TedX talks: Jeff speck, The Walkable City

Jeff speck

Img: http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JeffSpeck_2013Z-embed.jpg

   Jeff speck is a city planner, urban designer, former art advocate, trained in architecture and art history. He talks about how America can be economically resilient, healthier and more environmentally sustainable. He states that the worst idea America and other places are facing is urban sprawl, which is the creation of landscape centred around automobiles.

   He plans to make cities more walkable. He states 3 arguments he learnt from economists, firstly arguing that Americans in the 1970s sent 1/10th of their income on transportation, but that has increased to 1/5th of their income going to transportation, causing them to spend slightly more on transport than on housing.

   The second argument is about health. Back in the 1970s, 1 in 10 American was obese and now 1 in 3 are obese. The second third of the population are overweight, 25% of young men and 40% of young women are too heavy to enlist in the military forces and according to the centre for disease control, 1/3 of children born after 2000, will get diabetes, causing them to have shorter lives. Inactivity, born from our landscape which removes the need to walk, increases the weight of people.

   The last argument is about the most dangerous term of driving, car crashes. Cities designed around cars are more likely to have car crashes. Finally, the abundance of cars affect our environment and states that we are being green in a wrong way.

   He ends with saying, no matter how much energy saving products we use, it can never measure to the amount of energy saved from a walkable city, whereby the reduction of cars and the increment of walking will benefit human health and the environment.

   

TedX talks: Steve Howard, Let's go all in on selling sustainability.

  

Img: http://images.ted.com/images/ted/73e86ef01b59f40cb31e946940480962c39a5c7c_254x191.jpg

 

      Steve has worked on sustainability for about 25 years in total. He wanted to maximise his personal impact on the world, and thus joining Ikea. He starts by mentioning 3 numbers.

 

These 3 numbers are 3, 6 and 12.

 

3 for 3 billion people joining the middle class by 2030, coming out of poverty. In addition to the already existing 2 billion, it adds up to a total of 5 billion people, making it a big challenge due to the already scarce resources we have now.

 

6 for 6 degrees centigrade. This is where we are heading for global warming. This will cause a lot of environmental changes and impacts.

 

12, for the number of cities that had 1 million people in the last century. Currently, there are over 500 cities with a million or more people.

 

   Today we have choices, stating that we can and should make beautiful, functional, affordable and sustainable products. For example, lighting such as LED lights produce light and emit little heat compared to incandescent lights that emit heat and little light. These LED lights save energy and can last much longer.

 

   He states that a 100% target in sustainability is easier, as it is much clearer. He ends with saying, measure what you care about and lead the change and that sustainability has lead from nice to do, to must do.



TEDX talk: The promise of bicycle urbanism, Florian Lorenz TEDxVienna

   This talk is about using bicycle urbanism to create future cities. People use bicycles to adapt to cities and not use bicycles to create cities. He talks about his project, Bicycle 2.0, which is building a city with and for the bicycle.

   He went to Beijing and realised that the culture of travelling around using bicycles was dying. He started to work with SCC on a research that documents Beijing's urban lives around bicycles, as it was eroding away at a fast pace. In Beijing, there are many functions happening via bicycles, so it is a very important lifestyle there. These functions range from mobile kitchens to even dentists.

   Cities especially face 3 major challenges. The challenges are;
- Mobilising a growing population with the limited space
- Adapting transport systems at such a high demand
- Reducing footprint of urban mobility systems.

   Florian has suggested 3 proposals to Vienna for bicycle urbanism. The 3 proposals are;
- Scale from urban planning:
To create zones for democratic flow in Vienna. It is where traffic regulations are removed, making people feel uncertain. Therefore, every traffic participant is equal. This will lead to an inclusion of traffic participants.

- Community building
To introduce bicycle livelihoods. He is part of a project that is working on pedal powered incubators. There are 2 types of incubators, ne is a creative cultural incubator, fitted to provide capacity for media production. The 2nd type is the gardening incubator, providing storage for tools and also a vehicle to transport goods.

- Urban visioning
Promoting creative capital for urban cycling. He worked on a programme, cycling visionary awards, to create new ideas and make them visible to the global cycling community.

   He believes that the bicycle is a catalyst for urbanisation. The efficiency simplicity of the bicycle brings people together.

Creative adaptation in the urban landscape Jerry Van Eyck TEDXSacamento

   

img: http://www.villapalladio.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Jerry_van_Eyck_Las_Vegas.jpg

 

   Jerry is a landscape architect that moved to America. When he arrived in America, the economy had crashed and affected projects he was working on as well as the firm he was working for. He looked back and realised that he was sick of his routine, a traditional way of working. He felt democratic instead of a creative professional, and that his work could be better.

 

    He started a new practice in urban design and landscape architecture in New York. He wanted to gather a group of young talents of various disciplines, a diverse collaborated team. To create designs that addresses the unique and inherent qualities of a site. Jerry realised that he had to approach projects with a different attitude. He had to start from scratch and relate to the local context.

 

 

   He ends by saying that he thinks that we should and we could create designs in relation to the place, by syncing our creative frequency with the site, thus bringing out the soul of the place.

Singapore’s public housing story

 Liu Thai Ker

http://futurememory.sg/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/LTK.jpg

This is a lecture by Dr Liu Thai Ker, Chief Architect and later, CEO of Housing Development Board (HDB) In Singapore. He first joined HDB in 1969 and became their chief architect in 1975. He explained that HDBs planned new towns that were self-sufficient. The stages of development are;

-        Initiation

-        Consolidation

-        Refinement

-        Excellence

-        Asset building

-        “My place, My home”

   In conclusion to his lecture, he stated that HDBs not only provide shelter, but they bring about economic and social benefits. Their mission is to build home ownerships and communities.  

 

HDB flat

http://therealsingapore.com/sites/default/files/field/image/property_HDB01_1_0.gif

Urban Design Studies: Cities for people, lecture by Jan Gehl

    

Jan Gehl

img: http://gehlarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/4600939940_0538234749.jpg 

     Cities are about culture, its not about the buildings, it is about what happens when these buildings hit the footpaths in a human scale. In the coming years, our population will double. This will mean we have to build what has already been built, cities and all. That is out challenge we face today. Cities are responsible for 70 - 80% of the greenhouse gases.

     Certain cities are failing, such as Melbourne. Trends such as increasing in poverty and congestion has come into play. If their city isn't turned around, it could be a social catastrophe. Melbourne's population is aging, with family household decreasing in number as single-people household increases.

 

Image taken from the article "Motorist showing signs of confusion"

img: http://images.theage.com.au/2010/03/16/1229183/Interchange-420x0.jpg

 

 

     Jan Gehl witnessed 2 paradigm shifts in the 1960s consisting of 2 components. Firstly, it is where cities were built in other ways and secondly, the car invasion. Cheap petroleum starting to increase the abundance in cars, changing people's lives. He also stated that everything built before World War II, everything was alright, which he called, the good old days and where everything built after the WW II, everything was not alright.

 

     The good old days were another way of building cities, it is where cities were built in a continuous process, it was built through many generations via small instalments from experience passed down by previous generations. There were many traditional and heritage buildings back then. Back then, cities were all about people, whereby people could walk everywhere and use the functions the streets and squares were made for all in harmony.

 

     However, after the 1960s invasion of cars, cities were being planned to accommodate more traffic and cars. Over time, people were treated more arbitrarily. In addition, cities back then were built for small spaces and a slower paced life, where planning made cars moved at 5km/h and people could see and talk to each other, it was where everything was on a human scale. However, now cities are fast paced, where cars travel at 60km/h and space is so huge, there are no details. It is a complete opposite of cities back then. This had lead to a confusion of scale.

 

   Another important shift in the 1960s were when city expansion happened really fast. This made slow, continuous growth of city ideology where building were built one by one extinct. Jan mentioned that city planners had "The Brasilia Syndrome", where cities were planned from the sky, 5000 meters above. This placing of mega buildings has caused the confusion in scale. For example in Singapore, the small colonial houses which are of human scale, are place beside huge towering structures, which are not at all in human scale.

 

 

img: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Singapore_River_where_it_all_begins.jpg

 

 As seen, the smaller colonial houses in comparison with the large office towers.

 

 

   After 50 years and now, there is another paradigm shift. We now want lively , attractive, safe, sustainable and healthy cities.  In conclusion, it seems that it has been forgotten than form is not the most important of architecture. The most important thing is how form interacts with life in architecture.

 

     

Urban design studies: The Big Rethink

Urban site plan

img: http://imaginativeamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/uli_2008_siteplan.jpg
 

     The fundamental purpose of urban design is to provide a basic structure to guide the development of citizens. Majority of humanity is now urbanized, stemming from slums, they have evolved and some even expanded into megacities. Many new cities have dismal aggregations of sweatshop factories and densely populated residential buildings.

     There are many problems that have aroused. The most threatening of these problems are found in modernity. There have been many warnings of problems for the food supply and security in the future. I think it’s obvious that this is a major problem, food scarcity. However, with today’s technology, it can be resolved. Combining rural and modern settlements together to utilize the land for agriculture to provide food.

     Global population has been projected to reach 9 to 10 billion; however, this is population cap. It is even predicted to dwindle. As women become educated, the population in those areas has stabilized. Birth rates have even known to drop below replacement levels for some countries. Likelihood of population pressure seems to be short term. As humans evolve, we jump from wanting to conquer nature to wanting to seek symbiosis with nature instead. This is a crucial step to sustainability.

     The challenges of sustainability will further influence urban planning and its design. It has already taken effect in the advocacy for the compact city. A dense city with mixed use neighbourhoods, thus encouraging walking, lessening the need to commute and make public transport feasible. Use of planting leads to improved microclimates. This is achieved through the channeling of cool breezes and excluding gusty downdraughts.



img: http://www.calgreeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sustainability-pic.jpg

     Urban design goes deeper and further than frameworks or places and locations. It gives cues to which architecture responds to accordingly. However, many architects do not follow these subtle cues as they may follow their own visions. Thus, guidelines are set to be complied with.