Qihui (Peter) Wang
A Garden City
ideal could never be built by throwing the existing upside element in cities,
but by bottom up generation and mix use neighbourhoods. The garden is defied as
a city that it once built, nobody would ever live in his or her original place
anymore and come to it instead. The construction of garden city is built on the
basic need of human being, from basic physical need to esteem needs.
Likewise, the
design of Canberra ought to have elements representing Australia, including
culture, politics, economics, etc. However, if we look back the current state
of Canberra, which is the capital city of Australia, it’s not as famous as
other cities in the Australia, like Melbourne Sydney and Brisbane. If we
reflect on the design process, it selected important elements, which represents
Australia in other cities and try to thrown them is a small town. The result is
obvious, from the perspective of attracting people live their, it failed.
The question is why
did it failed, the city had all the elements it needs to build a perfect that
represents Australia. A very similar question could be asked, why did Garden
city (a city with all the ideal elements of human being want) never could be
constructed? Or in other words, why there are so many people (Thomas Horsfall,
John Nettlefold,) try to build a city according to the Garden City Ideology but
problems keep coming?
There are also cities was build
according to the political and economical need of the country which regenerated
nowadays, these cities are facing problems of lack of high quality space. (Vasiljeva,2013)
in order to do so, cooperation with other discipline is require such as
landscape architecture. The case of
exploring topics of human need in urban environment in Olaine, which aim to
improve the quality of recreation areas, proves that systemic approach is more
efficient in planning. This is not limited in landscape but architecture as
well. Bristol (2008) addressed the
responsibilities that architects has to the basic human needs of society by
providing shelter, healthy workplace and a liveable city by using development
working examples of communities in China and Southeast Asia.
Planners’ epistemology
play an important role in how they design cities, and it’s preconceived with
marginal reductionism. According to Eagleton (1991), the key to claim something
is ideological is to prove that it had been orientated with pre-occupied ideas.
Take a closer look
at how Canberra was designed, the designer took out elements from different
cities which represents Australia and thrown into it. The understanding is
purely based on marginal reductionism, the approach to understand things is by
breaking it to its smallest components. Marginal reductionism is the foundation
of the modern science, which provides human being with the advantages of
technical breakthrough.
However, planner
ought to identify, understand and treat cities as problems of organized complexities
instead of problems of simplicity (Jacobs, 1961). Cities are more than just a
collection of two-variable questions. A systematic approach should be adopted
in order to understand cities. Reynolds (1991) examines how transportation
reshaping the cities to meet the needs of human being in a background of large
scale urban sprawl in Australia. Approach public transportation systematically
becomes the new focus of town planners.
de Haan, F et al (2013) address
societal systems are systems which evolved to meet the societal needs by using
established social psychological framework of societal needs is developed. The
approach has a more comprehensive and systematic description of societal system
and ‘intrinsic facility to address matters like sustainability and
liveability’. The systematic approach allows planners think about cities as a
whole and understand the community more comprehensively.
Additionally,
instead of over-focusing on why current cities succussed, it’s more important
to understand what the users, people living in the city, really needs and
integrated into the plan. For that purpose, bottom-up planning approach would
be more user-friendly and effective in promoting walkability and encouraging
mix used of streets. On the other hand, a top-down approach is more suitable at
large scale regeneration.
For instance,
temporary parking at Sunday streets meets the needs of outdoor recreation of people living in high
density urban areas. A wide range of survey was conducted in San Francisco
which found a strong positive correlation between the concentration of
residential parks and the probability of participation at Sunday Street. The
same result also was found in the Spanish and Chinese community.
Bibliography:
de Haan, F. J., Ferguson, B. C.,
Adamowicz, R. C., Johnstone, P., Brown, R. R., & Wong, T. H. (2014). The
needs of society: A new understanding of transitions, sustainability and
liveability.Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 85121-132. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2013.09.005
Human needs in urban public spaces
: improving the quality of recrea on areas in Olaine, Latvia. (2013).
Architecture and shelter : the
roles and responsibilities of architects in meeting basic needs. (2008).
Reynolds, M. (1991). Urban Sprawl--The
Need for Reform. Social Alternatives, 10(2), 23-24.
Eagleton, T. (2014). Ideology.
[electronic resource]. Hoboken : Taylor and Francis, 2014.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The death and
life of great American cities. New York: Random House.
No comments:
Post a Comment