Thought You Should See This

December 5, 2011

At the weekend, I got a chance to see Urbanized, the new film from Helvetica and Objectified film maker, Gary Hustwit. It’s a stylish treatment of an enormously complex topic, and though the viewer gets a little whiplash from the superfast tour of so many of the world’s major cities, there was still a lot that was new and thought-provoking. I jotted down some stats that surprised me:

The population of London lives in the slums of Mumbai, where as many as 600 people share one toilet. An amazing woman, whose name I sadly didn’t catch, said that politicians don’t want to build more toilets because they don’t want to encourage people to live in slums. “As if people come to shit,” she retorted, acidly. Pretty good point.
Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities, was blunt about the complexity of the challenge facing urban planners and architects looking to figure out housing for the many billions of people on the planet. What stops him from slitting his wrists, he said, was the fact that a small group of innovators can demonstrate the efficacy of something entirely new… which can then be rolled out at scale quite quickly. Change can happen fast, in other words.
In Denmark, 30% of the population commutes by bike. The traffic flow system is designed so that parked cars protect the cyclists, and not the other way round (as is the norm in so many other cities.)
In the same vein, the former mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, marveled at the fact that so many citizens seem to see parking as a fundamental civic right. Instead, a new public transportation system in the Colombian capital elevated bus, bike and pedestrian lanes over roads for cars.
Brazilian architecture guru, Oscar Niemeyer made a brief, cameo appearance, showing wry humor. He wondered at the fact that in his career he has designed 23 churches–despite the fact that he’s an atheist.
Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas thinks that architectural competitions are “a complete waste of intellect."
Foster + Partners founder, and British architecture legend, Norman Foster: "As an architect, if you’re not an optimist, you’re not going to survive."
New Orleans-based architect, Grover Mouton was hilariously scathing about the architectural rush to the city after Hurricane Katrina. A lot of architects had a lot of fun at a lot of expense–and without making much impact, he said, rather sadly.

Finally, the concluding story in the film, about a battle to prevent the redevelopment of the area around the train station in Stuttgart, made me cry. I didn’t know about the Stuttgart 21 project, and still need to read more. But one thing I do know: once you cut down trees, they’re gone for good. And while there was almost a Roald Dahl-style characterization of "bad fat cats” vs the persecuted commoners just trying to talk sense, the developers and the politicians sure didn’t come off looking good.