Jan Gehl
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"
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.
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.
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