urban design

In the early 20th-century steam railroads emerged in places that were not connected by waterways, and the new trains soon reached the North-Eastern port cities in the USA; they became a tool of rivalry among cities like New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston. New York with its New York Central Railroad proved its superiority, ensuring the city’s continued dominance over the international trade from within the United States.

However, in the 1950s and 60s, trucking became a more financially viable way of transporting goods, and New York began to de-industrialize as jobs went to other parts of the region or country.

In the mid-1980s, a group of property owners with land under the line lobbied for the demolition of the entire New York Central Railroad structure.

However, residents in the area prevented this from happening by challenging the demolition threats in court. In the 1990s, as the line lay unused and in disrepair – although the riveted steel elevated structure was still strong – it became known for the tough, drought-tolerant wild grasses, shrubs, and rugged trees that grew on top of the structure.

In 1999, a group of community members formed a non-profit organization, called Friends of the High Line, and began applying for permits to redevelop the structure into a park. They also convinced the government to fund the project with backing from private investors.

The example of the High Line project illustrates how some of the infrastructures that have lost its functionality are being transformed into linear infrastructures of public spaces and leisure facilities. The High Line today is a 1.6 km long, elevated linear park, redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway. The High Line shows that, even if big-picture planning is still important, such specific small-scale interventions can produce a high impact on the larger scale and influence urban processes. 

The reclamation of the streetscape in a public campaign from 2005 shows the power of grassroots movements in demanding articulation between bo om-up and top-down initiatives. Given the Manha an grid, it points out the street as the place to perform urban retrofi ing, therefore creating spaces to shelter a collective life.

Jane Jacob’s 1960s observations in the streets of New York remain an essential reference of criticism to the modern planning principles while looking at life in the streets asking ordinary questions of urban living.(1) They draw a ention to the city as a laboratory, from which to learn and in which to act.

The Manha an grid and system of spaces a ached to it has been the testing ground for new initiatives that intend to make use of already-built structures, by performing minor changes on it and therefore provoking e ective changes. The PPS(2) campaign radically raised the profile of transportation and public space issues and generated demand to bring in a new progressive administration to DOT (NY Department of Transportation). Based on that, in the last five years, the City Transportation Department has aligned its transport policy with the need of improvement of the streetscape.(3)

Gehl Architects have been commissioned by DOT to develop a project. The aim has been to use the opportunity of transit design to rethink the streetscape with a budget already existing for the maintenance of the street grid. It represents a strategy to change a space previously used by cars only into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard. This transformation has brought extremely rapid results based on simple and creative temporary operations.(4) 

Stichworte: Reclamation of the street space, Life and Death in Great American Cities

(J.Jacobs, 1960er), Pedestrian City, Department of Transportations New Plan

OIL AND THE AUTOMOBILE CITY

THE HYBRID CITY

MULTIPLE HUBS

“Oil and the Automobile City” shows the urban expansion that marks the beginning of the social segregation and the transition from the compact colonial city to the outspread modern one; this phenomenon was directly influenced by the motor vehicle culture of North American cities.

Latin American cities have experienced rapid and drastic urban transformations in the last century. In this sense, the fragmented urban and social fabric of Caracas are the results of arbitrary forces and events like the oil-based economy, rural and foreign migration, and the modern architectural movement. These influences have transformed Caracas from the rigid Spanish grid to an organic, chaotic and spontaneous city.

The expansion to the east, encouraged by the American standard and the car culture, started to create new isolated houses, which were very di erent from those in the historic district characterized by proximity to basic services, and with access to the tram system as the main mode of public transportation(1).

Along with the prosperity through oil came serious tra ic problems as well as new expansion plans like Robert Moses proposal in 1948for main arteries in the city. The agenda was to promote the automobile by creating more room in the city, resulting in the vehicle shaping Caracas’ landscape and living conditions in a very decisive way.

The priority given to the urbanism of highways means that until recent years other forms of transportation have been neglected; because of this, the best way to experience the urban landscape of Caracas remains the automobile(2) 

The inventive power of the urban laboratory that exists inside the Barrio in Caracas is an aspect that should be of interest to planners and designers. The role of the professionals is to explore and discover the extreme richness of these zones as a valid model for housing development, along with the self- regulatory systems that generate living spaces for millions.

The phenomenon of informal urbanization has become the single most pervasive element in the production of the city of Caracas. In this sense, the Barrios can be interpreted as a complex, adaptive system, which is permanently recreating itself.

The mass of the Barrio structure follows the concept of the growing house. The growing house is typically made of a concrete frame, and filled with the cheapest local block or brick available. Antenna- like concrete supports rising out o the columns of the last floor are left as provision for a future that will bring materials for expansion. The Barrio houses maintain a microclimate that is far superior to comparable dense structures in the formal city. The pedestrian access and the dependence on the topographic situation, which are currently considered negative characteristics, could be easily reversed into assets. Existing forestation and vegetation can be used to support the microclimate, and additional forms of roof farming should be studied and promoted.

The Caracas case allows us to learn from the improvisation of a city formed by unpredictable agents and uncontested forces. Caracas o ers us an insight on how cities in the future will develop. While the traditional city surrenders to formal modes of operation, the informal sector is gaining terrain. In many ways, it seems that the informal city is presenting us today with the stronger culture, which is also increasingly adopted by the formal part of Caracas.

The Metro Cable in San Agustin, Caracas not only connects the barrio dwellers to the main transportation system but also, and most importantly, creates hubs for social services and spaces for community interaction.

Metro Cable introduces formal infrastructure for the integration of the informal city. The phenomenon of informal urbanization has become the single most extensive element in the production of the city of Caracas. Because the last 30 years of urban development have received limited participation from local politicians, planners, and urbanists, these areas have engaged in bo om-up processes that fostered the integration of the barrios into the formal city through localized social initiatives in accessibility.

The Metro Cable project was conceived as an initiative that presents an alternative proposal in opposition to the government’s one, which consisted of a road network through the barrio, displacing up to a third of inhabitants and disrupting their way of life.

Connected to the Metro Systems of Caracas, the public transit system provided in the “formal” city, the Metro Cable has five additional stations. Two are in the valley and connect directly to the existing public transport system; the other three stations are located along the mountain ridge on sites that meet the demands of community access, established pedestrian circulation routes, and suitability for construction with minimal demolition of existing housing. 

MEGASCALE PLANNING

CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION

TEMPORARY URBANISM

The di erent societal phenomenon is dictating Urban development with all its various mechanisms. In some cases, urban development is extensively dependent on political decisions. In Berlin, the Great- Berlin urban design competition was the trigger for a new era of urban development in the decades following 1910. Urbanists created provocative visions for an emerging World City - Great Berlin.

Like many other cities during the industrialization, Berlin was an overcrowded city with massive problems regarding infrastructure and hygiene. Being delayed in having a World City, after the historically renowned cities like London and Paris but also emerging North American Cities, Germany started creating its own “World city.” The ideas emerged in the second half of the 19th century, but Berlin had to wait until 1908-10 for the Great-Berlin o icial competition that was won by Hermann Jansen and his collaborators proposing a concept named “Within borders of possibilities.”

In 1920, the merge of Berlin and its surrounding was finally decided by the authorities. Shortly after, the rise of modernism and works of Hilbersheimer, Taut, Wagner and many others started shaping the new era of Berlin - until the Nazi regime took over the power. According to Hitler and its main urban planner, Albert Speer, Berlin should become the biggest World Capital, called Germania. As those ideas disappeared in the fire of the Allies’ bombs and the division of the city during the Cold War, Berlin lost its international significance. It became the showcase for architecture and urbanist ideas of the East and West “Blocks,” e.g. best seen in the example of the Stalinallee and Hansaviertel projects.

Berlin, as a city with a highly dynamic development and a broad spectrum of very diverse ideas, never managed to reach and keep the character that was intended by its planners. Much more the city became a laboratory and developed its ever-changing character that created a unique environment. Even today, two decades after the unification and after new significant changes in the socio-economic and political context as well as rigid urban visions about its development, Berlin, through its own mechanisms, still keeps its unrestrainable and wild character. 

After realizing the failures of the modernist city, in West as well as East Berlin during the end of the 1970s and 1980s, di erent initiatives had been started to recover the values of the traditional city. One example is the IBA (International Building Exhibition) that was held in West Berlin from 1984-87. After the German reunification, the city administration started with an extensive campaign of critical “reconstruction” that led to a vivid discourse which still heavily influences the urban development of Berlin today.

Following the fall of the Berlin wall and the immense social change, the dysfunctional and over-zoned modernist city of Berlin, especially its Eastern part, was perceived as outdated and was overwhelmed by problems of deteriorating infrastructure, housing shortage and urban scars on post-wall, post- industrial and other types of abandoned areas. Nevertheless, the lack of identity as the old-new German Capital, it was the main trigger to start re-introducing the urbanity of pre-war Berlin.

The main idea was to define the central role of the city and “invent the contemporary equivalent,” returning to a traditional urbanism of pre-war Berlin. Conservative building typologies and the promotion of the block structure, as well as a “dress-code” for building facades of stone and glass, are witnesses of the idea to cover up the “wild” Berlin and the legacy of its historical layers of a divided city and annihilated Nazi metropolis.

The urban design “general model” (=Leitbild) in the form of the Planwerk Innenstadt from 1999 as an example, endeavors a re-urbanisation and re-vitalisation of the inner-city area, aiming to restore the functionality of the Prussian-era and Weimar Republic-era Berlin. This Planwerk Innenstadt concept, which was supported by the urban planning authorities and the Chief Urban Planner of the City of Berlin, Hans Stimmann, promotes a design theory that returns to traditional urbanism qualities with development schemes that preserve or re-discover the old pa erns as in the example of Leipziger Platz. Besides, this same concept also proposes an introduction of new typologies as seen by the example of Hans Kohlho ’s Alexanderplatz proposal. In both cases, controversies of di erent idea streams and political ideologies still rule and heavily define the urban development of Berlin. 

Temporary use projects are of strategic importance for urban development, as space pioneers open up new development prospects. Urban pioneer practices situate the architectural discipline as an active gesture towards the city spaces, by introducing core cells and generators for triggering new types of urbanism and demonstrating a new understanding of what architecture could be.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the temporary, spontaneous, often illegal use of wasted urban land or empty buildings has been one of the central themes of discussion in the contemporary city of Berlin of the last two decades. Urban contemporary conditions demand an architecture openness to change and transformation, informed by the diversity and complexity of its lived-in spaces.

‘Urban Pioneers’ is used to describe individuals that have taken proactive roles in small-scale environments, being makers, realizing their own ideas and operating within the abundance of space, creative potential and lack of money.

The importance of the urban pioneers for the development of Berlin is part of a long story and tradition with the unplanned, which intensified after the Berlin wall fell.

In 2007, the Senate Department for Urban Development (Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung) Berlin compiled temporary projects as local tactics that have been developed into a manual that supported the argument of a possible urban restructuring based on the creative industry. “Urban Pioneers” is part of the discussion of the branding of the city of Berlin as a creative hub.

Temporary use projects such as the Mobile Kitchen Monument or the Badeschi are some of the successful examples of creative urban projects in Berlin. 

PLANNING THE METROPOLITAN AREA

REDENSIFICATION

CREATING INFORMALITY

 The first railway line in Switzerland, the so called “Spanischbrötlibahn” was inaugurated in 1847 connecting Zurich with Baden. It meant the starting point of the rise of Zurich as the comercial capital of Switzerland. The strong industrialisation pushed by Alfred Escher as the founder of the machine factory “Escher-Wyss” pushed Zurich to grow quickly. In 1893 the city was extended over formerly independent municipalities. In 1934 another round of “Eingemeindungen” took place. The administrative borders of Zurich have not changed since, but nowadays the urban catchment area reaches out way beyond those borders. Another round of “Eingemeindungen” seemed at the time not only politically impossible, but also because wide parts of Switzerland appeared as one urban fabric. This required new ways of thinking of the country’s urban landscape as well as new forms of collaboration between the municipalities. Only roughly fifty years ago, the task of planning the land was identified as a national issue in Switzerland. In 1969 the first national law on spatial planning was elaborated. It said that land has to be managed economically and that national, cantonal and municipal planning authorities have to synchronize their plans. However, nowadays it is not suff icient to synchronize planning activities on the vertical hierarchy of planning authorities; the need of a horizontal synchronization is undisputable. These new forms of collaboration can materialize in associations between municipalities or cantons -that are not designated in the costitution- such as in the “Metropolitanraum Konferenz Zürich” that counts 236 municipalities within eight cantons or the Planungsgruppe Glatt al. But they can also be organized temporary as for example for the idea competition Limmatt al. The competition was organized by an association of the municipalities of the Limmatt al, the cantons Zurich and Aargau, several federal off ices (Bundesämter) and ETH Zurich.Conceptual thinking on the urban landscape of Switzerland as the study of ETH Studio Basel on urban potentials or the proposal for the Glatt al of the “Gruppe Krokodil” fostered public dialog on the future spatial development of the country.

The industrial prosperity in Switzerland brought a continuous population growth and rural migration with itself. In general, urban sprawl has been a critical phenomenon of the last century around the globe. Also, Zurich continues to grow, the authorities critically address this situation and look for new ways of development. By the year 2030, the city government forecasted a population growth by 10% and an increase of 46’500 jobs. Zurich has few undeveloped buildable areas so its growth can be absorbed only through a densification inwards inside existing urban areas.

Re-densification is a process of densifying by adding di erent functions and programs to an already urbanized area. Besides Zurich West, Neu-Oerlikon is Zurich’s most notable example of an extensive conversion of former industrial sites into a living and working district due to the large size of the area that was about to be re-purposed.

When in 1865 the railway line from Zurich to South Germany opened, Oerlikon, by then a village belonging to the still independent municipality Schwamendingen, proliferated as a location for se ling industrial production facilities. Shortly after, the machine factory Oerlikon (MFO) was founded, which became the primary catalyst for the growth of the village. In 1934 Oerlikon was incorporated into Zurich. At that time, a wide area of the district was covered by factories and not accessible to the public. Towards the end of the 1980s, the now internationally operating companies decided to transfer their production to other countries and to abandon the sites in Oerlikon. The derelict and depopulated area needed a new vision. In 1988 the planning process started. In 1992, an urban design competition was launched, and a development concept (=Entwicklungsleitbild) was published in 1994. Besides the existing urban planning policies such as the Kantonaler Richtplan or the BZO (Bau- und Zonenordnung), special building regulations (=Sonderbauvorschriften) needed to be developed by the authorities due to the size of the area and the great level of conversions and intended interventions in the form of new buildings and open spaces. Being criticized for not being urban and dense enough, Oerlikon today continues its development through infrastructural projects (expansion of the train station), conversion of industrial facilities (Hall 622 and Rheinmetall Areal) and by adding new housing and o ice buildings 

 Already in the early days of the Lett en Viaduct, small businesses installed themselves underneath its pillars. In 2003 when the Swiss Railway Company (SBB), as the owner of the lot, planned to renovate the viaduct, all the shacks had to be removed. Subsequent to the renovation, the SBB wanted to benefit from the new popularity of the neighbourhood, gained after clearing of the open drug scene in the ‘90s, and establish a new concept for the space underneath the train tracks. After protests of the adjacent residents who feared the new project could become a “Schickimicki-Meile” the administration of the city of zurich intervened and elaborated in a participatory procedure the concept of the “Viaduktbögen” as spaces for small local brands and a market hall to complete the insuff icient grocery supply in the neighbourhood. “The Rise of the Creative Class” in 2002, it has become an acknowledged fact that the creative industries are a breeding ground for economic growth. Setting up a vivid creative community has since become marketing goal of every major city. But how can these free spaces, that constitute a creative environment, be enhanced? For obvious reasons, laisser faire can not be the policy of a government. Zurich attempts to foster a creative environment by different approaches, from legal facilitations for temporary uses or events in public space for young people under 25 years, over financing plans for smal, local businisses, to subsidised atelier spaces. 

RECOVERING WATERSCPAES

NETWORK OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

MACRO-SCALE HOUSING

The Basin of Mexico City has su ered from periodical transformations until today. From being a lake- side city barely one hundred years ago, today Mexico City is dying of thirst. An enormous visionary project is being planned. It consists of a new lake for Mexico City. This project aims at solving Mexico City’s water problems and returning part of the former lake back to the city.

When the Aztecs founded the city “Tenochtlitlan” in the center of the “Texcoco” lake, they optimized the resources of the lake system and learned to control the overflow with dams. They managed to separate brackish from fresh water and to cultivate crops on artificial islands called “Chinampas.” Already in 1521, this city was an urban agglomeration of almost 1 million inhabitants. The Spanish did not understand the lake system and set out to dry up the basin by digging artificial exits, called the “Nochistongo Cu ing.”

Today, only small parts of the lake remained, since the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico, which houses more than 20 million inhabitants, has been built directly upon the ruins of its ancestors and spread over five dried-up lakes. Mexico City is su ering today from a huge scarcity of water; 37% of the water distributed in the city is lost due to leakage and aging pipes. Due to the irregular distribution and lack of universal connection to the water mains, 20% of the city’s population has no guaranteed access to water. 70% of the needed water is taken from the ground of the basin, and 30% is brought from outside. The over-exploitation of the underground has led the city center to subside by up to 7 meters.

The planned project, “Mexico Ciudad Futura,” proposes the rehydration of the ancient lake, fed by 5% of the city’s discarded water. It promises a sustainable solution for Mexico City’s water system, and it is accompanied by new infrastructure projects, such as an airport, new urban housing and commercial developments, green public areas, educational and sports facilities. 

The public transport system in Mexico City involves two main actors. The transport system in the Federal District, which is operated by the government, and the transport system of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Mexico State, which is covered by a privately organized plan. The recent increasing tra ic congestion in Mexico City motivated the government to re-organize the public transport and find new innovative solutions to alleviate the problems.

Five million citizens spend between three and four hours each day commuting within the metropolitan area of Mexico City. The public transport system is operated by the government of the Mexican Federal District and by several public companies. The metro system, the light rail system, the trolleybus network and the bus network are public-driven transport systems, while the Metrobus is private- public partnership and the “peseros” (collective-buses) and taxis are managed by private companies or individuals.

The “peseros” are used by 55% of the city’s passengers and cover all the routes that are still not covered by the public transport systems. In 2005, the new transport system “Metrobus” opened a new high-capacity rapid transit network. The “Metrobus” replaces two routes covered before by the “peseros”; first, the 20 km long north-south axis known as “Avenida de los Insurgentes,” and second, the east-west axis or “Eje 4 Sur”.

This system was influenced by the “TransMilenio” in Bogota and “Rede Integrada de Transporte” in Curitiba. It consists of several interconnected elevated stations, which in turn, are connected by an exclusive lane only for the express buses. The stations are simultaneously linked to other transport networks, such as the metro.

The “Metrobus” serves up to 400 000 passengers per day. The new lines have proven to reduce the tra ic on the main roads and reduce the delays between the connecting networks. 

 The fast urbanization process of Mexico City -with its 3 million inhabitants- in the 1950s, created an increasing demand of social housing, which gave rise to the production of informal sett lements. The respons to this urgency was the creation of diff erent social housing typologies, which emerged in diff erent time periods with diff erent finance approaches.

The first actions undertaken by the government were a slum clearance and an urban renewal initiative; the social housing block typology was implemented between the 1940s and 1970s. The vertical housing developments and large scale complexes marked the first direct governmental

 In 2000, the Mexican president Vicente Fox introduced a privately-driven social housing development model and promised to build “two million low-income homes” throughout the country. 

 The houses are located at the periphery of Mexico City, without zoning, without commercial, educational and collective space, totally disconnected from public transport network, and no room for growth and transformation. Nevertheless, the inhabitants started to create solutions for their own necessities by organizing and adding basic services, such as markets, grocery stores, bakeries and others to these homogenous satellite cities.

DEVELOPER AS ARCHITECT

POST-OLYMPIC URBANISM

USER-GENERATED URBANISM

The history of the architectural development of Athens can be traced through a multiple-story housing structure called the “Polykatoikia,” literally meaning “multiple houses.” The successive changes in building code between the 1930s and early 21st century had a direct impact on the form of the polykatoikia and the city itself. The private developer was the primary person responsible for the formation of the city.

The Athenian polykatoikia was originally conceived in the 1930s as a multistory apartment building for the Athenian bourgeoisie. The proliferation of this type was supported by the State in the form of a general building regulation and a property law, which directly produced the basic rationale behind the architecture of the polykatoikia. This law facilitated landowners to trade their buildable ground tax- free in exchange for built indoor space, e ectively de-regulating the construction industry. In essence, through the apparatus of the polykatoikia, the project of the city was advanced no longer through top-down master planning, but through the production of abstract legislative frameworks, which materialized in the bo om-up practice of self-building.

The law permi ed a small construction company with low-budget to build on a plot without paying for it, but o ering in exchange part of the resulted space. A direct exchange of services between plot owner and contractor was established. The plot owner would receive in return for his temporary displacement 1 or 2 apartments to own, while the contractor collected profit from the sale of the remaining apartments. Architects were hardly involved in this procedure.

The most important building laws were published in 1929, 1955 and 1985. In between, there have been alterations, but the main module of polykatoikia was defined in three decisive laws 

According to one Olympic bidding manual, in hosting a Summer Games a city needs to prepare: 31 to 38 competition venues and up to 90 training sites for the 28 summer Olympic sports, one or more Olympic Village(s) for housing approximate 15,000 athletes, broadcasting facilities and accommodation for more than 15,000 journalists, at least 40,000 hotel rooms and all kinds of other infrastructure – transport, logistics, telecommunications and entertainment facilities – to support the event. The Olympics represent both urban opportunities and liabilities: an example might be the satisfaction of Olympic requirements in a way that is to the long-term detriment of local development and local needs.

In Athens, major developments took place in the coastal zone, and in several sites around the edge of Athens. This situation led to a major decentralization of the Olympic sites, drawing a ention to the suburban zones and away from the urban core. There were many concerns about the country’s ability to build and maintain such costly projects as the Olympic Village — fears that have proved well- founded. In 2008, the British newspaper The Daily Mail reported that 21 of 22 venues from the games were closed, most of them derelict and covered in gra iti. Athens has essentially become a manual on how not to stage the Olympics.

There are two major impacts of the Olympics on cities: firstly the Olympics have su icient momentum to intervene in the host city’s short- and long-term development activities, placing unparalleled challenges and opportunities in the sphere of urbanization during the process of preparation; secondly the modern Games imply a certain standard of hosting milieu, such that cities need to rearrange their urban fabric and built environment to win the bid as well as to safeguard the success of Olympic events. 

T

The citizens of Athens have not given up on their city. The young architects, artists, and activists have started to seek out and highlight the positive forces that currently are emerging from the crisis and to delineate a be er future for Athens. The evolving traditions of the urban past, the fragmentation of public space, and the collapse of street life are issues recently being tackled by multiple grassroots initiatives in the form of small-scale, user-generated, architectural solutions.

Recent a empts to design public space are influenced by self-managed parks, occupation/squa ing movements, and alternative economy networks. The Self-Managed Park was created in March 2009, when hundreds of residents from the Exarcheia area and other neighborhoods decided to take over a former parking lot, transforming it into a green area, a place for playing and encounters with others.

These new proposals, created by the users and the local community, investigate new strategies for direct citizen participation; new programs for meetings and open assemblies, and new models of production, such as the formation of urban plantations, are just a few examples of the direct citizen participation. The city has also, through its crisis, opened up opportunities for small-scale interventions. The empty buildings and newly opened lots, due to the collapse of buildings in disrepair, have provided opportunities for reimagining space.

The Athens financial crisis hit the city hard, its center most of all. Phenomena indicating a disruption of the social web have become increasingly more severe and lead to urban decay, homelessness, drug problems, etc.

However, these recent events are shaping a particular dynamic in the city. Conditions have been created in Athens at this time to redefine the priorities of architectural design. The current social and economic crisis brings to the forefront new ways of viewing the role of architecture, separated from professional opportunism and the standards of well-being of the previous decade 

RE-ACTIVATING THE CITY 

TURBO URBANISM 

RE-ACTIVATING THE CITY 

Extreme circumstances in cities mirror themselves on the urban spaces. In the time of the conflict in Sarajevo, the city was objected to the extensive destruction by heavy weapons called “urbicide” but also by local people in search for survival. Sarajevo’s infrastructure broke down, and the city turned into a “ruralized“ city, with its urban fabric largely dissolved. It can be compared to de-industrialized shrinking cities of the “US rust-belt” or the Ruhrgebiet in Germany.

In the traumatic experience of ge ing killed in the open space, exposed to snipers and bombs, issues like spontaneous graveyards in parks or fear of land mines changed the perception of people about their city. They were forced to cut hundreds of thousands of trees for fuel. Sarajevo’s streets became sniper alleys, and public open spaces were turned into graveyards. Besides those “landscapes of death,” the citizens in their ba le for survival cut down hundreds of thousands of urban trees for fuel and re-activated or rediscovered local resources and ecosystems; water was taken from forgo en and sealed streams, gardens and other open spaces were turned into urban agricultural sites.

The improvised land uses created a laboratory for various temporary but also new permanent functions. Sarajevo’s landscape showed a strong dynamics due to the creativity and self-organisation of the citizens, proving that even “ordinary” places can receive di erent and “unexpected” functions.

The example of how a modernist park can be turned into an agricultural field or a local stream into a water source changed the picture of the citizens about their city. Such phenomena also show the high adaptivity of urban areas and their potential multi-functionalities. The possibility of a change of urban land uses, and the new mindset of citizens about it can be used as crucial information for designers and planners to create flexible scenarios for urban spaces, having in mind the transformative potential of urban areas 

Until 1992, Sarajevo was a socialist city with a highly autocratic and centralized planning regulations. At the end of the war, Sarajevo not only woke up from the nightmare as an annihilated and divided city with tens of thousands of war refugees, but it also had to face a de-facto legal vacuum regarding urban planning regulations. These regulations resulted from the sudden transformation of the economic and political system from communism to a capitalist democracy.

Following the end of the communist regime and the war, new identities materialized in the urban space. New ideas of capitalism and the re-discovered value of religion created new ethnic and religious identities, which required new architectures. Suddenly, the existing mono-functional modernist urban fabric of a socialist society was faced with the need to introduce new functions. In the period during the reconstruction and rebuilding processes, very diverse actors influenced the urban image.

These developments introduced new “invasive” typologies to the city-making processes of Sarajevo, having in mind that the post-socialist planning city authorities have less executive power to enforce building laws and planning regulations. On the cost side, they have produced the overbuilding of green space, an increase in personal tra ic and chronic environmental concerns.

Iconic, sacred buildings as representations of values of a post-communist society, or investor- driven developments of the capitalist economy, resulted in an aggressive overproduction of new architectures, heavily densifying the urban fabric. For instance, in Sarajevo’s socialist modernist neighborhoods of Alipasino Polje and Marijin Dvor, a dramatic level of occupation of green open spaces by a vivid construction of generic or retro-stylish commercial buildings, low-end housing or large sacred buildings, occurred. These mechanisms increased the land value having a significant impact on surrounding communities. One of the consequences is a demographic shift in inhabitants who are forced to move out, mostly due to new economic conditions defined as “gentrification.” 

Post-war Sarajevo missed the opportunity to use its experience with wartime urban transformations formalized and integrated into new urban development plans. Most of the modernist buildings and landscapes that were built in the boom period during socialism are still underused or empty and require major design-based adaptations and reprogramming. The social and cultural life still su ers from the post-war stasis and mostly takes place informally inside such structures. As the most valuable local resource, they require amplification through contextualized design.

The U-TT team conducted a critical assessment of the inherent problems and potentials of the city, aiming to construct a unique conceptual framework within which new urban typologies and prototypes can be proposed. In this process, the important cultural and green infrastructural axis were identified as the main new organizational forces that are to drive a transformation of the built environment of contemporary Sarajevo. The longitudinal cultural axis runs along the main river valley including all the eras of Sarajevo’s historical development. The green transversal axis stretches from a place north of the Olympic sports complex, bridges the city centre and continues southward along the slopes of the Olympic Mountains.

At the intersection of the axis lies the government and museum quarter, Marijin Dvor, master planned in the 1950s as a socialist modernist urban extension by Juraj Neidhardt, a collaborator of Le Corbusier in the 1930s. The pilot design intervention developed by U-TT focused on the integrated regeneration and reactivation strategy for the deteriorating modernist building built in 1965 that hosts the National Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as its surrounding landscapes. The museum was exposed to major war destruction as well as post-war decay due to lack of government funding dedicated to cultural institutions.

U-TT proposed a strategy for the museum including new spaces of engagement and interaction around the building. The proposal aims to activate the contested site, bringing back the public function to the forefront by creating a meeting place for exchange, education, and recreation. The currently characterless landscape around the Museum will be transformed into a vivid public hub with functions that include sports facilities, urban gardening, playgrounds, and a temporary event space. 

MASTERPLANNING SEGREGATION

DEVELOPMENT THROUGH DISTRIBUTION

COOPERATION AND DIALOGUE

Cape Town o ers one of the most radical examples of the regulated right to centrality. Through the design and management of space by distance and accessibility, Cape Town developed a fraught relationship with its periphery.

Racial distribution in Cape Town is fairly stable and reflects the apartheid legacy. From the beginning of the 20th century, di erent se lements for particular ethnic groups, with increasing distances from the center, where founded over time.

Starting 1923, the “Native Urban Areas Act” required all local urban authorities to establish separate residences for ‘Black African’ and to exercise complete control over immigration into these areas. They also prohibited property rights to Black Africans because they were not permanent urban residents.

The “Slums Act” of 1934, gave the Department of Health sweeping powers to expropriate what they deemed to present a health risk. Slum owners would be served notices to repair their property, reduce the number of residents or face having the occupants evacuated. (1935 - 45)

In 1948 the Reunited National Party won the national elections and confirmed Daniel Malan as Prime Minister. Their success was based on the platform of appeasing White South Africans, who felt threatened by the black political aspirations and were dissatisfied with domestic and economic problems after World War II. Nationalists pledged to implement a policy of strict racial segregation in all spheres of living - “apartheid” (“apartness” or “separation”).

Apartheid Planning set about projecting the ideals of apartheid over the political territory and became the o icial urban structural policy of South Africa Government 1948 - 1994. It took di erent forms but relied principally on the segregation of space and access based on a hierarchical racial classification. This system was progressively refined to service the needs of the ruling elite and the national, international economy. 

The second tool highlights the post-apartheid period in Cape Town’s city planning. After 1994, the government started to gradually dissolve its total control and make way for a more integrative approach, where people could have their right to the city.

The aim was to link economic growth with redistribution and reconciliation and address inequalities in housing, health, tenure, education and service provisions (water, electricity). This approach is first encapsulated in the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) and reinforced in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the Housing Act. This concept was manifested in its urban form as free housing units with access to water and electricity.

The RDP promise was for 200’000 - 300’000 houses to be built a year with a minimum of one million low-cost houses to be constructed within five years and after ten years meet the backlog. Beneficiaries needed to be married or have financial dependents, earn less than 3500 RND (about 300 $) and not have received any other housing benefits. The delivery method was predominantly done through private sector developers who identified land and implemented projects drawing from the capital subsidy.

The strategy had three key points: distribute private property to foster productive investment, create home ownership to encourage the establishment of a middle class and ensure a strong voter base.

Twenty years later, the promise takes on extreme proportions with 350’000 houses in the backlog in Cape Town alone. Surveys show that some beneficiaries sell them illegally and move back into a shack. The shacks are either located in the back of the lot on which the RDP house sits or in another informal se lement. This relocation makes a lot more economic sense for the beneficiaries than living in the RDP house because the utility costs are often more than they can a ord.

The size of each house was too small and the quality poor due to profiteering. Developers were complaining that the amount of subsidy was insu icient. These results, together with monopoly and corruption in the construction process and lack of new territory are just some of the problems that occurred with this ambitious housing program. 

In 2004 the National Department of Housing released a new policy document for the development of sustainable human settlements known as “Breaking New Ground” (BNG).

This document comprised a major paradigm shift in how housing is delivered and subsidies are allocated. It required constructing all new housing projects to be located close to amenities and planned in a comprehensive manner that incorporates access to infrastructure services and social and economic facilities. In addition, it set out different options for tenure security and diverse housing typologies based on the demands of individual households.

The focus shifted towards working in-situ rather than relocating people, new measures for acquisition and rehabilitation of well located land, flexibility in layout planning, participation in decision making and planning and new measures for service provision.

One of the bottom-up pilot initiatives on the micro scale is ‘Empower Shack’. Through design and organisational models the project aims to upgrade the BT-Section informal settlement through the development, implementation, and evaluation of four core components: a light weight, two-story housing prototype; a participatory spatial planning

Landmark buildings and experimental construction are transforming the Netherlands’ second largest city into a world-class destination for architectural innovation, outstripping other European centres and turning Amsterdam into “the city of the past”.

In addition, Rotterdam has also established itself as a hub for new building technologies, home to studios experimenting with floating architecture, robotic construction, wind power, lighting innovation, 3D printing, etc.

All this despite having been one of the most intensively bombed cities during the Second World War, when most of the city centre was reduced to rubble.

So unlike Amsterdam or The Hague, there is very litt le old architecture to preserve and respect in Rotterdam. It is this lack of historical context that has transformed the city into a testing ground for new building styles.

In conclusion Rotterdam has become a global epicenter for architecture. Grounded in urban renewal projects and city-wide efforts to transform the urban fabric, Rott erdam’s cultural development plans helped to create the largest commercial port in the world, as well as a thriving economy.

GENERATING SUBURBIA 

SHRINKING CITY 

ACTIVE INFILL 

Suburbanization generated a new mode of urbanism that pushed the growth of the city to the edges, to the periphery – dramatically redefining Detroit and the American Landscape. The production of new technologies, typologies, available modes of transportation, communication, and distribution together began to form what Robert Fishman would call new “Networks of Decentralization.”(1)

Suburbanization through these “Networks of Decentralization” will be understood here as a fundamental shift from the old lines and nodes of communication into these new systems; into a new, often autonomous fabric made possible at the urban edge. It has also contributed to the condition of stagnation in the urban core of Detroit.

As Suburbanization (a concept already well-understood as far back as the eighteenth century) gained momentum in the United States in the early and mid-twentieth century, the parallel desires for open space and cheap land took on an extreme quality. This separation, or exodus, from the city center to the outskirts, created a massive regional shift, radically restructuring the relationship between the periphery and the core.(2) This phenomenon was described succinctly by Lewis Mumford as “urbanization at any point in a region.”(3)

Suburbanization in Detroit was not an inevitable development along a singular and linear urban evolution; it was the result of parallel developments occurring simultaneously (automobile, new transportation networks, desire and availability of open space, new typologies of living and manufacturing). As these reached critical points in their progress, they could be combined to promote growth away from the core (ironically, the same processes and developments that had previously built Detroit also produced the process of urban decline). As a result of these contemporary tools of decentralization, Detroit had lost its density and resources. 

Detroit operated in what was once known as the American Manufacturing Belt, a large region that contained several cities as transportation and production hubs.(1) Many of these cities were built up around industry, most notably the automobile industry, along and near the Great Lakes and in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic States.

Now, after the region has endured industrial decline during the 1970s, this area is simply referred to as the Rust Belt, adopting its new name from the rusty shells that remain of the abandoned factories.(2)

The massive infrastructure built during the previous decades, combined with a sharp decline in and decentralization of manufacturing, meant that now entire regions would have to address these abandoned infrastructures and constructions. The Midwest was confronted with a situation of extreme loss, but also, paradoxically, an absurd overabundance.

“Whether in the USA, Britain, or Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, or China: everywhere, cities are shrinking. (...) Shrunken cities contradict the image, familiar since the Industrial Revolution, of the ‘boomtown,’ a big city characterized by constant economic and demographic growth.”(3) The shrinking city defines the phenomena of population decrease and emptying of city areas.

After the war, the “American Dream” and life in the suburbs became a larger reality. The dream of open space and cheap land for a single-family home was a reality for many. However, if we step out of the periphery and back to the core, we see a systematic erasure of the city, its services, and urban quality.

Detroit is the only city in the United States that has reached a population of 1,000,000 only to fall back below that milestone number. As a shrinking city, Detroit is defined as much by its erasure, decay, or loss - along with inherent new potentials - as it is by its growth.(4)

Shrinking cities spur a reconsideration not only of traditional ideas of the European city but also of the future development of urban worlds.(5)