The word ‘Death’
is somewhat related to Living Organism,
So A city is considered as living
organism by many authors on their perspectives. Here we discuss about How the
city gone lose all its value (natural resources, disease, pollution, etc).
•So, how this happen to us?
•Is this a very sudden
change?
•Is doomsday is true
which coming to us?
•Is this a beginning
of the END of the world?
After the mid 19th century, there’s
many changes taken place around us like from automobiles to our factories.
Three big events are responsible for these changes.
Architects, planners and administrators are unable to
deal with this Triple Growing of urban Units, unless they proceed to
remodelling & demolition.
CHANGES FOR THE BETTER? NO, CHANGES FOR THE WORSE
–EVERYWHERE .
vOne of the main three big changes is- Unprecedented increase
of population all over the world.
vIt took Humanity
thousands of years to reach at this point, until the beginning of our century,
and it took it only sixty years to jump up and double the population.
vThis increase is in
the cities even worse. The rate of increase is higher and the larger the city,
the more it goes.
vThe second big phenomenon of our century is a gradual
socialization which takes place irrespectively of political systems, where
architects and planners were thinking forty years back of
vmonuments,
cathedrals, big hospitals, civic centers, perhaps of some villas for the
privileged classes
.
v, now
there is no
municipality anywhere in the world which dares to think of
supplying water
only to the privileged classes or to pave the streets of
only some neighborhoods.
vEverywhere the
governments are
thinking in terms of public housing, of many schemes which are meant for the whole population.
vThis
was again a
big change,
vbecause if in the past our
interest was limited
practically to
a horizontal line of civic centers, of temples, of palaces;
vif we were only building
for gods and kings, now during
our century we have to
think and build for the whole population.
vThe content of our subject has changed.
The third one we all aware of
(or say one of our body part) is “MACHINE”.
In this context we talk about cars, dependency on
automobiles as much as preference on car is more than preference of man, which
is the smallest unit of our cities ‘once.
We are not free persons in our cities.
We are completely under the control of the machine which
we have
created to become our slave
and now
the situation has been reversed: We are the slaves.
Now lets took for a moment what happen to our cities-
so static that they were surrounded by walls.
Many cities in the other continents especially, have been surrounded by walls for centuries.
“I know cities which have been surrounded by walls for thousands of years.”
Thus we had to live
in and to deal with a
walled city; a three
dimensional city.
Then came the era when the walls broke and the cities spread out.
This is the big change we have to reckon with. And now we cannot follow the spread
of the cities.
The third one we all aware of (or say one of our body
part) is “MACHINE”.
In this context we talk about cars, dependency on
automobiles as much as preference on car is more than preference of man, which
is the smallest unit of our cities ‘once.
We are not free persons in our cities.
We are completely under the control of the machine which
we have
created to become our slave
and now
the situation has been reversed: We are the slaves.
Now we have Three
Important Factor due to which, a city can’t perform its function if not
maintained. OK…
Let’s see in between these three, what is the reason
that planners don't get these.
To this type of problems we have now to add another
category of problems due to the traffic situation and
the way it is
met. What we usually do in order to relieve a center
from its
traffic pressures is to try and open highways. We
proceed as
surgeons and cut through the city in order to facilitate
the traffic
to the center of the city and from the center of the
city. Because
we have a congested area we open new wide highways to facilitate traffic.
If we
open new highways, we demolish more buildings, and we
create
for a moment relieved conditions. This moment - moment
in
human minds, years in the minds of the city - is used by
someone who comes and brings new functions in. If we
continue
this policy, we have condemned the center of the city to
remain
some day without buildings and be covered by highways
only.
qBut now we have a new
weapon - urban renewal. Let us not believe that we have a small weapon in our
hands; it is a very big one if we use it properly.
q
qWhat can we do? How
can we face this difficult problem? We have a weapon, a new weapon in our
hands, the conception of urban renewal.
q
There is only one solution. To let the city grow in one
direction. Instead of letting the center grow all around where the most
valuable of land is, where there are the most narrow
streets; let the center grow in one direction towards
the outskirts, towards the areas of less pressures and lesser resistance.
Then the city will move around the new center.
Thus later we reach the outskirts and protect the area
for the next phase of growth of the center, not anymore within the city but
out of it - in the areas of less or no resistance at
all.
Thus we can create a city which is four-dimensional, a
parabolic city.
This will be a dynamic city - Dynapolis.
Conclusion:
Therefore, instead of making designs and plans, we must
learn from the economists the technique of long-term planning, and see our
plans and designs only as three-dimensional projections of our long-term
programs.
Instead of thinking in terms of master plans which are
static, we have to think in master development programs, and at the end of
every year, have our plan of the year, as a
three-dimensional projection of the thinking of the community, of the ability
of the
community to develop itself.
We have acquired new techniques.
It must be difficult .
The problems are big, but if the understanding exists,
and I see it existing, that all this talent must come together, and join
forces, then it can develop a new policy and a new program.
If by discussions we can help each other to discover the
truth, and we decide not to lose our courage, because for five years empty
lands existed in a certain city and they have not yet
been built, although this may make some citizens angry, as this is nothing in
relation to the life of the city, if we can have the patience to project into
the future, to acquire the knowledge of the proper scale of events,
then this is sure that it is here by such groups of
people, coming together confessing the truth, that a new
approach can be developed and a new road can be opened . . .
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