‘Songdo: the hype and decline of world’s first smart city’ in ‘Sustainable Cities in Asia’

Routledge published ‘Sustainable Cities in Asia’ last September.
The book was edited by Federico Caprotti, Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Exeter, and Li Yu, Reader in Planning at Cardiff University.
It contains 23 chapters that show recent urban policies and practical challenges to build up sustainable cities in Asian cities.

I contributed Chapter 12: ‘Songdo: the hype and decline of world’s first smart city’ for the book. It looks at the history of Korean smart city policy, traces the twenty-five-year history of Songdo and critically reviews the reality of Songdo.

You can find more details of the book from Routledge’s webpage.

A great urbanist_Peter Hall

The book cover of 'Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century'

Yesterday I was surprised when I searched some new journal articles through UCL library’s E-Journal service. Volume85, Number 5, 2014 of Town Planning Review that was published just some days ago includes a new paper of Professor Peter Hall. Unfortunately, it is still unable to look through the UCL service, ‘And one fine morning -’: reflections on a double centenary, the paper can arouse the glad to read his words as well as the grief losing a great urbanist who passed away on 30 July 2014.  

I, had trained as an architectural designer, started to have an interest in urban studies after reading one of his tremendous books ‘Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century.' The book carefully and attractively introduced the history of modern cities from the 19th century to the end of the 20th century and it unveiled hidden stories that had built on the characteristics of each city step by step. The most interesting point what I found in this book, his vision for the city is not heading for built forms, but alternative society as Ebenezer Howard pursued. And it was entirely enough to bring the young student to London. 

After I have entered The Bartlett, UCL, I had the opportunity to audit his seminar class for masters’ students. Every week, students groups analysed urban problems of particular cities in the world and studied how urban policies have intervened in the problems. When I listened his comments in the class, I could imagine Kung-Fu masters who simply overwhelmed many fighters in the movie what I watched long years ago . He looked like he knew everything about cities, and he was thoroughly conversant with geographical, economic and social issues from European cities to Sydney, Singapore and Global South. 

Recently, Regional Studies that Peter Hall worked as the first editor published a virtual special issue to commemorate him. In the editorial page, Nicholas A. Phelps and Mark Tewdwr-Jones admire him highly as the academic who “successfully brought together in his career – history, geography and planning” and explained his achievements based on his articles in the issue that you can freely access. 

I have made the list of his recent books.

The Planning Imagination: Peter Hall and the Study of Urban and Regional Planning

Good Cities,Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism 

Sociable Cities:The 21st-Century Reinvention of the Garden City
Citiesof Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in theTwentieth Century

Also I have checked his lecture videos on online.
Youtube and Vimeo contain some his lectures, but the following videos might be useful to watch.

Connecting European regions through innovative transport technologies
Geography of a recession glimmers of hope?
New New Town: Peter Hall (Part 1 of 2)
New New Town: Peter Hall (Part 2 of 2)

I recommend seeing Michal Batty’s tribute for Peter Hall.

Hope this post could be helpful to remember Professor Peter Hall and his works

 

 

The techniques of urban design- Designing Cities: Basics, Principles, Projects

 

Image 1. The book cover of ‘Designing Cities: Basics, Principles, Projects’

 

What is the basic knowledge for urban design? Which techniques are necessary for designing decent urban spaces? ‘Designing Cities: Basics, Principles, Projects’, written by German architect Leonhard Schenk, is navigating the answer of these questions.

The book is structured along three parts,
1) General principles of urban design
2) Practical techniques for designing cities with relative examples

3) Three sensible examples that are recently constructed and well evaluated   - Hamburg (Germany), Tubingen (Germany) and Belval (Luxemburg)

When people want to make an overview from the basic theory to the completed projects, it seems a well organised book to look through all parts. 

 

The author argues that the most urban design projects have been realised by competitions, and two factors should be incorporated to win the competitions. On the one hand, projects need to satisfy the demands of the client and the jury. On the other hand, the functionality, the design and the representation capacity of projects have to be promoted by themselves. This argument clearly indicates the direction of the book. Over 350 pages, the author illustrates in detail the systematic methods for creating urban spatial organisations and visually attractive designs.

 

What an interesting point of this book is the explaining principles of urban design step by step, particularly in the Chapter 1 and 2. For example, ‘the law of similarity’ describes that ‘elements that resemble one another in the form are more readily experienced as belonging together than elements are. In addition, similar elements result in more uniform groups than dissimilar ones’. (P.21, See image 3) The principles demonstrate not the characters of each element but the natures of the group as a corporate body of the elements. These rules are underestimated because too simple and too obvious. But, we could easily deep in troubles during the design process if we do not keep them in mind. And then, from the Chapter3, the author starts to explain the practical ways of urban design such as designing urban blocks, various grid structures, organising building lots, road systems, designing public space and representation skills. 

From Rhythmanalyst to Rhythmconductor- Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life

 

 

 

 

Image 1. The book cover of ‘Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life’

 

In the book, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre suggests ‘Rhythm’ as an alternative tool to understand and analyse everyday urban life beyond visual recognition. He argues that we can examine the true nature of cities from the human body, the basic unit of urban life, to substantial urban structures through rhythms.

 

Invisible rhythms are generating, repeating and transforming in cities. Lefebvre categorizes types of rhythm, which deeply intervene the life and make a foundation of law, institution and culture, based on its characteristics. Among them, the author particularly insists to pay attention to two aspects of rhythms that Arrhythmia which is creating discordance between or among two or more rhythms, and Eurhythmia which is staying in the state of harmony and balance. He asserts that it is important to convert Arrhythmia in the city that causes inequality and injustice to Eurhythmia which sustains healthy urban condition.

 

‘Rhythmanlysist’ is a fresh idea from the book published in 1992. Rhythmanlysist hears sounds of the city and reveals hidden systems behind visual images with sensing and analysing the change of spatial aspects in timing. As a rhythmanlysist, Lefebvre investigates Mediterranean cities. He presents some insights that the rhythms of Mediterranean cities are derived from specific geographical and climate environments, and the rhythms have created different political system and exceptional cultural diversity in contrast to Atlantic cities. Physically, it leads the development of plazas and the importance of stairways which link sloping lands.

 

Rhythmanlysist could still be a valuable concept to understand complex urban situations. However, we are living in the digital era. As Mitchell (Mitchell, 1999) denoted, the rhythms of our ordinary life are changing by digital communication. Every day tremendous data, which are invisible and inaudible, are generating, and its flows push us into the massive ocean of heterogeneous rhythms. Therefore, new Rhythmanlysist in the digital age needs other capacities. Capturing the digital data in real time and synthesizing it should be essential requirements to create or maintain Eurhythmia. While the cities of the 20^th century needed Rhythmanlysist, now it is the time of ‘Rhythmconductor’ who collects digital rhythms, reorganises its tempos-meters-articulations and resonates new contexts. We can easily find good examples of Rhythmconductor like below.

 

Image 2. London Public Bike share map by Oliver O’Brien. http://bikes.oobrien.com/london/

Image 3. Analysis of Happiness on Twitter during 9^th September 2008 to 31^st August 2011.

Dodds PS,  Harris KD,  Kloumann IM,  Bliss CA,  Danforth CM  (2011) Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter. PLoS ONE 6(12)

 

This radical change of the rhythm gives an opportunity to redefine the scopes of each social group. Citizens collect and utilize the data by their mobile devices; furthermore, they solve complex urban problems by themselves. (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012) The role of planners is challenging to make new rhythms by spreading effective information and stimulating civic participation using social media instead traditional managers’ role within mainstream planning structures. (Tayebi, 2013) Also, Scientists’ role is shifting. According to Wright (Wright, 2013), scientific researchers had focused to find reasons of urban problems until the last decade, however; their voices are getting stronger to solve problems and provide alternatives in the decision making process with geospatial data and geographical analysis.

 

You can find the detail of Lefebvre’s book from Google and Amazon.

 

Desouza, K C and Bhagwatwar, A, 2012, “Citizen Apps to Solve Complex Urban Problems” Journal of Urban Technology 19(3) 107–136.

Mitchell, W J, 1999 E-topia: “Urban life, Jim--but not as we know it” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).

Tayebi, A, 2013, “Planning activism: Using Social Media to claim marginalized citizens’ right to the city” Cities 32 88–93.

Wright, D, 2013, “Bridging the Gap Between Scientists and Policy Makers: Whither Geospatial? | Esri Insider” Esri Insider, http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2013/02/11/bridging-the-gap-between-scientists-and-policy-makers-whither-geospatial/.

 

 

Review: City Sense - Shaping our environment with real-time data

 

Image1. The cover image of ‘City Sense - Shaping our environment with real-time data’

Since 2005, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, which is a provocative architectural school and research institution, has opened architectural competition once in every two years. This competition seeks new types of architectural experiments in the fast changing urban environment and is gaining an international reputation over the world. The most recent competition was held in 2011, and 275 groups participated in from 98 countries. The themes of the competition have expected ideal projections in the future rather than current urban situations; therefore, it is a bit harder to articulate architectural ideas of the themes than other competitions.

 

The book “City Sense - Shaping our environment with real-time data”, which was published by ACTAR, is the outcome of the competition in 2011 and the title of the book is the same as it of the competition. 

 

High speed information and communication technologies have created more possibilities of diversity, mobility and change in the city that comparatively the speed of change is lower than the speed of the technologies by its physical nature. Therefore, urban design and urban planning in the future would claim not traditional approaches for physical urban structure but more and more concerns of immaterial and invisible urban factors based on the development of the technology. In the preface of City Sense, Manuel Gausa, Dean of IAAC, argues that new urban dynamics will emerge from interactive, synchronous and integrated information in multi-level of urban areas, not physical characteristics any more. He explains the purpose of this competition was to find innovative ways of urban design for increasing civic participation, interactive response with the urban environment and real-time information. 

 

Image 2. page 76-77. Honourable Mention- THE DATA-CITIZEN DRIVEN CITY

Image 3. Second prize winner- THE CYBORG LANDSCAPE

 

Image 4. Third prize winner- RCNHA 2030+

 



Image 5. Honourable Mention- 0kWhcity



 The publisher divided competition entry works into six categories: Sensors & Data, Adaptive & Reactive, Behavioural systems, Parametric technology, Social & Collaborative and Theories & Strategies. There are many fresh and fascinating ideas to show various approaches to architectural and urban design. For example, enhancing digital networks in urban areas by social media and applying to urban management, reducing the rate of risky incidences of Chicago through making 1/25 scale testing model of Chicago, creating on-offline network for exchanging second-hand goods and suggestion for architectural system to checking environmental pollution in the site of landfill.

Among lots of entertaining works, Francisco’s work, which is the first prize winner, is outstanding. Francisco Castillo Navarro is an architect and interactive designer. After he graduated from ETSAS and UPF, he set up his own research group: Responsive Environments and has been doing several research projects focus on the urban environment changes.

 

Image 6. pp.82-83. First prize winner- CITY DATA SENSING

 

Image 7. Panel image of CITY DATA SENSING

 

His idea is to collect invisible but influential data for urban life such as the flows of energy, transportation and economic, and to provide these data with citizen based on real-time. It leads the change of citizen activities and then new information are generated by these changes, as the result, the citizen and the information in urban endlessly foster the interaction between them.

The most participants are bound in physical architectural suggestions as the outcome of the competition; however, Francisco illustrates that integrated system for real-time information, which would stimulate sustainable interactive actions of citizen, could become an aggressive outcome of urban design in the digital era. Unlike other entry works which started from architectural ideas, his approach began from the other fields such as collecting real-time data, visualisation of big data and urban modelling. His final images for the competition could be understood as pretending to describe multiple urban data; however, his actual final work is a movie file to display collecting urban information on tidal system and visualising it.  As the result, other participants demonstrate images and systems at the moment; however, Francisco’s work suggests that the tidal changes of urban information and the visualising structure of real operating situation. Please check his movie image here.  On his blog pages, there are nice information of 3d printing and robotic fabrication as well as his works. Blog1 and Blog2. 

 

The new book of ACTAR is too full of suggestions to regard just the outcome of idea competition. Above all, this book clearly points out that new urban environment based on the rapid developing technologies pushes architects need to collaborate with other fields more than before. It reminds us to consider how the urban environment will be changed by integrated set of information from individuals and institutions, and how new technologies impact on architecture.

Secondly, all winning projects of the competition propose specific own urban system connecting with all urban area not separate buildings. Traditional design approach, which means the sequence of analysing site, finding similar cases, making concept idea, developing mass and building up 3d model, cannot be available anymore for new urban design that needs to understand and develop urban networks and its system.

 

Of course, there are some disappointing parts.
All participants submitted three panel images through the internet, but it is doubtful whether traditional panel images would be applicable to explain invisible flow of data in urban areas or not. As we regard that the real outcome of the first prize winner is a movie image, IAAC needs to revise the format of the submission. On the one hand, there are many fresh ideas and well finished projects. On the other hand, I think the most projects are not far away from pre-existing design methods and are rooted in technical optimism that the city could be effectively controlled by one system. Also, the size of the book is relatively small. It is convenient to carry, but uncomfortable to look at images.

 

But it is obvious to allow this book as a good reference to designate the influence of the technologies on the city and alternative ways of urban design in digital era.

 

The detailed contents and the entry works of last competitions are well arranged on the homepage of IAAC. Please visit there.  

1st competition- Self-Sufficient Housing, 2005http://bit.ly/YMF79q

2nd competition- Self-Sufficient Housing, THE SELF-FAB HOUSE, 2007http://bit.ly/WphN53

3rd competition- THE SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY: Envisioning the habitat of the future, 2009http://bit.ly/13zxrgk

4th competition- THE SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY: Envisioning the habitat of the future, 2011http://bit.ly/Crab7

 

Basic outcome is below.

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: ACTAR / Institut d'Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya (IAAC)
                 (2 Jan 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 8415391293
ISBN-13: 978-8415391296
Product Dimensions: 16 x 12.2 x 2.3

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/XzfVDN

Review: Basics Landscape Architecture 01: Urban Design

Cover page of Basics Landscape Architecture 01: Urban Design

When I was an architectural student for my bachelor, nobody told me and taught me about urban theory and urban design. And it became the main reason why I started to learn urban studies in London after some years. 

When I attended the first design class for designing house and small building in the school, professors pushed us to consider the meanings of architecture and home, the difference between public space and private space, the characteristics of users, design methods and so on. Several good references were introduced as well.

However, the next semester after the house design, still I had not enough to finalize one mass or one building, I was thrown into ‘urban’ and had to design the building in the context of urban and urban itself.   

In the beginning, it was very exciting to make something new in large and complex area by myself. But, in an instant, I realized it is really difficult to distinguish what I have to consider, how I analyze urban aspects, how the aspects could be led to design materials and what urban really is. Nobody told me and it was hard to find something what exactly explains the way of urban design. Furthermore, the embarrassment by jumping into large scale from small level was tantamount to facing a great wall.

At that time, I was thinking that ‘Is there any readable book to show the guideline of urban design?’. I believe other people who studied or have been studying urban design at the department of architecture might suffer similar experience with me.

 

‘Basics Landscape Architecture 01: Urban Design’ from AVA Publishing should be a good reference for people who have the same problem what I had before. This book is composed of six chapters: What is Urban Design?, Context, Measure, Movement, Community and Culture, Projects and Processes. Each chapter provides the meaning of the title, summarizes main issues and spreads out relevant examples.

Like other basic series of AVA Publishing, it provides general knowledge of urban design with core issues, key individuals and good design examples for beginner, rather than deep-abundant thought for broader discussion. 

In fact, many elements of the contents are complicated and vague to define each meaning and suggest compatible cases; therefore, the frantic effort of the authors which translates to comfortable language would be respectable.

 

Page 20-21: Evolution of urban form

 

For example, this book sums up urban growth as a chain of events : clusters of dwellings – City walls – Sprawl – massive growth in the industrial age – new urban forms (even it would be too simplified), and the authors argue that recent urban growth should be focused on not physical land expansion but social facts such as international migration. 

 

The best point of this book is to excite curiosity of readers and stimulate finding key issues, individuals and cities. In my case, I took an interest again in grid system which is the oldest method of urban design. Grid system has been developed since Ancient Greece and was intensely used by Roman Empire. It was not just a tool for construction of new city but a symbol of their domination over nature as well as imperial power. Personally, I have been interested in the grid structure of cities such as Barcelona, New york and some Korean modern cities. After reading the part of the grid, ‘The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History’ was borrowed from library and unfolded additional texts.    

 

Page 143: Structure-Barcelona Grid

 

 Also, the book mentions how urban elements can be developed as the main design concept and how it leads the project. The last chapter of the book, Projects and Processes, introduces five basic elements of urban design: Structure, Line, Point, Beyond and Green, and briefly provides some examples. In the case of Line, the authors insist that lines in urban projects occasionally represent the movements in urban areas. Complex urban scenarios and expanding urban movements in cities can be organized by infusing conscious lines into the projects such as the cases of Barcelona, New York and Hong Kong.

Page 148-149: Case Study-High Line

 

Page 150-151: Case Study-Euralille

 

Total 170 pages with many images is not a big burden as the first step of urban design, so the book is recommendable for students who just started studying urban design such as 3^rd year or intermediate course students.  

Basics Landscape Architecture 01: Urban Design

Paperback: 184 pages
Publisher: Ava Publishing (Oct 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 2940411123
ISBN-13: 978-2940411122
Product Dimensions: 16 x 1.7 x 23 cm