Rethinking Shrinking Cities catalogue

Rethinking Shrinking Cities Lijun Loy

Rethinking Shrinking CIties Written by Lijun Loy Edited by Lijun Loy 2014

Content Overview

01

History of Shrinkage

02

Cause of Shrinkage

03

Case Study

04

Proposals

05

Strategies

06

Alternative

07

Proposition

08

“Shrinkage in one place feeds growth in another.�

Evolution of Terms 19th century

20th century

Situation Outcome Architectural Movement

Growth Village, Town Urbanization

Urbanization Sprawl, Metropolis center Metabolism

Decline

Situation

Decline Ruins Monuments

Outcome Architectural Movement

Shrinkage

Brownfields Greenfields Post-Urbanism Reurbanization

Overview

Brownfield

Urbanism and the sprawl it brought used to be the focus and line of interest for Architects and Urbanist, evident with the formation of the Metabolist Group and movement during the 1960s. However, the consequence of growth, its counterpart; Shrinkage, was soon brought to attention as not just a natural phenomenon but one that has developed into a global concern that is not one to be overlooked. De-industrialisation, political shift, economic changes and demographic change are the main interrelating factors that work together to cause a city to shrink. Shrinkage, especially in the city, has been a major concern with the numerous problems it creates from the decline in urban population and economic activities. For instance, excess and redundant buildings and infrastructures.

Automobile boom in Detroit.

Taking the persisting shrinkage in Detroit for instance, their automobile industry, who’s positive traits of flexibility, mobility and speed acquired them global recognition, is also the cause of the city’s downfall. The impact of external competition brought about from globalisation and the industry’s inability to react fast enough to these changes rendered the industry disposable, causing deindustrialisation which is one of the key contributing factor to the city’s shrinkage.

The frivolous nature of globalisation due to the unpredictable forces renders a future of uncertainty which brings us to the focus of this book; “Has the traditional function or theory of cities as a space for stability, permanency, and heritage now become obsolete? Are the cities already moving, and should we begin to conceive and design moving cities, rather than try to stop them from shrinking or expanding?”

Thus proposing strategies that anticipate future events rather than strategy as a tool for repairing. The book will revisit manifestos during the late 1960s Architecture Utopian movement that promotes an alternative approach to the typical modernist static and rationalised method of urbanisation. Example of such rational approaches are Decamping Detroit and Metrosachs, where zoning and organization play an important role in the redevelopment process. The alternative is a respond to the unpredictable urban situation with the proposal of an unplanned, formless and flexible city housing nomads. The essay will begin by studying the origins of this utopian concept of mobility using proposals by Constant, Yona Friedman and Archigram and then looking at the more recent Tokyo 2050 Fiber City proposal. Through these studies, the book will highlight the strategies used in each proposal and discuss the benefits and shortcomings of such speculation in relation to a shrinking city.

History of Shrinkage

19th century

79 AD

900AD

Pompeii Ruins

Mayan Ruins, Gautemala

Population 20,000 inhabitants

0

Cause: Volcano eruption in 79AD which engulfed the entire town.

Population 2,000 inhabitants/mile2

0

Cause: Speculation of collapse range from warfare, invasion to migration, disease and over-farming and deforestation which worsened drought condition.

20th century

1947

1950

2003

East Germany (Leipzig)

Detroit

Japan

Population 1930 : 714,000 inhabitants 2010: 531,809 inhabitants

Population 1950 : 1,849,568 inhabitants 2010: 701,475 inhabitants

Population projection: 2004 : 120 million inhabitants 2050 : 100 million inhabitants

Cause: Globalization Deindustrialization Political instability Government development failure Suburbanization

Cause: Globalization Deindustrialization Social instability Suburbanization

Cause: Falling Birth Rate.

Rural to city migration: 78% of Japan’s population lives in ‘cities’.

Cause of shrinkage

Territorial War

Epidemic

20th century

19th century

Natural disaster

Political Instability

Social Instability

Extreme Urbanization

Economic Crisis

Deindustrialization

Ageing population

Case Study

Timeline Stakeholder

EVENT

PROPOSAL

Detroit Eastern Germany

Government Private investors

1940s-50s 1945 1947 1950s-60s 1960s 1967 1969 1970s

Plattenbauten Suburbanization Formation of Berlin Wall

1961

Berlin Green Archipelago

1977 Fall of Berlin Wall

1990 Decamping Detroit

The New Suburbanism

1995/6

1997

The Guggenheim Museum

2000

Stadtumbau Ost Schkreutz City Map

2004 2004

2012

MetroSachs

2016

Stadtumbau Ost Unbuilt proposal Implemented

The People

The People

Racial Riot Issue Demolition permits Global Oil Crisis

Stakeholder

Private Government investors

- African American migration into Detroit - White flight to suburb

PROPOSAL

3rd Largest City in the World Nazi Regime Cold War End of Nazi Regime Deindustrialization

1920 1933 Dominance of auto-production

EVENT

Detroit Eastern Germany

Alternative

Ville Spatiale

1959

Walking City

1964

Tuned Suburb

1970

Alternative

1959

New Babylon

1969

Instant City

2006

Fiber City

Detroit “While flexibility, mobility, and speed made detroit an international model for industrial urbanism, those very qualities rendered the city disposable.

Traditional models of dense urban arrangment were abandoned in favour of escalating profits, accelerating accumulation, and a culture of consumption.�

America: Detroit Fordism: Dominance of auto-production which led American industrial economy after World War II. Automobile industry accounts for

Ford’s architect Albert Kahn devised a system of reinforced concrete, creating wide spaces, vertical organization and offering freedom of movement. The increased flexibility for production lines resulted in the Model T. Later, when production exigencies determined that the era of one-factory-under-one-roof had passed, production spread out into the city and extruded horizontally, reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s "City as machine."

Shrinkage

Urbanization

1940s-1950s

1950s-1960s

1970s

African American migration from rural areas into the city due to agricultural decline.

Global oil crisis.

Faced with economic competition from globalisation. (influx of steel and car imports)

White flight out to the suburbs to more luxurious houses. The lure of the new suburban landscape.

1967 Racial riot Urban planning failure: It was not designed to be a city in the classical sense. Cities develop out of conflicting desires and their resolution.

1973 Election of first black

East Germany Leipzig . Halle . Wolfen

East Germany 1950s

Stalinist architecture symbolic of GDR’s Soviet ruling.

Shrinkage

Urbanization

1947

No modernization measres lead to decline in industrial sector.

Lack of investment

1960s Formation of the Berlin wall

Construction of plattenbauten in outlaying areas of city. eg Halle-Neustadt (satellite town)

Wilhelminian-style architecture Karl Marx Allee

Entire region shrinking through inner redistribution of population to the larger prefabricated concrete settlements at urban peripheries.

Brownfield Plattenbauten: term for prefarbbicated concrete buildings

1970s Attempt to revitalise through redeveloping the city centers.

Demolition of existing structres to make wayfor concrete slab buildings.

1980s Loss of more than 2/3 prewar buildings.

1990s Fall of Berlin wall “Demographic revolution�

Mass migration to the West.

Factory closure, rapid unemployment (loss of 90,000 in Leipzig) Emergence of extensive brownfield

Japan “A population projection that nearly half of Japanese municipalities may vanish in the future, leaving only metropolises behind, has prompted local authorities to call on the central government to take necessary countermeasures�

-Mainichi newspaper, May 9,2014

Timeline

Japan 1955

Beginning of Economic growth.

Migration from rural to city center.

1960

Suburbanization trend --> “Housing Craters” - Housing development at periphery due to conversion of downtown to tertiary sector.

Metabolism movement Drop in population at “new town” region.

1970s

Economic Growth Weaken

1980

Land Prices skyrocket

Early 1990 Late 1990

2002 2004

Reurbanization State measures to revitalize the urban metropolitan.

Ageing population recognized as an issue.

- Caused by drop in real estate price, demand amd state measures to increase housing supply in city center. State promoting compact cities.

-“One-point concentration on Toyo” caused by te strong attractions of the capital region.

- Domestic Migration: Population concentration due to industrialization during the postwar period. Change from a push effect of the rural areas to a pull effect of the city (its attractiveness).

PRoposals

EVENT

PROPOSAL

Private investors

1947

1950s-60s - African American migration into Detroit 1960s - White flight to suburb 1961 1967 Racial Riot 1970s Global Oil Crisis 1977 1990 Decamping Detroit

1995/6

Deindustrialization

Plattenbauten Suburbanization Formation of Berlin Wall Berlin Green ArchiFall of Berlin Wall

1997

The Guggenheim Museum Stadtumbau Ost

2000 The New Suburbanism

2004 2004

Schkreutz City Map

2012

MetroSachs

2016

Stadtumbau Ost

Unbuilt Implemented

The People

The People

1940s-50s

PROPOSAL

EVENT

Private Government investors

Government

Dominance of auto-production

Detroit Eastern Germany

Berlin the Green Archipelago, 1977 Government . Investor . Society

Urban repair in the form of a “City within the city� .

Critique: Idealitic as land cannot be as easily disposed of as Ungers suggests as urban building land are largely in private hands.

“MetroSachs� 2012 Eastern Germany Government . Investor . Society

Polarized regional city

This is a 21st century model of urban compaction vis-a-vis the depletion of peripheral areas. Sealing the fate of shrinking cities by phasing them out (returning them to nature) and consciously promoting growth at other locations.

This Federal supported and economic regenration funded proposal creates a second metropolita, addition to Berlin and Baltic city, through the merging of Leipzig, Halle and Wimar. It emerged from the former Saxon Triangle and now extends from Dresden to Erfurt.

Mapping Migration

Decamping Detroit, 1995 Government . Investor . Society Strategy of Landscape as urbanism and Urbanism of Erasure.

“The city’s ombudsman... is suggesting that the most blighted bits of the city should be closed down. Residents would be relocated from dying areas to those that still had life in them. The empty houes would be emolished and empty areas fenced off; they would either be landscaped, to allowed to return to ‘nature’,” Process of decommissioning and staging of their vacancy: 1) Dislocation 2) Erasure 3) Absorption 4) Infiltration

Core & Plasma, 2001, L21 Government . Investor . Society

Characterized by a 50% vacancy rate, this type of urban region represents an area of improvisation in the broadest sense, maked by dynamics, contradiction, and low density. Plasma underscores the freedom of the individual as the bearer of preocesses of social change and is able to grow and to shrink.

Core as point of social concentration.

“Loud plasma” planted with desnse forest “soft plasma” as gardens until demand grows again and the green disappears.

Late 1990s: 1.3 millions vacant housing units Stakeholder: German Federal Government and Länder Fund: 2.7 billion Euros invested in this proposal / 60 euros per square meter of demolistion building. 90% of the money goes into demolition and only 10% into improvement measures.

Over the course of 10 years, 350,000 surplus housing units to be demolished.

“Stadtumbau Ost” 2002-2016, Eastern Germany Government . Investor . Society

Urban restructuring through total demolition.

As a reaction to the mistake of German transformation policy in the 1990s with the prefab concrete housings, this is a process of demolition with no provision of replacment. Thus departing from the growth logic of growth promotion policies.

They attempts to associate this very procedure with a target orientation towards ‘sustainable urban development’. However due to the large amount of money channeled into demolition, little finance is left to develop the empty urban lots, leaving it to be filled by parking.

Critique: This state-directed, single-minded approach only focuses on the short-term physical environment and housing market, failing to engage economic (private) actors in its plan.

Flagship Effect . Trophy Buildings, Tourist magnets.

Guggenheim Museum Government . Investor . Society

Periphery as the Center.

Propose a new urban development along the periphery of two city centers, Leipzig and Halle, that draws on the traditional linguistic terms and ciphers of city maps.

City Map does what the producers of that very city do: it extracts, pulls-out, gives importance through naming, it is “an imaginative drawing-out of relational structures”(J. Corner) and thus the mental image of a new—but still unseen—city.

It is the spatial articulation of the confluence of interest groups, i.e. state and regional administrations, retailers, and residents. Built fast and cheap, on no pre-conceived grid, a city evolves without the involvement of an overall plan or zonings where walks became our reading device to explore.

“Schkreutz City Map: 1st Edition” unbuilt, SMAQ, 2004 Government . Investor . Society

Highway

‘Tunnel Arcade’

New Suburbanism Government . Investor . Society Bottom up approach where the individual Detroit residents take advantage of shrinkage to increase their housing space.

“Has the traditional function or theory of cities as a space for stability, permanency, and heritage now become obsolete? Are the cities already moving, and should we begin to conceive and design moving cities, rather than try to stop them from shrinking or expanding?�

Moving Cities, Kyong Park Government . Investor . Society

tEMPORARY MARKET

We the people

pEOPLE ACTIVATION

Strategy Erasure .

Collective . Inventories .

SPATIAL fIBER .

Detroit

Berlin .

London

Japan

Proposal

Staging

Decamping Detroit, Charles Walkdheim + Marili Santos-Munne, 1995/6

1) Dislocation 2) Erasure 3) Absorption 4) Infiltration

Berlin Green Archipelago, Ungers + Koolhaas 1977

Fiber City, Tokyo 2050, 2006

1) Identify city’s characteristicsCataloguing of elements and structures 2) Development of alternative models- architectonic and urban planning 3) Evaulation of different models and planning formulation 4) Design phase 5) Actual realisation 1) Surface to Line 2) Dynamics to Fluidics 3)Serparations to Exchange 4) Machine to Fabric

Landscape Urbanism of Erasure.

“Landscape as the only medium capable of dealing with simultaneously decreasing densities of indeterminate futures”

Not designing a completely new environment, but rebuildings what already exists. Not a discovery of a new order/concept/construction for the city, but the improvement/re-organisation of what is already there.

A Fiber as an organizing grain or thread, a linear space that changes the quality of urban space in Tokyo by manipulating fibers.

Plan

Treatment of Exisitng Landscape of indeterminate status.

The project suggests a disposable nomadism.

Proposed the decommissioning and abandonment through discontinuation of services to, and the relocation of vestigial populations from the most vacant portions of the city.

Refugee Center

Migrant worker mobile homesteads. Boot camp

Intrusion Establishing an architectural oasis in the behavioral sink of London.

Division, isolation, negative aspects of the wall. But use in the service of positive intentions. So that inhabitants of this architecture become its Voluntary Prisoners. Offering them the freedom in their architectural confines.

Exodus, 1972 Rem Koolhaas

Re-using instead of demolishing, accepting existing conditions. eg. Urban wrinkle is born from a dialogue between city history, topography, and memory.

Green Finger

Green Partition

Green Web

Urban Wrinkle

Spaces

Critique

Creation of Zones.

The military infrastructure that lent itself so keenly to the forces of economics and production, when complete, could be decommissioned.

Segregated with a collection of Monuments. “City Within the CIty�: islands of conceivable architectural structure and formless areas of infrastructure.

Some of their proposals return to the land with migrant worker homesteads and garden annex and experimental agriculture cooperative homestead, but others The physical structure of the old town will not be able to stand the continuing competition of this new architectural presence. London as we know it will become a pack of ruins.

Fractured Fabric Break between spaces accommodates the natural shrinking and expansion of the city.

Long-term outlook that includes the entire Tokyo Metropolitan without losing sight of the human scale.

Common thread All strategies recognizes the importance of consumerism as the basic attractions of urban life that facilitates continous exchange and interchange of values. This is reflected through density, mobility and borders that either developed or evolved in city centers.

Alternative “Has the traditional function or theory of cities as a space for stability, permanency, and heritage now become obsolete? Are the cities already moving, and should we begin to conceive and design moving cities, rather than try to stop them from shrinking or expanding?�

Static City Relocation

Monumental

Segregation Demolition

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Organized

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Dictated

Planned

Zoning Fencing off Permanence

Mobile City .

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Nomadic Shift Impermanence

Disorientatied

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Revis

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past N

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New Babylon by Constant is a manifestation of the formulary for a new urbanism which advocates the ideal city to be one where by inhabitants participate in the continuous thrive of their city. The design of a labyrinth city with constantly changing structure and ever-changing landscape serves to disorientate, reorientate and liberate the mind of her inhabitants through continuously self-inventing.

“... (A) new agenda where nomadism is the dominant social force; where time, exchange and metamorphosis replace stasis; where consumption, lifestyle and transience become the programme; and where the public realm is an electronic surface enclosing the globe.� —David Greene.

New Babylon Conceptual Plan

New Babylon, 1959, Constant

Liberating through Disorientation + Formlessness Yona Friedman’s Ville Spatiale, which was manifested at around the same period as New Babylon, also explores the idea of a flexible city, one he termed “mobile architecture”. Through the elevation of habitable areas off ground, streets on ground level have the freedom to shift and change when required. Designing in “software”, as opposed to “hardware”, offers inhabitants the freedom and choice to manipulate their living spaces as they desire, thereby personalizing and adding meaning to their environment. He advocates to look at what is existing seek to transform in another way and change the pattern of use.

Both proposals advocate the idea of the new urbanism as one that liberates the inhabitants from the constrains of planning and structuring. This steers away from the megastructure and into a kind of formlessness and “software” that frees the city. “Form” in this sense speaks about the relationship between objects, programs and voids.

Ville Spatiale

Ville Spatiale, 1959, Yona Friedman

Mobile City Influence by Constant and Friedman’s ideologies, Archigram’s following manifestos further explores the concept of a mobile city through the argument of and using the disposability of our consumer culture.

Walking City proposes a massive mobile robotic structure, representative of a metropolis, that could roam freely to wherever their resources or manufacturing abilities were needed. The idea was that many structures could be interconnected to form a larger metropolis and separate when the concentrated power is not required. This strategy eliminates the danger of redundancy which is what shrinking cities now are suffering with.

Ron Herron’s Instant City presents a more temporal intervention with the proposition of an air ship containing the glitz and dynamics of mass culture that invades and is temporarily installed in an existing city, allowing her inhabitants to enjoy the hype of city life.

Walking City, Ron Herron,

1964

Both proposals proposes light and temporal structures that situates itself in the urban future of constant migration and globe-trotting urban dwellers. These mobile lightweight structures carry with them tangible self-sustaining programs and also the intangible, like culture. These proposals offer strategies of instantaneous revitalization of dying cities which feeds on the future of the disposable and nomadic.

Instant City, Ron Herron, 1969

Integration + manipulation The Fiber City proposal for Tokyo’s shrinking city proposes a more tangible strategy for shrinking cities .

The proposal exercises a certain degree of control and freedom, dictating where sprawl could happen and where it ends. It accommodates flexibility with it’s linear thread-like nature that alters the quality of the urban space through strategic manipulation of the fibers. The transformation of surfaces to lines, dynamics to fluidics, separations to exchange, machine to fabric enables and facilitates continuous editing of the fabric by both the larger body and also by their inhabitants.

This proposal threads lightly on the city’s existing fabric and intervenes through the weaving of this soft fabric in and around the existing. The layering of the four main fibers create a fractured character in urban fabric where the breaks between each spaces accommodates the natural shrinking and expansion of the city.

Fiber City Tokyo 2050, 2006

Proposition

“Each generation must build its own city,”

Through understanding the changing urban reality and envisioning the future urban system as ever-changing and the lifestyle of humans to be that of a nomad, the selected proposals demonstrates conceptual strategies that facilities a new form of urbanism that could be adopted by shrinking cities. The proposals proposes strategies to liberate its inhabitants from the traditional urban planning that confines through a mobile city that can regenerate itself according the city’s current urban conditions.

However, we have to acknowledge the loopholes in these strategies. For instance its inability to address the social and political issues of shrinking cities, such as the racial tension in Detroit and political shifts in Berlin.

Moreover, in the planning of such a volatile city of impermanency, how can the architect ensure the manifestation of the human spirit and place? Perhaps place in such an urban context becomes impalpable as with the spirit of a nomad. Despite the its inability to solve all problems, these speculations present and open up new ways of understanding and interpreting today’s urban condition and how we can approach shrinking cities.

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Bilbliography

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