Moshe Safdie in his speech at the World Architecture Festival reflected on the need for urban planning to create better cities, not just pretty skyscrapers.

The recently concluded World Architecture Festival 2014 emblazoned a theme that’s very relevant for our times: “Architects and the City.”

Moshe Safdie (image from www.cityproject.it/)

Because, really, in an ideal world those two concepts—architects and cities—go hand in hand.  Thus the theme becomes an affirmation, an affirmation of the architect’s role in the growth of a city.  Architecture and urban planning have to work together. Architects aren’t just merely in charge of designing buildings; they’re responsible for the city that takes shape as those buildings are erected one after the other.  It’s as if people’s lives actually depended on them.

Think about it, a freshly-erected building doesn’t just alter the skyline, it also has its way of signifying new changes for city and its inhabitants.  How will these skyscrapers serve the needs of the people? What important role/s will they fulfill in the city? How will they drive the economy? How do the buildings fit in with the rest of the cityscape?  What about their carbon footprint?

Clearly, skyscrapers impact our lives inevitably and irreversibly—these buildings are meant to last a long, long time after all.  And not just our lives, but the state of nature and our planet.  Whether that impact is for the good or bad depends on the vision of the architect.  That makes the architect’s task a lofty and demanding one.

Urban Planning and the Community

Architect Moshe Safdie, who gave the closing keynote speech at the WAF 2014, reflected on the role of the skyscraper in our cities.  Entitled An architect and the City – 50 years of Urban Architecture, Moshe’s speech puts in a rather harsh and critical observation:

« I think most of the avant-garde in our profession today is preoccupied with fundamentally the object building… The object building cannot make a city. Unless we resolve this paradox, we will continue to be producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation. » (via Dezeen)

Mr. Safdie was speaking from experience of course.  From the get-go, he had been keen on urban planning, incorporating social responsibility and connectivity into his projects (such as the Habitat 67).  It stems from his childhood life in the communal kibbutzim of Israel.  These days, according to him, public spaces are being privatized, replaced instead with isolated towers with privately-owned malls at their base.

« These are private spaces, they are controlled privately.  Secondly, they are introvert. They do not connect one to the other. It is rare, unless there’s intervention from a planning authority, that they connect with each other. They create a world, and another world, and another universe, each upon itself. Not as a connective city as it’s been historically….”

In many ways, what Mr. Safdie said is true, especially amidst the continuing arms race of countries such as China and Dubai to erect the tallest, biggest, and grandest skyscrapers one after another.  So we get pretty buildings that have that wow factor, to paraphrase Mr. Safdie, yet too little a sense of community baked into it.  The buildings have that private, exclusive air to it.  Case in point: the nameless humble construction folks who helped create these massive buildings might never get the chance to set foot in them.

Putting the City Back in Architecture

Then again, Mr. Safdie probably didn’t mean to generalize. Surely, architects do not envision their masterworks as selfish structures that exist in a vacuum. While it’s true that some buildings are glorified or hyped, many are built with the community and environment in mind.

The really good architects know that buildings can’t simply be stand-alone structures on the map.  They must also create and maintain a meaningful link in the city and its people.  They know that it isn’t just the buildings that matter, but the public space too–the spacious parks for instance which are a welcome relief amidst all the skyscrapers.

And that’s what urban planning is for, as it guides how our cities evolve.  Every new building will impact a city’s density, walkability, the environmental, light pollution, etc.  And that too is why we need LEED all the more.  For that to happen, first we have to rethink the way we regard our cities.  The city needs to be considered as a living, breathing entity which connects us humans.  We ought to be a little more careful with what we put and install in it.