Urban Change - Projetos Urbanos » English

Luz – Left Hand Rotation

Merten — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:33:59 +0000

In the last couple of years, project Nova Luz has begun to transform one of the liveliest and most central parts of São Paulo. Low income groups fear they will have to leave the area soon, due to expropriation, demolition and gentrification. Questions are raised regarding the inclusion of these social groups in the urban plan. Spanish media collective Left Hand Rotation recently launched a documentary on this topic (Portuguese/Spanish).

Nos últimos anos, o projeto Nova Luz começou a transformar um dos bairros mais centrais e movimentados de São Paulo. Moradores de baixa renda são expostas á desapropriação, demolição e gentrificação, processos que acabam expulsando-0s da região central. A inclusão desses grupos no projeto, na forma de zoneamento ZEIS, está sendo debatido no momento. Coletivo Espanhol Left Hand Rotation recentemente lancou um documentário sobre essa situação (Português/Espanhol).

Urbanized – a documentary

Merten — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:40:12 +0000

Urbanized is a documentary film by Gary Hustwit.
Cities are physical representations of existing forces, such as economic and environmental ones. Furthermore, they are the result of urban design: what we see while we’re walking through the streets, has previously been designed by someone.

Monorail – future or science fiction?

Merten — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:19:45 +0000

A couple of times per year my inbox gets spammed by the International Monorail Association, asking me to register for one of their conferences on monorails for mass transit. As the invitation always looks rather tacky, I never go, but it made me wonder: Is monorail a mode of transport to be taken seriously, or is it some futurist gadget that politicians buy or promise their citizens in order to win elections?

A glance at a list of monorails around the world shows that:
- most monorails have been built in theme parks or for temporary events such as world exhibitions and soccer world cups
- most monorails have been built in Asia (Tokyo has the most successful monorail line, transporting over 100 million passengers per year; Osaka has the longest line, measuring 22 km)
- Germany is the European hot spot for monorails (the Maglev – ‘magnetic levitation’ – train is the world fastest monorail; a prototype was built in Germany and a final implementation was built by a German consortium in Shanghai)
- a number of monorail projects have already been torn down or canceled, most of them in North America

Tokyo monorail

Despite of this reality of implemented monorails, some more successful than others, I have the impression that there still is an air of utopia, fantasy and even humor around the topic of monorails. Perhaps it has something to do with the Springfield monorail episode of The Simpsons (featuring the Monorail Song), or the fact that corrupt or weird politicians are often related with futuristic monorail plans.

Springfield monorail – The Simpsons

In São Paulo alone, there are enough examples. A monorail project was started by mayor Pitta in 1997, called Fura Fila, but just some concrete pillars were built during his time. Only three mayors later, the project continued as an elevated bus rapid transit project under the name of Expresso Tiradentes. The last decade, politician Levy Fidelix – a fairly bizarre but harmless character with a big moustache – has been promoting his so-called Aerotrem.

And for the 2014 world cup, the city wants to inaugurate a monorail to the Morumbi soccer stadium. However, it is said that the capacity of the system would be insufficient to bring all spectators to the match in a short time. Apparently, until 2010 not a single construction company was interested in building the monorail for the proposed amount of money, but now Bombardier and Scomi are building one line each. Let’s wait and see.

Shenzhen monorail near ‘Window of the World’ attraction park

The new gadget, by the way, is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). Monorails seem old fashioned compared to this. There was a race to build the first PRT in the world, between Masdar City (Emirates) and the airport of London Heathrow. Individual electric pods with rubber tires bring up to 6 people from a certain spot, for example a parking lot, to the flight terminal, and vice versa. They move automatically, without driver, within a guiding system in the asphalt. New PRT plans are popping up everywhere, including the town of Breda, the Netherlands. The futuristic transportation pods would bring people from the railway station to a hospital and an education campus.

Personal Rapid Transit at London Heathrow

Welcome to Lagos

Merten — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:35:17 +0000

Lagos is the fastest growing megacity in the world. In the process of attracting millions of new people, its inhabitants have found resourceful ways of making a living, building homes, recycling materials and trading goods. This creative attitude of the Nigerians are at the center of this BCC documentary.

Part 1 focuses on recycling and making money from waste in one of the city’s major land fills.

Part 2 tells the story of a shantytown built on poles in the lagoon (a type of settlement that would be called Palafitas in South America)

Part 3 describes the ambition of Lagos to become a succesfull megacity through implementing infrastructure and regulations. Both elements obviously clash with the existing informal settlements and commercial activities.

(all parts available on youtube, by clicking through the different sub chapters)

Flagship developments

Merten — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:58:24 +0000

On November 3, 2011, Paul Lecroart (senior urban planner at Île de France) gave a lecture on Flagship Developments at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The focus was on his research which looks at the impact of major events, such as the Olympics, on world cities. How can they give an impulse to the development of urban areas and the collaboration of various parties at different levels? Even though plans have become much more flexible and less monumental in character, grand scale master planning still proves to be a useful instrument for metropolitan development in France. The most recent important example is Sarkozy’s vision on Grand Paris.

The next day I attended the expert meeting on Flagship Developments, held in the Amsterdam WTC at the Zuidas, which focused on this development area particularly. Besides Paul Lecroart, the meeting was attended by Willem Salet and researchers of the University of Amsterdam, planners of the Zuidas, architects with projects on the Zuidas (Architecten Cie and Benthem Crouwel), a respresentative of ABN bank (one of the big players at the Zuidas) and a few colleagues at the Deltametropolis Association.

One of the main issues at Zuidas is the proposed tunneling of the infrastructure (ring road, metro and railway) by the so-called Zuidas-Dok. Due to financial problems in the real estate sector, smaller alternatives of the tunnel have been considered. The question is, whether this tunnel doesn’t in fact hide one of the main characters of the site: a lively traffic axis, and whether this is the best way to make Zuidas into a more lively part of Amsterdam.

Some fragments of the discussion:

Sebastian Dembski – How can symbols mobilise new energy in urban development? The name Zuidas already gives a certain idea about the project. However, it is not clear what exactly the identity of the site is: an office park, a new urban district? Many large scale projects are too much state driven (top down) and fail to include the energetic society at the starting point. Also is it important to find a ‘real’ symbolic marker, linked to the site’s historical, geographic or social identity. Made up ideas with no local roots are bound to fail.

Rick Vermeulen – Exhibition and entertainment centres, such as the RAI at Zuidas, have often been planned in a functional way, based on modernist separation of functions and car logistics. In order to become part of the city once more, the RAI could take a rather culturalist (Choay) approach, moving some of the events to urban outdoor space, focusing more on quality than on quantity of event space, and looking for synergy with neighboring complexes such as the VU University Amsterdam, the new railway station and the financial sector at Zuidas.

Willem Salet – The creative class has turned its back on the Zuidas and moved to sites along the river IJ. The current setting of Zuidas is too exclusive for small businesses and the creative sector. The project is still very young. I’m curious about the turning-point at Zuidas, as we have seen in other mega-projects such as the implementation of social housing at the Rive Gauche in Paris.

Heymen Westerveld – Small interventions, such as opening up parts of office blocks to a wider public, or making cross-connections underneath the infrastructure, may be a very wise first step to develop the area.

Robert Dijckmeester – More attention is needed for the public realm. Squares and streets need to occupied by urban programmes and activities, this is crucial to make the area a success.

Pero Puljiz – The planner’s attempts to make multi-functional and penetrable buildings at Zuidas were frustrated by the developers. They preferred to build traditional mono-functional typologies instead. There should be top-floor restaurants and clubs, shared auditoriums etc. With the current real estate crisis, I would choose to completely freeze development at Zuidas and first try to improve the liveliness of the existing areas.

Douglas Grobbe – ABN already shares it’s auditorium with other organizations, VU already shares facilities with RAI. Many of these synergies are already starting to emerge at Zuidas.

Hans van der Made – Between 9 and 5, Zuidas is a real beehive. We need housing and amenities to make the area lively at night.

Paul Lecroart – If it were be possible to slow traffic down and build retail and amenities on ground level close to the roads, this would turn the Zuidas into a attractive boulevard. The Champs-Élysées in Paris makes lots of noise, but still the space on the first levels is very expensive and attractive.