The edge making city

1

“I, Caterina Avitabile, confirm that the work presented in this report is my own.

Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the report.�

2

3

THE EDGE MAKING CITY

UCL The Bartlett School of Architecture

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

THE EDGE MAKING CITY

4

5

Acknowledgment Abstract Introduction Urban issues to make the 21st Century megastructure

• The site: San Fernando Road and Pacoima

• The Post fascistic scenario of Camelot

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

• The “edge making city” as science fiction

• The “edge making city” as townscape

• The Design Proposal Conclusion Architectural composition turned into an urban linear strategy for new community facilities .

Bibliography

6

7

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

“To my mother, my dad and my brother with much love and gratitude”

8

9

– How to densify and shrink cities to make them more sustainable?

– How to make recognizable urban limits and edges on administrative borders?

– How to make the utopian linear megastructure of the 21st century?

This paper will try to answer to these questions, giving a design proposal which is only one of the possible formal solution to an urban program which provides rules about transportation

ABSTRACT

(railway, motorway and water), water management, use of alternative energies, economic development and social policies.

Using the distinction that Colin Rowe does in Collage City between the utopian abstract Cartesian world of Superstudio and the Robert Ventury vision of Disney World as symbolic American Utopia - my dissertation will explore a prototype of city which keeps together the principles of urban sustainable design and architectural design of megastructures.

The duality of Disney World as townscape and the images of Superstudio as science fiction exhibit the extremes to which the two critiques of the ville radieuse have reduced themselves.

This thesis will try to explore the opportunity to build up a strategy for a prototype of sustainable city which might accommodate the ideal (the science fiction as mega-buildings, lightweight throwaways, plug in variability, integration of buildings transport,

ABSTRACT

10

movement systems and tube) and what we believe the real has to be.

According to what Colin Rowe says, these two visions are different but complementary in fact if on one hand Superstudio proposes the elimination of the formal structure of power, Disney World is an attempt to furnish the resultant vacuum. Similarly if the linear macrostructure will make the edge and the city border, densification and shrinking involve different urban roles and economical interventions which make this urban strategy real and feasible.

11

12

13

This project is the attempt to make the 21st century megastructure addressing some urban issue taken from the reality of San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The site is along San Fernando Road named also Route 99 which cuts the backbone of the Northeast San Fernando Valley trough the communities of Sylmar, San Fernando City, Pacoima, Sun Valley, Burbank and Glendale before hooking up Route 66 and dropping in San Gabriel Valley.

“Megastructure are the architectural idea of encasing an entire city in one building”. Few of them became built environment, mostly remained paper architecture and commonly ar-

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Urban issues to make the 21st Century megastructure

chitectural expression of totalitarian regimes of modern history.

Consequently for a new type of megastructure intended as the urban alternative to the lack of borders and clear limits due to sprawled cities and dispersed metropolis, this paper sets up the post fascistic scenario of Camelot split from Los Angeles city within San Fernando Valley.

In terms of design proposal Camelot embodies the idea of a defensive long linear megastructure, a science fiction, conceptually based on the historical precedent of the Edgar Chambless Road Town, the Le Corbusier plan for Algiers, the Paul Rudolph Lower Manhattan Express way and the Superstudio utopian abstract Cartesian world.

This peculiar linear city is made by the extrusion of one section which doesn’t change accordingly to the specific part of the site it is passing through. The wall of Camelot has been built along the new city administrative borders of San Fern-

14

15

ando Road and Ventura Boulevard, the first facing San Gabriel

ies, densification, linearity, and water power are part of a com-

The model in the picture below

Mountains, the second Camelot geographical borders of Santa

plex urban design idea which improve the Camelot design

densification and shrinking along

Monica Mountains. These protecting densified lines consoli-

proposal to get to a strategy based on diversity, a spine of dif-

date the agricultural heritage of the Valley and its communi-

ferent infrastructures and flexible variable land uses.

the infrastructural line of San Fernando Road. Exsisting activities and uses move to the line and within the population of the area.

The idea is to genarate oppor-

ties. The valley becomes a garden limited by the these two strong edges.

has been built to show the idea of

tunity to work along the line

Inevitably when the urban approach evolve into an architectur-

where people can live in more

al attempt to make the form of the edge making city, the weak-

autifull lanscape of San Grabriel

sustainable way enjoying the be-

Mountains

With the edge making city displacement towards science fic-

ness of the design proposal obliged this research to make a

tion, the design proposal lack in diversity and shows clearly all

critique and shift the issue again to an urban scale.

its limits. The goal is getting to an urban strategy and architectural solution which takes on board equally the science fiction and the townscape visions.

In Collage City Colin Rowe says “it becomes necessary to conceive a strategy which might accommodate the ideal (science fiction) and which might plausibly respond to what we believe the real to be (townscape)�.

This site offers an amazing variety of urban events characteristic of the sprawl vocabulary which Dolores Hayden brilliantly reported in A field guide to sprawl (W.W. Norton & Company, New York – London 2001). According to her list of urban sprawl episodes, this paper analyses the Route 99 reporting the existing ground conditions, the frequent traffic areas, all the San Fernando Road communities and population social backgrounds, human and physical geography.

Further some key words, taken from the general issue of urban sprawling, build up the vision of townscape of the edge making city in terms of related arguments to make this project deals with the crude and the obvious like a new Disney World Enterprise.

The concepts of depopulation, enterprise zone, edgeless cit-

The site: San Fernando Road

16

17

The site: San Fernando Road

they started selling thei homes and moving out” said Oscar Williams owner of Big “O” realty, which has been located in Pacoima for 16 years. “They had to follow their job” Pacoima also is a place where the poverty rate hovers between 25% and 40% where one of three people lives in public housing. Families on waiting list for the complexes live out of sight, crowded in garages and converted tool sheds, often without electricity, heat or running water.

Consequently the area of San Fernando Road is recently being studied for potential redevelopment from the San Fernando San Fernando Valley is essentially a microcosm of what many

The San Fernando Valley is about

political and social scientist call the two Californias. The first

bounded by the Santa Susana

is predominantly white affluent, older and well educated and votes. The second is minority, less educated working class,

260 square miles (670 km2)[1]

Mountains to the northwest, the Simi Hills to the west, the Santa Monica Mountains and Chalk Hills to the south, the Verdugo

younger and does not vote. The Valley is microcosm also

Mountains to the east, and the San

physically, cut from the rest of Los Angeles from Santa Monica

ast. The northern Sierra Pelona

Mountains. Since the 1970 in the Valley there is a secession

topa Mountains, southern Santa

Gabriel Mountains to the northe-

Mountains, northwestern Topa-

Ana Mountains, and Downtown

movement which rises the resentment against the city government due also to the less in municipal services than its residents have paid in city taxes. The Valley gets a poor deal for its money. For instance it contributed 1.3 billion in taxes for the new subway and got only the very end of the line.

Recently San Fernando Valley experiences domestic out – migration. A mass exodus of firms and people have become more numerous and loud. High personal taxes are driving out the rich and the disintegrating social safety net is pushing away the poor. The Valley is slashing spending in education and healthcare and the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished Fernandinos and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. “So many people have lost jobs,

Los Angeles skyscrapers, can be seen from higher neighborhoods, passes, and parks in the San Fernando Valley

through the Central valleys and eligible to be an Enterprise zone. The designation would allow the area to share in tax breaks for businesses and up to $100 million in government funds for social programs.

According to census data, most of the residents of the two tracts that make up the proposed empowerment zone live in crowded homes and nearly 40% are under 18. More than 40% of the residents were born outside the United States, and nearly two of three people speak Spanish at home, a fact borne out at Pacoima Elementary, where three-quarters of the school’s

Existing cross section of

San

Fernando road and the parallel rail way.

18

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The site: San Fernando Road

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

they were replaced by a growing population of even poorer people.

The percentage of African Americans in Pacoima’s population went from 75% in the 1970s to 10% in 1990. Meanwhile, the Latino population rose to 71% in 1990, as Mexican immigrants were joined by Salvadorans and Guatemalans.

Though Pacoima’s Latinos and African Americans have not always gotten along, the mood has shifted from conflict to conciliation as the town has become increasingly Latino. “They need each other right now,” said Williams, the real estate brostudents speak only limited English. Pacoima has tradition-

ker. But the bottom line, he added, is that Pacoima “is a transi-

ally been a first stop for immigrants to Southern California es-

tory place where people have tended to stay only until they

caping rural poverty. First, it was African Americans fleeing

can afford to move someplace else.”

segregation in the South after World War II, who settled there

Regarding San Fernando Road, it ripples with industrial mus-

because of racially discriminatory covenants elsewhere in the

cle. Mortar and brick, concrete and steel, chain link and iron

city. Eventually, the area became the center of African-Amer-

flex through factories, freight yards, airports, junk yards, swap

ican life in the Valley and, by 1960, nearly all of the Valley’s

meets, car lots, repair shops and a gamut of funky motels and

10,000 African Americans lived in Pacoima and nearby Arleta.

family businesses – all fused together along one of the busi-

But by the late 1960s, the area began to be transformed again

est bus and rail line routes in Los Angeles. “I want to identify

as immigrants--this time from rural Mexico--came to Pacoima,

job openings on the street and place residents in those jobs,

drawn by its low housing costs and proximity to manufacturing jobs. As the African Americans who could afford to moved out,

Elevations San Fernando Road

a smart growth approach,’’ said VEDC President Roberto Barragan. “San Fernando Road ranks among the most important

19

20

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010 THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

corridors.’’ According to the guidelines, if San Fernando Road area could receive empowerment zone status, businesses inside the zone would receive tax incentives, including payroll tax deductions of as much as 20% of the wages paid to workers living in the zone.

Additionally, businesses would get significant tax breaks for buying new equipment and machinery.

The site: San Fernando Road

21

22

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010 THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

According to an article from the Economist with the title “ The road to Camelot” of June the 13th 2002 In recent polls the percentage supporting secession by the Valley, which has 37% of the city’s population of 3.7m but a higher share of its voters, has run in the high 50s locally and in the high 40s city-wide. If the secession vote wins, the new city would come into being on July 1st next year. Its name would also be decided in November’s ballot, which will offer voters five possibilities, from plain “San Fernando Valley” to the more inspiring(and ludicrous) “Camelot”

The Post fascistic scenario of Camelot

23

The Post fascistic scenario of Camelot

24

The Post facistic scenario of Camelot

The secessionist political scenario and the post fascistic vision

surface by centres and farms and rebuild the wilderness.

of Camelot is based on the real San Fernandinos resentment

Trough various projects Camelot uses the water coming from

against the city government and the actual isolation that the

the North to revitalize and irrigate the Valley which have been

valley lives from the rest of los Angeles city. The fiction starts

re-naturalized with tall grass and stately oaks. In this way los

when in 2012 San Fernando finally splits itself from the rest of

San Fernandinos boost their economy and set up a water bank

L.A. and becomes the independent city of CAMELOT which is

to trade water with the city of Los Angeles. Now they mainly

mostly a confederation of communities.

base their economy on refining potable water for internal use

Droughts and lack of water create a gigantic synthetic desert

and trading.

in the Valley. Synthetic because it has been caused by cities buildings, roads and fabrics. This Asphalt Desert cause also

All the communities decide to build new city centres and re-

the transformation of verdant non desert areas into arid waste

organize their land use in order to have with a quarter of mile

lands. Consequently people move from the suburbs to the city

schools, shops and libraries and to concentrate housing, jobs

of Los Angeles to get new jobs and live close to their offices as

and transport in an area as limited as possible. New city cen-

they cannot use the car anymore after the oil running out and

tres are built along the two main axes of San Fernando road

has become too expensive.

and Ventura boulevard which are also the administrative South and East border of the city. The new cities first settlement will

Camelot communities have been finally forced to use alterna-

be in proximity of the water lines.

tive energy such as solar, wind and geothermal. Each com-

They decide to create city without all service for car but built

munities have its own political agenda but jointly decide to

close or above road and railway. The linear city takes advan-

reverse the process of desertification shrinking the covered

“Is This the Railway of the Future� image that ran in Popular Science in 1932.

tage of vertical space by stacking living and work spaces to

25

26

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010 THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

make multiple level buildings. Buildings are settled to get the best view to landscape and surrounding hills, to conserve energy and resources to improve the quality and reduce to minimum movements by car.

The idea is combine the transportation system and the city itself in a linear creation which works mostly like a wall along the landscape. The greenery passes trough or underneath the linear structure like the water coming from the Northern mountains of San Gabriel. This running water has been controlled and purified by each buildings according to the necessity of their inhabitants. The linear structure presents the same cross section all along its length while it’s characterized by two different elevations.

The one facing San Gabriel mountains is continuous and monotone instead the other presents long tentacles which collect and store solar energy giving to the line kind of organic appearance.

In 2070 Camelot lives a global renaissance and the population increases significantly as people are attracted again by

The Post fascistic scenario of Camelot

27

28

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The Post fascistic scenario of Camelot

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

the wealth and lushness of Camelot. The green valley garden

CAMELOT CALLING!

bordered by San Fernando Road and Ventura Boulevard be-

2nd December 2032

comes a place of wild nature, river lines and farmlands with green houses, water purifies and aquaculture zones.

Those who left the Valley years ago now come back to the city to work in new downtown mostly in water government and entrainment industry. The consequence of population rising up is urban densification and the city spreading along the two main lines. Moreover Latino – America people coming from other parts of L.A. and Mexico are attracted by the city and its wealth. They arrive without anything, take a piece of land in the Valley and make their temporary accommodations. One by one they organize small community first, slums after.

Communities governments of Camelot really believe in the idea of integration of low income family living the slums and wealthy people living and working in the road town, follow the example of green exchange of Curitiba in Brazil, they give food and bus ticket to whom collect garbage and keep clean the favelas. Moreover city council give them the opportunity to cultivate their piece of land to provide them food and job. In this way even though the middle class doesn’t exist anymore communities government is actively involved into the tough process of integration.

Yesterday, residents of CAMELOT democratically decided for further split into organized communities. Fragmentation is now official; communities will start concentrating in the Southern part of the Valley, while the opposers to the secession, are going to be moving to the South of L.A. towards Phoenix, Arizona.

Existing built environment will be reallocated and densified with new additional construction. Each community will have it’s own political agenda. The land use will be organized in order to have, within a quarter of mile, schools, shops and libraries.

The infill between the new communities will be re - used in order to boost their economy which is mainly based on refining potable water for internal use and trading. The success of the private communities has it’s origins when Los Angeles voters decided to let 1.35 million residents of San Fernando Valley split off to found a new city named CAMELOT. During these years the Valley had been receiving less in municipal services than its residents had been paying in city taxes. The secession came at a time of numerous and loud mass exodus of firms and people. High personal taxes drove out the rich and disintegrating social safety net pushed away the poor.

29

30

The “edge making city” as science fiction

31

The “edge making city” as science fiction

Conceive the edge making city as megastructure of the 21st

The Prefeito Mendes de Moraes

century requires moving from different motivations that in-

Pedregulho, was designed by the

Residential Complex, known as

architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy

spired the research and visions in the sixties when those theo-

(1909-1964) was built from 1947 and finished in 1952, to house

ries couldn’t refer to any historical precedent.

government employees of the

After setting up the spine of motorway, waterway and railway,

then capital of Brazil. Located in

a new structure will be conceived as light skeleton and mac-

Cristóvão,

rostructures for infrastructure (for instance a new airport) or

sing units of different sizes, 68 per

the Rio de Janeiro suburb of São the

260-meter-long

serpentine building has 272 hou-

floor. Two additional apartment

for commercial and residential (for instance supermarket sub-

buildings, both 80 meters long are below, other of the planned

urbs) will be built accordingly and following this linear devel-

pography is against you? Your old town slides down steeply to

opment.

the port? There’s no room? Then why not build artificial sites?

serpentine form was probably

Reyner Banham rightly says that “we have to be grateful that

And that labyrinthine, treacherous slope of streets not made

unbuilt plan for Rio de Janeiro.

the megastructure generation creates a large store of collat-

for automobiles – get rid to it, lay out your great horizontal

eral imagery which enriches our view of the cultural back-

boulevard at the summit of your artificial sites?” The Radiant

ground to megastructure”. In Megastructure: Urban Future of

City ( New York: The Onion Press, 1967 p.222)

recent past you can see “Megastructure as a short term sup-

For Rio de Janeiro he says: “Here you have the idea: here you

port structure on which could be hung a number of long term

have artificial sites, countless new homes, and as for traffic.

ideas such as indeterminacy, leisure and mobility”.

Architecture? Nature? Liners enter and see the new and hori-

buildings were never built. The

inspired by Le Corbusier’s 1929

zontal city: it makes the site still more sublime more sublime.

The edge making city is clearly inspired by Le Corbusieri-

Just think of this broad ribbon of light, at night”... The Radiant

an approach of the city plan for Algiers (1931) and San Paolo

City ( New York: The Onion Press, 1967 p.224)

when he proposed a linear city built along a viaduct, open spaces and straight boulevard or corridor. He says: “Your to-

Previously in 1910, Edgar Chambless had the idea of the Aircraft Carrier City in Landscape, project, Exterior perspective Hans 1934)

Hollein

(Austrian,

born

Roadtown which was a scheme to organize production, transportation and consumption into one systematic plan.

Transportation makes the form of the city. “The idea occurred to me to lay the modern skyscraper on its side and run the

Le Corbusier’s urban plans for Rio de Janeiro, 1929

32

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city” as science fiction

33

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

Edgar Chambless and Michael Graves images from the wonderful book, Unbuilt America, by Alison Sky and Michele Stone.

From The People’s ALmanac, 1981): “In

cross

section,

Roadtown

would, beginning at the top, consist of: (1) a roof promenade--a glassed-in sun parlor in winter, shaded walk in summer, with

In 1967 “Lower Manhattan Express way” of New York Paul Rudolph combined his interests on an appropriate 20th-century urban scale with the potentials of cellular construction in his project for the Graphic Arts Center (1967), where prefabricated modules, trucked to the site like mobile homes, were to be suspended from the skyscrapers’ superstructure in a terraced, pinwheel fashion providing great variety within the huge scale

bicycling and skating paths and towers housing schools, nurse-

of this mega - structure.

ries, recreation facilities, stores, and power plants; (2) a two-story, above-ground house, with a workroom at street level, a living area above it, and utility lines (electric wires and gas and water pipes) enclosed in a runway beneath the house; and (3) three belowground levels of railroad lines for expresses and locals, to carry both passengers and freight”

Paul Rudolpph “Lower Manhattan Express way” of New York 1967

elevators and the pipes and the wires horizontally instead vertically ...I had found a workable way of coupling housing and transportation into one mechanism and a human way for landmoving man to live...I would build my city into the country. I would surround the city workers with the trees and the grass and woods and meadows and the farmer with all the advantages of city life”

34

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city” as science fiction

35

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

built on the edge and working like a urban city dam to running In Twelve Ideal Cities, published in AD Magazine in 1971, and

water of Tujunga and Pacoima watersheds.

Cinque storie del Superstudio: vita, educazione, ceremonia,

Finally the Archigram project of Crater city gives another idea

amore, morte, which appeared in Casabella in 1973, Super-

of the strong wall city edge.

studio- founded in Florence in 1966 - despite all their criti-

“The ‘crater city’ would be virtually a hotel for 16,000 people,

cism of the megastructuralists’ expansionistic attitude, showed

with carpeted corridors and a very high level of servicing, air-

collages and texts still betray a fascination with the idea which they could not entirely overcome All these references are in the background of the wall design proposal of Camelot which moves from the science fiction to-

Existing ground conditions of San Fernando Road

wards the townscape vision when the idea to reinforce and enlarge the existing Whiteman airport along San Fernando road comes up.

At this point seems reasonable set up the strategy of an airport city which will be at the end only one part of the final edge making city collage of megastructures.

The new airport and the infrastructural spine of motorway, fast train and tram lines need to be provided by extreme suburbs

Superstudio Twelve Ideal Cities, Casabella 1973

36

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city” as science fiction

37

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

conditioned apartments. It would have an outer wall which is a conservatory so that in summer the apartment would become one third bigger and in winter the two skins that sandwich the conservatory would insulate the apartment. The ‘crater city’ looks inward on to a large impeccably mown lawn a third of a mile across. This whole city is a circular crater and the outside of the circle is earth-banked up like a prehistoric mound with

Foulness (Q. T. F. S) - Crater City Plan.

Foulness (Q. T. F. S) - Crater City

Peter Cook 1971

a ring of trees planted on the top. Nothing would be seen ex-

Plan.

Ink on tracing paper

cept this hill with trees”.

Ink on tracing paper

Peter Cook 1971

The “edge making city” as townscape

38

The “edge making city” as townscape

Disney World is nearer to what people really want than what

abandoned and reverse the process of urban desertification,

architects have ever given them because it is the expression

the first item is an economical agreement in order to revitalize

of reality and fact. Disney World is a popular successful urban

ailing suburban economies thanks to a constructive partner-

intervention because it comes from a commercial exploitation

ship between government at all levels and private sector.

of the needs and it’s the product of a social where the evidence of the public realm was never very highly assertive.

ENTERPRISE ZONE

Considered the edge making city equally derivative of science

Depressed and depopulated areas of inner cities can be ad-

fiction and townscape, the urban strategy of the 21st century

vantaged by different economic initiatives like taxes breaks,

megastructure deals mostly with the sprawling as dispersed

free trade zones and other benefits. New developments are

and low density unsustainable urban built environment.

free from rent control and entrepreneurs are granted of ex-

To photograph the reality of the Valley and its characteristics of

emption from property taxes. The idea is setting up Empower-

sprawl, some key words have been listed:

ment Zones on those lands of poor and depopulated areas to encourage linear densification and make dense edges on ad-

DEPOPULATION

ministrative borders. Regarding the specific case of Pacoima

According to the last demographics data this particular area of

and San Fernando Road, Warren Cooley, director of economic

LA city and the communities of San Fernando Road are recent-

development for the Valley Economic Development Center

ly experiencing internal migration and decreasing of work-

says: “Having the enterprise zone in that area has enabled

ing class population. Consequently those regions are facing

other businesses to make a decision to locate there, which

shrinking in job base and shrinking in retailing and services.

creates jobs for the people who live there. The incentives are

Job seekers migrate from suburbs to downtown generating si-

huge when it comes to businesses evaluating whether to go

multaneously outflow of the middle class. To reduce the population moving out, to avoid those suburbia to be completely

Disney World, Florida. Elevations Main Street

one place or another”

39

40

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city” as townscape

41

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

Transportation system in the built linear city of Curitiba, Brasil

can Graffiti.

In Los Angeles for instance, avenues like Vermont and Normandie, or boulevards like Sunset or Sepulveda and trajectories like the Los Angeles river, form lines and linearity which disappear into the haze of the city long before they reach their vanishing point.

Wilshire boulevard is already an established trajectory for linking and connecting the disparate points on the Los Angeles grid and is already creating ideal conditions for high density. For Wilshire, the concept of Edge City is in the sense

EDGELESS CITIES One consequence of urban sprawl is the lack of clear limits and boundaries between cities when all voids are increasingly taken by new developments.

Suburban horizontal growth produces edgeless and elusive city which are generally characterized by low density, favouring automobiles, and possibly scattered or unplanned.

of concentration of business, shopping and entertainment outside a traditional urban area which follow a linear trajectory that slices across the landscape like a knife. We can say that it is still an edge located in the city core rather than a physical border and a limit to the city growing.

WATER POWER Nothing altered the Valley’s future like the opening on November the 5th 1913 of an aqueduct between the Eastern Sierra’s

DENSIFICATION Densify and shrink the city can reverse the process of sprawling and dispersed metropolis. In terms of sustainability city movements by car can be reduced to the minimum while long distances are covered by electric transport fed by solar, windy and hydroelectric energies. The city can be literally built along the main infrastructures (Curitiba) to get the harmonious combination of transportation and consumption. The infrastructures system set up the spine and form the city.

LINEARITY The concept of the strip is so famous that it has become an American icon, enshrined in Las Vegas and celebrated in the book “Learning from Las Vegas” as well in such film as Ameri-

Owen Valley and a Reservoir West of San Fernando. The water-

Aerial view of Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

42

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city” as townscape

43

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

way designed by William Mullholand transformed a parched region into a irrigated greenbelt. Mainly it ensured Los Angeles a steady water supply. Recently due to the lack of water, has been discussed weather water should be reallocated from agriculture to urban uses drying up farms. Controlling and managing the water is the main source of health and power as it’s one of the main issue to deal with to redesign a new sustainable city.

How was the waterway system in San Fernando Valley on 1913.

THE EDGE MAKING CITY

44

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010

The “edge making city� as townscape

45

THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

luxuorious residential area hospitality and leisure structures officies commercial area social houses area train stations

land use

airport

tram line rail connection

Transportation system in the built linear city of Curitiba, Brasil

motor way and fast train line

water way connection

urban structure

The Design Proposal

46

The design proposal

The line has been planned as the long living corridor between San Fernando City and Burbank along the motorway of San Fernando Road and the parallel train line of the Southern Pacific. Different communities are involved into the design proposal and it will affect approximately 200.000 people. The majority of the population is poor, unemployed and speaks only limited English.

The facing mountains of San Gabriel give the live the opportunity to become a new artificial landscape built on top of the infrastructures and the water way which runs in parallel with motorway and fast train line. The line works like a dam, collects and manages the water while each single hubs which forms this collage of megastructures purify individually the water necessary to satisfy the needs of each single community.

Each hubs is conceived as a vertical community village independent and autonomous. In terms of phasing the first hub is the new city airport which will transform the existing Whiteman airport in a bigger infrastructure comparable in size to the City Airport of London in Canary Warf. The runways are 4 km and built on top of the water and the train and motor ways, keeping the same orientation of the previous runway of the Whiteman airport.

The city airport with offices, hotels, commercial area and new residences will start the process of densification of the line which will be followed by the new supermarket suburbs settled closer to San Fernando city. Like Tesco Town in London it will house hundreds of families with its own high street, park, library and primary school still according to the idea of creating vertical villages. In this way thousands of new job have created thanks to the new airport and the big commercial area

47

48

MArch Urban Design 2009-2010 THE EDGE MAKING CITY Caterina Avitabile Unit 2: Robert Dye & Jason Coleman

which will give the reverse the process of internal migration.

All the hubs along the line are independent. Each vertical villages pay their own taxes to get their own community services. They provide themselves individually for the needs of water and energy as they are completely autonomous also for solar energy consuming and production as well as internal economical and political regulations.

The Design Proposal

49

50

51

The post-fascistic political and economical scenario of Camelot is clearly instrumental to set up the ideal condition to make a modern version of the 60’s megastructure conceived as a prototype of sustainable city.

This paper proposed only an urban design strategy based on the idea of densifying city edges and borders but the attempt to look for a physical form transformed the urban design project in an architectural exercise which evidently failed.

Although this is a fascinating topic, the megastructure issue cannot be solved only at the architectural scale leaving a part the urban strategy for community facilities, social interaction and economical interventions.

CONCLUSION

Most of those references quoted in this paper failed their purpose...that’s what Reyner Banham says in his book Megastru-

CONCLUSION

Architectural composition turned into an urban linear

cure: urban futures of recent past:

strategy for new community facilities.

“ Megastructure, almost by definition, would mean the destruction or overshadowing of small scale urban environments; those who had just rediscovered “community” in the slums would fear megastructure as much as any other kind of large scale renewal programme.”

In this sense it could give a good contribute to this dissertation referring to two different examples of failed megastructure as urban social housing interventions realized in Italy in 1970’s.

One is the “Corviale” in Rome the other is the large urban housing project built between 1962 and 1975 in the Scampia neighbourhood of Naples, Italy and called “Vele di Scampia”.

Both of these projects failed because the original project was not completed in all its parts, infrastructures and communities facilities were unrealized.

52

53

The Corviale is well known as the longest single residential

70’s the paradigm of a "new way of thinking the social resi-

building in Europe: an 11-stories high slab of apartments ne-

dence” and were part of a more extensive housing plan in the

arly 1 km in length. It was realized for 8000 inhabitants as an

Eastern area of Naples. Its architect, Franz Di Salvo, was clearly

independent community and according to the original project

inspired by Le Unitè d’Abitation of Le Corbusier and the high

it would have included inside facilities such as schools, shop

technology structures of Kenzo Tange. The original idea for the

areas, recreation spaces and even a church. This long building

project included large units where hundreds of families had to

was based on the idea of social housing to provide all needed

integrate and create a community, rail tracks and large green

infrastructures of a city within the complex itself, and to encou-

areas between the different sails, (named by their triangular

rage social contacts between the occupants. For internal and

shape, reminiscent of a sailing wide at the base and narrows

political reasons many of these originally planned social infra-

as it moves toward the upper floors) a real city model. But the

structures were never realized or are, almost 20 years after the

reality is completely different, the project remained uncomple-

first occupants moved in, still unfinished.

ted leaving unrealized all those planned community facilities

The area suffers from the lack of an adequate metropolitan

which should have created the sense of community. Nowadays

infrastructure and it remains isolated from the greater city of

it’s established a ghetto since the earthquake of 1980, when

which it was intended to be a part.

The Vele in Secondigliano of Naples were considered in the

The Corviale in Rome, Italy

many homeless families, more or less improperly and illegally, informally occupied the sails.

The Vele of Secondigliano, Naples, Italy

54

55

Assumed that these two urban housing projects failed for the lack of infrastructures and community facilities and the predictable weakness of an architectural approach to shape the Edge Making City, rather than try to stuck the megastructure explore a different direction more oriented to an urban design approach and again at a bigger scale.

The megastructure can be intended as a the place to implement urban interventions on behalf of private individuals and developers which use the spine of infrastructures and community facilities built with public economic incentives. It’s more a string - line of schools, playgrounds, sportive, leisure and shop areas realized strategically along the main connections of San Fernando Road motorway, tram and train lines and the airport. The idea is make this places – nodes for the communities which will catalyse in the future private agent investment for new social housing rather than luxurious residential settlements.

The Vele and the Corviale would have been successful urban housing interventions if the way to realize them would have firstly privileged the completion of the main infrastructures and connectivity, then community facilities and shop areas to make a strong sense of community and only afterwards use an architectural approach to make concretely the physical structure.

Vittorio Gregotti plan view sketch of the University of Calabria, Cosenza, Italy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

into a defined architectural form, it would be more interesting

56

57

The Radiant City, Le Corbousier, London: Faber and Faber, 1964 The limitless City, Oliver Gillham, Island Press, Washington 2002 Roadtown, Edgar Chambless, New York: Roadtown Press, 1970 Shaping the city: studies in history. Theory and urban design, El-Khoury Rodolphe, Megastrucure: urban futures of recent past, Reyner Banham, London: Thames and Hud-

Robbins Edward, New York 2004

son, 1976 Recombinant Urbanism, Conceptual Modelling in Architecture Urban Design and City Collage City, Rowe Colin & Koetter Fred, Cambridge Mass: MIT, 1980

Theory, Shane David Grahame, London: Wiley Academy, 2005

New tools for Economic Development, G. Sternlieb and D. Listokin; Centre of Urban

The infrastructural city – networked ecologies in Los Angeles, Kazys Varnelis, Actar

Policy Research, New Jersey, 1981

Barcelona, New York 2009

Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-rays of the Body Public, Douglas R. Betsky, Aaron (editor); Hubert Christian (editor) Suisman, 1989 Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. Mike Davis, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998 The art and the architecture of Paul Rudolph. Tony Monk. John Wiley & Sons; 1st Ed. 1999 The Situationist City, Sadler Simon, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1999 Structure serving the unpredictable, Yona Friedman, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 1999 Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].

A field guide to sprawl, Dolores Hayden, W.W. Norton & Company, New York – London 2001 Le città invisibili, Italo Calvino, The Estate of Italo Calvino e Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A, Milano 2002