Asma Khawatmi
EPILOG UE
The Whole and the Parts, Mutual Intelligence
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In the urban context, the concept of ‘the whole and the parts’ isn’t the scientific notion inherited from Galileo, Bacon or Descartes that reduces the whole to the addition of the parts, but rather the interrelation of parts that creates a whole. ‘The variables are many, but they are not helter- skelter; they are interrelated into an organic whole.’ Jane Jacobs 1
In this sense, questioning the city fosters the under standing of combined dynamics and systems: city forms, territorial relations, urban development policies, governance and social and environmental impacts.
Consequently, a city can be considered as a system and its elements, an internally organised set in which elements are strongly linked and function as one in relation to external conditions and other systems.
Ecology refers to the question of the whole and the parts and their interactions, the impact of urban activities on wider ecological systems, and the social and biological aspects of urban issues. Megalopolises are suffering the deterioration of their social climate and ecological conditions in the context of an increasingly globalised economy with the imperatives and intrusions this involves. Globalisation-driven growth has produced new circum stances that impact environmental transition, creating unique and unprecedented conditions. Asian Pacific megalopolises are struggling between local and global. What forms of mutual intelligence could be established to rebalance this opposition? The environmental and social challenges of Asian megacities can only be met if each city, from its own culture, reconciles itself with the logics of the whole and the parts like that of the local to the global. Understanding mutual intelligence in Asian megalo polises as a specific spatial and contextual model fosters the identification of urban environmental challenges and potential actions to be taken.
The case studies of Bangkok, Hong Kong and Shanghai Baoshan raise three fundamental issues that can be extrapolated to other global cities: —In the most populated cities, official systems are usually complemented by informal systems. To what extent are these off-systems the expression of exclusion or inclusion, segmentation or cementation? —The private sector has increasing dominance in the development and governance of Asian Pacific megacities. How can this all-powerful unilateralism be compensated in order to preserve the virtuous dynamics of the whole and the parts? —The relations between globalisation and territories seem contradictory. How can megalopolises reconcile their territories and identities in the face of international pressures to provide more sustainable and liveable urban conditions?
Bangkok: Off-system, Segmentation or Cementation? Bangkok presents one of the most rapidly degraded and severely deteriorated urban environments in the world, where social inequality and slums re present almost 15% of the total population of the Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The majority of slum communities exist in areas of continuous flooding. While for most citizens, environmental changes or global warming are not relevant to their immediate concerns, for local communities to defend their local space, environmental issues are immediate. In the urban-rural polarisation of Bangkok caused by urban expansion and destructuration (the de coupling of mobility and water management systems, over-densification, gentrification and globalisation to the detriment of social systems and ecosystems), the rearrangement of the formal and the informal seems an absolute necessity. In terms of planning and urban management, the Thai state has shown a limited ability to work with slum settlements and to act immediately on natural disasters. Although electrification, flood control and pipe water have improved over recent decades,
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