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First city of the future

The Observer special features on Beijing

'I am Chinese but my life is westernised in a city in which history survives in isolated fragments, sporadic pieces of tradition ruptured by modernity. We want to preserve our traditions and promote our value systems but we don't know what either of them is. After 30 years of this explosion of power, there are no rules, no plan for this city. We are crossing the river by feeling the stones beneath our feet.'

 

 

Beijing has rebuilt itself faster than any city on earth, turning from a warren of alleys into a capital fit for a superpower. No wonder the world's top architects - from Foster to Koolhaas - have flocked to make their mark on it.  Deyan Sudjic:

"Very few architects say in public that they will not build in Beijing. The only notable dissident is Daniel Libeskind of Ground Zero fame, who has questioned the seemliness of building for an authoritarian and undemocratic regime, under which construction workers endure the most primitive of conditions, with minimal safety provisions and poor wages."

The great ecotown land grab

Glancey and Greer in The Guardian

Whatever the government says, they will need to be served by even more cars and - this being England - out-of-town supermarkets. In any case, how can a town be called "eco" when its existence requires the loss of green land and a spread of new homes away from established towns, as so many of these proposals do?

Shenzhen

Naomi Klein on growth and surveillance in a chinese city from Rolling Stone

Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples.

Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses.

...as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city.

Developers accused of pursuing gadgetry instead of saving planet

Architects and developers are ignoring the threat of climate change and failing to address concerns over sustainability, according to the government's watchdog on urban planning and design.

"There are some architects and developers who really get climate change, but most don't or choose not to. As a result we get a lot of greenwash, such as green gadgets and microtechnology stuck on to buildings, rather than a proper approach to sustainable design."

Pitfalls in paradise

Why Palm Jumeirah is struggling to live up to the hype.

Low-paid workers and villa gripes cast a cloud over 'eighth wonder of the world' in Dubai.

" ...this is no picture-book desert island. Its size is the most arresting characteristic for newcomers. An eight-lane motorway is at the Palm's trunk, and each frond is a mile long. Meanwhile, there is yet more expansion, with 40 hotels being built on the breakwater. [...] A nagging guilt for some is the quality of life of the migrant construction workers who built all this. Most are from India and Bangladesh and they travel in bus convoys from labour camps in the desert each morning. "

Church for the city

Jonathan Glancey on the the regenerated St Martin in the Fields

"Contrasts, contradictions and even conundrums are, though, parts and parcels of this extraordinary London foundation. "

27th April -18th Festival in the Fields including Sacred spaces- an exploration with Eric Parry, Philip Sheldrake and Maragaret Barker.  "What constitutes a ‘sacred space’? And how do our buildings – ancient and contemporary – help us to express the concept? Reflecting on our renewed church building, and the new complex of underground spaces, three renowned speakers help us explore the fascinating subject of ‘sacred space’ from a variety of angles – theological, architectural, cultural and sociological."

Even an atheist can marvel at this exquisite refuge for the urban poor. "St Martin's is emphatically a church, and its revival is a salutary tale of our times. It has raised its own money to beautify the city as well as to assist the homeless. We may choose to leave the faith out of it, but we can yet marvel at the mission." Simon Jenkins 2nd May

Cities are the new green

"It will not save life on Earth, but merely drive ever more people into hypermobility. "

The Housing Minister has announced a short list of locations for Brtian's eco-towns, and a period of consultation.

Simon Jenkins questions a strategy which ignores the eco-needs of existing towns and cities.

"Britain has plenty of potential eco-towns. They are called London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, to name a few. They conform to every one of Flint's declared objectives. They have an infrastructure of utilities, schools, clinics, libraries, welfare services and public transport already built. People have shown themselves ready to live, work and play in them without using cars. They are settled communities able to absorb immigration and high-density living, without tearing the bonds of local leadership. "

What legacy?

How will the claims made for the Olympic Park really play out in the lives of East Londoners?

The Olympics site is eating into east London's green spaces and few local residents will be around to benefit from the area's vast redevelopment, says Tony Lloyd-Jones.

'A new "green Olympics" site development will be of little more benefit to local residents than the current vast blue-fenced building site they will have to suffer until the Olympics is upon them, and for several years after as the legacy sites are redeveloped.'

"An unsuccessful city has closed its mind to the future."

Cities on the edge of chaos

Deyan Sudjic, co-editor of Endless City, asks if the city of the future will be a vision of hell or a force for civilised living?
"Cities are made by an extraordinary mixture of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators. They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary."

"We need more than platitudes" Jonathan Meades reviews Endless City

Row over 'street in sky' estate

The future of a significant modern housing project is under threat.

Robin Hood Gardens was completed in 1972. It was intended as an example of the "streets in the sky" concept - social housing characterised by broad aerial walkways in long concrete blocks. The estate seemed destined for demolition but has won a reprieve.

The Building Design website has begun a petition which it hopes to present to English Heritage to get the "seminal" building listed. Lord Rogers has said:

"Peter and Alison Smithson built two seminal buildings in London - the Economist Building in St James' Street and Robin Hood Gardens in Tower Hamlets - both as good, if not better, than any other modern building in Britain. Whilst the Economist Building has been maintained and upgraded, Robin Hood Gardens has been appallingly neglected…”