IaaC blog

hyperhabitat_final-presentation.pdf

 “What is a city?”

In order to answer this question it would be easier to first answer “why do people build up cities in the first place?”.

The idea of the “city” is something that has been existing from the ancient years, is evolving until nowadays and will continues to do in the future. It has never become a stabilized unit and never will be. The structure of the cities is indissoluble joint with the mutations that our world experiences since its creation. As new things are invented, and as the world continues to up-growth, developed, transformed and transmutated, the “city” has been dragging along to this, in order to keep the equation on a stabled unreeled. People have been building cities starting from the creation of “urban centers” by the sea or on lofts to get a strategic landmark for defense matters and/or for trade development. Gradually these “centers” were increasing both in numbers and in size. The city began to function as an unwritten common law, became a natural self-organized group where its functions and its inhabitants support one another. 

Another interesting point that should be mentioned to help us understand the city better, is the issue of emigration and urban attraction. Studying the last century, both elements are holding a main role for the increasingly raised-up for both the numbers and the size of the urban centers.

“Every year, 2 to 3 million people emigrate in the world. More than half go to the United States, Germany, Canada and Australia. At the outset of the 21^st century, 130 million people live outside their country of birth.” [1] “At the outset of the twentieth century, 10% of the population lived in cities. In 20o0, around 50%of the world population lives in cities. In 2025, the number of city-dwellers could reach 5 billion individuals (two third of them in poor countries).” [2]

Why do people move to the urban centers? If we ask any emigrant he would say that he sees the city as the place of choice and opportunity.  

The city is (and must be) a place of opportunities and choices; not in a number matter but in a diversity matter, mostly; a place that is able to provide its inhabitants as good as possible quality of life so it can lead to a healthy function of the relation between itself (the city and its evolution) and its inhabitants. This relation is a two-way relation; in order to keep alive the city its inhabitants must be satisfied, and as the city is able to provide growth ness and evolution in a variant of sectors then its inhabitants are able to evolve and develop the city and vies versa. The substance of the urban functions regards to the diversity and the relationships that connect them.

“A city is a mesh of relationships between spaces. It begins once a place is built to provide a specialized function that is not fulfilled by another existing space, and the two spaces are linked together by a communication system.”[3] “The city becomes a very complex mesh or a semi-lattice. You cannot isolate any part of this mesh from the rest……Good urbanism is the creation of support systems for building relationships. Streets, public spaces, transportation networks and building codes achieve this. The best support systems, the best urbanism, will permit the greatest density of relationships (not density of people), implying the greatest spatial complexity and diversity achievable.”[4] 

 “The very act of growing a city is an act of differentiation, creating something different from what currently exists as part of the city’s network of buildings in order to fulfill a need that the existing building stock cannot fulfill. (In other words, adaptation to changing circumstances.)”[5]

In general, the X-city, as in any city, must be able to provide and forward this complexity/diversity and their connections, from the scale of 1 person to 10 million, with goal to reach the best context of living. It should fulfill the habitat needs (house, work, leisure, services) and provide convenience and connections between its own units and between itself and other cities. But the build of a city doesn’t end here. We cannot create for example 10 X-cities, as we cannot create a second Barcelona. A city needs its uniqueness; it needs beauty, identity, quality, singularity. Every X-city has to own also, its special elements, and a name that would take the place of the “X”. If we take for example the contemporary cities, we could find that their “special elements” are historic, monumental traditional, topographical, etc (exp. Barcelona-Sagrada Familia, Athens-Acropolis, Paris-Eiffel Tower). The name and those elements, as time pass, will become interconnected, and whatever transformation or mutation the city will experience, those will never change.  

“The city is the process of mutation as globalization and urbanization transform both the environment and traditional architectural forms.”[6] 

                                                                                                                           Rem Koolhaas   

[2]  Source: Global Urban ObservatoryMutations: Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Stanford Kwinter, Daniela Fabricius, Hans Ulrich Obrist,Nadia Tazi; 2001

[3] Christopher Alexander  http://mathieuhelie.wordpress.com/tag/sim-city-4/

[4] Christopher Alexanderhttp://mathieuhelie.wordpress.com/tag/sim-city-4/

[5] Christopher Alexanderhttp://mathieuhelie.wordpress.com/tag/urbanism

[6]  Rem KoolhaasMutations: Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Stanford Kwinter, Daniela Fabricius, Hans Ulrich Obrist,Nadia Tazi; 2001[6] Christopher Alexander