China’s Ghost Cities: A Documentary

An estimated 65 Million apartments sit empty in Chinese cities while millions of China’s urban residents live in overcrowded, rented apartments.  The scale of  China’s housing overstock is like nothing ever seen before.

Many stories and reports have emerged in the past few weeks about China’s scary housing bubble after Moody’s downgraded China’s property sector from ‘stable’ to ‘negative.’  Although it is difficult to understand the scale of how empty parts of urban China really are without traveling there, I found this Australian documentary by Dateline to be particularly illuminating.  It provides an accurate idea of the scale of this massive development overstock by walking through a few ghost cities, malls and highrises. Boing Boing describes it below:

It’s symptomatic of the growing divide between China’s rich and poor, which has left many Chinese without adequate housing. Unlike the US bubble, the Chinese property bubble isn’t founded on cheap credit, which makes the analyst hosting the show believe that it won’t burst in the same way as American one.

For more about China’s housing bubble read this discussion between leading researchers and economist from the New York Times: China’s Scary Housing Bubble. The future of urban development in China is both exciting and scary as there is potential for truly innovative cities to develop, however the housing bubble also will have global ramifications if the government of China can not find a way to slow unnecessary growth soon.

- Melissa

Curitiba, Brazil: Model of Sustainability

Curitiba Brazil is best known for its innovative urban planning practices from the 1970′s, including its famous Bus Rapid Transit system that functions as an “above ground subway.”  Jaime Lerner is the former mayor of Curitiba responsible for most of these innovative elements. During this first two terms, 1971–75 & 1979–84, his strategy was to implement many individuals projects separately at a very quick pace. The wire operate house is one of his famous examples of a project that was went from an idea to complete in a few months.  He calls this approach urban acupuncture – “When a small intervention can provide a new energy to the city.”

Jardim Botânico de Curitiba - Opened in 1991 as Curitiba's trademark botanical garden

Pedestrian street in downtown Curitiba

In the past forty years however, the bus system and other elements of this world famous planned city have been been tested and are now aging. I had the opportunity to study urban planning in Curitiba during the Summer of 2007 and learned that many famous elements of the city have remained unchanged since their implementation, such as the BRT that was in need of new routes and signage to meet the changing demands of residents.  During this trip my classmates and I dub this city a “Disneyland for Planners” because there were so many examples of sustainable practices and creative uses of space, however we had the feeling that many of these places, such as the pedestrian street for shopping downtown, were installed without the approval of the residents or business owners.  Although they function well now, at the time some of Jaime Lerner’s projects that were built they neglected to involve public opinion during their planning phases.

Museu Ocscar Niemeyer - Art museum designed by famed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer

Trash seperation system

Today however Curitiba is still praised as a model sustainable city and in fact it won the Global Sustainable City Award 2010.  Curitiba is also hosting a few World Cup matches in 2014, leading planners to realize that they need to improve the city’s infrastructure to be able to handle the huge influx of football fans.  CNN also featured a story on Curitiba after it was awarded the Global Sustainable City Award in 2010.  See the video below for a profile of the city and interviews with Jaime Lerner and current planners.  Also to learn more about Jaime Lerner’s current projects with his private architecture firm see this interview with him from the Dirt.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this sustainable city plans for the future especially in with the upcoming World Cup.

- Melissa

Photo Credits: 2007 Melissa Reese

Hong Kong 68

I found this film of Hong Kong in 1968 on polis yesterday and it inspired to me to explore how Hong Kong has changed over the last forty three years.  Hong Kong 68 is a short video by Impactist that gives a quick view Hong Kong during 1968. Through the film the city is seen  from the air, the harbor and the streets, according to polis:  “a constantly changing landscape and yet it maintains the same feel as it does today.”

During the 1960′s Hong Kong’s population was about 3 million people, with half of the population under the age of 25.  Today Hong Kong’s population is over 7 million.  With this addition of 4 million people Hong Kong’s built environment has also grown substantially.  One of the most significant additions since 1968 is the vast amount of public housing towers and “new towns” constructed in the New Territories.  My photos below show a few of my favorite places in Hong Kong that did not exist in 1968.

Contrasting old and new towers on Hong Kong Island.

The Lippo Centre by Paul Rudolph, completed 1988.

Public housing towers in the New Territories.  Many of these projects were built in the 1970′s and 1980′s.

View of Hong Kong Island from the Star Ferry, featured in the film.

Urban Photo also shares images some interesting photos of old Hong Kong in their post that shares a story originally in the South China Morning Post on August 3, 2009. More about my recent trip to Hong Kong can be found on my other posts about housing and  general photos of my travels.

- Melissa

Rebuilding after Japan’s Earthquake and Tsunami

As Japanese authorities are still trying to avoid nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture while also dealing with at least 350,000 homeless citizens, it is difficult to think about plans to rebuild Japan.  However groups like Architecture for Humanity already are thinking about rebuilding efforts. On Saturday Architecture for Humanity announced that it will help in the rebuilding effort in Japan through small scale projects.  Their Executive Director Cameron Sinclair explains the program:

On a grassroots level, the greatest impact we can make is to focus on specific small scale building projects for local community organizations. These ‘urban acupuncture’ projects create a ripple effect of social cohesion and change.

Kelsey Keith of Architizer, also provided a comprehensive post Friday exploring design and infrastructure solutions that will need to be considered in Japan’s earthquake recovery plans. She writes about how Japan will have to consider housing, infrastructure, energy and economic recovery in the months and years to come.

Before rebuilding efforts can take place the success of Japan’s strict building codes should also be examined.  The New York Times discusses the history of these building codes and explains why the flexible skyscrapers (seen via YouTube below) sway instead of crumble as one would expect with an earthquake of this magnitude:

After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed about 6,000 people and injured 26,000, Japan also put enormous resources into new research on protecting structures, as well as retrofitting the country’s older and more vulnerable structures. Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis.

A BBC report further explores whether or not making a country, or city for that matter, tsunami proof is possible.  Their answers:

• Totally preventing tsunami-damage is impossible
• But an early warning system can allow evacuations and other precautions
• Buildings can be constructed to survive the wave with repairable damage

In the end we have to admit that it will be impossible to rebuild Japan’s cities and villages as tsunami and earthquake proof.  However the building technology that has allowed for flexible buildings, massive public education system about natural disasters, and communication infrastructure that has allowed for early warning systems are all elements already in use in Japan that should be re-instituted in the rebuilt areas.

- Melissa

City Beautiful: Inside Out

Cities don’t generally hide confrontation. The friction from millions of bodies, minds, and diverse beliefs in close quarters creates the energy for both innovation and conflict. While the city wears much on its sleeve,  so many stories remain untold. But a new art project promises to expose some of them – the city is a confrontational canvas exhibiting faces that might be overlooked much of the time, but have exceptional things to tell us.

Security fence between Israel and Palestine (Israeli side), "Face2Face" project | Photo: BasilicStudio // aKkY

That’s the essence of Inside Out – it’s the Parisian  artist/photographer JR’s “one wish to change the world” with the help of a $100,000 TED Prize.  His work takes huge black-and-white photos of faces, or fragments of faces, and adheres them to walls, trains, rooftops, stairwells – anyone can be a model, anywhere – from favelas in Rio to walls in Los Angeles. Now the world is invited to join in the process. The artist explains in this recent TED talk:

His past projects have explored social questions such as why Israelis and Palestinians can’t get along to showcasing courageous women from around the globe. Generally there’s some element of creating a conversation around a conflict big or small through pasting these uninvited guests in unexpected places where we can’t help but engage with them and anyone else who happens to be around.

Inside Out takes that idea and opens it up to everyone’s participation. The project is about “standing up for what you care about” – a compelling story that needs to be told, photographing who you see to be the face of it, and then pasting it on a city surface. Anyone can submit an idea and upload a portrait to the website. JR’s crew will print it on a poster and mail it back for you to wallpaper a conversation piece on your own city.

Below are some photos of JR’s previous work – looking forward to seeing the world’s cities blanketed with more.

~Amy

Image from Favela Morro da Providencia in Rio, part of the "Women are Heroes" project | Photo: BasilicStudio // aKkY

From "The Wrinkles of the City" project, a portrait from Carthagene, Spain | Photo: BasilicStudio // aKkY

Shanghai, two months after photo placed | Photo: Sabine Fricke

View of portraits on rooftops in Kibera, Kenya for the "Women are Heroes" project. | Photo: BasilicStudio // aKkY

Film: Urbanized

Gary Hustwit, the director of the documentary Helvetica, is working on a new documentary about the design of cities. Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies as well as the people that are shaping how our cities develop.  The film tries to explain how the design of cities effects our lives:

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live.

Look at the kickstarter campaign for more information about how you can support this new project.  Urbanized is still in production and will premiere later this year.

- Melissa

Film: Dharavi, Slum for Sale

A new documentary by Director Lutz Konermann portrays the story of the controversial redevelopment of Dharavi in Mumbai, India.  Dharavi, the largest slum in India and possibly the largest in the world, is home to over one million people and millions of dollars of industry. US trained developer Mukesh Mehta’s Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) seeks to demolition the slum and build high-rise buildings that will both rehouse the existing squatters and provide extra housing to be sold at market rates that will fund the rest of the project.

The documentary, Dharavi, Slum for Sale, will be showing next week in New York as part of the Center for Architectures Jugaad Urbanism Film Series. For a full review of the film read Polis the blog.

- Melissa

Squatters in Skyscrapers

Today’s New York Times features and article about an abandoned 45 story building in downtown Caracas that has become one of the world’s tallest squatter settlements.  Built in the 1990′s the “Tower of David,” after its architect and financier David Brillembourg, now houses over 2,500 squatters.  The New York Times also made a great a video about life in the tower.

This tower in Caracas is just one of many hundreds, perhaps thousands of abandoned towers in the world that have provided informal housing for urban poor populations.  Below is a list of a few other towers originally intended for rich urban residents, but now occupied by some of the poorest.

Sao Paulo Treme-Treme was filled with squatters up until the city began to empty it in 2004.  It was not until 2009 however that this 27 story tall tower was successfully cleared of squatters and now it sits empty awaiting demolition.

 

 

Rio de Janeiro Torre Abraham Lincoln is one of two never completed towers designed by Oscar Niemeyer as part of Lucio Costa’s master planned southwest expansion of Rio de Janerio in the 1960s.  Each tower has 37 floors, 454 apartments and is 110 meters high. In 2004 more than 400 people from the surrounding favelas invaded the Torre Abraham Lincoln as squatters. Watch a video from PARAÍSO OCUPADO to learn more about the towers today.

Bangkok The Sathorn Tower in Bangkok is also known as a “ghost tower” because supposedly no one lives in the 50 story abandoned building.  Built during the 1990s it is one of many victims of the Asian Financial Crisis of the period.  It is a beautiful example however of one of just over a few hundred abandoned buildings in Bangkok, many of which are occupied by squatters.  See more photos from 6000Times.

There are also many tall abandoned buildings in the U.S., however none of them seem to be as overtaken by squatters as these towers abroad.  Here is a list of 12 tall abandon buildings throughout  the world that also includes many examples in the U.S. including.  As our cities throughout the world change more sustainable methods of adaptive reuse will certainly need to be explored for these buildings to maintain their historic and architectural significance.  However converting them to more affordable forms of housing instead of restoring them as high rise condominiums may be one of the best and most viable options.

- Melissa

Mini-sanitation for Megacities

The rapid growth patterns of megacities in developing countries are unpredictable. Sanitation infrastructure, on the other hand, is pretty rigid. It’s usually reactionary as well – housing sprouts up, and sanitation is dealt with later, often when donor funding comes through for big, centralized infrastructure.

But could  sanitation infrastructure be designed to grow along with the settlement patterns of fast-developing urban areas rather than come later? A team of German researchers led by engineer Peter Cornel is doing just that with local partners in Hanoi, Vietnam – the video below highlights one of their pilot projects:

Video credit: Future Now

Part of the inspiration came from an unlikely source: street food. People in Hanoi tend to cook food and then eat on the street, which also happens to be very near where sewage tends to overflow from saturated septic tanks. As the population is also overflowing, more waste (both food and sewage) is ending up on the streets and in waterbodies, not just causing health hazards but also sacrificing the recreational value of urban waterways.

The project Cornel’s team is piloting is  a “semi-central processing system”: first, wastewater is recycled in households, then food waste and sewage are integrated for processing.  Value is created from waste by generating electricity, heat and fertilizer. Of most interest is that the system is semi-decentralized. The plants that process waste are small in size and modular, so they can be located near residential buildings that produce the waste -  more plants would be installed in response to population growth. The electricity and heat produced then go back to the buildings where the waste came from in the first place – closing the loop.

Amy

Cities as “Real America”?

If you liked Melissa’s post yesterday about urban economist Edward Glaeser’s new book about the amazingness of cities, check out an interview with Glaeser from last night’s Daily Show. His intensity instills a little fear into Jon Stewart, and we find out that cities might just be Real America:

Amy