I had the opportunity to take a quick visitor tour through the School of Nursing at the UT Health Science Center, thanks to my fiancee who studies in the adjacent building. This building is counted as one of the top green projects for 2006. I could tell you more but I’ll point you in her direction as she has some interesting links for you. I took few pictures and am sharing a couple:
A gallery of derelict London cinemas accompanied with a brief background of each [via].
Technorati Tags: revitalization, cinema, theaters, redevelopment, abandoned, derelict
The stark reminder of Hurrican Katrina – the battered dome roof of the Superdome (largest free-standing dome upstaging the Pantheon) was finally fixed today:
The job required 120 roofers working round the clock since March 1 to finish. When it was done, workers had replaced 10,463 pieces of galvanized metal decking and sprayed 500,000 gallons of polyurethane foam sealant to the 9.7-acre surface.
Five other projects also are on track: replacement of 14,000 seats in the club, plaza and terrace levels that were damaged during the storm; installation of a new epoxy flooring system in the ramps and concourses; remodeling of the 38 permanent concession stands; installation of a new technology infrastructure; and the new video board-scoreboard-LED ribbon board system.
“We’re confident the building is going to be ready for football by Sept. 25, but the project is far from over,” Thornton said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
I would ask a different question. Is it ready for the hurricane season?
People ask me why is sprawl harmful to the environment. Among other reasons, my first response is that why build on greenfields when you have so many abandoned sites waiting to be developed back to their glory days. As technology developed and industrialization changed dramatically, erstwhile bustling industrial sites fell into decay. Many of those sites still exist and can be a delight to a photographer albeit in a graphic sense.
Feast your eyes on several such abandoned sites. Never was desolation and abandonment pictured so beautifully. All that is left to be done is to clean up the sites and redevelop them to satiate our need for more urban development. Of course, green spaces sprinkled liberally would do just as well.
We finally heard back from the EPA’s P3 [People, Prosperity, and Planet] Request for Proposals and sadly, they rejected our grant application. The reason – too ambitious and infeasible for the allocated grant money. Well, they are right. We had submitted a proposal suggesting developing a sustainable model to rebuild Southern Louisiana by seeking to analyze risk perceptions and economic necessities of residents that force them to make unsustainable choices.
On the flip side, it is not entirely lost. We can always choose to divide up our proposal and resubmit to other funding organizations or just modify this and send it off to a larger funding organization. In lieu of Katrina hurricane, we found our proposal quite timely and had managed to keep the scope of the project broad enough to warrant adequate examination of the research issues involved. Restricting ourselves to a particular region of Louisiana or just to media-popular New Orleans would have led us to ignore correlational factors that influence every move in the southern state.
Climate change data has shown how everything is interrelated and a little bit of tweaking elsewhere can have larger implications often unintended elsewhere. Developing a sustainable model for Louisiana (and New Orleans) cannot be a piecemeal project but has to encapsulate the larger region. This may not have been possible within the parameters of the P3 Project but hopefully, the EPA takes this issue seriously enough to allot more funds for such a study.
New Orleans brings to mind several images dominated of course by the debauchery-riddled and flamboyant Mardi Gras. But death, destruction, despair, and desolate landscapes are far from your mind. The city stands on a rich cultural heritage and although (ecologically) as I argue, the city should not exist; it not only does but also prospers and throbs with urban vibrancy. However behind the glitz and glamour of the chic French Quarter with its colonial architectural trimmings lived one of America’s poorest cities. Crime was rampant and racial divisions were never more pronounced. I had stopped over for a night while traveling to Texas last year just before Katrina hit so it was an immensely sad experience to see a city shaken at its very foundations. We talked to a local architect who had nothing but frustration and disgust writ all over his countenance over the rest of the country’s apathy. And rightly so too. People seemed to have forgotten that this is just the beginning and the worst might be lurking behind the next hurricane.
The basin of the world’s third largest river (after Nile and Amazon), New Orleans and much of Louisiana stands on unstable ground that constantly changes its geographic form every thousand years. The mouth of the Mississippi has moved left and right since forever and it continually seeks to do so. But it finds itself restricted and controlled by the sub-standard levee system (the Dutch do it better). New Orleans is famously known to exist below sea level and if you look at the cross-section of the city, you will see a great depression in a bowl-like fashion protected by feeble contraptions erected by man. In spite of many warnings by scientists and climatologists, stubbornness of American people (in the region) often mistaken as resilience failed to inspire any preventive action. The result – Hurricane Katrina literally exposed the dangers of human impact on marshlands by destroying nearly 80% of the city. Levees snapped like twigs and all talk of their engineering prowess was muted.
We walked through the Ninth Ward and even after six months we could see destruction and wrecked home as far as our eyes could see. It is almost that this part of town has been declared a ghost town and no cares to rebuild. The catch however might be that probably the best option is not to rebuild. Easier said than done; this area was inhabited by mostly low-income people because no one else wanted to live on ‘that’ side of the town. The low-income people also happen to be mostly African-American so the issue of not rebuilding slowly transcends from that of rational thinking to resolving issues of social and racial equity. Can we genuinely deny these people from coming back? If we can stop them from living in this vulnerable location, where do we put them? Of course, New Orleans needs people who can work low-end jobs at the bars, restaurants, grocery stores and those people cannot live in flood-safe areas occupied by the middle- and upper-class residents. So technically, the low-income people have a choice of living in flood-prone areas that are cheap to build in but face risks of destruction almost every year or not living in New Orleans at all. So will New Orleans exist as an urban space without its share of poor people that are needed (relative and in an economic sense) in a society? Probably not; no matter how much the upper class of New Orleans citizenry secretly wishes. Hence my conclusion that New Orleans may or must not exist in its current urban form; it should either drastically evolve to live sustainably and densely so as to reduce its ecological footprint in a worsening ecosystem or in a worst-case scenario, count its losses, cherish its history, pack up and move on.
Cities have died before either gradually due to economic or social decline or suddenly due to natural cataclysmic changes. Our capacity to absorb havoc wrecked by nature might have increased and it might take one heck of a natural disaster to wipe off a city especially in a developed nation. As I mentioned, the next hurricane season is expected to be worse and so will be subsequent seasons; natural processes or global warming – the consequences are similar. If at all we choose to rebuild, the way we do it will be paramount in testing the hypothesis that man learns from history. Sadly, I think that we often prove that hypothesis wrong.
I recently read Fast Food Nation for a class on Sustainable Urbanism. Expectedly, the book was loaded with facts against mega corporations aiming for a quick buck while paying little attention to the overall impacts of their business. The author, Eric Schlosser came away as a convinced (and converted, I think) activist against the evils of the fast food companies. Any talk of rabid and profit-hungry corporations with scant regard for societal good cannot exclude Wal-mart. Countless campaigns against its labor exploitative policies and tendencies to big box American countryside and movie (Wal-mart: The High Cost of Low Price) with scathing allegations hasn’t won any friends for Wal-mart in recent times. The capitalistic spirit justifies its business-like methods but accusations of being heartless for its tireless workers and its surroundings is not completely off the mark. Wal-mart at its end is continuously trying to explore new markets and have been eyeing the lucrative and number-rich Indian market for quite some time now.
Recently during a trip to India, I drove by the now-vacant plot of land at the junction of Bandra-Kurla Complex and the Western Express Highway that housed the drive-in theater not long ago. I was informed that this site was earmarked for India’s first Wal-mart in partnership with Reliance Industries as the retail giant look set to enter Indian markets. Of course, the information wasn’t accurate and may have been a tad premature; I couldn’t help but imagine that this would indeed be the perfect site for an in-city Wal-mart. A huge parcel of land with ample space for parking, prime location, proximity to the Western Express highway to facilitate easier access for inbound trucks, location at the cusp of the city and the suburbs; the site had Wal-mart all over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the information I received would prove to be correct in the near future. Of course, Wal-mart efficiency and its famed supply chain would be seriously hampered in an Indian context due to lack of supporting infrastructure.
India’s cabinet recently approved the entry of foreign retail outlets [source: Times of India] and eliminated the need for India-based franchisee partners. This is yet another step towards a completely globalized market in India. The humungous middle-class consumer market is pegged at $200 billion currently and is expected to grow to almost $500 billion in the next 5 to six years [source: CNN Money]. Although it is small compared to other growing overseas markets, it still offers enough incentive for retailers to move in and are held back only by regulation issues. However, Wal-mart and other big-box retailers are bound to face protests from the local businesses and urban planners. Ample proof of the Wal-mart effect seen all over America –unaesthetic stores, disregard to local urban fabric, conformity leading to monotony, environmental concerns, and lack of attention to regional geographic constraints. Consumer’s economic and rational behavior partly tries to justify shutting out local business but charges of despoiling the urbanscape refuse to go away. In the recent fascination for malls that appeal to the consumer from the inside but do nothing for the urban dweller on the outside (e.g. Centre One, Vashi), Wal-mart’s big blue box will definitely be something new in the first few years but repeat that thousand times over all around India; you will realize the bane of American urbanscape.
But fortunately, not all is lost. Andre Duany of the New Urbanism fame has something wonderful to offer in rebuilding the Wal-marts destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi. Seventy percent of Pass Christian, a beautiful bedroom community was destroyed after Hurricane Katrina passed right over its skies [via Veritas et Venustas]. But this destruction has given Wal-mart an opportunity to rebuild keeping in mind the unique urban and cultural context of the southern town. The big-boxing of its retail outlets undoubtedly more efficient but has eroded support in the bucolic environs of Pass Christian mostly due to adverse impact on local businesses. But some businesses have managed to adapt in spite of the presence of Wal-mart and it shows a resurgent attitude amongst local businesses. But they wish Wal-mart mend its ways regards the way it chooses to construct its stores. During a design charette to rebuild Pass Christian, Duany proposed working with Wal-mart to modify its design to suit small town characteristics; instead of a “big-box” store, Wal-mart could build a series of stores that give the appearance of a small town (source: Sun Herald). Plans haven’t been finalized yet but this offers a great opportunity for Wal-mart to win back hearts at least in an urban design context.
Such an approach would also have tremendous implications for its move to India in the near future. Fascination with the big-boxes will wane over time but if Wal-mart choose to assimilate into urban fabric of any Indian city depending on the cultural and social context, it will definitely win brownie points for the mega corporation. Adorning the outsides with commercial logos (see any mall in India) appears cool now but trust me, design ultimately triumphs as people tire of seeing disjointed and non-contextual symbols everywhere they go. The ‘beauty’ of Times Square would be lost if it is replicated everywhere. Sense of a place is an important characteristic in finding your place in an ever-expanding city. Sometimes, making yourself inconspicuous is the solution to standing out from the rest of the crowd. After all, there is more to life than rising profit.
The mill land redevelopment plans got an unexpected shot in the arm today. I had emphasized for a greater allocation of public space and a fresh look at the way land was allotted to Matoshree Realty. In a stunning reversal of fortunes for the mill land owners and developers, the Mumbai High Court decreed that almost one-third of the mill land will be reserved for open space, thus granting the city the provision of a breathing space. As the DNA article aptly puts it, Mumbai’s lungs have expanded by almost 200 acres and in land-crunched Mumbai that indeed is a largesse.
Additionally, the court also stipulated that another one-third of the land would be reserved for public housing or affordable housing, which also according to me, is a welcome step. Affordable housing has never been dealt with seriously in Mumbai. Mumbai’s burgeoning slum population is almost begging for an urban planning solution. Moving the slum dwellers “elsewhere” is not only unjust but also infeasible. Rajiv Gandhi’s grandiose scheme Prime Minister’s Grant Project (PMGP) failed miserably because slum dwellers sold the houses alloted to them and moved back to the slums. Hopefully, the public housing projects will be approached with a sound sense of socio-economic realities of Mumbai.
Opponents to the decision are citing reasons of higher prices due to constriction of supply (an economist’s argument) and although they may be technically right, the long-term benefits for an improved standard of living will only help the city’s health but also make Mumbai more livable for its 13 million-plus residents. Environmental and health costs aren’t factored into the opposition’s arguments, which I am sure are significant in this case. Building shopping malls and high-rises and then selling them off to the highest bidder without laying down the supporting infrastructure is planning suicide. Let us hope that the court’s decision prevails and the mill lands are developed after accounting for the city’s health and its citizens’ opinion.
I have always been interested in revitalization of central city neighborhoods; I have deliberately avoided the term “inner city” because of negative connotations in planning literature. Admit it or not, you are likely to have lived in or traveled through a central city district that seriously demands renewal either physically or economically; more so if you live in India’s organic cities. Mumbai being a classic example has plenty such districts and provides ample scope for improvement. It has always been cited as a vibrant city constantly evolving to adapt to the times. The city’s economic base has moved from a textile-based focus to a more service and finance-oriented economy. This has led to large chunks of land previously owned by cotton mills to lie vacant. Although the reuse of this land has been endlessly debated, no significant progress has been made and opportunity cost of these vacant lots continue to rise.
Couple of months ago, Matoshree Realty, a development firm supposedly owned by Shiv Sena leaders, Raj Thackeray and Manohar Joshi scored a bonanza when they managed to acquire a five-acre plot more commonly known as Kohinoor Mills in the heart of Bombay. I am quite aware of this land’s potential because one of my classmates had worked on its proposed developmental reuse for his architecture dissertation. The deal was finalized for an astronomical sum of Rs. 421 crores, or almost to the tune of Rs. 14,813 per square foot of undeveloped land. For anyone who is remotely involved in land development, that is an extremely high price because most resources go into developing the land for construction. Also, the choice for the winning bid is subject to suspicion because the Shiv Sena had vehemently opposed the sale of mill lands not very long ago.
But what troubles me most is the proposed reuse that these developers have planned for the vacant mill lands. Without doubt, the land in city limits is precious and public opinion should be paramount in developing these lands. So the words of the managing director of Matroshee Realty, Rajan Shirodkar disturb me: ‘‘We will build an exclusive shopping complex, residences or perhaps hotel apartments.” Spoken like a pure capitalist with his eye solely on one thing – profit and no regard for social consequences. Don’t get me wrong, I support free market initiatives but 600 acres of erstwhile mill land open for redevelopment in the heart of Mumbai is not open for speculation and pure commercial interests that may benefit only the elite.
An earlier attempt led by noted Indian architect, Charles Correa to delineate areas for much-needed transport arteries and public amenities lies somewhere in the dust in the Mantralaya. I believe that the public should have a significant say in developing the property although they may not be direct land owners. Public opinion and charettes should run their due course at least to gauge the immediate needs of Mumbaikars. After all, if the reuse of a recently-vacated 16-acre plot in downtown Manhattan (doesn’t say prime property than that) can be debated so actively, then I don’t understand why Mumbai should be any exception? Public spaces are at a premium in Mumbai and building more malls is definitely not a sign of economic development. The proposal for building a shopping mall smacks of lack of creative thinking and a sure shot eye on profits only. The developers haven’t mentioned anything regards public space allocation. Sadly, urban space activism doesn’t exist in Mumbai and few protests that conservationists and urban planners raise will be dismissed as “rants of crackhead environmentalists”.
Is there hope for revitalizing Mumbai the right way?
Update: I was just done writing this post and I happened to read that Bombay Port Trust (BPT) is planning to liquidate its holdings in Mumbai; a whopping 21 kms of coastal land on the eastern side. I had always felt that Mumbai was a uni-directional city, facing the sea only on the west side whereas it had an equally beautiful undeveloped waterfront on the other side too. Now, this news is going to get the developer sharks out rubbing their hands with glee and the government along with BPT should not fall for the short-term profits, although they can be quite sizeable. Public amenities, provision for affordable housing (for slum dwellers), infrastructural framework including transportation upgrades should be given top priority. I hope the Urban Research Group headed by Rahul Mehrotra has begun lobbying hard.