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Vertical Urbanism: Re-Conceptualizing the Compact City

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Vertical Urbanism: Re-Conceptualizing the Compact City Vertical Urbanism: Re-conceptualizing the Compact City ZHONGJIE LIN University of North Carolina at Charlotte Although the term “compact city” appears frequently as urban infrastructure, transit system, and urban in academic accounts on sustainable urbanism as waterfront redevelopments, testing the concept in well as in professional descriptions of planning proj- different geographic and cultural settings. Sensitivity ects, it is often used in a general manner to indicate to locality in both ecological and cultural terms such ideas as high density, mixed uses, walkability, was emphasized across these studios although the and transit oriented development, all linking to the schemes often engaged speculative and innovative common principles of New Urbanism. Unfortunately modes of design production. This paper examines a this misses some important points, as the concept number of issues around the urban design approach of compact city possesses the power to generate of Vertical Urbanism, including the drive for density dynamic urban forms, utilize cutting-edge technolo- and vitality, the relationship between horizontal and gies, address pressing environmental issues, and vertical dimensions, space of flow and scalar shift, as respond to distinctive geographical and cultural well as ecological and social adaptability of mega- contexts, thus challenging conventional notions of forms; but above all, it tries to explore the capacity Urbanism. The awareness of the limitations of the of global urban tactics in providing localized design current practice leads to the introduction of Vertical solutions. Urbanism as an alternative discourse on the compact city responding proactively to the state of con- DEBATES ON THE COMPACT CITY The compact city is a relatively recent concept in the discourse of temporary metropolises characterized by density, urbanism. Many attribute the idea to Jane Jacobs and her seminal complexity, and verticality. The reinvented concept work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which argues of Vertical Urbanism moves away from the Modernist strongly for dense and diverse urban centers like Manhattan over notion promoting tall buildings as dominant urban the neatly planned Modernist City or Garden City; but it was not until typology to explore physically interactive and socially the late 1980s that the term Compact City became commonly used engaged forms addressing the city as a multi-layered academically and professionally.1 This has to do with rising global and multi-dimensioned organism. Informed by com- awareness of sustainable development following the Brundtland Report in 1987, which prompted policy makers as well as profession- plex systems ranging from underground mass transit als to rethink the role of urban design and development to better to futuristic ecology of vertical urban farm, this exper- protect and sustain the human habitat.2 The discussion on the com- imental urban design approach envisions a holistic pact city routed through the policy circle to influence design, and was organization of infrastructure, space, and ecology in particularly well received in Europe with political leaders more con- a three-dimensional framework. cerned about issues pertaining to energy shortages, global warming, and the negative impacts of urban sprawl. Michael Breheny’s 1992 This paper derives from a series of urban design essay documented the early debates on this concept and its impli- research studios under the common theme of cation in planning.3 Two governmental documents were particularly Vertical Urbanism conducted in four different cities notable, both published in 1990. One is the United Kingdom’s White in the United States and China during 2010-2014 and Paper on the Environment entitled This Common Inheritance.4 The recently shifted to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. These stu- other is the Green Paper on the Urban Environment published by the dios took on various sites and design questions such Commission of the European Communities.5 Both recognize the role 122 of the urban form and planning in achieving environmental and urban Vertical Urbanism addresses design issues of urban areas of sig- sustainability, and advocate the ‘compact city’ as a solution to the nificant intensity supported by complicated urban systems that the problems.6 The Green Paper went further to promote the compact conventional planning regulations and approaches are only able to city not solely for environmental benefits in energy consumption and manage inadequately. When urban density reaches a certain point emissions but also based on improving the quality of life. These docu- and a city is dominated by a vertical dimension, all components of ments were quite influential and led to a series of other publications urban design including circulation, land uses, open spaces, ecological in line with the idea. One such report that is probably also best known network, and human activities are distributed in a different pattern was put together by the Urban Task Force in the United Kingdoms led and their relationships mutate. As we can see in some of the world’s by Sir Richard Rogers in 1999 called Towards an urban Renaissance.7 mega-cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, and New York, the floor area to plot ratios can go above 1:12 and their residential However there have been constant debates on the idea of compact densities can exceed 400 persons per acre. With such intensity, the city. On the one hand, advocates claim the compact and functionally planning area is no longer the surface but the entire built-up area and mixed urban form could solve neatly the two major urban problems the potential buildable vertical space above. In such cities, transporta- – the desire to protect the natural environment and to preserve the tion, programs, and open spaces are highly integrated in a system that quality of life that a healthy city provides. On the other hand, oppo- stretches from underground to the top of buildings. We can no longer nents have pointed out several limitations of the concept. Some focus on the planning of the land, but should examine the city as a critics suspect that the relationship between compact urban form three-dimensional matrix for urban design solutions. and environmental improvement might not be as direct as the plan- ner would like. Others suggest that the compact city has always been It is worth repeating that the verticality highlighted in this approach based on the European tradition, often referring to particular medi- not only deals with the areas going upward from the ground; it aeval or early modern urban forms in Europe, and thus representing involves looking beneath the land for underground transportation, certain fixed cultural identity.8 Although most recognize a compact service, and uses, as well as their relationship to the uses and struc- form contribute positively to urban sustainability, the criticisms nev- tures above ground. Those areas around any major interchange metro ertheless indicate inadequacies of the prevailing notion of compact station in cities like Tokyo and Shanghai are the best examples for city. such vertical connections throughout height/depth. The multi-level underground spaces often integrate commercial development, public Since the 1990s, New Urbanism has become a dominant discourse in use, pedestrian circulation, and parking facilities with an inner-city or city building and influenced practices across the world. As the two inter-city transportation node that connects to the public area and concepts share many principles like high density, mixed uses, walk- open spaces above. ability, and transit oriented development, the compact city has been often associated with the New Urbanism, further strengthening its Vertical Urbanism is not a new idea. Architect and planners have been connotation of traditional Western urban form. However, political, dreaming of urban forms to address increasing density since more social and cultural factors have led to different forms of urban density than a century ago. The illustrations of future New York by Richard in different societies. Thus the compact city as both a morphologi- Rummell and other artists in the 1900s and 1910s envisaged a multi- cal, as well as sociological, concept should be interpreted in regional layer city of skyscrapers connected by interconnected bridges and contexts when applied in urban design practice. Furthermore, the serviced by automobile and rail transportation networks on different expanding territory of human agglomeration has led to a growing levels above and underground.9 These early-20th-century visions of scale of contemporary urban systems, including its mass transpor- the city as a machine have by now fallen out of favor, but the ques- tation, information network, and ecological system, which in turn tion remains relevant: can we design urban environment of high are changing the process of urban intensification. It thus requires a intensity which is efficient, sustainable, and livable, with the amenity, reinterpretation of compactness in which a higher degree of urban integration becomes the key. CONCEPT OF VERTICAL URBANISM It was based on the observations noted above that we began to explore the concept of Vertical Urbanism. We focus on the dimen- sion of “verticality” to study the concept city because it possesses the power to generate dynamic urban forms and utilize cutting-edge technologies, and is thus able to provide new insights into the cur- rent environmental issues of the city and challenge the conventional notions of urbanism. We used the advanced urban design studio as a laboratory to explore the concept and methods of Vertical Urbanism. The study has last several years, and is being developed into a publication. Figure 1: The world’s biggest cruise ship Oasis of the Seas. Cities/Urban Tactics Cross-Americas: Probing Disglobal Networks 123 landscape, and life style that we enjoy on the ground? The impera- resorted to a similar integrative approach of planning. One example is tive and imminence have only been heightened as cities have become the CCTV Headquarters complex design by the Office of Metropolitan larger and contemporary urban systems more sophisticated.
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