Urban Planning Blog

co-authored by Rohit Pradhan

Back in the days when Doordarshan (Indian state television) ruled the airwaves, if you tuned in during the weather forecast, you wouldn’t be completely off the mark if you thought that India’s urban regions comprised solely of Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras – conveniently located in four corners of India. It was the natural corollary of India’s development since independence that has always been centered on its millions of villages. The idea of making villages self-sufficient drew its sustenance from the rather utopian Gandhian ideals. India’s early leaders also believed in heavy industrialization which led to development of cities like Jamshedpur–modeled primarily along industrial cities like Detroit in the developed world. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ (in stark contrast to its Chinese counterpart), came only after the post-1991 liberalization when India embarked on a path of economic reforms and globalization. The impact of rapid liberalization and expansion of opportunities were profound especially on the morphology of Indian cities.

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Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.

A practical approach for developing economies - Design for Sustainability.

Ten areas that offer both affordable housing and rapidly rising home values in some of the country’s largest cities. Also, check out the list of biggest Metro areas with the lowest rent. All four Texas metros make the cut.

The ‘white flight’ to the suburbs was followed by other citizens who well, were not so white. When the Fair Housing Act criminalizing racial discrimination in housing came into effect followed by the gradual decline of exclusionary zoning practices like redlining, etc, communities hunkered down further by creating the ‘gated community’. Justified in the name of keeping out crime and other evil social conditions [although not always true], the gated community was the ultimate in creating a Truman’s Show world provided you had the money and of course, the right ‘attributes’. The homeowners association probably the strongest private body that can at times be so un-American played the role of the gatekeeper and of course, law-enforcer and isolator if you ever managed to crash the gates.

In a increasingly globalized world and with the leveling of the playing field that Friedmann mistook for the flatness of the world, gated communities are making a foray in Indian cities. Expats are returning home and wish to duplicate the good life of their U.S. experiences. The market obliges and provides them with their own haven. Welcome to Palm Meadows:

It is a gated community of about 600 single family homes, with 10 or more security guards manning the gates at any given time. Some houses are big and some are small, but most houses have at least three bedrooms each. Residents of Palm Meadows are a mix of original owners, returning Indians and expats [source: Blogpourri].

Heck, even the name is U.S.-centric and trust me, I have never seen a meadow of palms. But leaving that aside, it does appear to provide all you could wish for to eke out a luxurious living. Of course, considering the clients and homeowners are considered to be rich and ‘earning in dollars’, prices are steep and as Sujatha mentions, collusion among the real estate agents have hiked up the rents further. Of course, some of that wealth trickles down to the domestic help. In India, it is quite common to have domestic help, even the middle-class families have them. The only difference is in the price.

Of course, you can enjoy all you want while you are inside Palm Meadows but once you cross the gates, not even God can help you navigate through that dreaded Bangalore traffic.

Just when we thought that the nature of our urban spaces has been altered by the changing forms of economy and technology, the manufacturing-based cities make a comeback. In the previous half-century, we moved from a manufacturing-based economy to services-based economy thus altering the form of our cities from being centralized to being disperse. No longer was a single industry the major employer and the working class didn’t necessarily have to live near their place of employment as commuting to work became easier. This held true even in developing economies until of course, China took over the mantle of being the world’s manufacturer. Of course, manufacturing never died as someone has to manufacture the countless goods that we desire; it simply moved to places where it was more affordable to do so.

[source]. Edward Burtynsky recently released his pithily-named book, China that contains several photographs like the one above that depict the vast manufacturing industry in China. The mass employment pattern of such industries have spawned townships that are akin to manufacturing towns that dotted the Rust Belt in the United States in the earlier part of last century. Almost all workers are employed by a single industry and work and live together in high rise apartments. Characterized by long working hours, most workers either have no need for activities apart from work or aren’t given opportunity to indulge in any such activity. The other day I was talking with my significant other regarding the proclivity of having acquaintances and friends outside of our working environment and if lack of such options would have any detrimental effect on our lives. It looks like these workers simply don’t have the luxury of such options. The images of the workers housing as shown below are indicative of their work-centric lives:

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I have always loved the concept of moving entire houses. Considering how ‘rooted’ the houses are in India because of the way they are built, this concept was completely unimaginable to me when I first heard of it. Here is a time-lapse video of moving an 1883 carriage house in Portland:

I’m sure the old neighborhood will miss it but I’m sure the new one will love it.

Attempts to resolve poverty and to grant economic justice has been the aim of planning ever since Charles Booth’s studies in London have shown it as a bane to the urbanscape. Planners have oscillated between objectives of eliminating poverty from the neighborhood and eliminating poverty from the people; both of which claim to achieve common ends through very different means. The former merely shifts the problem elsewhere and the latter puts the concerns of the people often in lieu of the economic process.

However one common strand has been to throw money at solving poverty, the logic being isn’t poverty defined as the lack of monetary resources so more of money would be good, right? On the contrary such methods have not only failed to make a dent in the larger issue of poverty but have often compounded the problem. Neoclassical economists will believe in letting the people choose what they want by giving them financial means to do so and if they fail to alleviate their problem, central planners will say, see we told you they cannot make the best decisions for themselves but we have to make it for them. Thus goes the struggle in trying to resolve poverty and only more money gets thrown at a problem that isn’t even close to being solved. The poverty issue has once again found its place in the limelight thanks to John Edward’s Two Americas presidential campaign.

However contrary to the popular opinion, poverty is more of a sociological problem than an economic or political one. But approaches to solve it from a social perspective by first trying to understand its underlying causes have often found lacking. I don’t propose to offer a silver bullet solution for poverty alleviation in this article (if I had one, wouldn’t I be running for President?) but rather shed some light on recent attempts especially at MIT and other top universities in trying to understand the problem and work toward finding a solution.

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Architecture continues to push boundaries and of course, Daniel Libeskind is doing his share of pushing as designs for Gazprom City in St.Petersburg [HQ for the Russian gas giant] stream in. The building is expected to rise at least 300m into the air and symbolize the growing power of the firm. Check out the other designs in the image gallery - each is more ambitious than the other.

After 9/11, people were ready to write off towering skyscrapers as they tend to be sitting ducks for potential terrorism. But they are larger than ever and fears of terrorism are history. Right from the age of the Pyramids, bigger has always been considered better but is it really? Such a tall building in the heart of historic St.Petersburg is a virtual slap in the face of the city’s urbanscape. I have always believed in contextual design and this is so not it. But then again, change is revolutionary and departs from the status quo.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Libeskind, St. Petersburg, Gazprom, Russia, design, architecture, skyscraper

Alex Staffen at WorldChanging gives a thumbs up to Worldwatch’s new report on the State of the World in which they cite that by the end of 2010, we would have nearly 3.5 billion urbanites. Alex particularly likes the chapters that address the crossover between the urban and the natural regions of the world that underline the role of sustainable development. The three aspects - providing clean water and sanitation, farming the cities (’urban agriculture’), and reducing natural disaster risk in cities - would be key if we are to survive the growing wilderness that our cities are turning into.

Technorati Tags: urban, future, worldchanging, cities, sustainable development

In Queens, the median income among black households, nearing $52,000 a year, has surpassed that of whites in 2005, an analysis of new census data shows. No other county in the country with a population over 65,000 can make that claim.

New York Times reports on this unique country in the United States where the average income of black households exceeds that of their white neighbors. But it should be noted that most of the black households are immigrants from West Indies. As the article says, Queens isn’t the only country but in fact, Mount Vernon in Westchester, Pembroke Pines, Fla.; Brockton, Mass.; and Rialto, Calif. also show similar tendencies however none are as large as Queens.

[tag]Queens, racial inequality, median income, demographics, census, black households, opportunity[/tags]

Wouldn’t you kill for a view like that? Well, except you don’t have to.

A company of architecture of Barcelona and a group of aircraft
engineers of Florida (EUA) are developing a prototype of room of space
hotel, baptized like Galactic Suite, so that the tourists and astronauts who are decided to travel to the space have a site where to lodge.

Read more.

Technorati Tags: space, hotel, technology, Galatic Suite, architecture

Suburbanization - and even ever greater sprawl - must be accepted as the future. Attempts to stomp out or control outward movement, as Portland tried, have not only failed but have driven settlement even further out beyond the areas of control.

I have been an avid proponent of ’smart’ growth and continue to believe in the ‘evils’ of suburbia but Joel Kotkin makes a reasonable argument for accepting suburbia and in fact for making it better. Yup! if you can’t beat it, join it.

Ash and I often hold opposite views on whether you need to be someplace you call your workplace or not. Of course, simply put I generally think that working from home although requires more discipline eventually works out better for both, the individual and work. Ash counters that when you work from home, you miss out on important social interactions that happen at the workplace. I admit that her point is not untenable and even I partly agree with the importance of social interactions. The point where I differ is that, you don’t have to sacrifice or give up on social interactions even if you work from home. No job exists unless it involves sitting back and enjoying your inheritance without any form of social interaction. Even if you are a freelance writer (a stay-at-home job that comes to mine readily), you are constantly meeting with your editor/publisher or out in the world researching your current topic or if nothing at all, going out to the café to write your best-selling novel, like JK Rowling did. Self-employed or small-business owners work similarly. They have their little world of people that they meet everyday and go about their business. So does that mean that their world-view especially in this day and age of ubiquitous computing is any less to that of a high-flying sales executive who meets with tens of people every month?

Under that premise, Otis White over at Urban Notebook writes on the inadvertent and mystifying residential agglomeration of self-employed people in a neighborhood in Baltimore. Keswick, a quaint neighborhood with modestly-priced homes has several small office buildings, stores, restaurants that serve as gathering places for people. The small-town feel of the neighborhood brings out the people who often do not “go out to work” to connect with their neighbors. These connections are not merely for emotional reasons but also functional as people doing different businesses rely on each other for business or personal needs. For e.g. artist that needs a lawyer’s help or a writer that needs web design and technical help often finds assistance within the neighborhood; often during informal meetings. This not only builds community ties but also fosters an active life in the neighborhood with people milling around at all times of the day.

People are ultimately social animals. Even though they may profess to prefer solitude, eventually they return to connect with their fellow beings. Regardless of where you work, this way you actually get to choose the people with whom you want to connect rather than putting up with a pesky and irritating co-worker.