Public Realm, Privatization and the Three Urbanisms

Douglas Kelbaugh-Three Urbanisms & the Public Realm What exactly is New Urbanism and what are its advantages and criticisms? New Urbanism is an urban design movement popular in America during the 1980s and models pre-World-War II-no-automobile eras. It emphasizes, walkability, connectivity, mixed-use, the public realm/ civitas, neighborhoods, place-making, pedestrian prioirity, human-scale, high density and sustainable design and has principles like TND (Traditional Neighborhood Design) and TOD (Transit Oriented Development). It takes traditional cities or polis as ideals for an design, opting for prescriptive rather than proscriptive policy. Its organizing body is Congress for New Urbanism founded in 1993. It has been criticized as a type of social engineering by applying universal principles instead of letting locations determine the design. Right-libertarians claim that New Urbanism ignores consumers preferences which are car-oriented designs. At the same time, it is criticized by not truly pushing for pedestrian design by putting as much value to motor as it does to pedestrians even going as far to say that New Urbanism is  a "grand fraud" (Alex MArshall, journalist), a repackaged suburban sprawl and that it ought to push for car-freedevelopments.   Three Urbanisms and the Public Realm Douglas Kelbaugh University of Michigan USA   Kelbaugh presents three emergent ideologies: Everyday Urbanism, New Urbanism and Post Urbanism. Extremist politics, technology and privatization challenges the public realms. Kelbaugh suggests that New Urbanism  is the most ideal for wealthy but not yet fully established American cities. While the locally-driven, decentralized nature of Everyday Urbanism fits the squatters and shanties of Developing countries and the grand, large-scale, non-contextual buildings  (often designed  by starchitects like Koolhas, Hadid, Niemeyer) may revitalize old European cities. Three schools of urbanism has emerged which cover most of the theoretical and professional activity: Everyday Urbanism, New Urbanism and what Kelbaugh calls Post Urbanism. Everyday Urbanism In Everyday Urbanism much of the design process is left to the spontaneous devices of the public and is the "default" design mode if no planning is initiated. It highlights culture rather than design. Although, this leads to vibrant neighborhoods, unchecked freedom leads to chaos. non-utopian, non-structuralist, conversational Non-utopian: rejects the idealist mentality of having set principles to determine design of community rather depends on diversity, plurality and spontaneity of everyday community life shape design Non-structuralist: downplays direct relationship of physical design and social behavior Conversational: openness, populist and egalitarian Street murals rather than civic art, public markets rather than chain stores How indigenous people and immigrants transform their environments with the resources they have. open-ended and democratic designer is co-equal with the public, empirical student of common and popular rather than ideal and pure modest and compassionate idealizes the everyday too much, prosaic present New Urbanism New Urbanism tries to  order different elements in a hierarchy within a dense space. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense but its criticisms lie in implementation. How is this implemented? Do not trust anything that claims utopia, you cannot find heaven on earth. We have 20th century history as proof of that. "to make a link between knowing and feeling, between what people believe and do in public and what obsesses them in private." utopian (reformist/ idealist), inspirational, structuralist (determinist) Utopian: NU strives for a social ethic and a civic ideal, mixing of different ethnicities, income class, races as well as mixing of different land uses and architectural typologies Inspirational: wants people to feel they are part of a bigger culture from their individual private lives by creating public realms and public architecture Structuralist: there is direct relationship between social behavior and physical design Normative: Good design-> positive effect on sense of place and community-> healthy society High density, walk-able, spaces for face to face social interaction, hierarchy of public and private spaces civic buildings, public architecture, squares and parks in the foreground residential areas and private space in the background normative and doctrinaire most precedent-based: extrapolates from past enduring architectural types  tries to democratically include public through dialogue (public design charettes) best practices of the past Post Urbanism Porst urbanist shoc-tactics often seem like shocking for its own sake then a genuine  desire to challenge the status quo. Despite claims of its proponents of how post urbanist designs area product of open and democratic thinking it ignores its local context and urban fabric. It is often self-referential rather than contextual. Post urbanism is the millenial version of Urban design: individualistic, self-centered, and isolated. heterotopian, sensational, post structuralist Championed by Rem Koolhas in the Generic City projects characterized by shopping mall developments and disconnected hyper modern buildings Traditional cities, dependent on proximity and shared values, are repressive and no longer relevant in age of technology and telecommunication Heterotopian: many fragmented individual paradises Sensational: large, look-at-me diva buildings Mistrusts order and promotes isolated zones of free-range commercial consumption, taboo, fantasy, etc. "lone genius," does not include the public in discourse because it disbelieves that there can truly be coherence or unity atomistic microcosm that does not try to weave itself into the urban ecological fabric awes, shocks, overwhelms overly comitted to the endlessly exciting future   Order is often equated with repression and, by the same token, disorder with democracy. John Locke, Enlightenment thinker and western philosopher, has presented democracy as both about personal rights ad freedoms but as well as civic responsibilities. In America, individual freedoms has so much trumped civic responsibilities that it endangers community. Three Sensibilities, Methodologies and Outcomes Differences in these three urbanisms are deep but their divergence with the designer's sensibilities  have more to do with their early childhood experiences than their design values. These aesthetic sensibilities can be tempered with theoretical and ethical discourse, seeing the political and philosophical regimes that affect these frameworks, thus, shaping their design values. Physical outcomes of the urbanisms are as follows: Everyday Urbanism with its spontaneous nature has the lowes asthetic quality, beauty or coherence. New Urbanism strives for unity and order with its grid streets and emphasizes pedestrian life, may look to rigid from above. Post -urbanist looks the most exciting with sweeping arcs and geometric lines but is least pedestrian-friendly. Everyday Urbanism is default or accidental, Post urbanist are just trophy buildings inserted to dead public realms. New Urbanist claims to build a sustainably ordered and liberating space. Civitas: the Public Realm Human being, being social animals, have a need to be part of a bigger social structure. This need is provided for by organized religion but people also find this need assuaged by being part of community or 'polis'. However, our culture has become more individualistic and narcissistic making our private worlds more loveless and and selfish than it need be. Insight from Bart Giamatti's line: Private and public must be balanced in a constant act of daily gradual refinement that allows us to interact with each other harmoniously, and maybe even triumphantly, instead of constant chaos. Kelbaugh says that a just and tolerant society is needed for minorites to live with dignity and peace but that America has lost city living skills as well as a history of discrimination. Communities must deal with human nature, its dysfunction, pathologies and y to achieve unity by creating an enemy. The question of the proper scale arises for social harmony and political unity: Ancient reeks suggested 5000 citizens per polis (25000 including wives, children and slaves). NU suggests half a mile on one side and a metropolitan region. Though Kelbaugh fails to address, if a community should inevitably have an enemy. What should it be against? And conversely what should it value? Controlling the scale of city is futile as majority of the world population has moved to the world's few capital cities, and the population continues to grow. Middle class American and European immigrants have chosen privacy of gated suburbs, and LE Corbusier Modern European seperation of vehicles and pedestrian over the messy complexity of the public realm and urban streets which are brought by immigrants, Latinos, Africa-Americans and other minorities. The private affluent take quality schools and money with them, the public poor have a vibrant community life, bothe are necessary for a healthy community. There is a pattern here: those well-off have much to lose and so the protect and safeguard what they have, isolated, ordered and private, they are conscientious; while those are struggling share what the little they with each other, they are communal, messy and public, they are open. Kelbaugh sees property rights trumping community rights as a threat to civitas as well destruction of civilization itself if there is absolute protection for private property and risk-free land ownership which is a social contract and not an inalienable God-given right. I do not know enough about the nature of land ownership and property rights but its seems that absolute property rights is unfounded and baseless. Should society's interests trump the individual's interests? It depends on what the interests are, society could be corrupted, the individual could be corrupted. Each case should be evaluated but by who? America historically is seen an icon freedom and protector of private property from the threat of fascism and totalitarianism but though extremist threats are always present, the world does no longer needs its equally extremist individualism and must adjust to include community interest and put greater priority on land use and ecological policies. Telecommunications and computers cannot replace the human need for physical contact. Everyday Urbanism with its rich public realm does not care weather this is physical or electronic, nor does it aspire for beauty or progress. Post urbanism is temporary and fleeting architecture. New Urbanism strives for a high quality physical world, desiring not to eliminate diversity but to control it-put chaos into order. Everyday urbanism undermines what architecture and design can bring to community life, Post urbanism is cut off from community and could easily be novelty for novelty's sake. New Urbanism, like great cultures before, requires balance and discipline.  Do we put too much value on private pleasures that we threaten the common good?  

Green Urban Spaces: PLAZAS, PARKS & URBAN SPACES Paulo Alcazaren (Landscape Architecture UPD, Urban Planning NUS) Manila has a long history of urban plans that never come to fruition because they are often disrupted by wars, natural disasters, conflicts of interest or government terms that are too short to complete a project. This results to a fragmented, inefficient and muddled urban city, with disjointed government “center” and a chaotic urban fabric. Due fiscal to limitations has resulted to government to selling off land to Private Corporations leading to privatization which causes even more uneven urban landscape. Unlike well-planned cities like Singapore, our open space to built up space is small which denies the human need for nature and a communal space for public life to thrive. Money can be well-spent when channeled to the public realm which is why we need good leaders who are conscious of the value of public space in the community.

Postmodern Urban Form A. Loukaitou-Sideris and T. Banerjee The visible hand of privatization The reliance on private initiatives for amenities and improvements in downtown areas has led to prioritizing private interests rather than public interest. There is little effort from the government for strategic urban planning, design and public policy. Designers chosen by the public sector decide on design concepts which can easily neglect need for public space, proper allocation of these spaces, context and character which models of public space best fit different areas of the public which result to weak public design which subdues public life. Although corporate open spaces are said to be part of public domain, they serve office tenants rather than people of the community. Privatization leaves design choices to market forces becoming opportunistic and profit-oriented rather strategic and proactive. Good city form and urban design focuses on stimulating civic pride a sense of community and private investment in desired pattern. The inward nature of private urban spaces destroys urban coherence, district links and pedestrian connections, closing off parts of the city into several atomistic fragments.

Personal Insights Kelbaugh proposes New Urbanism as the appropriate model for wealthy American cities that are not yet fully established like the old cities of Europe. New Urbanism is presented as an egalitarian and ideal model striving for diversity, democracy, and a strong sense of community through public realms, walkability, pedestrianization, high density, mixed-income/race/religiion neigborhoods, human-scales, high density and even sustainability. This is based on universal principles of "successful" traditonal western cities/polis like Ancient Greece, Rome, and Paris. We wonder though if this would work in the Philippine context-an Southeast Asian developing country with a massive population that will continue to grow. Perhaps in smaller municipalities or cities in the provinces but it is a hard sell in megalopolis like Metro Manila or Pampanga. Cities are artifacts of values, what does the three urbanisms value, what does the Philippines value? How are different urbanisms a reaction to societies aspirations and power struggle The three urbanisms emerge from different set of values: Everyday Urbanism promotes openess and populism, New Urbanism is inspirationa and normative, and Post Urbanism is sensational and individualistic. The application of these models lie in the defining what Philippine cuture values. Developing countries fall into Everyday Urbanism by defaults centralized planning strategy is lacking, such is the case with the Philippines wherein natural disasters, break out of wars, fiscal limitations, government failures and lack of public initiatives have lead to an uneven urban landscape that has proved inefficient and even dangerous to its inhabitants. Our Post Urbanism phase can be seen in the legacy of a Edifice Complex from Marcos era which has produced world-class architectural icons that remain elusive to daily life. Paulo Alcazaren, principal of PGAA Creative Design, stresses poltics' role in realizing the urban dream, that there are no shortage of good plans but short government term prevent from any of them to coming into fruition resulting into fragmented cities. Another cause for this is the government's dependence on private corporations for amenities and public projects which leaves large parts of the city serving private enterprises, usually profit, rather than public needs (Loukaitou-Sideris, Banerjee). This creates spaces that are directed inward in itself and closed off fromthe rest of the urban fabric. In privitization, private interests trump society's interest (Milton Friedman) but historically, we also know that government interests are corruptible or that they are simply incapable of providing and predicting what is good for its public. This is why New Urbanism's idealism has been criticized for social engineering, poor implementation of its pedestrianization, rigidity of principles and being out of touch with onsumer wants, especially on the automobile, but the great wisdom of New Urbanism are public design charettes- constant public initiatives as well as opportunities for public inclusion holds for a truly democratic city. These urban movements are not meant to be narrow and rigid and has its place both physically and in the lifespan of the city. Government, the public and designers must come together to create policies and laws that satisfy that broader society. Government must remain transparent and accountable with their policies and laws. The public be made aware of project plans and actively involved in the design process. Designer must not be merely prescriptive but also inclusive of the public and able to infer what normative principles apply to each unique city. In the end we know nothing. A good city takes a hundred years to build and involves thousands and thousand of good decisions. We cannot flatter ourselves with the idea that designers are lone geniuses and we degrade our profession if we demote them as equal to the public, perhaps what we can do is to create a model of a good Filipino city, which is flexible and evolving, and make sure each of our individual projects is geared toward that end. Public initiatives must have that foresight while being aware that ideals are also continuously refined to the demands of changing times. Through this, trends will pass away, the values that societies hold deep and true will manifest itself in the hierarchy our cities are ordered.