Atlantis 28_3

ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

#28.3 March 2018

ACTION • REACTION

COMMITTEES 2018

FROM THE BOARD

ATLANTIS VOL # 28

We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students. With the help of them we can organise excursions, lectures, workshops, drinks and events. The Polis board wants to thank all the people involved for their great efforts and positive input!

Dear Polis Members,

Our theme for the upcoming volume is Action and Reaction. Having successfully discussed novel ideas and concepts in our previous volume - Dialogues - we now set out to see how these ideas can be brought to the real world. When one discusses the realisation of an idea or concept, it is vital to contextualize it. Hence, in the coming four issues of Atlantis we challenge ourselves to consider implementation in as many different contexts as possible. To give our readers a diverse and unbiased picture, we look at the world through an impartial framework of time-zones. Each issue of Volume 28 will be compartmentalized as a set of time-zones to cover a heterogeneous range of content.

We also hope that this unusual lens will focus our eye on parts of the world which we may normally not consider and help us uncover links between those places that only seem to share a common time.

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01.west.350) or by e-mail: contact@polistudelft.nl URBAN AND LANDSCAPE WEEK ATLANTIS EDUCATION PR COMMITTEE BIG TRIP & SMALL TRIP

POLIS BOARD Anna Myllymäki - Chairman Sebastian Gschanes - Vice Chairman Ninad Sansare- Secretary Mark Slierings - Treasurer Adithya Athreya Rao - Public Relations Sindhuja Janakiraman - Atlantis

JOIN US Not a member of Polis? For only €12.50 a year as a student of TU Delft, €30 for individual professional membership, or €80 for organizations you can join our network!

You will receive our Atlantis Magazine (for free) four times a year, and access to all events organized by Polis.

E-mail contact@polistudelft.nl to find out more.

We are proud to present to you this issue of the Atlantis published under the new Board of 2018. We sincerely thank the former Board and committee members for their incredible effort in building a dialogue between students and professionals. Their determination and guidance encourage us to carry forward their legacy.

As we step in to the new year with a diverse group of individuals, POLIS is excited to develop a platform that is not limited to the students of Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, but the rest of BK as well. With this year’s theme of ‘Territo • realities’, we are looking forward to exploring the concept of spatiality, focussing on the network of processes that gives rise to places through investigation across all scales. We are keen to extend these ideas in each committee to have a unified outcome for POLIS. Although a new board has taken over we are still halfway through volume 28.

During our transition we aim to ideate themes for the upcoming volume of Atlantis. We hope to continue the good work of the previous editorial team to make Atlantis as engaging as possible.

Our committees are on the look out for new team members to join us on this exciting journey. For more information send us an email or feel free to join us for a quick chat or coffee at our Polis Office!

Warm Regards from the Polis Board 2018, Anna Myllymäki, Sebastian Gschanes, Adithya Athreya Rao, Mark Slierings, Ninad Sansare and Sindhuja Janakiraman

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We plan to cover a range of topics like planning in post-conflict or post-disaster zones, how innovations changed specific parts of the world, and design in the face of extreme growth or decline to name a few.

Interested in contributing? Email us at atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Editorial With the advent of 2018, we move further east towards China, Southeast Asia and Oceania continuing our exploration of new histories and narratives that often escape our mainstream feed. While we live in the age of the internet and of multi-faceted narratives; free from single-focused broadcast stories, there is the danger of filtering our perspectives to what feels familiar. As urbanists, we are faced with a huge task due to the rate of urbanisation, climate change and designing for a globalizing world. But we must confront various issues associated with this transformation and be sensitive to the conditions that arise once we cross national boundaries.

In this issue, we get a glimpse of Japan attempting to shield its population from tsunamis at the cost of its historic and cultural relationship with the sea. In China, we explore a changing rural landscape and a firm grappling with reshaping lives through the interiors of houses. As South Korea embraces the fourth industrial revolution while designing parks, it loses sight of a park's social relevance. The importance of acknowledging and being open to local knowledge and histories is common undercurrent through most of our articles.

As you read through the magazine we hope that you appreciate the way our authors and contributors have brought such contemporary conflicts in implementation to our attention. We look forward to working on the last and final issue of Volume 28, and we hope you enjoy this issue as we enjoyed putting it together.

IJsbrand Heeringa and Selina Abraham Editors-in-Chief

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Contents p.21

p.9 p.31

p.49

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00 #inthenews โ ข by Karishma Asarpota, IJsbrand Heeringa, Roberto Rocco & Mike

Emmerik, Melinda Marjรกn & Dรณra Hegyi, Alexandra Farmazon & Felipe Gonzalez ........ 5 01 Water & land, conflict or collaboration? by Jesse Dobbelsteen .................................... 9

02 The Asian rise - from local market to megacity by Ovidiu Stoian & Alexandra Farmazon ....................................................................................................................... 13 03 Bangkok, a beautiful mess by Rapa Surajaras & Worarat Patumnakul ....................... 15 04 Designing a Political Landscape by Oukje van Merle with Kaori Ota Cabrera ..... 17 05 Urban Realities Of The New Silk Route: A Visit To Khorgos Gateway by Kseniya Otmakhova ..................................................................................................................... 21

06 Are Rural Utopias an optimistic projection? by Yue Mao .......................................... 25 07

Conditional

territories

by

Alexandra

Farmazon,

IJsbrand

Heeringa,

Sarantis Georgiou ........................................................................................................................ 31

08 Intensive Symbiotic Community by Aikaterina Myserli ........................................... 35

09 Cities for the people of tomorrow by Reza Ambardi Pradana .................................. 39

10 The Red Line: An Interview with KCAP about designing for Russia by Panagiota

Tzika-Kostopoulou & Karishma Asarpota with Masha Pidodnia & Riikka Tuomisto ....... 43 11 Park meets IoT by Boomi Kim ............................................................................................... 47

12 Affording Hong Kong: the struggle of low-income families living in subdivided homes by Mark Kingsley & Maggie Ma ................................................................................. 49

13 Barangaroo by Preetika Balasubramanian & Siva Subramanian ................................ 53

14 Nuclear Territories of Disaster by Sindhuja Janakiraman ........................................... 57

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ATLANTIS 28.3

The City at Eye Level in the Netherlands

Editors: Jeroen Laven, Sander van der Ham, Sienna Veelders and Hans Karssenberg

By IJsbrand Heeringa

The city at eye level is an opensource learning network and a book series aimed at improving cities, streets and public space all over the world, ‘The city at eye level in the Netherlands’ is its third publication.

Public space is the basis for sustainable and healthy cities. But how should we come to a good public space. City at Eye level in the Netherlands is a compendium that offers tons of advice and examples from great public spaces throughout the Netherlands.

The book does not consider public space as a two-dimensional shape on a map, as with the previous two, the book has a transdisciplinary approach and considers multiple scales from the city to the front garden. It argues for the importance of

plinths and functions in public spaces.

Furthermore, it provides a great variety of insights ranging from suitable widths of streets to useful tips for financial models.

As the title indicates, its focus is on the human experience of space.

What aspects of a public space make people want to go there? What binds people to a space? There are many answers to this, but one of the most important that comes from the book is that people bond with a place

if they get a chance to shape the process that created it. Therefore, it is not so much concerned with urban design – though it touches on this topic multiple times – but rather with these processes, what they call placemaking.

The book is filled with 40 stories that offer different perspectives on how to make good public space. Each story ends with a series of useful do’s and don’ts. To close the book ends with several critical reflections on the durability of placemaking initiatives and the importance of scalingup small-scale interventions to city-wide approaches.

The book is a great read for any student of the city and a useful guide for those who stand to embark on placemaking practices in the Netherlands.

Loveless a grim parallel between society and landscape

By Melinda Marján and Dóra Hegyi

The film ‘Loveless’ directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev uses present-day Russia and the suburbs of Moscow as a grim scenario to hold a mirror up to our indifferent society. We follow the story of a couple going through divorce, while dealing with their everyday lives: working, finding love, scrolling down social media. They don’t even notice, that their son has been missing for two days. The nondescript suburb of Moscow in ‘Loveless’ is just as pale and

cold as the life of its characters. This frosted, neutral-tinted vision outlines the whole story. When the investigation to find the boy begins, we follow the group of volunteers through the neighbouring, misty forest and bare, shabby housing estates: visions of a post-modern, postindustrial contemporary Russia. These two, contrasting scenery return from time to time on the screen, creating a joyless, glaring atmosphere, a world of ‘lovelessness’ 5

in which one simply cannot live.

Zvyagintsev, the most famous Russian filmmaker of his generation created another memorable movie with a controversial story, that is certainly food for thoughts. If you are looking for an unflattering, realistic portrait from Moscow’s monolithic suburbs - the sleeping districts, as Russians call them - the film ‘Loveless’ is definitely worth watching.

NEWS March 2018

TU Delft at the WORLD URBAN FORUM Kuala Lumpur, 7-13 February 2018

By Roberto Rocco and Mike Emmerik

22.000 people (48% women) took part in the World Urban Forum 9 (WUF9) in Kuala Lumpur in February 2018 of which more than 50% were from the Global South. The topic - implementation of the New Urban Agenda, a binding document signed by all UN member states that aims to guide sustainable urban development in the following 20 years.

- habitat3.org

WUF9 was a marathon! Going from one session to the next - the feeling was you were always missing something. Alongside this, TU Delft had its own event at the WUF9, in which we discussed education for the New Urban Agenda. The results of the discussion will be made public soon. TU Delft was also represented by Henk Visscher, Simone Rots and Mike Emmerik, who took part in other events. Simone and Mike organized an event on behalf of INTI and TU Delft, in which they discussed urbanization in Africa. The importance of such events lies in the shared commitment for inclusive, fair and sustainable

urbanization. Sustainable urbanization is key for development, but it is also crucial for justice and for life. The fate of our planet and its inhabitants (humans, animals and plants!) depends on how we manage explosive urban growth in the next 20 years.

Besides, this was an opportunity to meet people, people who are different and people who “make the difference”. It is incredibly humbling to have the grassroots talking in assemblies. As Ophelia, the Filipino grassroots leader said: people want to be the rightful planners of their own settlements.

The age of the all-powerful, male, technocrat planners and designer is passed.

We need to understand that people must be empowered, trained and capacitated to be planners and designers of their own cities. I don’t think planners and designers will be out of a job. On the contrary: they will have more work than ever training, capacitating, facilitating, organizing and also planning and designing WITH people, in co-production.

"Despite all the challenges of our world today, it is heart-warming to see so many people really trying to do the right thing. I come back to my university fully energized and full of ideas."

- Roberto Rocco 6

The 500 Mile City The Chair of Design as Politics was at the World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur this February, presenting their first ideas concerning a multi-year research by design project dubbed ‘The 500-Mile City.’ A project together with the International New Town Institute, focused on one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the world: the African west coast – between Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria. Their event at the Forum, was aimed at generating awareness and to find partners for this project. Next step will be a visit to Ghana with students as part of the Design as Politics Q4 elective: The New Town Design Studio: Africa.

All the knowledge generated from the lectures, debates and competition during the 4-day event was recorded and is now being condensed into a publication, to be issued in the first months of 2018. So, if you are interested in the discussions and outcomes of the Urban and Landscape Week 2017, don’t hesitate to contact Polis or the ULWeek committee to ensure you receive a hard copy of the publication!

More information check the polistudelft.nl See you next year!

FROM BK CITY

by Alexandra Farmazon

Becoming Infrastructural Let’s talk about water 19th February 2018

5-9th February, 2018

One of February’s highlights in BK City was the seminar by Ross Exo Adams (IOWA University, USA) in the Berlage Hall inviting all TU Delft students. Urban resilience is perceived as a multi-scalar process where the human body is considered a preconditioned order that could display the ways in which power and space have interacted and continue to interact over the years. In this context he stressed the idea of the ongoing shift to ‘resilient urbanism’ as a conscious departure from designing for the built environment using the human body as the norm to construct the ‘urban’, to designing for simply the environment in which the human body, ecologies and infrastructure become the mere vectors of a larger natural distributed agency. The lecture stressed the importance of identifying a new model of resilient infrastructure that is inclusive of natural processes and aims at bringing society and nature together. As a main conclusion, Ross Exo Adams stressed that any account of future sustainable or resilient development unable to forge interdependencies between local actors and global economic players/ elites will inevitably fail. In this context, the duty of architects and urbanists will be to endow local communities with a new role: that of custodians of nature’s heritage, of partakers in the unfolding of climate change initiatives or re-naturing strategies.

Let’s Talk About Water (LTAW) is an award-winning event held at university campuses and other community settings, composed of a film program and panel discussion about water problems and solutions for access to water, pollution, flooding, conservation, drought, impacts of global warming and policy challenges. The project is coordinated

by Linda Lilienfeld, picture history and natural science researcher and created in partnership with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI).

At its sixth edition in Delft, Let’s Talk About Water micro-movie festival consisted of a series of screenings and

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workshops meant to facilitate the dialogue between scientists, students and the public through more comprehensive means of presentation – using cinematography.

This years theme revolved around ‘Water and Power’ and a workshop organized by MSc students in the Delta Interventions studio introduced the idea of thresholds through a series of micro-movies that highlighted their personal research theme.

Screened at the Lumen Theatre in Delft, the festival’s outcome summed up with a ceremony of best student film awarded to Malou Visser a student from MSc Landscape Architecture. Last year work can be seen on the YouTube channel Water Micromovie Festival 2017.

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IDEAS COMPETITION

preserving communities and creating public goods in informal settlements competition brief TU Delft is launching an ideas competition for students from any discipline concerned with the built environment and sustainable urban development. The question we wish to answer is: how to create healthy, safe and resilient living environments in informal settlements, while preserving livelihoods and social networks? How to create public goods in informal settlements while avoiding displacement?

organized by:

We wish to create a platform for discussion and exchange of ideas among students and teachers everywhere working on these topics who together will face the challenges of urbanisation in the Global South.

The first prize is 3000 euros.

more information and enrollment at

confrontinginformality.org/competition/ 8

WATER & LAND, CONFLICT OR COLLABORATION? The recovery of areas devastated by the 2011 tsunami in Japan “As a fisherman, my day begins with the smell of the sea. When I can’t smell the sea breeze, I feel like I can’t breathe.” by

Jesse Dobbelsteen MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Miyagi, Japan

1. A woodblock print that shows a scene from Shinagawa illustrating the strong fishing culture of Japan. Source: Ukiyo Hokusai

品川 (日之出) 歌川広重 東海道五十三次 ukiyo | ●壁紙画像コレクション●. (n.d.).

Throughout human history, most major settlements were developed along coastal areas or rivers, which provided access to trading routes or fertile lands. These lands were either low-lying coastal zones or river deltas. As a result, this process led to a large part of the world’s population living in low elevation urbanized areas which are, almost always, vulnerable to flooding due to a combination of storm surges, high tides, river discharges and human induced stresses such as urbanization and subsidence (Veelen, Voorendt, & Zwet, 2015).

In Japan, about 49% of the population and 75% of real estate are located in these 9

low-lying coastal zones (Zhai & Ikeda, 2008). This is due to the fact that 61% of Japan’s topographical layout consists of steep mountainous areas that are mainly inhabitable (Graaf & Hooimeijer, 2008).

Recent events have shown the vulnerability of urban settlements in delta regions and the devastating force of natural events. On March 2011, the most powerful earthquake in Japanese history was recorded with a magnitude of 9.0. When this happened, because of the quick transition between the deep and shallow sea, the water volume got compressed, resulting in higher waves.

The tsunami that followed reached waves

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with heights up to 15 meters destroying all coastal villages almost completely of the Tohoku region in the north-eastern part of Japan. This resulted in almost 16,000 deaths, 2,000 still missing, and damages estimated around 122 billion dollar (Arm, Vervaeck, & Daniell, 2012). In addition, the tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in a nuclear disaster and heavy power shortages. The release of radioactive substances into air and sea had devastating effects on the environment and has made it impossible for residents to return to their former homes.

In fact, residents and local governments are

still recovering from the tsunami disaster.

Until February 2017, there were around 150,000 evacuees still without homes, of which 50,000 were living in temporary housing as stated by Japan’s Reconstruction Agency.

have already started performing a more traditional urban recovery with mainly hard engineered solutions, the question that arises is if this is the right direction and whether it effects the relationship between the people and the water.

Although there is no doubt that such a disaster is a horrific event, one could say that it also offers new possibilities. Because everything is washed away, a tabula rasa is created. This offers room to implement new innovative building concepts and tsunami mitigation techniques. Despite the fact that the government and municipalities

Recovering

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All over the world Japan is known for its large and rich fishing industries. And Miyagi, the main research location, is no exception. Miyagi was the most heavily hit prefecture with the highest losses of life and damages of the whole Tohoku region. Due

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to its thriving fishing industry, it ranks third of the 47 prefectures in amount of fish catches, many of its villages and cities were established near the coast despite being the most vulnerable for tsunami disasters.

Tsunamis and earthquakes are not an uncommon natural event in these regions of Japan. Because the geographical location next to the subduction zone of two tectonic plates, every decade or so earthquakes occur and sometimes are followed by large waves.

Therefore, multiple defence measures such as dikes, breakwaters, coastal forests, and water gates were constructed to mitigate impacts from the sea. The 3/11 earthquake, however, was something Japan had never dealt with before. After the disaster, the central government implemented laws and determined the budget for reconstruction.

A protection strategy was developed for affected prefectures and divided into a strategy for a level-one and level-two tsunami. A level-one tsunami is estimated to occur once every hundred years and is caused by an earthquake with magnitude 8.

The level-two tsunami happens once every 500 to a thousand years and is caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake (Onoda, Tsukuda, & Suzuki, 2018).

The next step for national and local authorities was to determine which protection was needed for a tsunami resilient coast. It was decided that recovery should include the building of sea embankments along the coastline and to heighten the land when rebuilding settlements at the same location. Lives and properties should be protected during a level-one tsunami whereas during a level-two tsunami, the embankment had to assure that there was enough time for evacuation. The height of the sea embankment was based on results from computer simulations by the prefectural

in concrete projectiles in the water. This caused even more damages to the buildings behind the sea embankments. As a result, there is a widespread fear that when a tsunami with the same magnitude hits the coast, it will cause even more damage.

Secondly, the walls are built for an event that has a chance to occur once every 500 to a 1000 years. The question that follows is, if one must live behind a wall for something that has such a small chance of happening, on such a long time span.

office. However, this method proved to be inefficient due to the fact that it did not take all parameters into account. For example, it did not consider the population and the density of buildings that needed protection behind the embankments. Nor did the method anticipate that the height of a tsunami is much lower at the mouth of the bay than the inner part of the bay (Santiago-Fandiño, Sato, Maki, & Iuchi, 2018). This resulted in a sea embankment of 15 meters high and 400 km long (McCurry, 2014), even at locations where this is unnecessary. As seen in figure 2 the sea got completely shut off from the fishing villages. "We love this scenery and we're worried about the environmental impact of sea wall construction, which would affect my livelihood," lamented tsunami survivor and fisherman Makoto Hatakeyama.

Municipalities started large-scale rebuilding and ground raising. However, due to lack of resources, this process lasted many years resulting in a population outflow or residents staying in temporary housing for years.

As a matter of fact, many coastal residents feel trapped behind the walls and feel disconnected with the sea. A fisherman of Kesennuma, Rikio Murakami, said: "We've never had a sea wall before. We've always coexisted with the sea and we don't like being cut off from it". This relationship with the water is deeply embedded in the Japanese culture at the coastal villages and cities; not only the relation with the water of the sea, but also with the way water is integrated in the public spaces. Everywhere you look there are small canals, streams and rivers that run through the city like veins, discharging water. But now, with the ground raised and the emergence of large sea embankments, this relation and integration has been lost. The reason why they only rebuild what was there before and add sea embankments has to do with the way of defining progress. In Japan, there is a method named “Kaizen” which means ‘next step’ or ‘improved step’. The essence of this method is that each step taken should be a better result than the previous state. Although this does not sound like a bad approach, it helps to only improve step by step instead of working with more synergies at the same time and thus, it slows down the process of improvement and recovery. This is also the reason that they rebuild the previos state in order to proceed to the next step. So in the case

The sea embankments are large and expensive to build. Before construction started the costs were estimated at around $7 billion, due to delays and unexpected influences this number keeps increasing (McCurry, 2014).In addition, the sea embankments are believed to have negative impacts on the fishing villages in the area.

Although some residents are happy as the sea embankments provide a certain feeling of safety, there have also been many discussions with coastal residents doubting their necessity and effectiveness (Onoda e.a., 2018). This doubt is derived from two main arguments given by Japanese residents that were interviewed. Firstly, when you look at the damages done by the 3/11 tsunami you see that sea embankments were partly destroyed by the water, resulting

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2. Section of the Sendai plains. The main characteristics of the Sendai plains are illustrated together with the process of compressed water volumes that result in higher waves at the coast. Source: Author 3. The waterfront disconnected from the land by a concrete wall. Source: Author

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of the tsunami disaster they rebuild the previous state with the sea embankment as the improved next step.

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Additionally, local governments have been recently exploring new ways of reconstruction, where natural elements are more balanced with hard-engineered civil constructions. An example is the Urban Renaissance Agency (UR). This agency provides frameworks for recovery projects that integrate more sustainable approaches.

Although at this point in time the actions are mostly only written in documents and not actually executed, it is still a step in the right direction. Another example that shows that the views on the relation with nature and water are changing is an interview with the civil engineer Jun Matsushita working on the Saitama University. As a civil engineer, he mainly focused on hardengineered constructions until recently; Matsushita has now started researching the combination of natural elements and civil constructions. More specifically, he has researched the use of mitigation forests and the heights of the crown that is needed for better protection. Matsushita stated that until now, the forest could only hold back the salt spray in the air from the sea in order to decrease the damage done to vegetation behind the sea. In his point of view, a better solution would be to create a hybrid system with a small embankment and a forest, together. That way the first row of trees doesn’t get affected by the salt

spray in the air and improves the strength of the trees in case of a tsunami. This is just one of the examples on how there can be a better balance between the natural aspects of coastal areas and the added safety of civil constructions.

When the reconstruction process started, municipalities and governmental bodies carried out surveys in an effort to decide how much housing had to be rebuilt and how many functions should return to the areas after the recovery. However, they did not use the survey to ask what people wanted, only what they needed. This resulted in very pragmatic zoning plans without any guidelines to improve spatial quality or restore the connection with the water and nature. As a consequence, villages have been rebuilt without any identity related to the fishing culture that was there before.

The coping stone of the article stresses the need to explore how new, more sustainable approaches can be integrated within the current strategies and restore the balance between land and water. Of course, safety is a crucial necessity for a coastal resident; however, building a 15 meter high concrete wall for protection is not the solution.

Residents have to give up too much of their livelihood for an event that happens once every 500 to a thousand years. It is more important to recover the identity of the thriving fishing industries, and use the 12

money to speed up the recovery process and develop more efficient evacuation routes. • References Arm, Vervaeck, & Daniell, D. J. (2012, maart 10). Japan - 366 days after the Quake... 19000 lives lost, 1.2 million buildings damaged, $574 billion. Geraadpleegd 2 november 2017, van https://earthquake-report.com/ Graaf, R. de, & Hooimeijer, F. (2008). Urban Water in Japan.

CRC Press.

McCurry, J. (2014, juni 29). Tsunami-proof “Great Wall of Japan” divides villagers. The Guardian. Geraadpleegd van http://www.theguardian.com Onoda, Y., Tsukuda, H., & Suzuki, S. (2018). Complexities and Difficulties Behind the Implementation of Reconstruction Plans After the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011. In V. Santiago-Fandiño, S. Sato, N. Maki, & K. Iuchi (Red.), The 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Reconstruction and Restoration: Insights and Assessment after 5 Years (pp. 3–20). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-58691-5_1 Santiago-Fandiño, V., Sato, S., Maki, N., & Iuchi, K. (Red.).

(2018). The 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Reconstruction and Restoration: Insights and Assessment after 5 Years.

Springer International Publishing. Geraadpleegd van //www. springer.com Veelen, P. van, Voorendt, M., & Zwet, C. van der. (2015). Design challenges of multifunctional flood defences. A comparative approach to assess spatial and structural integration. Research in Urbanism Series, 3(1), 275–292. doi.org/10.7480/ rius.3.841 Zhai, G., & Ikeda, S. (2008). Empirical analysis of Japanese flood risk acceptability within multi-risk context. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 8(5), 1049–1066. doi.org/10.5194/ nhess-8-1049-2008

The Asian Rise from local market to megacity by

Ovidiu Stoian

National University of Singapore

Alexandra Farmazon

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

After gaining independence from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore emerged from a small local market, with high levels of unemployment and extreme poverty. No longer under the influence of Malaysian economic market, more than 70% of its inhabitants lived in overcrowded conditions, with more than a third of the population living in slums. The high illiteracy rates portrayed by half the population, Singapore struggled with unemployment rates around 14% and a GDP per capita of around 516USD, roughly the same value as Mexico and South Africa.

The Singapore that we know today has become a world leading economic centre. Yet, how was that extreme growth possible? What where the interventions that transformed it from a high unemployment city ruled by unskilled labour force, lack of sanitation and poor infrastructure to a high-density metropolis, highly liveable, with a high quality of life, sustainable environment and competitive economy? A possible factor could be the governance model promoted by Lee Kuan Yew, that focuses on a successful set of policies advocating for housing, transportation, resources management, environment, social integration and economy.

Democratic denomination of housing as a key factor

@ Duxton, the Best Tall Building award winning, 50 storey residential building.

Sheltering more than 80 percent of the population, the public housing scheme, implemented on 1st of February 1960, is responsible for the success of Singapore not only because it provided affordable housing for the Singaporeans, but it also managed to reduce the social disparities and increased social inclusion. Being governmentally owned, it was able to provide almost 14.000 units per year, as opposed to the private sector, which was only able to provide around 2.500 units per year (units which were out of reach for the average citizen).

Due to land scarcity, the HDB (Housing Development Board) aimed to build highrise with high density flats. Starting with 1968, the citizens were allowed to use their pension fund to buy the homes they were renting. The sense of ownership gave the locals an incentive to work harder. Starting with 1989, the Ethnic Integration Policy, promoted the racial integration, preventing social segregation which further reduced the risk of social conflict. Nowadays, HDB is undertaking upgrading programmes for the old units, while it continues to develop new housing, under newer, innovative and sustainable technologies - The Pinnacle

Interlinked public transportation as a key factor Under high pressures from land scarcity, Singapore had foreseen the risk of car usage, which led to implementing control methods preventing the issue to take further amplitude, successfully avoiding the state of American and European cities. The issue was approached from three different angles. The first measure adopted was the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP). The system would add the real value of traffic congestion to the trips undertaken by the private cars. It started as a sticker-based system, but with the later technologies it switched to better control methods. This discouraged the people to travel by car and added more capital to invest in the public infrastructure. Its success was visible, and since it started there was recorded a drop of 13 percent in traffic flows.

Additionally, another measure was the Certificate of Entitlement consisting of a quota license received from a successful winning bid in price auction, which grants the rights of the holder to register, own and 13

use a vehicle, for the period of 10 years.

Given the fact that it is auction based, when the demand is high, the value can exceed the value of a car. This measure ensures that the car usage stays low.

Third important measure to be taken into account was the shift of the public transport system towards an multi-modal approach.

Starting from 1987, Singapore develop the MRT transport system which spread across the island, improving the connectivity.

It was integrated with the current bus network, increasing the accessibility.

Currently, new investments are made by the government to expand the MRT network, to improve the connections with the bus line, and also to improve the access to the public transport stations. As these measures seemed like the logical step to be taken as the city grew, they could also account for a method with replicablability to the Asian second- tier cities. Using Xiamen as a reference, the overall daily transit of a citizen is inclined towards private transport, as only 30 percent of the total population use public transport and even less resort to biking as a transportation mode for daily commuting (eventhough the city has world’s longest elevated bike path- 7.6-kilometrelong).

atlantis Industrial confinement for environmental diversity Emerging from the “Garden City” vision, Singapore benefits from one of the largest public green areas in the world, almost 47% of its total surface due to the isolation of incompatible uses. As a result the oil industry is located outside the city, resulting in a highly liveable urban environment and boosting industrial development. Even though oil industry is one the main factors driving the local economy, the pollution control is very strict. Its environmental concerns are also applicable on a citizen scale, implementing very high fines for littering as well as annual compulsory emission test for cars.

Conclusion The article undertakes an objective overview of the planning tools, which may or may not lead to a successful urbanity.

A key difference between the two cases it the scale and reach of implementation.

While Singapore is a state city, relatively easy to control via policies, in the case of Xiamen the same policy might not have the same effect as the interrelations and model of hierarchical governance may lead to operative inconsistencies, thus placing the referential scalarity of a policy as a key factor for a lucrative implementation.

Being part of the ASEAN association - an intergovernmental organisation formed in 1967 by 8 countries (Singapore, Thailand,

Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam), Singapore’s policies are directly formulated and implemented at a national level, conferring direct communication between the planning and the operational aspect of a policy. This results in acceleration of the economic growth, social evolution, sociocultural progress and regional stability.

Not only a policy is relative to occupation outreach and extent of governance levels, but it is also sensitive to local context.

Singapore’s social context is unique, even though the high majority of the population it’s Chinese (approximately 76.2 percent of the population) it is mixed with the indigenous Malays (almost 15 percent), ethnic Indians (close to 7.4 percent), and other nationalities. In the case of Xiamen, the majority of population is Chinese, in proportion of almost 98.84 percent, while the rest are other ethnic groups. Considering that the population of Singapore is double the population of Xiamen and also that the two cities have distinct social demographic distribution, adjustments need to be made in the set of policies, as addressing a mixed citizenship requires a more diverse scope that takes into consideration different ethnic groups and their diverse needs, traditions, lifestyles.

Success factors as the foresight in city planning, with a constant update of the initial plan through innovative thinking and technological progress should not only be considered by Xiamen, but by all

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Asian cities. Also, a catalyst for growth lies in transport policies, focused on encouraging the shift from private owned cars towards public transport or alternative sharing transit, ultimately reflecting a positive impact on economy, environment, public health and lifestyle. Additionally, providing affordable housing with a fair allocation system and distribution akin to public means of transportation, would make the city attractive not only for Chinese nationals, but it may increase the immigration rate, nesting an opportunity for the investors to consider Xiamen as an emerging global market, place to develop their business. • Reference China Tour Online, Xiamen Population www.chinatouronline. com Euston Quah, "An Economic History of Singapore: 19652065*" - Keynote Address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore Economic Review Conference 2015 on 5 August 2015 www. mas.gov.sg Hesham Hamdy, Singapore: From the Past Directly To the Future (2017) - www.ierek.com Kimutai Gilbert, The Most Liveable Cities in China http:// www.worldatlas.com Ministry of National Development, Land Use Plan to Support Singapore’s Future Population (2013) Nadia Khomami, G20 summit: US and China ratify Paris climate change agreement - as it happened www.theguardian.com Wade Shepard, How People In China Afford Their Outrageously Expensive Homes www.forbes.com

BANGKOK a beautiful mess

by

Rapa Surajaras

Msc Landscape Architecture student TU Delft

Worarat Patumnakul

Photographer and Graphic Designer Bangkok

Collage by Rapa Surajaras

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Photograph by Worarat Patumnakul

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Designing a Political Landscape Call for a new city

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From time to time, urbanism students may encounter clashes between study courses with a strong emphasis on inclusive and sustainable development as well as practical and more hands-on experiences from the professional field. The gap between ideology and reality turns academia into a naïve world, and the much studied and theoreticized goal of ‘taking all stakeholders into account’ – is a fairy-tale. Often students commenting on inclusive development after an on-the-ground internship, advocate a disparity between theory and practice “This is just not how the world works’’.

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by

Oukje van Merle

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Kaori Ota Cabrera

Project Officer for the Right to the City

atlantis on collectiveness as a key to ensure a full and decent life for all urban dwellers, particularly those from disenfranchised segments of society.

The Right to the City is derived from the understanding that human settlements are made up of their material, as well as political and symbolic dimensions. By implication cities are centred on ‘social production’, which constitutes the built environment (material production), urban policies (production of policies) and the identities, values, experiences and memory (production of meaning). The Right to the City positions an understanding of cities through a holistic approach, based on three interdependent pillars: (i) spatially just resource distribution, (ii) political agency and (iii) socio-cultural diversity.

Although this is understandable, it should be no reason to conform to the status quo during your study and professional career. The university has the role of shaping critical minds that are capable to look beyond reality. The biggest challenge of every generation is to imagine the unimaginable.

This article attempts to show that inclusive development is possible. It is an invitation for a dialogue to reflect, rethink and challenge the presented ideology; and it is an invitation to think about how to bridge the gap between an ideology and the real world today. It shows possibilities for action on different scales, with different approaches. The first part of the article introduces the international orientated movement ‘Right to the City’. Subsequently it describes ‘The Urban Social Forum’, a national event in Indonesia, that facilitated different kinds of inclusive thinkers. Finally, the article will explain an organisational approach for inclusive urban development.

Kota Kita Foundation Kota Kita is an Indonesian non-profit NGO, based in Solo City, with expertise in urban issues, a focus in city planning and citizen participation - there are three main thematic axes guiding its activities: Urban Governance & Citizenship, Urban Resilience and Urban Inclusivity.

They are aligned with the mission and vision of Kota Kita for well-educated and empowered citizen participation, through open access to information, aiming at influencing policies in the design and

Right to the City – the international movement The Right to the City concept has evolved and matured throughout the last decades as a bottom-up international movement.

The core philosophy behind the Right to the City is that cities are conceived as a common good, that are supposed to be used, occupied, produced, governed and enjoyed equally by all its inhabitants - present and future, temporary and permanent. The idea that peaceful, just, inclusive and sustainable cities are a collective right of all living in them sets this concept apart from classic human rights, which are focused on individual rights.

In order to have a people-centred citymaking process, it is essential to recognise and include all inhabitants and dwellers’ voices in the production of cities (Polis Institute and HIC, Global Platform for the Right to the City, 2016). A national event, held in Indonesia does just that by attempting to bring together all the voices that should be heard in the production of cities - The Urban Social Forum.

Another City is needed

It is a right that tackles aspects of exclusion, marginalization and discrimination that are derived from urban life. It recognizes the interdependence of all internationally accepted civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, adding to the territorial dimension and focusing

December 16th, 2017 - Civil society organizations, activists, academics, urban practitioners and students came together in Bandung, Indonesia, for the 5th Urban Social Forum (USF), in a positive and vibrant atmosphere. The Urban Social Forum is an annual national forum lead by Kota Kita Foundation and based in one of the main cities of the island of Java.

Under the yearly theme of ‘Another City is Possible!’ it aims to create a space for articulation, content production, exchange and learning, as well as networking – to empower collective efforts for inclusive

development of peaceful, just, inclusive, democratic and sustainable urban lives and cities.

organization, local communities and local and national government bodies and officials.

The organization has carried out projects related to youth capacity-building, facilitation of citizen participation, climate change resilience, participatory budgeting, inclusive economic participation, mobility and transportation and disability-friendly cities, in more than twenty Indonesian cities.

It does so through promoting democratic and participatory approaches in the urban design of cities, and by working together with multiple actors, including grassroots

Kota Kita promotes cities as commons, to be enjoyed equally by its citizens, and the Right to the City concept as a collective right. The organization has been since 2015, engaged - international, regional and locally - in the movement for Right to the City campaign, through its membership in a joint effort with the Global Platform for the Right to the City.

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For more details, visit: kotakita.org.

cities and urban change. It seeks to promote awareness and stronger partnership, building and strengthening civil society into a force for change, with common goals and sets of action.

During the opening speech, Somsook Boonyabancha, chairperson of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, turned the slogan into ‘Another City is Needed!’. She advocated that we should talk less and act more. Although USF is an open space for discussions, debates and talking, it is a stage to showcase concrete examples of actions.

The presented and debated initiatives throughout the event were committed to improving conditions for minorities and marginalized within the city - dealing with environmental impact, exclusion from urban and political decision-making processes or exclusion from design.

Tough seemingly small and of little impact, together these projects show a movement that poses a counterforce to the status quo.

Verena Lenna states the following about the contemporary non-institutional practices of city making: “More than punctual alternatives, these initiatives […] should be understood as the beginning of a different society. […] what if the language of this new society imposed itself as a new form of contractual power? ” (Lenna, 2015). An organization with designers and planners who can be seen as part of the ‘contractual power’, and that is promoting the ideology and principles of the Right to the City is Kota Kita Foundation, an Indonesian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) carrying out a series of participatory and hands-on projects closely linked with local communities. Working together with the office of Kota Kita and encountering other professionals within Indonesia, has provided tangible insights: Another city is possible!

ANOTHER CITY IS POSSIBLE 5 local lessons the challenges

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Public space is not just about nice benches, but also about ownership of land.

Strolling around a neighbourhood of the city of Solo, the few vacant plots are being used by the community for drying laundry, playing and working.

These plots are not real public spaces, but private-owned land. A new design of the public space could improve the neighbourhood’s liveability. But in the case of lack of true and legal access to the land, a designer is designing a temporary solution. A quality public space needs to aim to be a long-term plan. In case a plot has a huge value for a neighbourhood, it is essential to guarantee legal access and ownership over it.

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Urban projects hold a high level of complexity and they touch many disciplines. One does not need to have all knowledge by oneself, but it highlights the need for different stakeholders to collaborate. According to Somsook, finance is the key to change: she points to a need for a new money system, highlighting participatory budgeting as one way to go. “Don’t say, that it is up to the economics.” This quote illustrates how, while working towards social change, different areas of expertise are interrelated. Making use of curiosity and creativity, and reaching out to those able to help can widen and improve solutions.

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One might come across issues outside their work field.

You are responsible to tackle issues within your work field.

Bima Pratama Putra, Kota Kita’s Lead Designer stresses the value and responsibility of using one’s set of skills: by collecting data, analysing the urban context and showing citizens and other stakeholders the physical opportunities.

Corroborating this, IJsbrand Heeringa’s 19

statement, written in previous Atlantis Magazine (oct. 2017), sums up the importance of being consistent to one’s area of expertise in order to continue to be relevant and able to bring about change: “Whatever discipline draws us in, we must never forget what it is that we do, which is to design and plan the physical spaces where people live. The less spatial things our work is, the less capable and therefore less relevant we become.’’

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Always work with a correct representative of the population.

In case you want to work towards an inclusive design with a people-centred approach, aim to have the proper representation of the group you are designing for. Participation can attract a one-sided group of society (Geus, Sigaloff, 2016) – or during the process some will have a louder voice. It is your task to keep an eye on a balanced present participation group.

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You are not a neutral mediator

Within participatory-related projects, urban planners and designers can have a tendency of self-proclaiming themselves as ‘neutral’ mediators and facilitators, navigating amongst all stakeholders.

Often, as an urban planner, you are not neutral, but you have an interest and concern within the project as well.

Having an agenda is not negative, but it is important to always be transparent about it. It is a lesson that Kota Kita learned during executing a participatory design project. ‘’ It was important that we had been honest about the values of the team.

After all, we had our own agenda: we had a design concept in mind and also wanted to do something about water – which were not necessarily priorities of the project beforehand. Rather than assume the role of objective, expert outsiders, we took the position that we were stakeholders in the process as well.’’ (Haggerty, Kennedy, Shay, 2013).

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A Political Landscape The international movement of Right to the City, the national gathering of The Urban Social Forum and the lessons learned from Solo-based organisation Kota Kita are executed by politically-oriented professionals within cities. Is it possible to not walk through this political landscape?

“I believe that there are no purely valuefree or only technical solutions to urban problems and all decisions in development are political decisions and they involve negotiation, choice-making, agitation and agreement to take shape.” This statement of Paulista Bunga Surjadi, Communications Coordinator at Kota Kita Foundation, emphasizes a context in which urban professionals are not able to even attempt to make an apolitical decision in urban planning and designing - there is no such thing as neutrality, and that is a good thing.

Paulista sets an environment in which you are always part of the political context.

Paul Davidoff, formulator of Advocacy Planning in the 1960s, describes a similar context: “Appropriate planning action cannot be prescribed from a position of value neutrality, for prescriptions are based on desired objectives. [...] Here I will say that the planner should do more than explicate the values underlying his prescriptions for courses of action; he should affirm them; he should be an advocate for what he deems proper’’ (Davidoff, 1965). Here, it is arguable that even if you are not fully dedicated to advocating for a subject, you will not be able to escape from a political landscape.

The quote of the introduction: ‘This is not how the world works’, highlights the gap between (political) ideological ambition and (political) reality. One should always keep an eye on this gap during and after graduation. Future careers for many may still not be clear, and instead of a cultural shock, recent graduates will probably experience a ‘professional shock’. Good intentions might stumble into a world of complexities. The article positioning examples of and lessons from those that are bridging the gap draws forward the potential of “Another city is possible”.

Talks on inclusive and exclusive cities is not only a debate within Indonesia, the discussion is also visible within the Netherlands. This global discussion is a perfect topic for the Urbanism master - a gathering of students from all over the world. The University can play a role as well - facilitating reality checks as an interplay between academia and the professional world. Once we have overstepped the gap between the University and the work field, let’s discuss how big the bridge should be. • References Davidoff, P. (1965) Advocacy and pluralism in planning.

Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 31, 4 Geus, T. van., Sigaloff, C. (2016). De Slimme Stad: van en voor wie?. Kennisland, retrieved 31 Jan. 2018 from www.kl.nl Haggerty, M., Kennedy, S., Shay, A., (2013) Social Design Field Guide – A handbook from experiences in participatory design in Indonesia. Firm Foundation, Hong Kong,

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p. 48 Heeringa, IJ. (2017) Editorial Note, Atlantis Magazine for Urbanism & Landscape Architecture, 28, 2 Kota Kita, retrieved 9 Feb. 2018 from www.kotakita.org Lenna, V. (2015). Learning from Advocacy Planning – for a critical reading of contemporary non-institutional practices of city making. MONU Magazine, Participatory Urbanism (23), 28-35 Polis Institute and Habitat International Coalition, Global Platform for the right to the city (2016), The Right to the City, building another possible world - Guidelines for its understanding and operationalization.

Tegenlicht (2017), City for Sale?, retrieved 31 Jan. 2018 from www.vpro.nl Urban Social Forum, retrieved 9 Feb. 2018 from urbansocialforum.or.id Kim, M. (2015, July 28). Welcome to Astana, Kazakhstan: one of the strangest capital cities on Earth. The Guardian.

Retrieved from www.theguardian.com

1. 5th Edition of Urban Social Forum Somsook Boonyabancha - chairperson of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights - guest opening speaker 2 . 5th Edition of Urban Social Forum - a gathering of inclusive thinkers 3. 5th Edition of Urban Social Forum - brainstorm during one of the organized workshps 4. 5th Edition of Urban Social Forum - a gathering of inclusive thinkers

Kh o

r

Urban Realities Of The New Silk Route: A Visit To Khorgos Gateway

Khorgos

Nurkent

Dry-port Railway Station

Rou

I had never heard of Khorgos until my recent research on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Khorgos is an emerging logistic hub at the centre of Eurasia and plays a crucial role in the contemporary revival of the ancient Silk Routes. I visited Khorgos to explore how this ‘megaproject’ of the century touches the ground in ‘the middle of nowhere’. The following narrative is based on my research, observations and conversations during my journey.

40 km

tes

Zharkent

a t l Be

g n i v i Rev

tS

o R nd

ilk

ive

t a i t i n n I e d i a c n A e h t by

350 km

Kseniya Otmakhova

Almaty

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

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CHINA

KAZAKHSTAN

s go

y tewa a G

CHINA

KAZAKHSTAN

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650 km

Urumqi 90 km

Ili, Xinjiang potentially involves 62.3% of the world population and 30.0% of worlds GDP (Fung Business Intelligence Centre, 2017).

Huo’erguosi ICBC ‘Khorgos’

ation

What is the Belt and Road Initiative?

During his first state visit to Kazakhstan, in September 2013 Chinese president Xi Jinping held a speech at the Nazarbayev University titled ‘Promote People-to-People Friendships and Create a Better Future’.

With this China put forward a plan to revive the Ancient Silk Routes in a contemporary form of cross-continental economic collaboration network to strengthen trade and investment partnerships across Asian, European and African markets. In May 2017, during the Belt and Road Economic Forum in Beijing the global community was invited to join powers and contribute to the ‘win-win’ project of the century (Phillips, 2017).

In the past five years since the announcement of BRI, several projects have been initiated. Among the first and most important ones for China was the establishment of the New Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor. This was realized through the construction of a railway connection from Yiwu to London.

The new infrastructure line made it possible to transport freight directly over land in 17 days, half of the amount of time than it previously took over the sea route (SCMP, 2017). What followed, was the development of the railway hub on the border of China and Kazakhstan into Eurasia’s largest dry-port and the creation of a new Special Economic Zone (SEZ), ‘Khorgos Gateway’.

Khorgos Gateway – change of perspective

The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), also known as OBOR and the ‘New Silk Road’, consists of two parts: a network of logistic and economic corridors over land, and a series of sea-routes supported by existing and new Chinese ports, essentially providing China better access to Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

When the BRI developments touched the ground at the border of China and Kazakhstan in 2010, it was an empty canvas of wide, wild steppe landscape with the Dzungarian Alatau mountain range rising up on the horizon. The first urban settlements were small towns about 40 km from the border on both Chinese and Kazakh sides, with a few villages scattered around them. The area is remote by definition, situated a couple hundred kilometers away from the Eurasian pole of Inaccessibility, the center point of the continent. It was the presidents of China and Kazakhstan that saw the potential for the ‘middle of nowhere’ to become the ‘center of everything’ and initiated the development of ‘Khorgos Gateway’ a hub consisting of both economic and infrastructural strategic projects.

Unprecedented in scale, the initiative covers 65 countries across six regions and

Infrastructure wise, the dry port was an unmissable object for the transfer of goods

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across borders, as China and Kazakhstan use different railway gauges. The SEZ as an economic object, provides an environment with different trading laws, creating favorable business conditions for companies and industries. What makes the SEZ in Khorgos stand out, is the addition of world’s first cross-border ‘International Centre for Border Cooperation’ (ICBC) to its program. With this trio ‘Khorgos Gateway’ fulfils exactly one of the core BRI aims – efficient economic collaboration, and is a crucial access point towards Europe, Central Asia and the Middle-East.

The future is envisioned to be grand – Khorgos is to become the “New Dubai”.

To support the growth of the hub, new urban developments were planned. They embrace the border from both sides and can potentially merge into one mega polis in the next 30 years. For now, on the Chinese side, in a former village Huo’erguosi, skyscrapers are growing by the minute so that this village can become a 200,000 people robotics manufacturing hub one day. On the Kazakh side, plans for a 100.000 inhabitant town are progressing slower. So far, the city of Nurkent was constructed to house about a thousand people, and Nurkent 2, similar in size has been announced recently.

The local experience Nevertheless, a simple change of perspective takes time to live up to.

Khorgos Gateway, operating full-time now, remains a challenging destination for an average traveler. First, the predominant language for international communication across borders is Russian, with English limited to the navigation signs in the airports and along the highways.

Furthermore, it takes 6 hours by bus or taxi to Khorgos from Almaty and double the amount of time from Urumqi, currently the closest cities in the area with international airports (although there are plans for a new airport near the border). Twice a week it is possible to reach Khorgos from the direction of Almaty, Astana and Urumqi by hopping off at the Alashankou railway

station near the dry-port.

Kilometers of blank space of untouched landscape between the new developments of the Khorgos Gateway indicate the future potential of the hub. At the same time it feels like the human scale is left out of the equation during development. Considering that all the inhabitants of Nurkent (20 km from the border), work in the dry-port, there is no proper railway connection.

It seems so strange that these people are forced to depend on cars, as the newtown they lived in was too far away from their work. The long distance aside, there are no walking or biking paths along the highway to offer a convenient alternative and protection from the burning sun in the summer or the icy winds in the winter.

As for brand-new Nurkent itself, it nevertheless struggles to inspire. Although the settlement is inhabited to its full capacity, it gives an empty impression. It may be because of the absence of a decent public space and the cozy tree-framed alleys, but there are barely any people on the streets of Nurkent. There is no public life. The inhabitants confirmed, work opportunities aside, there is nothing to do in Nurkent. Strangers to each other, people from different towns and villages across Kazakhstan are brought together in Nurkent by work, but don’t have a place to socialize. If they get to live in housing typologies with shared space, neighbors get to know each other. In other cases, such as

the stand-alone houses this is much less likely to happen. There are no parks, just an occasional grass field.

Shockingly (for a planned city), the shops are stuck up in office rooms of a “community center” because of the lack of a proper shopping facility. The last resort for a sense of public life is the public bathhouse, gyms and the kindergarten. The local cafeteria (with the first and only English sign in town saying ‘welcome’) remains empty when it is not reserved for banquets of visiting committees and officials. Although the housing conditions are decent, and the kids play outside joyfully, young adults are not happy living in Nurkent. To hang out with friends or have some quality time with the whole family, Zharkent, a 20-minute drive away is the place to be.

It’s hard for the new Nurkent, to compete with the established Zharkent or even the small villages around it, as it lacks both the diversity of a big city as well as the freedom and community feeling of the villages. For example, it puzzles the inhabitants of the stand-alone family houses of Nurkent, why they are not allowed to construct their own banya (small bathhouse) on the adjacent piece of land belonging to their property.

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The apartment buildings are seen more like an unavoidable necessity as most people 4 strive to have a house with outdoor space to grow fruits and vegetables, hold animals, have a private garage or a play garden for children. While in Nurkent there is no such option, the 130-year-old Zharkent is currently expanding by making land available for private developments and welcoming new inhabitants that leave their villages behind.

Given the fact that the future for ICBC are meant for more than just trading, I tried to understand the local attitude towards ICBC at the border as a potential solution for the missing entertainment. I found out that among the locals the trading center is seen exactly for what it currently is, a wholesale market for cheap Chinese goods, without much hope for improvement in the future. It would need to be a big luxurious shopping and entertainment center, like the ones built in the ‘million cities’ Almaty and Urumqi, for it to attract masses of people on daily basis. For now, a visit to ICBC is a day-trip activity, complicated by long lines and security checks at the customs. On the territory of ICBC trade seems quite one sided for now, with the Chinese selling and the Kazakh buying. The cheap price of goods is worth the hassle for individual customers even though traders are held back by the tight export limits of 50 kg and 1500 euro per person per day.

The local markets of Zharkent and the few shops in Nurkent are filled with goods from wholesales in Almaty, Astana or even Urumqi.

Tension between (global) expectations and (local) reality Khorgos Gateway development gives big hopes for the future. Making the infrastructure of Khorgos Gateway functional for the first train to run from Yiwu to London, the first CEO of ‘Khorgos

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Gateway’, Karl Gheysen convinced the global community that the vision for ‘the New Dubai in the steppe’ can become a reality (Shepard, 2017). However, this was not enough to win over the locals that are hopeful, but also skeptical or in their own words ‘realist’, about the development.

“Even if it would become a big city in the future, what does this give me now? I can’t live for 20 years feeding of tomorrows”, sighs one of the locals’ . And this is understandable after seeing the daily life in Nurkent, and some of the challenges within the region.

For example, the high-tech dry port struggles to reach its full potential. For political reasons 80% of the freight flow, is still being handled by Dostyk station about 400km to the north across the border (Shepard, 2017).

The vision of a future mega polis is further challenged by the demographics of the region. Kazakhstan with a population of 18 million, just recently performed a population shift, moving its political center point to the brand-new city of Astana in the north. Nevertheless Almaty, just 350 km away from Khorgos, remains the wealthiest and largest city with 1.5 million inhabitants.

The Xinjiang province across the border with most of its inhabitants living in the 2.5 million populated capital Urumqi, continues to lose inhabitants despite the recent rebranding into BRI’s cornerstone region. The Chinese government created a lot of favorable conditions in Xinjiang to attract companies and investors, but most prefer to work their way around and stay in the bustling East of the country.

“Since the announcement of the BRI,

many companies registered in Xinjiang get the economic benefits, but they don’t want to move their business here because it does not have a very big population and the government controls for safety reasons causes a lot of inconvenience” one of the traders in Urumqi said. Since the terrorist attacks in 2009, Xinjiang prioritizes safety and stability over economic growth.

Urumqi shows another challenge that Khorgos might need to battle; empty wholesale markets, that welcomed thousands of people on daily basis just 5 years ago. Digitalization of trading through social platforms like WeChat (Chinese WhatsApp with a digital wallet), made frequent visits to physical malls unnecessary.

With further progression of this trend, the brand-new ICBC might suffer the same fate.

This raises the question: can Khorgos Gateway overcome these challenges, and attract enough people to match the density and prosperity of its role-model Dubai?

And should it?

Khorgos: The New Silk Route city of the future?

The strategic value of Khorgos for the BRI is evident in the economic benefits that the efficient infrastructure has brought on the (inter)national scale. This certainly provides a good fundament but doesn’t guarantee a successful future for Khorgos as a bustling city. Competing with established cities like Almaty and Urumqi isn’t a simple task.

What Khorgos needs is a unique selling point that would attract people on both local and regional levels. Going beyond 24

provision of jobs and housing, the true potential lies in understanding the dynamics of the local communities and their current needs. Rather than mimicking Dubai or other metropolises, Khorgos could stand out by mixing the rural character of its current context with the convenience of a globalized city by providing conditions not just for good international trading but for a good daily life as well. • References Fung Business Intelligence Centre. (2016). The Belt and Road Initiative: 65 Countries and Beyond (pp. 1, 2). Hong Kong: Fung Business Intelligence Centre. Retrieved from www. fbicgroup.com/ Phillips, T. (2017, May 12). The $900bn question: What is the Belt and Road initiative? The Guardian. Retrieved September 9, 2017, from www.theguardian.com/ SCMP (2017). Belt and Road Initiative. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: multimedia.scmp.com Shepard, W. (2016). Why Kazakhstan Is Building A "New Dubai" On The Chinese Border. [online] Forbes. Available at: www.forbes.com/ [Accessed 17 Dec. 2017].

Shepard, W. (2017). Europe Finally Wakes Up To The New Silk Road, And This Could Be Big. [online] Forbes. Available at: www.forbes.com [Accessed 24 Feb. 2018].

Shepard, W. (2017). Khorgos: The New Silk Road's Central Station Comes To Life. [online] Forbes. Available at: www. forbes.com/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2018].

1. The Belt and Road Routes 2. The local 'shopping centre' of the new Nurkent 3. Although disappearing, there are numerous small villages surrounding Zharkent where local people run their own households.

Are Rural Utopias an optimistic projection? atlantis

68 years in transforming Chinese rural areas by

Yue Mao

MSc Urbanism student TUDelft

The urbanization growth of China is among the fastest worldwide.

Not only urban areas but also rural areas have experienced drastic demographic changes and territorial transformations. One critical influence of rural transformation in China is its political landscape.

There have been five phases of rural transformation since 1949, the establishment of People’s Republic of China and each phase is firmly steered by specific policies that control the development of rural areas to its very existence from migration, land distribution to management. The other pivotal influence is the binary structure between urban and rural areas in China: cities with rapid economic growth create a wealth gap and discrimination, while rural areas, in spite of the recent economic transformation and social inequality, still hold the ideology of equal and plural coexistence (Lee, 2015).

This ideology underpins alternative rural transformation strategies and is advocated by current civilian power, however, concurrently constantly struggling to survive in the cracks of power system.

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Rural transformation in China 30 years ago, the majority of China was rural. The 25 years between 1990 and 2015 witnessed the growth of the urbanizing population rate from 26% to 56%. This rapid development of rural areas had eagerly been erasing its features of rurality and replacing it with urban architecture and planning strategies. The result is a transformation from countryside to ‘countryside cities’.

The urbanizing development in rural areas is not a new phenomenon but rather a continuing historical tradition. Due to the lack of available research and practical case studies specific to rural areas, the design solutions for rural conditions are out of context and turn out to be a mixture of varied urban strategies (Yang, 2015). This disjuncture, steered by central government, has formed a utilitarian and monotonous reality for rural areas.

During 1949 to 1978, rural areas and its people were declared by Chairman Mao, as symbols of genuine ‘Chineseness’. Urban youth were sent to rural areas to learn from the countryside. A ‘Rural Utopia’ was envisioned as the People’s Commune, a type of unit that integrated agriculture, trade and education in rural areas, combining farm collectives with 4,000-20,000 households. People’s communes were built around order, efficiency and extreme hierarchy [Image 1]. Although located in rural areas, none of these plans of the people’s commune represented the existing rural villages in terms of social organization or spatial footprints. These thorough and systematic plans proclaimed the end of peasantry, traditional rural lifestyle and rural architectural languages (Yang, 2015).

In this way, rural transformation in China has a tone of urbanization from its very beginning since 1949 and this tone has remained strong since.

1978-1991 was the period of the industrialized countryside in the form of Township and Village Enterprises (TVE).

The pursuit of efficiency in the people’s commune was amplified in this practice: the sole purpose was to create rigid, simple and economical industrialized countryside. The success of TVE gradually faded due to the disorder and pollution associated with it.

Until the 1990s, the development of urban areas largely relied on exploiting the labour and nature resource of rural areas.

Combating the trend, a plan of integrating urban and rural areas focused on sociology, economy, ecology and urban planning was introduced from 1991-2005.

However, the integration only happened on a planning level, the link to the scale of

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urban design was missing. Thus, the result was at odds with its implementation.

From 2005 to 2012, a policy of the ‘New Socialist town’ aimed to offer more to village life. It was meant to imporve the natural landscape and built environment by building new amenities. Due to the absence of rural planning knowledge, as [Image 2] indicates, this policy was eventually misunderstood as building brand new small cities on agricultural fields. This practice continues today under the new slogan of ‘Chinese Townization’ that confirms the idea of developing and urbanizing rural areas. Starting from the ideology of ‘Rural Utopia’, the tradition and cultures of rural areas have constantly been eliminated, as urbanization has been the sole method and purpose of transformation. In each phase, the lack of knowledge on existing rural contexts and the segregation of design disciplines has led to an end and a decline in each policy. This history has confirmed the downside of the strategy in urbanizing rural areas, drawing forward a need for a more continuous, harmonious and sustainable strategy of rural transformation.

Emerging Research and Practice in Chinese Rural Transformation Recognising the resultant impact of this form of growth, urban planners and designers are exploring the rural context 26

and independently challenging the status quo of ‘Townization’. Although named as ‘new rural Utopia’, the ideology of these new practices is in its essence, the opposite of the ‘rural Utopia’ from the 60s. From its strategies to process: contrasting the preceding era of development, emerging research practices have embedded themselves in rural areas, aiming to recover rural consciousness and liveability.

The challenge for these practices is money, loss of labour force, misunderstanding or even resistance from villagers, and above all governmental policies. How can these new rural Utopia's survive the still ongoing political influence of ‘Townization’?

Bishan Bishan, a rural village located in a basin in Qian County, Anhui Province, has prominent in the media since 2011 due to a participatory rural transformation project initiated by designer, artist and curator

1. Siting plan of Dazhai, the most identical rural people’s commune.

Source: twitter.com/uofwchinaposter/ status/509987696723656705 2. New Socialist Village plan in Zhangjiachuan. Source: pic. gansudaily.com

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Ou Ning. Surrounded by many renowned tourist villages [Image 3], Bishan had been overlooked due to its lack of historical architecture, which was destroyed during the economic boost in the 1990s. This provided a chance for Ou Ning to step in.

The project initiated by Ou Ning, is in partnership with an artist group and propogates a new social-economic model.

The model leads to a spatial strategy based on the existing landscape and architecture in Bishan. But, can a new social economic model influence the spatial structure of Bishan?

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From 2011, Ou Ning started the Bishan Project to create an ‘intentional community’, a planned residential community designed with a high degree of social cohesion. Inspired from the first BnB in Bishan, ‘Pigsty Bar’, Ning curated several rural based public projects such as the Bishan Harvest Festival, a research base for handicraft in cooperation with media students in Anhui University; the School of Tillers [Image 4], a renovated granary as a study centre for agriculture; as well as, Bishan Bookstore, in a renovated ancestral hall, in partnership with Xianfeng Bookstore [Image 5]. In a piecemeal fashion these projects tried to provide space for the residents’ local knowledge. Moreover, instead of eliminating daily rural life and painting a brand-new layer of ‘showcasing tourist rural life’, commonplace in the tourist villages nearby, the Bishan Project was designed for the residents’ daily life.

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But the Bishan Project in practice did not bring structural change to a larger scale. Although strongly encouraged to participate, most residents shared little interest or knowledge of the culture innovation in Bishan and contributed little to its process. Their concept of rural transformation is still limited to the commercial tourist developments and all they wish was to passively wait for a share from the tourism companies.

Bishan Project has caused been an constant inconvenience for the authorities. A new effort of rural Utopia has since then come to an end - again.

Unable to rely on the participation of residents, Ou Ning had to hope for collaboration of government. Due to the support from the secretary Wu and various governmental departments in 2011, most of the interventions were rapidly implemented. With the instatement of Hong, a new secretary in 2012, the Bishan Project experienced poor communication with the authorities. The project was only partly brought back to life later with a new secretary, Yu, which led to the highly acclaimed Bishan Bookstore. But the Bishan Project’s attraction was also a double-edged sword. Cultural sponsorship from investors remains linked to real estate development of luxury hotels and housing, an incentive for government, but a threat to the project. In this way the Bishan Project could only hope to be the mediator and advisor for as long as it has governmental support. Equally their position as outside elites remains frequently questioned as to whether they can speak on behalf of the village.

Dongziguan

In February 2016, Ou Ning’s family house in Bishan was cut off from services without notice. It is easy to push the outside residents out in the rural areas as the community owns the land (Qin, 2016).

The utopian and anarchist ideology in

The intention might have been promising, in reality the Bishan Project remained a managerial exercise with limited room for spatial interventions. It serves as a reminder that civil society has little influence in development processes.

Most of the rural transforming conventions for rural villages are generic tourist developments and low initiative can be expected from the residents. If alternative policy is the only promising way leading to alternative rural transformation, Dongziguan can be regarded as a lucky child born into a ‘rural dream come true’.

Like Bishan, it is also a village slightly falling behind in a comparatively developed rural region in Zhejiang Province. Luckier than Bishan, in 2013 Dongziguan was listed as the example village for preserving and renovating historical architecture and thus gained its chance to be delicately transformed.

The original plan was to relocate the residents into the town, but this plan would also cause population loss and land use conflicts. In 2013, architects from gad, a local firm which is familiar with many governmental projects in the area took over the task to re-localize the farmers in Dongziguan. Discussions with local residents for the design proposal lasted months, culminating in a merger between modern and tradition, preserving features of the traditional housing such 28

3. Villages in QIan County. Source: crnews.net 4. The School of Tiller. Source: https://www. facebook.com/schooloftillers/ 5. Bishan Bookstore. Source: https:// cn.nytimes.com/travel/20141215/t15bishan/

as south-facing yards and entrance, while providing space for their daily uses such as storage rooms for electric bikes, bigger areas between 290m2 and 340m2 and rich sunlight into the rooms and yards [Image 6] (Archdaily, 2017).

However, it is the secondary spinoff of the project that has yielded great success as it has brought commercial opportunities into the town. The intervention has prompted the development of BnBs in farmers' and fishermen’s houses, cafés and design workshops have emerged, while in the second phase of development a new sugar cane plantation of 120 hectares will be developed as well as a health resort in collaboration with a real estate company.

The approach of the Dongziguan project mirrors a research project in Harvard University Graduate School of Design lead by Christopher C. M. Lee, ‘Common Frameworks - Rethinking the Developmental City in China’. The idea of the studio project is based on a typological approach to the problem of rural transformation that invests architecture with a social and political role (Lee, 2015). As shown in [Image 7], the proposals show a deep understanding of rural life, bringing together architecture, landscape, rural and urban. But in the master plan level, as [Image 8] indicates, the consideration of infrastructure or connectivity for the settlements is absent. The project convincingly provides space for active micro life in the transformed areas, however, how it confronts the social-economic impact from a macro infrastructural scale is not discussed. It resonates the reality in Dongziguan project, the following big interventions will be out of the hand of

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7. Design proposal from Common Frameworks. GSD. Source: https://issuu.com/ gsdharvard 8. Design proposal from Common Frameworks. GSD. Source: https://issuu.com/ gsdharvard 9. Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture 2018 in Nantou Old Town. Source: http://www.szyuan.cn

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the residents, and the proposed micro interventions are still facing major changes in the future.

the macro. In this sense, just as the case of Dongziguan, the threat of homogeneous ‘Townization’ remains present.

The initial idea of Dongziguan project was to settle the 46 farmer families, which for them is a utopian dream come true.

However, looking at the current business programs, the economics and lifestyle here will no longer be formed by its residents but by external factors. The need of capital questions whether Dongziguan can avoid a future of becoming another homogeneous tourist town. The success as an architectural project and the uncertainty as a rural development project of Dongziguan share the dilemma with many pedagogical projects in rural transformation and put a difficult question in front of us: what is the role of designers and what is the power of design practices?

Although rural areas still hold a utopian role in Chinese culture, the transformation route is essentially fixed towards ‘Townization’ and never follows those notions embedded in the ideology of a Utopia. Despite many trials in alternative rural transformation practices, they offer no definitive change nor are they a dose of medicine for the symptoms of urbanisation.

Conclusion Despite emerging practice and research, Chinese rural transformation seems intent on repeating history. As it is evident that the development of rural areas remains under the strong guidance of government policies that persist towards urbanization. Anarchist utopian projects, like the Bishan Project, inevitably fail due to their fundamental position against current policies. Rural China as a context has been rewritten from the beginning. Tools for rural design and planning are only being recently recognised and developed, however they remain at a micro scale in disjuncture with the larger scale development - lacking holistic visions and approaches of the micro to

From 2016 onwards, Ou Ning, the former founder of Bishan Project started a new project Kwan-Yen Panorama in Yantai, a second-tier coastal city in China, aiming to transform a historical area and urban village into a hub of public art with an international team of commercial development. This project, based in an urban environment, faces much less pressure from top-down communication and the critiques of its elitism. A similar phenomenon is now happening in the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture 2018. The three-month exhibition embedded its main venue in Nantou Old Town in Shenzhen, a multilayered environment of historical district, deserted factories from the 1990s and an urban village for migrant workers (figure 9). The biennale attempts to grow with the city and generate long-term impact on the transformation of urban villages.

Currently both projects are running smoothly, creating a discourse between external developers and local residents,

in turn receiving political and financial support that is stimulating local business.

The recent initiatives are avoiding the trend toward generic tourist projects because of the strong context and demand from residents that are part of the daily life of these areas. With open-minded policies and involvement with the tangible interest for the everyday residents as well as planning and design research about urban transformation, these urban village transformations are a promising experiment in developing the ‘Rural Utopia’ ideology.

Rural transformation in China is still dependent on the urban-rural relationship - with urban environments steering the way forward. Let us hope for a shift, where the relationship no longer exploits rural resources and rather positions a knowledge transition from urban to rural in the future.• References Bolchover, J., & Lin, J. (2013). Rural urban framework: transforming the Chinese countryside. Walter de Gruyter Dongziguan Affordable Housing for Relocalized Farmers / gad.

(2017, January 3). Retrieved January 31, 2018, from www. archdaily.com Lee, Christopher (2015). The Countryside as a City. Common Frameworks Part 3: Taiqian. Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Sun, Yunfan, (2014, December 18). 3 Years of Bishan Project. New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2018, from cn.nytimes.com Qin, A. (2016, June 17). Architects Seize on Potential in China’sCountryside. The New York Times. Retrieved from www. nytimes.com Yang, Dingliang (2015). Designing China’s Rural Transformation. Common Frameworks Part 3: Taiqian. Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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Conditional territories climate change

Orcadas (ARG) Signy (GBR)

King Sejong (KOR)

“Conditional Territories” may refer to 1. the actual existence of a territory, as a result of a set of parametres, or, 2. a specific form of territorialization of space, as a result of a set of parametres.

While the evidence of climate change and its effects are vast, we have yet to start to completely realize how it will affect the future of humankind's course of inhabiting the planet. In this article we explore two cases showcasing this relationship, both posed at the two extremes of the spectrum: habitable land appearing and disappearing.

(Re)Emerging Territories: The case of Antarctica Antarctica, like its counterpart on the other side, is melting away. The previous sentence is extraordinary in that it essentially means that Antarctica is appearing. In an epoch where we are occupied with the prospect of entire regions submerging into the oceans and the seas, some would say it is fascinating to be speaking of the opposite.

Nevertheless, it is true: the ice sheet that covers the continent is slowly, but surely, fading away, unveiling potential territories and possibilities for grasp.

The ‘Antarctic Treaty‘ (signed in 1959

Johann Gregor Mendel (CZE)

Gabriel de Castilla (ESP) Vernadsky (UKR) Rothera (GBR)

land transformation Introduction

Marambio (ARG)

and activated in 1961) singles out a very peculiar regime for the continent, one that appears unique on the planet, giving it both a meaning and an ownership status.

It states: ‘Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only (Art. I)‘ and ‘No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting , supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force‘ (effectively preserving a previously established status quo). In other words, it establishes the basis for the territorialization of Antarctica and, most interestingly, it raises the question of what would happen if it were to be revised, which is scheduled to happen only 30 years from now, in 2048 (http://www.atahq.org/).

Present-day territorialization is focused on approaching the region with a pure scientific interest. Being almost completely untainted by human activity and, at the same time, one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet, it is the ideal location for scientific inquiries.

Indeed, the scientific-related resources

B San Martin (ARG) Lieutenant Luis Carvajal Villarroel (ARG)

LIutenant A Parod (CHL)

Russkaya (RUS)

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Alexandra Farmazon, IJsbrand Heeringa, Sarantis Georgiou MSc Urbanism students TU Delft

United Kingdom

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Larsen Ice Shelf - Split

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France New Zealand

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Vostok (RUS)

Casey (AUS)

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Melting velocity

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are vast and, coupled with humankind’s need for exploring potential futures for itself, Antarctica is basically a laboratory.

And, however you look at it, this is exactly the kind or territorialization that follows its gradual emergence from the ice. In this respect, even the old saying that "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" stands true1. And, not so unexpectedly, these green areas happen to be on the most contested upon regions by territorial claims. Projecting hypotheses into the future, it will be interesting to 1

imagine a scenario where Antarctica is not protected anymore and a race for occupation has begun, invisioning a future where the continent is urbanized.

However, the unveiling of habitable land does not only ensnare scientists, tourists or, potentially, the general population and a possible "colonization"; it also has this iresistible charm of resource extraction.

While difficult and prohibited now, there is no guarantee that it will not be easy and allowed in the future. And allowed is, of course, the most civilized way to put it.

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Vulnerable areas 2

° Disappearing Land: The case of Micronesia's missing 8 islands In the last decades, islands in the south pacific have been under continual threat from rising sea-levels. A current study found that recently the Micronesia lost eight islands due to sea-level rise and the accompanying erosion 2. Though these 8 45islands represent a priceless loss of possibly unique flora and fauna, they are mere forebodings of the danger that Oceania is set to face.

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Many more islands in the pacific face imminent peril from climate change, among the most vulnerable are the islands of Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the 30Solomons. Some of these islands stand only a few feet above the surface of the water. The populations of these minor islands groups still number O inmthe an tens of thousands but their numbers are dwindling as the ocean is slowly eating away at their homeland.

Depressingly, the most promising solution to the problems of these island nations is° to encourage them to leave their homelands.

Already, thousands have sought refuge on larger island nations like Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Up until now these larger islands nations have sought to help their neighbours. The government of Fiji has even gone so far to sell land to the island nation of Kiribati.

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The World Bank has recently argued that the bigger islands nations of Australia and New Zealand should establish ‘structured’ immigration program that allows open migration from islands nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu. This could create a more gradual transition that would lessen the cultural and political shock of the mass migration that would inevitably come5.

Consecutive representation of island sunkage [ Funafuti ]

Up until now, neither New Zealand nor Australia has shown to be favourable towards this argument. They prefer to focus on internal relocation and climate adaption.

Though many islanders would probably prefer to remain in their homelands, it is questionable to what extent these measures would suffice. Though work is being done to accommodate the first wave of climate refugees, questions are raised on who is going to accommodate the next waves.

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Manila Stage 1 - Loss of litoral areas

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Both cases above underline the effect S

climate change can have on human's domestication of land. Modifications in environmental conditions have always shaped the course of our habitation. By conceptualizing on the concept of "climate change affected territorialization" we can relate environmental conditions with how we occupy space or envision possibilities for future occupation and, one the other hand, we can prepare for the inevitable: either by protecting our territories against external forces, or by establishing policies of new territorialization. •

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Though there are adaptive measures that these nations could undertake - for example, by investing in new coast15defences or by reconstructing coral-reefs – the costs of these interventions are easily in access of the modest GDPs of the small island nations. As the president of Kiribati expressed: "Whatever is agreed within the United States today, with China [the two largest sources of CO2 emissions], it will not have a bearing on 30our future, because already, it's too late for us ... And so we are the canary. But hopefully, that experience will send a very strong message that we might be on the frontline today, but others will be on the frontline next."4.

This puts pressure on the worlds governments to come to an agreement on how to deal with this threat. As of yet, the legal status of climate refugees is undefined.

No matter how inhospitable your homelands might have become, currently international law does not cover climate change as a viable reason for immigration.

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15It is not merely rising oceans that are threatening the islands. An increasing number of storms is destroying villages and crops. Some islands positions are so vulnerable that one single storm could raise the sea-level enough to completely wipe them away. Coral erosion is annihilating the local sea-life 0 populations. What is more, basic functions such as drinking water supply are cutoff. Approximately 3 million people are struggling for clean drinking water 3.

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Stage 2 - flooded productive territory

References 1.Donahue, M. Z. (2017, May 19). Fast-Growing Moss Is Turning Antarctica Green. Retrieved from https://news. nationalgeographic.com 2.Nace, T. (2017, September 9). New Study Finds 8 Islands Swallowed By Rising Sea Level. Retrieved from https://www. forbes.com 3.Mellino, C. (2016, January 05). Meet the World's First Climate Refugees. Retrieved from https://www.ecowatch.com/ meet-the-worlds-first-climate-refugees-1882143026.html 4.Caramel, L. (2014, Luly 1). Besieged by the rising tides of climate change, Kiribati buys land in Fiji. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/01/ kiribati-climate-change-fiji-vanua-levu 5.Doherty, B., Roy, E. A. (2017, May 08). World Bank: let climate-threatened Pacific islanders migrate to Australia or NZ. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/08/australia-and-nz-should-allow-openmigration-for-pacific-islanders-threatened-by-climate-says-report

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INTENSIVE SYMBIOTIC COMMUNITY A workshop in Planning for the 2022 Asian Games Four years from now, from September 10 to September 25, the 2022 Asian Games (widely known as the XIX Asiad) will be celebrated in the city of Hangzhou in China. During the Games, 44 city venues will be used, of which 30 venues already exist, 10 are under construction and another 4 venues are in the planning stage. In the context of these big transformative processes, the city’s Municipal Government organised the 2017 Hangzhou Ecological Community Urban Design Workshop which invited students from different universities, including TU Delft, to examine different design scenarios for the 2022 Asian Games Athlete Village. The aim: to come up with sustainable design solutions that could be integrated in the development stages of the area.

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by Aikaterina Myserli MSc Urbanism TU Delft

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Residential Area: Qualities and Potential The primary aim of the workshop has been to explore creative possibilities for future resilience and environmentally friendly development, with a specific emphasis on water-related infrastructure, public space and urban form issues.

Specifically for the residential area of the Athlete Village, we were asked to research and bring forward concepts on how an ecological community of 80.000 future residents [athletes included] can be planned under conditions of super high-density development. Although Zhejiang provincial government and the Hangzhou municipal government have benefited from China’s vast experience of organising major multisport games, most previous developments focused on generating economic profit and international prestige and de facto neglected environmental or social values.

On that account, special attention has been given to ecological and social systems; water-related infrastructure, public and semi-public spaces as well as circular strategies on energy and waste flows have been at the forefront of the workshop design agenda. Proximity to Qian Tang river, the already existing water canal system as well as local flora and fauna [displaying an extreme diversity of vegetation types and species] have been key qualities that defined our strategic framework, laying the foundations for design scenarios on urban farming, circular economy initiatives, water transportation alternatives and hybrid public spaces. The combination of two main ideas, the establishment of circular strategies and the design of mixed typologies with highly synthetic public space, shaped our approach and defined the results of our “Intensive Symbiotic Community” project.

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Area size: 21.600 m2

The Approach Having circular economy as the first pillar of the proposed sustainability policy, we underlined that promoting circular metabolic processes and closed or cascading loops of energy should be high on the municipality’s and the planners’ agenda for the 2022 Asian Games. Given that urban farming and local production of food lie at the core of the proposal, scenarios on sustainable fertiliser production, efficient use of resources and minimisation of nutrient loss have been essential for the workshop's projective approach. The proposed framework highlighted that waste separation and nutrient recovery could be achieved through a system of decentralised biomass plants which could, at the same time, constitute vital parts of local public spaces. Locating the biomass plants in strategic public spots would not only raise awareness among future residents of the Athletic Village towards a more sustainable standard of living but also reveal hidden potentialities of vivid public life and hybrid urban conditions.

Organising the building chain as well as food, waste and energy flows in a circular way while also fulfilling the growth ambition to realise 80.000 new homes by 2022, could help the city of Hangzhou achieve a 3%-10% productivity increase worth € 80.000.000 per year (¥ 631.000.000). This revenue stream comes along with a considerable improvement of the environmental conditions and the reduction of pollution in the area. Results of the proposal showed that the application of circular flows has the potential to greatly reduce CO2 emissions caused by heavy traffic and industrial uses. It also will reduce the overall material consumption during the Asian Games facilities development. At the same time, minimum loss of resources and the establishment of new, sustainable industrial sectors (organic food industry, green technology companies etc.) would greatly stimulate economic growth and employment opportunities for citizens in the area.

Taking it one step further, these development scenarios came along with a new series of typologies and built environments for the Athlete Village.

Revolving mainly around issues of urban form and density, the second part of the approach explored the spatial manifestation of the aforementioned systems. As the team was asked to develop a masterplan for a residential area of 80.000 people under super-high density conditions –unfamiliar in European contexts- the question that inevitably arose was: What is high density in a Chinese context?

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Housing per floor: 560 m2 4 towers: 44.800 m2

Built-up area: 5.000 m2 Housing area: 50.000 m2

Built-up area: 4.000 m2 Housing area: 47.000 m2

Built-up area: 4.000 m2 Housing area: 34.000 m2

Proposed typologies

The new 80.000 seat stadium is being built on the Qian Tang riverfront opposite the city’s new Central Business District and, after the Games, it will be mostly used for football. In addition to the soon-tobe-completed stadium, the Hangzhou Municipal Government will deliver four other new venues, twelve renovated venues, seven temporary venues and the Games Village. Among the roster of venues and facilities to be constructed, a batch of hotels will also be renovated as part of the Asian Games Village. As a matter of fact, Hangzhou has already been through a major phase of hotel development in advance of hosting world leaders for the 2016 G20 Summit, which has triggered further development of hotels and touristic facilities to meet future demands.

Built-up area: 2.700 m2 Housing area: 13.500 m2

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bike path

entertainment rooms

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Coda: Feedback and final results The framework and strategic steps presented in the “Intensive Symbiotic Community” project gave a concrete direction to the ambition, vision and agenda of designing a resilient and environmentally friendly development for the Athlete Village of the 2022 Asian Games. The workshop made it evident that open-ended design briefs, accentuating circular metabolic processes and lively urban conditions, could lay the groundwork for re-thinking China’s current high-density context.

energy heating, electricity

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the efficiency and the compactness of high-rise developments. Reflecting back on the received feedback and our discussions with local practitioners and representatives of the Municipality of Hangzhou, it was compelling and unprecedented to see the extensive use of top-down approaches and deterministic masterplans within the current planning processes. This fact alone highlighted how the designs may shed light on potential scenarios for some of the area’s future residential blocks. The perspective of harnessing the maximum potential of the area’s metabolic flows (food, energy, waste) was welcomed by local stakeholders and developers and has been taken into consideration for the actual development of the Athlete Village in the fut ure.

300 ktons CO2 reduction

CO2 reduction

36 ktons of recyclable material

material savings

As a final remark, I remain positive that the proposal, addressing both issues of systemic changes [circular flows, resource yields] as well as new spatial configurations [mixed typologies, connected public spaces] could diversify the character of current high density developments in the area and may eventually lead to the enhancement of local economies, socio-economic resilience and overall ecological stability. •

4 new job sectors: building chain food industry fertiliser production material processing

3.450 new jobs

job growth

46% renewable energy

The fact that the team had the freedom to question the on-going residential planning in the area helped investigate a series of diverse building typologies and address the Chinese context through the lens of our European background.

Having the opportunity to work with extra-large scales, not familiar in Europe, enabled us to combine the best elements of low-rise, low-density designs [open courtyards, networks of green spaces, fine-grained blocks, porous borders] with

0.7 million MWh electricity from burnt waste

waste output

50.000 tons of waste/year for 4 people

5.000 to 20.000 households

human input

80.000 people

Losing the local tradition of low-rise village-like houses, packed high-rise buildings in the suburbs of Hangzhou significantly alter its urban tissue. As a result, the context fails in stimulating any interaction between citizens and lacks diversity. On that account, the team shifted their attention towards a wide range of mixed typologies that are easily recognizable and supported by a welldesigned network of squares, community parks and open spaces. While achieving the standards of the desired high density as well as incorporating urban farming systems and water harvesting infrastructures in the proposed buildings, the proposal transformed the archetypical, repetitive and monolithic high-rise typology into a

series of hybrid, highly synthetic , mixed typologies.

energy creation

As a multi-variable phenomenon, density refers to the relation between built mass and open spaces, independently of programmatic compositions. Current planning praxis in China answers the demand for housing mostly by building high-rise buildings, usually identical with each other with limited open space between them. These are often gated and only respond to the needs of specific groups of residents/workers.

te

as

w

bioretention cells open canal

LOOC

te

as

w

energy heating, electricity nutrients nutrients

organic food

organic waste

biomass plants fertiliser production

green waste waste

power plant

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atlantis

green waste grass + biomass

organic waste

organic waste [+ limited non-organic] Pharma industry

fertiliser production

biofuels (?)

Animal feed

food industry

nutrients

rainwater harvesting

water treatment [waste]

treated water

ut ho

paper + plastic packaging processing

r

biohub refinery

n re utri co en ve t ry

ate

Energy production

local restaurants

heat exhangers

local biomass plant

power plant

yw

small scale local market

solar panels

gre

supermarket

Electricity, heating

food festival

heat

city green

[80.000 people]

grey + black water

households

6

urban farms algae

1.View of a nutrient hub integrated in public space 2.Existing and proposed typologies 3.Food production integrated into the building structures 4.Circular flows in space 5.Data on resources/outputs and systemic section 6.Energy flows proposal - circular approach 7.Perspective section of a proposed neighbourhood Source: Author

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Promoting urban vitality in Ecopark New Town city centre, Vietnam

CITIES FOR THE PEOPLE OF TOMORROW

by Reza Ambardi Pradana MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

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“You see, but you don’t observe. The distinction is clear, Watson.”

- Sherlock Holmes

This simple quote by the renowned (fictional) detective Sherlock Holmes triggered and has been steering my journey in the academic and professional realm of urbanism so far. It puts forward the fact that observation is a critical part to thoroughly understand what happened in a crime scene – how do people walk; what do people touch; where is the shortest path to escape. Then, you might ask, what’s the relation to the realm of urbanism? This notion has strangely linked me to the likes

of people-first, cities urbanists’ beliefs e.g., Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, Kevin Lynch, and Jan Gehl, just to name a few.

Instead of a crime scene, they observed how people behave in cities and how cities affect people’s behavior – how people behave on the sidewalk; use movable chair; imagine their city; or choose their path. Gehl’s ‘cities for people’ concept (see Gehl (2011;2013)) in particular, have piqued my academic and professional interest and over the past five years, I have been exploring this topic.

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This exploration reached its turning point in the summer of 2017 when I went to Paris (France) and Tianducheng (China), where I incidentally found two Eiffel Towers (Figure 1), one obviously trying to copy the other. This striking phenomenon depicts the very idea of this graduation project – to juxtapose the two topics: Gehl’s ‘cities for people’ (depicted by Paris old town and many other European old towns as the ideal ‘cities for people’) and Le Corbusier’s (1947) ‘the city of tomorrow’ (Tianducheng new

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town and many other new towns) –hence, the name of this graduation project: Cities for People -of Tomorrow.

In short, the interesting question to be explored is, “How to create cities for people (as Gehl proposed) from scratch (in new town form as Le Corbusier proposed)?

The Case: Ecopark New Town, Hanoi, Vietnam Similar to many Asian cities, Hanoi experienced a major boost in its urban population in recent years, especially since the economic reformations in 1987.

Catering to this population boost, Hanoi has made enormous efforts to house these populations, mainly rural immigrants (Geertman, 2007; Labbe, 2010). The city promoted a new kind of development: New Urban Areas (NUA) / new towns that are located around the city (new town ‘ring’) (Figure 2; Existing peri-urban areas intertwine with more than 152 New Urban Areas in a territory of more than 444 km2 – five times bigger than the existing cities (Luan, 2014)). Many of these new urban areas are failing, as they are characterized by private-led large-scale development, mono-functional, mismatch between real estate supply and demands, land speculations, lack of urban vitality and

lack of flexibility (Calabrese et al, 2015).

Ecopark New Town is chosen as the testsite of this graduation project because it shows some indications of being an anomaly in relation to typical new towns in Hanoi: multi-functional development; non-excessive production of housing; great attention to urban vitality with carefully phased development; and attention to typology flexibility in relation to the market demand (CPG Consultants, 2016). However, Ecopark is currently in the phase of developing its city centre (Figure 3), comprising a wide mix of uses i.e., residential, commercial, education, transportation, open spaces and public uses.

These uses may display higher complexity in comparison to the relatively monofunctional housing estates that Ecopark has been developing before.

In summary, the main task for this graduation project would be to seek the way to design a vital city centre that promotes urban vitality through the masterplanning process. In relation to the question posed earlier, the research question is then formulated as, “How to promote urban vitality (Gehl’s ‘cities for people’) throughout the process of new town masterplanning (Le Corbusier’s 40

‘development from scratch’) in Ecopark New Town city centre Hanoi, using urban design?”. Urban vitality (the product) and new town masterplanning process (the process) are the two keywords defining the project; given the limited scope of this article, only the notion of urban vitality is chosen to be further elaborated within the next section .

The Intended Product: Vital City Centres In the process of understanding and promoting urban vitality within the graduation project, the following subresearch questions were developed and answered: How should Ecopark city centre position itself in order to become vital?

The city centre of Ecopark needs to differentiate itself from other new town competitors – especially those that are located in the ‘ring’ (Figure 2). In order to achieve this differentiation, Ecopark needs to learn from the vital city centres of Hanoi, which are functioning properly and displaying a wide mix of activities. This step is deliberately taken in the graduation proposal, in an effort to embrace locality

atlantis instead of copying or “learning” from the international best practice, like many other Hanoi new towns have done.

How do vital city centres work in Hanoi?

The first step to understand how city centres in Hanoi are working is by examining the accessibility aspect – where the most accessible places are located and which of them are accessible based on the transit coverage. Accessibility in this graduation project is analysed using the Space Syntax simulation. Transit coverage is defined as the radius of the analysis: radius of 800 m is defined as local accessibility (walkable distance); 2700 m as neighbourhood accessibility (cycling and motorbike distance); and radius of n as global accessibility (driveable distance).

Accessibility itself is defined as combination of Choice aspect and Integration aspect.

High level of accessibility means that the particular street has a high level of Choice aspect (passed more often – accidental visitor) and high level of Integration aspect (most central – highly desired destination) (Javadi et al, 2017).

Based on the simulation, streets with high accessibility level are expanding as the transit coverage grows (Figure 4): the most locally accessible streets are located around the old town of Hanoi; the most neighbourhood accessible streets are located around the newer part of the old town e.g., the French quarter; and the most globally accessible streets are mainly the highways (ring roads). Each location will then be analysed in terms of their spatial quality and their relations to the vitality of the place through spacematrix analysis (i.e., Floor Area Ratio and Building Coverage) (Mozas, Ollero & Fernandez, 2015) and on-site observation (i.e., pedestrian rate and urban quality assessment) (Gehl Institute Public Life Study Protocol, see: gehlinstitute.org/tool/ public-life-data-protocol/ ). The site visit part is crucial for this exploration as it is directly linked to the ‘cities for people’ approach; an approach that is rarely used in the practice of new town masterplanning in the Asian context.

How should vital city centres work in Ecopark?

After understanding how city centres in Hanoi work -using accessibility analysis in Space Syntax simulation-, the next step has been to compare them to the city centres of Ecopark, as designed by the masterplanner (CPG Consultants). Based on this analysis, the main difference between Hanoi and Ecopark city centre is related to the locations of different accessible areas. More specifically, in Hanoi, the three accessible areas (local, neighbourhood and global) are

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located in relatively different part of the city (Old Quarter, French Quarter, and New CBD) with very distinct differences in the block and building typologies (Figure 5a).

On the contrary, in Ecopark, the three accessible areas are located inside the city centres. Being in the same area, the block and building typology are designed to be similar (high-rises) (Figure 5a).

These differences have also been verified after the on-site observation. Regarding the aspect of pedestrian rate (amount/ hour) and the urban space quality, the trend indicates that Hanoi city centres have high pedestrian rate with relatively poor quality of urban space, whereas the Ecopark existing city centres display quite the opposite (Figure 5b). Hence, while building upon drawing inspiration from the vital city centres of Hanoi, the key challenge will be to properly apply their urban vitality principles onto the Ecopark city centre.

Conclusion First Step of Creating Cities for People, from Scratch As mentioned earlier, the very idea of this graduation project is to juxtapose Gehl’s idea of ‘cities for people’ with Le Corbusier’s idea of ‘city of tomorrow’.

‘Cities for people’ concept in this graduation project is applied into the Ecopark city centre (the manifestation of the ‘city of tomorrow’ concept) in order to achieve urban vitality [intended product].

The first step in juxtaposing these two ideas is to embrace locality and start learning from Hanoi local vital city centres - an ironically uncommon method in the 41

practice of Asian new town masterplanning which continues to promote tabula rasa approaches and international best practices.

This “embracing locality” notion is concretely manifested in the process of understanding the way Hanoi city centre works: both by Space Syntax simulation and on-site observation. This study in progress shows that it is fruitful to understand how the existing cities work in order to design vital new towns in the future. Although the relation seems obvious, the key is on how to properly apply Hanoi city centres urban vitality principles onto Ecopark city centre.

Hence, the next step will be to focus on design, based on this interpretation, in the pursuit of creating cities for the people - of tomorrow. • Acknowledgements This graduation project is funded by LPDP (Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education) and supported

by CPG Consultants Pte Ltd and Viet Hung Urban Development and Investment J.S.C (VIHAJICO). I thank the colleagues from CPG Consultants who provided experience, expertise and insights that greatly assisted the project.

References Calabrese, L. M., Qu, L., & Van Faassen, W. (2015).

Re-Framing Resilient Urbanism. A Smart Alternative to Generic New Towns Development in South-East Asia: The Case of Hanoi (Vietnam). Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Forum Urbanism, Incheon, Korea, 22–24 June 2015.

Consultants, C. (2016). Ecopark Masterplan Revision: Van Giang Commercial and Tourism Urban Development (Ecopark) 2016 Master Plan Revision Scale 1/500.

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5a

5b

Den Hartog, H. (2010). Shanghai new towns: searching for community and identity in a sprawling metropolis: 010 Publishers.

Geertman, S. S. (2007). The self-organizing city in Vietnam: processes of change and transformation in housing in Hanoi. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Gehl, J. (2011). Life between buildings: using public space: Island Press.

Gehl, J. (2013). Cities for people: Island press.

Javadi, A.-H., Emo, B., Howard, L. R., Zisch, F. E., Yu, Y., Knight, R., . . . Spiers, H. J. (2017). Hippocampal and prefrontal processing of network topology to simulate the future. Nature Communications, 8, 14652.

Keeton, R. (2011). Rising in the East: Contemporary New Towns in Asia: International New Town Institute, SUN. Labbé, D., Collin, J.-P., & Boudreau, J.-A. (2010).

Facing the urban transition in Hanoi: recent urban planning issues and initiatives: INRS Centre-Urbanisation Culture Société.

Corbusier (1947). City of tomorrow and its planning.

Luan, T. D. (2014). Living In\“New Urban Areas”: Towards Sustainable Urban Communities In Hanoi, Vietnam. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 181, 333-344.

Mozas, J., Ollero, Á. S., & Fernández, A. P. (2015). Why density?: debunking the myth of the cubic watermelon: a+t architecture publishers.

Provoost, M., Keeton, R., & Gerson, T. (2010). New towns for the 21st century: the planned vs. the unplanned city: Uitgeverij Boom/SUN. Zhou, J. (2012). Urban Vitality in Dutch and Chinese New Towns: A Comparative Study Between Almere and Tongzhou: TU Delft.

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1. Paris and Tianducheng, the Two Eiffel Towers.

2. Hanoi New Town Ring (without Masterplan) 3. Ecopark Masterplan 4. Space Syntax Accessibility Analysis 5a. Spacematrix (FAR & COV) 5b. On-site Observation (PED-HR & QUALITY) Source: Author

atlantis

THE RED LINE An Interview with KCAP about designing for Russia Founded by Kees Christiaanse in 1989, KCAP Architects & Planners is a Dutch office for architecture, urban design and planning. Since its more than 25 years of practice, KCAP has established itself as one of the leading international practices with a wide work range throughout Europe, Russia and Asia. Atlantis met KCAP associate partner Masha Pidodnia and senior urban planner Riikka Tuomisto for an interview about planning and designing in Russian cities.

interviews by

Panagiota Tzika-Kostopoulou Karishma Asarpota MSc Urbanism students TU Delft

with

Masha Pidodnia, Associate Partner

Riikka Tuomisto

Senior Urban Planner KCAP

Being an office located in Europe, how did you get involved in projects in Russia, and to what extent does the European perspective of urban design influence your proposals for Russia?

Masha: We were first asked in 2008 to participate in the formation of the Strategic Masterplan of Perm. Perm is the capital of Perm Region, a large industrial city with around 1 million inhabitants. The Senator of Perm Region, now a famous Russian developer and owner of one of the biggest mass housing companies, decided to initiate a research for a city transformation strategy in Russia. He needed the guidance for a big group of advisors. Having seen our work in the 'Legacy Masterplan Framework' (LMF) for London, the redevelopment of the Olympic Park and Lea Valley after the Olympic Games in 2012, he got interested in our work. He invited us to become part of this research. We have to admit that at the beginning, we were doubtful because Russia was quite unknown to us. But finally, we decided to join and after 2 years of intense work and many trips to Perm we got linked with Russia forever.

Riikka: Well I can jump into the story now... When you take such a step to enter a foreign market, it is essential to work with people from the country itself. Since we work in Russia, Masha has been playing a great role in our link with that country.

Being from Russia, she is really familiar

with the Russian context. So one of the reasons why we managed to do this project in the way we did, was that she was able to communicate with Russian clients, not as a translator in terms of language but as a translator between the different cultures.

Above that, we were lucky with our first client. He had the ambition to provide a new way of planning and designing for Russia. At the end, this project resulted not only in a masterplan for the city but also in the production of a book, a document that could work as guideline for urban design and planning in Russia, a field that was missing in the country. This book also became a study source at Russian universities. With this book we explain thoroughly, by using Perm as an example, in a complete and comprehensive way how to design cities in Russia. Personally, I haven't been involved in this first Russian project of KCAP, but I know it very well because we refer to it in every new project that we are involved in Russia. You could say, KCAP developed a thinking towards Russian cities through that book, since we had to rationalize our European ideas and to “Russianize” them.

What does this mean, to Russianize your projects? What is the connection and difference between European and Russian projects?

Masha: There are two main differences.

The first is that in Russia, projects are

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managed in a different way. For example, urban plans are being initiated by developers and not by municipalities. The developers have to deal with very stiff regulations. The municipalities pursue a number-driven approach, requesting only specific proportions of different elements like green spaces, playgrounds, parking spaces etc. The other difference is that there is almost no constructive cooperation between developers and municipalities.

This results in many difficulties in practice.

As designers, we have to intervene at the borders between private and public and the best things usually occur at these borders of these two domains. This lack of interaction and communication and the lack of “border” interaction is one of the biggest challenges that we have to face in urban design projects in Russia.

Riikka: To add to this, let me share with you my first experience with projects related to Russia, also at KCAP and in collaboration with Masha. At the beginning, I was very excited. Our team came up with many ideas but for most of them Masha gave us a big NO. “These ideas cannot be realized with Russian regulations” she argued. So we moved on to the next one.

It was after many iterations that we finally came to a solution. During the process, you have the feeling to constantly run and hit your head at a concrete wall. Even now, being familiar with the majority of Russian regulations, we still have to face many times ‘no, within this city you cannot do this’.

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#interview At the same time, this challenges our creativity. The regulations are so mathematical that we can actually provide a design through programming. One could say that with these regulations , urban designers are not needed at all. What we try to do is to find this borderline of what we can challenge from the regulations in order to provide a qualitative environment. And believe me, it is not an easy field to operate in.

Luckily, our clients believe in the quality of what we provide and they acknowlegde the value of discovering new ways of approaching cities in order to provide healthy and vital environments. For example: in 2016, we participated in the annual inter-regional Forum for Living environment in Kazan. This had the aim to establish a national consensus on how to transform cities into places where people can enjoy all aspects of life in a nonconflicting manner. The fact of regulations being stiff was one of the main issues discussed there. An institute in Moscow, called Strelka, got the task to prepare a whole new vision on rules and regulations that can help towards this target and they have been consulting with some foreign offices, including KCAP. A new way of looking at these rules has been initiated and currently, they are really trying to make the environment designable.

Moreover, coming back to the border between private and public, I would like to add that in Russia, developers come up with urban plans but they are always bound to the “red lines�, the site boundaries that are defined by the city. They are literally called

red lines and are arbitrary lines defining client land ownership. The vision of a developer has to fit into this area even if it has no real relation to public and private spaces at the end. Operating within this red lines boundaries or at their borders, is very difficult when it comes to spatial quality and actually it is contradictory to the integral thinking we are used to here. In the Netherlands, you design a building and its surrounding with an integral approach and you cooperate with the city to define who is taking care of what and how. In Russia, the red line is kind of a magical border.

This means that if we provide a design that takes the surrounding space into account and if we want, for example, to provide a real public space that create high quality streetscapes, we can only guarantee that it is done well within the red line. Outside of it we don't always know.

This space outside of the red line is usually open space that belongs to the municipality.

The city has its own standards and if the developer wants to provide different qualities they have to really negotiate with the city and this can be very difficult. The common way of thinking in Europe is that we start from a well-defined public space plus the building and we deal with that as a whole.

In Russia, the red line is something that you can barely cross, limiting the quality of the final product and its possibilities. In our work, we are challenging this principle all the time. Even in one of our current projects we are challenging the client to take over a whole street by realizing it themselves. In every meeting we are trying to convince them again, because the

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value of a property is also related to the environment around it and it doesn't make sense to limit the design to the building.

I can imagine that this situation is already challenged by some architects and designers even in Russia. If interaction with the municipality is at a minimal, how are they able to implement all these regulations?

Riikka: They can be really strict because the rules are so well written and precise and all fit into the red line. What does that mean for us, what do we have to do within the red line? We have to provide a certain amount of green according to how many people are going to live there and within that, areas for pets, sports and children playgrounds.

And if we decide that a specific area should be a children's playground, there are regulations defining that it should be placed at a distance of at least 12 meters from the facades of buildings and that it needs to have a specific percentage of sunlight per day. In this way, the proposals can be checked from the municipal office, nobody has to go on the site. In this way, we are challenged to provide qualitative space while still following all these parameters.

We do not want to be the victim of the stiff regulations but rather try to stay below the figures and provide qualitative environments.

Masha: And this can even be different in different cities. For example, in Ekaterinburg the municipality is very open for discussion while in St. Petersburg it is more difficult to operate.

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atlantis To what extent can you actually provide diverse people-centered environments while dealing with such strict regulations? Aren't you doomed to provide similar solutions?

Masha: The history of Russia is highly embedded in modernism. Considering the very open fabric of “microrayon” blocks that are a result of this era, a lot of undefined public and private space exist in Russia today. Urban blocks are one of the main aspects we are concerned about, especially when we have to deal with transforming the existing urban fabric. By managing and designing blocks, we try to make the Russian cities more compact and defined while considering the context of each city and the specific site location. For example in St. Petersburg, we provided perimeter blocks of six layers with an active plinth and with a lot of activated public space on the ground floor. But we were also interested in designing the skyline because the project is located next to the sea and should be seen from the harbor.

Riikka: In this project in St. Petersburg, our client was interested in the landscape as well. One of the main challenges in Russia is that landscape architecture does not exist as a discipline. If you hire a landscape architect in the Netherlands, you know that you get urban thinking. Landscape design in Russia is mostly thinking in rural terms. Strelka is now starting a landscape education program but only recently, before there was none. Our strength of working with a European background in Russia is that we are thinking thoroughly about the whole environment incorporating the landscape element in each project. Our design in St. Petersburg is a good example of how we can make this successful in Russia.

Apart from that, we are always looking for differentiation. We are looking for something that makes every project unique.

Ekaterinburg for example is a city where we have a lot of clients. And every now and then, a new one approaches us. Sometimes even knowing that we are working for their “competitors”. We brought this up once at one of our clients. But they didn’t seem to have a problem with that. They really trust us. Working for different clients in the same city, we obviously have to keep in mind to not take design ingredients from one client to the next. This is difficult sometimes.

Because finally, we are dealing with the same regulations in the same city and under the same climatic conditions. Of course, the specific context of the site location might be different but it is a challenging task.

Moreover, compared to the Netherlands, where developers come to you quite often with very sharply defined target groups and lifestyles they want to attract, in Russia there are no real target groups. Users are mostly divided only into families with children, couples and singles but there is no definition according to lifestyles or divisions based on income. We are often in discussions with developers regarding what sort of lifestyles they want to offer, what kind of people they want to attract.

Because this is also an aspect that can lead to differentiation between different projects.

So sometimes we even deal with marketing aspects.

Don't you think that if you design only for specific lifestyles and target groups then you lose the aspect of diversity? Do you consider it as a positive or negative aspect?

I think that this does not have to do with diversity versus segregation, because if

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you design for the average then all the neighborhoods look exactly the same. We are actually looking for differentiation. We are always looking for something that makes every project unique. Defining the target group is one way that can provide us with the ingredients to design and program an area even sharper.

What are the main concerns regarding a project in Russia from an environmental perspective?

Masha: As a designer you always need to work with the climate and this is also true for Russia. Russia is a quite diverse country in terms of climatic conditions.

At the same time, the regulations are almost the same everywhere throughout this vast country. There are places where you have a Mediterranean climate and some places where the temperature can reach -40 degrees. Even in the same city the temperature can vary greatly between seasons, I have experienced temperatures of +40 and -40 on two different trips to Ekaterinburg. Most people might have the perception that Russia is cold but actually Russia is everything. We are dealing with designing for snow and providing for airconditioning in every single apartment. We have to provide a robust design that can survive the climate.

Riikka: In the St. Petersburg project, another environmental issue is evident.

We integrated tree lined boulevards in the urban plan, but later on, we received new drawings from the municipality. There, all water and gas infrastructures were located beneath these tree lines which made it impossible to place trees above. It was very challenging to redesign this so that it would still qualitatively present our intentions. We are now in construction phase. Since that

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#interview

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time, almost every year something changed.

This year, we received new regulations stating different definitions of the height of the buildings. This means that creating the skyline will become very challenging.

And also that no pipelines will be allowed under green areas anymore.

So we can implement our green streets design ambition better in the following stages of this project. This was actually a positive change in regulations because we believe that trees have a greater impact on environmental quality at the eye level.

We believe in the quality of the eye level experience, quality of daily life starts from the street level.

What is the perspective on sustainability in Russia?

Masha: Sustainability and green architecture is seen as something above what Russian architecture and urban design can reach. The belief is that everything happening in Europe is very far away from

Russia. Responding to environmental issues is considered as luxury. But this can change with more awareness. For example, in the Netherlands everybody pays for the amount of gas and water etc. they consume and people are aware of their consumption and their costs. In Russia, there are meters measuring the consumption of water, gas and electricity, but not of heating. As a result, if your home is too warm you just open the window and let cold air in.

Heating is provided per room, connected to vertical pipes. Measuring heating is possible only at the building level, but one building has many residents and it is impossible to keep track on consumption levels per apartment. Quite a challenge still.

But Russia is changing very fast. For example the Moscow Urban Forum, an important Russian knowledge platform, will focus this year on “Megacity of the Future. New Space for Living”. Who knows, the theme of next year might be “Russian sustainability revolution”? We would definitely join. • 46

1-3. Perm Project: Spatial framework to guide the transformation of the city of Perm as a a comprehensive vision for future development.

Team: KCAP in collaboration with Hosper, Haarlem (landscape, urban planning); Systematica, Milan (traffic); Pöyry, Vantaa (traffic, engineering); Tavernor Consultancy, London (heritage, townscape); Fakton, Rotterdam (urban economy); Allies and Morrison, London (architecture, urban planning) 4. Image from the book produced after Perm Strategic Masterplan project: "Transforming the city" or / "Трансформация города" in Russian 5-7. Vasilevskiy Island Team: KCAP in collaboration with Orange Architects (architecture), ALEN (local partner)

park

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IoT

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the first korean smart park meeting the 4th industrial revolution by

Boomi Kim

Msc Landscape Architecture student TU Delft

Klaus Schewab, progenitor of DAVOS forum, argues the era of 4th industrial revolution has started in 2010 and defines it as the era which shows ground-breaking technological development through fusing multiple technologies. It stems from the digital technological revolution. No industry, including landscape architecture, can escape from 4th industrial revolution. A wind of change is blowing through Korean landscape architecture, which the profession must critically engage in.

IoT-See Park, Daegu, Korea IoT-See Park (Internet of Things) is the first smart park that applied core technology of 4th industrial revolution to Gukchae Park in the city centre. As a regional attraction the park hosts 1,13 million visitors a year. The park is significant for Koreans as it commemorates a historic collective citizen act, the National Debt Redemption Movement, which is one of the anti-Japanese movement during Japanese

colonial era. It served as an open space in the city centre that was characterized by modern infrastructure and skyscrapers.

The revolutionary intervention formed a renovation that would bring innovative technologies into this historic space.

Mayor Kwon advocates that the park will be the milestone that interactive service and technology will be extended abroad as a business model. The radical intervention provides a range of data, making the park a living lab. The objective to suggest standards for a smart-park model: to create a smart and safe park culture and optimise park management.

Conventionally existing surveillance videos should be watched by a manager for 24 hours. However, AI surveillance videos are used in order to track down or image analysis about risky factors; smokers, homeless, restroom safety management, movement of a group of people and restricted area. It supports safe park by

providing information of field situations.

The AI support manages the managers’ fatigue through its real time alarm system.

Interactive emergency bells are installed.

When pushing the emergency bell, people are able to directly report to the situation room in the park and the police station, which is a 300m away from the park. AI surveillance video gives a thorough record of monitoring. Police are thus able to respond to various situations on a real time basis. The primary aim is to build a feeling of safety. Once the trial of this system is leted and proven to be successful, the other institute will adopt this facility.

Smart streetlights automatically control the lighting by aligning to activity and human movement. Maintenance expense is calculated to be less than 50% of ordinary systems. In addition, the sensor collects and analyses big data gaining insights into energy demands and user rates throughout the day and year, which will be critical in developing a policy in the future.

1. Park's location in the city 2. Aerial night view of the park Source - mapio.net 3. Fine dust sensor 4. Smart solar bench 5. Smart trash can Source - info.daegu.go.kr

Gukchae-bosang Memorial Park Location: 42 Dongin 2, Jung-gu Daegu, South Korea Surface: 42,509m2

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Easy Park Easy Park realised through public WiFi services aims to introduce advanced technology into the daily lives of people.

Augmented Reality lets people know about the facilities, events, and historic cultural contents in park and city. Edutainment contents2 have been introduced. People take photos with historical figures in a multifaceted virtual experience. They can enjoy and learn at the same time! While more practical needs are also met as VR service maximises users’ convenience.

Smart signage rotates 360-degree, interacting with users with QR coding enabling the connection between a thing (signpost) and visitors. Signposts inform people to the distance, direction and tour information connected the park server.

It actively intervenes in the way the park works, the system engages people through lighting and other mechanisms that direct people to avoid crowding and dead zones.

Smart pillars are constructed to show dynamic colour change. The brightness of the pillars progressively changes to welcome people. At the square, GOBO projectors offer a spatial sense through ingenuitive lighting.

Eco Park Eco Park tries to form an environmentally pleasant and healthy atmosphere in the park. Fine dust sensor installation reflects people’s concern about ultra-fine dust fatal to health. It is connected to waterscape facilities such as fountains in the park, and cooling fog. The effect of fine dust reduction from the facilities are continually analysed and checked by big data.

Smart public furniture is part of this initiative. Solar panels on benches generate electricity to charge mobile phones wirelessly. It also facilitates advertisement and exterior lighting. Currently two these benches are being tested in the park. Smart trash can compress garbage 8 times more than ordinary trashcans, while working with solar energy. It perceives hand, fire and delivers the information in real time, aiding in waste management.

Conclusion The park provides data as a living lab for landscape architecture, proceeding by combination of new technology in an existing place. It helps landscape architecture expand its territory beyond place formation to active intervention and user experience. Additionally it has been a significant step that the park opens opportunity for companies to have trials in a real site. CEO of “D-Bot”, a company landscape facility using renewable energy, argues the realistic difficulties of the market during development process of IoT landscape as new technologies need to be tested. It helps improve and support companies related to landscape architecture.

But the intervention negates the park’s function as a public space. A park exists to let people recreate the enjoyment of walking in the green open space. These cutting-edge technologies are likely to distract people from the environment and role of a park as an alternative to the busy city life. For instance, the charger on the smart bench has the advantage to generate energy for smartphones. However, smartphones distract people. The smart signpost that prevents people from losing their way, is counter intuitive in the sense

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that it stops people from walking freely in the space to enjoy nature. The technologies almost deprive the right to appreciate the environment.

We can draw several ethical questions from the project. The surveillance camera regards homeless people as a potential risk factor. Who is the city for? It should be a place for everyone. Also it infringes on privacy. Interactive emergency bells may have a similar effect as they may form a platform for discrimination. The Park and City need to focus on tackling these serious ethical issues rather than being reactive after the incident occurs.

The radical technological advance in this sense draws to the fore both positive and negative issues related to the field, however if such interventions are going to find their place in our future, it must be done through landscape architecture and not for landscape architecture. In this sense the professional must remain both sceptical and conversely actively involved in the future of these technologies in our environments. • References Davos 2016, UBS white paper on the Fourth Industrial Revolution Daegu news, info.daegu.go.kr Youtube video, IoTSee Parkwww.youtube.com/ watch?v=R74Vs7eqjEw

Notes 1. Internet of Things 2. video games, television programmes, or other material, intended to be both educational and enjoyable.

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Statistics1

Mr. Luk and his family have been on the waiting list for public housing for over ten years. Due to an error in his application he had to restart the process and join the back of the queue. But Mr. Luk’s story is not an exception; in Hong Kong, the average waiting time for public housing is over 4 years.

In the interim period, where do people go to find affordable rental housing?

Average waiting time for public housing Number of families living in Subdivided Units Number of people living in Subdivided Units % of children under age of 15 (living in subdivided units) Median monthly rental cost (of subdivided units) Median area per capita (subdivided units) Median household size (subdivided units) Median area per household (subdivided units)

Affording Hong Kong:

4.7 Years2 87,600 199,900 18% HKD 4,200 4.5m2 2.0 people Not provided (but from the figures above we could estimate 9m2)

by

Mark Kingsley & Maggie Ma DOMAT Limited

the struggle of low-income families living in subdivided homes 1. What are subdivided homes and why do they exist?

Hong Kong is widely reported as the most unaffordable city to live in the world3.

Although approximately 30% of the population live in subsidised public rental housing4, there is need for affordable private rental housing for lower-income people who are either waiting or ineligible for public housing. Subdivided homes started appearing in the city as as a direct response to the laissez-faire housing market and its demand. The name derives from the way a landlord takes an existing apartment and divides it into two or more smaller units, to be rented to different households. Most subdivided homes are

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atlantis accessed through the main door of the apartment, which leads to the separate homes. In the past, these may have been individual rooms (‘cubicles’, or ‘cage homes’) with shared common facilities, but the more recent trend has been for self-contained units with independent kitchens and bathrooms which offers more privacy. Due to the space limitations of this approach, it is common to see the bathroom and kitchen combined into a single room, but for many people this may be preferable than communal spaces, despite the health risk.

Depending on the quality of the subdivision, subdivided homes may be crowded, dangerous due to fire hazards, and lack sufficient daylight and ventilation - some do not even have windows. These living conditions are largely invisible to the public eye, since sub-dividing an apartment doesn't affect

the appearance of the building facade.

It is almost impossible to tell whether the apartments in a building have been subdivided just by looking at them from the street, making this phenomenon very easy to ignore. According to the official report, the median rental cost of subdivided homes is HKD4,200, (around 435 euros) and tenants spend around 1/3 of their monthly household income on rent. There are no official figures for the average size of subdivided houses, but from our experience visiting 80 different homes, we have recorded an average size of around 11m2.

Although this size might be reasonable for a single person, it is common for low-income households of two or more people to live in such houses, due to the lack of other affordable options.

Most subdivided houses are in tenement buildingsa in older districts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and many of these

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buildings were built over 40 years ago. As a post-industrial and then post-colonial city with limited land supply, these older residential buildings are a target for urban redevelopment. The owners of these buildings may deem them to have limited historical or cultural value; and in a laissezfair capitalist economy, the owners will welcome redevelopment as a safeguard on their investment. A combination of high housing demand, limited available land, low tax rates, the government as the single landownerb, and high wealth disparity, further adds to the demand for affordable housing. Thus, subdividing property that is reaching the end of its life is a way to meet a market need. We could argue that landlords who chose this option are not necessarily bad people , but are acting according to social norms by making the most of an opportunity. As for why people will end up living in subdivided houses, the reason is more simple: lack of choice.

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2. How is this an architectural issue?

As architects, how does the issue of subdivided housing relate to us? The architects of the tenement buildings could not have foreseen their adaptation into smaller housing units. Although the contractors who subdivide the apartments often find ingenious ways to create smaller units, the reality is that they are not designed from the perspective of good habitation and decency, and are instead focused on maximizing profit per square meter. Due to this economic limitation, options for improving the design of the subdivided unit are also limited.At the same time, can we ignore the situation, or say it is not our responsibility? This was the issue we faced when a local NGO

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atlantis asked us, as architects, to advise them on how to improve the living conditions of families living in subdivided homes.

The NGOc took us to visit a few different households, including one to which they were doing basic renovations. Although the house was now in better condition, it was also clear that these improvements were something that should have been the responsibility of the landlord.

Furthermore, making a renovation, and subsequently increasing the value of the room, creates the risk that the landlord could increase the rent. Our input was to think of how we could change the flat without increasing the value of the house itself, and how the design could directly benefit the tenant instead of the landlord.

This developed into an idea of using furniture as a spatial tool to improve the living environment.

To date, we have worked with over 80 different households, targeting families with children; the project aim is to make the home environment more conducive to learning (thus the programme could have a longer lasting benefit for the family). With appropriate furniture we can provide a means for a better organisation of space in the house, as well as providing dedicated study areas for the children. Furthermore, by limiting any modifications of the home to the design of furniture, the benefit of the project remains with the family, even if they move to a new house – either to another subdivided unit or to public rental housing.

The furniture design focuses on simplicity, durability, and adaptability. The design is primarily modular with sizes that fit the scale of smaller homes, allowing for personalisation with different options and combinations. When stacked, the furniture maximizes the area of the living unit and

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frees up space at the level of daily life. At the same time, modularization can provide basic visual alignment, to make for a tidier interior environment. The materials used are locally available plywood with clear finish, which is simple for the owner to modify by themselves.

In this project, many of the NGO workers are from a social work background. The collaboration with social workers is vital for the implementation of our design, as we need to talk effectively and build a relationship with the families of the subdivided homes. Unlike architects working on typical Hong Kong housing projects driven by the speculative property market who rarely meet the future users of the space they are designing, our working method becomes much more personal – intimate even – and we must learn to be more sensitive.

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3. A not-for-profit social practice outside the academy At school, we were influenced by practices from OMA/AMO to Rural Studio. We later had first-hand experience with the Global Studio and Rural Urban Framework, which are practices closely associated with academic institutions.

Resources are necessary for any practice, and in our case – as an independent not-for-profit company – we need to build them with volunteers and goodwill, and work with integrity to build up our reputation. Social projects are inevitably cost sensitive, so the most obvious sacrifice for a practice like ours is the loss of potential earnings compared to working in the commercial field. At the same time,

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atlantis we must aim at providing a professional service comparable to a regular practice, so we will charge a reasonable fee if the client has the means or find other ways to raise funds to sustain our service. In the profit driven context of Hong Kong, we can redirect the culture of resourcefulness towards helping others, and at the same time work with a basic belief in the concept of ‘enough’ and better social equality. There are several approaches to working in the social field – whether inside the academy or not; each has their quirks, and each are united in the act of practicing architecture with more social responsibility. Ours is one of the ways. •

Question for another day: By working on subdivided homes do we help to validate it as an acceptable means of housing?

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Notes

References

a. The two main types are: • ‘tong lau’ – walk-up buildings of typically 3-7 storeys, with shops at ground floor and usually one or two individual houses per floor, built around the 1950’s • ‘yeung lau’ – buildings with elevators, approximately 16 storeys, with corridors leading to several individual apartments per floor, built during the 1960’s to 1970’s b. With the exception of St. John’s Cathedral.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._ John%27s_Cathedral_(Hong_Kong)#cite_note2 c. The NGO, Society for Community Action (SoCO), works with grassroots society, advocating for several issues, including housing.

1. Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. (2016). Housing conditions of sub-divided units in Hong Kong. (Thematic Household Survey Report No. 60). Census and Statistics Department:Hong Kong 2. Number of Applications and Average Waiting Time for Public Rental Housing . Retrieved from https://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en/about-us/publications-and-statistics/ prh-applications-average-waiting-time/ 3. The 10 most unaffordable cities for housing … and the most affordable city – in pictures (2017). Retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10most-unaffordable-cities-housing-in-pictures (see http://www. demographia.com/dhi.pdf for source data) 4. Retrieved from https://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en/ public-housing/

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1. Diagram home modification.

Source - Author 2. Subdivided housing. Source - Author 3. Subdivided housing. Source - Author 4. Subdivided housing. Source - Author 5. "Society of Conscience". Source - Author 6. Hong Kong. Source - Author 7. Furniture (before). Source - Tanya Tsui 8. Furniture (after). Source - Author 9. Diagram furniture idea. Source - Author 10. Diagram of modular furniture. Source Author 11. Plan of divisions. Source - Author

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BARANGAROO the devil's advocate

by

Preetika Balasubramanian MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Siva Subramanian

MUDD student University of New South Wales

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Everybody loves to hate a good villain. A villain who is flamboyant, with exaggerated wickedness and a big scar on his face.

Throw in a creepy cat and you have with you, a cliché. This kind of villain is easy to stereotype and despise. But what happens when it’s not so simple and you catch a case of the Stockholm syndrome and fall in love with the bad guy instead? Isn’t it true that sometimes we come out of movie theatres undecided whose side are we on- say, the Joker or the Batman?

We are accustomed to expecting black and2 white definitions in every act we pursue, whereas reality is in shades of grey, with villains you cannot really hate or blame. The ‘wicked’ problems in cities are similarly grey, with multiple dimensions of complexity in the city making process.

Cities that thrive in the current neoliberal economy are hard to condemn or praise.

Michael Novak, an American philosopher, argued for the virtues of capitalism in his 1982 work “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism”, based on the premise that any kind of democratic polity depends on the reality of economic growth.

Interestingly, this partnership between democratic institutions of public good and private institutions of self-interest, harks back to the construct of capitalistic cities as a Mandevillian paradox, where the concentrated pursuit of individual selfinterest can have public benefits.

The question here then becomes, how can urban planning channel pursuits of private self-interest towards the welfare of the public domain? How do we defend the public realm when its development sways to the tune of current market hegemonies? This article aims to illustrate the complexities of this ideal through the Barangaroo Urban renewal project on the Sydney waterfront.

Australian Urban Planning: From ‘Coca-colonisation’ to Market-led urbanism In the global chart, Australia bears the highest urbanised population. Modern Australian society is often portrayed as steering between “British cultural imperialism and Coca-colonisation alike.”

(Freestone, 2004; Bell and Bell, 1993). In terms of urban planning, however, there have been remarkable parallels between Australian and American planning ideas. Most of the encounters have been contested, resisted, and most certainly adapted in some way, from Walter and Marion Griffins’ (American Architects/ planners) design for Canberra, regional plans and Planning Commission bodies adapted from their American variants, freeway-based transportation planning, to the Australian variant of New Urbanism (Freestone, 2004; Bell and Bell, 1993).

In the past decade, one can see the dominance of market-led urban development stemming from growing influence of Australia in global trade networks. 1 In market led urban development, cities tend to revolve around multiple economic nuclei. The city appears to be a theatre in progress while the nuclei ideate, flourish, decay and get transformed from one form to another. This process of transformative urban morphologies (Moudon, 1992) can be seen in the change from productive landscapes of agriculture to large land acquiring processes, industrial zones to creative industries, obsolete defence landscapes into recreational parks, low density suburban houses to agglomerates of hybridised commercial war horses, Olympic precincts into business incubators. The transformations in urban morphology that creates space to satisfy the demand for growth becomes a profit 54

oriented ‘development’ that results in a massive dip in affordability, year after year, cycle after cycle until a policy of some sort recommends an affordable slice in a development; an accessible slice for public.

Rather, public space and public realm should be sought by defending public gain through planning instruments and policies.

Take Sydney for example. The impact of globalisation on central cities has been more than just economic restructuring.

2 Central Sydney, like many global cities, has seen dramatic spatial reorganisation, encompassing important social and political implications (Hu 2012). A mega-project that happened the recent past, and is still in the building process is the ‘Barangaroo Urban Renewal Project’, to transform a container wharf in Central Sydney to the city’s newest financial district. This unusual extension to the city was proposed in 2003 by the NSW government, brainchild of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, indicative of the enormous political impetus behind the project.

Barangaroo skewed Urban Transformation Mixed use mega-projects are seductive mode of urban transformation, offering massive wealth generation and cityscale public benefit. The post-industrial waterfronts became the conventional opportunity to perform this city level extension (Harris, 2016). In most cases, when the CBD is extended, there is an ample demand to reconfigure the site as an globally oriented leisure, commercial and residential city expansion (Garcia Ferrari, 2012). One might think with 30 years of being a spectator to mega projects that altered the waterfronts of cities around the world and in Australia, this project should have recognised the complexities of building one and would have channelled

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But, evidently not.

Why did the Barangaroo project come under unprecedented national scrutiny and public bashing?

This development was taken through a sketchy top down process, which is evident in the decisions made from the beginning; where do we start? The competition’s winning entry by Hill Thalis/Berkemeier/ Irwin was not implemented but fused

by Lendlease (the developer) in a casual threesome with Rogers/Schwartz’s masterplan. A conventional Global City modus operandi of engaging ‘starchitects’ is evident in Barangaroo- South Barangaroo designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour, low rise residential complex in Central Barangaroo

by American superweight SOM and the headland park by Johnson Pilton Walker, augmented by Wilkinson Eyre’s 71 storey Casino hotel that somehow slipped through the planning controls to build on land that was allocated as ‘public space’! The public anger was compounded by the phallus shaped Casino, an addition to Sydney’s skyline that it is not proud of, and the excessive interference of the former Prime Minister Paul Keating- like a dirty bag of gambling and politics, brought to you by shady democratic process.

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Is everything wrong about Barangaroo?

Forget the failures in architecture and spatial quality. The process of development and urban governance that let this happened is the real failure. Touted to be biggest developer land grab in Australian history, the floor space of the development is twice what it started out with, thanks to Lend Lease’s alleged autonomy over the project, since they built part of the Barangaroo Metro Station. Talk about value capture gone wrong! It was heavily criticised for its persistent breaches of transparency and poor public consultation (Spencer, 2010). In 2013, Danish urbanist Jan Gehl’s firm retracted from this project citing the absence of communication and a concern that the quality of public domain was declining in favour of increasingly bigger buildings (Hasham 2013). Gehl claims that despite repeated attempts to participate in the design process for almost two years, his firm was not informed about any process, resulting in the firm’s request to remove their name and logo from the project (Harris, 2016).

On the whole, Barangaroo is the spoilt child of a bad marriage between "generic urbanism" and the neo-liberal economy but he knows people, he has ‘contacts’.

Barangaroo is the product of a nationally significant precinct, developed with non-

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atlantis democratic processes and interests vested in the market led economy. In the age of collaborative urban governance, the Barangaroo phenomenon is a setback. The saving grace of this project is that somehow, the active street edges leading to the waterfront numb us to the tacky arrogance of the towers and lack of affordability. A high volume of commercial edge passively relates to the human scale. The pedestrian friendly environment with people grabbing their lunch in the middle of a busy day from office, interacting with other people makes us tolerate the inevitability of this neoliberal landscape. The end product is a striking spectacle of 21st century urban life.

The spatial quality is profound in nature and muffles all the shady processes involved

in the making of it. It is like a paradoxical product of capitalism, an action driven by personal gain but with the potential for public benefits. And it comes together with a very strong "philanthropy" branding, like a charitable contribution to a third world country.

Should we settle for this? Instead of a yes/ no answer, we should rather recognise that the city making process is a juncture where politics, finance and design meet (Washburn, 2013), and negotiate one another for the public gain. The issue is, however, how they define this. Give these three actors a piece of paper and ask them to write about public gain; the results might surprise you. •

Notes 1. In Australia’s Unintended Cities, Tomlinson advises caution in pushing for economy driven urban development, since it cannot be presumed that market-led development will inevitably best serve the interests of providing affordable, well-located housing, and building productive, sustainable, livable and fair cities.

(Tomlinson, 2012) 2. Sydney Central Business District has a permissive planning framework that allows for a dynamic mixed-use urban context. The high-rise district has a complex set of physical planning controls that are currently being reassessed to align with current and future growth aspirations and trends. (Hawken, Hu 2016).

References Flyvbjerg, B. 2005, Machiavellian Megaprojects. Antipode, 37(1), 18–22. doi:10.1111/j.0066- 4812.2005.00471.x Freestone, R. 2004, The Americanization of Australian Planning. Journal of Planning History. 3. 187-214.

10.1177/1538513204267083.

Garcia Ferrari, M & Smith, H 2012, 'Introduction: sustainable waterfront regeneration around the North Sea in a global context'. in Waterfront Regeneration: Experiences in City Building. Routledge, pp. 3-16.

Harris, M. 2016, Barangaroo - Machiavellian megaproject or erosion of intent? in Ruming, K (eds), Urban Regeneration in Australia: Policies, Processes and Projects of Contemporary Urban Change/ editor: Kristian Ruming, Routledge, London.

Hasham, N. (2013, October 5). Designer’s Barangaroo bombshell. Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney. Retrieved from http:// www.smh.com.au/nsw/designers-barangaroo-bombshell20131004-2uzri.html Hawken, S & Han, J. H. 2017, Innovation districts and urban heterogeneity: 3D mapping of industry mix in downtown Sydney, Journal of Urban Design.

Moudon, A.V. 1992, A Catholic approach to organizing what urban designers should know. Journal of Planning Literature, 6(4), 331–49.

Novak, M. 1982, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Simon & Schuster.

Tomlinson,R. 2012, Australia’s unintended cities: the impact of housing on urban development / editor: Richard Tomlinson CSIRO Publishing Collingwood, Vic

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1. View of Barangaroo development from Headland Park source: photograph by Abdul Ghani Hourani 2. Aerial view of Barangaroo Development source: www.barangaroosouth.com.au 3. Comparison of GFA and Usage source: NSW Department of Planning & Environment 4. Urban context source: PWP Landscape Architecture 5. View of pedestrian activity from street level source: photograph by Abdul Ghani Hourani

TERRITORIES OF DISASTER

NUCLEAR by

Sindhuja Janakiraman MSc Landscape Architecture TU Delft

1. 'Nukes and Godzilla', Source - Author 2. Immediate evacuation plan covering 20km radius from the NPP. Source - Author 3-4 Expansion of evacuation orders to 30km radius Source - Author.

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An eerie sight of abandoned streets, shops, houses, schools, banks and calendars fixed to the month of March 2011 – a frozen moment in time. A city fled by its residents.

Villages evacuated. This is the atmosphere that one experiences in the Fukushima prefecture of Japan to this day. This uninhabitable ‘frozen landscape’ continues to be rendered and portrayed in apocalyptic films. However, the situation is not fiction; it can be interpreted as an aftermath of war, one between technology and nature. A reality that transcends national boundaries and raises questions about energy consumption and production.

25 years had passed since the 1986 Chernobyl accident, and so had general opinion on nuclear practice moved on.

The energy accident of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP)1 in 2011, has reignited the nuclear debate. It reminded nations once again to re-think their energy decisions and brace up for alternatives.

Fukushima revealed the fragility of nuclear installations, highlighting radiation as the hidden and enduring threat. Disasters such as these unmask nuclear energy, which for several years has passed as ‘clean energy’.

Under this guise its proliferation worldwide accounts for 11% of energy production with 447 operable civil nuclear reactors with another 61 under construction. Importantly this excludes the hundreds of nuclear installations that are not ‘civil’ installations, connected to the grid – such as research reactors, those used to power independent facilities, ships and submarines as well as those for the generation of medical isotopes.

Today, we live in a nuclear landscape where the mankind has exploited the natural world and created the anthropocene.

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In the anthropocene, solutions that are flagged to battle out climate change are immediately desired to either meet energy needs with minimal use of natural resources or to meet the universal standard of CO2 emissions. Evidence to discredit nuclear energy can be found by interrogating the Fukushima Daiichi accident and its immediate and long-term impacts on the region and its environs. The negative effects on the environment, public health and the economy, emphasises Fukushima’s extreme impact, locally and globally.

On this account, precepts can be drawn to understand the complex interaction between entities such as man, nature and technology, that is steadily shaping the environment we live in.

Repelling Mechanism

“To give any estimate when atomic energy can be applied to constructive purposes is impossible. [...] Since, I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace.” – Albert Einstein in 1945 at the inception of nuclear R&D for ‘peaceful’ uses.

Natural disasters are a gruelling experience to grapple with, facing an additional ‘manmade’ disaster infringes a new territory of unforeseen circumstances. Fukushima adds to the growing list of anthropogenic disasters that have been drawn under the umbrella term global warming and climate change. But like the recovery of the hole

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in the ozone that was caused by CFC emissions, there is precedent in recovering our environments. Unfortunately, the impacts of nuclear disasters are much larger than CFCs, putting us under the pressing threat of catastrophe The intentional decision of setting up the NPP that led to unintentional phenomena at the onset of the Nuclear meltdown, demanded mitigation measures. The Japanese government passed an immediate evacuation order forcing more than 150,000 residents from regions at twentykilometre radius around the NPP, almost immediately creating a void around the accident zone. On learning the seriousness of the penetration of the radioactive material in the air, the evacuation zones were further extended (Fig 3&4). As a result, these ghost towns epitomize the helplessness of the public who had to forego their homes and livelihoods, due to the technology commissioned by a group of ‘powerful people’ in order to drive a culture of consumption. The frantic usage of radiation monitoring devices by people for several years in Japan, clearly indicates the mental distress caused by the accident.

It can be viewed as a repelling instrument pushing habitual boundaries by heavily altering settlement patterns around it.

In this case, the disaster mitigation plan overrides the existing planning guidelines giving rise to two large phenomena. One is the restriction to live in the affected region for a indefinite period; two is the preparation of the surrounding cities to take in the incoming nuclear refugees.

This scenario creates a conflict at national level by the internal refugee crisis with

technological failure as the underlying reason. The blanket evacuation zone declared by the government got later divided into three main areas designated for practical operations as seen in Figure 5.

Do people want to return to their homes when the evacuation orders are lifted?

From the recent reports, only 8.6% of the former residents have returned to Namie town, Kawamata Town, and Iitate village where the government has signalled green for occupation; while the towns such as Okuma and Futaba that hosts the plant will remain a “no-go-zone”. Situations like these advocate a new form of planning model, where energy production and potential disasters inform design and planning of environments. The protection of areas around NPP from impending danger changes the role of planning to act as a ‘defence’ tool from a nuclear fallout, identical to the emergence of bunkers during war times. Bleak as it may be, Fukushima projects a reality of a world in danger- where people are at the mercy of techno-environmental disasters.

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Penetrating risks One of the technological requirements of nuclear power generation demands the NPP to be located near a water resource for cooling, in the case of Fukushima Daiichi NPP the source was Pacific Ocean. Oceans are interconnected to each other, in such disasters they behave as a delivery system for radiation. Penetration of radioactive elements into the ocean happened in two ways – first during the event of fifteenmetre-high tsunami wave, and the second is by deliberate dumping nuclear waste 58

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Legend - 1. Evacuation orders are ready to be lifted; 2. Residents are not permitted to live; 3. Residents will face difficulties in returning for a long time Modified map from source - Shutterstock

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into the ocean from the decontamination process. The impact has been global. The high level radioactive contaminants found along several beaches in Japan, spread rapidly by the tidal currents of the Pacific Ocean, has eventually ended up along the Canadian coast with some traces found as far as Europe. According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Canada, the radioactive elements shot up 50 million times compared to the situation before the accident. This forms a direct threat to the marine life. Although the levels have dropped, there is still an indication of ongoing leaks.

According to Kendra Ulrich, a senior nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, the government’s massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The contamination was across all mediums of the environment – ground, water and air. Apart from the obvious air pollution caused from hydrogen air-explosions and intentional venting to release pressure on the reactor vessels, several other signs of its environmental impacts are becoming apparent in both terrestrial and marine biota. Scientific research warns that these impacts – which include mutations in trees, decrease in abundance of bird species, DNA-damaged worms, and contaminated watersheds – will last “decades to centuries” (Ulrich, 2016). The long lived radioactive elements are absorbed by plants and

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animals intruding the natural processes causing huge threat to the ecosystem. As a measure, close to 220 acres of trees have been cleared since the meltdown, this large amount of waste will be incinerated and stored with no long-term solution.

Thus, the promotion of Nuclear energy as the forefront saviour of climate change on the grounds of reduced dependence on natural resources and reduction in CO2 emission, becomes nonsensical.

However, the position has situated nuclear technology in the green energy circle. In doing so compromising other forms of environmental pollution for ‘zero carbon emission’ claims, raises questions on a holistic understanding of environmental degradation Even though the trade-off between environment and economy seems obvious, the twist that lies within the case of nuclear energy production is its active ‘advocacy’ of environmental protection.

The environmental damage becomes a threat of international importance. The extent of contamination draws forward a new discourse on energy production and environment protection globally. A unified engagement on this issue is required now more than ever, yet those international bodies who such responsibility should fall to, continue to downplay the disaster.

Unprecedented Futures One of the few advantageous characters of nuclear energy lies at the limited use of radioactive isotopes and its ability to re-use 59

5. Water currents in the Pacific Ocean upto the North American coast and map showing the location of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 6. Evacuation Zones for practical operations Source - Author 7. 'Nukes and People' Source - Author

atlantis the resource until it loses its producing capacity. But it faces with the conundrum to dispose waste from the process, ending up in barrels either at the nuclear complex or wherever space is available. The dearth of waste management in Fukushima led to a bigger problem after the meltdown.

It has been close to seven years now, and the Japanese officials are still trying to deal with the ever-growing pile of radioactive waste. About 400 tons of water that is used to cool down the reactors every day, are stored in these barrels – totalling up to 962,000 tons of contaminated water. While these barrels remain fixed until technology catches up to provide solutions, they become territories of disaster.

Due to the immediate contamination caused from the meltdown, the fishermen communities faced a great deal of damage to their livelihoods are further at risk by the government’s decision to release the stored contaminated water into the sea.

The story does not end at the sea but extends to all economies directly or indirectly connected to the physical geography of the place. Thousands of plastic garbage bags containing gallons of soil scraped from polluted grounds, are queued for incineration – this solution still does not fully eliminate the radioactive elements.

While a massive, interim storage facility for radioactive waste is being built in Fukushima prefecture, it will still need larger sites in the years to come. The traces of radiation in the soil will lead on for years, jeopardizing the future food production.

The food industry took a big downfall, affecting the local and international market. Food that met government safety levels was available, but many consumers nonetheless questioned the safety of food supplies in and around the Fukushima prefecture. The rise in risk

perception spread across consumers.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, a renowned physician declared the Japanese food to be unfit for consumption which immediately led the US Food and Drug Administration to pass the “Import Alert 99-33”, banning some food imports from Japan. This has raised fear among other importing countries that had lifted their ban. Japan has only 14% of arable land, subjecting it to such contamination is a high risk to the entire country, having in mind its frequent encounter with natural disasters. With no long-term solution in place, food security and sustainability come into questioning like the other sectors affected by the destruction. Yet another face of nuclear energy gets torn down by the large discrepancies between its ‘objectives’ and reality.

accident proves the toxic legacy left behind by this technology that will continue to maim the environment and humanity for generations. Having seen the issues, with no further delay we must shift to other alternative energy solutions. At the end, even if the decision-making authority lies at the top, as cliché as it may sound, the choices in our everyday lives to cut down carbon footprint will be the first step towards a resilient and sustainable living. Our demands drive these autocratic mechanisms. Since we are still at the beginning of the nuclear epoch, there is there is room for precautionary and preemptive measures by rethinking our morals for the betterment of our society and nature •

Conclusion

Notes

Restoration of remnants – both tangible and intangible, short and long term, mental and physical, in villages and cities, national and international. In this context, many parallels could be drawn to portray the extent of ‘healing’ needed than just mere ‘solving’. Is it worth putting so many things at stake in return for energy? We have seen its ill-effects that cuts across different scales and themes of mental health, displacement of lives, natural landscapes, bio-diversity, pollution, economy, while the list could go on, it brings us to a point to reflect on a few things. All the effort to deal with climate crisis by transitioning from fossil fuels will go to waste if nuclear power is considered as the solution. It may produce lower carbon energy, but it comes with a great deal of risk. The repercussion of decisions taken by ‘authorities’ that are so distant from the reach of common people, showcases its unjust and unsustainable character. The nature of this technology expects a highly centralised hold, both in terms of governance and energy distribution. Undoubtedly, the Fukushima

1. The Anthropocene is a term used to refer to the current geological age where human activity is seen as the most significant influence on climate and environment

References Ulrich, K (2016). Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident – 5 years on.

Greenpeace, 2016, ‘Nuclear scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima’, from www.greenpeace.org Motoko Rich, 11 March 2017, ‘Struggling With Japan’s Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Disaster’. from www.nytimes.com Lee D, Seo S, Song MK, Lee HK, Park S, Jin YW (2017) Factors associated with the risk perception and purchase decisions of Fukushima-related food in South Korea. PLoS ONE 12(11): e0187655. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0187655 Fukushima in 2016 environmental impact publication, from www.irsn.fr Global Number of Nuclear Reactors, from www.world-nuclear. org Sherwood, C (2016. April 6). Radiation from Fukushima disaster newly detected off Canada's Coast. from www.reuters.com World Energy Resources Full report 2016, from www. worldenergy.org

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ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture

Cover Selina Abraham

Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 28, Number 3, March 2018

Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft Office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093

graphic sourced from FreePik.com

Editors-in-Chief IJsbrand Heeringa, Selina Abraham Public relations Alexandra Farmazon

www.polistudelft.nl atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Board Representative Karishma Asarpota

Atlantis appears four times a year.

Number of copies: 450

Editorial Team Michael de Beer, Turkuaz Nacafi Felipe Chaves Gonzalez, Sarantis Georgiou Aikaterina Myserli, Dora Hegyi, Melinda Marjan Sindhuja Janakiraman, Tanya Tsui, Panagiota Tzika Kostopoulou

This issue has been made with great care; authors and redaction hold no liability for incorrect/ incomplete information. All images are the property of their respective owners. We have tried as hard as we can to honour their copyrights.

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ISSN 1387-3679 61

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