People Centric Planning

Analysis / 2020.05.24

 

The Myth of the High Rise

 

The surge in high rise buildings began as a direct response to the availability of new industrialised products, such as steel and precast concrete, in the early 20th century. The need for a swift and economical method for building housing for the severely affected cities after the two world wars backed the idea. In the latter half of the century, rapid population growth and the resulting boom in urban expansion has aided the process to continue till date. However, in the 20th century, the cities grew around 1000% while population grew only around 375% (Satterthwaite, 2007). During the course of this uneven growth fuelled by market forces rather than absolute need, little care has been taken by the developers not only in examining the basic socio-psychological needs of people who are the most essential part of this active space but also the environment around, which is an essential factor in sustaining the quality of life in the long run. 

 

It is, by now, evident that though going high rise is a possible solution for densifying, the actual physical advantage is much less (Mikellides, 1980) comparing to a low-rise, medium dense construction because of the high level of investment needed for building high-rise and the effect which these socially detached high rise living-working towers have on the behavioural and cultural patterns of the people. It was only after the revival of Gestalt Psychology in the late 1970s and its application to a much wider sphere to form what is now termed as Environmental Psychology that a lot of architects and planners started taking notice about the issue (Mikellides, 1980). Since then deeper studies were conducted on the human responses to spatial impulses and the notions of defensibility, territoriality and security that thoughtfully designed spaces could provide. This development, in a way, marked the beginning of the departure from modern notions of ‘industrialised space production‘: the copying and pasting of typical design solutions irrespective of physical context. The understanding that human behaviour and culture influences the built forms and that forms once built will affect behaviour and lifestyle (Oliver, 2006) was, since then, the underlying idea on arguing against cloned spaces and detached zoning principles put forward by the modernists.

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Zoning, as a planning tool, has been very influential in shaping our contemporary cities. However, in most of the cases the zoning decisions tend to be segregatory, neglecting the possible layers of activities carried out in a common place and the connections established between the layers of activities to form sustainable and efficient usage of all the spaces. The Zoning divisions have to respond to a certain hierarchy of spaces, starting from the Individual (private) space, Family space, Areas of Intimate contact (Transition spaces/ Semi-private), Neighbourhood meeting (Community gathering) places and the Principal Urban area, depending on the diminishing sense of territoriality in occupants. Each element may have its own share of built and open areas. 

 

However, the hierarchal spaces upto the level of the areas of intimate contact are characterised by a deep sense of territoriality by the occupants of the respective households while the neighbourhood meeting places are perceived as the defensive territory of the community; which fosters natural surveillance. To impart this notion in the community and urban realm the design has to provide elements of attraction; a strong focal point of activities fostering social coherence. By responding to this interdependent hierarchy of spaces, one could find trade offs where probable lack of space in one area could be compensated by addition in another to create a balanced spatial division (Correa, 1989). In this way, it is also possible to collectively bring many of the activities in the primary hierarchies to the community realm, thereby reducing the area required for individual households. 

 

For example, the traditional Roman baths were one of the rituals that collectively brought the activity of cleaning up to develop a system of community gathering by virtue of a selective function. To make similar activities possible in the contemporary urban realm one has to establish strong sensory connections between activated zones of different hierarchies. This can only be successfully done if the density is kept at a moderate level (assuming an average of 10sq.m. space is needed for one person with a minimum single living unit size of 30sq.m. (Correa, 2000) and 30% of urban land in average is used for residential purposes an average density of 15000 persons/sq.km. gives a feasible number for balancing psychological and functional efficiency) in a low-to-medium rise configuration so that the spaces at the lower end of the hierarchy could always interact with the spaces in the successive hierarchies. Proper distribution of interconnected spaces for diverse activities in strategic points is often found to be more important for successful spatial usage, as seen in the Eaglestone project, than densifying blindly by piling up activities in a spatially separated manner. Most of the traditional high rises are characterised by deep underground garages, public, mostly shopping, spaces near the ground and residential usage beyond 3 or 4 floors above which results in the residents taking an elevator, skipping the socially activated public areas, straight from the underground to the socially inert sky villas. 

 

Population growth is often cited as the major reason for uncontrolled densification of inner cities by piling up high rise towers which are socially inert and detaches its inhabitants from the active sphere on the ground. However there are two major issues in this approach, which requires greater clarification. The first issue is that, even if we consider that a high rise tower is going to be fully occupied (which is most often not the case) its combined density will be no more than a rather low rise 6-9 storey building cluster spread out over the same area (Correa, 2000). If one has to build a denser high rise, the trade off is often a healthy supply of day-light and natural ventilation in the lower floors of the buildings (as experienced in the dense high rise blocks of Manhattan) which has profound psychological and physical effects. To have a pleasant living experience, a high rise building often requires to leave more land cover around it so that it is separated enough from adjacent buildings to allow proper lighting and ventilation even in the lowest floor while a building of lower rise could consume considerably higher amount of land and stay close together. This approach has four major benefits; it is much easier and less expensive to build and operate low rise buildings than high rise ones, it could provide local employment and can utilise local resources as it does not need the same level of specialised expertise needed to construct a high rise building, it is easier to plan and build service infrastructure (Correa, 2000) and it provides a visual connection for all the occupants to the street (Mikellides, 1980) as they are closer together with a height limit of not more than 30m, enabling a clearer enough view of the street to identify people moving around.

 

Even though many modern planners prefer the ease of cloning and aggregating high rise prototypes they are particularly rigid in terms of the spaces they provide as they lack the incrementality (openness to further additions), variety, functional flexibility, adaptability, renewability (openness to modifications and reconstructions) and equity (long term investment interest) provided by their low-rise counterparts (Correa, 1989). In low rise mixed use projects, direct sensory connection to the ground floor activities attracts participation from occupants of upper floor and thus improves social interactions and develop community sentiment among people living and working in the area, which not only create a sense of security by natural surveillance but also nurtures stronger local economic growth in the tertiary and small scale consumer sector. (Mikellides, 1980).

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A typical example of successful low-rise medium dense urban settlement can be found in Amsterdam‘s historic city centre. Its tree lined streets with the central canal is optimised (with the inner streets measuring not more than 30m in width from its mid-point to the building facade, including the width of the canal) to facilitate visually simulated social interaction. Also the narrow, low-rise houses have their main doors opening to the street at around every 5-6m so that chance encounters between neighbours is made possible. What may be missing in the tertiary residential streets is the presence of ground floor commercial establishments (main streets are obviously shop lined while the secondary streets do have a small amount of commercial mix) but it could only be a natural reaction to the flood prone ‘floating‘ city to have a high plinth rather than a shop at street level in residential buildings. Amsterdam manages to support as much as 10,125 people/ sq.km. in its low-rise, old inner city for permanent residential occupancy alone (Iamsterdam, 2014) and still scores as one of the top 10 most desirable cities to live in Europe (TNS, 2013). The population density map of Amsterdam even reveals that the relatively low-rise inner city is at least as dense as the more high-rise, newer developments around the west part (Bell, 2017; Skyscraperpage, 2020). An analysis of the population density distribution of Manhattan also reveals a similar story (Herries, 2018; ESRI, n.d.) where medium-rise residential areas are as dense as the ultra-high-rise areas.

 

On the other hand, one of the most famous incidents of failure of densified high-rise urban settlement projects was in Missouri, U.S.A. The ‘Pruitt-Igoe‘ project, first occupied in 1954, was a very modernist approach towards solving the issue of lack of housing for the urban poor. The 33 eleven storey, identical towers were meant to serve the poor black population of the city of St. Louis, who were living in slum conditions. However, in around 5 years, the site became internationally infamous for poverty, crime and segregation issues. In 1972, the government decided to demolish the whole project that spread around 57 acres and relocate the occupants (Bristol, 1991).

 

The fate of Puritt-Igoe was a clear case of inability to understand and respond towards human behaviour. The 2700-unit project was to house 15,000 tenants at a higher density than the original slum dwellings existed on the site where it was built. The high density resulted from housing and redevelopment officials‘ expectations that these projects would eventually come to house not only those who are displaced by the slum clearance, but also by demolition of redevelopment projects elsewhere in the city (Bristol,1991). The tall buildings and the featureless landscape between the blocks created a socially uninspiring environment, while the urban poor, used to shanty conditions, also found the sudden shift to modern living facilities difficult to get acquainted with. Most of the occupants were even unaware of the function of the standard European wash closet with which the toilets were fitted. They took little care of the common spaces like stairwells and corridors and these unattended spaces soon became spots for drug dealings, rapes, smuggling and many other sort of criminal activities. Coupled with it was the issue with cost cutting that most of the materials used for doors and windows were of poor quality and were easily damaged (Bristol, 1991). The city council‘s decision to avoid the Architect‘s idea to make vertical social spaces to create an effect of small individual neighbourhoods by placing common facilities like washing and a gallery in every third floor and to use a skip-stop elevator that always brings occupants to the gallery floor from where they have to walk down to the apartments, only accelerated the issue.

 

Contrary to the approach in Pruitt-Igoe, England experimented with low rise clusters built with community participation to effectively reduce cost without compromising efficiency and usability.  Architect Ralph Erskine converted a dilapidated fishing village in Eaglestone with 2 and 3 storey clusters of social housing with narrow, pedestrianised approach ways intertwined with public parks and other social facilities at surprising locations as part of enhancing the notion of natural surveillance in the area. Erskine also took care that every household have a pleasant garden-view outside, framing the public realm to encourage people to move out and interact. Even the upper floors were connected to the street system by ramps and walkways to enhance this feature. While Pruitt-Igoe was demolished 18 years from its construction, the Eaglestone is still considered as one of the most successful solutions for solving the housing problems of urban poor in the most affordable but humane way.

 

Contemporary Urban spaces have to respond positively towards the socio-cultural and psychological needs of its inhabitants apart from (but not excluding) the functional and economic needs of the city. The notion of convivial and efficient developments, balancing opportunities and functional integrity with environmental and traditional values (Benninger, 2001) provides a plausible framework to work towards it. Key approach in this front is to plan and design to suit the human scale, not only in the dimension of size, but also of horizons of possible contact, be it visual, audible and any other possible sensory reactions. The architecture of the city, as of any other context, is currently predominated by the visual sensation it could provide from a context outside of the space it encompasses. Buildings that are very imposing from a distance often fails to provide the spatial quality one expects from it on a closer scale due to its inability to respond to the needs of the users in the concerned intimate scale. A change in this approach could not only improve the efficiency of built-space usage but also act potentially to bring newer and diverse activities to the urban realm which is as important to economic growth as to social cohesion.

 

However, the idea of introducing low-rise usability and controlled densification is not to produce a completely monotonous urban structure with exactly same building heights and features creating a prototypic mixed use typology, but rather to control the exactly same scenario now happening with the high rise towers. The essential features of Urban intelligibility like landmarks and icons are important but an entire city with buildings trying to be landmarks on its own would be nothing but chaotic. With an analytically proven fact that the population is going to stabilise in the near future, it is time that we stop building upon speculations (as was the case with Puritt-Igoe development) and to start build for what exactly is essential, as the demand for built space is going to come down with decrease in population growth. It would be a grave mistake if we are not yet ready to control our building industry from speculative development even after realising the fact that it is the largest contributor of green-house gases and causes resource depletion and environmental degradation all over the planet. It is time that the idea of quality human habitats are to be reconsidered from the prevalent belief based on imposing presence and monumentality to one based on integrity with human psyche and nature to envision a better and a lot more sustainable and resilient future for the whole humanity.

 

Most contemporary built spaces are mono-functional and hence consumes much more space and act much less efficiently than that of a more traditional multi-functional built units. Proper distribution of interconnected spaces for diverse activities in strategic points is often found to be more important for successful spatial usage than densifying blindly by piling up activities in a spatially separated manner. Future urban developments should not only consider the continuity and connectivity of human settlements but also the natural environments for other life forms to sustain and help to let the environmental balance remain.

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References

1. Bell, J. (2017). Amsterdam Population. https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=b97780479b004339aa7d2a36b192780d

2. Benninger, C.C. (2001). Principles of Intelligent Urbanism. Ekistics 69(412): 39-65.

3. Bristol, K. G. (1991). The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. Journal of Architectural Education. 44(3): 163-171.

4. Correa, C. (1989). The New Landscape: Urbanisation in the Third World. London: Butterworth Architecture.

5. Correa, C. (2000). Housing and Urbanization: Building Solutions for People and Cities. London: Thames & Hudson

6. ESRI (n.d.). Manhattan Skyscraper Explorer. https://esri.github.io/Manhattan-skyscraper-explorer/

7. Herris, J. (2018). New York Population Density. https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=80f9b95a4ce0491091f1477710f6a91d

8. IAmsterdam. (2014). Amsterdam City Districts. http://www.iamsterdam.com/. Amsterdam: City Council.

9. Mikellides, B. Ed.(1980). Architecture for People: Explorations in a new Humane Environment. Durrington: Littlehampton Book Services.

10. Oliver, P. (2006). Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture. Burlington: Architectural Press.

11. Satterthwaite, D. (2007). The scale of urban change worldwide 1950-2000 and its underpinnings. London: IIED (International Institute for Environment & Development).

12. Skyscraperpage (2020). Amsterdam Skyscraper Map. https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=572

13. TNS. (2013). Quality of Life in Cities: Perception survey in 79 European Cities. Luxembourg: European Union.