Principles of sustainable urban development
Background and Strategies
Mr. Johannes Dell
AS&P – Albert Speer & Partner GmbH, Frankfurt
Mitglied der Geschäftsleitung + Partner/Member of Management Board +Partner
AS&P – Architects Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., Shanghai
Executive Director
蒋丽1 Introduction
Since more than 45 years, AS&P- Albert Speer & Partner GmbH has worked inmouths
the field of urban and architectural design, transportation planning as well as
project- and process-management in many regions of the world. Strategic city
development in a large scale with a focus on resources-efficiency has been a
major issue in the projects almost from the first projects on.The experiences gained over the years has helped us to identify a number of thesis’s and strategies for sustainable urban development, which can help to plan,organize and implement city-growth more appropriately; in different stages and scales, from regional development up to the design of single buildings. In this context, the more technical aspects of reducing recours consumption play of cour an important role. Yet apart from that, aspects of social harmonization, the mix of functions to provide lively, manifold and diver cityscapes and environments must be recognized. And last not least the design of a city fabric, which can be distinguished and perceived by the citizens as “their” own city, quarter or neighbourhood. I am talking about citizenship in general, corporate governance, identification of the citizens with their community, and in the end about city-marketing or –branding. City planning and urban design are integral parts of a process, which starts on a very abstractly on a state- or regional planning level and ends with the construction of our build up urban environment, buildings, open spaces, roads and infrast
ructure. This process requires quite a sophisticated management to be successful, that means the synchronization and harmonization of many often parallel evolving,sometime even contradictory sub- and side process; in other words: the integration of all parts of the puzzle into the bigger picture. As the city is understood as a living organism, or a complex, dynamic system,this process-management requires not only a participatory and transparent communication-culture which integrates the relevant stakeholders. It as well requires a lot of flexibility, as well as constant amendment and refinement. In this n, the fixed visions and images of a “Master Plan” which tries to precily regulate everything up to detail is no longer appropriate. It has to be replaced by a more flexible planning tool which allows organizing, steering and moderating the planning process at least as comprehensively as the implementation of the results. This will be pointed out more detailed in the following. From my point of view and my experience, the biggest and most rious shortcoming in most city-planning projects which I came across in china, is a still underdeveloped understanding of such process and their management.In a broader n the city as an organism means that the technical, social, cultural and politi
cal systems, their different elements and the networks they constitute should be regarded as a kind of organic entity, which “reacts” and “behaves” quite similar to “natural” organic entities we call eco-system.
As such, it more or less directly tends to follow the principles inherent to ecological, organic, “living” systems. Among the rules, there are two which em to be of utmost importance, as they strongly determine a systems ability to develop, flexibly adopt and thus in the end survive: the systems tendency to efficiency, namely to obtain resource-efficiency, as well as its tendency to (lf)- organize as a de-centralized network-structure of basically similar and lf sustained, “human scale” entities or modules, (quarters, sub centres, core areas, satellites or whatever they might be called) which constitute a Larger Cities, “Mega-Cities” or “Agglomeration Areas” urban fabric.
The idea underplaying the principles with regard to urban design is reprented by a comparatively new systemic approach towards city planning: the shift from an understanding of urban development as merely technically determined (strongly related t
o infrastructure), to an interpretation that regards urban agglomerations as non-linear, dynamic, sometimes even chaotic systems (which have indeed many characteristics in common with complex living organisms and organisations). Like all living organisms by the way, cities experience different phas in their life-time, and they can as well fall ill! The Belgian architect Lucien Kroll as well has, already many years ago, rightfully pod the question whether Urban Development is an evolutionary process. According to our understanding, the answer is yes.
To a huge extend, the above mentioned principles are decisive for what we u to call “sustainable urban development”.
(side-note: Sustainable Urban Development is understood as a process of
balancing constantly changing determining factors of city development, with the aim to provide to the citizens:
- airtight安吉里之战satisfying work
-
天津培训学校integrate, stable social conditions
breeze- adequate mobility
- political system with balanced reprentation of interests and values
- adequate public rvices
- built environment rving the needs of modern economic and lifestylegenkan
without overstretching the natural environments capacity to regenerate.)
I would like to underline the importance of such kind of development.Given the still accelerating process of urbanisation, especially in china, the large cities or mega cities in fact provide the battle grounds whether appropriate living conditions for the generations to come can be provided or not!
2 Framework-conditions of today’s City-Development in China
The general framework conditions are t by the so called global “Mega trends”:
- Globalisation, understood as increasing interaction and interdependence between “global player regions”, producing a new division of urban labour, of production and rvices capacities, at the same time increasing competition between the regions to attract the most capable global economic players and groups of inhabitants (mobility of the “Brains”, “knowledge nomads”).
- Urbanisation, regarded as the hugest shift from rural to urban population in world’s history, creating complex, manmade ttlement patterns and infrastructural systems with high density and a need for sophisticated processing and spatial organisation. (just a friendThe driving forces behind urbanisation are: industrialisation (in developing countries) respectively de-industrialisation (growth of rvice ctor), mobility, telecommunications revolution, information revolution)
儿童英语顺口溜- Systemic approach: as already mentioned, (Shift from an understanding of urban development as technically determined, to an interpretation that regards urban agglomerations as non-linear, dynamic, sometimes even chaotic systems which have many characteristics in common with complex living organisms and organisations.)
- Demographic change: the shift in the composition of age-groups, the “aging population”, first in the highly industrialized societies in the developed countries, subquently and already starting (China!) in the rapidly urbanising regions of the developing world, will lead to radically new approaches in literally all fields of political, social, economic and cultural live. (It will inflict governmental as well as private social and insurance systems, healthcare and education, child care and圣诞节快乐英语怎么读 elderly-housing, labour time and conditions, leisure time and tourism activities, mobility, transportation and other infrastructural systems, taxation regulations)
