See, think, do is a series of texts by Tuomas Toivonen (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism) attempting to articulate the relevant elements in the work of an architect today. The fourth part of the series discusses the creation of an inspiring city.
Urban iteration. A construction site in Töölö, Helsinki.
4. City
After the invention of language, fire, the wheel and money, the city may be the greatest human innovation and achievement. The next step is to develop it further. While the 20th century promised a teeming metropolis, but delivered an explosion of dormant suburbia, we will have to take responsibility for the urbanism of the 21st century. Or did we already extinguish the urban process with the benevolence of modernism, planning, welfare and civic democracy? Have the compound patterns of politics, ownership, governance and consumerism killed the mechanisms that could create new city? Yet, while facing unprecedented challenges such as the unpredictability of globalisation, changing climate, future demographics and the complex challenge of providing clean energy, food and water for all, we realize the city may be our only hope. How to moderate the impact of culture and society on our habitat? How can the city shape future society and let us all take part in its conception and construction? How to balance hedonism and idealism, merge ecology and economy, or combine the best of top-down leadership and bottom-up intelligence? How to build an inspiring city?
Four guidelines, concepts and observations towards a smarter, faster, livelier, and more diverse city:
1) Urban sustainability is more city and less sprawl. Streets and railtracks make a city, roads and motorways create sprawl. Intersections and nodes create urban potential and good congestion; transport should form grids, not branches.
2) A matrix of plots cut by a grid is the universal urban syntax. It restricts and consolidates edges, but liberates the conditions within to be manipulated and re-iterated independently. To get the grid working and the process going, establish boundaries for growth.
3) Cities are results of constant iterations. To become urban, fabric must be built up, torn down, rebuilt, modified, again and again. To enhance urban potential, increase population density, leave room for the enriching of services and future diversity.
4) Change is constant, yet it requires both patience and action. Present conditions are irreversible, but always temporary. Masterplans don’t work. Create and manage addresses and their potential with sensitive, flexible and intelligent processes. These may operate in any scale or timeframe. The city is never complete.