Towards a more environmental urbanism: the “territorial mosaic city” Carles Llop
small territoriality, a close one, in a symbiotic system and bound to man and habitat, as the community and the areal environment where he inhabits. During a conference, I heard how José Luís Sampedro associated ecology and economy, what I understand by a more environmental urbanism is based on his reflections, a balance between the anthropic action in the urbanization and the care and respect towards the
To start talking about planning, I am going to
dynamics
of
the
ecological
natural
systems.
offer you a funny anecdote. Some years ago, recently
Paraphrasing him, I also subscribe that ecology and
arrived from a trip to Nicaragua, the taxi driver who
economy have much to do and determine the basis for
was carrying us asked about the reason of our visit in
a more environmental urban planning. To begin with,
the country- it is known that taxi drivers have great
they have as the root oikos, home or habitability in the
conversation skills. So I thought about what I had gone
widest sense from the etymological point of view. The
there for, and I answered him to teach a course of
nomos of the economy cares for the efficient guidelines
urbanism. In the answer, I hindered thinking that
in order to make feasible the habitability in the planet
maybe he did not know exactly what this was, situation
which is sheltering us, and worries about the conditions
in which he emphatically answered: Oh, of course, what
that make it easier, that is what the civilization has
we were taught in school when we were kids!,
been searching for since immemorial time. In its place,
confusing urbanism with urbanity or good manners.
the logos of ecology talks about the concern about the
But in fact, the taxi driver was not so confused: the
habitability logics, through the relations between the
exercise of good manners has much to do with the way
organisms and the environment which gives them the
how we treat the environment, the territoriality; that is,
inputs nutrients and, even from an ethic point of view,
it has much to do with the subject of urbanism, and
it proposes how we face this habitability in a more
especially a more environmental urbanism.
balanced, solidary and ecumenical way.
This concept of territoriality is given to us for a
The first shelter that man builds is a
life experience when we live integrated in a certain
good reference that makes us think, as urban planners,
space; and at the same time, it is conditioned for what
in the chance of a minimal interaction with the
we want to do beyond our lives when we think of a
environment and how we should proceed to not modify
desire to colonize, to take up more territory, to explore
substantially our environment. Jean Philipe Vassal said,
and move unlimitedly in wider environments. It is in the
“If nature was perfect the architecture would not have
moment in which we think about occupying or taking
been necessary”. Indeed, engineering and urbanism
more advantage of the environment, when we break up
would not have been necessary; neither to modify it
our serene relation with it. And this has some very
because of our needs. Therefore, from minimalist
significant consequences. Every time we have a relation
positions, it is tried to do almost nothing and to value
less pristine with our environment. And the effects that
what nature gives us and serves us to live. Giving
we cause on our urban or rural environment show it.
examples of the first shelters (a log cabin with four bent
Our cities have detached from the territory, because
trunks and plaited leafs; to modify the land topography
millions of people no longer live or work slowly on a
to build a wall, like in a Viking settlement which is
regarding to the cardinal points to make sure the right
The effects of the diffuse limits in the use of
ventilation and protection in front of possible invaders)
the territory, the big process of the population increase
we discover the history of the construction process of
and the extensive urbanization, characteristic of the
the urban environment very basic actions that
20th century, what has broken this historical territorial
practically do not alter the natural heritage. They are
logics and has opened a new paradigm of a city
actions of deep architectural essence that should give
extended through the territory, and of a territory
an answer to our current questions to find a way of
interspersed with the city; a phenomenon that affects
acting more simple and harmonious with the
the big metropolitan concentrations, but also the
environment. These images place us in front of
countryside. An urbis shape every time bigger and
contemporary
the
larger that states a conflict on the management of the
contemporary way and the resulting form of making
balance between the support territory (the biophysical
city and changing the territory. Two questions are
matrix) and the city (in certain situations bundled each
especially sharp: what we do and why we do it.
other in a perfect symbiosis and environmental
challenges
which
appeal
The city can be understood as a splendid
cooperation; one depending the other).
solution of the three components that shape the
The city has refused its atavistic relation with its
essence of a civilization: being place (urbs), being
territory generating a multiplicity of heterogeneous
political community (polis) and being meeting place
forms often incomplete and mixed. The real city is an
and cultural exchange (civitas). Traditionally, the city
urban nebulous, that it’s necessary to solve, to
has been surrounded by a wall, but not only in order to
comprehend and to be ready to work on it.
protect itself from outsiders, but to benefit from an environmental balance. For example, the chronicles shows us that in Valencia, the inhabitants pressed together in the dense urbanization surrounded by the wall, efficiently benefited from the orchard around: the city limited itself and did the good governance of the near crop fields and the forest in the distance. It’s the explosion of the city with a vast use of the territory what
changes
the
balance
conscience
for
an
exploitation one. This explosion of the city causes big opportunities, but also big problems, and makes evident the relationship between man and territory.
In this context, it has no sense the glorification of the city left in the chaos order of the flexibility of the normative deregulation, neither the praise of the outskirts as new kinds of modern spaces. So, it is necessary to observe carefully the forms of use of the territory to identify problems and to be able to search solutions
that
optimize
the
project
and
the
management of the territory, identifying effects and proposing
mediations
to
its
environmental
improvement, working the articulation between city and territory.
Today we suffer a “sconfinatta” (without limits) city, on
So, nowadays we have a territory which is
a territory full of scattered settlements which make
conditioned by a territorial splash, an extension and
almost impossible to be certain of the limit between
tentacular spread of urbanization and fragmentation of
what is urban and what is rural, and it doesn’t help to
rural areas that affects territories which should keep as
place ourselves in our perception of the urban form.
environmental spaces to carry out essential biophysical
The city is scattered, diffuse on the territory in a
functions. These harmful phenomena on the territory
multiplicity of urban heterogeneous forms even
usually are not perverse in their origin, but they appear
blurred.
as secondary results of economic processes, which
haven’t found the right project to set in a territory.
During a trip to Stuttgart we made in the beginning of
These processes have given place to what I call “the
the 80’s, we found a city tied with far away territories,
territorial-mosaic-city”. And I name it like this because
the interland, and that generated contacts between
city and territory are mixed making like a “melting pot”.
what is artificialization and its support matrix. We were
This “territorial-mosaic-city” it’s made by historical
fascinated when we saw the railways with a careful and
pieces of coexistence between rural and urban, pieces
decent aspect (different from our infrastructures in that
of agricultural production and structures of industrial
time, that often were furrowing among the dirt), which
activity, often furrowed by numerous infrastructures
magnified the mobility fact and gave to the collective
and splashed by banal territories, useless or degraded
transport a social dimension of union with the territory.
spaces (“drosscapes” as the English say). The city is also
When we came back to Barcelona, we wrote the book
manifested in forms that we have had to admit as a city
“Projectar la ciutat metropolitana” (“Projecting the
but that in fact, they are marginal places, like the
metropolitan city”) (1986), where we described a city
shanty neighborhoods, a phenomenon that fills so
project that considered the form and the manufacture
many metropolises in the whole world. It has been
but, especially, the environment dynamics and the
done a big mental process to admit that these marginal
management of the landscape quality. It was proposed
agglomerations are city too. But I add: needless to say,
a more environmental urban planning, that intends to
this is not city if it doesn’t meet some basic conditions
settle in people lives and to generate the productivity
of urbs, civitas and polis, accessibility to the basic
optimism, the capacity of respect for the environment,
services,
democratic
and the creative responsibility of giving added value to
representation, the presence in the political and local
what we are doing. From these premises, any act, so is
decisions, the access to the transport and public
drilling a tunnel, a highway plan, or building an
services. However, I’m interested in making a virtue of
industrial estate, is organized in base a militant urban
misfortune and believe that we have no option that to
planning, engaged with the management of the
have a big city hope. As Borges said, the city is not the
environmental quality of the territory with a positive
problem; the city is still the solution. In a recent
sense and of added value.
the
word
right
and
the
conference in Caracas, Oriol Bohigas titled his speech: “Cities that not are, architects that we don’t want to be, architecture that will never be”. With this pun, I interpret he would say that there are cities with a facade and a back space, cities that ignore an annex territory which almost can’t be considered as city. For example, the big Paris has an envelope that doesn’t appear in the city cartographies, a back-city with a population of 2 million people, eminently immigrants from Africa. Not admitting the marginal neighborhoods of the cities is misunderstanding the potential capacity in the urban transformation. The waste-spaces, the marginal areas, are potential spaces for the urban transformation, since they liberate territory and remove urban pressure on the free space surrounding.
Also beneath these premises we collaborated in carrying out the action project in Seu d’Urgell after the big disaster of the floods in 1982, a fact which carried destruction and chaos, even with a loss of human lives. In order to rebuild this devastation, and having the complicity of the Mayor Joan Ganyet, we projected the riverbed of Segre river. With this action we not only solved the problem, but we had the opportunity to rearrange the territory, creating a big river park. We could redo the landscape to walk up and down the riverbed and, at the same time, we could build big whitewater canoeing channels. So, we could build an artifact that, giving an answer to the land subdivision, channeled the river to get a hopeful
landscape. The Segre park is a piece that tries to make
patience about the right time of building infrastructures
territory, creates landscape, tries to build a system that
o urban spaces. We don’t realize the time needed to
mimics the river, and is a structuring to get closer to the
analyze, to understand the processes and the forms
natural river in the best measure possible.
that better answer to the inhabit needs, and that we
Hopefully this environmental conscience has arrived earlier to the urban planning. Even though I listened from Jaume Terradas that “any city can be
change the territorial balance. The problem of the time to make city in balance with the territory is so important!
sustainable for own definition”, we have the aim to
Returning to the territorial-mosaic-city, and taking as a
work in the most symbiotic way between the urban
historical referent this example of Yemen as a
part and the environment. A problem that we see for
counterpoint of a contemporary urban reality of many
making this possible is that often there is a lack of
cities which is shown in some heterogeneous and
coordination between the professionals that work in
chaotic shapes, large occupations on the territory, the
the environment and the territory and which are
denial of natural territories, higher particle emissions
responsible for the taking of decisions.
and polluting gases, points of heat generation, a
From here I present the city of Shibam in Yemen, the country of Saba queen. The city of Shibam is a very interesting model where the water allows the building of an oasis. The water comes from far away and is channeled painfully until a point of the oasis that allows the creation a plantation. On the ground there are the vegetables, medium height, the fruit trees, and above, the palms with their dates promise, in a splendid production cohabitation. In Shibam, the ground fertility comes from the wastes of the city, so all is recycled in a closed cycle that makes live this territory. Nearby, the city is porous, but it closes and shuts itself away to stand the extreme climate of dryness and heat, taking profit from the oasis created; a virtuous circuit like Pietro Laureano calls it. This set gives us an aesthetic and formal marvel, but above all, an example of the symbiosis between urban artifact and environment.
meager recycling capacity, among other harmful effects, the vindication of a more environmental urban planning is appropriate and needed. From the point of view of urban planning, the dynamics of the territorialmosaic-city can’t be treated as a purely theoretical question, but let's get down to it. For this reason, we have to choose intervention and clear management attitudes. The new spaces and city shapes in the regional planning claim a new scenario based in the environmental agreement between the contemporary city and the standing territory. So the new paradigm for the contemporary city project is set on the social and techno-political agreement that in the last years we have been building with the territorial governance action, and the proposals and citizen manifests. All these agents and platforms, mostly talking about Catalonia case (and unfortunately we are not accompanied by other regions of the peninsula) we have been creating some solid principles, conceptually
And we ask ourselves, is that beauty can’t be
and efficient when planning, projecting and managing
part, within the technique, of the artifacts we make or
this stage of the city that we are living: against the
create to inhabit? This is one of the biggest challenges
sprawl, the concentration; against the low density, the
of our times when the hurry, the speed, the urgency in
work based in reasonably higher densities; against the
execution of a urbanization usually, excessive and
territorial fragmentation, models reasonably more
disproportionate, due to which we are losing our
compact; against the hiperspecialization, the mixing
and mixed uses; against the social segregation, the
metropolitan city, the circular ring is a marathon track
project of the social space as an incentive of the
of 44 km that integrates the main part of the emerging
cohesion and solidarity; against the megalopolisation,
parks and the green filters of the metropolitan city.
the reticular polarization of the capital centers tied in
Nowadays, the outskirt is an area that polarizes the
network with the intermediate cities, making good the
new service sector, with offices in the nodes of road
principle of the network theory, the autonomy of the
communication. The outskirts would be a metaphor of
parts and complementarity between them.
how to work with the territorial project which
I propose to follow three big strategies concerning the specification of territorial projects: 1)
to set a limit to the city; to recognize there are
spaces that cannot be occupied, spaces that have a natural value and an environmental function that is not of built space. Defining and building the limits of the cities, creating frontiers well delimited between urban and rural, and enhancing the proximity values between the people needs and the urban devices which provide the services: work, leisure, health and culture. Urban planners are helping to underscore the society to understand a territory similar to a beehive, with full parts and others empty and soft ones, but articulated and symbiotic to each other.
integrated and articulates other projects, both dense use and activity, as calmed and slow, environmental. Urban planning has to work in the field of anticipation, creating interesting models for the planning and the management of the occupation of the territory. Certainly, and more committed and specific in the option for the environmental quality. Indeed, a more environmental urbanism, committed and specific, goes without rethorics through a renewed territorial project based on urban containment, the articulation of the urban pieces and the suitability of the different kinds of city in a new physical and functional organization system based in: the definition and building of city limits, the creation of frontiers welllimited between the urban and the rural; the
An environmental urbanism has to preserve
promotion of proximity values between the needs
sine die the spaces with extreme environmental quality,
which make easier the services (work, leisure, health,
and favor the uses overlay and the mixed spaces; it has
culture); the reuse (rehabilitation o recycling) of
to articulate the edges. It’s needed to plan and manage
obsolete tissues or underused; indefinite preservation
properly the urban transition areas, to manage the
of areas of extreme environmental quality; the working
wealth in biodiversity of the quality pieces that are part
in favor of uses overlap and mix spaces as to the
of the existing mosaics in the territorial spaces of
program and activities; the articulation of the edges.
regional scale, to recover the quality of the edges in
The project and the management of the urban
metropolitan perimeters and interstices. Working with
ecotones; the richness management in biodiversity of
the edges, the marginal spaces, building on residual
the big quality tiles of the territorial spaces of regional
badly finished spaces is a fact which allows an immense
scale; the quality of recovery in margins and interstices
amount of hectares, now abandoned, for a urban profit
metropolitan perimeters; the project of the big
without wasting territory still open; and
attractors in the big urban voids as new spaces of the
2)
3)
embed infrastructures in a mutual integration.
An example of this last point is constituted by the big urban round, the outskirts of Paris. Apart from run thousands of cars, it’s a potential big green belt of the
city. So, an urban planning which responds to a model of “territorial-mosaic-city”. In other words, a structure both morphological and environmental that favors the mutual environmental adaptation and the coevolution
of the natural urban ecosystems in interaction, based in a mosaic articulated in urban pieces and the biophysical matrix of the territory
environmentally
balanced. Which are the big strategies that we have in urban planning history from interesting territorial proposals? I propose seven strategies for making an overlapped reading, not-classifying which one is better, but to value that what it's interesting is its overlapping and the simultaneous application of the whole of them for a complete project of the territory: 1)
Finger Plan, Copenhaguen, conceived
in 1947 for the sustainable developing of the metropolitan city growth, tackles at the same time the matter of to balance the city with the rural territory to make them work in a right and articulated way. A dense city, compact, of services, located in the middle of the countryside, is served by five 'fingers' which organize the roads, the paths and the railways, letting the center to be very powerful (with distances of one mile for the pedestrians), and on the other side, these 'fingers' leave territorial green open spaces that penetrate until the middle of the city. 2)
The Transit Oriented Developments
strategy, by Peter Calthorpe. In his acknowledged book 'The next American metropolis, Ecology, Community, and The American Dream' (Princeton Architectural Press, 1933), the person -the pedestrian- is situated as the center of the territorial planning. There shouldn't be any new urban growth that wasn't based in the uses mix (residence-work-trade-services) and with means of transport which make easier a collective and specialized mobility to live in appropriate time and speed. So, the essential trace of the city structure would be based in the spine of a train (in the different modalities of urban adaptation) and the intermodality that organizes all the new urban developments in a radius customized for the pedestrian, which big facilities for that one, and served
by the collective transport or the mobility with more environmental means. Plan of Chicago, 1909, by Burnham
3)
and Bennett'. Oddly, this plan was not approved by the local council, but responds to the impulse of a businessman group who wanted to be competitive with their city and who understood that an excessive growth of the roads network, undifferentiated and unlimited, led nowhere, they understood that it had to be hierarchized, combining the central areas with a micropolicentrism in a appropriate scale of the metropolis. They proposed a new model of metropolis organized in green spaces, creating a 'system park' which articulates both the spaces of proximity and the big territorial parks. A plan that values the biophysical matrix of the territory. The plan even respects the diagonal traces of the Indian paths which supposed the unbreakable traces of the collective memory. This plan let conjugate poetry and pragmatics in a new planning model-system that encourages the proposal in the clear idea of project, put in value and management of the territorial heritage. A plan that still now determines the essential strategies of the new proposals for the Chicago territory (Chicago Metropolis 2020, or the 2040 Regional Plan). 4)
The Green belts that introduced in the
new regional scale of planning the Greater London Plan Council (Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935) and specifically, in the Greater London Plan (Patrick Abercrombie, 1944). It comes about spaces of progressive transition of the urban spaces with urban density, towards the suburban and rural situations. They let the configuration of the big city as a neighborhoods federation reasonably articulated by urbanization open spaces with environmental function. The
green
management
belts
promote
the
protection
of the natural spaces and
and their
environments, they help to the increase of the metropolis` environmental vectors quality, they make
sure the proximity of the inhabitants to the rural areas
whole action and the transformation view make
in order to make easier the environmental education,
possible the management of a diverse model of city
the leisure opportunities, and they protect against the
that follows a green strategy.
abusive invasion of the progressive transformation of the suburbia. This contribution to the regional planning has leave us an active inheritance for the project of a renewed metropolis, ordinate by a green strategy based in the definition of some free and open spaces standards which are basic to accomplish, strategic green belts and a interconnected parks system.
7)
The 'Anillo Verde' of Vitoria. In Vitoria
a big urban-territorial green ring has been built. It is the result of a decided restoration and environmental recuperation plan of the city outskirts in order to recover the ecological and social value of the space through
the creation
of a
continuous natural
environment of the city articulated by parks, enclaves
7V's plan. Le Corbusier was very
of high ecological and landscape value; of closeness
impressed the day he visited Colombia, were the big
which helps to the building of the city limits and the
“quebradas� (gorges) of the land had an impact on him.
rural surroundings. The green ring is a live space that
And in a commission made to develop a future project
makes landscape community among the inhabitants,
for the Latin cities (in BogotĂĄ), we realized that wasn't
and makes possible there are family vegetable gardens,
enough with the roads structure, but it was necessary
forests, public buildings, environmental spaces, spaces
to add a seventh road to the structuration system of
where enjoy the nature. So, it is a physical space that
the urban settlements projects. The 7V incorporates
lows the pressure on other natural spaces, but at the
the big green wedges that organize the territory and
same time, is a referent for the environmental
that will have to read and put in value the
education to unite the citizens around a shared
environmental corridors, the runoff spaces, the
objective of respect and management of the territory
recognition of the tectonic faults). He was realized that
quality.
5)
it was need to use them as an attribute to organize and configure the epidermis, but above all, the cities structure in their relation with the territory in a resembling way, without discontinuities. 6)
The green 'U' of Stuttgart, a strategy
So, if we overlap these seven strategies, we make an operative ideogram for the construction of a territory model which attributes a value to all its components
without
distinguish
between
the
urbanized and the open space, in a process of respect
that talks about management. The shape of the
and
territory has no sense if we don't think it in terms of
territories of the metropolitan outskirts makes possible
time and management with the complicity of people
the outcrop of new ethic attitudes of their inhabitants.
that use this territory. In Stuttgart, 8km of parks which
The urban acupuncture, operating in little actions but in
extend from Palace Garden, going across Rosenstein
the perspective of a big strategy as gives us the
Park, till Killesberg Park, constitute examples of
integration of the mentioned strategies, wants to be
transformation of an obsolete space on the crossing of
the strategy of an optimistic urbanism. If is not possible
big railway infrastructures and urban highways,
to make it all in just one plan, we must select those
intended to make mobility friendly for people. The
points where specific actions let a big change in the
whole German Lands intervene in the transformation
space and produce important and positive social
bringing their intervention in an annual gardening
effects.
exhibition that transforms the mentioned space. The
mutual
balance.
Recycling
the
mistreated