Bienal de Arquitectura de São Paulo, 2012

Urban planning needs green rethink, por Martha Schwartz

"When it comes to environmental concerns, there has been altogether too much fragmented talk of buildings.

We have consistently failed to recognise that buildings are situated in wider landscapes that desperately need greater attention.

As I go about my work as a landscape architect, I regularly deal with our profession's role within the green agenda.

Unfortunately, I have found that we lag behind architects when it comes to participating in the conversation around sustainability; in fact, we are often relegated to presiding over green roof technology.

This is most ironic, because landscape architecture is, in fact, the profession that deals with the "green" part of the agenda.

The reason for the focus on buildings, as opposed to that of the surrounding landscape, is down to the fact that the uses of resources and energy can be addressed with a degree of simplicity and directness.

Meanwhile, landscape architects are left outside looking in on the discussion because our professional remit rests outside these technologically oriented and building-focused discussions.

This is problematic because the nature of our profession is to focus on pressing environmental issues in a holistic fashion, in what I call the Softer Side of Sustainability.

This approach involves creating a sense of place, identity and belonging, in order to develop sustainable communities and - I hope - improve the environment.

Living landscape

We seem to have forgotten that sustainability itself is a cultural notion, and that a building or a place must have value to people if it is to be used sustainably.

It is therefore vital that landscape architects assert this both in our advocacy and in our actual work; for so long as we trail behind the architects by topping their buildings with green roofs, we are simply fiddling while Rome burns.

The landscape is the canvas upon which we live our lives, join together as communities and build our cities.

Embedded and integral to the landscape are the ecological systems that must be understood and respected, as well as the infrastructural systems connecting us all together.

I am not simply referring to gardens and majestic wildernesses; in fact, the most sustainable form of human habitation is the city.

This is where we collectively need focus our activities, and this is also where landscape architects can be of real use.

Encouraging people to live side by side more closely will help the local ecology to flourish, because the community can utilise superior water stations and sewage treatment plants, as well as improving electricity consumption patterns.

Cities also inspire a collectivisation of wealth, allowing local governments to better build and equip schools, libraries, and performing arts buildings.

So the reward of collectivisation can be true sustainability. City inhabitants, from a variety of backgrounds, can be quickly made aware of environmentally friendly ways to live.

This, in turn, can result in people influencing one another as they incorporate progressive lifestyle changes into the fabric of their diverse daily lives.

Landscape architects ought to help to make cities better places for all who live within them through the establishment of good connectivity and open spaces, the promotion of public transportation and, very importantly, ensuring water is used responsibly, with run-off being managed and put back into the ground.

In addition, landscape architects ought to ensure developers plant as much as possible so that we have an abundance of trees and permeable surfaces.

Careful and inspired design can make all the difference between a place that is viewed as no real significance to anyone, and a place that attracts people, creates vitality, and is cherished by its inhabitants.

The design of Exchange Square in Manchester, UK, is a good example of how careful attention to a community's history and a site's geology can foster the sort of intellectual and emotional investment in a place that leads to real sustainability.

Exchange Square is a wonderful outdoor living room created from a space that was formerly an ignored and ugly traffic intersection, bombed by the IRA in 1996.

The revamped square is now hugely successful; a vibrant and well-used space for everything from watching soap operas during the lunch hour to greeting the Queen.

10-minute rule

Currently, some urban authorities, such as New York, fall short of implementing the issues around the Softer Side of Sustainability, but they are heading in the right direction.

For example, PLAN NYC, the sustainability agenda for the eastern US concrete jungle, includes a proposal to ensure that all New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of a park.

But this reference to parks is the only mention of the landscape in the NYC sustainability agenda.

PLAN NYC is certainly a marvellous commitment to improving the lives of citizens by giving them access to fresh, green, open spaces. But it does not push the envelope quite far enough.

It does not advocate the vital commitment to landscapes that reflects the most forward visual thinking, through dynamic, inspirational design, and structured attentiveness to community histories.

The role of landscape architecture is once again one of green embellishment, adding parks here and there, rather than sustainability agenda-setting through thought-provoking design.

Although NYC embraces its image as the centre of the global contemporary art scene, it has supported neither adventurous architecture nor landscape architecture.

For the best examples of this, we have to look to areas like Germany's Duisberg Nord Parc in the Ruhr Valley, or the beautiful green spaces of the Park Andre Citroen in Paris.

So how are we to implement The Softer Side of Sustainability?

First, we should incorporate the expertise of landscape architects into the planning process leading up to the establishment of sustainability agendas such as PLAN NYC.

This planning process should include measures to encourage compaction of the urban landscape, along with more efficient public transportation.

Secondly, we should increase sustainability education for students of landscape architecture, architecture, and urban development.

Finally, American builders should learn from the design overviews used in much European urban planning, but extend their minds to reflect the sophistication of landscape thinking.

Three straightforward steps, but they are key to deciding whether cities can develop effectively for the 21st Century, or remain mired in yesterday's thinking."

Martha Schwartz is a US-based landscape architect specialising in master plans, art commissions, urban renewal, reclamation and redevelopmen.

Fonte:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7372184.stm

Imagem: http://www.marthaschwartz.com/projects/corporate_barclays.php#

Seminário - A METRÓPOLE, FÁBRICA SOCIAL

Seminário para debater a cidade
Teatro Maria Matos, sempre às 18h30
Entrada livre
Organização do Teatro Maria Matos e da UNIPOP

Programa
28 SET Para que Servem as “Cidades Criativas”?
Debate com Pedro Costa e João Pedro Nunes

29 SET Da Cidade dos Criadores à Metrópole dos Produtores
Debate com Tiago Baptista, Luís Vasconcelos e Renato Carmo

30 SET O Governo Metropolitano
Debate com Susana Durão, João Seixas e Tiago Saraiva

1 OUT As Lutas Metropolitanas
Debate com Chullage, João Branco e Eugénia Margarida


"A cidade constitui-se metrópole a partir do momento em que uma série de equipamentos e edifícios ligados em rede transformam cada via de acesso num fluxo produtivo. Uma teia de ligações, configurada por sistemas de transportes públicos, pontes e vias rápidas, redes sem fios e circuitos de video vigilância, é diariamente activada pela circulação dos habitantes da metrópole, os quais percorrem os escritórios, as fábricas, as salas de espectáculo, as lojas, as escolas, os hospitais, os jardins e os centros comerciais em que se produz e reproduz a vida social. A metrópole assemelha-se então a uma fábrica social, lugar de mobilização cooperativa da força de trabalho, onde se encontram as matérias-primas, circulam as mercadorias e onde se pratica o consumo, alimentando os circuitos de uma economia global.

Esta natureza produtora da metrópole encontra eco em alguns debates. Quando governantes e urbanistas invocam a imagem da “cidade criativa”, em parte reconhecem a natureza produtora da vida espiritual metropolitana. E quando nos falam acerca da necessidade de criação de uma imagem de “marca” para uma cidade, de algum modo repetem o gesto empresarial de criação do logótipo, símbolo que se inscreve no produto e cuja compra permite consumir um certo estilo de vida. Entretanto, a metrópole enquanto fábrica social extravasa largamente o que pode ser contido por aquelas formulações. Veja-se o caso da “cidade criativa”, fórmula que tende a reduzir a produção metropolitana a uma dimensão elitista, reduzindo a metrópole dos produtores – que liga margem sul e margem norte, que engloba centros e periferias, que articula indústria, serviços e comércio – a uma pequena e mui nobre cidade de criadores, de acesso restrito a alguns grupos profissionais de índole artística, uma cidade preferencialmente localizada em novos bairros de charme que emergem no interior dos velhos bairros populares dos centros históricos.

A contra-corrente desta concepção emergente que transforma a fábrica metropolitana em cidade criativa, a primeira sessão deste seminário de quatro dias começará por debater o conceito de “cidade criativa”. Contando, para este efeito, com a participação de investigadores das ciências sociais que se têm dedicado aos estudos urbanos, perguntamos para que servem as “cidades criativas”?

No segundo dia, com a ajuda de quem trabalha a metrópole em planos tão diversos como as políticas de transporte e as representações cinematográficas, transitamos da cidade dos criadores à metrópole dos produtores.

Esta passagem permitirá que no terceiro dia analisemos o governo metropolitano, debruçando-nos nomeadamente sobre a sua implicação no trabalho de arquitectos e urbanistas chamados a debate. O seu traço livre constitui muitas vezes a face mais visível de práticas e discursos de «renovação urbana» apontados à requalificação de zonas degradadas e à valorização do espaço público, mas a arte e engenho de arquitectos e urbanistas também participa, de forma menos evidente, de estratégias dirigidas à administração de pessoas e bens.

Finalmente, no quarto dia, focaremos os conflitos que ocorrem na metrópole e que são habitualmente tratados de forma despolitizada e avulsa (as chamadas “questões locais”) ou enquanto questões do foro criminal (a invenção dos “bairros perigosos”). Neste debate em torno das lutas metropolitanas, à procura de velhas e novas ligações entre antagonismos diversos, contaremos com a participação de activistas envolvidos nas lutas pelos transportes públicos, membros de comissões de moradores, dinamizadores de associações culturais, etc.


Breve apresentação dos participantes:
João Pedro Nunes é Investigador no Centro de Investigação e Estudos em Sociologia (ISCTE) e lecciona sociologia urbana no departamento de Sociologia da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais, onde se formou e completou o doutoramento. Tem investigado o desenvolvimento urbano da periferia de Lisboa nas últimas décadas.

Pedro Costa é economista, formado no ISEG, e professor no Departamento de Economia do ISCTE. Tem trabalhado sobre questões do planeamento urbano e do desenvolvimento regional e local.

Luís Vasconcelos, antropólogo, tem levado a cabo investigação no campo das festas de música electrónica, com base no projecto de doutoramento intitulado Percepção e Modernidade. Alucinogénios no Portugal Contemporâneo. É investigador no Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS).

Tiago Baptista, historiador, tem diversos trabalhos sobre a história do cinema em Portugal. Trabalha como conservador do Arquivo Nacional das Imagens em Movimento (ANIM) da Cinemateca Nacional - Museu do Cinema.

Renato Carmo é Investigador no Centro de Investigação e Estudos em Sociologia (ISCTE). Doutorou-se pelo ICS em Ciências Sociais com uma tese sobre os processos de urbanização dos meios rurais. Tem dedicado os seus estudos a temas como a desigualdade social e a marginalização territorial.

Tiago Saraiva é Investigador Auxiliar do Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS) da Universidade de Lisboa. Doutorou-se pela Universidade Autónoma de Madrid em 2004 com uma tese em história das ciências sobre o papel dos laboratórios na construção da cidade moderna. Publicou recentemente, em co-autoria, Cidade & Cidadania (Lisboa, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2008).

João Seixas é Investigador Auxiliar do ICS. Doutorado em Geografia Urbana pela Universidade Autónoma de Barcelona e em Sociologia do Território e do Ambiente pelo ISCTE, tem desenvolvido as suas investigações em torno das dinâmicas contemporâneas de governação urbana, bem como das lógicas e perspectivas do desenvolvimento sócio-cultural das cidades.

Susana Durão é Investigadora Auxiliar do ICS. Doutorada em Antropologia pelo ISCTE (2006), tem desenvolvido pesquisa na área do policiamento, patrulha e proximidade em Portugal, tendo particular atenção ao trabalho desenvolvido pela Polícia de Segurança Pública.

Eugénia Margarida é membro da comissão de moradores do Bairro das Amendoeiras, em Chelas. Associação que em 2005 e 2006, desenvolveu uma interessante mobilização contra o aumento de rendas imposto pela Fundação D. Pedro IV e pela defesa do direito à habitação condigna.

João Branco é membro do grupo Massa Crítica. Com origem em São Francisco (EUA) e realizado actualmente em mais de 350 cidades de todo o mundo, a Massa Crítica propõe um passeio no meio da cidade feito em transportes não poluentes, encorajando assim outras formas de mobilidade urbana.

Chullage é músico de intervenção e membro da Khapaz, associação sediada na Arrentela e pólo dinamizador da cultura local e da participação cívica. Tanto a sua música, como a sua intervenção política reflectem os problemas sociais existentes nas periferias das grandes metrópoles: a pobreza, o desemprego e precariedade laboral, a criminalidade e a violência policial."

Transportes
Metro: Roma
Comboio: Areeiro
Autocarros: 7/35/40/56/708/722/727/767

Fonte:
http://u-ni-pop.blogspot.com/2009/07/metropole-fabrica-social.html

A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City, por David Byrne

The author in Budapest.

"A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City
Osaka's robot-run parking lots mixed with the Minneapolis lakefront; a musician's fantasy metropolis
By DAVID BYRNE

There’s an old joke that you know you're in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it's the other way around you're in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I'd take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney's with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it's not really possible to cherry pick like this—mainly because a city's qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place's cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.

As someone who has used a bicycle to get around New York for about 30 years I've watched the city—mainly Manhattan, where I live—change for better and for worse. During this time I started to take a full-size folding bike with me when I traveled so I got to experience other cities as a cyclist as well. Seeing cities from on top of a bike is both pleasurable and instructive. On a bike one sees a lot more than from a freeway, and often it's just as fast as car traffic in many towns.

A "livable city" means vastly different things for many people. In Hong Kong it might mean that your family is in a comfortable apartment while you play in the exciting mercantile world in a glass tower overlooking the harbor. In Dallas livability might mean that you live near an expressway that isn't jammed up, at least not all the time, and your car runs most days. For some it might mean super fast Wi-Fi, the possibility of lucky and lucrative business opportunities and plenty of strip clubs. If that's what rocks your boat then try Houston, though to me that city, oil money made physically manifest, is my worst nightmare.

Here are some things that make a city livable for me:
Size
A city can't be too small. Size guarantees anonymity—if you make an embarrassing mistake in a large city, and it's not on the cover of the Post, you can probably try again. The generous attitude towards failure that big cities afford is invaluable—it's how things get created. In a small town everyone knows about your failures, so you are more careful about what you might attempt. Every time I visit San Francisco I ask out loud "Why don't I live here? Why do I choose to live in a place that is harder, tougher and, well, not as beautiful?" The locals often reply, "You don't want to live here. It looks like a city, but it's really a small village. Everyone knows what you're doing" Oh, OK. If you say so. It's still beautiful.

Density
If a city doesn't have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It's human nature for us to look at one another— we're social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.

Sensibility and attitude
New Yorkers are viewed as being tough as nails, no-nonsense but with hearts of gold—or maybe just gold-plated. This might not be the sensibility I would choose if I had a choice. The people of Glasgow, where most of my relatives live, are working class, blunt and free of pretenses. (They see their sister city Edinburgh as putting on airs). Their sense of humor can be scathing, though I find it hilarious. There's a wicked sense of humor associated with Berlin as well—Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder and Helmut Newton all shared this dark and sometimes transgressive sensibility. New Orleans is a city where people make eye contact. There's a more open sensuality there as well. I'd take that in my perfect city, minus some of the other aspects of that town, such as its tragic poverty, corruption, and crime.

Security
Travelers return from Japan with tales of someone having left their phone or bag on the subway or even on the street and then returning to find the phone or bag exactly where they left it, sometimes the next day. I'd like to live in a city where the citizens trust one another that much- though I suspect that's the result of Japan being a more or less homogenized society, which has its drawbacks as well. But security can exist in the West. For example in parts of New York's West Village, as author Jane Jacobs pointed out, the streets are rarely abandoned and there are almost always some locals hanging out, so everyone sees a little bit of what's going on. The community has eyes and ears, and everyone behaves accordingly. In my perfect city I'd feel that sense of neighborliness—that people weren't in my business, but that I would be a familiar sight, as they would be to me.

Chaos and danger
To some, security means rigid order and strict rules. I do believe we do need some laws and rules to guide and reign us in a bit, and I don't just mean traffic lights and pooper scooper mandates. But there's a certain attractiveness to New Orleans, Mexico City or Naples—where you get the sense that though some order exists, it's an order of a fluid and flexible nature. Sometimes too flexible, but a little bit of that sense of excitement and possibility is something I'd wish for in a city. A little touch of chaos and danger makes a city sexy.

Human scale
Scale is important. In London people hang out in Soho, Covent Garden, Mayfair and other areas of mostly low buildings packed closely together. The City (their financial district), like the downtown in many American cities, is full of tall offices and it empties out at night. It isn't that bustling in the daytime either. Some sort of compromise might be more ideal—the tall towers mixed in with the modest-sized shops and restaurants.

Parking
To be honest, available parking doesn't matter to me. Parking lots and structures are dead real estate—they bring no life into a city and I'd be happy if there were a lot fewer of them in New York. It would be a pain in the neck for a lot of drivers, but unless they can be hidden underground, as they are often in Japan, lots and parking structures are simply dead zones, which hurt the businesses around them. In Japan parking structures are skinny, no wider than a large car, and a robotic system files the cars away. The Italian cities of Florence, Modena, Ferrara, where parking is pretty much relegated to the fringes of the town, are vibrant, though their appeal to pedestrians has turned some of them into tourist hubs.

Boulevards
If boulevards aren't too wide, like 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, they can serve to break the monotonous pattern of streets and blocks, let sunlight in, and function as a landmark (so you know where you are). And if they are lined with trees and beautiful buildings of different types, they can even be pleasant. Park Avenue, Manhattan's widest boulevard, doesn't cut it. The green in the middle is lovely but inaccessible, and the endless sameness of giant apartment or office buildings with little else to break the rhythm inspires the eye and mind to glaze over. Berlin has some great boulevards. Karl Marx Allee, a massive boulevard in former East Germany, has outdoor cafes, wide sidewalks and weird Soviet era fountains and movie theaters. It threatens to go beyond a comfortable scale, but the business in the little shops along the street helps hold that in check.

Mixed use
This is a Jane Jacobs phrase. A perfect city is where different things are going on, relatively close to each other, at different times of the day. A city isn't a strip of hotels and restaurants on a glorious beach; it's a place where there are restaurants and hotels, but also little stores, fashion boutiques, schools, houses, offices, temples and banks. The healthy neighborhood doesn't empty out at 6 p.m., as most of downtown L.A. does. In my perfect city there would always be something going on nearby.

Public spaces
In my perfect city there are ample public spaces—parks (not just vacant land, but common areas that people pass through and use), plazas (not just slabs in front of corporate towers) and, if possible, public access to the waterfront (if there is one). We don't necessarily need massive acreage in our parks. Bigger is not always better, but we do need periodic breaks from buildings. Industry abandoned the waterfronts over previous decades, and as the docks and the industry that went with them moved elsewhere our cities have begun to reclaim these areas—river walks (look how many people use Manhattan's Hudson River paths!), lakefronts (the beautiful Minneapolis lakefront paths eventually lead all the way to the Mississippi!), beaches and seashores. In some seaside towns there is no public access to the sea, which to me seems a self-injuring situation. In my perfect city there would be public access to all these areas.

The perfect city isn't static. It's evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they're not what they once were. My perfect city isn't fixed, it doesn't actually exist, and I like it that way.


—David Byrne is a musician and founding member of the band Talking Heads. His book "Bicycle Diaries" will be published by Viking next week."

Fonte e imagem:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574403293064136098.html#video=CC7135BE-7B21-4EAE-8761-A7E1B0571FA1&articleTabs=article

Jaime Lerner, Palestra para TED

About this talk
Jaime Lerner reinvented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way, he changed the way city planners worldwide see what’s possible in the metropolitan landscape.


About Jaime Lerner
From building opera houses with wire to mapping the connection between the automobile and your mother-in-law, Jaime Lerner delights in discovering eccentric solutions to vexing urban problems.…


Why you should listen to him:
For many city governments seeking visible improvements in their congested streets, the pace of change is measured in months and years. For Jaime Lerner, it's measured in hours. As mayor of Curitiba, he transformed a gridlocked commercial artery into a spacious pedestrian mall over a long weekend, before skeptical merchants had time to finish reading their Monday papers.

Since then he's become a hero not only to his fellow Brazilians, but also to the growing ranks of municipal planners seeking greener, more sustainable cities. His dictum that "creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget" has inspired a number of his unique solutions to urban problems, including sheltered boarding tubes to improve speed of bus transit; a garbage-for-food program allowing Curitibans to exchange bags of trash for bags of groceries; and trimming parkland grasses with herds of sheep.

In addition to serving three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Lerner has twice been elected governor of Parana State in Brazil. His revolutionary career in urban planning and architecture has not only improved cities worldwide, but has also brought him international renown. Among his many awards are the United Nations Environmental Award (1990), the Child and Peace Award from UNICEF (1996), and the 2001 World Technology Award for Transportation.

"Lerner is a longtime proponent of what might be called "blitz urbanism": the rapid, workable improvement that does an end run on bureaucrats and doubters"
Justin Davidson, Newsday

Página do Arq. Jaime Lerner:
http://www.jaimelerner.com/principal/index.asp

Fonte:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/213
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/jaime_lerner.html