WHY URBAN DESIGN ?
The Majority of metropole today exist in rich and industrialized nations within the next two decades, This picture will change drastically for by the year 2000, there will be about fifty cities of fifteen million each around the globe of witch more than forty will be in the third world . Thus the urban images we carry in our minds are going to change fundamentally across the globe. The town and cites of the third world are growing very rapidly . In most of these countries the annual population growth rate is somewere between 2 to 3 % but the town and cites themselves are increasing at more than double this speed ,facts these are going to change images of cites in our mind , just as the icon of the mushroom cloud has dominated our consciousness in the last four decades , so this new urban image is going to be a crucial determinant of the moral issues of the next century. As long as we are with small bites and pieces of the problem , there doesn’t seem to be any solution in site so we must start with an overview ,it is a necessity to examine the entire system we call and try to identify those life patterns , those life styles which are optimal in there totality,including roads,services,schools,transportation systems,social facilities and of course the housing units only than one might be able to perceive how one could in Buckminister Fuler’s incitable phrase ‘Rearrange the scenery’. Cities have always been unique indicators of civilizations all the way from Mohenjodaro to Athens to Prsepolis to Peking ,to Isfahan,to Rome. You can have great music created during rotten times ,every painting and poetry but never great Architecture and cities ,why is this ? Primarily , /Because building involves two essential conditions,Firstely an economic system which concentrates power and decision making and secondly at the centere of that decision making leaders with the vision. The test and the political will to deploy these resources intelligently. In modern Architecture the most glaring failure has been in the field of mass housing in contrast to private residences , museums,schools etc . The Architects
were sincere but the result was faceless, ugly and dull ,it realy was an inevitable out come of our methodology , the number discussing were astronomical , beyond human comprehension . We can get high on this arithmetic for due to the enormous success of Henry Ford’s assembly line ,Architects were seduced by the anologue of the mass produced car. The principle involved was apparently to first create the ideal house and than repit it,sadly Henry Foard’s methed did not take into account many of the things we find are essential to housing,variety ,identity,
participation ,in short pluralism having to house 10.000 families the Architect designs a building which can accommodate say 500 of them . Most cites in the past havegrown by continuous, incremental stages. Thus the authorities neverperceived the opportunity to rearrange the scenery .Lateus for instance ,turn the clock back to thetime when New York had only 1 or 2 million inhabitants If at thatstage it was apparent that it would soon have to accommodate90million people than a lot of basic structural changes might haveseen not only financially possible but politically viable and NewYork today would be a far more rationally organized city.And this in the final analysis ,that for the first time in history , weare able to perceive an enormous quantum leap in URBAN growth , aperception that should really prompt us to re adjust this scenery wehave inherited , intelligently done ,this could have staggering geopolitical implication , This is not to say that population shouldcontinue to grow in the third world . It is merely toemphasizes that in spite of anything we do the population will inmany cases double before they stabilize .
If these settlements come into being , they will bring about twofundamental changes firstly ,since god’s sunlight falls justabout equally all over any of these third world countries. The demographic pattern of the population distribution will also follow suit . Avoiding the centralization and the large concentrationinherent in industrialization. The second consequence follows fromethis pattern , for in such a world of evenly distributedselfcontained communities the poltical power structure must changedramatically , since no one will be able to pull a level in Delhi,Laos or Saopaolo or Jakarta and affect millions of people right across the country .
From the Polynesian island to the medeterian hill towns to the jangles ofassam , for thousands of years people have been building incrediblybeautiful habitat .In fact if we look at all the fashionable concernsof evironmentalists today , balanced ecosystems ,cycling of wasteproducts , appropriate life styles ,indigenous technology etc. we find that the people of the third world already have it all .There is no shortage of housing . What there is a shortage of most definitelyis the URBAN CONTEXT in which these marvelously inventive solutionsare viable .
