The magazine - Lafarge

“ According
to numerous analysts,
the greatest danger
our towns face
is not dispersal
but segregation.”
Manhattan landscape.
Anarchical or mapped
out, how cities develop
is telling of the local
culture.
The extended and fragmented city
Today’s towns are growing. Individual houses have multiplied the world’s
urbanized area by four. Changes that are just starting to occur will not
reverse the trend of the phenomenal extension of towns or the waves
of urban populations that are growing every day by some 180 thousand
people!
As Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin notes: “the 20th century underwent major
urban changes: a spreading out accompanied by a loss of centrality
and the emergency of ‘polynuclear’ cities, organized around access
points for express transport.” Indeed, the extended city now raises the
issue of mobility. Temporal proximity is now just as important as spatial
proximity, meaning that urban planning is increasingly concerned with
reducing isolation. The issue of accessibility is thus behind the creation
of large urban areas made up of several towns, such as the conurbations
of Ruhr in Germany or Randstad Holland in the Netherlands.
But the inhabitants are not necessarily equal when it comes to accessing
this fluidity. “Certain poor urban populations are now assigned
to land,” points out the geographer. “A town is more than its developments
and buildings, it also defines human groups. According
to numerous analysts, whichever way they develop, by extension
or congestion, there is always a risk of representing social divisions
through geographical segregation.
The social fragmentation of urban areas is expressed by the appearance
of urban ghettos and ‘bunker’ neighborhoods, but also by
a segmentation of the residential market – housing for retired people,
students or businesspeople in need of temporary accommodation.
Pushed to the extreme, this leads to the establishment of gated communities.
A product of the need for security and a sense of belonging, the
phenomenon is increasing in the United States where nearly three
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© ARR © ARR
DJAMEL KLOUCHE AND
CYNTHIA GHORRA-GOBIN
> Architect and urban planner
Djamel Klouche is studying the
constraints of constructing and
reconstructing a town using the
existing town: urban recycling.
He set up the AUC agency in
Paris with Caroline Poulin and
François Decoster.
> Geographer Cynthia Ghorra-
Gobin, research director at
CNRS and professor at the IEP
de Paris and the Sorbonne, is
analyzing the globalization of
the world economy and its
effect upon urban spaces.
EXPLORING A WORLD ON THE MOVE
million homes in twenty thousand 'private towns’ have opted for this
segregating set-up.
Towards a more moderate management of resources
Furthermore, the impact of cities in terms of use of space, ecological
footprint and plundering of natural resources is on the increase.
Towns occupy just 2% of the earth’s surface but consume threequarters
of resources and account for 80% of greenhouse gases.
In response to this situation, three hundred American town mayors
decided to apply the Kyoto Protocol and twenty-seven European urban
planning ministers signed a ‘Charter on Sustainable European Cities’
in May, setting out the main joint actions. Several recent projects, such
as the Dongtan eco-city in China, aspire to become a yardstick for urban
ecology.
New human-scale urban planning
Making the global city sustainable is what supporters of new American
urbanism are proposing. The city will be denser, give priority to pedestrians,
favor 'neotraditional’ architecture, provide top quality public
spaces, foster neighborhood relationships and decompartmentalize
residential areas. ‘New urbanism’ is based mainly on the principle that
space is a rare commodity that must be optimized and made denser.
This way of thinking is relatively new on the vast North American continent.
It rethinks the configuration of housing estates and focuses
on public spaces. “Since the middle of the 20th century, urban development
has been characterized by no conceptualization of public spaces,
apart from in historic quarters,” points out Djamel Klouche. The
enormously increased and deregulated consumption of land is accompanied
by a move away from planning the town and its overall development.
For the last ten to fifteen years we have cast aside this logic.
The new urban ‘utopia’ has taken shape in prototypes that have
received a lot of media coverage such as Playa Vista in California and
Seaside in Florida.
The political challenges of the town of the future
According to Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin, tomorrow’s challenge will involve
creating ‘metropolitics’: a democratic system at the level of the metropolis,
its labor market area and travel network. “We have to move away
from the idea of competition between towns making up large metropolises,”
she believes. “They behave like competing companies. We need
to devise a new citizenship, on the scale of the metropolis.” A multidisciplinary
approach to urban phenomena is essential: “the urban planner
cannot address the issues the city faces alone (sustainable development,
social segregation, etc.),” concludes Djamel Klouche. “He can
only play a part in it. The urban planner’s work must take into account
the opinions of the inhabitants and be part of a democratic process
which will require institutional innovations.”■
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