The lesson from 'Poltergeist': Planning needs to be socially responsible

It was half-way through watching Poltergeist last night that I realised the message of the film was thus: Planners need to be socially responsible.

A 'typical' American family live in a house that is a carbon copy of all those around them in a bland, but not unpleasant, suburbia. Only - the planners were naughty. Not only did they use up lots of green-field land, not only did they build boring houses in unintelligable twisty unpedestrianised streets... they built over a graveyard.

Whoops.

The result? Well...



And what's worse, is the society is so car-orientated... that when they family flee the house... they jump into the car - only for the father to fumble about for the keys. Why didn't they cycle away or run down the street?

Perhaps these ghosts and gouls were angry about the amount of oil they were burning up too, or the lack of public transport, or...

Urban New Zealand: Natural Hazards Central.

Nigel Tisdall wrote an interesting piece in last Sunday’s Observer about the 1931 earthquake that struck Napier, New Zealand. Or, more to the point, the explosion of art-deco architecture that flowed out through the cities re-building:

‘If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier's is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age. For this was an earthquake that also gave back, tilting the coast up by a couple of meters and draining a huge lagoon that is now filled with fertile farmland, the city airport, and some choice stretches of 30s and 40s suburbia. Downtown Napier, meanwhile, was quickly rebuilt in a colourful, confidence-raising art-deco style that married symbols of renewal – sunbursts, fountains, flowers – with robustly quake-proof buildings limited to two storeys. Out went brick parapets, gables and heavy facades; in came chrome speed-lines, ziggurats and naked women reaching for the stars’.

Indeed, as of 2007, Napier has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated. However, New Zealanders don’t seem to be ‘resting on their laurels’ though – an earthquake is all too likely to strike again. As well as obvious architectural limitations of building urban spaces in geological sensitive areas, Wendy Saunders of GNS science has been looking into urban design and natural hazard mitigation. Taking into consideration land-use, the need for community networks to reduce risk and respond to disaster as well as more direct (built) design measures that would mitigate the effects of an earthquake.

All interesting stuff if you’re both an urban design geek and also still pandering back to your undergrad natural hazards lectures…

 

Tokyo Picnic Club

I stumbled across a ’15 rules for a picnic’ leaflet by the Tokyo Picnic Club a few months ago, and forgot about them until today – when they randomly popped back into my head.

 

Their profile is here, and their website linked to above:

 

‘Tokyo Picnic Club (TPC) was founded in 2002 to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of picnic, which became popular by the activities of "Pic-Nic Club" founded in London, March 1802. TPC members are over 80 people from various fields like the architect, urban designer, landscape designer, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, food coordinator, editor, curator etc.. They are to dedicate their talents of creativity for re-defining the activities of picnic in the modern context of urban circumstance of Tokyo, from developing food menu of sandwiches and tea flavours, to renovating the park management systems and its landscape qualities. To criticize the narrowness of public spaces and their exclusive management, TPC is claiming the "Picnic Right", as the basic human right for the urban dwellers of Tokyo’.

 

Here’s a bit more on ‘picnic rights’ posted on newcastlegateshead.com:

 

‘Park area per person in Tokyo is only 5.2m2, while 29.1m2 in New York, 26.9m2 in London. In addition to that narrowness, the parks in Tokyo are poorly managed and exclude people, with far too many plants, "keep off the grass" signs, fixed benches and such early closing times of 17:00. In Tokyo, we rarely invite friends to our narrow houses in comfortable manners. Therefore, we expect public spaces to be the place for gathering. We rarely own private gardens with delightful flowers and trees. Therefore, we want to cherish urban nature as our shared gifts. That is the reason why Tokyo Picnic Club insists on the "Picnic Rights", as the basic human rights of the urban dwellers. If the "Greenfield" such as beautiful parks are open to us, picnic can be reminded as the art of encounter with rich wits and traditions. If the "Brownfield" such as ex-industrial sites or abandoned harbours are open to the public, we can try experimental picnic, with new meals, tools, manners and conversations to re-define our modern urban lifestyles. We want to pursue the possibility of picnic, 200 years after its birthday, here in developed Tokyo. To explore the frontier of city, to seek the tastes of modern feast, and to celebrate our precious encounters in the city’.

 

The most fun project they’ve had seems to be ‘grass on vacation’ when a strip of grass ‘took off from Tokyo’ and landed in Newcastle, UK, last summer. An interesting project from an interesting group that are certainly contributing to convivial public spaces in their own unique way. I especially hope someone picks up from the ‘grass on vacation’ idea and takes it further!…

 

 

 

 

The Oubliette

‘Q: Why do you think it's okay to occupy property owned by someone else?

 

A: The ability to squat is a social necessity - an important and greatly underestimated civil right. For those who have lost everything it is a safety net over the abyss, and for creative people subjugated by subsistence costs it allows a far more effective way of contributing to society, especially where the arts are concerned. Property left unattended can develop serious structural problems, attract crime, detract business, demoralise the local community and devalue neighbouring property prices by up to 18%. Conscientious occupiers ameliorate these problems, saving the community concern and the building owner and taxpayer a fortune.’

 

theoubliette.co.uk

 

I’m inclined to agree:

 

emptyhomes.com

 

 

Time out on the bench...

Many urban designers and planners are aware of the need to ensure places are made for people – and very often this involves just having somewhere to sit… although it’s perhaps surprising how easy it is to get it wrong.

 

I absolutely love this bench though, designed by StokkeAustad, which caught my recently. It’s a bit of an antidote to plain old boring street furniture and opens up quite a few possibilities for creative uses… as tables, play, stages/platforms etc – refreshing and fun!

 

This Is Not A Gateway 2009

It was this time last year that I missed out on the first TINAG festival:

'The festival brings together people, living and working in Europe, who's main preoccupation is the city. TINAG creates platforms for emerging academics, activists, human rights canvassers, artists, youth workers, filmmakers, architects, students and more, whose point of departure is the city'.

Yep, it was back again this year - and this time - I made it!

I popped into the Sonalle's exhibition of photography based on 'ethnic minorities coming out' - an interesting exploration into the individual tales and experiences of those that featured.

The exhibition did well to feed into the first of two sessions/workshops I attended - 'The City as Stage: Art, Narrative & Play'. The hidden narratives behind the experiences of the subject in Sonalle's images related directly to the discussion of the panel in the 'The city as stage' seminar.

Artist Lottie Child and Dan Hon a media technologist joined additional speakers from the world of theatre (notably the Soho Theatre) to talk about their experiences in using the built environment as both stage and stimulus. Most interestingly, as slightly reassuring for anyone thinking of using the city as stage on the micro and macro scales… Lottie’s comparison of Rio De Janero to London highlighted that in Brazil issues of permission and authorisation were non-existent. This was not the case with the UK. They highlighted a real case for a guerrilla approach to using the city as a stage and in drawing from the built environment to develop narratives and multiple discourse.

The second session I got to join was ‘The City And The Transnational Commons’. European Alternatives discussed the themes from Polis 21, a series of transnational interventions and discussions run over the month of November in Athens, Zagreb and Belgrade. The session explored the idea of how cities can become urban containers and how with merging with notions of post-national cities, new ethno-spaces and post-national social forms hybrid cultures can form and lead to a deconstructed, or, an ‘un-built’ state.

The festival’s strength is obviously in its ‘mix and match’ interdisciplinary approach to the city. The opportunity for attendees to jump into such diffusive avenues of discussion and make their own interconnections acts as a catalyst for thought and energises ideas. My only criticism of the festival was the feeling of a lack of an opportunity to meet others and enter into a larger discussion surrounding the various strings that made up the event.

Roll on next year though…

Rome was built in a year...

...or at least, the initial infrastructure was, if the analogy applies to my blog.

Just over a year ago I set out to start the 'The Urban Composition' blog. My aim was to do a series of test posts and play with how I could use the interwebs to express and explore my ideas surrounding urban issues.

Turns out a year goes by quickly, and whilst the blog fell recently dormant, it's now roaring back into life!

Whilst I've continued to work at CABE over the past year and start the MSc International Planning at The Bartlett, UCL, I've expanded my knowledge of the built environment, and expanded the focus of this blog from 4 areas to 7 - the:

1) geographically-spatial
2) iconographically-visual
3) dramatically-kinetic
4) artistically-tangible
5) politically-infused
6) environmentally-underpinned
7) culturally-enveloped

So here we go, after a very busy 12 months and with an even busier 12 ahead - I'd like to welcome you to the full-running, full-steam 'The Urban Composition blog'!

I'm planning on staying ad-hoc with posts - from as many as a few a day to at least once or twice a month (depending on what pops up)... links will break, discourse will change... but the city never sleeps...

m