What will become of our cities, and how will they accommodate new realities?
With the Covid-19 pandemic having emptied urban centres, these three books – Designing Disorder, Sitopia and Terra Incognita – invite readers to question why we love and loathe our cities, and whether density is our destiny
Designing Disorder by Richard Sennett and Pablo Sendra, Verso.
Richard Sennett said it 50 years ago in The Uses of Disorder and he is saying it still: our cities should be less prescriptive and more uncertain. Only then will their inhabitants be able to enjoy, and benefit from, the complexity of experiences that may evolve.
In Designing Disorder, co-written with architect/activist Pablo Sendra, the American urbanist-cum-sociologist makes the most of a second opportunity to rail at the homogenous and the predictable. Meaning he has no time for real-estate-driven urbanism, which has, he argues, blighted London and New York.
To understand how cities work, look at ‘the boring stuff’
Evocatively, he paints a picture of brittle cities, which serve closed systems and whose buildings are destroyed rather than adapted as their use changes: New York skyscrapers have an average lifespan of only 35 years. At the other end are open cities in which planning has been determined democratically by the people and their planners. Here, incompleteness is important so that architecture can be revised as necessary.
With the pandemic raising innumerable questions about our cities and their adaptability, not a few readers will thrill at the anarchical ideas of Sennett – who himself was influenced by celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs. If novelists were to reveal at the start how their stories end, you’d close the book, he says. “All good narrative has the property of exploring the unforeseen […] Likewise the urban designer’s art.”
Sitopia by Carolyn Steel, Vintage.
Although a book that centres on food, Sitopia – Greek for “food” (sitos) and “place” (topos) – contains an excellent chapter on cities and their co-dependence with the rural areas around them. That paradox has vexed urbanites since cities came into existence 5,500 years ago, writes Carolyn Steel, who points out that “countryside is in fact an urban construct, a space outside the city that exists at the latter’s behest”.
Which came first is not as important as the fact that their evolution took place in lockstep, giving rise to urban civilisation. For Plato and Aristotle, size was crucial to the success and self-sufficiency of cities – optimally 30,000 to 35,000 people. Multiply the Greek ideal by at least 10 for the kind of urban population needed to deliver high-density benefits today, Steel writes. But while cities offer connectivity, jobs, culture and proximity to markets, schools and hospitals, among other essentials, the cost of living far from nature can be high.
Steel points to the mountain community of White Horse Village, in China’s Wuxi county, which paved paradise to put up high-rises, creating winners and losers. Some of the latter – depicted in 2012 BBC documentary The Fastest Changing Place on Earth – felt so stifled in their new concrete boxes that suicide was the only way out. With 68 per cent of the world’s population expected to squeeze into cities by 2050, from 54.5 per cent now, finding a balance between city and country is vital.
Terra Incognita by Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah, Cornerstone.
Kudos is due to Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah for being nimble enough to include in Terra Incognita a map tracking the coronavirus’ evolution from November last year to June 2020. It shows an alarming clot of red along the US east coast, around which clusters throb across the globe. One of 100, the map highlights the book’s aim to demonstrate visually our impact on the world and identify the gravest challenges.
Introducing the section on urbanisation is another arresting map, which on first glance appears to show China ablaze. In fact, accumulated night light in the past 25 years illuminates the urban boom in its coastal regions. Among the country’s megacities of 10-million-plus people is Shanghai, which contributes to calculations forecasting that one in five city dwellers will be Chinese by 2030.
Exploring the double-edged character of urbanisation, the authors argue that cities are among our most successful experiments in social engineering and will be crucial to our collective survival. But the pandemic has exposed many fault lines, including the vulnerability of the elderly and the poor.
Predicted to boom in Asia and Africa, cities have also become economic powerhouses, flexing their muscles and acting without permission to tackle problems related to climate change, infectious diseases and inequality. Thankfully, statistics, in the form of hard-to-remember numbers, play a secondary role in Terra Incognita, whose maps relay complex ideas at a glance.
