Brianne McGuirk, Architecture Construction Unit DM/FMS New York
The way people live has changed through the centuries. In ancient times, people used to visit cities for services and contribute to society by taking part in forums, markets, education, etc. Since then, the Internet has broken this necessity by providing online commerce, school, and forums. Time and space are not relevant to on-line society, and the physical world has lost an integral part of social function further separating production, consumerism, and cultural identity. Additionally, domestic and international economic policies are entangled in strategies that can only meet a nation’s interests part way. This international economic compromise is diversifying the world’s wealth and poor, thus effecting communities that may specialize in a certain trade or profession. The invisible borders of economic policy and Internet created a shift in power and stability that alters the way people live. This challenge to re-invent cities is posed by a threat of slums.
No country is immune to slums. Currently in the United States, due to the economic crisis and foreclosures, people have abandoned their homes to seek employment in the cities. Squatters move into these new “suburban shantytowns.” Ironically, the public demands new affordable housing as empty homes are on the rise. In the late nineteenth century, a book called How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Riis, a journalist and photographer, exploits the slums of New York. Slums are not designed, they happen. Slums are not homes where people live, but rather exist. And slums embrace Social Darwinism not civility. The lack of adequate shelter, food, and clean water presents a puss that can spread into the infrastructure of a city contributing to a rise in crime and a destabilizing community.
In the past thirty years, consumerism has destroyed what we have known as urban, by replacing it with the likes of McDonald’s (USA), of Nintendo (Japan), Audi (Germany), and other brands that have proliferated into the global market as soft power and ultimately have rendered cities as dull and conventional machines all over the developing world. So, the city has become generic, which creates an opportunity of identity and renewal. Urban renewal challenges preservationists and policy makers concerning economic development and human resource. In more prosperous nations, cities are changing large areas and instigating massive migration of peoples from rural to urban dreaming of the opportunities of work. The Victorian writer, Charles Dickens, called this risk of moving to the city, “speculation,” and in the nexus of the city poverty and chaos thrived.
For example, the growth in China has moved at such a high rate that new cities are designed by engineers, who create built environments by altering the natural landscape and old cityscape; and do not respond to the regional identity (landscape, material, and culture) but accommodate production and efficient existence. The most obvious example is the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River, which displaced millions of people; jeopardized a number of species; and destroyed ancient historical sites.
The concern is that the desire for sustainable development, “[M]eeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” will indeed be shortchanged by providing the absolute minimum “ability” as though everyone in the future will succumb to the limping slave of a detriment instead of aspiring to the lean Olympian-athlete of possibilities.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “All are born free and have the right to life.” If, “all are born free and have the right to life”, then communities must foster a quality of life. Are we headed for a true sustainable future with possibility for humane progress, or a systematic and bureaucratic New World Disorder? Clearly, the rise in slums and changing city structures makes the architect and the urban planner important partners for the policymaker.
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