Modern Urban Planning

[innonimatu]

I wonder why that is? In the US, the middle class did flock to the suburbs in the 60's and 70's while the immigrants and poorer folk stayed in the city.

In Europe the influence of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and is school of though was much greater than in the US. And let's be honest: his buildings suck. Big time! Cheap buildings are going to be bad, whether in the suburbs or in a city center.

What happened in Europe was that the experiences with these cheap buildings were concentrated mostly in the suburbs, because the city centers were old and harder to change. Except in the most war-damaged portions of the continent during WW2: central/eastern Europe. Those countries had more to rebuild, and a need to rebuilt it quickly and cheaply. And in some new cities (the UK had some of those built). There city centers were built in a modern style, and they suck also.

I'm not going to absolutely condemn "modern" construction which favored small areas, cheaper materials, and spartan styles. In some circumstances it was necessary: where resources for housing were limited those buildings were better than the alternative of letting poorer people live in shanty-towns! The sad public housing of the 1960s-80s in western Europe, or the soviet-block "style", are in part a product of the constraints of the time. But also of a very sad lack of taste...

Well, that's debatable. Post-war architecture and urban planning was generally framed as "Modernist", but the extent to which that actually was the case is more debatable. Often-times, it's superficial, blocky buildings and wide streets, but without any of the social democratic rationalism that actually underlay this aspect of the the Modernist project. Notably, most of the Modernists argued strongly for socio-economically mixed housing, which they saw as necessary to building a sense of citizenship, yet this characteristic is limited, if not entirely absent, from almost all post-war housing schemes. The primary characteristic of such construction wasn't that it was Modern, only that it was cheap without being actively hazardous to the inhabitants. (And the past tense should be stressed.)

Show any socialist Modernist worth their salt one of these dismal suburban ghettos, and he'd vomit with rage, so it seems strange to highlight "Modernist principles" as a central factor.

The fact is, this modernist goal was not achievable unless people were forced to live together. People very much like to pick their neighbors among their own sort of people, and given any degree of freedom to move around they will move around. It was and will always be unrealistic to expect or demand otherwise. When people dislike their neighbors on a personal level, because of perceived differences in philosophy, culture, whatever, they are not going to start having a "sense of citizenship" because they have a neighbor their dislike right nest door. Rather the opposite happens: they insulate themselves against their neighbors, or have their life occupied with conflicts against them. That tears the local community apart and cause its individual members to become politically impotent, because they are isolated. Social democracy my ass, this "force them to mix and they'll become more equal" was one of the big mistakes of social-democrat governments, one of the reasons why they lost their base. They should have bet on proving equal levels of services for the entire city and dealt with the social engineering in other ways... urban planning is not something to be toyed with!
But these problems are nothing new. Ever since big cities exist, they're there. There is no universal recipe to solve them. There are by now, however, known problems with some recipes which should lead people to avoid them...

 

[Camikaze]

[...]

Moderator Action: Please ensure your posts are relevant to the thread. This thread isn't about posting pictures of funny architectural or planning decisions.

 

[Phrossack]

In the light of the recent multiculturalism thread opened by Quackers, I'd like to draw attention to what I think is the actual reason why migrants fail to integrate in mainstream society, as well place artificial limits to social mobility: Poor urban planning.

We may have a gone a little too far with rationalistic modernism: Every extension to any town or city these days seem to be designed for cars rather than people. There is pattern to be had: Every immigrant riot in the Europe started in the suburbs - built by modernist principles. Perhaps no coincidence: The suburbs in Europe were originally built for the middle class. They did not flock to those places and instead those modernist suburbs got inhabited by those who poor in means, primarily immigrants.

So let's rant about that.

The religious obsession with cars is a huge problem in the US. I hate it, plus cars and driving in general. Since everything's built for cars rather than people, you generally need a car in much of the US in order to get to work, the store, or anywhere else, for that matter. This leads to pollution, rampant oil consumption, lack of exercise, tens of thousands of deaths a year, highways slicing ecological communities in two, and ugly neighborhoods of ugly houses with the same zoysia lawns and where neighbors rarely see or even know each other. Like where I live (though my particular little cul-de-sac has sociable neighbors). It doesn't help that I am practically incapable of driving, even though I have a license.

Now, in Hamburg, everything I needed was either within walking distance or within walking distance of a train station or boat. Or I could cycle there. Cars weren't an absolute necessity.

I just so happen to take a class that recently covered this topic a bit, and there were some very interesting reads. One of them, by Jane Jacobs, basically covers how deliberate designs and official programs for increasing public safety in cities don't work nearly as well as informal associations and a sense of community and neighborliness, and that dividing cities between gated communities and gang turfs only makes things worse.

 

[Kyriakos]

The square-grid and highway-centered city plan is ugly, at any rate (but i always hated cars and still consider them horrible for inner-city movement).

 

[Tahuti]

The religious obsession with cars is a huge problem in the US. I hate it, plus cars and driving in general. Since everything's built for cars rather than people, you generally need a car in much of the US in order to get to work, the store, or anywhere else, for that matter. This leads to pollution, rampant oil consumption, lack of exercise, tens of thousands of deaths a year, highways slicing ecological communities in two, and ugly neighborhoods of ugly houses with the same zoysia lawns and where neighbors rarely see or even know each other. Like where I live (though my particular little cul-de-sac has sociable neighbors). It doesn't help that I am practically incapable of driving, even though I have a license.

I think it perhaps also encourages ghettoisation - something which is seen even in the Netherlands: People too poor to use long distance transportation like cars will remain unemployed, being unable to get to work (and there is no work close to them, since the neighbourhoods were solely built for residence).

Now, I'm not anti-car. I like cars. I do not have a driver's license, but I regularly take a lift by car with my friends and travel the country. However, cars should not be used to travel within cities.

Also, a lot of thanks for mentioning Jane Jacobs in the thread. I should have done so in the OP, but I guess it was a matter of time before someone would bring it up.

In Europe the influence of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and is school of though was much greater than in the US. And let's be honest: his buildings suck. Big time! Cheap buildings are going to be bad, whether in the suburbs or in a city center.

What happened in Europe was that the experiences with these cheap buildings were concentrated mostly in the suburbs, because the city centers were old and harder to change. Except in the most war-damaged portions of the continent during WW2: central/eastern Europe. Those countries had more to rebuild, and a need to rebuilt it quickly and cheaply. And in some new cities (the UK had some of those built). There city centers were built in a modern style, and they suck also.

I'm not going to absolutely condemn "modern" construction which favored small areas, cheaper materials, and spartan styles. In some circumstances it was necessary: where resources for housing were limited those buildings were better than the alternative of letting poorer people live in shanty-towns! The sad public housing of the 1960s-80s in western Europe, or the soviet-block "style", are in part a product of the constraints of the time. But also of a very sad lack of taste...



The fact is, this modernist goal was not achievable unless people were forced to live together. People very much like to pick their neighbors among their own sort of people, and given any degree of freedom to move around they will move around. It was and will always be unrealistic to expect or demand otherwise. When people dislike their neighbors on a personal level, because of perceived differences in philosophy, culture, whatever, they are not going to start having a "sense of citizenship" because they have a neighbor their dislike right nest door. Rather the opposite happens: they insulate themselves against their neighbors, or have their life occupied with conflicts against them. That tears the local community apart and cause its individual members to become politically impotent, because they are isolated. Social democracy my ass, this "force them to mix and they'll become more equal" was one of the big mistakes of social-democrat governments, one of the reasons why they lost their base. They should have bet on proving equal levels of services for the entire city and dealt with the social engineering in other ways... urban planning is not something to be toyed with!
But these problems are nothing new. Ever since big cities exist, they're there. There is no universal recipe to solve them. There are by now, however, known problems with some recipes which should lead people to avoid them...

Totally badass post! Thanks! Do note that Le Corbusier also had a very large (negative) influence in Post-War European construction. I think the problem are not really the aesthetic design of the buildings - even though most of the ugly building are modernist. For instance, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe arguably had a relatively benign view of modernism, simply employing modernist and futurist styles as an expression of our present culture in the same ways Greeks and Romans did with their structures. It was primarily the way they were put together as a neighbourhood (car-centric) - and the use cases the architects had in mind.