Infomatics Presentation

Presentation to QUT Infomatics Research Lab (Creative Industries) having been invited by Marcus Foth to present to his PHD students. Some great feedback and advice from them. Their focus seems to be on the interfaces and technologies, but they were interested in the Social Enterprise aspect and how this could be implemented in public spaces.

Some of the PHD candidates came back to me with useful information on Interactive Urban Screens, projects that had been successful and unsuccessful.

http://www.urbaninformatics.net/projects/swarm/dis/

Abuja, Nigeria.

Abuja

Abuja is a city that was conceived with lofty ambitions. Following Nigeria's independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, the young nation experienced a vast increase in wealth resulting from its oil reserves. Its capital at the time, Lagos, was considered overly congested and difficult to manage, as well as contentious given its coastal location far from the interior of the country. In an effort to choose a location that would be deemed neutral to the many ethnic and religious groups comprising Nigeria, a site in the centre of the nation was made into the new federal territory in 1976. A design competition for the city's master plan was held, and was won by a planning/architecture consortium from the United States.

The plan they published in 1979 has many familiar themes. There is an orientation toward landscape, with the central spine of the city pointed toward Aso Rock. There are Baroque diagonals; in this case converging upon a public square and not an institution of government power. As Lawrence J. Vale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues, "Capital city urban design is the last refuge of grand axial planning..." (Gordon). Additionally, with precedents like Brasilia, Abuja also inherited some more Modernist principles such as emphasis on unimpeded traffic through elaborate roadway design and green spaces that result in wide breaks in the cityscape.

However, the plan has not had an opportunity to be fully realized. Certain government functions were moved to Abuja much too quickly, before enough infrastructure and plans for housing had been completed. This set into motion a housing crisis that continues to this day in the fast growing city. Ostensibly a democratic nation, Nigeria faced inconsistent governance for decades as succession after succession of military overthrows occurred. In 1991, Abuja was officially proclaimed the capital, and an election in 1999 ushered in a new era of relative stability. The damage had already been done to the symbolic heart of government, where the three arms (patterned after the United States) of governance were barricaded and otherwise cut off from the people, resulting in a difficult to access site. The grand diagonals also, to date, have not been built.

image source: http://www.wrtdesign.com/projects/detail/Abuja-Capital-Master-Plan/13

More pressing are the housing needs. Once more, we have a planned city that has not been able to meet the needs of a growing population. The city center is under-developed, yet expensive, and people with lower incomes are forced into dense neighborhoods surrounding the capital's core or in cities outside of Abuja. A plot of land legally obtained one day becomes illegal the next, when government officials decide they will adhere to the master plan after all. These housing needs are not unique to Abuja or Nigeria, as they are problems the developing world (and some of the developed world) face chronically. They do cast the effectiveness of idealized city plans into question, however, in the face of the challenges the developing world faces.

image source: http://www.wrtdesign.com/projects/detail/Abuja-Capital-Master-Plan/13

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

Brasilia, Brazil.

Brasilia

Brasília is situated well into the interior of Brazil, a nation where the vast majority of the population resides near the Atlantic coast. The desire for an interior capital reaches back to the 17th century, the earliest days of the former Portuguese colony, but would only reach fruition in the mid 20th century. Reasoning for an interior capital included providing a catalyst for development away from coastal population centers and safeguarding government offices from the potential of a coastal attack in the event of war. After Brazil won its independence in 1822, the idea of an interior capital gained momentum when it was mandated in the Constitution that such a city would be built.

By 1892, a general location for the federal district had been chosen. However, it would take until the 1950s for significant efforts to be made to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro. The mid 20th century was an era marked by the "developmentalist" movement in Latin America, which held that development directed by the state would be the primary method by which to increase economic growth in under-developed nations (Holston). Building a new capital was not only a way to direct development into the interior, but to provide an economic and development example for the entire nation to follow.

Final site selection occurred in 1954, with Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer named as director of architecture. The design of the city itself was authored by Lucio Costa, another Brazilian architect whose plan won in a 1956 competition. Both architects' design aesthetic were based on Modernism, and both had worked with Le Corbusier, who is well known for his Modernist designs and urban planning theories. The resulting design has been called the "most complete example ever constructed of the architectural and planning tenets" of CIAM, the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Holston), and the "quintessential experiment in high Modernist capital city design" (Gordon). The plan centers on two primary axes with segregated land uses defining each axis. Echoes of monumental vistas apparent in earlier capital designs are present, but interpreted through the Modernist sensibilities of the time.

Brasilia Pilot Plan by Lucio Costa, 1960. Retrieved from the Center for Research and Documentation on the Contemporary History of Brazil (CPDOC).

The core city is marked by its expansive green space and devotion of acreage to automobile traffic. Costa originally conceived of a city unencumbered by traffic signals; with limited access expressways providing rapid transportation to all destinations. Unlike the Le Corbusier example of tall skyscrapers surrounded by open space, Costa designed the city at relatively low densities, advocating superblocks of buildings generally no higher than six stories. Egalitarian ideals were suggested with conformity of design among the residential structures, no matter the social class.

However, like the planned capital cities preceding it, planning ideals faced challenges when the federal district attracted high rates of population growth. The core city became an underdeveloped and expensive area, while dense, lower income satellite towns surrounded it, growing in a more organic, haphazard manner.

The intentions behind the plan for Brasilia have been called utopian, but the end result has been the implementation of a core city that adheres strongly to the principles of the era in which it was conceived, and a mostly unplanned expanse of urbanization around it. In response, the design has been revisited and regional planning has been introduced in an attempt to connect what has become a segregated core city to the remainder of the metropolitan area.

Aerial of Brasilia, Brazil. While the city is at full build-out, areas immediately adjacent remain under-developed. In the meantime, unplanned satellite cities surround Brasilia with higher density and lower income homes. Retrieved from Google Maps.

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

New Delhi, India.

New Delhi

New Delhi differs from the other cities presented in this exhibit in that the capital city was not founded by an independent nation. Rather, the city was built by the British, who desired a capital more centrally located in their vast Indian Empire holdings, as civil unrest in the empire made the existing government center in Calcutta appear inadequate. Still, the site chosen, adjacent to centuries-old Delhi, had precedent as a place of Indian royalty. Further, the region had also been the seat of former Muslim dynasties, so there was potential for gaining the favor of a variety groups by choosing this location.

In 1911, the capital relocation was formally announced, and British architect Edwin Lutyens was given the planning position. By his side was architect Herbert Baker. Together, they designed a plan not far removed from Versailles and Washington, DC, with numerous diagonals and wide avenues connecting important sites.The viceroy's palace was placed at the focal point of the plan, which was a purposeful reinforcement of the colonizing power. In fact, there are sources that claim it is the largest residence for a head of state in the world.

The plan for New Delhi, India, as designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. Retrieved from Cornell University Library

Construction of the capital city's structures and infrastructure began almost immediately after the plan was announced. In 1931, the city was inaugurated. Scarcely 16 years later, India became an independent nation, and the viceroy's palace now became a new symbol for a democratically elected president.

The people of India removed most monuments and statues devoted to their previous British rulers and reappropriated the capital city as their own. Perhaps this transition was made easier because the architecture of the most significant buildings, the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the former viceroy's palace) and the Secretariat (home to high level government offices) merged neoclassical elements with distinct Indian architectural motifs. These include the chhajja, a roof overhang; jaalis, latticed screen or stone; and chhatris, which are open air domed pavilions. The shape of the central domes in the buildings, too, combine western and Indian architectural styles.

New Delhi is unique amongst the capital cities exhibited here in that it was sited adjacent to a large existing city. Originally, plans were made to extend a grand axis north into the old city, to establish connections between old and new. However, this was never implemented.

Other facets of the design have presented issues in the city and fast-growing surrounding metropolitan area. From the beginning, social stratification was built into the plan, with higher class residences built in the center of the city, and progressively lower class residences fanning outward. Borrowing heavily from the Garden City movement, density was extremely low, and, with few exceptions, these densities have remain enforced to this day. Given the extreme growth outside of the the core city, this has led New Delhi to "[remain] almost a sleepy suburb right at the core of a large and growing metropolitan area bustling at its fringes." (Gordon).

Consequently, this has led to significant pressure to redevelop and increase density in the center of the city. Opposing this have been preservationists that seek to safeguard the unique design and character of New Delhi.

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

Washington, DC.

Washington.

Written into the Constitution of the United States (1787) was the authority to establish a federal district for the new nation. New York City had most recently been serving as the capital, with other large cities interested in procuring the role. The fairest solution appeared to be establishing a new federal district and city so that no single state or city would have to be favoured over another.

A predicament arose regarding where to place the capital in a nation already showing sharp divisions between north and south. Southern states had mostly paid off their debt accumulated during the Revolutionary War, while northern states had not. The northern states were interested in the new federal government assuming their remaining debt, which the south opposed. A compromise was reached when the south agreed to have the federal government assume the northern states' debt in return for a federal district located further south.

In the end, the specific site was chosen by George Washington, the nation's first president, and land was ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia for the new federal district in 1791. The same year, Washington appointed Pierre Charles L'Enfant as the designer of the new city. L'Enfant was a French-born architect, and had fought in the Revolutionary War.

L'Enfant's design carried forward the Baroque patterns found at Versaille and St. Petersburg, only on a far larger scale. All of the key elements of Baroque planning were integrated here: Monumental axes, attention to terrain and vistas and generous space allowed for streets and green space. Although Baroque design was conceived within the realms of monarchs and autocrats, it was readily appropriated to celebrate and highlight the visibility of democratic institutions. http://www.museumofthecity.org

While L'Enfant's plan provided the framework for Washington, there was no strong hand dictating how growth should occur within the city. Thus, development was haphazard and unorganized. This became a point of contention with L'Enfant, who was dismissed from his post shortly after the city had been established. Replacing him was Andrew Ellicott, a surveyor who had worked alongside L'Enfant. For all intents and purposes, adherence to L'Enfant's street plan continued under Ellicott's direction.

L'Enfant's plan of Washington, DC. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Other cities presented in this exhibit had strong guidance over the character of the buildings within the core, with little to no regulation over construction in rapidly expanding metropolitan areas around them. Washington's case was different. The plan was spacious enough to account for population growth within its boundaries for several decades. However, little control was taken to guide the aesthetics and character of the growth. This led to Charles Dickens' observing in 1842, that the city contained "spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets a mile long that only want houses, roads and inhabitants; public buildings that need only a public to be complete, and ornaments of great thoroughfares that need only great thoroughfares to ornament." (Mumford).

By the turn of the 20th century, many parts of the plan had yet to be implemented. Due to a new interest in city planning engendered by the City Beautiful movement, there was momentum for revisiting and reimagining the monumental core of the city. Under a 1902 plan named for Senator James McMillan, who was chair of the Senate Committee for the District of Columbia (the name of the federal district), emphasis was placed on the Mall, a linear green space. This led to razing of lower quality structures built in the area, to be replaced with monumental architecture in the mold of City Beautiful.

The McMillan Plan for Washington, DC. Drawing from the City Beautiful movement, the plan emphasized development along the National Mall.

Aerial photograph of Washington, DC. 

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

WBG: An 'Accidental' Australian

Australia, and visions of it's future capital, Canberra, entered Walter Burly Griffin's thinking at least a decade before he would ever step foot on it's shores. News of the Federation movement coalescing in the distant antipodes captured his attention in 1896, while he was still a student at the University of Illinois, at Urbana - Champaign (1895-99). Convinced that a new capital city was an inevitable necessity, Griffin, his father recollected 'then decided to build it'. About five years later, on 2 January 1901, the Chicago Tribune reported that a 'new era in Australia' had begun with the inauguration of the Commonwealth. With Federation the likely catalyst, and in anticipation of a design competition, the recently graduated (1899) designer began an earnest interest and study of town planning.

Remarkably, as envisaged, a competition for the new federal capital was finally announced in 1911.

by Christopher Vernon: published in 'The Griffin's in Australia and India'

http://intrinsecoyespectorante.blogspot.com/2011/03/arquitectos-que-cambiaron-el-mundo.html