policy sprawl* hukou* migration to townships and villages hukou* migration to urban periphery INFRASPRAWL DCF Sprawl Derivatives population growth hukou* reforms urban - rural income gap growth M.U.D - Market-driven Unitentional Development development zones* rural income growth urban income growth TVE* growth, dispersed development in townships and villages TRANSSPRAWL non-hukou migration rollover* POLICYSPRAWL remittances remittances semi urbanized villages*, floating villages* SCATTERED URBAN EXPANSION GDP growth = conversion* MONOSPRAWL policy sprawl* hukou* migration to townships and villages hukou* migration to urban periphery rural labour surplus urban population growth population growth hukou* reforms augmenting urban - rural income gap uneven landreforms development zones* rural income growth urban income growth brickification*, upgrade* TVE* growth, dispersed development in townships and villages xiao kang* society, suburban upgrade*, doorstep urbanization* footprint per capita growth non-hukou migration rollover* employment in TVEs* remittances remittances semi urbanized villages*, floating villages* SCATTERED URBAN EXPANSION GDP growth growth service space and infrastructure = conversion* SPEEDSPRAWL ॡቝѐ നތ "ࡀӳ -LQ\QVO LM[QOV" 6M^QTTM 5IZ[ ށ߄වສၨƌ How To Be Holistic? ؎ഺ ฆӳ൮ࠕ߽ ൮Ӎߋ࿄ा نഺဌഺ ࠕԫനേഺ ᆦҭഺ ݝӸഺ ֍၉ഺ
DCF special issue Urban China #35: How to be holistic? 花好四万亿!
Edited by Neville Mars, with contributions by the DCF and numerous international designers and institutes.
China, like so many countries, is adopting a stimulus package. An impressive 4.2 Trillion RMB has been allocated to keep the economy moving at a Chinese pace. But unlike so many Western nations struggling to determine how the money should be spent, China has a stringent to-do list with a strong urban focus. Nation building through city building. Yet it remains unclear how the individual bullets on this list - infrastructure, housing, environment, etc. - should relate to each other. Yet a ‘better city’ can only be the result of an integrated vision connecting all the scales of design. After thirty years of accelerated growth a top-down megaproject approach of crude answers can no longer suffice. This special issue of Urban China examines the contradictory choices China faces, mapping out an holistic approach from policies to individual people.
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Transcript
policy sprawl*
hukou* migration to townships
and villages
hukou* migration to urban
periphery
INFRASPRAWLDCF Sprawl
Derivatives
population growth
hukou* reforms
urban - rural income gap growth
M.U.D - Market-driven Unitentional Development
development zones*
rural income growth
urban income growth
TVE* growth, dispersed development
in townships and villages
TRANSSPRAWL
non-hukou migration
rollover*
POLICYSPRAWL
remittances
remittances
semi urbanized villages*, floating villages*
SCATTERED URBAN EXPANSION
GDP growth
= conversion*
MONOSPRAWL
policy sprawl*
hukou* migration to townships
and villages
hukou* migration to urban
periphery
rural labour surplusurban population
growth
population growth
hukou* reforms
augmenting urban - rural income gap
uneven landreforms
development zones*
rural income growth
urban income growth
brickification*, upgrade*
TVE* growth, dispersed development
in townships and villages
xiao kang* society, suburban upgrade*,
doorstep urbanization*
footprint per capita
growth
non-hukou migration
rollover*
employment in TVEs*
remittances
remittances
semi urbanized villages*, floating villages*
SCATTERED URBAN EXPANSION
GDP growth
growth service space and
infrastructure
= conversion*
SPEEDSPRAWL
How To Be Holistic?
后奥林匹克北京/廖维武+黄颂威+余启昌 - P54
post-Olympic Beijing, CUHK
Laurence LIAUW+ Ray WONG + Andrew YU
"新兴都市”麻醉品/陈威廉与张婷婷- P60
Urban Narcotics in Boomtown China
William TAN and Ting-Ting ZHANG
动态城市基金会 - P22~51
DCF
阿德里安·霍恩斯比 - P25
Adrian HORNSBY
何新城
Neville MARS
水晶石空间设计实验室 - p39,56
Crystal Urban Creation
光明Smart-city - 林纯正 - P50
Guangming Smart-city /CJ LIM
梦魇体/Speedism - P16
Doomdouch/Speedism 超级卫星城/周静 - P38
Super Satellites/ Jing ZHOU和谐社会/王帷泽+王帷新 - P49+P53+P67
A Harmonious Society/Richard Wei-Tse WANG
+Stephen Wei-Hsin WANG
深圳中心区皇岗片区改造规划/杜娟 - P53Central Huanggang RedevelopmentJuan Du
后上海世博方案/沃瑞伯斯工作室设计团队 - P54Post-Shanghai Expo ProposalsAA School, Tom Verebes
转型中的城市类型/汤姆•沃瑞伯斯工作室- P56
Urban Typologies in Transformation
Tom VEREBES, OCEAN.CN // AADRL
中国城市编码/泽纳尔/霍克工作室- P56
CODING URBAN CHINA
ZELLNERPLUS / HOUCK Studio
从“极大”到“米塔”/哥伦比亚大学建筑研究院- P58 Mega to Meta China Lab, Columbia University
A post-heroic scenario for the Chinese Dream.A post-heroic scenario against the Chinese Dream.A post-heroic magic ingredient to maintain the Chinese Dream.
Chinese future = brightSPEEDISM peeks behind the D*R*E*A*M panorama, where the D*R*E*A*M will be 100% real and nothing ever happens. Behind that stage there lurks a content Doom, the twin to a sad dream bubble waiting to burst. Doom Dough is the resulting urban landscape revealed in 8+1 steps that take us deeper into a happy future where Doom and Dream become one...
I : niPod tower [holy holism], la tour idéale; height 250m, 8+1 floors.II : Mama-Papa tower [be careful! the post-orgasmic urban orgy is so permanent]; height 375m, 51+62 floors.III : Jiao Zi tower [growing to become hole]; height 348m, 100 floors.IV : Caged tower [all we need is fear]; height 230m, 75000m² retail surface V : CMYK Tower [render reality in a grey loop]; height 8+1Gb RAM.VI : Partyworld tower [there is only you!]; height 385m, 8+1 dance floor.VII : Jade tomb [big business is dead, long live big business]; height 227m, 56 floors.VIII : P.I.G [Post-Intuitive Goo]; body mass index 8.8+1.
Market capitalism in its purest form received a deathblow in 2008. Not because of the global economic melt-down, but because of the sudden erosion of its underlying ideology. Alan Greenspan, the oracle of the free market, conceded incompetence: “The idea of the last forty years, that the markets were best to regulate themselves was flawed [...] some of the critical pillars underlying market competition arguably, have failed”.
In the months that followed stimulus packages took the world by storm. Words like bailout were uttered by the starkest economic conservatives, while American liberals suddenly opposed the idea of government spending fearing it might just line the pockets of those who corrupted the system in the first place. The world’s political financial logic turned upside down. The contradictions in the economic belief system brutally revealed themselves in sheer apathy. Billions of dollars were
allocated to rescue the economy, but no clear objective to spend
和谐二元体Harmonizing the Hybrid 文/何新城Text/Neville MARS
16 17
WarningsMuch critique has also been raised about China’s 4.2 trillion RMB stimulus package. It might be too impulsive, difficult to implement and indeed too expensive at a time of a real-estate slow-down for local governments to cough up 3/4 of the sum. However, assuming the effectiveness of this measure, there is a more profound question we should raise. Why must an impressive 8% annual growth rate be upheld in the first place? This decade old concept aimed to artificially safeguard employment - and with it stability - flies in the face of China’s move to a market economy, moreover it contradicts the stated ambitions to prevent its economy from overheating. The task of this balancing act is undeniably daunting, yet it seems clear the central government will invariably opt for faster growth over a slow down. The extensive crisis in the West should provide a strong warning, yet fundamental questions about China’s future are still not addressed.
Unlearning Modernity A strong economy depends on fast urbanization. Yet many basic problems can be contributed to the accelerated pace of construction, ranging from housing shortage as a result of large-scale demolition policies to rampant speculation. After precisely 30 years of flash urbanization we need to ask if this is still a desired, even acceptable model. We need to assess the specific qualities of high-speed growth and the type of environments and society it produces. Unfortunately there are no precedents. We cannot evaluate the direction of this fast moving train based on the conditions it left behind 30 years ago. Nor can China determine its intended direction based on what other countries have achieved. In three decades the world has dramatically changed. Linear economic
development along the lines of western industr ia l nations will no longer suffice. The minute interconnections b e t w e e n i nd i v i dua l prosperity and
collective (even global) progress have surfaced. This is true for the crises in the housing market, but equally for the augmenting environmental pressures felt particularly at an individual level in the emerging economies. So far government initiated urbanization has been an effective tool to offset mounting social tensions against bright new developments. In a magical show of central might the outside world (and China’s hinterland), were presented with the highest achievement of three decades of top-down planning and orchestration. For a month in August the air was clean, even the rain was controlled, but soon after smoggy clouds rolled back over Beijing. Similarly actions to tackle the post-Olympic slowdown were confronted with the harsh reality of a real-estate slum. The limits of artificial growth have been reached.
PreconditionsIn addition to the strategic contradictions, there are plenty of practical challenges facing China’s stimulus package. But unlike Wall Street's demand for a blind check, at least China has been extremely precise in defining how it wants to allocate the money. The targets primed for investment range from society and livelihood (housing security, medical care and education), to infrastructure (rural infrastructure, the power grid, railways, highways and airports), the environment (ecological protection a n d w a t e r t r ea tment ) , t o p o s t - d i s a s t e r reconstruction. All are hands-on projects with a clear d i r e c t i v e a n d purpose t h a t should h e l p give
nuance to China’s ongoing development. This method of nation building, based on large-scale incentives coupled with a careful release of
bottom-up entrepreneurialism has been the success formula from the beginning of the reform era. It is, for lack of a definition, the best way to describe the socialist market hybrid. With Western capitalism in disrepair China’s stimulus package presents a real opportunity to mindfully define the socialist market economy. But there is a precondition: that we consider and map how it will likely shape society and landscape.
One Nation, Two ForcesUnlike three decades ago, China’s map can no longer be approached as a tabula rasa*. Today, China’s economy - as any where else - is entirely interconnected with its urban geographic conditions. Unfortunately, the success of the socialist-market hybrid is increasingly at odds with the blurred rural-urban hybrid it
produces. The new landscape is complex and dynamic; ill-suited to investments as a blunt listing of isolated
objectives. Precisely the awe-inspiring gains that have been made, now dictate a shift towards coordinated
spatial-economic planning. Parallel to the top-down economy and its planning apparatus a powerful
bottom-up economy has generated a pervasive organic growth. Two worlds that fear each
other, yet feed off each other. While China macro-plans its cities and icons,
aggregated micro-projects expand the urban landscape in the form of
more Market-driven Unintentional Development, or MUD* (as
illustrated below).
Concealed RealityO b s e r v i n g M U D
formations fractures the persistent beliefs
in both the grass-roots city and the
orchestrated landscape.
At street l e v e l
the ensuing MUD configurations then fixed for decades. Yet the economy is no longer just a prerequisite for urbanization, instead urban patterns are increasingly shaping future economic potential. The long-term effects can hardly be overestimated. A comparison between the spatial constitution of American, Asian and European cities reveals the impact on energy use, productivity, creativity, even crime rates and happiness. Designing the city beyond the scale of the compound or development zone is becoming as difficult as harmonizing society itself.
But unlike the rest of the world, China can anticipate another three decades of growth; a unique opportunity to coordinate its scattered organic expansion. Embracing the dynamic nature of the city, density itself becomes an effective tool to streamline growth. We can still abandon the static and sterile layouts the state-market machine generates, if we encourage a free free market to adopt flexible urban frameworks - this is not just more sustainable but more investment-friendly in these turbulent times. Short-term economic growth might support stability, fast pace urbanization discourages developers and institutes alike to innovate and diversify, undermining the quality-driven competition we could expect as the real-estate market moves away from a suppliers’ market.
Roadmap
Any ambition to either support the economy or engineer the harmonious society hinges on our commitment to an holistic urban vision. Ironically, pre-Olympic Chinese planning can best be compared to Western medicine: fast and powerful in tackling isolated problems.
Now half-way complete, post-Olympic China must start drawing on its own models, and switch from crude mega-project medication to a broader planning philosophy. This change is both urgent and drastic; its implementation needs to be both immediate and long-term. Designers can no longer hide behind the much vaunted excuse ‘endless flexibility is acceptable’ in order to survive in the Chinese market. While developers will need to accept that design is not drafting, and that the design the process is less a question of applying stylistic cues than a means to overcome the contradictions and hurdles that plague China’s development. All of us involved in the urbanization process are accomplices and we are all an integral part of the solution.
This issue of Urban China offers a roadmap to mark out a collective route to an alternative future. Based on the research by the Dynamic City Foundation and with contributions from designers and institutes from across the globe, we have produced a framework in which the individual ideas come together to form a larger conceptual patchwork. Step by step correlations are forged between the scales on which the city operates and between the components of China’s stimulus package.
But be warned: it is not as straight-forward as join-the-dots, no longer as black
and white as good and bad options. Instead, at every junction, we’ll
need to think twice about short-term gains and long-term
investment.
China's new urban realms look perfectly micro-planned while the same polished island developments at the scale of the region merge together to reveal macro-organic systems. The biggest challenge for China’s next phase is to consciously address these two forces as a single dynamic. This is difficult, not just because of the development speed, but because of the counterintuitive reality China is producing. Increasingly slick and superficially modern, the organic nature of its urbanization remains concealed. As a result policies and planning measures are rational only to the extent that they address what is seemingly in front of us today. Unresponsive to an inevitably different reality tomorrow they ultimately contribute to the problems. Spatially fragmented, socially divided the schisms that characterize China’s urban landscape widen. The window of opportunity is closing.
Defying PatternsWhile the building industry has evolved, tremendously accelerating its operations to meet the demand for new cities, a comprehensive design, research and education system needed to answer how best to produce the future landscape is still not in place. The components of China's cities are designed in days;
FASTER:Modernity has firmly established; faster is always better. Accelerated growth is testament of economic momentum. Keeping growth on pace is the only way to safeguard stability and ongoing expansion of the middle-class. Speed is what keeps the Chinese Dream alive.
SLOWER:But China’s raucous speed is catching up with itself. The general excuse there is no time to design with consideration for the future, is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Accepting the economic slowdown is a natural opportunity to conceive an holistic vision. We must supplement China’s fast pace reality with slow dreams immediately.
TOP-DOWN:Privatizing China’s collective urban landscape is ultimately a state affair. Nationally top-down incentives have successfully transformed entire cities. While locally designated market leaders are plot by plot swiftly transforming the nation; all efficiently planned and controlled.
BOTTOM-UP: Yet most top-down incentives - from the special economic zones to the new socialist village - are actualized by individuals. To grow strong, China must support their efforts. To grow healthy it must streamline the muddled organic nature of their efforts; to thrive, their diversity embraced as a source of liveliness that can supplement the sterile urban plans that are pushing them aside.
现实对照
REALITY
CHECK
2
当城市化超越了绘制地图的速度,规划往往沦
为马后炮;哪怕是给出貌似前瞻的模式,也不
过是反映某些已然存在的自发现实。
When urbanization occurs even faster
than we can map, the practice of plan-
ning is often reduced to post-planning;
prescribing ostensibly pro-active models
that can barely do more than reflect the
spontaneous reality already in place.
Source: Feiner, J., Shiwen Mi, Willy A. Schmid, ‘Meeting the Challenge of Future Urbanization’, 2001
hamlets and
villages
large villages / townships
small towns
medium sized cities
large cities
extra large cities
Land
use
per c
apita
(m2 )
popu
latio
n (
x 1,
000,
000)
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
175
200
population 1997
population 2030
Land use per capita (1997) and population distribution according to settlement types (1997 and 2030)
转变*CONVERSION
VS.往返迁移*ROLLOVER MIGRATION
45% 25% 30%within the same district
intraprovincial
interprovincial
Source: 5th Population Census, 2000
urban to rural migration: 5%
rural to rural migration: 23%
rural to urban migration: 51.5%
urban to urban migration: 20.5%
Source: 5th Population Census, 2000
省际
省内
同地区内
城市往城市移民/
农村往城市移民/
城市往农村移民/
农村往农村移民/
人口
/
人口/
来源:2000年第五次人口普查
来源:2000年第五次人口普查
来源:费纳,米诗文(音译),威利·施米德,“迎接未来城市化的挑战”,2001年。
人均土地使用面积(1997)和各居住地类型的人口分布情况(1997年及1030年)
村寨与村庄 大村/乡 小城镇 中型城市 大城市 超大城市 人均土地使用面积
22528 29
(反)城市情结 + 爱/惧(Anti) Urban Sentiment + Love / fear 上世纪五十年代伊始,中国城市规划的各层面被恐惧参透:对拥挤中心的恐惧,对于自主发展的恐惧,对于不可控制的城市空间的恐惧。而后从八十年代开始,对于城市的爱火缓慢重燃。而户口制度仍然强悍着。若要拯救城市、与散点城市扩张作战,我们不能给任何反城市的情绪或政策以立足之地。
Since the early fifties, at every level fear has permeated China’s planning decisions: fear of overcrowding centers, fear of erratic growth, fear of unmanageable cityscapes. Then from the eighties onwards slowly a love for the city again rekindled. However, the urban registration system has remained in place. To save the city and combat scattered urban expansion we cannot allow any anti-urban sentiments or policies to linger.
Sprawl, originally a neutral term, has become a catch-all pejorative for unwelcome urban expansion. DCF sprawl derivatives describe and evaluate specific characteristics of that expansion which impact negatively upon accessibility.
Sprawl created by policies which were intended to reduce sprawl but in fact augment it, and policies which themselves are sprawling. Opacity created by excess policies obscures the possibility of achieving ”legal” developments and facilitates widespread abuses on the part of local officials and their private partners.
Urban expansion that exercises pressure on the accessibility of the city by generating an excess of frequent trips of significant length due to internal inadequacies. Commonly
these are newly developed areas wholly dependent on other areas for their own basic needs. They are monofunctional, socially stratified, lack vitality, and, overwhelmingly, are
Additions to the city may exhibit sprawl characteristics but serve as a necessary phase within the transition to a larger city. Big official developments may initially appear brutal and under-serviced, but
density and local entrepreneurialism may quickly supply the necessary life. Equally informal settlements lacking in basic infrastructure can be recognized and absorbed to become healthy tissue. Transsprawl*
acknowledges the potential maturing urban expansion.
Imbalance between architecture and infrastructure results in infrasprawl*. THIS can be defined as, on one hand, disruptions of spatial patterns created by excess infrastructure, and on the other, infrastructure that consumes more space than it can serve or generates more traffic than it can process.
No SprawlFrom a numerical standpoint, within the context of Jinghu an area the size of France with an average density of a an small American city, there can be no sprawl.
中国96% 的人口/96% OF CHINA'S POPULATION中国96% 的经济活动/96% OF CHINA'S ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES (GPD)中国96% 的人口流动/96% OF CHINA'S MIGRATION FLOWS中国96% 的城市人口/96% OF CHINA'S URBAN POPULATION中国96% 的可耕种土地/96% OF CHINA'S ARABLE LAND
The concept of PUC* introduces a paradox. China’s urban landscape is distinctly concentrated on only one third of the nation’s surface. For 2020 the region of PUC reveals and average density of a continuous urban region, yet without such coherence. The reality of its spatial condition is a grey merging and blurring of city and countryside and 96% of all its activities.
W h i t i n t h i s c o n c e n t r a t i o n a n o t h e r conentration can be traced. Jinghu is a metropolitan area roughly the size of France with a continuous urban density equal to an American town. This makes Jinghu is the world's first true megalopolis.
Scenario for the year 2025:8 megacities, 11 economic clusters of on average 60 million people each (representing 60% of total urban investment) and over 900 smaller cities. Source: McKinsey Global Institute‘Preparing for China's Urban Billion’illustration DCF
COLLABORATION:The Chinese market is already fiercely competitive. Provinces compete for support, cities compete for prominence, neighborhoods compete for residents. City and countryside compete for space. In the 11th Five Year Plan, urban clustering, the spatial precondition for collaboration, is rightfully designated as the ‘principal mode of urbanization’.
COMPETITION:Yet urban clusters thrive on the hierarchies between nodes at different stages of development - as production of goods flows up from villages to the metropolis, money trickles down. These differences are rudimentary and should be nurtured by genuine competition. Only a Free free market can diversify and streamline cluster based urbanization.
增长极地理论GROWTH POLE THEORY大城市之间为了赢得投资和巨型项目的激烈竞争也在较小型城镇之间发生。如果城市政府都非常自律的话,这一商业竞争是有好处的,然而投机性开发的泡沫和浪费的重复建设却是必然的副产品。“增长极地”城市周围的落后地区会从中受益,而益处辐射至两三小时车程外就开始衰减了。
Fierce rivalry between large cities for investment and mega-projects is found also in smaller cities and towns. This commercial competition is good if it gets city administrations to run tighter ships internally, but has also led to a bubble of speculative development and wasteful duplication.
China shows that hinterlands around “growth pole” cities do benefit from incomes spent and multiplied in regional economies34 (and factories plus consumers move to the suburbs and then the urban fringe, expanding a peri-urban area into what was previously rural hinterland35) the benefits seem to fade two or three hours from the pole itself. With current transportation infrastructure, this is sometimes as little as 120km away.
现实对照
REALITY
CHECK
3
社会主义市场经济之二元体亦集计划与市
场之缺点于一身。很多貌似市场主导的行
为,却往往更接近于僵化的政府分区或者
来势汹汹、拒绝合作的孤岛式地块开发,
或者“房地产棋局”。
The socialist market hybrid still
combines many drawbacks of both
planned and market growth. What
looks market-driven is often simi-
lar to rigid government zoning and
aggressive non-collaborative plot-
driven development, or ‘Checkmate
real-estate’.
Below the radar reality
从太空中看中国,人们会看到一块工业细菌的培养基,从生长点开始繁殖,并集结成密实的一个大块面。Looking at China from space one would see a Petri dish of in-dustrial bacteria, multiplying around initial nodes and coagu-lating into a dense mass.
When is a city a city? Definitions, usually expressed in terms of population, continue to fall short, the world over. Expressing the city's dynamic nature, cannot be achieved with set population numbers, nor can the Chinese formula of computing population with economic output, warrant a clear definition. To understand the city we must conceptualize, the critical amalgamation of the city’s essential, often intangible ingredients.
Oddly enough in urban planning the same models are often both descriptive and prescriptive. The limitations this professional idiosyncrasy reveals is particularly pertinent when applied to Chinese urbanization. Slick City models are the final formula for hassle-free development. With hardly any virgin land left to urbanize they lay bare the contradictions of what the market wants; growing side ways, when what is needed is growing inwards and upwards.
This matrix organizes China's common and ideal growth models set against the distance of urbanization from the center.
Slick CitiesPlanners and policy-makers alike dream of a clean slate when building a new city. Across the river or train track on an empty lot, the town is reinvented from scratch. Self-contained designs are implemented that ignore all previous incarnations. The new center rapidly turns its back on the old core. A split city is born. Other models of rebirth include the Finger or Ring City (old is encircled by new), the Culled City (new is carved out from old), Sprawl City (new scatters while fleeing from old) and the Satellite City (new and old engage in a precarious game of tug of war).
In the past 30 years, hundreds of new towns have mushroomed across the nation as mining-towns, tourist towns, suburban enclaves, factory villages, concept towns and military settlements. They appear to follow different models, but are equally fortified against their muddled surroundings. Without reference to the preexisting, the new urban projects look and feel particularly smooth, but there is a price to pay for this slickness. Slick cities are by nature static. Their walled off spaces are unyielding to change and reflective to criticism. Yet we are forced to acknowledge their drawbacks. Implemented with minimum connections to the original infrastructure the public domain is reduced to the voids in between the buildings. The storefront, the interface of the city, is blinded. This phenomena reveals China's Slick Cities' inherent problem; they generate schizophrenic urbanization.
DISPERSED:Historically compact, the exploding land-use of industry, infra-structure, services and housing can only be facilitated by moving people out of the city, parks and plazas in: The Modernists’ dream of air, light, and subcenters. In fact, within the organic context of Chinese urbanization, only dispersion as a tool seemed to have had any serious measure of affect on emerging urban patterns.
DENSE:Dispersion accelerates the city’s fragmentation and inaccessibility. Compactness equals efficiency; nation-wide compact growth can safeguard agricultural land and boost GDP. If planned well, density equals comfort. To counter the fragmentation triggered by fast pace growth and policies, radical densification will need to become the goal at every scale, from village to metropolis.
SUPER SATELLITES
36 3736 37
自上而下的巨型项目和大量中等规模的房地产项目则不断将小规模的自发性开发推向边缘地带。
Top-down megaprojects periodically push small informal developments further out to the periphery.
Market-driven Unintentional Devel-opment describes an urbanization characterized by organic growth pat-terns as a result of an accumulation of clearly designed and orchestrat-ed planning. The invariable result: Amorphous expansion within the field of urban gravity.
EXPANSION:Planning a new satellite is an impossible balancing act. Positioned too far from the city mutual benefits are lost, daily commutes to the center become unfeasible. Positioned too close the satellite will be swallowed up by suburbia. Urban expansion is the natural process to maintain densities along the urban rent-gradient. Cities slowly grow into Super Cities.
NEW CITY:Yet new cities built on a clean slate are highly seductive. In theory, constructed at once a city could be free from all the accumulated problems and clutter slowly evolving urban landscapes struggle with. But cities are very dynamic systems, incessantly changing from conception. Against the odds, China in love with the new, must prove it can design a New City that can evolve naturally and systematically. The Satellite must become a Super Satellites.
*
第五步STEP
5北京
Beijing
天津Tianjin
将土地集中划归供开发区建设,2010年之前本地区的城市化速度将达到每年100平方公里。--北京规划委员会Predominantly through land appropriation for development zones urbanization in the region will accelarate to 100 km2 per year by 2010 and beyond.– Beijing Planning Commission
北京周边开发速度Speed of development around Beijing25 km2 50 km2 100 km2 每年/per year
To accommodate a Beijing populalation of 20 million official residents by 2020 at Fourth Ring density would only require a 28 meter expansion of the current perimeter.
28 M 28 M
变大饼为面包圈——动态密度的北京个案研究Turn Your Pancake Into A Donut - Dynamic Density in Beijing文/何新城Text/Neville MARS
2005密度环 Density per ring当代北京的密度曲线依然陡峭,五环路内的向心集结程度也非常高Contemporary Beijing continues to present a steep density curve with high levels of central massing within the Fifth Ring Road.
2020规划新区 Planned additions新规划的副中心(红)和卫星城(紫)清晰地标出了高密度的划定点。但这并没有表现出地理上的延伸很大可能将令密度曲线变平缓。The planned new subcenters (red) and satellites (lilac) propose sharply delineated points of high density. This fails to acknowledge that geographical spreading will most likely result in an exacerbated flattening of the density curve.
无论是否有意识,北京正与单中心的城市模式渐行渐远规模的房地产项目则不断将小规模的自发性开发推向边缘地带。Intentionally and unintentionally Beijing is moving away from the monocentric city model.
人造城, 名词。指需要过量资源才能实现功能的城市。
Artificial City - City that requires excessive amounts of resources to maintain its appearance.
概念跃进CONCEPTUAL LEAPFROG 在中国,高密度与生俱来。这为缓慢进化才能实现的城市目标带来了新希望。面对市场化无序开发的速度,动态城市 (DD) 的概念是长期规划应遵循的逻辑。IN CHINA DENSITY ITSELF IS IMMANENTLY ACHIEVABLE. THIS OFFERS HOPE FOR GOALS EVEN BEYOND THE REACH OF SLOW EVOLVING CITIES. THE CONCEPT OF DYNAMIC DENSITY (DD) APPLIES A LONG-TERM PLANNING LOGIC TO THE FAST REALITY OF M.U.D. FORMATIONS.
动态密度
Dynamic Density (DD) 这一理论旨在勾勒城市密度和其发展轨迹的优化关系、阐明城市的密度本该与城市同步增长的固有规律。城市密度的动态性质需要灵活的规划方案。动态密度的应用尤其适合快速变化的环境。动态密度的方法论首先是记录城市扩张/收缩的工具,也能有效评估增长部分的功能(其中最重要的是可达性),并在城市整体目标的框架下催生市场化的引导政策。
A theory which outlines an optimum relationship between density of a city and its built footprint, and proposes that as a city grows its density should increase proportionally. Thus density is dynamic and requires flexible planning solutions. Applications of DD are especially well suited to fast changing contexts. The dynamic density methodology operates first as a tool to map the processes of expansion and contraction, and then to assess the quality (most notably accessibility) of new growth and suggest market-oriented guidance measures within a conceptual framework for overarching city goals.
动态主义——灵活的规划,对于建成后仍保持变化的预期DYNAMISM - PLANNING IN FLEXIBLE FRAMEWORKS THAT ANTICIPATE CONTINUOUS CHANGE,EVEN AFTER COMPLETION
密度——所有在中国的规划要坚定不移地以紧凑为原则DENSITY - PROMOTING COMPACTNESS AS AN UNAMBIGUOUS DIRECTION TO COORDINATE ALL CHINESE PLANNING EFFORTS.
动态密度的前提DD PREMISE
#城市密度是物理的,有其地理分布Urban density is physical and has a geographical location
#城市密度是有形状的,并呈分散的特征urban density has shape, and a trait of dispersion
#密度是环境的结果,它也塑造环境Density is the result of its context and it generates a context
#密度的变化是可追溯的DENSITY DYNAMICS ARE TRACEABLE#它也有速度和方向It has a speed and a direction
#目前的中国速度缔造的空间都是静态的SPACES PRODUCED UNDER CURRENT CHINESE HYPERSPEED ARE STATIC#这些形态集中导致了MUD——市场化无序开发COLLECTED TOGETHER THESE FORMS RESULT IN MUD* (MARKET-DRIVEN UNINTENTIONAL DEVELOPMENT)
#对变化保持预期的超速发展能让“市场化无序开发”跳跃前进,实现动态的密度HYPERSPEED DEVELOPMENT WHICH ANTICIPATES CHANGE CAN LEAPFROG MUD* TO INCORPORATE DYNAMIC DENSITIES
From any position Beijing casts a pattern of blind spots — places too inaccessible to treat as regular destinations. One has to conclude that in daily life much of the city is out of reach.
Green Edge*A concept that describes the urban zone beyond the core yet still within the range of high end mass trans-port. The Green Edge aims to fulfill demands for both fast access to downtown areas and lower density sub-urban qualities. It also offers a distinct city limit for planners and developers.
# 2020年,北京的人口将以目前四环内的密度分布在绿色边界以内,并且没有附加的扩张部分。Within the Green Edge Beijing can accommodate projected growth for 2020 at Forth Ring density, without additional expansion.
#目前的中国速度缔造的空间都是静态的Spaces produced under current Chinese hyperspeed are static.
#这些形态集中导致了MUD——市场化无序开发Growing together these forms result in more MUD* (Market-driven Unitentional Development).
The installation 'Beijing_Real-time' is an interactive density map of Beijing that evaluates planning proposals. Our software calculates efficiency based on travel time and distance. The user can either start with an empty map or build proposals on the 2005 or 2020 condition. One touchscreen allows you to navigate through and alter the density map, while a second panel controls the realtime projection of a ride through the proposed city. It becomes clear density is capricious. Scattered small clusters of extreme density may have little effect while moderate densities close to the center can boost efficiencies.
44 4544 45
大型公共交通是最后一个至上而下改善城市的干预工具;我们最后的乌托邦工具
Mass-transportation
is the last remaining
topdown insertion to
mend the city; our last
utopian tool
total 28 km
2
2000m 4000m 6000m
1.35km2 13.81km25.47km24.68km22.92km2ring 2 ring 3 ring 4 ring 5 ring 6
北京的年轮1990-2020; 年轮之下是火爆生长的北京2008年的真实模样The ideal circular model superimposed on the exploded reality of 2008
'环形中心'The Pericenter
Bei j ing reveals an e x t r eme s t a t e o f infrasprawl*. The city keeps getting bigger, but useful tissue gain i s m in ima l - Th i s is comparable to a relentless pursuit of building height, where a c c o m m o d a t i n g additional upper floors with elevators means sacrificing space at the bottom to shafts. Infrasprawl* suggests a s imi lar opt imum a p p l i e s t o t h e footprint of the city and its infrastructural network.
T h e c o m b i n e d surface of Beijing's ring roads covers an area substant ia l ly larger than the entire downtown.
“The Chinese Knot”wraps the ring roads in Beijing around a model of the Forbidden City of the same scale.
www.BURB.TV/view/Shenzhen_2007
和谐社会 A —— 就业和交通政策:行动力,就业和公交车A Harmonious Society A - Policies for Transport and Employment: Mobility, Employment and Bues方案/王帷泽+王帷新 Project/Richard Wei-Tse WANG+Stephen Wei-Hsin WANG
Unemployment and higher transport costs are major problems confronting China’s future. With deepening industrial restructuring, there are now over 275,000 registered unemployed citizens in Shanghai. At the same time, with continued urban expansion, more and more lower-income households face increasing financial pressures of commuting. Expansion of the urban bus networks, rather than only the more expensive underground metro system, can help resolve these challenges. Buses are an integral part of any sustainable transportation system that is affordable for all. Developing
a larger network of buses will simultaneously create chains of new work opportunities including drivers, attendants, mechanics,
inspectors, engineers and managers. Many are well suited for the low-skilled, the
unemployed, those with limited work experience. In sum, the humble bus
has a significant role to play in the future. They will help realise visions
of a fully-employed, inclusive and more harmonious society.
Road:China's road network is very unbalanced. Many new roads will need to be built to connect vast underdeveloped areas. While large cities have structurally been transformed to accommodate vast highway systems, they can only continue to expand their network in order to bridge the gap between disproportionately large and traditionally small streets. The bus, still the cleanest form of public transportation, comes into play as a means to serve the dispersed Chinese cities.
Tracks:Beijing has made a bold start building the world's largest track-based network by 2020. Built on top of its pervasive road system the result is a unique infrastructural hybrid. But the two systems are hardly compatible, and tracks can be as intrusive to the urban fabric as roads. To be effective within the coarse inhospitable fabric of cities like Beijing, the pedestrian needs to be served with door-to-station end transportation.
龙轨是大幅度缩小城市网络的大胆尝试
The D-rail is a big attempt to dramatically shrink the urban network...
龙轨是大幅度缩小城市网络的大胆尝试
...looped around over Beijing’s Ring Roads
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生态——工业二元体Ecological - Industrial hybrid
楼房高度
当大门面向公路
主路
辅路
岔路道路系统
Code ConundrumChina's rigid building
codes in effect prevent the shift to sustainable pedestrian orientated
planning!
标准难题中国苛严的建筑标准规范实际上是服务行人的可持续城市规划的障碍。绿色边缘/The Green Edge
绿色都会/The Green Metropolis
光明Smart-city —— 新型中国城市Guangming Smart-city - A New Chinese City项目/林纯正Project/CJ LIM
Basic Concept:Guangming Smart-city provides the opportunity to continue the agricultural tradition, creating a hybrid city at the vanguard of urban design and eco-sustainability.
Post-Olympic Urban Approach:A very modern assumption of our culture states that faster is always better. But in the race to keep up, everything suffers – our work, diet, health and our relationships. Slow living is fundamental to the success of the new city especially in the context of China’s current culture of speed; it will establish a unique character and lifestyle, that will sett Guangming Smart-city apart.
Guangming Smart-city (7.97km2)is arranged into human-scale clusters of housing and farming suburbs in the form of towers and craters. The forms are conceived as an augmentation of the existing topography. The Suburb Towers and Craters are intended to combat urban sprawl and advocate compact land use patterns that are walkable and bicycle-friendly. Each tower or crater is self-sufficient with its own high street, Suburb Square and individual character.
在天津打破常规Breaking The Rules in Tianjin项目/水晶石空间设计实验室[何新城+安健生+戴夫·哈兰德 ]Projects/Crystal Urban Creation [Neville MARS+Jason ANDERSON+Dave HARLANDER]
There is a sense in China that, if only developers would abide by the rules, if only buildings would not be so haphazard, things would be better. However, China actually forces designers to rethink sustainability in planning from scratch.
Invariably, density and development speed make any western approach redundant. More importantly, we need to address contradictions inherent to the Chinese planning system. Rules aimed at safeguarding basic urban qualities in new plans in effect prevent real sustainability from ever occurring; sustainability not based on the number of parks, solar panels or even certified buildings of an area, but defined by its intrinsic ability to encourage a green use.
Our research for the design of the Tanggu Green CBD revealed severe obstacles embedded in the regulatory framework. Most notably the planning codes keep the spaces between the buildings unnecessarily wide. Not unlike the problems at the regional scale, the city environment is forcefully dispersed. This leaves the streetscape uncomfortably open, while connections between different parts of the public space are hard to forge; a far cry from an pedestrian orientated landscape. Breaking the rules becomes imperative. And with the government as a client, this is actually feasible.
A second step was the introduction of progressive phaseability. An important moment in what can only be described as a steep mutual learning curve, was the notion that marketability and sustainability are closely aligned. Large aggregate projects are conceived and built at once. Designing a flexible backbone that can facilitate both fast or unforeseen slow growth, suddenly becomes valuable in these tumultuous times. Remarkably larger ecological planning frameworks, such as watershed and natural habitat protection, offer a comprehensive approach that also allow investment freedom. The flexibility of natural systems, grants the city a vitality in a commercial sense.
In a harmonious society, the relationship between old buildings and new buildings could change. After more than 20 years of rampant urban renewal, Shanghai today still has approximately 10 million m² of old lilong houses. Old houses are a vital source of affordable housing in the city, but an estimated 900,000 residents here still have no access to sanitation facilities such as bath, showers or toilets. If affordable housing is to be preserved in their current locations, a radical solution is needed. In the spirit of ‘neighbourly assistance’, new buildings may do much to help old houses. New developments adjacent to older sub-standard housing are required to include small numbers of missing facilities for their
和谐社会 B ——住房政策:新房帮旧房A Harmonious Society B - New Housing Policy: Showers for neighbours方案/王帷泽+王帷新Project/Richard Wei-Tse WANG+Stephen Wei-Hsin WANG
neighbours. In this way, communal shower and toilets will be made available for use by households without them, ensuring that poorer neighbours enjoy the fruits of urban development. This simple, yet profound change, might becomes the basis of a more socially inclusive, yet cost-effective housing system.
The Shenzhen CBD Huanggang Area Redevelopment Project involves an extensive research and design process that encompasses 50 hectares of the central business area of Shenzhen and more specifically 23 hectares of land presently owned and managed by the Huanggang Village Collective. The challenge is to achieve a responsible and sustainable urban development planning while meeting the various conflicting demands of the involved agencies, including the Mayor’s office, the Shenzhen Exhibition Center, and the Huanggang Village Development Corporation. Based on tremendous social, cultural, and economic demands along with complex spatial, Infrastructural, and programmatic needs of the project, seven main concepts were formed to guide the development of the proposal and to ensure a correspondence and correlation of each of the demands and requirements of the involved issues. Specifically for the redevelopment plan of the Huanggang Urban Village, the main goal is to achieve a long-term, socially and economically sustainable plan for the self-development and operation of the Village Collective’s corporation. In addition to preserving the Village’s ceremonial structures and spaces, such as the Ancestral Residence, Meeting Hall, and associated gardens, the proposal retains the existing street network and building organization of the village site. Creatively extending the central axis of the CBD by forming a low-rise high-density central zone, this area along with the preserved collective public areas forms a sharp spatial contrast to the adjacent potential high-rise development zones. The spatial arrangement and layout of all development allow for maximum freedom in mixed programs and flexible zoning - ranging from commercial to residential - by pre-testing the sites for code regulations and sun-light exposure. The implementation process is designed with five sequential stages that each holds a demolition and construction balance for sustainable economic and operational management. Each developmental stage is envisioned as a comprehensive step toward forming equilibrium of flexible public housing, residence housing exchange, and commercial space allocations. The entire planned process forms an interactive and counterbalancing redevelopment system.
Green projects belong in the suburbs — or rather, the green edge* of big cities
5252
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溶解和构建后奥林匹克北京Refabricating Post-Olympic Beijing项目/廖维武+黄颂威+余启昌Project/Laurence LIAUW + Ray WONG + Andrew YU 支援/陈悦,李静文,黄嘉颖Support/CHEN Yue, LI Jingwen, WONG Ka Wing
The 2008 BeijingOlympics have come and gone, acting as an event catalyst that has radically transformed ‘Old Beijing’ into ‘New Beijing’ with many questions remaining for the future planning of China after the Party’s over. After massive and costly infrastructure and iconic stadium development, Post-Event planning in the 3.75 sq km tabula rasa Olympic Green’s evolution of socio-economic and political-cultural urban life will demand new architectural strategies to sustain the city in a coherent manner. Future ambition beyond the mere spectacle of today (already yesterday), and baggage of the past, Beijing’s development has been reconfigured suddenly by these monumental Olympics at the cost of displaced citizens and urban fabric densification. The city could however sustain its future growth through new infrastructural landscapes and regenerating urban fabric, by allowing a dialogue with the rest of Beijing through density exchange. By challenging the monumental 2008 Olympic Park and intensifying it with future urban development, it is possible
to ‘displace and disperse’ the landscape of the Olympic Park into the city to regenerate the rest of Beijing, for future generations. Could this be the dynamics between this
These proposals address issues associated with the obsolescence of cities and buildings. Far from a celebration of impermanence and ephemerality, we will deal with questions of environmental,
economic, cultural and social endurance within the context of rapid urban transformation in China. Masterplanning strategies which seek an enduring final state of urban completion tend to lead to
dysfunctional cities and quickly obsolescent buildings, given the urgent, incessant, and evidently unstoppable pace of urbanisation and construction in contemporary China.
We aim to seek alternatives to urban masterplanning based an evolving city with capacities of adaptation to future contingencies. The vehicles inherent to our understanding of contemporary
urbanism are design techniques with capabilities of managing the complex qualities of interaction, communication and exchange that characterise the twenty-first-century city. Our approach to Parametric
Urbanism addresses the ways in which associative design systems can control local dynamic information to effect and adjust larger urban life-processes by embedding intelligence into the formation and performance
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OCEAN.CN has developed a ser ies of urban organisational models, generated as computational arrays of massing typologies and densities. This design exercise proliferates new hybrid urban massing prototypes, and varied species of
architectural configurations associated with contemporary Chinese cities.
Typology TransformationsPopulation and density data was initially
mined from several Chinese cities, and was applied to the morphing of four dominant massing typologies (tier buildings; low-rise/deep-plan; high-rise towers; luxury detached
villas).
The parametric logic of the resultant prototypical spaces embodies dimensional constraints such as height limits, FAR, architectural footprint density, plot area, and the total buildable surface area.
The urban prototypes are differentiated in relation to the five Chinese cities which initially briefed the parametric variation. These urban prototypes incorporate the subdivision of land by road networks, infrastructural optimisation, lot boundaries, and the geographic/topographic features and existing urban patterns of each of the five cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan).
The final stage of design has a parallel objective of surpassing simple Euclidian geometries as the basis for the formal articulation of more detailed architectural prototypes. A set of modifications to the generic block models generates formally specific responses to local topographic and environmental conditions, resulting in a hierarchy of degrees of curvature of the ground plan and its subdivisions.
GRID:A grid fosters an inherent set of building typologies. As such the quality of public is embedded in their design. Though laced with highways and avenues, the Chinese city is not based on a multidirectional grid system. Ostensible flexibility is derived from over-dimensioned infrastructure: the framework for extensive mono-functional zoning of ample public square meters, but zero public space. More efficient, flexible and intimate cities rely on embracing orthogonal grids of human proportions
NETWORK:Today even the orthogonal grid is too static for the fluid urban spaces we want to design. The grid itself needs to be able to adapt to geographic conditions and morph without loosing its generic properties. This opens the grid up to a broader range of typologies and offers the possibility of more closely defined relationships between infrastructure and building.
中国城市编码Coding Urban China
项目/泽纳尔/霍克工作室[柯特•弗朗兹+约翰•霍克+酒井智彦+彼特•泽纳尔]Project/ZELLNERPLUS/HOUCK Studio[Kurt FRANZ+ John HOUCK + Tomohiko SAKAI+Peter ZELLNER]
Generating a National CityWe imagine a potentially limitless, sprawling yet dense URBAN China composed from an archive of
almost endless architectural varieties and unlimited typological re-compositions. We imagine in China a nationalized urbanism- general in ambition yet specific in execution.
We aimed to create a model for a cohesive national urban fabric in which public and private spaces could be freely swapped or interchanged without disrupting either the individual house
or the larger block. In particular we sought to inject each city block with private as well as public functions, creating an ambiguous quality to block interiors and edges.
We hoped to generate these conditions without immediately over determining intention or resorting to simple (e.g. analog) methods of iteration and reiteration to produce
an artificial rendition of variation. Ultimately, we sought to invent a strategy for developing a randomized, generative pattern language that could automatically
edited according to a predetermined set of constraints and rule sets.
56 5756 57
NEW URBAN SPECIES
GROW STRONGER IN THE STRUGGLE FOR SUNSHINE
LIFT UP THE PEOPLE, TUCK IN THE PUBLIC
JEFFREY INABA, JURY MEMBER
THE CITY AS ONION
WITHOUT BOUNDARIES THERE ARE NO OPPORTUNITIES
LIVE LATERALLY IN THE URBAN CANOPY
RETURN TO AGRICULTURE WITHOUT LEAVING THE CITY
URBAN VILLAGES WILL CONSUME THE CITY
CONSTANT CHANGE IS HARMONIOUS
TWIST TOWARDS THE FUTURE
FLEXIBILITY IS THE NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
TOP-DOWN LIVING
DOUBLE DIVERSITY MAKES DOUBLE HAPPINESS
HYPER-MESH THE VOIDS
MODEL PRODUCTION UNIT FOR THE NEW ECONOMY
LIBERATE THE GROUND, REINTEGRATE THE ENVIRONMENT
PROMOTE UNDESTRUCTIVE CONSTRUCTION
LEARN FROM HAKKA HOUSING
RAISE THE LIVING OF FLOATING POPULATIONS
URBAN DOUFU CAN TAKE A HUNDRED SHAPES
MAKE IT LIVABLE
GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY WITH LOCAL CHARACTERISTICS
The Chinese University of Hong KongLau Hung Ching, Leung Yiu Ming, Ng Shuk Wai, Wong Chun Wai, Ray Yip Tak Kei; Advisor: Laurence Liauw, Shinya Oduka
What if an incremental, serial approach to the Mega-block could set up a dialogue between city and nature through evolutionary types of the city block?
How can high-density housing be formed by the demands of energy independence—a power-driven architecture—and exploit the collectivity of urban living for mutually beneficial social, economic and ecological gains?
Charrette WinnerRice University School of ArchitectureMatthew Crnkovich, Quyen Ma, Viktor Ramos, Peter Stanley; Advisor: Clover Lee
Can the tower-podium formulation of the typical superblock be re-imagined with more dynamic relationships between public and residential zones?
“Can the design be taken even further, not only to create public space on the plaza level but also to more polemically redefine the plinth? Can vertical connections—waterfalls, bike paths, car parks, garbage chutes, music—be introduced as elements that make the space above and below the plinth less absolute in their distinctions?”
Columbia University, GSAPP + Grad. Sch. of Public HealthTat Lam, Meg Andrews, Chao-Jung Chen, Yongjun Do, Danielle Radel, Eirini Tsachrelia, Bret Quagliara, Alvin Wong;Advisor: Jeffery Johnson
Can the human desire for bigness be taken to its illogical extreme, to produce a maximized network within the 3D block?
University of Waterloo, School of ArchitectureTammy Chau, Bill Chan, Joseph Lo, Rosanna Ho;Advisor: Anne Bordeleau
Can the Mega-block enclosures, as containers for mixed programs, be developed as opportune zones for social dynamics to unfold?
Rice University School of ArchitectureW. Amanda Chin, Katherine Green, Nkiru Mokwe, Beth Wieber;Advisor: Clover Lee
Could the growth of a manufactured jungle end the segregation of discrete towers and the disconnects between open space and program in the Mega-block?
University of Southern California, School of ArchitectureAnthony Laney, Brad Zuger
Can China reclaim agriculture as the open heart of its Mega- block?
Rice University School of ArchitectureRobert Crawford , Beatrice Eleazar, Curt Gambetta, Richie Gelles; Advisor: Clover Lee
Can the model of the urban village be intensified then re-carved to produce channels of connectivity?
Columbia University, GSAPPAndy Yuan, Luoyi Yin, Shao W. Deng, Xin Wang, Ziyu Zhuang; Advisor: Kenneth Frampton
Can a new, open framework accommodate both stable and unstable programs over time?
Columbia UniversityHelen Cao, Lily Parshall, Dana Pillai, Jeff Shrader, Mercy Wong, Tom Wu
What repeatable formal logics might allow the necessities of natural light, interlocking public and private green spaces, and energy awareness to become visible in the Mega-block?
Jury RecognitionUniversity of Southern California, School of ArchitectureJamie Wu, I-Ting Chen, Hua Li; Advisor: Eui-Sung Yi
Can a flexible, changeable infrastructure system reconcile the disconnects between the city and the home, between horizontal and vertical growth, and between interior and exterior environments?
Rostov Architectural Academy Bellini Daria, Platonov Pavel, Levoshina Diana, Maltsev Ivan, Muchtarov Eldar; Advisor: Doynicin Andrew
How can services and living spaces be stratified and densified to take greater advantage of environmental resources like air, light, and water?
Columbia University, GSAPPEgbert Chu, Yuka Terada, Sid Wichienkuer
How can the illusion of security and serenity be exposed, to move towards the co-habitation of rich and poor, enabled by gradient zones strategically placed to encourage contact without forcing it?
Jury Recognition / Columbia University, GSAPPMark Bearak, Dora Kelle, Seth Ruggiero, Dana Fantauzzo
Could a prosthetic construction of parks, residences, and services hyper-activate the ‘community space’ voids within superblocks?
Columbia University+Bard Graduate SchoolKatie Shima, Aidan Flaherty, Robin Fitzgerald-Green, Keith Greenwald, Chris Altman
How much energy can a single Mega-block capture, and can it start to feed the city?
Univeristy of WaterlooJason Hong
Can the existing ‘social infrastructure’ re-animate the superimposed housing system?
In what ways can the autonomous urban microcosm of Hakka housing be integrated into and inform a greater urban system?
Columbia University, GSAPPChristopher Guerette, Andrew Jacobs, Marlo Brown, Xu Chen
Can density become an advantage by creating a microclimate within the Mega-block?
Jury Recognition / Columbia University, GSAPPAmanda Brookins, Jenny Chou, Kevin Wei; Advisor: Brian McGrath
How can Megablock Urbanism avoid obliterating already functioning lands (AFLs)--vast tracts of agricultural land, traditional villages, worker housing?
Columbia University, GSAPPMicheal Young, Michael Ka'ainoni; Advisor: Mark Rakatansky
Can the Mega-block and its individual units become doufu, absorbing existing and imposed cultural flavors, and changing character as they interact with their neighbors?
Columbia University, GSAPP+SIPATao Liu, Matt Flynn, Bing-chi Sung
Houw might the traditional concept of jia shan shui—an alternative landscape composed of mountains, earth and water—shape profit and community, twin ideological pillars of the new China, within the megablock?
University of California, Berkeley, School of ArchitectureGina Siciliano, Melissa Smith, David Bowen-M. Arch, Adrianna Navarro-Sertich; Advisor: Renee Chow
Can the complexity of street activities bring life to the typical patterns and technologies of global urban connections?
ERIC CHANG, JURY MEMBER
“The massing of the scheme is extreme, oppressive, and unlikely to be hospitable at the inner layers of the onion, but provocatively asks whether it’s possible to create a Mega-block that is even more dense and massive than current Mega-blocks.”
DOREEN HENG LIU
“A possible conceptual solution to urban and human rigidity.”
DOREEN HENG LIU
“In between flexibility and rigidity in a slightly poetic way.”
从“极大”到“米塔”:极大城区项目Mega to Meta: The Megablock Project项目/杰弗里·约翰森[哥伦比亚大学建筑研究院]Project/Jeffrey Johnson [China Lab, Columbia School of Architecture Planning and Preservation]
The Summer Workshop's 'Megablock to Metablock' project constructed a systems-based approach to retrofitting, re-integrating, and sharing resources between fragments of Beijing's city fabric.
The Meta-Block is a de-monumentalization of the mega-scale infrastructure of Beijing. By linking multiple levels and ecological systems, it is an organic, holistic logic that complements the ring roads and towers-in-the-private-park. And it is a balancing act between Big and Small: it does not negate the value of the pragmatic large-scale framework, but rather recalls the historical value of Chinese architecture as a mediator between the larger cosmos and smaller habitats.
Mega-block development, in its current trajectory, is unsustainable in all aspects of the world: socially, environmentally, economically, and as a part of the built environment. The transformation into Meta-Blocks reinserts sustainable strategies into the existing city structure: Meta-plane (multi-level and cross-block connectivity and access to open spaces), Meta-transport (reprioritizing pedestrian and bike circulation above the massive vehicular grid), Meta-ecology (localized interaction between inhabitants and constructed nature), Meta-infrastructure (upgrading local telecommunications, water filtration, energy, waste revitalization), and Meta-economy (linking more diverse demographics, including the insertion of low-income housing, to new infrastructure).
Are you waiting for the next big thing? Are you tired of waiting for the next slum to be evacuated, the next work unit compound to be privatized, and your next gated community condo to lose its luster? Wait no longer; the Meta-Block has arrived. This is not your typical superblock, and you are not a typical real estate investor. Real estate development has finally gone multi-dimensional: not only can you enjoy the benefits of vertically layered development, but you can also see new returns as the meta-block develops over time. Based on intensive research into the hyper development of urban systems, a new real estate product, the Meta-plane, addresses unsustainable problems—demographic, environmental, and economic—of the overused gated community model that has made your city feel like every other city. Visit www.china-lab.org to learn how to become part of the Meta-Block future.
The Beijing Boom Tower is the theoretical product of a genuine market attempt to supply
according to demand: suburban luxuries in the center of a major city. In the BBT you can have your cake and eat it. Beijing’s extremely coarse urban landscape can only find its match in giant tower blocks. Designed to offer LA style villa’s at precisely 10 times Manhattan density the BBT is able to reinstate a minute and erratic quality lost in China’s generic mega blocs. The 12,500 inhabitants are all accommodated with big balconies, and orientated towards the sun. There’s drive-in parking, 2 subway stations, and 8 public squares. The uncompromising design indicates the kinds of sacrifices which need to be made to allow luxurious future living standards within a compact integrated urban environment.
Socially conscious, the BBT presents a wall-free solution for China’s inner-cities. The regimented society of the communist era has naturally progressed to form a sophisticated gradient of privacies and increasing opulence. Only the housing sector still depends on a very crude form of segregation. The different residential compounds, represent well-defined niche markets. But bluntly fenced-off from the street and disconnected from each other they lack any real communal space. Effectively a city in a city the BBT aims to overcome this problem by offering its residents a radical diversity of facilities. They form the massive base of the building with direct internal subway and highway access.
The apartment towers are connected with bridges to form three distinct clusters, each with a hollow tower at the core. These clusters present a soft social gradient through the different neighborhoods, served by tailored facilities in the vicinity. The hollow towers contain extra vertical infrastructure, connected to bridges with the skinny villa skyscrapers all the high-end homes enjoy the perfect luxury of a private elevator.
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upper class
middle class
lower middle class
expr
ess
elev
ator
priv
ate
elev
ator
high above the parkinglot:
3 di�erent living typologies linked to di�erent transportsystems:
high end, elegant stacked villas (directly connected to the parkinglot)
middle class living blocs (connected with express elevators to the underground)
lower middle class social slabs (connected with escalators to the ground�oor)
some towers are divided into cheaper and more expensive appartments according to:- accessability: the easier to access, the more expensive- sungradient: the more sunlight you get, the more expensive your apartment
overall structure:
the whole complex can be devided into 3 sections, based on sun orientatien and tower type:
A: most expensive section, is orientated totally towards the south and contains mostly stacked villa towers
B: middle priced section, is orientated partly towards the south and contains all kinds of tower types
C: cheapest section, is orientated towards the North and contains the biggest hub - towers
just above the parkinglot:
in between the di�erent towers squares are unfolding
directly accessable from the di�erent squares you �nd all kinds of service providing facilities (sauna, swimmingpool, clotheshops, KTV, bars, restaurants,...)
spare space:
40% of total buildingsite is kept building free so there’s space left for green space
parkinglot:
Clearly divides building into up and under;with sunlight and without
under parkinglot:
A wall less city, people can walk in and out freely
Big Box retail inside the towerroots
small shops and o�ces on the outside of the towerroots giving the customers the possibility to shop in a halfopen space.
C
BA
sungradient
THIRD RING ROAD
THE THEORETICAL PRODUCT OF THE MARKET RESPONDING TO ALL FUTURE DEMANDS: SUB-URBAN STYLE LIVING IN THE HEART OF CHINA’S CAPITAL.
12,500 PEOPLE 5,000 APARTMENTS 6 HECTARES OF LAND 10X MANHATTAN DENSITY!
醒这城市潜在的疯狂,并最终将之彻底改变。这一项目采取了一种将相反的两方面合而为一的路径:大尺度的将发展视为建立封闭区域的自上而下的规划 vs. 覆盖城市每一个角落的细小的不受约束的城市生活。它推广一种新的城市进程,将利用广大的城市化发展作为各种街头商业活动衍生的框架。这些日常的随意活动不再是寄生性的,它们将与现有的巨构体交织在一起,像病毒感染一般取而代之。一旦它们超越了临界的数量后,将成为能够自我展开的系统。整个城市终将演变成一个能够承载一切生活所需的、连续不断的、超高密度的人造景观。
The Beijing Olympic Games presented us the image of a total integrated approach to the urbanity. It put up an extreme appearance that the city-state works as one mega-system with clear determination. Yet paradoxically, if you zoom in to the urban surface, out of the aesthetic of a perfectly manufactured stable image, emerges the fine grains of the proliferation of seemingly uncontrolled urban substances. The city is inundated with innovative urban upheavals – “vertical” eruption of the underground dynamics. We are witnessing the mutation of the city, in which logics for (re)production of urban substance are constantly reinvented. It is a paradigm of urban wildness that thrives against any discipline.
The wild growth driven by the economic boom has lead to the city’s heterotopias of countless lockdown enclaves. Huge segregated residential compounds have exploded to the point that architecture has swallowed any urban vision. Of the few strategies trying to deal with the uncontrolled rapid growth, many are preoccupied with domesticating order. Beijing simply subverts all those, and proof that the purifying procedure failed in registering the inherently turbulent mode of the multi-dimensional dynamics and tensions by which the city actually develop.
Wild Be[ij]ing inscribes a prospective history for the mutating reproduction, attempts to evoke the wild city rather than claim to represent it. The project responds to the all-encompassing paradigm of wildness with an approach that merges two seemingly opposing concepts of urbanity into one: the mega-scale top-down planning that treats developments as lockdown enclaves vs. the unregulated mobile activities that flood the urban ground. It propagates a new urban process by utilizing the vast urban developments as framework to proliferate street commerce – instead of being parasitical, unregulated activities can weave into the rigid structure of existing mega-blocks and disturb it like a virus infection. Once they reach the critical masses that catalyst the ferment, the city will become a self-unfolding system that ultimately reinvents itself as an uninterrupted hyper-dense artificial landscape, capable of accommodating all manners of life.
Site: Dahongmen Area - South of Beijing between 3rd-4th ring road
Wild Be[ij]ing proposes dynamic design procedures as a means of choreographing simultaneously the inhabitants, small initiatives, market and governmental forces in relation to the continuous changing urban environments. Below are three tests on pieces of urban fragments - of different scale, different stage, attacking different aspect of an existing system – they aren’t providing a complete set of answers to the site in present, nor do I desire to offer one, rather, they are possible scenarios of a desirable future.
BIG:China has broken all the records when it comes to size. The exploding cities have found their match in countless suitably gargantuan structures. Big is commercially seductive, technically fast and politically formidable. With careful design within the mega-structure the minute and independent can be safely reintroduced: Bigness is dead, Long live Bigness.
SMALL:Chinese architecture has exploded to the point it has taken over the role of urban planning. The public domain has administratively and effectively been swallowed up within the walls of mega-compounds. While the most cherished qualities of the Chinese city are the tranquility and intimacy of environments such as the hutong. To revive these qualities, small scale projects must be promoted and allowed to survive in the new cityscape.
Many Chinese children are not creative enough. Given that creativity has become a key ingredient of cultural as well as economic competiveness worldwide, China needs to develop intelligent means of nurturing more creative kids. We see the Beijing Olympic event as the culmination of a top-down, nationalist endeavour. The “One World, One Dream” campaign is symptomatic of the socialist ideology of collectiveness that diminishes the individual. If future visions are top-down defined, what role can children play in defining their own visions of the future? More fundamentally the Chinese education system is not conducive enough to enhance children’s imagination and creativity. Conformity, cram schools, and academic competition all but define and take over the lives of children. The problems become apparent as many Chinese students face difficulty when they travel abroad and encounter a more self-initiative based system. Many Chinese student need constant hand-held guidance, step-by-step ‘procedural manuals’, before they can tackle a given problem. (to be continued...)
想改变中国城市的面貌么?So,You Want to Re-Image the Chinese City? 概念图/洛克• 杨森Concept Sketch/Lok Jansen
如何产生良好的建筑师? How to produce good architects?项目/水晶石空间设计实验室[何新城+安健生+戴夫·哈兰德 ]
Projects/Crystal Urban Creation [Neville MARS + Jason ANDERSON + Dave HARLANDER]文-建筑/何新城Text-Architecture/Neville MARS
future needs today, diversity should be nurtured and no architectural ideology or no fixed design method should be pre-imposed. What then should be on offer instead? Or, what is the X-factor of a modern architecture school?To find out, we’ve analyzed the composition of 16 renowned but radically different design institutes. Three aspects seem to most affect the quality of a design school:1. Organization and Curriculum: Schools tend to teach architecture either as an art form (design driven), a discipline (technology-driven) or a field (research driven). 2. Environment: The building typology, the urban setting, size, population, languages offered and online presence.3. Community: Links with the professional community and industry, relations with other faculties, other design institutes, number of exchange students, profile of teachers and professors.
The X-factor of a design school is to Mix and Connect.We have designed a new school system, accommodated by a new (intentionally introvert) architecture. The school as a satellite that aims to adapt to local conditions, but operates within a network of institutes that exchange and build on each others experiences. Our objectives can be described by three design concepts:MINICAMPUS: Design studios are created throughout the buildings’ flexible framework. Residences and commercial uses are integrated into the campus to produce a slowly developing, dense, porous low rise structure of maximum exchange. MALL: Offer a variety of courses; the student shops around, mix and matches courses according to his personal skills and future ambitions. MOTHER SHIP: In a global market understanding local conditions is crucial. The design institute must become a node in the knowledge network.The research reconfirms one of our profession’s long-standing premises; that spatial conditions impact on social interaction. Secondly, that rather than building a platform where existing ideas can be taught, it is more sustainable to create an environment that encourages students to develop and exchange new ideas.
A serious hurdle on the road to better Chinese cities is the lack of good designers. This itself can be attributed to the lack in good design education. In the post-Olympic era architecture school must move away from producing drafters and begin producing designers of which large quantities will be needed across the country. We cannot depend on the handful of ‘sea turtles’ turned star architects to save the Chinese city. Instead we should investigate how to create an educational structure and curriculum that can produce designers who are able to respond to two unique features: the fast-changing urban landscape of and the fast changing needs of China’s urbanites. The fact is the educational process is very slow compared to the transformations of China. To comply with
和谐社会C - 教育政策:创意儿童- 新学园概念A Harmonious Society C - Education Policiy: Creative Kids - Concept of New School文/王帷泽+王帷新Text/Richard Wei-Tse WANG+Stephen Wei-Hsin WANG
Bring back some of the nit and grit i've been missing so! Discords, the unimagined, and undesigned are such a reprieve. Chinese planning is eradicating all things spontaneous and natural to reveal only static slickness.I've been investigating Mycelium, a fungus that can break down chemical waste and transform it into fertile soil. It grows over millennia, expanding its rhizome to the size of
an entire city. This should inspire designers and planners to work with the spontaneous, natural processes that already occur in every city - and to accept that it is sometimes better to simply let go...
Star Professors:Bernard Tschumi, Steven Holl, barry Berqdoll, kenneth Frampton, marry McLeod, Joan Ockman, Jorge Otero-PailosFelicty, Scott mark, Wigley Gwenndolyn Wright
Star Professors:Kolo Moser, Alfred Roller, Oskar Kokoschka, Henrich Tessenow, Franz Cizek
Star Professors:Star Professors:S h i g e r u B a n , D a n i e l Libeskind, Karen Bausman, Elisabeth Diller, Toshiko Mori
Connected: Online Public Information
Connected: Online Public Information.
Profiles.
Star Professors: Cedric Price
Star Professors:Tom Mayne,
Language : EnglishLanguage : English, GermanLanguage : French
Star Professors: Yong - He Change
T33LM X-FACTOR
TSINGHUA
EINDHOVENBERLAGEETSAB
AA SCI ARC PEKING HKU
COLUMBIAANGEWONTECOOPERUNION
Star Professors: IM PEI, Kevin Lynch, Saul Griffith
Connected: Online Public Information.
Star Professors: Eric Milalais
MIT
EAPLA
DELFTNUSAO PAULO HARVARDTSINGHUA
X number of factors that could better position BK_Delft within the market, principally by producing more diverse, better equipped designers. To achieve this, we have defined X-change as the central goal; knowledge X-change and social X-change. This goal is translated into three spatial concepts:
* MALL: Architectural layout and urban setting have a profound impact on the interactions a student has. Inner-city schools and dense, particularly low-rise structures maximize opportunities for X-change. The TU district lacks such urban qualities. However, as outlined in the universities 2010 urban plan, BK_Delft will gain prominence as one of the main entries to the district.
We aim to expand on this opportunity by creating a porous structure on top of an underground parking and retail deck. The ground level of BK_Delft becomes a lobby for the TU area with public services and facilities. Atriums connect to the underground shopping level and parking. These atriums become a controlled buffer zone and offer ample day-light throughout the building as the bases for a sustainable approach. The mall concept reduces the educational facilities to three levels stimulating predominantly horizontal movement. In plan BK_Delft’s four departments are organized in vertical neighborhoods. During the course of their schooling students get exposed to all aspects the school has to offer, encouraging them to shop around for knowledge, mixing and matching the products they feel are essential for their future.
* MOTHER SHIP: In a market that has architects working around the globe, we feel a school the size of BK_Delft should establish international research labs. BK_Delft becomes a mother ship with global satellites. This means at any given point as much as a third of the graduate students may be abroad. The unoccupied spaces become the lab exhibitions moving around the¬¬¬¬ studio floors; small two-way x-change rooms between the school and the world.
* MINI-CAMPUS: Today’s architect is required to respond to increasingly complex circumstances. Beyond the spatial dimension, a growing amount of societal issues needs to be understood. We urge BK_Delft to take the lead in offering a broad range of social studies to all students in the TU area. As a first step we have included 1/3 more lecture auditoriums to realize this. The design studios are created in three types; an open curving landscape for under graduates, flexible private studios for thesis students and auditorium style studios for larger teams of graduates to work together, listening to each other presentation from behind their desks. The top floor is all residential, accessible from a private gallery for guest professors and post-graduate students. The building, designed with minimal architectural articulation is a growing system, presented here in its maximum formation for the site.
A good architecture school makes good architects; a place that produces designers who can adhere to the changing needs of society. No ideology, no method can be pre-imposed. Then what should be on offer instead, and within which framework? What is the X-factor of an architecture school?
To find out, we’ve analyzed the organizational structure, environmental factors and community make-up of 16 design institutes. We have mapped the following 12 factors:
Organization: Type of curriculum, degree and its educational character - distinguishing schools that approach the profession more as an art form (design driven), a discipline (technology-driven) or a field (research driven). Environment: Building typology, urban setting, size, population, language, online presence. Community: Link with the professional community and industry, relations with other faculties, other design institutes, number of exchange students, profile of teachers and professors.
X-rated :: How does BK_Delft compare?+ Its large scale allows it to offer a broad array of different courses and facilities.+ BK_Delft provides an open learning environment and does not adhere to a dominant school of thought._ Although BK_Delft is known for its research orientated design, disciplines that train students to do research are few._ Students (until recently) worked predominantly at home and not in studios, limiting opportunities to work in teams._ The four departments that make up BK operate very autonomously.+ Its position is very central within the Western European Network and well connected within the conurbation of Holland’s Ring City. _ At the same time the TU Delft is isolated, has few services, residents or urban program._ The TU Delft campus is techno-centric, lacking diversity in supporting studies and courses. + _ Although BK_Delft is accessible to many exchange students, and has many program, little effort is made to create strong research labs abroad.
BK_triple X :: Creating a strategic learning environmentThe architectural profession is changing. BK_Delft has the type of rare opportunity that only comes with great tragedy. It can conceive how its architectural setting can support its long-term educational goals. Globalization and unpredictability prove dominant forces, also in our field. We have defined a
GlobalB i l a t e r a l C o o p e r a t i o n Agreements
Visual:With the urban boom, architectural visualization technology has taken a quantum leap. Movies of buildings and cities can soon, not just be viewed in lifelike computer animation, but altered and designed in real-time. Then the progressively complex urban context can be understood and controlled with the click of a mouse by specialists and laymen alike.
Conceptual:Slick imagery has reduced architectural design to a purely formal, even superficial practice. The concepts are obscured by lens-flares in doorknobs and skylines. The serious implication: the illusion of understanding the rendered proposals further tightens the grip Chinese policy makers have on the design process. The emergence of planners and architects as significant spatial problem solvers is postponed.
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Stereotype to Prototype
剧院绽开THEATER UNWRAPPED通常剧场的延展部分环绕在其技术核心――听众席――周围,掩盖了自己的特征。本设计返璞归真,展示其基本结构以令机制本身自言自明。将三座地下剧场、空中桥梁连接起来,使每个建筑物在空间与功能上都独立,并解放地面部分以作为公共空间。Typically, the malleable program of a theater is wrapped around the technical core of its auditorium hiding the characteristic features. Stripped down to its fundamental structure this design aims to let the machinery speak for itself. This is possible by connecting the three theaters underground, and with bridges in the air, leaving each building independent and efficient, while liberating the ground surface as public space.
绿舰THE GREEN
CARRIER 除了最大程度吸收被动式太阳能,以太阳能为主导的设计理念也值得考虑。这一设计将一个庞大建筑置于公共领域上,从而解决了巨大阴影的问题。其如锥如舰的造型令阴影面积达到最小。Solar oriented design concepts deserve consideration beyond maximizing absorption of pas-sive solar energy. This design addresses the vast shadow a large building casts onto the public domain. Its cone or carri-er shape minimizes this shadow silhouette.
塘沽展厅TANGGU
EXHIBITION HALL博物馆的柯布西耶式曲线将许多理性设计理念隐藏起来。站在飘浮的甲板上,参观者们俯瞰整个CBD,映入眼帘的是悬浮在城市上空的新规划发展,和四周倾斜玻璃立面中的倒影。The Le Corbusian curves of this museum conceal a number of rational design concepts. From a floating deck visitors look down over the CBD, and virtually see the new planned developments floating over the city, reflected in its tilted glass facade.
葱翠大塔LUSH TOWER标志建筑处处风靡,但怎样的建筑才是可持续式区域的标志?这座空心巨无霸高60层,外部立面上布满了植被,是当今世界上最大的垂直公园。大塔本身就是一面美丽的生态墙,排除大气毒素、净化我们的空气。Icon building is all the rage, but what is the icon of a sustainable district? This 60 story hollow giant has vegetation lining its façade, creating the world’s largest ver-tical park. The tower becomes a beautiful biowall, purifying the air of atmospheric toxins.
上海火车馆SHANGHAI TRAIN PAVILION 铁轨与车站不再只是功能性基础设施,它们代表了中式大都会的两大目标:向网络城市的转型,和以公共交通为居民现代生活方式核心的都市社会。本建筑展示了这种复杂三维交通节点的冰山一角。Tracks and stations are no longer just func-tional infrastructure, they represent two quintessential goals of the Chinese metropo- lis: a shift to-wards the network city, and an urban society where public transport is at the heart of its residents modern life- style. This building reproduces a section of such a complex three dimensional transportation node.
拼拼可持续PUZZLE PIECE SUS-TAINABILITY何不更新换代让你的绿色社区赶上迭升的保密级别,在公共绿地上稳健地建起盘根错节的住房与服务网络。Why not stack your green commu-nity into levels of increased privacy and achieve a meandering network of housing and services, tightly nestled in a green parkland?
电视塔TV TOWER最初,在尚无任何前期条件之时,建造地标式电视塔就是一桩梦幻任务。一项针对全球现有电视塔的基本调查揭示了另一种现实。它们拥有同样的外观――完全出于正当原因。它们唯一的目标就是以更少的结构性付出(比如,成本)盖到更高。这注定它们都是内部中空,并大多在塔身3/5高度的位置设有向外延伸的观景台和餐厅。下面三个议案则一方面延续了固有结构逻辑,同时又有效地突破了这一传统。Initially the request to make a landmark TV tower, without any preconditions, seemed a dream assignment. A basic sur-vey of the word’s existing TV masts revealed another reality. They all look identical - and for good reason. Their sole objec-tive is to achieve height with minimum structural effort (i.ae. cost). This reduces them to a basic hollow core with a pro-trusion as a viewing deck and restaurant at roughly at 3/5 of the height. These three propos-als effectively break with this tradition while maintaining the inherent structural logic.
世博动态图EXPO LIVING DIAGRAM目标是让本建筑的整体造型成为上海世博会的典范式图解:神形具备地展示全球增长规模最大、速度最快的城市。图解建筑体上的每座山头代表一座超大城市。宽度对应城市的大小,高度则代表城市的发展速度。山体内部是投影放映厅。The shape of this building is aimed to be the Shanghai Expo’s quintessential diagram: the state of the world’s largest and fastest growth cities. Each hill of the diagram building represents a mega-city. While the width of the hill reveals the size, the height of each hill represents the speed with which the city grows. Inside the mountain are projection halls.
立面旋转购物中心ROTATING FACADE SHOPPING MALL
森林停车场PARKING LOT FOREST太阳树(树形太阳能装置)占领了中国城市中心的混凝土海洋。仿佛钢铁树冠一般,它们为你的车辆带来荫凉,挡风遮雨又减弱城市的热岛效应。噢,如果要接入树干为你的混合动力车充电,千万不要客气。Solar trees take over the concrete seas of China’s urban centers. Like a steel canopy, these trees pro-vide shade for your car, shelter from the rain, and reduce the urban heat is-land effect. Oh, feel free to plug your hybrid vehicle in its trunk to recharge the battery.
天津博物办公塔TIANJIN MUSEUM TOWER中国公共建筑之大不幸在于其根本不面向公众。博物馆与政府大楼两者功能互融,令我们可以穿越传统的桎梏,既允许展览向上延伸至高塔的中心,也允许办公室向下渗透到博物馆之中。如整体式可持续发展工程般的设计,塔身就像博物馆的天然通风烟囱。两座建筑的地下部分互相连接,利用博物馆的空旷部分将新鲜空气送到顶端。Chinese public buildings have the unfortunate quality of be-ing particularly non-public. The combined commission of a museum and government building allowed us to blur the traditional borders, al-lowing the exhibition to crawl up into the tower atrium and the offices seep down into the museum. Designed as an in-tegrated sustainable project, the tower functions as a natu-rally ventilating chimney for
the museum. Underground the two buildings are con-
nected, drawing fresh air through the voids
of the museum to the top.
子弹大厦BULLET BUILDING上海火车馆的设计大胆地表现了中国轨道交通闪电般的实现速度。数天前还需几天才能到达的地方,如今只需几个小时就能抵达,全国数百万人的时空体验已被火车大大压缩了。This design for the Shanghai Rail Pa-vilion boldly represents the lightning speed at which rail transportation has been realized in China. Connecting places in hours, that until recently took days to reach, the train has dramatical-ly shrunk to time-space experience for millions of people across the nation.
分散的与折射的SCATTERED AND REFRACTED渐渐地,写字楼内的背光区域越来越多。这里将所有的背光办公室集中在大厦内部,通过缝隙将光线汇聚到大厦深处,从而避免将大厦建成又一座黑暗高塔。Increasingly office towers contain more and more dark program. Rather than making an-other gloomy silo, this tower concentrates the dark office space inside the building, while drawing in light deep into the building through craveses.
类型到原型From Stereotype to Prototype
项目/水晶石空间设计实验室[何新城+安健生+戴夫·哈兰德 ]Projects/Crystal Urban Creation[Neville MARS+Jason ANDERSON+Dave HARLANDER]文-建筑/何新城Text-Architecture/Neville MARS
The design industries are highly fragmented. Planners, re-searchers and designers have little to no interaction with each other, yet their work is profoundly and mutually related. Chi-nese planning culture - we can blame blatant pragmatism - has discouraged, even disrupted the traditional balance be-tween the disciplines that shape our environment. The urban
designer is squeezed out in the process. At the regional scale large swaths of land are simply gridded by universities and design institutes, to be filled in with generic urban typologies. Simultaneously the architectural scale has exploded, margin-alizing the role of the urban designer to plotting out connect-ing arteries. The essential tasks of the planner, providing an adaptable framework for growth and designing the space in between the buildings (the public realm we once understood as the actual city), are swallowed up within the confined lay-out of mega-industrial fields and micro-planned compounds. Big buildings are simply locked into place; their potential as integral components of the urban fabric is lost. Designing from a birds-eye view fails to consider the human perspective. Ul-timately this planning practice denies anyone other than bu-reaucrats the responsibility for the final outcome of the city.
To achieve truly integrated schemes policy makers will have to learn to embrace plans that remain abstract, yet anticipate the role architecture should play to give intricacy to the city-scape. The anxiety to please developers should make way for the ambition to challenge and inspire. Policy-makers should concern themselves less with a stale image, more with the workings of a living city.
It is this ambition that has resulted in a series of design pro-posals, ironically from the worlds leading image maker; Crys-tal CG. As an expert of architectural renderings it has taken the bold step to address this void by expanding its business into conceptual architecture, moving from production towards in-novations in the process. This collage presents the first phase of our ‘pro-active urban prototypes’ for the Chinese city.
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水晶石的大脑 ——卢正刚: 多样化、破坏与混乱的制造者Interview LU Zhenggang - CEO Crystal CG:On Creating Chaos采访/何新城 Interview/Neville MARS
NM: We are at a very special moment in time. Thirty years of relentless growth, topped by the Olympics, directly followed by a new economic reality. Is Crystal at a similar point in time, after ten years of amazing growth?
LZG: The end of 2008 is a turning point. But Crystal is in fact just a very small company in the large economy of China. We got seriously involved with the Beijing Olympics, right from the bid in 1998, to the PR, building the stadiums and the opening ceremony. The size of Crystal and the brand has been elevated tremendously during the ten years of hosting the Olympics. This single opportunity made Crystal grow from a company of 60 to more than 2000 employees today. We are one of the main beneficiaries of the Olympics in the last ten years. The next event that will push us moving forward will be the Shanghai Expo in 2010.
何新城:水晶石当时的竞争优势是什么? NM: What was the competitive advantage of Crystal?
LZG: Crystal was one of the first companies in China that produce computer graphics. during the early stage of the Olympics preparation, Crystal had absolute cutting edge technology in rendering, modeling and visual effects. Secondly, Crystal was way ahead of the state owned enterprises in terms of professional service.
何新城:水晶石今天还具备最前沿的技术优势么?
NM: Today still have a technological cutting-edge advantage?
LZG: Overall Crystal still has a technological advantage, however, computer graphics technology right now is much more diversified and some technical aspects needs to be updated. On the other hand, now Crystal can produce an entire city in virtual reality and upload it online. Such technology is absolutely cutting-edge and is being applied in the online World Expo in 2010. All the museums and exhibitions of the Expo will be replicated. This is one of the major highlights of the Shanghai World Expo. That’s unprecedented.
NM: Creating new products shapes the market. This seems to me to suggest that Crystal’s technologies are actually redefining the architectural profession.
LZG: True. Crystal only had one technology in the beginning which is architectural rendering and all of our clients were from the architectural fields but our client base has much diversified now. On the one hand, we create new demand but at the same time, those clients who have great imagination and who are ahead of us have helped us to expand. Crystal is a highly market-driven company. We know the change of demands faster than our competitors.
何新城:当虚拟建筑变得日益重要时,传统意义上的建筑表现市场是否越来越不重要了呢?
NM: As the importance of virtual architecture is expanding, does that mean the market of architecture in the
traditional sense is becoming less important for you?
LZG: I haven’t seen any sign that the traditional rendering is diminishing. Yet market structure has certainly changed. More and more architects know how to use architectural rendering tools. However, the dependence of architects on renderings is also unprecedented. It means that service providers like Crystal will face ever more critical and smart architects who are ever more aware of costs. At the same time, i can also see that the foreign demand of visualization is five years behind that of China. It means that after ten years of development, architectural rendering has evolved from an advanced cutting-edge to a popular tool and the demand for the service is ever more stable.
In fact, about half of Crystal’s clients are foreign architects nowadays. But recently, as I’m studying our foreign client base more carefully, i realized that we are still not a truly international company. Most of the clients in our offices in the States, Europe and The Middle East have emerged in China and expanded to those places. In terms of either market share, brand recognition or client satisfaction, Crystal hasn’t even started to become international. That’s my observation of the current situation.
何新城:水晶石走向国际市场似乎是坐标变化的指针。过去的十年都是全球化
的公司打入中国市场,而现在水晶石是第一批真正走出去的先锋之一。
NM: Crystal entering the world market is one of the indicators of a real paradigm shift. The last ten years global companies have fought hard to enter the Chinese market, now Crystal is among the frontrunners of Chinese companies expanding it’s horizon.
LZG: Crystal’s overseas expansion is not because the Chinese market has receded. There are two challenges in terms of Crystal’s overseas expansion, one is the lack of talent. There’s a major shortage of Chinese who speak the local language, and understand the culture and Crystal’s business. Secondly, the size of Crystal suits the Chinese market. It will be a major challenge to the business
structure of such a big company to meet the diversified demands in different
NM: Every great business leader thinks about sustainable growth rather than quick profit. I know for Crystal this means educating it’s people and trying to build a community.
LZG: it has always been my primary mission to achieve a balanced growth. Primarily the balance of commercialism and professionalism. Not too commercial yet not too professionalized like a small studio. Maximizing short-term profits should not diminishing the long-term competitiveness. Maintaining long-term competitiveness is always my first priority mission, essentially by promoting innovation. I believe to a certain extent innovation means damaging the organization. If you don’t destroy the old structure there will never be a new one. Damage will cause chaos and chaos will promote innovation. Besides damage, competition will also result in innovation. I need to maintain the co-existence of different ideas, viewpoints and opinions, allowing them to clash with each other without destroying each other. Diversification, damage and chaos are the three key words in my dictionary to promote innovation.
何新城:作为商业领袖,你如何看待四万亿的经济刺激计划?
NM: Finally, on the topic of competition, as a business leader how
LZG: I have my doubts about the four trillion RMB stimulus. Other than the fact it is just an empty slogan, and the central government will only spend one trillion, i think the stimulus
package will make the transition to the market economy in China move backwards. I oppose such economic policies of this government. They are increasingly empowering the national
economy and they firmly believe that a strong government will be able to save the economy. It might have some short-term effect the next two or three years, but it will kill innovation and damage
the free market economy. I’m not worried about our business but i don’t like the political economic environment. I don’t like that i will need to face up to an ever more powerful government.
This also explains that why we decide to expand the overseas market even though China has a four trillion RMB stimulus package lined-up. I made a huge bet which is to become a major sponsor of London Olympics. the ten million sponsor fee is only part of the investment we will make. Many people within the company are against it, arguing that the london olympics is not
as big a commercial opportunity like Beijing. Yet I insist to invest. I’m under huge pressure at the moment, but I believe that after another four years of struggle and self-reflection, Crystal will have its rebirth.
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土生土长的城郊Home Grown Hangzhou摄影-文/何新城Photograph-Text/Neville MARS
Around China’s cities the urban registration system has spawned extensive in situ urbanization. Outside the administrative border, where
you’d expect the edge of the city, informal rural developments often continue far into the countryside. Generally this is primitive
urbanization staunchly competing with the official projects of the city that chases them, but not always. At a time when among
planners urban farming is all the rage, the periphery of cities such as Hangzhou have produced an entirely new kind of
‘home grown’ suburbia. With basic support from the local authorities, here the struggle between city and
countryside has consolidated into a compelling hybrid of agriculture and private villas.
The result is an in-between zone as diverse as any Chinese metropolitan periphery but without the staggering spatial and social contrasts that have dominated suburbanization in recent years. The main typology is a 5 or 6 story villa designed like a colorful fantasy palace with
a vegetable garden as a backyard and sometimes a workshop in the
garage. Our survey shows they are built and mostly occupied by locals; an investment for rural families in an area whit little room for large-scale farming but with increasing land-values.
Tightly aligned shoulder to shoulder along canals and aggregation systems Chinese pragmatism has produced an entirely un-Chinese layout. Though still pitch black with pollution these canals make this a truly unique urban system. Beyond the mixed use, the urban farming, and the socio-political niche that is fills, it’s an powerful example of what urban planning should be about; providing developers and individuals only with the basic framework to realize their architectural projects. Nestled against the urban core, semi-autonomous, relatively dense, and served by public transport the home-grown suburb has all the qualities of a Green Edge* wedged between city and countryside.
The harmonious city must first be planned by experts who understand the science of urbanism. They work out their plans in total freedom... once their plans are formulated they must be implemented without oppositions.—Le Corbusier
Perhaps the most powerful way of improving the fit of our environment, is to put the control of it in the hands of its immediate users, who have the stake and the knowledge to make it function well. If users are in control ... then a good match is more likely.—Kevin Lynch
Between Le Corbusier's top-down and Lynch's bottom-up visions of planning one would imagine all possible planning strategies are covered. In the reality of China, however, neither the designers nor the users, but two other parties grosso modo define the outcome of the urban environment: the state and the market. This last segment raises questions about the process of real-estate development in China and its effect on the city.
Democratic Design 1.0 – The Loop Model
Is the city yours, or mine, everybody's, or anybody's? If the city is more than a mere byproduct of our urge to coalesce and to build, if we can influence its form and evolve beyond the generic, beyond pre-existing models, someone - maybe all of us - should consider what it could ultimately be.
Performance: It is obvious there is a price to pay for urbanization at hyper-speed. At every level of society bulldozers and sledge hammers are clearing the way for the modern. From CBD to suburban slum, from factory to village we are surrounded by the ceaseless efforts of contractors and their army of construction workers. They in turn are
fed libraries of drawings produced by over 100.000 designers, planners, engineers, market consultants and architects who are hired by a growing number of developers, coordinated by an array of design institutes and kept in check by several government bodies and ministries. The efficiency of China's urbanization industry is astonishing. To achieve such efficiency the architecture itself, the buildings we live in, the new streets and shops, have inevitably adapted. It has made the Chinese cities under construction today and finished tomorrow into slick cities; light in concept and material, sophisticated in their ease to be drafted and assembled. The price we pay is performance.
It's obvious the city can't ever be solved. Slickness may be fast to construct, but it comes with countless glitches. It's a national sport (as in any country) to complain about the city: it's too big, too polluted, too dense, too expensive, too harsh, too congested; or it's still too small, with no work, no space, no green, no facilities, no community, no roads. What to complain about is different for all of us. Car owners and construction workers most likely have conflicting ideas about what the city should be like. The list of opposing needs and interests to address is endless. So while the city can't be
Choice: The absolute number of people involved in China's reconstruction is staggering; the number of designers and decision makers is minimal. So who decides what's good for you as a citizen? And do they know what you want? No longer do we live in rows and rows of indistinguishable blocks. On offer today are all sorts of apartment towers and villas in different sizes and colors. The market knows what it wants to build, and it decides based on what sells. This is trial and error; as demand levels out and competition stabilizes, the assortment on offer should broaden and the city will evolve. And this is happening - sustainable housing is slowly more en vogue, and tailor-made local projects are on the rise over copy-paste solutions. Still, in reality the tens of thousands of residential projects scattered across China follow very similar design principles. The level of luxury may differ, but the way they function, their living environment, and particularly the urban context they produce are
all but identical. Chinese cities are all becoming the same. Urban development has progressed and accelerated. The majority of buildings for 2020 have today been realized. In order to produce better performing buildings and cities that keep pace with the blossoming urban class the development process itself will need to become more sophisticated. This involves a more intense dialogue between the state, developers, designers and users; a continuous loop of information will be necessary.
Developers: In this highly aggressive market, innovation is a dangerous luxury – eighty eight of the top one hundred of Chinese real estate companies have been taken over since 1994. Understandably developers have been walking a tight-rope, careful not to stray from the success formula of previous projects. From a commercial standpoint, the real-estate industry has indeed become so refined it's hard to imagine there is room for any new paradigms. A resilient misconception that innovation in design always means added costs - not only in direct costs, but in more complicated architecture - pervades. The developer knows these sort of considerations will be beyond the carefully calculated budget of new inhabitants. But there is of course innovation all around us. A Beijing company has recently
produced a panel system that allows an entire house to be built in less than five hours. This is an amazing novelty that may further accelerate China’s building boom. For the most part, however, explorations on how we can live, and what the user might need tomorrow, remain scarce. Developers in China, with an unusually strong input from market consultants, try to map what people want and can afford. Unfortunately simply listening to home-owners with surveys is not a profound basis for innovation. And the improvements are restricted to the level of the building or the (gated) community; the city as a whole, as a product of thousands of connected real-estate projects, is not addressed.
Designer: If we believe Le Corbusier the harmonious city is just around the corner, if only the visionary architect could have his way. Ironically China has by and large been constructing a Le Corbusian landscape, complete with repeating apartment towers, flyovers and mega-projects, but without involving many architects. At this moment, at this speed in China’s history the role of the designer is still dismal. Based on output Harvard researchers have argued the efficiency of the Chinese architect is 500 times that of
In China individuality is a young concept, but nothing less than an urban renaissance has been sparked by you the individual and by the millions of new citizens and first generation metropolitans. You are moving to the cities and you are rebuilding your villages. You are driving the economy; you are buying the cars, building the apartment towers, operating the conveyer belts and buying the villas. That makes you the new leaders of China.
Dynamic city: So what do you want? Slow cities, such as the capitals of Scandinavia rank high on the world list of favorite cities to live in. Evolving block by block, year by year they have been able to mediate the different desires of their citizens over time. These cities resemble the environments described in our survey, but they hardly present a feasible option for China’s burgeoning new centers, and copying the style of their facades won’t help much either. Another approach is hands-on user participation of the kind we have tried in Europe in the early seventies. This was truly democratic design, but it proved horrendously slow and subsequently failed. Construction in China will not slow down soon. The paper-thin features typical of the new neighborhoods and development zones will not evolve overnight. The next phase of China’s modernization efforts requires the refinement of the development process itself. An
open dialogue about the future of the city is needed that involves all parties: a loop of information between policy makers, developers designers and, new to the equation, citizens. The theme of the 2010 Shanghai Expo is appropriately called: Better City, Better Life! For the one billion Chinese soon living in cities the correlation between the quality of the urban environment and the quality of their life will be evident. This dialogue will undoubtedly slow things down. It will thicken the process; give layers and layers of detail to slick cities. It will give control to all those who partake in the city. Above all, operating as a single force we might gain control to steer the city in a distinct direction. This direction must be distinct, but will always be unclear. What you, the citizens will need or might want tomorrow is uncertain. The city must be able to respond to this uncertainty. Proposals for a context as dynamic as China must be able to grow and evolve after completion—if only so as not to impede their own development. The city must be able to adapt by anticipating the reality of constant change, acknowledged at every level by all parties. This is the dynamic city; the result of a dynamic process, based on research dialogue and foresight.
his American counterpart; though on the rise, his role in the design and decision making process should be reduced by a similar amount. The tug of war over a proposal between architects and developers is a crucial game at the heart of the development process that should crystallize the outcome of any design. Both parties should meet as equals to interpret the needs of the user, and struggling to explore the limits. In China however, the designer as an interpreter of user needs simply does not yet exist.
Government: The city is a mediated space. Its density, the proximity of its citizens to each other, the ease to interact, is the key to its success. This proximity should be voluntary and produce equal opportunity for all citizens to explore their lives. This proximity however is also undesired; more space is more comfortable. To optimize the city as a mediated space the input of the
state is needed. China's anticipated urban mix can't grow freely. Planning policies can't be both flexible and restrictive enough to let the city grow without spatial planning or design. The state should balance the demands of individuals and companies against the common good and envisage some form of coherency that captures the common good. In this centrally planned economy an overarching vision should, at least on paper, be able to be implemented more effectively than anywhere else. Long-term regional planning should have an actual spatial impact, beyond assigning economic and development zones - notably on land use efficiency. The large, generally successful state-owned developing companies are a unique means to supplement an architectural landscape solely produced by the market - notably the introduction of small scale projects. State-run
projects are realized with higher quality and faster than any other; they can and should push the entire industry towards more strategic proposals and accepting slower or longer-term revenues.
User: That leaves you and me. As users of space, we really don't know what we want. We simply choose from what's on offer; the house we can afford, the neighborhood with a decent school, the city with a friendly face. But you, the individual will have to start to participate if you want anything more than what's on offer.
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英文版《城市中国》(部分)English Version of Urban China (Partly)
黄页Yellow Pages
1. CHINA KEEP GROWING!
We’re in the midst of a global twister. America is on its knees begging for cash injections; banks are creaking, prices falling, and container ships bumping emptily against the docks. Yet China — one of the world’s most globalized nations — has explicitly stated that its “greatest contribution” to global stability will be to keep its own economy running smoothly. Essentially, when seas are high, it will look to home.
There is good reason to believe this actually is in the world’s best interests. With the slowdown in the West, the global economy is increasingly reliant on China for maintaining some show of growth; and were China now to fall into a slump, it could roll the entire world off into a downward spiral. Fortunately though, the world is well assured. China’s growth, it is widely assumed, is dependable because it is not based on a single finite resource, such as oil (as in Russia), but on the continuing productivity gains of the Chinese workers. And why would they stop working, and gaining?
A little more scrutiny however reveals a markedly more fragile picture. Over the last two decades, Chinese economic growth has been driven by a twin-burn engine, fueled on either side by urbanization and exports. Exports are now drying up. Against a fifteen year trend of 26% annual export growth, recession in the West has led in 2008 to a 2% fall in exports. Thus exports have become a drag, not a driver. At the same time, central government has become increasingly concerned about urban land acquisition. The last fifteen years have seen cities across China mushrooming to two and half times their size. Now fear of further loss of arable capacity has led to a stipulated minimum of 120 million hectares of farmland. Seeing as this is just about as much as there is now, cities are left with precious little room to grow into.
The sudden drop off of exports and of urban expansion, taken together, constitutes a terrible double blow for the growth wave. The rapid urbanization model, formerly so dominant in transforming the physical and social landscapes of China, is now gagging on the prospect of no new land to develop, no investment capital with which to develop it, and no foreign markets to sell to once development is complete. It turns out that China’s growth, far from being resource-independent, was in fact heavily reliant
upon two distinct resources — resources which until recently people somehow assumed to be infinite. These were the affluence of the Western consumer, and the vastness of the Chinese nation. Right now, right when the world needs them most, they’re both looking disconcertingly exhausted..
2. BUT NOT LIKE THAT!
In truth, this should have long been apparent given the fundamental unsustainability of the rapid-urbanization-export-maximizing attitude. Firstly, exports, in the greater scheme of things, ultimately have to balance. Over the last ten years and more China has been running a huge trade surplus with the US, exporting far more than it was importing, and stashing the dollar proceeds. The effect of this was to flood the US with cheap credit, thereby sustaining the boom, but only through supplying debt. And as any shopkeeper knows, you can’t keep on lending to your customers so that they can keep on buying your products. The current global financial crisis is in no small way an expression of precisely this — the necessary unwinding of impossible global imbalances.
Secondly, imbalances were equally at work within China through the rapid urbanization component of the growth model. Again starting in the early nineties, central policies were introduced which incentivized local officials to boost GDP by acting entrepreneurially. This sparked a multi-scalar urban rush. The best means to grow local GDP was to stimulate urbanization, and the best way for local officials to raise the necessary capital to urbanize was to start selling the thing they had most of: land. Officials at every level across China acquired land, stripped it, and resold it in the form of use-rights to urban developers, using the cash to lay down promised infrastructure, and elaborate slick downtown masterplans. According to the principal of market reform, these operations were left largely to play themselves out, and assessed chiefly on the basis of reported GDP figures. The result was a chaotically atomized pan-China construction boom, with thousands of small and mid-sized cities exploding horizontally — or even summoning themselves into existence out of previously rural areas — competing frenetically for investment. Given the fiercely appetitive climate that was developing, fledgling cities entered into internecine undercutting wars, with land being offered to industry at cheaper and
cheaper rates, with more and more favorable tax packaging, and with fewer and fewer regulatory constraints. What followed was exorbitant land consumption in largely unstructured patterns, notwithstanding more stringent regulations, planning and building quality remains dire.
Protected by sweetheart deals with local officials, factory bosses were able to run amok, largely unbeholden either to central planning schemes or to market realities. Sure enough they produced cheap exports, but the resultant macrostructures were characterized by local protectionism, and riddled with land abuses. A stark demonstration of this comes from the people who formerly held the land themselves. In 2007 80,000 large-scale protests were officially recorded across China: more than 10x the figure for 1992. Over half of these were directly related to land issues. Things couldn’t just continue.
3. I’M NOT SAYING STOP!
Yet what makes the atomized urbanization model so essentially ill-suited to post-Olympic China is a fundamental structural confusion. At the same time that policies encouraged ubiquitous local-level bureaucratic entrepreneurialism, there was an inherent bias toward the megacities. The Shanghai-model of the urbanizing ‘90s, pioneered by former Shanghai bosses Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, inevitably favored the coastal Special Economic Zones (SEZs). These areas were able to use their peculiar export and import status, as well as their superior level of global recognition, to leverage more foreign investment, and thus outpace the brawling rabble of interior cities. A further structural advantage was awarded the megacities in their ability to attract human capital, both from within China’s pool of freshly mobile graduates, and even internationally as the megacities became global cosmopolitan centers.
It is on this issue of migration that urban incoherencies become most apparent. The continuing existence, if under terms of somewhat mitigated relaxation, of the hukou system, ensured the continuing restriction of rural to urban migration. Thus while national growth efforts favored the urban poles, urbanizing migrants were encouraged to leave the village but not the countryside, creating to high levels of intraprovincial migration, and a massive pool of floating migrants. Existing in a regulatory grey area, the floating migrants remain urbanites of the least stable kind — a rolling component
CHINA KEEP GROWING! BUT NOT LIKE THAT! I DON’T MEAN STOP! HURRY UP AL-READY! ONLY BETTER!Text/Adrian HORNSBY
within the population, who greatly contribute to the city, yet are barred from integrating into its essential fabric.
Unstable migration of this kind has deleterious effects upon city growth in two key ways. Firstly, necessarily uncommitted to the temporary situation in which they find themselves, temporary migrants exhibit much lower levels of personal or financial investment in their immediate surroundings. Without committed residents, local environments tend to degenerate toward substandard living conditions, which are more readily tolerated as they are regarded as short-term. Crucially however, while they are short-term for the floating migrant, they are on the ground realities for the growing city. And thus the city suffers. Secondly, the financial investments which floating migrants are not making into the urban environment are instead being diverted, in the form of remittances, to places which are regarded as more permanent — i.e. the migrants’ point of origin. The result of this is that capital generated through urban productivity is leaking out of the city, rather than funding its growth, and flowing into the village. Thus the place most deserving of investment (i.e. where money is actually being made, and therefore where more money should go to further development) is starved of cash. Not only is this backwards conceptually, but it is made all the more desperate by the fact that migration levels, far from slackening, are set to accelerate over the coming period. While previously the urban population was significantly swollen by the physical act of cities swelling, and thus engulfing formerly rural populations, future city growth is likely to come primarily from a rural influx. Mid-size cities can expect 40–50% of their future populations to comprise of migrants. Can these all have such temporary expectations? What would it mean for a city to have up to half of its population regarding itself as not truly living there at all?
4. HURRY UP ALREADY!
The oncoming wave of migrants constitutes for China its greatest challenge yet: graduating from the rampant ad hocism of the pre-Olympic urban boom, to a more sophisticated and sustainable post-Olympic urban society. This perforce will be less space extensive. It will also be more people intensive — with more people traveling into cities, arriving with greater expectations, and forming a larger incontrovertible presence.
China’s grand contribution to the world of keeping its own economy running smoothly will center upon its ability to manage this influx, and reorientate its growth. These are the two things it has to do. And fast.
5. ONLY GROW BETTER!
The urbanization of the recent era (i.e. atomized development driven by rampant land acquisition and temporary populations) can be characterized as driving forward on five wheels. It was urbanizing everywhere all at once. This is exactly the form of unidirectional irrational exuberance that the global financial crisis has wiped out at a stroke. China’s 4.2 trillion RMB stimulus package however represents an end to such approaches. It is an explicit acknowledgement on the part of the central government that, if left to themselves, the five wheels would probably come off, and the whole barouche crashes into the ditch. The package is a guiding hand taking up the reins.
Notably, the largest single component of the stimulus is investment in national infrastructure. The configuration of new road, rail and airport networks will inevitably enforce a rationalization of the tiering of cities according to their varying levels of connectivity. Even more significant will be the development of the national power grid, which will dictate the shape and weighting of future urban growth. Heavy industry may follow the route of on-site generation, locating itself ever further from the city at the end of a coal-truck road. Urban centers however, as they become more sophisticated and I.T. dependent, will increasingly be strung together and suspended from the cross-weave of power lines. Central engagement in the distribution of these lines and power stations will to a large extent assume the hitherto missing role of national and regional planning.
At the lower level, engaging users with the emerging urban property market will be the principle route to improved urban integration. The atomization model encouraged fervid competition among cities, with all the concomitant volatility and shortsightedness of a new market. However, given the level of control exercised by local officials and state-owned banks over the actual land deals and investment structures involved, the market within cities, from the point of view of the urban resident, was in fact excessively constrained. Shifting the emphasis of where
market freedoms take place from competition among urban nodes to competition for urban space, will bring the consumer into play, and form a second, this time “invisible”, guiding hand. Rather than a market composed of local officials flogging GDP area-figures, the real competition in post-Olympic urban China will take place among actual apartments, shops, offices, recreational and cultural spaces etc. On this floor, the key actors become the people living in the city, and buying the program. Restructuring urban growth to be more demand-aligned will protect against future bubbles, and simultaneously capture more residential investment capital.
An important move in this direction, and again part of the new measures, is to reduce mortgage down payment requirements from 30 to 20%. The more accessible the property entry level becomes, the greater the user response to urban development, and the lesser the role of the speculator (though too low and speculation rises again, as does risk of negative equity). A further and equally stimulating implication of this shift is to put more money into the pockets of consumers themselves. Cash formerly constrained within housing is freed up for urban retail, which is the one true bull market left unravaged by the global crisis.
While Chinese exports are contracting, domestic consumption is strongly on the rise, with retail sales growing by 22% in 2008. This is all more encouraging for the fact that the Chinese consumer is a relatively small contributor to overall GDP (less than one quarter, against almost three quarters in the US), offering tantalizing room for significant further expansion. Indeed, it is the newly cash-flush consumer, fresh into the city which he now feels is his home, and in which he plans to spend his paycheck, who will carry the growth wave through. Getting him there is all that’s needed to shift growth from collapsing state-led export-orientated operations to consumer-led domestic-orientated sales.
As the global twister sweeps its way east, the Chinese middle class urban shopper — with bags in one hand, and a real estate brochure in the other — stands right in its eye, staring up.
1. A Working Model?
A new town strategy has been adopted for the Beijing New Masterplan 2004-2020. Planning and design have been prepared prior to the Olympic Games. It was plotted by Beijing municipality that large-scale new town development would commence shortly after the Games, as part of a post-Olympic economic stimulus. In fact, over a hundred new towns are being or about to be constructed in China. Needless to say how well this strategy is implemented will have great impact on social economical even political aspects. However, this top-down planning concept has long been criticized as hard to implement, even as utopian. The discrepancy between theory and practice manifests itself in most of the existing cases. That raises a serious question: how certain are we on the reliability of this model in the Chinese context?
2. The Personal Satellite
Suburban new town emerged as a self-organized activity initiated by pioneer social reformers, like R. OWEN and F. FOURIER in early 19th century, as the result of the individual efforts of an industrialist with good intentions for his employees. However, such individual attempts became the prototype for a popular urban model. By the time it came to be the Garden City initiated by E. HOWARD in early 20th century, it had evolved into something halfway between a public and private settlement. Although still individually initiated and financed, it aimed to serve the benefits of a mixed unknown group who would be attracted to the new town by its distinct qualities. In other words, the early adopters organized themselves by making a personal and free choice.
3. Tried and tested
It is easy to imagine this early success was inspirational to planners and policy makers: if an individual could achieve this, a municipality with stronger financial and administrative power could naturally make the process easier. This was part of the reasoning that triggered a global new towns offensive in the fifties and sixties. Countries in Western Europe incorporated the new towns in their post-war reconstruction plans, as did Brazil and China too. Since 1958 Beijing planned to build 40 new towns (see table) to alleviate the booming center and scatter the distribution of industries. Though sometimes partially a success, globally the new towns suffered from their own ambition: to forcefully serve the will of people.
4. Post-planning
In doing so, the nature of the new town dramatically changed to become top-down, rigid and out of touch with the market. The Chinese new-town however, by virtue of its political context, was able to align work and living much closer and for much longer than its western counterparts. In fact, the ‘moving out of the center’ policy is in effect still at the heart of the Beijing Masterplan 2004- 2020, to reduce the old center from 1.4 to 0.8 million inhabitants. More importantly, even though only 3 of the 40 initially planned satellites made it to fruition, this reasoning has been neatly adapted to become the bases for the 2020 plan under the name of the poly-centric model. The naturally scattered shapes Beijing has produced are retrofitted with a seemingly intentional plan to develop them into distinct sub-centers and satellites. The pro-active satellite model is in fact at the mercy of Beijing’s organic logic.
5. State-Market Hybrid
The problems of empty office space and under-used public facilities of the French and British new towns can be found across China. Taking Shanghai as an example, the construction of a dozen new towns started more or less in the same period in late 1990s. Each of them has been using suburban style housings as a strategy to attract inhabitants. A free market incentive in Chinese socialist market hybrid has resulted in over-saturation and mono-sprawl. It indicates the consequences of market-driven unintentional development within context of crude fast forward urbanization. We have reached the point that we need to give the new town its self-organizational character back. That is to say that the large-scale decentralization and re-agglomeration of urban functions and population should develop in relation to ‘free-market’ rule instead of trusting in ‘intentional manipulation’. Government agencies are actively fueling urbanizing, operating like market actors, but without the constraints of the inherent logic of the market. The traditional division in roles between public and private is lost, with essentially nonsensical urbanization as a result. 6. Dynamic Growth
So what is the impetus of the public sector? Preemptive investment in public transportation, roads and faci l i t ies is a burden that a municipality can not, and should not have to carry. The imbalance in China - illustrated by busy cities without connecting roads on the one hand, and fully equipped cities without
people on the other - needs to be restored. In different developing phases, a new town will have different competitive advantages for different target groups. In the case of Dutch new town Almere, in the early stages, most of the early settlers considered better housing as the most important attraction of the new city; social life still heavily depended on its parental city Amsterdam. As city progressed and societal development needed to keep pace, it successfully delivered a mixed fully functional stylish new center. It shows that the foundations of a new town need to be firstly and gradually laid down, before a certain ‘critical mass’ (Charles Landry) can be achieved. Critical mass is concerned with the achievement of appropriate thresholds which allow activity to take off, reinforce itself and cluster.Secondly, as the precise time of ensuing steps are unpredictable, planning needs to follow the rules of ‘dynamic growth’ and ‘supply-on-demand’. That means that a plan or design is flexible, editable, and open to change. When the artificial pressure to develop is lifted from the Chinese new towns in post-Olympic phase, this issue deserves our primary attention. This concerns practical quantitative and qualitative questions of the fundamental nature of poly-centric model, such as the optimal distance from the parental city and a new town; population size, land use pattern, zoning regulation.
7. Organic Reality
For the first question, the challenge is to safeguard natural areas and prevent urban areas from merging. However, is that a feasible concept? We can address this question by looking at ‘self-organization’ theories which adhere to the character of a complex system. The Complex System theory applies in many disciplines, such as economy, physics, biology, cognitive and artificial intelligence, sociology and evolutionary studies. The qualitative definition can be that ‘complexity is situated in between order and disorder’; ‘two or more distinct components that are connected in such a way that they are difficult to separate’ (Francis HEYLIGHEN). Each component in such a system is interacting with others, adapting to an external environment with self-organization as a result of the internal dynamics. Translated into urban scheme, it suggests that each individual is a planner, and his decision is the result of interaction with others; each urban development is a process of self-organization, which is always naturally trying to connect its internal structure to the external environment. Simply put, a new urban area wants to connect with the existing urban fabrics in order to
SUPER SATELLITESText/Jing ZHOU
take the available advantages. In this sense, separating a new town from an existing city is to a large degree in denial of self-organizational rules, as the interaction, continuation and interdependencies are deliberately cut off.
8. Bottom-down, Top-up
However, not all organic growth in the city is desirable; neither all self-organization correct. There is a need to safeguard the ‘collective good’. One of the important characters of self-organization is its ‘trail-and-error’ trademarks - characteristic of the formation of the Asian Tigers of the early nineties. Dense, and often admired for their remarkable resilience they reveal short-comings on a collective and individual scale, that a good planning framework could have circumvented. Interestingly enough, in contemporary China, although the top-down planning appears to be strong, market development is often unbridled and chaotic. Compared to countries like Holland and Germany, it means planning in China does not yet function as an effective tool to coordinate market-driven self-organization. Notable examples in Beijing are the eaten up of the planned ‘green-belt’ and the erection of Financial Street at the western end of Chang’an Avenue. Admittedly the relation between planning control and market force is still in a primal trail-and-error process itself. The balance between planned and unplanned; fixed and flexible is still unexplored. In developing Chinese cities, the top-down planning institutes and the diverse market actors are busy self-organizing, without a clear framework for communication or goals for the ‘collective good’. The dilemma remains that the many rules remain obscure, self-contradicting and can still be bended, while reasonable requests and suggestions by individual actors are confronted by masterplans made behind closed-doors. Evidently there is a need for a revolution of the planning system itself.
9. [2CP]
One essential alteration should be improving public-private partnership (PPP). The concept itself is familiar, but the concrete and effective methodology is still under research even in western societies. However it is of special importance for urban China because this planning issue closely correlates with the current social and political reform calling for stronger transparency and democracy in government management. Apparently, public-private partnership is different from the simple juxtaposition of top-down and bottom-up, but rather it emphases the efficient interaction linking the two sides. It confirms the positive
role that an authority can play as coordinator; at the same time it requires more freedom for various stakeholders to pursuit its own optimal benefit through self-organization. The concept can be described as 2CP: Communicative Planning; Collaborative Planning.
10. Talking Cities
How communication can be effective and efficient relies on both spatial and managerial tools at the hands of by planners and decision-makers. Taking new town planning as an example, instead of the current hierarchical relationship between different actors, it should be an open process involving interactions in different stages. We can conceive of a new planning and decision making structure for the production of new town masterplans (see diagram). The current planning communication in China is improving but is still far from functional. Plans are rather reluctantly revealed in publications or on internet without the intentions of adapting it according to feedback. Productive interaction actually requires new skills from planners. They should be ready and keen on explaining plans and designs to others, including layman. This means policy-makers need to learn to be good listeners and adopt the role of negotiator. Especially in the case of new towns, such active communication can give a boost to city promoting and attract private investors and trigger a sense of belonging with newcomers.
11. From Static Image to Flexible Concept
Meanwhile, spatial plans should become the materials on which the dialogue is based. They will need to become more communicable. In general it means these drawings should become easier to interpret; more adaptable and f lex ib le to changes. Instead of a masterplan which contains extensive research and analysis, a more flexible format or Strategic Plan should be adopted. The latter intends to contain only the main strategies and principles, main locations, phasing plan and types of intervention. It is usually illustrated in a more indicative and expressive way rather than detailed and designed. There are several ways to achieve flexibility, for example, by designing only the fixed elements (usually infrastructure and public facilities) and leave the rest open to smaller plot orientated design initiatives; by designing as many alternative plans as possible for the choice of end-users; by designing a group of urban typologies and leave the final result of collage to the interaction between actors, and by integrating urban design criteria into a zoning plan. All
these suggested concepts need to be put into practice in Chinese urban context, in order to find the most effective and applicable ways to implement.
12. Chinese medicine
We can conclude that planning remains an essential tool to tackle market failures. However, the rules of the game call for improvement. Ironically we can suggest China should make a shift away from Western medicine to Chinese medicine to heal the city. Depending less on crude single-minded, top-down aggressive interventions such as the Olympics, and instead more on an approach of broad self-diagnosing and the individualized holistic approach of Chinese medicine. Public-private partnership is part of such a Chinese recipe. On a broader scale, Beijing’s ‘big pancake’ needs to be weighted against new centralities in the Greater Beijing Metropolitan Area, even in the larger Jing-Hu trans-provincial region. When a serious malfunction does occur, such as in case of Beijing’s its traffic congestion, deterioration of urban environment, lack of available land and water resources etc. then a strong and clear public planning intervention can be performed.
13. Super Satellites
There are so-called successful new towns; in Beijing namely Tongzhou and Yizhuang. Located just 15-20 kilometers away from center to center and with no more than 5 kilometers of open space to separate them from the city, they already suffer from the proliferation of urban sprawl. Yet if we choose to accept the main principles of the new town as desirable and feasible, then technical problems during execution can be gradually solved by the suggested ‘Chinese medicine’ method. The new town, is the most popular component of Chinese urbanization yet requires the most careful and sophisticated balance of market incentives and regulation to succeed. In addition the procedures of creating new towns need to encompass the challenges that China’s economical structure faces as a whole; to harness the self-organizational principles without loosing sight of the common good. As such New Towns planning challenges the very foundation of China’s planning culture. Finally the model itself needs a radical make-over in relative positioning spatial constitution, social mix, and phasability. It means since we choose the satellite as a planning tool, we will need to design and develop high quality Super Satellites.
We see in the past decade of economic boom a phenomenon whereby city-building is reduced to a business venture. Attracting foreign investments becomes the sole purpose of developing a city, bureaucrats posing as businessmen and the cities branded and packaged as commodities: Bilbao, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Hyderabad.
The governments of these states move swiftly from a model of providing basic social, legal, economic security for citizen’s pursuit of happiness to a technocratic, profit-minded amoral corporate entity. This results in a unique style of governance – a new kind of state different from the Western politics where the state acts as ‘a referee of competing interest groups’ and different from the Marxist definition where state is a tool of ruling economic class – a business-oriented authoritarianism. This phenomenon can be called 'Boomtown effect' and these cities 'Boomtowns'.
Boomtown-making is a singularly technocratic process - every aspect of urbanism and society is appraised through managerial, logistical or technological lenses. In this time-space compressed globalizing world economy, city planning becomes a business development exercise to attract the limited resources (material, financial and human) that roam swiftly and freely in search for investment opportunities. Boomtown has an authoritarian political power that allows it to reorganize and standardize its entire productive social and financial capital into ‘assembly lines’ that meet the demands of the targeted market objective.
Many Chinese cities are developing singularly by attracting and utilizing foreign investments. The incredible speed of these developments and their gargantuan scales will have unique physical, social and political consequences that can hardly be foreseen. The purpose of this article attempts to examine Singapore's unique situation, to draw parallel lessons from the making of the city-state and to envisage possible outcomes of Chinese developments, while accepting shortcomings of such speculative explorations. Why Singapore? Singapore is arguably one of the first Asian cities (if not one of the world's first city) to have successfully mastered the Boomtown method of city-making. Its brand of technocratic hegemony utilizes a micro-management method that blends Fordist-Taylorist methods with Asian social morality to create a systematically controlled and complacent citizenry so that national resources and popular sentiments can be effectively mobilized. More importantly Singapore's ethnic composition and the economic-development based urban development have many similarities with Chinese cities and we believe will provide a good future subjunctive for its Chinese counterparts.
From Singapore's independence in 1965, one of the main identities the city-state uses to attract foreign investments is good environmental, hygiene and health standards and the city's urbanism has been systematically altered to furthering this “Clean and Green” marketing strategy. Gardens, parks and green pockets are linked with street-side pastures and tree-laced park lanes. This green image is an important basis of Singapore's attraction and this becomes a great pull factor for investors and visitors alike. Chinese cities must understand that instant
urbanization without long-term environmental, social and cultural development plans is not sustainable and will eventually have adverse effect on the economy.
Learning from Singapore?
In Singapore any building no longer in the latest masterplan is demolished. The entire city is tiled and re-tiled, paved and re-paved regularly to upkeep the sleek look of efficiency. Its highly effective modern urbanism is designed to provide the vital infrastructure for foreign-investment. Not unlike Beijing, the well-pruned roads networks are monitored by vast CCTV systems that scrutinize and analyze traffic conditions and dispatch accident recovery where necessary. A punctual and reliable public transport system of subway trains and buses that link the entire city is supported locally by ‘feeder’ buses that transport commuters from virtually their doorsteps to the town centers where they transfer to subways or express buses to their places of work. Covered walkways provide sun-shade for residents walking from their public high-rise housing to the bus-stops and car-parks; air-conditioned arcades connect office towers and shopping malls to each other so that consumers and office workers need not be exposed to the retarding equatorial heat.
This may all sound like an ideal urban dream for many developing Chinese cities but mere physical accumulation of these urban features is not enough. Attention must be given to actual performance of such physical amenities and even more care should be placed on social and environmental consequences of such urbanization at large. Case in point, the constant revision in Singapore’s urbanism removes all provenances of one’s past. While this ensures the presentation of a ‘well kept and renewed’ city-scape to wide-eyed foreigners, the society has nothing from the past to remember. It is not so much collective amnesia but a constant annihilation of the collective memory - a memory that in due course should become the backbone of the city’s spirit, pride and provenance.
In Singapore, in addition to the constant erasure of the city’s physical record, its people are constantly driven forward, driven towards new professional destinations prescribed for them: manufacturing and engineering in the 70s, business administration in the 80s, bio-technology and banking in the 90s and presently, design and creative industry. Singapore's education system is altered for such economic themes. Those who have no affinity or aptitude for the 'industry-of-the-month' are often left behind. There is no unemployment benefit scheme in Singapore which leaves its people compromised en masse toiling after one-sided development.
Boomtown Contract?
Boomtown technocratic hegemony requires a calibrated statesmanship and more importantly, business acumen. However, its success relies largely on the state's ability to uphold an authoritarian grip on the society and the reduction of governance to the “winning formula” of continual financial prosperity and urbanization. In Boomtown there is no 'Social contract' 1 but a 'Boomtown contract' 2 between the
state and the people: a wealth for political consensus that started with a general consensus for wealth.
A Boomtown can usually be identified with these distinctive features 1) An Economic-themed alter ego 2) Authoritarian government 3) Transplanted urbanism 4) Forced-fed Identity 5) An immediate past that is all too painful 6) State policies driven mainly by economic gain 7) Political apathy.
Chinese cities in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Free-trade Zones, State-level Economic and Technological Zones and New and High-Tech Industrial Development Zones by virtue of their collective themed identities run the risk of becoming Boomtown cities.
Chinese cities can announce themselves as 'foreign investment-ready' Boomtowns by following the trialed and tested ‘Ideal City Check list’ 3. The problem of quality and banality remains. Large-scale traffic infrastructure, skyscrapers, buildings by famous architects, a new exposition center, monuments for tourism, a new performance arts center (to demonstrate a cultural dimension to the city), 'Beyond 5-Star' hotels, smog-free environments and Ferris Wheels 4 can all be built cheaply and quickly but since quality of these constructions are often overlooked, these urban features are merely signs and symbols of modernization that may have immediate visual impact but do not contribute to the legacy of the cities. Furthermore, such cookie cutter mode of city reproduction lacks the vital cultural reference that creates an attractive urban identity.
There is no local precedence for the Chinese boomtown. The speed and scale by which Chinese boomtowns develop offer little time to develop localized solutions. Infrastructure, urban-planning and residential estates are designed by foreign consultants or local authorities that use templates loosely based on foreign models. Singapore in the 1970s and 1980s depended greatly on the import of urban models to upgrade its urbanism - from the Dutch Ring City (Randstad)5 model to decentralize the island and Le Corbusian high-rise for mass housing and is successful in appropriating these foreign urban and architectural models to suit its social and climatic needs. The use of ready-made urban methods is inevitable for newly developing cities, but Chinese cities must avoid ‘cutting-and-pasting’ and adapt these imported models to their own context like Singapore did.
Singapore was much blinded by the limelight of presenting a “modern and new” city-scape and was relentless in removing traces from its colonial past from its urbanism. Consequently when it was deemed necessary to conserve old district for touristic purposes in late 1980s, there was little left to preserve. With ample land, Chinese cities may not resort to demolishing culturally and historically important sites for new constructions. However Chinese urbanism will become template depositories for alien designs if cities are not careful with what are being built by both local and foreign developers. In this case, it is ironic that while Singapore offers Chinese cities the privilege of hindsight, in preserving their urban histories during the expansion and construction for the future, Singaporean developers should be constructing housing communities in China
URBAN NARCOTICS IN BOOMTOWN CHINAText/William TAN + Ting-Ting ZHANG
with Disneyfied themes such as “New England” style single-family-housing.
Boomtown - The Utopia??
One distinct problem of city-building purely from an economic standpoint is reducing matters of a humane and cultural nature into statistics and demographic data. This consumption-based planning sees the society only as 'income groups' with preconceived 'lifestyles' to cater for. However there is no prior native middle-class culture for planners and designers to take reference from. In fact the newly-minted Chinese middle-class may find that their immediate history of economic deprivation cannot be forgotten soon enough and therefore often find themselves having inflated and misguided expectations and aspirations towards all things foreign.
To create a successful Boomtown, it is imperative that everything about the city be primed for economic activities. The state has to implement political, fiscal and legislative policies tuned to attract investments. Being a labor-intensive exercise, citizens have to participate fully for this development to be successful. In this case, there need be very little convincing for the citizens to comply with the state policies. Unlike abstract political utopias, economic prosperity is a convincing ideology to solicit a following. Boomtown citizens find it easier to agree with state policies once they think these policies ultimately benefit them even if they do not have immediate appeal. Since Boomtown government focuses on economic development and ‘modernization’, all policies can be alluded to economic development and stability. Once everyone is used to the comfort of urbanization and has accumulated reasonable wealth, opportunity costs of dissent become greater: Unlawful arrests of political dissidents of no relation to oneself is easier to ignore when one has a well-paid office job, lives in a gated community and drives a brand new imported car than when being underpaid, living in low-standard housing and having no access to material goods
Boomtown is a political narcotic.
In Singapore, rising wealth and an illiberal internal security act compel the general populace to believe they can only gain from supporting the hegemonic control of the state. The Phantasmagoria of Boomtown convinces the first generation of Boomtown citizens to give in to the state for better living standards. Current generation of Singapore citizens inherited their parents’ addiction to Boomtown narcotics. Having been born into this addiction and educated to believe there is no better alternative for the society, they have little motivation to work harder for the society - they become thorough followers of Boomtown ideology. This is the political neutering effect of Boomtown contract.
This neutering process unfortunately removes not only the political will but also the entrepreneurial will. In recent years, Singaporeans’ lack in initiative is reducing the country’s responsiveness to global trends and thus reducing its ability to compete with upcoming markets in Asia. The government is trying hard now to amend such lack of social impetus and imagination in the people by organizing public campaigns to bring importance and awareness to
“Creative Industry and Arts”. Developing China’s cities citizens and government alike may learn from Singapore’s predicament - state policies when treated as 'ideology du jour' to meet only economic goals or as socio-political tools to engineer the society may ultimately impair the people and the state alike. Economic liberalization in China prompted a renewed trust in the government, this trust is a great social capital that can either be a strength to these Chinese cities’ development but it can also be easily abused. Developing Chinese cities must consciously preserve the cultural and social wealth of being in a large and heterogeneous country. Policies that evolve with constant dialog between diverse representatives of the society – in their varied ambitions, talents and aptitudes may prevent one-dimensional development like that in Singapore.
Boomtown’s living standards and economic opportunities attract migrants who aspire to Boomtown life and are willing to subscribe to the Boomtown contract. Migrants moving to Singapore may come from adjacent Southeast Asian and Australasian countries which are worse off in political or economic conditions. Migrants may also be well-heeled professionals or oligarchs from countries such as India or Russia who find ownership of a Singaporean passport more travel-friendly than American passports nowadays. On the other end of the migration cycle, citizens of Boomtowns who do not wish to subscribe to Boomtown Contract can leave their native cities. In Singapore, individuals whose aptitude lie in professions that are not preferred by the state (which recently include creative industry and performing arts) have to seek greener pastures abroad. Individuals who do not agree with the ruling party’s governance but find no avenues for political dialog would also seek residences in other countries. This transfusion of Boomtown seekers and quitters creates a self-censorship – "if you don't like the theme you needn't join"; "if you don’t like Boomtown, you should leave".
Nothing is Free in the Free Market?
The spectacle of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is China’s proclamation of no longer being a “sleeping dragon,” but an international power to be reckoned with. The media success of this proclamation will produce a stronger urge from the people to be coached into a more powerful Boomtown formula as they will seek quicker financial gratification. It is possible that the newly initiated Chinese (into this capitalistic mode) may na?vely assume Boomtown to have the best of both worlds – a “free for all, grab all you want” economy and expect the state to facilitate their private economic pursuits and catch them when they fall.
Developing Chinese cities need to cultivate from their rich tradition a modern cultural and social scaffold to support their mercantile growth and contemporary life. At present the new financial elite can only rely on Western imageries they absorbed keenly when they are receiving education abroad or from advertisements of luxury goods to fashion their lifestyle and social disposition. This mimicry can only result in a disingenuous borrowed culture. However, if governments of these developing Chinese cities continue to encourage native social and professional
diversity as mentioned earlier, this social character will bear the hallmarks of native culture and not just a borrowed one.
What then for fast-tracked Chinese cities??
It may not be hard to make an argument for Chinese planners to take a more cautious and pluralistic view on their development plans. Besides understanding that pluralistic social policies drafted with public opinions are more economically and politically sustainable6, developing cities in China must see the adverse effect of repeating centrally designed urban plans. These pre-packaged formulae may get quicker authority approval and faster response from foreign investors but they are not carefully designed to suit these Chinese cities’ varied social and cultural needs. Growth must not be measured by the immediacy of economic success but also through sustainable socio-political development. Imported urban models and development proposals (from Chinese institutions or foreign firms) must be calibrated to meet local social needs so that these developments can truly improve the citizens’ lives. A government that tries to meet the people’s need and actual improvements to quality of life of the populace can only build a stronger society, economy and consequently a stronger China.
Ironically, the party that is harder to convince of the downside of blinkered Boomtown developments are the citizens themselves. The extraordinary success of Chinese economy is in no minute part contributed by the pragmatic and industrious nature of the Chinese people. So, how does one prevent these people from suffering a “Refeeding Syndrome” – a material excessiveness as a result of a sudden reinstitution into a financially abundant system after such prolonged material starvation?
How does one explain intangible ideas of cultural dignity and identity, when the temptation of tangible and marked elevation of their living standards is so huge? While we can propose to the state alternative plans of development and even alternative method of sustained hegemony that prevent the creation of Boomtowns, what alternative can we give to Chinese citizens that can better the prospect of quick wealth and material comforts? What proposition can one conjure that will pre-empt the people of developing Chinese from falling into social coma after working so hard and so long towards their country’s economic awakening?
From the success story of Singapore, China will learn that environmental care and meticulous urban planning are vital to create a platform for economic excellence. Singapore’s civic and cultural inefficiency that comes from an economic biased society demonstrates that there social sustainability is as important (if not more important) as the speed of physical and financial growth. Developing Chinese cities will also learn that urban, social and cultural heterogeneity affects the longevity of a city's development. If Chinese cities are built with strong and modern local identity that allows and encourages social participation, they may ultimately have the efficiency of Singapore and the cultural wealth that it has not.