Exhibit Review: Design with the Other 90% CITIES

While I was in New York City last week I was lucky enough to catch the exhibit – Design with the Other 90%: Cities before it closed. The exhibit, by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and hosted by the UN Visitors Center, displayed 60 projects, proposals, and solutions that “address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies.”  I found this exhibit especially inspiring because it went beyond defining the problems of rapid urbanization, and instead focused on actionable and innovative solutions that have already been carried out.  Below I have selected a few of my favorite projects:

Map of Kiberia – Kiberia, an informal settlement of about 750,000 to 1 million people in Nairobi, Kenya, was the site of a large participatory mapping project. The Map pictured was created as part of a larger crowd sourcing community mapping project using volunteers and tools from OpenStreetMap, the GroundTruth Initiative and community organizations.  The final product is a digitized map called “Voice of Kibera” which allows residents to share community information via news, videos, and SMS messages, which are added to the map using the open source Ushahidi platform.

Incremental Housing in Iquique, Chile and Nuevo Leon, Mexico – The government of Chile hired the Architectural firm Elemental to design incremental housing, on land purchased through a government subsidy as a new form of “social housing.”  Instead of using the traditional “sit and services” approach to social housing, the architects here went beyond providing the basic foundation and infrastructure necessary for families to build their own homes.  Instead the firm designed the most expensive half of the house – the structure, bathroom, kitchen and roof. Then the family completed the remaining portions of their home. Through this unique approach a variety of houses emerged.

Grassroots Mapping - Lima, Peru.  According to the exhibit, “Grassroots Mapping is an open-source, participatory approach that enables communities to create their own maps using inexpensive equipment. Residents own the resulting images and maps, which they can use to support land-title claims or to aid in upgrading efforts.”  Having participated in a community mapping project in South Africa before I know that one of the most complex elements of such a project is getting reliable aerial images of these areas.  Therefore I found the simple approach used here quite exciting.  An MIT graduate student simply used digital camera with continuous mode shooting lofted by a kite, balloon, or inflated trash bag to snap aerial images.

Even though the exhibit has since closed information about all of the urban solutions can be found on the project’s website.

- Melissa

All images are linked to their original source or taken by the author at the exhibit.

Urbanization News: July 15

That snazzy promo video is for this week’s featured urban happening, “The Just City: A Ford Forum on Metropolitan Opportunity” held in New York yesterday. Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, it brought together “Civic leaders and policymakers, urban designers and entrepreneurs [to] explore how fairness, opportunity and equity can serve as the defining features of this new era of urbanization.” NYU-Wagner adjunct planning prof Solomon Greene, also a fellow at the Open Society Foundations, offers some remarks on Bruce Katz‘s talk in this video. The lineup was an impressive one of thinkers and practitioners doing visionary work in their metropolitan area.

And our picks of the week’s news on cities and urbanization:

This Week in Waste: A pair of articles discusses innovative strategies for what to do with waste as cities grow. This article from PRI features a hydroponic farm in a Chinese lake that gets fertilizer for its leafy greens from sewage dumped in the water from the city of Kunming (photo below, courtesy of PRI). This dispatch from India via Live Mint critiques Delhi’s privatization of waste hauling, especially where Pune offers an example of a rapidly urbanizing city implementing a zero-waste strategy that’s working both for people who sustain their livelihoods from the waste stream and for the environment too.

My city’s modal split is better than yours: The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy opened up nominations for the 2012 Sustainable Transport Award – hurry up and nominate the city where you love to commute! Right now you’re up against Seville, Minneapolis, Cape Town and a few others – Guangzhou won last year, so you won’t have to compete with their awesome BRT and bike share.

“They put a bullet through the train”: In last week’s news we reported that donors had pledged big bucks for inter-city transportation infrastructure in Brazil in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup. Long a transport investment darling of the donor community, Brazil might not be quite as sexy as previously thought – Reuters reports that an auction that opened up this week for bids to build a bullet train between Rio and Sao Paulo (this one a major project for the 2016 Olympics) failed to attract a single bid.

The “Forgotten Front”: This Big City reports on the desperate situation of water in Afghanistan – being in turmoil for decades, infrastructure and institutions needed for a reliable and safe water supply have suffered greatly. “Around 73 percent of the population relies on improvised and inadequate facilities to supply water, while water sources are becoming increasingly polluted and overexploited in places like Kabul.” Find out more in this report from the Centre for Policy and Human Development at Kabul University (photo of the Kabul River below courtesy of IRIN, see a slideshow here). And just in case you were scratching your head too, the U.S. alone has spent about $19 billion just in development aid in Afghanistan since the war effort started.

Everyone should count: Cities Alliance released a new report this week, “The Urbanisation of Displaced People.” It examines how conflicts and wars lead to a unique form of rapid urbanization as people flee their homes and seek refuge in cities – because many refugees and displaced people end up as permanent residents, the report makes a  case for planners and development practitioners to account for these populations in plans and programs.

A critique of Ed Glaeser?!?: James Howard Kunstler, in his witty weekly “KunstlerCast” podcast, critiques Ed Glaeser’s ideas on urbanism. He sees Glaeser’s vision  in his lauded book Triumph of the City as backward-looking and too sweet on skyscrapers.

Shenzhen: The “Instant City”

We will be starting a new monthly profile of cities around the world that have experienced unprecedented growth. Hopefully this will give insight into some of the massive challenges that planners and governments face in accommodating this growth and what some of these plans (or lack thereof) have produced.

Shenzhen

This month we will take a look at Shenzhen, China. Known as the “instant city”, Shenzhen is a major urban area of almost 10 million people in China’s Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. Owing to China’s economic liberalization, the area became China’s first – and arguably most successful – Special Economic Zone. Since the establishment of the Special Economic Zone in the late 1970’s, Shenzhen has seen unprecedented growth from a village of 30,000 to a city of over 325 times that.

Shenzhen in 1970

Shenzhen Today

The small fishing village of Shenzhen was singled out in the 1979 to be one of the first Special Economic Zones (SEZ) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the “father of modern China”.  Since Shenzhen is so close to the then rapidly growing Hong Kong, the SEZ was meant to be an experimental ground for development. The idea was that Shenzhen would be able to provide cheaper labor and land that could accommodate the private sector looking to expand their Hong Kong operations. This concept proved extremely successful. Through strong government planning and infrastructural development Shenzhen saw an average annual population growth around 30% for the next 3 decades. This was unequalled almost anywhere in the world. In 2007, it had a GDP of almost $100 billion dollars, ranking it fourth among all Chinese cities, and Shenzhen’s GDP per capita surpassed $10,000, the first Chinese city to do so. Shenzhen is also known as one of the cleanest large Chinese cities with over 50% of streets lined with trees and large parks and green spaces available to its residents.

However for a city that experienced the type of rapid growth, it was very fortunate to have had forward thinking city officials and planners to help manage its success. Shenzhen officials remarkably were able to implement a total of three master plans within the span of 25 years; each adding to the fuel and direction of growth.

Shenzhen's Urban Growth Boundary

The first master plan of 1986 put in six “cluster cities” that concentrated growth and infrastructure along three highways. In the ten years to follow this, unprecedented growth and lack of zoning controls lead to major urban sprawl in Shenzhen. By 1996, the urban sprawl  that had started only 17 years previously covered over 645 sq. kilometers of land, the same size as 11 islands of Manhattan. Shenzhen was slowly running out of land and most of the structures being built were low-density manufacturing and housing units. City planners were also concerned about livability and taking a page from more developed nations, created a new 1000 sq. kilometer growth boundary; the first of its kind in China. “Periphery growth clusters” were also implemented around the existing six “cluster cities” to encourage growth and greater density while even more infrastructure, highways and a massive subway system began construction.

Shenzhen's First Master Plan of 1986

Shenzhen's Second Master Plan of 1996

By the mid 2000’s when a third master plan was being drawn up; planners faced another dilemma entirely. The amount of space that could actually be used for development was dwindling, and quickly. Only about 100 sq. kilometers of legally developable land was left, and officials feared that without more space that the economic engine of Shenzhen would come to a halt. Officials were faced with a hard choice. Instead of diminishing the green growth boundary, Chinese officials designated more than 200 square kilometers of occupied land as “urban regeneration areas”. The idea was to clear dilapidated low-density buildings and properties to build newer, higher density facilities. The government opted to buy back occupied land from private stakeholders and would then build new facilities themselves or give large plots back to developers. This plan was reinforced by stricter building codes that encouraged higher density industries and residential buildings. This tactic proved to be successful; Shenzhen has added almost 3 million people since the last master plan was put in place.

Shenzhen's Third Master Plan of 2005

This unprecedented growth however did not come without its consequences. Besides the ever present problems of pollution and traffic that come with large cities; Shenzhen had a massive housing problem. Chinese “urban villages” or slums popped up illegally almost overnight on the designated growth boundaries and open spaces. Workers’ conditions and quality of life for the millions of migrants were often quite appalling with little in the way of government intervention. The problems that these workers faced is beyond the scope of this post but the immense dilemma of how to deal with millions of migrants moving into a city within such a short time categorizes many of the toughest problems that these mega-cities face. Even thought there are many problems that Shenzhen still faces, it will forever be in the history books as a city that experienced an unprecedented rapid and sustained growth rate for over three decades.

-Adam

Shenzhen's Lychee Park

Planning for the Unplanned: Disaster Resilience and Reconstruction

As the world watches recovery efforts from the Japan tsunami amid ongoing reconstruction efforts in Haiti, Chile, and New Orleans, the Urban Planning Student Association and International Public Service Association are convening an engaging afternoon of discussions on Tuesday, March 29 that will bring together students, faculty and practitioners to discuss planning before and after natural disasters strike.

Tuesday, March 29 | NYU-Wagner – 295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor

1:30 – 2:20
A student panel will share their recent experiences with post-catastrophe reconstruction in Chile, Japan, New Orleans and Haiti.

2:30 – 4:00
A multidisciplinary panel will discuss how to strengthen existing infrastructure, recover from natural disasters, and build back better.

Panelists include:

• James Stuckey - Dean, NYU Shack Institute of Real Estate
• Rae Zimmerman – Professor, NYU Wagner
• Amy Stroud – President, Building Foundation
• Donald Watson – Principal, EarthRise Design

Details below. RSVP here.

“How big can cities get?” and other probing questions

The Big Name in international consulting, McKinsey & Company,  just started publishing a series of essays about cities and just how big they can possibly get. The cities writing is part of a larger project to ask other questions about big global issues, which would be good to read since the answers are intended to “shape our collective future” and all. Some of the contributors are McKinsey staff, but they’ve brought in large assortment of A-list thinkers as contibutors (including a recent piece my favorite sociologist, Saskia Sassen). There’s also a pretty good debate on city planning, and whether the more successful cities will be the ones to employ top-down planning with fancy master plans or bottom-up planing that uses careful design to empower the poor.

Amy