Urban regeneration
Adaptability
Cycles
Knowledge
Chaos
Based on the themes that we work with J, the conversations that we had in the coffee shop and the things we have write and read in the last year, several aspects have raised curiosity on me. Since I moved to Bogotá, a profound interest has grown on me on how to take care and change my city, I find myself worried about decisions that politicians make over the city, and it seems I always have a better way to resolve issues. You can call this irrational I think is love for something that I missed for a long time and now I feel part of it. F, how much of that brain extension is limited or extended according to your feelings towards that place? How much is your brain willing to explore when you find yourself in a new place? When does your brain finally feel at such a comfort level that in a way it stops exploring your surroundings and starts feeling it? Is this intuition?
Ok back to my vision, I do feel that we have in our hands several cities that can learn from each other, Bogotá could learn a lot from London the same way that Plymouth from Bogotá and so on. There is a certain topic I do want to develop in the research and is urban regeneration, cities in Europe don’t take this topic for granted since WWII, but I feel that we are fairly new in this topic and only now after realizing we are increasingly growing and no were to go we have to think on this, for the last years Bogotá has been a model for urban regeneration and a lot of projects are still to come. I believe urban regeneration link the other topics of my concern. Urban regeneration means adaptability, cycles, knowledge, chaos and now intuition.
Adaptability for the city to change, for the space to evolve, and the dweller to understand that as J says there are several other options to habit the space rather than the one that urban designers and architects dictate. Cycles to understand the city as a living organism and humans as flowing bodies traveling through paths that cannot be predicted; knowledge because is the future of our economies and chaos because I believe that is what we are and should always be part of us.
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4 comments:
I really think that the observations that F made about Plymouth are really good, they make me imagine the place as it should be. You talk about a very important thing and is the experience in the city you said that the space can become, or is an extension of the brain and I could not agree more. I try to put myself in your shoes and I realize that your point of view is very different from what I would see and think if I was there; if we put it in general terms you are a Swiss architect with a young family in a new city, the first thing that comes to my mind is Switzerland, known as one of the most developed countries of the world with some of the "best" cities of the world, everything is perfectly planned and works like a swiss watch... Some people say that the cities are so neat and organized that people get bored (this is a popular saying) now you are in plymouth which you describe as dirty and disorganized but enchanting, so you are compltely right the city is part environment part experience and maybe in our animal instict and as complex our brain is we feel good in a place were there is a bit of chaos. Some studies say that latin American countries are the happiest of all, do u think that it is because of this room for chaos?
J, makes a remarkable observation saying that in a way it seems that you do not feel home sick, but I think that this is because you have your young family with you, your life is you family and home is wethever the family is, this is why you have a great advantage over anybody trying to organize itself in a new city; and is that you can observe the city with less nostalgia. The point is that experience in a city is very
important and we as urban designers should think more about this. It makes me wonder again on how to control people reaction to a certain space or situation and how to let it flow.
urban regeneration is clearly a topic. I do not really understand what you especially want to go for. in europe this is a already a topic for a long time. how come you say it isn't? just saw a magazine today at my office that is called regeneration. the latest boom of the term regeneration was recently in connection with the descending industrial cities. see [shrinking cities project] - it is a publication project, the latest edition is a atlas laying out the changes connected to deindustrialization in western cities - J and I got one. example, manchester, ruhrpot [germany], london [thames gateway], ... so there is currently a huge debate ongoing. I think you need to be a bit more precise in where you think of plugging into this. I don't mind, just think it is a huge topic and would need to be outlined in order to go about it.
what I would be interested in about regeneration, is the transformation. there is hardly a place to start from scratch now a days. especially in europe there is no new development anymore. in the context of the sustainability debate today UD'ners can't just operate independently. there is a understanding for context, history and memory that are calling for "regeneration" rather than "tabularasa". I also believe that there is always a context and existing elements to deal with, this means urban design is always about "regeneration". but exactly this is challenging and needs a big deal of sensitivity. I look at "regeneration" in the light of the system approach. it could be acting within existing relationships and dealing with established structures in order to develop it, rather than replace.
I do see UD as an open process. UD'ners do plan and build parts of the city but it is not fixed after and for all times. it gets changed by everyday use and new developments. here and there gets a building replaced, some roadwork takes place, refurbishment and decay are always present. the urban environment is constantly changing. one could even say, alive [manifestation of its society]? this could be a context or approach for regeneration. I would almost say "regeneration" is "naturally" part of the urban process. I look at sustainability in a similar way. generally design must be contextual and respecting its environment to the best of the knowledge.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying about urban regenraton in europe, I am not saying it is not a big thing, by the contrary what I meant is that after WWII urban regeneration became a huge thing in europe, and I do think that at least in Bogota is NOT a big thing until know, so we have much to learn from european cities. You are right urban regenaration is a natural part of urban process and it could be understood as the cycle that the cities have to go through during the years, so it is a natural part of the urban growth since the begining of the first cities, but I feel that in Bogota we have reached a point were Urban regenaration is a big thing, we are growing quite fast and we have hectares of old, unplanned parts of the city that people need to look at, also we cannot just wait and assume that urban regenation should take its own natural course it needs to be planned and that is were I want to dig in. At the moment I feel that urban regeneration is the new urban design in latin America, is not creating new metropolis like is happening in asia, we do not have such infrastructure and we don´t have the area to build new cities, but we do have many jewels in our cities that need to be rediscovered. I feel we need one tangible topic to go with all our other topics we need to aproach the city like it is at least Bogota, but I do feel that we can connect this topic with adaptability, cycles, knowledge and even chaos. Maybe my idea is not still very clear and I do have to work in it, but I do feel we are getting somewere.
What I understand about regeneration from your interpretation is more about the process or a stage for a city development. Do you mean there is a stage that some major planning or 'generator' have to be applied to intervene the city development for sustainable development (economic or social development). The stage could be recession, decline or aging, but anyway, it is a stage that the city cannot rehabilitate by itself, or cannot rehabilitate quickly so that more social or economic problem will cause.
Talking regeneration as a process is interesting, but there are a lot of ways to regenerate, i.e policy, redevelopment, reuse, transport, tax, etc. – that is a big topic. After discussing with F, we think ‘generators’ could be a good focus. It is narrower and we have applied some related concepts in the Bartlett work before. What do you think, L?
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