Shaping cities

The “Urban Age 2016” conference, at the 15. Biennale Architettura, considered the question of scale, rising to several heated discussions of the merits of top down versus bottom up planning.

The Urban Age project has produced more than ten years of research, awards and conferences to bridge design and politics in cities across the world. This year a conference on “Shaping Cities” took place as a special event for the 15. Biennale of Architecture on 14–15 July in Venice. A series of presentations and curated conversations, involving 40 speakers from 25 cities, provoked responses from the many professional guests including mayors of various cities, planners, architects, academics and economists.

The issues they discussed were many and varied but the overt agenda gave way to the dominant themes of scale, duration, the potential and limits of community, and the capacity of designers and politicians to accommodate one another. In the urban age we are living in, with an expectation that over 70% of world population will be urban by 2050, the role of cities to provide opportunities, balance inequalities, deliver policy, improve health and environmental outcomes has never been more important – and the significance of these issues creates an urgency which made for compelling if occasionally difficult dialogue.

Director of UN Habitat Joan Clos began his talk with the claim that there was steady growth in unplanned informal expansion in cities, as in 70% of cities on earth the share of planned urban expansions is actually diminishing. This begs the question of how to deal with growing cities, by increasing density, expanding boundaries, or planning intervention by making space for informal settlements. Moreover, as Professor Mark Swilling from Stellenbosch University asked, where are the resources for urban growth going to come from?

Professor Shlomo Angel from New York University claimed that expansion of cities was the most practicable strategy, making the point that while Lagos and Paris have the same population the GDP and land of Paris are considerably larger, as when people become richer “they consume more of everything”. The problem with compact or contained cities, he claimed, is that housing is largely unaffordable to all but very few – if poor people have access to land (and job markets) on the periphery they will be able to house themselves.

By contrast, Swilling argued that current urban management requires excessive resources and proposed instead “strategic intensification”, that is to say, resource efficient urbanism with infrastructure reconfigurations. He argued ultimately improving resource efficiencies and infrastructure and improving density together is the best way to support growing urban populations – with or without expansion.

With cities continuing to grow, and issues of duration, capital, density, resources and boundaries all in contestation, it was necessary also to consider the question of scale. The conference gave rise to several heated discussions of the merits of top down versus bottom up planning, at large or small scale.

Shaping Cities features several projects which could be described as small- scale interventions, tailored for the particular environment and community for which they are created is created. In this way they are best adapted for creative solutions and design, to respond to and influences the context in which it forms part. Moreover at this level it is possible to learn from the resourcefulness of communities. The Makoko School, an architectural intervention using recycled materials in the Makoko community built on stilts over water in Lagos, are best adapted for reclaiming materials or using what resources people already have access to, such as plastic bottles in the case of the school. Alejandro Aravena also stated the importance of using materials that are extremely available, simple materials, which are accessible for design and construction. Moreover, there is a much stronger sense of community engagement and agency that is produced by smaller scale projects. Rozana Montiel from Mexico described a project where a bicycle-powered mechanism was constructed to filter water supply, giving people a sense of control over the resource.

Small scale improves both integration and design quality, he argues, as centralized decision-making leads to questionable design. Stefano Recalcati from Arup, further claimed that successful waterfront regeneration in Italy such as the Bagnoli steel factory in Naples, entailed a series of common actions that included community engagement, as well as simplification of the planning process to enable these communities to have a stronger impact. For Mexican architect José Castillo, better planning needs “oblique strategies”, making more mistakes faster, using unqualified people, and not trusting the experts. Both Montiel and Adeyemi argued that if proven successful, smaller projects can be scaled up, with Montiel saying very small tactical interventions and be can be adapted to new contexts and expanded, and Adeyemi claiming that lessons were learnt from the school across communities, inspiring new projects, with scaling up the next step.

Inevitably small-scale solutions may not necessarily be able to give form to or protect the city on the same scale as economic, legal and political interventions.

There were various cases put forward for leading projects at a larger scale, at times using a top-down approach. As Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau cannot confront every problem at local level, as many laws that affect urban settings are the province of state or even federal government. Small-scale projects cannot affect issues of land and land title needed for expansion and public space, or large scale infrastructure projects. As Jennifer Musisi says her work in Kampala is also challenged by legislative regimes that underpin urbanization, including the five different land holding types in the city, and an absence of policy to bring under one system.

Since efforts to manage forced migration and climate change will affect urban environments so drastically, as the real effects of political decisions are strongest felt at the local level, it is important that people at a local level feel like they can affect the policies that are written on high. The conflict outlined by Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro, regarding of the difference in direction for Venice between UNESCO and the people of Venice, is testament to the need for communities to feel like they can influence bottom down or large-scale approaches.

Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona, argued that being unable to shape the forces of your own city, and a sense of growing exclusion from it, has many consequences for psychological and physical well being. If as Ed Glaeser argued, it is necessary to change behaviors around infrastructure in order to produce the final outcome of reducing communicable disease, then engaged communities will be crucial to those outcomes, communities will be more engaged if they feel like they can influence the outcome of large scale projects. For this reason, even projects which are better rolled out at a larger scale, require input from the so called bottom or community in order to be adopted successfully.

Urban Age 2016: Shaping Cities, VeniceUrban Age 2016: Shaping Cities, Venezia — Urban Age 2016: Shaping Cities, Venice

One way to overcome a strict division between community-led or top down approaches, would be what Deputy Mayor of Paris Jean-Louis Missika called “negotiated urban planning”. For Missika the project “Reinventing Paris”, a series of new architectural projects by different architects mostly around the periphery of Paris, attempts this form of planning and to protect and promote what he calls the “urban commons” by creating new in between spaces and shared ownership. For example the project Mille Arbres by Manal Rachdi OXO Architects and Sou Fujimoto Architects on the site of Pershing, creates a bridging building over the ring road at Avenue de la Porte des Terne. Elsewhere David Chipperfield Architects won the redesign of the site Morland with a mixed-use facility including housing, a youth hostel, offices, shops and a market. These projects break down the dichotomy between public and private, small scale intervention, and larger plan – resulting in mutable spaces, and co-working spaces to bring different types of people together.

The process of shaping cities is multilateral, and challenges notions of rights and authorship. In many contexts, small-scale solutions are best for the quality of design outcomes and civic engagement, but not necessarily for urgent crises. Taking place alongside an exhibition embedded in the Biennale titled “Conflicts of an Urban Age”, this Urban Age was a particular response to two international events that highlight design and planning. Firstly the small, localized responses of the architectural exhibits featured in Reporting from the Front, the 15. Biennale of Architecture, which maintains that scarcity, insecurity and deprivation can produce ingenious responses and clever design. On the other hand it was an attempt to influence the New Urban Agenda of UN Habitat III, a meeting held every 20 years that will take place in October in Quito, Ecuador. The varied tone of conference participants recognizes that whatever the success of this meeting in constructing an agreeable plan, there is an art of application and the implementation of the plan will and should be interrupted by the context in which it evolves. Recognising this inevitable disruption – the mess – can allow for contingencies that are ultimately necessary for a healthy and successful city.

Shaping cities

The “Urban Age 2016” conference, at the 15. Biennale Architettura, considered the question of scale, rising to several heated discussions of the merits of top down versus bottom up planning.

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