Tro på morgondagens stad

Denna essä publicerades i den japanska tidskriften A + U i mars 2005. Numret var en sammanfattning av Ralph Erskines 60 år som praktiserande arkitekt. (essän är på engelska)

Belief in tomorrow’s city

The first two decades of this new century will present a variety of challenges to the European city, its suburbs and their public open spaces. Changing patterns of immigration and demographic changes – high divorce rates, people living longer, young people living alone – coupled with decades of under-investment in affordable housing, have led to a housing shortage in many European countries. Vast numbers of new buildings will be needed over the next few decades, not least in the emerging central European countries. This will, most likely, transform the physical space of the typical dwelling and radically change the spatial identity and social integration of many existing urban and rural communities. On a global level, the issues of sustainable urban structure are similar; problems and opportunities in urban regeneration are universal and the underlying vision of creating a better environment for everyday life is, and will remain, the same.

The building of towns and villages is an art acquired over nearly 100 generations back in history. As such, it is perhaps one of the most enduring and sustained of all human activities. During the course of a few decades this knowledge disappeared, both on a national and on the global level. Issues such as speed, rapid movement, single-minded demands (and the pure scale of the demands) and short-sighted investment have created a large proportion of the twentieth-century urban environment. Dealing with this environment will be tomorrow's task for planners, architects and politicians. As the approach to and the attitude to land use have changed, so has a new type of shortage occurred: land shortage. Green field sites and long-established agricultural land will not be the source for future land development.

The constraints restricting twenty-first century urban planning are in many ways healthy: We are all, without exception, caught in the landscape of the harsh boundaries created in all modern cities. The “leftover space”, the non-landscape, the polluted industrial estate – the characteristic features and the wake of the modernist era – will become this generation’s main challenge in the work of satisfying the needs of tomorrow.

Today, half of the world's population lives in cities, half in rural surroundings. The urban population is increasing by a quarter of a million a day – (this is equivalent to a new London every month). In this context, the European challenges are relatively minor; however, we should assist the less fortunate societies in their struggles with issues we ourselves failed to deal with decades ago. Urban planning is, therefore, a global concern, politically, socially and environmentally.

In writing and in lectures, Richard Rogers talks about the single-minded and the open-minded cities. These words and their messages are clear and descriptive.

The single-minded city – expressed through the tradition of the modern movement – goes down to the details – to the components of the city structure. Single-minded urban component – such as the ring road, the business park, housing estate, and the car park – these have one thing in common; they are there to serve one particular purpose, one function only. Also, they demand, by their very nature, a world without “conflicts” and diversity.

A single-minded city is an environment that it is difficult to make contributions to – in a larger sense – since personal responsibility is not activated. The atmosphere discourages participation. The more extreme and single-minded the urban environment becomes, the more detrimental it is to itself – socially as well as environmentally and aesthetically.

The open-minded city thrives on irrational human behaviour – both in time and space. An open-minded city connects people, places and processes.

As a market place for the exchange of goods and ideas and as an environment that is inspired by the contradictions and “conflicts” within the community, our towns and cities have always been the seedbed for cultural development. The urban structures, planned or established as a jigsaw of events and time reflect its purpose, physically and emotionally. Despite the complexity of the execution, the rules for building cities were, and still are, only a few:

Creation of a beautiful framework for our daily life.
Creation of sensitive and recognisable boundaries between what belongs to the individual and what is in common ownership.
Creation of a clear way of movement.
Creation of physical organisations for work, trade, living, landscape and beauty.

As such, the open-minded principles of a city are simple, recognisable, familiar and deeply human – they are a natural part of our system. The human soul has always, now and in the past, related and responded to a well-working urban community: an environment expressed by a certain minimum density, an intensity of use through a mixture of functions and population diversity.

Improvements to urban structures are not possible without basic human rights, social stability and diversity. Active citizenship is one of several signs of basic human health and a constructive and positive citizenship is encouraged by an open-minded city. Active citizenship leads to a sense of ownership, both at a macro-level as well as in the details – (at ground-floor front-garden level). With no sense of ownership, the civic space or even the back garden becomes a no man's land and thus, it falls outside the individual's personal interest and commitment and – finally – his or her personal responsibility.

The well-functioning and open-minded city is full of contradictions; it is built up of large-scale civic gestures but also contains small and spontaneous spatial surprises. These opposites – the grand scale, and the intimate scale, – are a fundamental aspect of the tradition in which we work. In pragmatic words, this is about familiarities and surprises.

Any attempt to regenerate land, incorporate new land or extend an urban structure is dependent on visions and an approach that can stand the test of time. Every city, town or village has its memories and its footprints of human events. Each and every urban planning project demands an approach to urban design based on these past events, it needs to link the past to a future idea as a unified whole.

The tradition and the working methods in our office have always been to search for these connections, to restore linkages, to bridge the gaps and to create a point of departure for the new. Many of the secrets of successful urban planning lie just in true respect for the context and for what already exists. A strong identity in a new development will fail if the bonds to its surroundings are loose or non-existent. A new development within a town or city will only continue to function if the old and the new collaborate in providing a successful whole. Urban planning is the art of sensitivity and the line between success and failure can be very thin.

Our approach to building homes for this millennium implies the reinvention of the attitudes and values that produced the most human and socially functional environments from the previous one. Central to this approach is the creation of an environment that is “Urban”, in the widest sense. A successful urban environment establishes a relationship between buildings and spaces that enables the provision and definition of the public realm – be it parkland, streets or squares.

The dimensions, scale and form of these spaces, as well as their inter-relationships, must provide a variation and richness in form that is both stimulating and that promotes a sense of ownership amongst the users. The creation of enclosure, intimacy and identity forms the basis of an informal control, without which a public area becomes a no man's land and thus falls outside an individual’s sense of responsibility.

Every city, town or village is dependent on a fair distribution of housing and living quality between different generations and between different income, cultural and ethnic groups. Commercial and public functions are integral amenities of urban life. Their distribution and their relationship with public spaces has significance not only for their own success, but also in terms of their potential contribution to the quality of urban life the village or town offers.

During the last decade we have been involved in urban regeneration projects in several different European countries, some of these entirely developer-led, some with a strong political agenda. Some projects have been left at an indicative level and some have been carried through to the detailed design of a large number of residential units, retail and communal functions. The similarities are many. Future living is nothing we can predict in detail – it can only be an intelligent guess based upon our present knowledge and understanding in combination with lessons learned from the past. Sustainability in urban planning is about long term respect for changing ways of living, respect for basic human needs and for the integration into the context. Creation of a new community must reflect and cater for changes over short and long periods of time, it needs to be precise as to the goals and aspirations on one hand, to retain flexibility and to stay open-minded on the other. In a pragmatic sense: a strong vision, flexible enough to encourage and respect the changes with time.

As architects we have the tools to inspire. That is why we are here, that’s why we try our hardest and that is why we should carefully consider our personal responsibility and our contribution in urban planning. Beautiful cities have always been the result of enlightened patronage by those in power, working with the creative talents of their time.

Today’s urban regeneration projects often reveal a complex structure of the people and interests involved; diverse groups with totally different political and financial motives are gathered around the creation of a piece public domain. Naturally, leadership is vital in these processes. However, successful urban planning needs more than this.

In many European counties in recent years, the two opposite ends of the democratic society have come into action – the general public and the governmental bodies. Developers and local authorities may face a challenging time ahead as the creation of our public realm has become the property of the society as a whole. We can only assume that a growing interest in urban planning arises through insight into its importance – the vision of tomorrow’s world.

In today’s fast-changing world, and in the era of unlimited communication techniques that may obstruct and change the real social contact between human beings, it is crucial that our cities, towns and villages reflect the inevitable need for meeting places of all kinds, at all levels and for everyone. The urban structures and concepts that we are trying to promote stress an aspect of urban planning different from many of today’s trends. As in so many inspiring towns and cities of the past, we try to make good use of the conflicts that are part of healthy urban life. In an inspiring community of tomorrow the informal contact between people and their interaction with spaces will be more important than ever.