designing cities for people

Truckloads of words have been written about how the modern lifestyle has alienated us from Earth and each other, leaving us "ungrounded". There are many interpretations of what it is about our lives that creates this disconnect, but technology features as a strong theme. I tend to think of technology not only as high-tech things like computers, cell phones and iPods, but as everything around us that is planned, designed and built.

As an engineer, I am at least partly responsible for shaping people's lives through design decisions that alter the built form. This influence can have a positive impact on quality of life, but I would hazard a guess that it is more often negative. The way a building is designed, where it is located in relation to other structures and spaces, how transport systems connect people with their destinations, what forms of energy are supplied - these all play an active role in determining the choices people have in going about their lives. There is nothing neutral about engineering, architecture or urban design; these disciplines come laden with the value systems of the people who apply them.

Trouble is, the application of design processes very rarely recognises the prejudices of their practitioners. If I don't understand the community that I am designing for, I can increase alienation, community dysfunction and poverty in its broadest sense. It's easy: as a professional, I know what's best for society as a whole. For one thing, we need more public transport and fewer cars - for a number of very good reasons. And we need more houses, because globally, there simply aren't enough. Oh yes, and we should have solar panels on the roof of every house, because distributed power systems are more effective and great for creating jobs.

Everywhere you turn, you can read about ideas like these. But if I sit down with the stakeholders involved in a particular project, they will pick holes in lots of arguments that I consider to be based on sound judgement - arguments for which I can find support from any number of other professionals. Stakeholders' objections can be based on the financial constraints of developers who seek to maximise profit; on issues about whether government should be providing houses for low-income families; on the difficulties of making public transport financially sustainable; on subsidies to power suppliers that make renewable energy hard to justify; on building design standards that stifle innovation; on lack of capacity to maintain promising initiatives once they are in place; on political forces that demand highly visible results, even if the results are not what is best for a community... do you need more?

So we, the planners and designers and builders-of-the-modern-life, we heave a collective sigh and carry on more or less as we always have done. Here and there, we summon up the strength to pick a fight, but it's easier to let someone else take the lead.

Where am I going with this? I am saying that what we do to physically shape cities has an impact on lifestyle and quality of life, whether we are conscious of it or not. We therefore have a responsibility to ensure that the impact is as positive as we can make it - but in general, we have abdicated from this responsibility.

I live in South Africa, where poverty is a stark reality; but there are less obvious forms of poverty everywhere. Sustainability, by definition, has to consider the social and political dimensions in addition to impacts related to the environment, the economy and resource consumption. It has to consider how people make use of the opportunities available to them, and how denying people access to these opportunities affects poverty and the sustainability of modern society. And sustainability has to consider that access to opportunities is not only about mobility, but also about health, childcare, information, affordability and education.

Which brings me to the blog post that triggered this essay. Geoff Manaugh, senior editor of Dwell and writer of BLDGBLOG (of which I can never get enough) wrote a couple of weeks ago about a project in Uganda that he describes thus:

Part outdoor classroom, part spatially immersive lesson in arithmetic, the project gives students a place to study in at least two senses of the phrase. On the one hand, it's simply a forum for learning; on the other, it is literally a place to study: the space itself, if I've understood this correctly, serves as a model for play-based education.

But you need to see the photos. The design of this outdoor space, and the furniture it contains, demonstrates mathematics rather than using words and diagrams to explain it. It's as if the educational tools were so magnified in size that the children could walk among them, experience them and be physically and emotionally connected with them. Like Alice in Wonderland, without the Mad Hatter. This is a case, one would hope, of providing a contextually relevant design that not only teaches in a way that these particular students can understand, but also serves to literally ground the children by linking their education with their physical world.

Geoff also includes an archive photo of a Froebelian garden for kids – that is, a kindergarten – which brought spatial education to Los Angeles some decades ago. He asks, in his usual style, whether there might be a way to use the built environment to provide a canvas of educational opportunities: "One of the questions here would be: could you reverse-engineer mathematical lessons from the environment that already surrounds you? Or do you need to purpose-build pedagogic spatiality?"

I would ask, "is there a way to use built form, and the systems we operate within it, to restore our lost connections and diminish our alienation?" It is my sincere hope that the answer is a resounding "yes". Some people try to achieve this by moving out of cities, either permanently or through weekend occupation of cottages or campsites, but that is not a practical solution for the majority of humanity, and does not address the roots of the problem in any case. Cities are where more than half of us live, and this is where we will remain, so let's take a deep breath and see what we can do with creative design.

Comments

[Vernon Collis]

Hi Rory,
I have followed your excellent blog from time to time. We need to chat .... I have much to say about what you have written today. Integrated projects exist here in South Africa ... and my practise has challenged exactly your point that the professions continue in a "business as usual" fashion. One way is to set up cross diciplinary practises, like I have, where Engineers work with anthroplogists, architects, permaculture gardeners and so on. If you are still in Cape Town, lets have tea. Regards, Vernon