kong when it employs multilevel maps that seamlessly incorporate building interiors and subway stations into an expanded conception of the urban environment. Travelling today already means travelling through augmented space, but if thus far that augmentation has been confined to portable screens, soon it will be the spaces itself that will be augmented, giving architecture back intelligence. The next phase in smartphone technology, as embodied in the Schindler Group’s Port Technology, will further reshape our relationship to space, changing how we experience thresholds and our right to pass through them (Figure 3). With a biometrically linked smart phone used to verify an individual’s identity, digital access devices will be able to weigh an individual’s right to enter a given space. Temporary keys will be granted via SMS, email or other means to allow visitors to pass barriers while ensuring they are only granted access to selected areas. Inevitably, demands for interoper ability will produce a standard digital access protocol for home, office, and automobile, as well as the enabling of transport ticketing, elevator routing, or even access to afterhours grocery or post pickup. Our progress through space will grow ever more augmented, ever more connected, as devices in our pockets talk to computers anticipating our next move, facilitating our passage and giving our environment a new kind of intelligence. But the development of a universal digital access system has greater implications than simply the loss of the key rings that currently jangle around in our pockets. Where the mobile phone and GPS-enabled maps make it impossible for others to lose touch with us or for us to lose our way, digital access changes our concept of territory. Presently, if the tenant on the floor of an office building changes, locks will need to be changed, or at least reprogrammed, and new keys or cards handed out. Digital access permits
Figure 2 (left) Waze is augmented traffic and mapping, sourced from its public user-base. (Courtesy of Waze) Figure 3 (right) The PORT Technology pedestal with integrated security, routing and way-finding functions. (Courtesy of Schindler Group, Ltd.)
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such change to be made instantly, even repeatedly over the course of a day. The result will be a massive intensification of Gilles Deleuze’s observation in “Postscript on Control Societies” that modes of confinement in space are changing from “enclosures” to “modulations”.7 By this, Deleuze suggests that whereas we used to understand space in terms of passage from one closed environment to the next, today we pass through a continuous space whose parameters are constantly varying. Digital access systems lead to a new form of modulation, in which identification will eventually be automatic. To understand the impact of this, take the most intensely regulated form of passage that most of us encounter: national borders (Figures 4 and 5). Already the Schengen Agreement and mobile boarding passes are all that is needed to fly from Berlin to Paris or from Helsinki to Madrid. At other national borders, such as those into the United States or Britain, governments are installing biometric controls to verify identity. For Giorgio Agamben this spread of biometrics indicates that we are being treated like “virtual criminals” since these technologies, once used for criminals, are now applied to the entire populace.8 To be sure, there is truth to what Agamben is saying. But incorporating biometrics at borders is only one aspect of how borders themselves are changing. If biometrics are used to detect threats and illegal entry, they expedite known travellers, thus replacing the border as a fixed thing with a more fluid membrane. Moreover, biometrics are only a single point of verification in an automated process of advance pre-screen ing based on digital pattern matching that begins long before a traveller arrives at an airport. Borders are becoming fluid, fragmented, even personal. A change in British visa procedures in 2000 means that entry into the country is now legally counted as having officially begun upon the issuance of the visa, not upon passage past any border. Sovereignty becomes less a matter of defining geographic boundaries and more of verifying identity and providing entry.9 The changing condition of borders has concrete architectural manifestations. Take one of the key structures of the last two decades, Foreign Office Architects’ Yokohama Terminal, a major international port infrastructure which serves cruise ships and ferries. There, the architects sought to maximize the public use of the terminal as open space in an overcrowded city and to accommodate the arrival of domestic and international vessels of different sizes by proposing that border checkpoints and barriers could be moved around the terminal based on the needs of incoming ships. With digital access systems, such barriers could become more electronic rather than physical and we might imagine them reconfiguring flows around the city without the need for an actual change in physical structure. Countries themselves might become increasingly discontinuous. With biometrically enabled digital access systems, the process of verifying identity and granting passage becomes functionally identical whether one passes into a building or another country. The result will be a progression of what Saskia Sassen calls the “unbundling of sovereignty.”10 A first step may be in enabling or blocking entry into specific urban territories, creating a new generation of city-states with more control over their territories. In China, the cities of Hong Kong and Macau as well as the island of Hainan are visa-free zones and also have different work permitting regimes than the mainland.
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A host of other Chinese cities now offer 72-hour visa-free stays to outsiders. Detroit has asked the United States government for the ability to issue visas to foreign workers to live and work there, to aid in repopulating the “shrinking” city.11 Beyond issues of citizenship, entrance into natural areas, parks, or historic districts might also be restricted by numbers to reduce congestion and to redirect tourist or leisure use to areas that might otherwise be neglected. The personalization capabilities of digital access systems can reduce apparent barriers across scales: you take an elevator to the gym in an apartment building in Shenzhen, get on a ferry in Shenzhen, enter into Hong Kong and take a taxi to an office where an elevator drops you off at a client’s office on the fifty-first floor, all without slowing down to verify your identity, procure a ticket or press a button. Borders are becoming soft
Figures 4 and 5 Border control areas, like those between Shenzhen and Hong Kong might become redundant. (Casmaron / Tony Wu)
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structures, but beyond digital access technology has the capacity to make all forms of passage soft and fluid, infinitely flexible and barely visible by reframing how we use space. To illustrate, take the Eruv, a ritual enclosure that orthodox Jewish communities sometimes build within cities. According to the Talmud, transfer ring items between public, private, and semi-public areas during the Sabbath is forbidden, but in “exempt” areas such transfers can be freely made. The exempt area of the Eruv is defined by minimal means, generally a rope, string, or wire along the perimeter of an area: it is a precedent for our completely digital reconceptualization of the meanings, use and access of a space. Although nearly invisible, if upon weekly inspection, the Eruv is unbroken,
Figures 6 and 7 Maeklong Railway market area, with vendors clearing merchandise when trains pass through. (Christine Olson / María Gabriela Lucero)
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the faithful are allowed to use objects such as strollers and wheelchairs, canes, and carry food to each other’s houses, within the boundaries of the Eruv. This has profound implications for how people use the space, and for its value. Within the Los Angeles Eruv, for example, real estate values rise as Orthodox Jews seek residence in the area.12 Digital access makes a sort of virtual Eruv possible, not anything in accordance with the Talmud of course but rather it makes possible temporarily exempt zones. With the ability to switch digital access codes on and off, the psychogeographic games of the Situationists become possible at a new scale, an area of London can be declared to be in France for a day.13 Koolhaas’s Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture becomes a matter of programming. An example by Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture, also plan ned for Yokohoma, allows us to glimpse the further urban and architectural implications of digital access systems. In its 1992 Yokohama Masterplan, OMA proposed to rethink an island in the Japanese port city on the basis of its 24-hour habitation. Looking for “an alternative to the heaviness of real constructions of cities,” OMA sought a “lite urbanism” that would be “plankton-like” and “infiltrate and invade.” OMA’s proposal consisted of manipulating program so that the market that only occupied the site in the early morning, between 4 and 10, would be occupied by shops, a stadium, exhibitions, a library, even a cinema.14 Program can be dictated by access, communicated digitally, and encouraged through flexible spatial aspects. Public and private spaces, spaces of leisure, mobility or even dwelling might become less and less possible to figure on a phased masterplan. We might need to think in terms of activ ity matrixes, stakeholder networks in terms of both space and time, with demand driven by open processes rooted in big data, facilitated by our personal mobile devices. In other words, the future of urbanism might increasingly resemble the sort of temporal displacement that we see at Maeklong Railway Market in Thailand15, also known as “Talad Rom Hoop” or the “Umbrella Pulldown Market” in which trains share a space with a market. Following a regular schedule, vendors pull back their display tables and the umbrellas shielding them to allow trains to narrowly pass by, only to return the market to its fully functional state within seconds after the train has departed, turning the railway bed back into its role as the market’s central passageway (Figure 6 and 7).16 If trains are unlikely to roam freely through our markets, autonomous, self-driving cars can be integrated into the urban fabric in an analogous fashion. For example, this can be done with digital access systems allowing pedestrians to occupy certain street areas that would be closed to traffic except during rush hours.17 Transit separation can become more nuanced than differentiations that are dictated purely through paint demarcating a bike path or granite curbstones. For architects, digital access technologies allow buildings and urban spaces to cease being witless, passive things and turn into active, artificially intelligent agents that shape the urban realm. Digital access systems will allow new forms of control and surveillance, but in making such control soft and virtual, while also reducing the distinction between passage across a border and passage across a threshold, they will reconfigure the very meaning of control. Space will cease being a container and will become responsive. How architects tackle this fact is a central problem of architecture in the next decade.
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William Gibson, Spook Country (New York: Putnam, 2009), 20.
1
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), 187–188.
2
Caroline Waxner, “212 Lust: Old Phone Numbers Are New Thing in Tech Scene,” Wall Street Journal Metropolis Blog (August 18, 2010), http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/08/18/212-lust-old-phone-numbers-are-new-thing-in-tech-scene/ 3
Earl Mac Rauch, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8 th Dimension” director WD Richter, USA1984, 20 th Century Fox 4
Kazys Varnelis and Leah Meisterlin, “The Invisible City: Design in the Age of Intelligent Maps,” Adobe Think-Tank (2008), http://networkarchitecturelab.org/papers/the-invisible-city/ Edwin Abbot/A Square, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1885).
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Nick Stockton, “Boston is Partnering with Waze to Make Its Roads Less of a Nightmare” Wired Online, accessed February 2015, http://www.wired.com/2015/02/boston-partnering-waze-make-roads-less-nightmare.
6
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies,” Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 178.
7
Giorgio Agamben, “No to Biometrics,” accessed February 2015, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/no-to-biometrics/
8
Leanne Weber, “The Shifting Frontiers of Migration Control,” in Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control, (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 35.
9
Saskia Sassen, Losing Control, Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 31. 10
Monica Davey, “Immigrants Seen as Way to Refill Detroit Ranks,” The New York Times, (January 23, 2014), accessed January 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/us/immigrants-seen-as-way-to-refill-detroit-ranks.html. 11
Janine Raynford, “Freedom Within Bounds: Inside L.A.’s Eruv Communities,” Neon Tommy/Annenberg Digital News (February 15, 2011) accessed Feburary 2015, http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/02/freedom-within-bounds-inside-la-s-eruv-communities 12
Guy Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” in Ken Knabb, ed., Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 5-8.
13
Rem Koolhaas, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and Bruce Mau, “Programmatic Lava. Urban Design Forum. Yokohama, Japan. Project, 1992,” S, M, L, XL (Monacelli Press, 1995), 1210–1237.
14
Thiren Waraphon, “Amazing Thailand: Railway Market Maeklong” Thailand 2008, accessed February 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJpR9n-L680
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Susan Cunningham, “The Market Where a Train Runs Through,” (October 5, 2012) accessed February 2015, http://www.southeastasiatraveler.com/2012/10/market-where-train-runs-through-youtube.html
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Tom Vanderbilt, “Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here,” Wired (January 12, 2012), accessed January 2015, http://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/all/
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A | Afterword – Neil Runcieman
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AFTERWORD – THE ELEVATOR: FROM SOCIAL AMBITION TO URBAN NECESSITY Neil Runcieman
Where is next for the city’s “other” transport infrastructure? Very few products can be proclaimed to have added a new dimension to our lives. The elevator undoubtedly can: the vertical dimension. The elevator’s ability to defy gravity was the catalyst for a genuine revolution in architecture, the design of cities, and society as a whole. Today’s world, with over half its population living in urbanized environments, would, without elevators, be unpleasant and uncomfortable. Tomorrow’s, with no end in sight to the migration from rural to urban living and the growing size of cities and buildings alike, would be inconceivable. The elevator has helped to make contemporary urban life possible. That is far from saying it has made it perfect. Architects, planners and elevator manufacturers alike fight an ongoing rearguard battle to expand the capacity of our cities to handle the ever-increasing numbers of new arrivals. The metrics of success – and failure – are safety, comfort and security. Yet often overlooked and perhaps the most important metric of all is time. Time, the old saying goes, is money, but it is also quality – and quantity – of life. Time is sacrificed to traffic jams, time spent moving from one building to another, time getting from home to work, to shops, to schools, to meetings, to airports… and of course time is spent waiting for and travelling in elevators. With the United Nations forecasting that our cities will have to accommodate 70 percent of the world’s still growing population by 2050, is global gridlock our inescapable destiny? Or can imagination and engineering combine again, enabling us to spend more time doing the things that are important to us, and less time in transit between the various locations where we do them? These are the challenges and questions that led to the creation, in 2003, of the Schindler Award. The new Global Schindler Award competition aims be a catalyst to the creativity of a generation of architects, designers, planners and landscapers who will be shaping – literally – the world of tomorrow. We believe, too, that our ongoing sponsorship of the competition is all the more relevant, because the role of the elevator specialist has never been so important in contributing to and even conditioning the quality of future urban life around the world.
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A | Afterword – Neil Runcieman
The history, role, and technological limitations of elevators Tall buildings made the 20th century city possible. Elevators made tall buildings possible. At first, every elevator had its own attendant, who drove passengers from floor to floor. This was comfortable – and in the prestigious high-rise hotels and office blocks of the great 20th century cities of the United States in particular, it was even luxurious. But as the numbers of city dwellers grew larger, and architects sought to build ever higher, the era of the attendant drew to a close because it was no longer an efficient way to guide elevator cars and their passengers. Automatic controllers using relay systems were introduced to replace the lift attendants, resulting in major increases in passenger handling capacity, particularly where zones of multiple lifts could work in concert, using automation and communication between the individual lifts to improve their efficiency. Transistors superseded relays, and then they, too, were replaced by microprocessors, whose ability to process millions of calculations per second upped elevator performance still further, enabling architects to design more complex and higher-occupancy buildings. Today, each zone elevator in a busy commercial building can make up to 200 trips per hour during peak traffic and travel up to 10,000 kilometers in a year – vertically. The most recent – and many believe the final – innovation to improve elevator efficiency by an order or magnitude, was lobby destination control. Developed by Schindler and introduced in the 1990s as Miconic 10, then further developed through successive generations as, first, Schindler ID, and now The PORT Technology, destination control uses the simple yet game- changing principle of registering passengers’ destination floors before they enter the elevator. This has made it possible to increase handling capacity by up to 35 percent compared with even the most sophisticated conventio nal elevator systems. Armed with advance information about all passengers’ destinations, PORT elevator systems can group passengers together in elevators by destination, thereby reducing the number of stops for each car, increasing speed to destination, and returning the elevator much more rapidly to collect its next batch of pre-allocated passengers. It is at this point, however, that the real challenge for designing the cities of tomorrow begins. PORT can effectively increase the handling capacity of a zone of six elevators by at least one additional car. It also allows for far more flexibility in layout and design, since passengers no longer have to wait in front of a bank of elevators to see which comes first. Passengers are instead guided by the system to individual elevators, and so circular shaft cores, or long banks of up to eight cars are perfectly feasible. However, many experts including Dr. Paul Friedli, Head of Schindler’s PORT Technology division and involved in destination control technology since the development of Miconic 10, believe that we have reached the limit of group elevator control development. There is, according to Friedli, no more passenger handling capacity to be squeezed out of the elevator shaft – and in making this assertion he is fully aware of experimental ideas such as multiple cars in a single elevator shaft, or elevators which travel laterally as well as vertically. None of these ideas have gone beyond the concept stage, and few in the industry believe that they will.
Global Schindler Award 2015 | A
Re-thinking the urban environment: New ideas for new cities Elevator technology as we know it may have reached the limits of its potential. That does not mean that the elevator has nothing more to contribute to urban design and architecture. On the contrary, we are convinced that elevators have an increasingly important role to play in creating an urban environment for future generations that is safe, efficient, comfortable and secure. PORT’s destination control – or Transit Management under the latest Schind ler terminology – now takes advantage of the system’s early contact with passengers to function as a combined personal access and security system that transports individually recognized building tenants and visitors from car park to office, and even from apartment to work using a single proximity card. And with the recent launch of myPORT, the entire system can now be acces sed using smartphones, including sending access codes to arriving visitors and opening or locking entry doors. The implications and potential of myPORT extend so far beyond the scope of a conventional elevator system, in fact, that a building does not even need elevators to benefit from it. Now installed at the single-story Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco, myPORT has received rave reviews for its ability to provide easy, comfortable and secure access throughout the building for people with disabilities, including the visually impaired. The greater impact on the built environment as this technology is rolled out is still unknown, but it promises to be profound. There is no doubt that we need radical thinking, visionary concepts and a fertile, symbiotic intertwining of creativity and technology if we are to leave to future generations a legacy of cities that can accommodate and adapt to the sheer volume of people migrating towards them. Tomorrow’s cities must be habitats that continue to improve quality of life, and they must do so sustainably. It is a huge challenge that requires contributions from everyone involved in urban development. The Global Schindler Award is our invitation to today’s young urban design visionaries to put their ideas and imagination to the test. A worthwhile exercise in any event for architects-in-training, we know we will find brilliance, beauty and invention in the submissions. Our greatest hope is that the hundreds of teams from around the world, who have committed their time and talent to take part, will find through the Global Schindler Award inspiration for new solutions to one of the world’s most daunting and inescapable challenges: the design of our shared urban future.
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A | People – Biographies
PEOPLE Jessica Bridger works as an urbanist, journalist, and consultant. Her writing and editing appear internationally in a variety of media, including Monocle, Metropolis, Landscape Architecture Magazine, uncube, Volume, MONU, Topos and Monocle 24 Radio. Her consultancy conducts expert research, strategic planning, and media projects for public- and private-sector clients. She is the author and editor of Metropolis Nonformal and edited Landscape Architecture Europe IV and Research in Architecture. Bridger is Advisory Editor for Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism. She earned an MLA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She was the 2011/2012 Bakema Fellow of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). Darryl Chen is a London-based urbanist. His speculative work has been published and exhibited internationally, including at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. He has taught at the Bartlett school of architecture and Architectural Association where he had previously graduated with distinction. He writes and lectures widely on urbanism and practice-based research. He is currently a partner at Hawkins/Brown where he leads the urban design studio and the &\also research think-tank. Ting Chen is a trained architect and received her B.Arch and M.Arch degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing. She has worked on projects of architectural design, urban design, and monument preservation, as well as on neighborhood revitalization. She was a junior researcher for the Chair for the History of Urban Design at the ETH Zurich, focusing on the historical study of designed urban elements. Currently she is a doctoral researcher at the ETH Zurich-FCL Singapore, studying the urban transformation mechanism of Shenzhen, home of China’s first Special Economic Zone. Kees Christiaanse studied architecture and urban planning at the TU Delft. In 1989 he founded his own office ir. Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners in Rotterdam, known as KCAP since 2002, which expanded to Shanghai and Zurich. Since 2003 he is a professor at the ETH in Zurich (CH). Since 2011 he has been Programme Leader of the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore and Principal Investigator as well as Module Leader for Module IV “Urban Design Strategies and Resources”. Next to his work as an architect, Christiaanse focuses on urban assignments in complex situations and guiding urban processes. He is a consultant to several airports and expert in the development of university campuses and in the revitalization of former industrial, railway and harbor areas. Alexander Erath (PhD) is currently a Senior Researcher at the Cities Laboratory of the ETH in Singapore. He is the Research Module Coordinator of the Mobility and Transportation Planning unit. His main research interests are multi-agent, activity-based transport simulation, the interaction between transport infrastructure, and the built environment as well as travel behavior modeling.
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Jiang Feng is Associate Director of the School of Architecture at the South China University of Technology, in Guangzhou. He is a member of Sino- Italian Center (AOA-ILAUD). He is the author of various journal articles and books, most recently In the name of Forefathers: On the Traditional Kinship-based Settlements and Ancestral Halls in Canton Prefecture during Ming and Qing Dynasties, which offers a viewpoint of historical anthropology to study the vernacular buildings of South China. Fabienne Hoelzel founded FABULOUS URBAN, a design and planning practice for emerging and developing regions, after working several years for one of Latin America‘s largest slum-upgrading programs as the Urban Design and Planning Program Director at the Social Housing and Urban Development Authority of São Paulo, Brazil, which was awarded the UN Habitat Scroll of Honor for its pioneering work in 2012. Hoelzel also has a research and teaching position at the Institute for Urban Design at the ETH Zurich, with a special interest in urban planning instruments, urban development and actor-network processes. She lectures and writes on a regular basis. With FABULOUS URBAN she is currently involved in the Makoko Regeneration Plan, Lagos, Nigeria, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Fuller Challenge and she is conducting a study on urban governance in Lagos (with HBS Nigeria). Eirini Kasioumi is trained as an architect and urban planner in Europe and the USA. She joined Professor Kees Christiaanse’s team at the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, ETH Zurich, in 2012. She is pursuing a doctoral research project on planning trends around airports, with the airports of Paris as the main case study, for which she received support from the Swiss National Research Foundation (SNSF). She was involved in the “Grand Projet” research proposal for ETH Zurich-FCL Singapore. Prior to this, she worked in architectural offices in Greece and Switzerland. Dimitri Kron is an architect, urbanist and researcher. At the ETH Zurich, he is currently involved in a research project on urban economies as resources for the valorization of urban space. Kron also teaches urban design studios and is part of the curatorial team of ETH for the Global Schindler Award, an international student urban design competition. Prior to this he worked with Bischof Föhn Architects. Andrea Murer is a Senior Project Leader at Schindler Group, where she heads the Global Schindler Award. In 2014 she led the conversion of the former Europe-focused Schindler Award into a global urban design competition open to students from all over the world. Her professional work is focused on international relations and it includes the Solar Impulse RTW 2 project, engaging mobility and technology to raise global awareness of sustainability issues. Murer holds a Masters in Communication from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland.
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A | People – Biographies
Silvio Napoli is the CEO of Schindler Group. He joined Schindler in 1994 and he has held various positions in the company. Prior to his appointment as CEO, he was a member of the Schindler Group Executive Committee, responsible for the Asia-Pacific region. Napoli holds an MBA from Harvard University Business School, USA and a Masters in Materials Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. Myriam Perret is an architect, urbanist, and researcher. She received her MSc. ETH Arch. degree from ETH Zurich / Future Cities Laboratory Singapore, and also studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2012 she has worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Chair of Prof. Kees Christiaanse, where she taught different design studios and is co-editor of the book City as Resource. She is the Academic Project Manager for the Global Schindler Award. Perret co-founded the architecture association Esperluet and the architectural office APE in Lausanne. Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He co-convenes the LSE Sociology Course on “City Making: The Politics of Urban Form”. As researcher and consultant he has been directing interdisciplinary projects comprising urban governance, transport, city planning and urban design since 2003. The focus of his current work is on green economy strategies in cities which includes co-directing the cities research program of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Rode is Executive Director of the Urban Age Programme and since 2005 organized Urban Age conferences in over a dozen world cities bringing together political leaders, city mayors, urban practitioners, private sector representatives and academic experts. Neil Runcieman heads the Employee and Customer Communication Department of Schindler Group. He has over 30 years experience in the field of communication. His previous roles include Director of Marketing for Jardine Schindler Group, based in Hong Kong, and for seven years he was the CEO of the largest independent digital services agency in Greater China. Runcieman holds a Masters in German from the University of London. Kazys Varnelis is a historian and researcher of architecture and technology. He holds a doctorate in the history of architecture and urbanism from Cornell University and he is a professor at Columbia University and the University of Limerick, Ireland. He is Director of the Network Architecture Lab, a think-tank devoted investigating the impact of digital technology and telecommunications on architecture and society and co-director of AUDC. He has published Blue Monday: Stories of Absurd Realities, Natural Philosophies and Networked Publics, Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles, and The Philip Johnson Tapes and he has exhibited widely.
Global Schindler Award 2015 | A
Linda Vlassenrood is Program Director at the International New Town Institute (INTI) in Almere, The Netherlands. She set up the international research and exchange program “New New Towns: Why we need to rethink the city of tomorrow today” in Shenzhen and Chandigarh in 2012. “New New Towns” serves a unique role in bringing together international and local expertise in a multidisciplinary think-tank. It is a catalyst for the exchange of knowledge between students, researchers, design professionals, developers, policymakers and politicians. She worked as a curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) from 2000, and served as Chief Curator from 2008 to 2011, specialized in China.
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