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Urban design in action
Conference reports Urban design in action Seventh International Conference on Urban Design, sponsored for Urban Design in cooperation with the City of Chicago Planning, Chicago, IL, 23-26 October 1985 These urban design conferences are in one respect unique. They are always working conferences. Each conference is built around the central theme that urban design is an interdisciplinary activity in which the only constant is continuous change. The accent is on action and the format is simple. Conferences rely on theoretic statements by nationally recognized practitioners, and on case studies of urban design in action which the conferences debate. The feature of each meeting is a studio. Conferences produce an actual urban design - which is left behind as a gift to the host city. In Chicago there were two studios. One concerned a historic but largely low-income black neighbourhood, the Gap, sandwiched between the Illionois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus on the east and a higher-income lakeshore development on the west. The other was the Chicago river as it snakes its sewerlike course between industries from Lake Michigan southwards through the city. Team leaders were two nationally known Chicago architects, Stanley Tigerman and Lawrence Booth. Working intensely through the afternoon and night of the 24 October, each studio developed four solutions and presented them to a plenary session the following morning. A prescription for inevitable superficiality? Perhaps.
Debate Well in advance background materials are prepared by city agencies and citizen meetings are held. On the first afternoon of the studio, citizens, government officials, councilmen and students join with conferees to elucidate and debate the issues and exchange ideas about creative directions to be
CITIES February 1986
by the Institute Department of
pursued in the studio. And the conferees - architects, planners, sociologists, economists and political scientists from all over the world - find themselves debating intense local issues with people whose city it is. After three or four hours of this, design briefs are defined, teams are formed and designing and drawing begins. The plenary session the following morning then becomes the second major debate, this time focusing on the practicality of the solutions themselves. The results predictably turn out to be alive, inventive and rich, capturing at once the spirit of excitement and spontaneity that pervades the studios - but also the wisdom and experience of some of the world’s most accomplished urban designers, for whom this annual international conference is rapidly becoming one of the main professional events of the year. I spoke afterwards with several people who live in the Gap, and also with three city councilmen. They felt that for the first time the potential of the neighbourhood has been realized and clear directions for public-private investment has been formulated. And professionals on all sides agreed that studios of this kind in which users, politicians, bankers and others participate are clearly the way that urban design and planning should be done. The conferences produced theoretic challenges of potential magnitude. Corrine Gilb, until recently Detroit’s director of planning, showed how big industry is fragmenting and diversifying. For example General Motors, Detroit’s largest industry, assembles cars from components made in plants dispersed not only throughout the USA but as far afield as Korea, Mexico and other countries, and has recently become so diversified that steelmaking is now less than 25% of its
traditional activity. These hegemonies are held together by rapid advances in computerization and electronic communications. Blue collar employment and the traditional power of the unions are being undermined by the twin forces of cheap foreign labour and robotics. How do industrial cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago, with high unemployment and segregated black populations lacking technological skills, fight back and regain a stable employment base? And failing the re-establishment of a blue collar employment base, what is the future physical, economic, social and cultural form of these cities as we inherit them today? Anthony Downs, a nationally renowned economist from the Brookings Institute, addressed an urgent component of the same problem, the inability of cities to finance capital projects (housing, parks, road and sewer repairs, schools and health facilities) in low-income neighbourhoods from budgets that are every day becoming slimmer due to federal cutbacks and inflation. Inevitably, he said, more of the burden has to be borne by private developers who benefit from public capital programmes in more affluent parts of the city.
Contracts One way he suggested was through public-private contracts under which the city would agree to speed up the approvals process, thus materially cutting the developer’s front-end costs, in exchange for fees which would then be applied to capital budgets in other parts of the city. Many people I discussed this idea with afterwards thought it dangerously close to bribery, and open to abuse. A better solution might be to treat those public works normally associated with large developments (parking structures, plazas, street improvements, utilities, etc) as public investments in the projects’ success, and encourage private sector investors to negotiate a percentage of public ownership with the city, permitting the public sector to derive an annual income from the projects over and above the increase of tax base, thus producing an annual cash flow that can then be directed to
81
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reports
capital projects in other parts of the city. One seductive presentation related art to the city in a novel way. Starting with abstract expressionist colour-field paintings by Still, Pollock, de Kooning, and Sam Francis, artist Chapman Kelley showed urban parks which he had densely seeded with carefully
articulated wild flowers. When they all bloomed at once, huge areas are transformed into a riot of intense blobs and strands in yellows, whites, reds, blues, magenta and greens. David Lewis Urban Design Associates Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Shelter for the poor Shelter, Services and the Urban Poor University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, Cardiff, 3-6 September 1985
In April 1985, a decision was taken by a number of university and polytechnic planning department and other institutions concerned with planning and development in the Third World (including the Commonwealth Association of Planners and the Association of Consultant Planners in the UK) to establish a series of annual seminars to discuss the common problems, and exchange views and experiences. The Department of Town Planning at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology acted as host to the first seminar (1985) and the theme chosen was ‘Shelter, Services and the Urban Poor’. The seminar was attended by more than 80 delegates from 30 countries representing a wide range of disciplines and institutions. In the keynote paper, Professor G.B. Dix suggested that, ‘all those who are in any way involved in the Third World, with the “south” of the Brandt report, or indeed with the wider aspects of human welfare anywhere, must be increasingly concerned about the generally deteriorating housing situation, in the face of an ever-increasing global need for shelter’. The seminar programme included seven discursive and analytical papers, seven case studies, and two open sessions. It was inevitable that the programme would include contributions anticipating the 1987 International Year of Shelter for the Homeless; namely two papers by John Cox, former Director of IYSH, and Neil McIntosh, Chairman of the IYSH Trust UK, who described 1987 as ‘a year of opportunity’. The remaining papers dealt with a wide range of
82
topics: the financing and affordability of shelter (Roger Tym); urban services and infrastructure for shelter (John Kirke); standards and specifications for human settlements (Professor Saad Yahya); and manpower, training and research for human settlements (Professor M.J. Bruton). The case studies were equally varied in their range and scale; they included such diverse topics as postindependence shelter policies in Zimbabwe (Dr Naisan Mutizwa-Mangiza), ‘low-cost housing provision and improvements in Jordan (David Walton) and Ismailia, Egypt (I. Green). There was also a review of the Housing Bye-Law Study in Kenya (Tony Hurrell). Such presentations generated discussions that posed delicate problems for the Chairman Harold Lewis. In the evaluation of the case studies, Alan Turner identified a number of issues facing planners and demanding special Third World solutions, ranging from legislation, regulations and standards to the role of the consultants. The solutions varied according to the case studies examined, highlighting the fact that there is no single universal solution valid for all situations.
‘Relative
affluence’
In contrast, Ho Khong Ming described a different situation relating to shelter and services policies in Malaysia referring to Malaysia as one of those fortunate countries where the number of people actually without a roof over their heads is so miniscule that the problem can be regarded as nonexistent. This was attributed to ‘relative affluence’ and ‘policies with re-
gard to housing and property development’, which were described in some detail. A particular feature of the seminar was the ‘Open Session’ in which about a dozen contributions were presented succinctly and efficiently, the participants being restricted to 15 minutes each; they dealt with housing issues in Zambia (Carole Rakodi), Bangladesh (Md. T. Shakur) and Indonesia (Eko Budihardjo), as well as subjects such as development control (S.M. Romaya) and an introduction on the work of the Habitat International Council by its president David Hall. They included a host of cameos of relevant topics which could not be covered by the main papers, and illustrated the complex and multifarious aspects of shelter and human settlements. In the final session, Ewart Parkinson, past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, illustrated the gravity of the situation with some basic statistics: ‘Last year 80 million people were added to the world’s population. Seventy-five million were in developing countries. In the previous year, the world’s GNP grew by over $200 billion. About $20 billion of that was in developing countries’. These figures might be open to question, but the indications of their underlying trend is generally accepted: the developing world is growing at a faster rate than the developed world, but its share of the economic growth is very small.
Optimistic Despite this, the seminar tended to end on an optimistic note. The challenge cannot be met by western-style housing policies, but many of the new approaches to housing and the provision of services are beginning to pay off and they relate specifically to the Third World. Perhaps these may by summarized in two basic criteria: the first is self-reliance in the provision of shelter, and the second relates to appropriate shelter for the prevailing social, economic and technical situation. The delegates were still concerned about the future. In technical terms, they were, as Geoff Payne put it, ‘concerned with how to translate
CITIES February 1986
Debate Well in advance background materials are prepared by city agencies and citizen meetings are held. On the first afternoon of the studio, citizens, government officials, councilmen and students join with conferees to elucidate and debate the issues and exchange ideas about creative directions to be
CITIES February 1986
by the Institute Department of
pursued in the studio. And the conferees - architects, planners, sociologists, economists and political scientists from all over the world - find themselves debating intense local issues with people whose city it is. After three or four hours of this, design briefs are defined, teams are formed and designing and drawing begins. The plenary session the following morning then becomes the second major debate, this time focusing on the practicality of the solutions themselves. The results predictably turn out to be alive, inventive and rich, capturing at once the spirit of excitement and spontaneity that pervades the studios - but also the wisdom and experience of some of the world’s most accomplished urban designers, for whom this annual international conference is rapidly becoming one of the main professional events of the year. I spoke afterwards with several people who live in the Gap, and also with three city councilmen. They felt that for the first time the potential of the neighbourhood has been realized and clear directions for public-private investment has been formulated. And professionals on all sides agreed that studios of this kind in which users, politicians, bankers and others participate are clearly the way that urban design and planning should be done. The conferences produced theoretic challenges of potential magnitude. Corrine Gilb, until recently Detroit’s director of planning, showed how big industry is fragmenting and diversifying. For example General Motors, Detroit’s largest industry, assembles cars from components made in plants dispersed not only throughout the USA but as far afield as Korea, Mexico and other countries, and has recently become so diversified that steelmaking is now less than 25% of its
traditional activity. These hegemonies are held together by rapid advances in computerization and electronic communications. Blue collar employment and the traditional power of the unions are being undermined by the twin forces of cheap foreign labour and robotics. How do industrial cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago, with high unemployment and segregated black populations lacking technological skills, fight back and regain a stable employment base? And failing the re-establishment of a blue collar employment base, what is the future physical, economic, social and cultural form of these cities as we inherit them today? Anthony Downs, a nationally renowned economist from the Brookings Institute, addressed an urgent component of the same problem, the inability of cities to finance capital projects (housing, parks, road and sewer repairs, schools and health facilities) in low-income neighbourhoods from budgets that are every day becoming slimmer due to federal cutbacks and inflation. Inevitably, he said, more of the burden has to be borne by private developers who benefit from public capital programmes in more affluent parts of the city.
Contracts One way he suggested was through public-private contracts under which the city would agree to speed up the approvals process, thus materially cutting the developer’s front-end costs, in exchange for fees which would then be applied to capital budgets in other parts of the city. Many people I discussed this idea with afterwards thought it dangerously close to bribery, and open to abuse. A better solution might be to treat those public works normally associated with large developments (parking structures, plazas, street improvements, utilities, etc) as public investments in the projects’ success, and encourage private sector investors to negotiate a percentage of public ownership with the city, permitting the public sector to derive an annual income from the projects over and above the increase of tax base, thus producing an annual cash flow that can then be directed to
81
Conference
reports
capital projects in other parts of the city. One seductive presentation related art to the city in a novel way. Starting with abstract expressionist colour-field paintings by Still, Pollock, de Kooning, and Sam Francis, artist Chapman Kelley showed urban parks which he had densely seeded with carefully
articulated wild flowers. When they all bloomed at once, huge areas are transformed into a riot of intense blobs and strands in yellows, whites, reds, blues, magenta and greens. David Lewis Urban Design Associates Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Shelter for the poor Shelter, Services and the Urban Poor University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, Cardiff, 3-6 September 1985
In April 1985, a decision was taken by a number of university and polytechnic planning department and other institutions concerned with planning and development in the Third World (including the Commonwealth Association of Planners and the Association of Consultant Planners in the UK) to establish a series of annual seminars to discuss the common problems, and exchange views and experiences. The Department of Town Planning at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology acted as host to the first seminar (1985) and the theme chosen was ‘Shelter, Services and the Urban Poor’. The seminar was attended by more than 80 delegates from 30 countries representing a wide range of disciplines and institutions. In the keynote paper, Professor G.B. Dix suggested that, ‘all those who are in any way involved in the Third World, with the “south” of the Brandt report, or indeed with the wider aspects of human welfare anywhere, must be increasingly concerned about the generally deteriorating housing situation, in the face of an ever-increasing global need for shelter’. The seminar programme included seven discursive and analytical papers, seven case studies, and two open sessions. It was inevitable that the programme would include contributions anticipating the 1987 International Year of Shelter for the Homeless; namely two papers by John Cox, former Director of IYSH, and Neil McIntosh, Chairman of the IYSH Trust UK, who described 1987 as ‘a year of opportunity’. The remaining papers dealt with a wide range of
82
topics: the financing and affordability of shelter (Roger Tym); urban services and infrastructure for shelter (John Kirke); standards and specifications for human settlements (Professor Saad Yahya); and manpower, training and research for human settlements (Professor M.J. Bruton). The case studies were equally varied in their range and scale; they included such diverse topics as postindependence shelter policies in Zimbabwe (Dr Naisan Mutizwa-Mangiza), ‘low-cost housing provision and improvements in Jordan (David Walton) and Ismailia, Egypt (I. Green). There was also a review of the Housing Bye-Law Study in Kenya (Tony Hurrell). Such presentations generated discussions that posed delicate problems for the Chairman Harold Lewis. In the evaluation of the case studies, Alan Turner identified a number of issues facing planners and demanding special Third World solutions, ranging from legislation, regulations and standards to the role of the consultants. The solutions varied according to the case studies examined, highlighting the fact that there is no single universal solution valid for all situations.
‘Relative
affluence’
In contrast, Ho Khong Ming described a different situation relating to shelter and services policies in Malaysia referring to Malaysia as one of those fortunate countries where the number of people actually without a roof over their heads is so miniscule that the problem can be regarded as nonexistent. This was attributed to ‘relative affluence’ and ‘policies with re-
gard to housing and property development’, which were described in some detail. A particular feature of the seminar was the ‘Open Session’ in which about a dozen contributions were presented succinctly and efficiently, the participants being restricted to 15 minutes each; they dealt with housing issues in Zambia (Carole Rakodi), Bangladesh (Md. T. Shakur) and Indonesia (Eko Budihardjo), as well as subjects such as development control (S.M. Romaya) and an introduction on the work of the Habitat International Council by its president David Hall. They included a host of cameos of relevant topics which could not be covered by the main papers, and illustrated the complex and multifarious aspects of shelter and human settlements. In the final session, Ewart Parkinson, past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, illustrated the gravity of the situation with some basic statistics: ‘Last year 80 million people were added to the world’s population. Seventy-five million were in developing countries. In the previous year, the world’s GNP grew by over $200 billion. About $20 billion of that was in developing countries’. These figures might be open to question, but the indications of their underlying trend is generally accepted: the developing world is growing at a faster rate than the developed world, but its share of the economic growth is very small.
Optimistic Despite this, the seminar tended to end on an optimistic note. The challenge cannot be met by western-style housing policies, but many of the new approaches to housing and the provision of services are beginning to pay off and they relate specifically to the Third World. Perhaps these may by summarized in two basic criteria: the first is self-reliance in the provision of shelter, and the second relates to appropriate shelter for the prevailing social, economic and technical situation. The delegates were still concerned about the future. In technical terms, they were, as Geoff Payne put it, ‘concerned with how to translate
CITIES February 1986