The Detroit-Berlin Connection

Numerous comparisons have been made between Detroit and Berlin. Especially within the fields of electronic music or the thriving art scene. The Detroit-Berlin Connection is a radio series produced by WDET public radio in cooperation with Berlin Stories,  that looks at the futures of these two cities and speculates on the measures being used to reinvent industrial cities for the 21st century. The series goes beyond the common comparisons in the fields of art and music and outlines other connections by covering also comparisons in Land Use, on Mies van der Rohe, or on The Creative Class. A more general overview gives the radio discussion on What can the Detroit Berlin connection teach us?
Also the other media is worth checking out, to give you a summary on the similarities but also discrepancies between these two distinct cities.
For those with a deeper interest in the topic and living in Berlin, there is a disscussion at the US embassy in Berlin tomorrow 4pm (map). 

Ruins of East Berlin 2008 (source)

Ruins of Detroit 2011 (source)

Manuel Castells: The Crisis Always RingsTwice

Yesterday, sociologist Manuel Castells was giving a lecture at Tent City University at Occupy LSX entitled "The crisis always rings twice: from financial crisis to fiscal crisis to political crisis".

How To Design A Thriving Community

Sustainability still is broadly examinedfrom the angle of environmental concerns. Nevertheless there is a growingawareness of social sustainability amongst urban planners and architects. The Young Foundation recentlypublished a report commissioned jointly by the Homes and Communities Agencyas part of Future Communitiesprogramme on the Design for Social Sustainability. On 55 pages, the reportprovides ‘a framework for creating thriving communities’. In the forewordBartlett Professor Peter Hallargues that under the scope of last summer’s riots in Great Britain we havefailed to create successful new communities within the existing fabric. Hefurther argues that “This study, which might have seemed peripheral andacademic, has become central and urgent. […] The lessons and the recommendations of this report are bound tohave a salience that its authors can never have imagined.” In relation to theongoing urbanization the report poses the question: how can we create newcommunities in new housing developments that will flourish and succeed longinto the future?  In Europe 32 newtowns are being created across 11 countries. Of course, the posed questionshould not be only approached by Western cities. Some estimates suggest that inChina 100 new cities with a population more than 1 million will be created inthe next three years. For example, as part of the Expo 2010 resettlementprogramme PujangNew Town in Shanghai aims to house 500,000 new residents to create One City, NineTowns. Outside Seoul the Incheon Development Area will house 200,000 peopleby 2010, while in Delhi four new satellite cities are being created to dealwith overcrowding and to cater for India’s growing middle classes. It presentsand will present huge challenges for governments to provide decent andaffordable private and social housing in communities that are economically,environmentally AND socially sustainable. But this is not a new challenge. Manyprojects have been developed to design out crime, incorporating socialinfrastructures, considering the role local greenspaces play in wellbeing andso on. However, many of them have failed. Partly because putting into practicewhat is known is difficult, claims the report. Theoretically these approacheswork out, but practically every community is different and therefore socialsustainability cannot be prescribed in the same way as standards for environmentalsustainability.  Hence, it iscrucial to incorporate the specific local conditions. However, the report arguesthat planning for social success and sustainability can prevent or at leastmitigate, the likelihood of future social problems, and in many cases,represents a fraction of the overall costs of development and long termmanagement. After arguing the undeniable, that social sustainability has a case,the report defines extensively the terminology. Subsequently the YoungFoundation tries to lift the debate out of the academic arena and developed aframework that contains four elements that are essential to build new sociallysustainable communities: amenities and social infrastructure, social andcultural life, voice and influence, can space to grow. 

What follows are the lucid diagramsdescribing the four elements of the framework (All images © by The Young Foundation)

 
Although further research is needed in therealm of social sustainability, the Young Foundations framework might be a hugestep forward on this terrain. It suggests a structured procedure which referencingfor every urban planner, designer and policy maker, as these issues will be oneof the main challenges of this century.

Related to this and the potentialpreventions of future disasters like the recent riots read Technologyand Urban Warfare in the archive.

Is Britain becoming Los Angeles?

Recently the architect RichardRogers attacked the British government’s planning reforms and warned thatBritain could 'very easily' become to resemble the ghettoes of Los Angeles with'rust belts and towns joining each other'. Cities such as Birmingham and MiltonKeynes, Bristol and Bath would also begin to merge under the current prospectof the policies and foster an enormous sprawl. Rogers argues that 'cities arethe engines of the economy, the heart of our culture and places of innovation.If the framework is not greatly improved it will lead to the breakdown andfragmentation of cities and neighbourhoods as well as the erosion of thecountryside.' Until now the fears over the plans had been limited to thecountryside. Rogers is the first person to voice concern about the effect uponmajor cities, as the Mail online article tells. Instead of uncontrolledplanning, Rogers pleads for the re-development of derelict areas and buildingsin the inner cities.  I would doubtthat Lord Rogers also had in mind the benefit cuts that result in an exodus ofinner-city working class people to the city’s fringes, as discussed in myrecent post. Maybe I do himinjustice, but I would have reasonsto believe that he is not (always) thinking of re-developments that benefitthe socially and economically disadvantaged.

The Demonization and Ghettoization of the Working Class

The modern British working class has becomean object of fear and ridicule. Their demonization as feckless, criminalizedand ignorant by media and politicians alike has also become acceptable by the gentrifiedyoung middle-class, who otherwise praises itself with tolerance and acceptance.This fact has become stereotyped by one hate-filled word: chavs. Owen Jones’well-argued debut thatI have read just recently explores how the working class has developed from astrong part in British society to the ‘scum of earth’. In the media, throughcharacters like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard or Jade Goody the contemporaryworking class gets ridiculed to a chav caricature. But also in other parts ofEurope the sneering at the socially deprived is everyday media-life. In Germanycountless docusoaps are relying on theinterest of viewers to mock and caricature the under class.  Jones argues that this development wasinitiated through the downfall of the previous strong British (trade) unions evokedby the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher at the end of the 1970s andcontinued by Tony Blair’s New Labour and has recently also been associated with David Cameron’s term of the Broken Britain. However, Jonesaspiration lies beyond explaining how the working class has become demonized,moreover he advocates for a revivified debate about class in general terms.Thatcherism’s - or neoliberalism’s - attempt to eradicate the working classthrough igniting the aspiration for everyone to become middle-class under one’sown stem also has demonized a debate relying on the division of the society byclass.  The aspiration for thefinancially deprived very often just means to ‘own more things’. And thisaspiration means economic growth in the neoliberalist thinking. The“non-aspirational working class” even had no place in New Labour, the partyoriginating out of British working class. Tony Blair declared upon assumingoffice in 1997: “ The New Britain is a meritocracy.” But when Michael Young wrotethe book TheRise of the Meritocracy back in 1958, “Meritocracy” was not intended todescribe a desirable society – far from it. It was meant to raise the alarm atwhat Britain could become. Young warnedthat its consequences would mean “that the poor and the disadvantaged would bedone down, and in fact they have been… it is hard indeed in a society thatmakes so much of merit to be judged as having none.” All these developmentshave fostered growing inequality in British society, one of the most, if not THEmost, unequal society in the Western world. It was not for the government toredress inequalities, because the conditions of the poor would only improve ifthey changed their behaviour. 

The chav charicature: Little Britain's Vicky Pollard pictured as a teenage mum in front of a council estate. Image Source: BBC

 Looking at British cities renders inequalityand also the demonization of the working class visible. The urban councilestate tenant has become the prototype of the chavcaricature. Jones argues that Thatcher’s Right to Buy schemeadded to this fact. Through this policy, which gives council estates tenantsthe right to buy the home they are living in, in areas where demand for housingexceeds supply, the stock of social housing was depleted faster than it wasreplaced. The remaining stock of council housing was concentrated inundesirable areas with little employment opportunity, further isolating andstigmatising the tenants. Due to the shortage in council homes only the poorestof the poor are entitled to move into a subsidised home, a fact that hasdrastically reduced the diversity in these areas. Instead of working againstthese developments in Cameron’s conservative led government this crisis willget more severe. The Tories called for the scrapping of lifetime counciltenancy agreements. Instead only the most needy would be eligible for five-yearor, at most, ten-year agreements. If it was decided that their conditions hadimproved sufficiently, they could be turfed out of their homes and made to rentprivately. Jones suggests that “Council estates would become nothing more thantransit camps for the deprived”. Through these policies combined with plans tocap benefits to workless families, low-income people face eviction fromrelatively richer areas, forcing them into effective ghettoes. According toestimates by London councils, as many as 250,000 people were at risk of losingtheir homes or being forced to move. This form of social “cleansing” would bethe biggest population movement in Britain since World War II.  Jones speculates that these facts arenot only economically motivated but also politically, since it would lead toand exodus of Labour voters from London. But critisims also comes from withinthe party, as for example London’s mayor, the Conservative Boris Johnson, cameout publicly to say that he would not accept “Kosovo-stylesocial cleansing” in the capital. There is a reasonable fear that underthese circumstances London and its still diverse neighbourhoods like theborough of Hackney for example develops towards a homogenised urban inner cityarea with a belt of ghettoes of low-income people at the fringes, comparable toParis and its belt of banlieues.

These types of displacement have a profoundimpact on the cosmopolitan character of cities. They add to the contemporary developmentthat cities are under threat to loose their capacity to foster diversity andbring together people of different classes, ethnicities and religions throughcommerce, politics, and civic practices, as argued by SaskiaSassen. The growing ghettoization of the poor and the rich – albeit in verydifferent types of ghettos – leaves the middle-classes to bring urbanity tothese cities. And the middle-classes arguably are not always the most diversegroups in the city. Sassen argues further, that displacement (from countrysideto town or from the city centre to the fringes or even within the city) doesnot add to a rich diversity but rather becomes a source of insecurity.

Owen Jones’ book makes us well aware ofthese insecurities contemporary society is facing. Although the case heestablished is very UK specific it is a topic that addresses most of Westerngovernments - and cities. In his closing statement he anticipated a revolutionthat the current occupy movement is leading:

“At its heart, the demonization of theworking class is the flagrant triumphalism of the rich who, no longerchallenged by those below them, instead point and laugh at them … But it hasnot be this way. The folly of a society organized around the interests ofplutocrats has been exposed by an economic crisis sparked by the greed of thebankers. The new class politics would be a start, to at least build acounterweight to the hegemonic, unchallenged class politics of the wealthy.Perhaps then a new society based around people’s needs, rather than privateprofit, would be feasible once again. Working-class people have, in the past,organized to defend their interests; they have demanded to be listened to, andforced concessions from the hands of the rich and the powerful. Ridiculed orignored though they may be, they will do so again.”

The last weeks have shown that the globaloccupiers have found a way to organize to defend their interests. And theworking class is part of it. The city is the very site of this revolution.


Related to the decline of British working class: Aditya Chakrabortty's recent article on why Britain doesn't make things any more. 

Ulan Bators ‘Ice Shield’ to Influence Summer Climate

As a result of global warming Mongolia’scapital Ulan Bator suffers from unbearable hot summers caused by the so calledthe urban heat island effect. Mongolia’sgovernment is about to launch a bold project to influence the summer climate intheir capital as theguardian reports today. In giant blocks of ice geoengineers intend to“store” sill freezing winter temperatures that will aid to cool and water thecity as it slowly melts during the hot summer months.  It will be tested if the city gets cooled through the ice insummer and how much energy-intensive air conditioning can be reduced.

Specifically, the idea of the project is toartificially create “naleds”.Naleds are thick slabs of ice that naturally can be found in far northern areaswhen rivers push through cracs in the surface to seep outwards during the dayand then add an extra layer of ice during the night. Through this process theselayered ice slabs continue to grow in thickness as long as there is enoughwater pressure to penetrate the surface. Due to their thickness of more than 7metres they melt much later than regular ice.

image source

The climate manipulating project tries torecreate this process by drilling bore hole into the ice that has started toform on the Tuul river. The water will be discharged across the surface addinga new layer of ice on top. The drilling will then be repeated at regularintervals throughout the winter.

Robin Grayson, aMongolian-based geologist argues that "if you know how to manipulate them,naled ice shields can repair permafrost and building cool parks incities."

While naleds have served industrialapplications before, as military bridges in North Korea or as platforms fordrilling in Russia, the Ulan Bator climate experiment is unprecedented.

This giant project lines up with other hugeclimate manipulation projects like the raincontrol operation for the Olympics by the BeijingWeather Modification Office.

Technology and Urban Warfare

In the article that boldly claims to answer "how technology can help us redesign our cities – and lives" the guardian recently posed the question if the devastation of the British riots last summer could have been tackled earlier or even been avoided. Space Syntax answers in the affirmative. Space Syntax believes that through their computer-aided analysis they are able to provide information for authorities to predict the location of future social disturbances. This sounds great; although it might be difficult to believe, that their advanced technology has the capacity for doing that. Space Syntax claims that the spatial layout of urban spaces and buildings excerts a powerful influence on people's behaviour: "The way that places connect is directly related to the way that people move, interact and transact". The unrefusable critique of this architectural - or spatial - determinism is that it mitigates other influences on human behaviour like social or economical imprints.Speculatively, with the technology created by Space Syntax the authorities, might become even more effective in monitoring and controling their citizens. On the one hand this might help to better tackle crime and as well informs an approach of CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design) but on the other hand there also lies a danger of relying on new technologies as a means of fighting an urban war. In the latter, the authorities and politics lose sight of tackling the real problems and causes. As for the guardian article, I would say that the glorification of technology in the future or also current redesign of our city has to be seen much more critical. In this context there is a thin line between  the use of technology as a means to improve urban living and as a means of urban warfare. Our cities will have smart buildings, smart grids, and consist of smart materials. But concepts like SmartWater that appear to be deriving right out of the last episode of CSI are reality, and I would assume these are opening the doors for further control of urban citizens.

"Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors"

mammoth recently pointed at this documentary short by Ben Mendelson and Alex Chohlas-Wood portraying the telco hotel at 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan. The former hotel is now a huge internet hub and, as the documentary speculates, may be an "outpost of a global empire". Within the physical infrastructure of the internet, 60 Hudson Street shows facinatingyly the "tendency of communications infrastructure to retrofit pre-existing networks to suit the needs of new technologies". Amongst Mendelson's and Chohlas-Wood's interviewees are Saskia Sassen as well as Stephen Graham whom we know well for his contributions on military urbanism and splintering urbanism.

Metabolic Architecture Repairing Itself

Image source

Protocells are able to help building bottom-up materials that form a living architecture. A quite bold claim by Rachel Armstrong from the Bartlett  in this, admittedly not very current, TED talk.
 
At the Bartlett, she is specialising in non-Darwinian techniques of evolution and the challenges of the extra-terrestrial environment. Armstrong is summarising that their research intends to generate, 

"metabolic materials to counterpose Victorian technologies [to build up] architectures from a bottom-up approach. Secondly these metabolic materials have some of the properties of living systems, which means that they can perform in similar ways. They can expect to have a lot of forms and functions within the practice of architecture. And finally, an observer in the future, marvelling at a beautiful structure in the environment, may find it almost impossible to tell whether this structure has been created by a natural process or an artificial one"

In her talk she suggests that it might be possible that Venice repairs itself. Let's hope that this amazing city will not sink before the protocells are ready to petrify the wooden piles it is build upon.