Prologue

The future of cities and urban lifestyles are talked about in this book, and even though these assumptions are highly based on studies and researches, they are not predictions or prophecies. This book is simply pointing out the directions where city developments are leading us, and the possibilities that people might face in the near future. Then, this book concludes with a new theoretical ideology and an alternative urban typology that is relatively adaptive to current urban environment. Again, it is not a design excises to address and accommodate all the existing or potential issues mentioned. Instead, this could be seen as a manifested reality that tries to prevent important issues and negative possibilities from being ignored.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, both their political and economic systems started to crack. Almost everyone in the nation knew the society was falling apart, but they had to pretend it was normal because no one could envision any alternative system other than communism since the free information from the western world was blocked off by the government. This phenomenon was described as “Hypernormalisation” in Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, “You are so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it.”

This accurately describes the urban environment we live in nowadays in terms of urban planning and urban design. There are thousands of cities in the world that more than 60% of the global population lives in, however, only a handful of them are considered truly great cities. Since the globalization of economy and culture, many cities share the same cityscapes and skylines of modern high-rises and massive traffic spaces, especially the cities developed recently. People living in these cities are constantly suffering from problems such as overcrowding spaces, skyrocketing housing prices, air/water pollution, large carbon emission, cramped public spaces, terrible traffic, as well as lack of visual identity and regionalism. The worst of it is that even though there are so many obvious problems in these cities, people choose to compromise and accept them as a part of urban lifestyle. Gradually, the abnormal becomes normal, and everyone is trapped in this problematic urban typology.

For example, the city of Beijing and San Paulo look almost identical from both the street side and from above. Their cityscapes are largely influenced by the internationalism and economic exploitation; therefore, much of the integrity and culture of the city is lost. The illusion of economic growth and propagandized media coverage only show the positive aspects that happened during the urban development. Before they realize it, the city in their memories has long gone, replaced with concrete columns and glass glazing.

In these developing countries, the real estate market is rapidly increasing with a fast growing economy, which gives developers much more power to control the market. This imbalance of economic power causes terrifying consequences: single family housing sometimes costs a lifetime of savings, but the architectural quality is only worth a fraction of it. As a result, urban real estate properties have become more of investments for wealthy than homes to the urban population. This distortion of economic stability has often resulted in unbelievably high housing prices, vacant developments, massive ghost towns, and even real estate bubbles.

Although there are serious problems with urbanization, it is unwise to abandon the urban development plan as a whole. It is far more sustainable to have the majority of the population live in cities, plus it is an easy solution to the growing population issue. In last few decades, history has proven that decentralized population and resources have huge environmental impacts and largely reduces the efficiency of all infrastructures. Vast landscape and spread out settlements create enormous possibilities for systematic waste. Despite material waste for building the infrastructure reaching that far, it is a fact that one water pipe leak just the size of a dime will waste nearly 6,300 gallons of water a month. In addition, about 14-18% of water treated in the United States is wasted through aging and damaged infrastructure, as well as faulty meters. According to the global trends, as well as many other obvious facts, the urban lifestyle will continue to dominate the planet in the future.

To maintain the position of urbanization, many authorities such as urban planners and politicians have been trying to solve these problems, but their minds are too trapped in the system, and more importantly, some of them often benefit from this crooked system. What they have done to try to solve these everlasting problems is using methods that only scratches the surface: they start to plan projects that seem right like adding parks to residential area, replacing old buildings with new ones, or constructing iconic buildings in a city center. Even though some of these solutions are effective, much of their goal behind them was to increase the attractiveness of the area and the real estate price for developers and global investors. They seem to pay more attention to the public image created by renderings and statistics generated by computers than what these projects’ real effect on people’s lives. Eventually, some cities with fast growing economy turned into the mess as we see them today. It is much like the story of Frankenstein: by adding all the parts that make sense and are attractive together, in theory we should have an ideal result. However, in the end, nothing more than a monster of city is created.

Citizens see these horrifying problems with their own eyes, and sometimes complain about it, but they have absolutely no control over it. The disastrous urban environment is gradually reshaping people’s way of living. They would continue their days by moving from one building to another by driving through terrible traffic, then coming back the same way. They would continue to live in their condos with a window looking out to millions of other homes looking just like the ones they have. They would continue paying mortgages for home whose value is mostly a giant bubble. They would continue hanging out with their online friend inside without knowing any of their neighbors. They would…

Sometime you may wonder: how did we get to this point that everyone is stuck in the same problematic urban typology? Is there really no alternative other than accepting it?

What if there is a complete rebellion from the very bottom of this fragile system?

Living in the age of the internet, no one asks the fundamental questions like “where does the internet exist” or “what is open source code” anymore. The concept of free sharing and open source information is not strange to the public. It is very interesting that the terms open source code or open source software were not popular terms 20 years ago. Before 1990, the software world was dominated by giants like IBM and Microsoft. These companies kept their source codes very secretive because they were extremely concerned about people copying or cracking their systems. At the time, only a few pieces of software published by these companies, mostly business software, were able to run on home computers, which very much limited the power of them.

In 1991, a freely modifiable source code called “Linux Kernel” was developed by Linus Torvalds. It was published and later used internationally, which broke the limit set up by traditional software packages that forbid anyone except for the publishers to modify or distribute the software. This breakthrough on open source codes made people realize the power of computers; the idea of open source laid the foundation of the information technologies that we have now. The concept of open source, unexpectedly, did not ruin the business of these large corporations, but instead stimulated their sales since computer products became much more desirable than they were before.

The real estate market and the information technology market are extremely alike from a macro perspective. The real estate giants are the rule makers of the game, and they do not want anyone to threaten their profit margin. Similarly, early large software superpowers were trying to protect their profit margin this way. However, the real estate business requires more capital and it is more of a necessity in most cultures.

The history is surprisingly similar. Again, this new ideology of open source urbanism would be terrifying to the large developers and politicians because it is unknown: they cannot predict how much profit could be extracted from the new system, and how stable the system is, that they could lose their control over the market.

Open source urbanism could gradually break down the limitation, such as corporate trusts’ bureaucracy and zoning complication, in the economic system set by these large corporations, and liberate the urban animals who are trapped in the system for too long. This new system shares many similarities with the concept of the open source aspect of the internet: free remix and redistribution, access to the source, a higher degree of cooperation, and the end to predatory vender lock-in. This new system could transform urban spaces and lifestyles by using modular building components to form larger societal hub. The design and structure of each separate module was actually quite simple, but when they were grouped in a high density algorithmic pattern, they formed a new, highly rational urban system well-suited to the complexities of modern individuals and societies. The module design possesses amazing customizability and is able to adapt to multiple urban environments, geographic cultures, individual lifestyles, and technological advancements. Its adoption will lead to new discoveries that will help us solve existing problems and influence future trends in architecture. With infinite possibilities, open source urbanism could be the revival of new individualism, as well as a new infrastructure system for further development.

Georg W. Hegel once said: “Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable.” One thing Kowloon Walled City taught us is that highly informal communities could be extremely disciplined and reasonable. Thus applying Hegel’s logic, existing programs in this informal dwelling are not only rational, but also irreplaceable. In that case, if there needs to be a convenient shop on the 5th floor of building 12, there would be one, or the resident living in the unit would become one; if the unit does not need to be a restaurant, even if there is one opening up, it will not last any much longer. Informal urbanism without macro control does not mean complete anarchy and chaos because there will always be relatively more efficient micro management.

As the alternative to the current broken system, a highly efficient new urban typology would be formed. Although the open source urbanism is systematically informal, it remains highly rational. Finally, cityscapes of the future will be shaped by unique individuals.