September 18, 2006

THE 10th INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION IN VENICE HAS EXPOSED THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL HORRORS FACING OUR MEGA-CITIES OF TOMORROW

By Uli Schmetzer
www.uli-schmetzer.com/

Venice, September 18 - Has anyone thought of Caracas or Bogotá as hubs of modern urban planning, models for other mega-metropolises that are threatened by rapidly rising populations, runaway crime and poverty, most of it squeezed into labyrinthine slums?
We know Caracas is run by President Hugo Chavez who likes Fidel Castro and uses his oilfields to torment the Americans. As for Bogota: Isn’t that the place (together with Cali) from where Colombian drug lords run their empires?
We also know that rural and third world migration to cities in search of economic opportunities has already converted minor urban areas into sprawling urban monsters particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The warning lights are blinking at the prestigious international architecture exhibition here which makes it clear only a combination of social and architectural innovations – like some of those now being tested in Caracas and Bogota - can save the planet from urban chaos.
Sociologists, statisticians and urban planners predict already by next year half the world’s population will live in cities. Many of these cities, like Shanghai, Mexico City, Bombay, Sao Paulo and Chongqing will swell into 40-million plus mega-monsters by the middle of this century.
What makes the two Latin American capitals so special is their belief in ‘retrofitting.’ This means instead of demolishing the centrally-located barrios and sent their residents to new slum towns on the fringe of the city, urban planners improved the barrios with special projects like small medical centers, gyms, community kitchens, free internet centers and food markets. The result: A sense of pride and wellbeing with a positive impact on fear and crime.
Both in Bogota and Caracas these studies say the crime rate dropped after the projects were launched. In Bogota the murder rate dropped from 131 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 23 murders per 100,000 residents in 2004. The city has built 52 schools which - like in Sao Paulo, Brazil - stay open at night for adult teaching and social gatherings. The city also built dozens of libraries. These are now frequented by seven million readers, the highest user rate in South America. School attendance has reached 92 per cent, truancy dropped dramatically.
With this kind of emphasis, not surprisingly, this year’s Venice exhibition has become controversial because it did not provide the usual marketing window for the world’s leading architectural firms. It is no secret corporate architects prefer access to expensive and futuristic show projects rather than social repair jobs on rundown city centers or decrepit slums.
But the exhibition had more valid information then just another show for mega-buck projects.
It found the world’s fastest growing cities are Shanghai (now 18 million people) and Chongqing (31 million) followed by Bombay (Mumbai now 18.2 million) and Mexico City (19 million). All of these urban giants will soon overtake Tokyo which remains currently the world’s largest city with 35 million inhabitants.
The frightening growth rate of the giant cities brings enormous challenges, especially in China where 300 million people in rural areas moved to the city over the last two decades and another 400 million will do so over the next decades.
The urban growth phenomena is already exhausting available resources and with it the dreams of the newcomers for a better lifestyle.
Pollution is rampant, so are water shortages (75 per cent of all river water in China is already undrinkable and not fit for fish). The mega-cities will gobble up 75 per cent of all our energy by 2050 and planners must find new ways to ferry these masses to work and provide housing for them.
Here is some of the more fascinating data on the Big Smokes:
.Urban garbage in China has already created a refuse dump almost the size of Germany.
.Two thirds of the people of Sao Paulo (Brazil|) are under the age of twenty; the city has 11,000 private helicopters and 1,000 new cars a day.
.Eighty per cent of Tokyo’s population uses public transport while in Los Angeles 80 per cent of the population travel to work in their private cars (because there is no viable public transport network available)
.In Mexico City - which has expanded tenfold since 1940 – a bottle of water is more expensive today than a bottle of petrol; the city that thirsts has sixty per cent of its population classified as ‘squatters’ and has a crime rate 40 times higher than that of Cairo.
.In the Egyptian capital 100,000 people live in the City of the Dead, the urban cemetery, inside the funerary buildings erected by wealthy families.
.Residents fled the center of Johannesburg for suburban areas. The city center’s high rise buildings, once housing offices, have been taken over by the poor. The crime rate there is rampant. By 2015 Johannesburg will be Africa’s largest city with 15 million people.
.The reunified Berlin boasts about its high quality of life but is a global anomaly with a low growth rate, a low cost of living and a surplus of housing that far exceeds demand. In Berlin twenty per cent are unemployment - but artists thrive.
.London is one of the few mega-cities in the world expanding up not out. The use of private vehicles dropped by twenty per cent since 2003 when the city introduced a day tax of $10 for entering the city center by car.
.In Bombay trains carry four times their legal capacity, half the population lives in slums and 90 per cent work ‘informally.’
In its conclusion about the first steps in tackling the problems of the urban expansion exhibitors recommend ‘well designed buildings’ and social service improvements in poor areas, accessible, safe and affordable public transport systems, the rehabilitation of city centers and more public parks in the inner cities, like Cairo’s Al-Azhar Park.
The parks attract more residents to live in the center instead of moving to the edges of the city, at the same time creating interaction and pride for all social classes. In fact London is considered the only mega-city that can expand without pains because its ‘green areas’ make expansion bearable.
Judging by the exhibits in the pavilions of the various countries architects and planners generally agree on the need for new approaches to the escalating urban problems. Their consensus is to find solutions before tomorrow’s mega-metropolises turn into the feared urban monsters of science fiction in which life is cheap, survival short. (endit)