Urban Planning in a Global context Lec #12 Flashcards
What does urban design look like in tghe 21st century?
focus on new cities and neoliberalism
What are new cities?
master-planned cities that cultivate local identities via urban planning and design
Emphasizes distinctiveness
ex) a little bit in Brasilia
What is Neoliberalism?
broad rejection of top-down urban planning, an effort to reduce the role of government in various areas where market forces are central
What are the three eras or urban planning, reframed?
colonial era, early post-colonial era, Late post-colonial era
What was the colonial era?
Spanish colonial America, British colonial India, French COlonial Africa
- these colonial powers were testing out urban designs in colonial areas
What is early post-colonial era?
The spread of modernist design in places like Chandigarh and Brasilia
- a continuation of European control
What is late post-colonial era?
Focus on new cities with national identities and state-led development
What were the Laws of the Indes?
plans for urban design in spanish colonial america
- used the grid system with a plaza in the centre
- the laws were intended to push Christianity and Spanish culture, they called for destruction of indigenous settlement surrounding the city
- placed the church physically lifted above everything else but adjacent to government buildings
What were cities like in British Colonial India?
They built towns adjacent to existing settlements but didn’t destroy them, but they were built to “protect” the citizens from the indigenous populations so they were fortress-like, laid out geometrically.
-They introduced racial segregation (white town vs black town)
What were cities like in French colonial Africa? Give two examples
Algiers as an example
- rebuilt city to protect from other cities and indigenous populations
- had distinct european sections: broader streets, geometric form, and muslim sections: no change, narrow streets, organic form
- Algiers is seen as an urban design failure
- Algiers was a CENTRAL LESSON for Haussman’s paris
Rabat, Morroco
- intended to demonstrate the ability of France to bring civilization
- favoured grand avenues like Haussman
- actually thought about sewer system, transportation, etc.
-separated land based on use: residental separate from industrial and etc.
- fan of racial segregation
What was the colonial planning cycle?
colonial planners tried out plans and practices for control to try and “civilize” people, and then would make tweaks when planning in European towns
Discuss Chandigarh, Punjab
Indian state post separation of India and Pakistan that had to rely on foreign planners
- corbusier designed main gov. buildings and symbolic buildings of power
- rest of the city is based on garden city principles
- ended up with a mix of different traditions like modernism and Indian Nationalism
What was Pruitt-Igoe Pubic housing?
a failure of US modernist public housing
- built in 1955, demolished in 1972
What went wrong with Pruitt-Igoe?
bad design –> bad social outcomes
- isolated low income groups from the rest of the city
- also a mechanism of racial segregation
- privacy becomes a source of problem
-not a defensible space (lack of eyes on the street)
