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Meaningful Urban Design: Teleological/Catalytic/Relevant

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Meaningful Urban Design: Teleological/Catalytic/Relevant Journal ofUrban Design,Vol. 7, No. 1, 35– 58, 2002 Meaningful Urban Design: Teleological/Catalytic/Relevant ASEEM INAM ABSTRACT Thepaper begins with a critique ofcontemporary urban design:the eldof urban designis vague because it isan ambiguousamalgam of several disciplines, includingarchitecture, landscapearchitecture, urban planningand civil engineering; it issuper cial because itisobsessedwith impressions and aesthetics ofphysical form; and it ispractised as an extensionof architecture, whichoften impliesan exaggerated emphasison theend product. The paper then proposesa meaningful(i.e. truly consequential to improvedquality of life) approach to urban design,which consists of: beingteleological (i.e. driven by purposes rather than de ned by conventional disci- plines);being catalytic (i.e. generating or contributing to long-term socio-economic developmentprocesses); andbeing relevant (i.e. grounded in rst causes andpertinent humanvalues). The argument isillustratedwith a number ofcase studiesof exemplary urban designers,such asMichael Pyatok and Henri Ciriani,and urban designprojects, such asHorton Plazaand Aranya Nagar, from around the world. The paper concludes withan outlineof future directionsin urban design,including criteria for successful urban designprojects (e.g. striking aesthetics, convenient function andlong-term impact) anda proposedpedagogical approach (e.g. interdisciplinary, in-depth and problem-driven). Provocations In the earlypart of 1998,two provocative urban design eventsoccurred at the Universityof Michigan in Ann Arbor.The rstwas an exhibition organizedas partof aninternationalsymposium on ‘ City,Space 1 Globalization’. The second wasa lecture by the renowned Dutch architectand urbanist, Rem Koolhaas. By themselves,the events generated much interestand discussion, yet were innocu- ous,compared to, say, Prince Charles’s controversialcomments on contempor- arycities in the UKorthe gathering momentumof the New Urbanism movementin the USA. Bothevents, however, did provokevisceral reactions in thisobserver about the superciality of current approaches to urban design. The twoevents were sadlysymptomatic of traitswhich render mosturban design projectsinsigni cant within the broadercontext of criticaland fundamen- talurban challenges. Koolhaasis so provocative (but notnecessarily either particularlyprofound ormeaningful) thathis writings on cities have been analysedby academicscholars (see Saunders,1997). Koolhaas (1995, p. xix) Aseem Inam, TaubmanCollege of Architectureand Urban Planning,University of Michigan,2000 Bonisteel Boulevard,Ann Arbor, MI48109–2069, USA. Email: [email protected] 1357–4809 Print/1469–9664 Online/02/010035-24 Ó 2002 Taylor &Francis Ltd DOI:10.1080/ 13574800220129222 36 A. Inam admitsthat architects are “ confrontedwith an arbitrary sequence of demands, withparameters they did notestablish, in countriesthey hardlyknow, about issuesthey areonly dimly awareof, expected todeal with problems that have provedintractable to brains vastly superior to their own”, yet purportsto analysecomplex urban conditionsin developing countriessuch as China. For example, hisslide showin Ann Arbor—derived fromHarvard University’ s Projecton the City—was an aggregation of spectacular images (e.g. cranes hovering abovegiant construction projects), shallow impressions (e.g. that contemporarycities are largely unplanned) andnovel vocabulary(e.g. Bigness) in describing the citiesof the Pearl RiverDelta of China.Students ofcities, especially architects,are easily dazzled by the impressionistic,spectacular and novel descriptionsof contemporarycities by architectssuch as Koolhaas. How- ever, while these observationsare perceptive, arethey useful in anymeaningful fashion? Koolhaasover-reads and romanticizes many of the urban phenomena thathe atthe sametime so sharply and originally perceives: Coney Island,skyscrapers, Manhattan(ism),congestion, Radio City Music Hall,the Berlin Walland so on. Koolhaasthe contrarianis determined tobe unconventional(which isre ective ofthe tyrannyof noveltyin the design elds), andthus reverses expectations thatEuropeans will view Americanscondescendingly. HatingEuropean snob- bery andeffeteness, he goes,at times, to an opposite extreme andbecomes a gullible, bedazzledidealizer of the USA andits associated phenomena: blank- ness,the ordinary,the unself-conscious,the self-indulgent, the ugly, the crude, the banal(Saunders, 1997).Furthermore, in hisideas about Bigness, Generic Citiesand globalization, Koolhaas commits the logicalfallacy of presenting part of the truthas the whole:presenting certainconditions— such as those in new Chinese cities—as the conditions. Likewise, the ‘City,Space 1 Globalization’exhibition purported todisplay new andexciting ideasas well asprojects about the future city.However, the exhibition wasdominated by spectacularimages, novel vocabularyand projects that were in citiesbut clearlynot about cities.The exhibition presented recent workby Michael Rotondi,Michael Sorkin, RemKoolhaas and other architects whotend toapproach the urban problematicprimarily from an aesthetic perspective, focusing onstriking impressions and images of cities. Their mis- placed,and primarily architectural, obsession with form tends to gloss over the complex(e.g. political)and multiple (e.g. economic)factors which actuallyshape acityand make it an enriching (e.g. social)experience. Forexample: The agorawas funky,notthe kind ofcentralizing, symmetrical space thatone imaginesin classicalantiquity. It’ s stilla goodmodel. The agoradescribed the sizeof atractablebody politicand offered the possibilityof assemblyin avarietyof registers,modalities, and settings. The agorasupported bothef cient passageand organized encounters while simultaneouslyoffering innumerable routesand hence innumer- able circumstancesfor chance, unstructured, and accidental, and serendipitousencounters. (Sorkin, 1997,p. 13;emphasis added) There isno attempt in the passageabove to more fully understandor explain exactlyhow and why the spaceof the agoraworked, or for that matter, did not work,the wayit was intended. Thisaesthetic obsession is further enhanced by Sorkin’s drawingsof ‘Neurasia’, aclever play ofwordsthat is akin to Koolhaas’s MeaningfulUrban Design 37 peculiar inventions,Bigness andGeneric Cities.The drawings(e.g. shifting formsin orangeand green) andwords (e.g. ‘funky’) certainlycatch our atten- tion,but dothey provide anymeaningful understandingof contemporary cities, ora useful meansof intervening in them?Probably not.The drawingsand spatialimpressions demonstrate an over-eagerness tobe unconventionaland spectacular,at the costof being penetrating andmeaningful; which consequently implies alackof deep understandingand a lackof patience— symptomatic of architects’view of citiesin termsof images. The present authorargues for a movementaway from this obsession with the architect’s focuson image in urban design; towarda focusthat is more on the ‘urban’than on the ‘design’in urban design; andfor an urban design thatbegins andends withthe complexand rich dynamics of the contemporarycity rather thanwith physical form. Thus, an urban designer isnot simply anarchitect, landscapearchitect or planner whohas an interestor hasbuilt projectsin cities, but one whohas a sophisticatedand deep understandingof citiesand of the substantivecontribution that urban design canmake to cities. Signicance The eld of urban design isin astateof ux.Variously described asan ambiguousoverlap of the elds ofarchitecture, landscape architecture, urban planning andcivil engineering onthe one hand,and as a generalistthat helps design citieson the other,urban design lacksa clearde nition (and hence, a useful understanding) anda cleardirection (and hence, auseful purpose). Simultaneously,countries such as the USA arewitnessing an urban revival,as demonstratedby renewed interestin revitalizinginner cities,an expanding marketfor urban housing,the prominence ofcities in popular magazinessuch as Time and Newsweek,popular televisionprogrammes such as Seinfeld, lms such as BridgetJones’ s Diary ,aresurgence of urban design curriculaat leading universitiessuch as Berkeley andSouthern CaliforniaInstitute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) anda recent inux of internationalurban design journals,including the Journal ofUrban Design , Urban DesignInternational and Urban DesignQuar- terly.Seminal books,including TheNext American Metropolis (Calthorpe,1993), Great Streets (Jacobs,1993) and Post-modern Urbanism (Ellin, 1996),have attracted much attentionin the pastdecade. Several large-scaleurban projectshave been built recently orare currently under wayin metropolitanregions such Detroit (e.g. DetroitLions and Tigers stadiums, Renaissance Center renovations,new casinosand airport expansion), in the USA (e.g. GettyCenter in LosAngeles, neo-traditionalresidential developments andconversion of militarybases and obsoleteindustrial areas) and in the world(e.g. London’s Docklands,Hong Kong Airportand the rebuilding of Beirut andBerlin). Unfortunately,much of thisrecent interestin urban design repeatsthe familiarde ciencies of the past:a focuson the supercial aesthetics and the picturesque aspectsof cities(instead of whatrole aesthetics play, say, in communitydevelopment processes),an over-emphasison the architectas urban designer andan obsession with design (insteadof amoreprofound interdisci- plinary approachthat addresses fundamental causes), an understanding of urban design primarilyas a nished product(instead of anongoing long-term processintertwined withsocial
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