October 2009 Archives

The crawling city - outline

The context for change

The concentric model of city growth is unsustainable. Population's exhaust their local resources expanding over fertile land, and distancing their resources. Food transportation costs are astronomical. There needs to be a way to sustain the city with local food.  The Population in cities continues to rise, and the over farming of crops has become a real issue, Energy prices have determined that transportation of food sources can no longer be imported from great distances. The water levels rise, the city needs to retreat. 

The compeition rebrief - "city as a surviving environment". The archinauts, a team of architects inspired by Rem Koolhass's exodus and archigram's walking city, propose a satirical design as a commentary of the market driven society and its disregard for the importance of history.  The competition - designed as a commentary - becomes a reality.  The crawling linear city becomes adopted because of its immediate development potential and how it can transform outskirt land into prime real estate. Fate is not without its sense of irony. 

The components of the crawling city. 

The city centre. The busiest part of town is in the middle of the strip as it is accessable to the largest number of people. Businesses and markets all collect here. Land value and rents are at their highest, so those who have the means and foresight to buy when this district was young, reap the benefits of selling at high rates to those who are desperate to be near the centre of town.  

The opening of the new district. (Spring) People and businesses pre-buy apartments and real estate in the new, fresh and modern wing. A celebration is held every year at the opening of the new district, which becomes a city wide event. New ideas are tested. It is always the most modern and exciting place to be.  The latest fashions in architecture and urban planning can always be seen on display here. 

The closing of old district: (Autumn) Generally a time for merriment and celebration of letting go, crops are harvested and there is an abundance of wine and beer from the harvest.  Every now and again a few people from the older generations gather to protest the destruction of the bay in which they had a special attatchment. People jeer or sypmathize, but mostly ignore these futile efforts, as everyone knows there is no point to stopping the slow and continuous journey forward.   Everybody knows the cities mantra "the city must move forward" in order to survive.  The end of the city, so close to destruction,  becomes the least valuable real estate/rent and therefore attracts the poor. Those who can only afford to live at the very back, must move house every year. It is exhausting. There is much drug/alchohol abuse at the 'back end' which has given rise to the common expression of 'having the back end blues'

The tube: The linear city has only one underground transport line. It only needs one. It is a linear tube which runs down the middle of the city. There are no changeovers, and the line runs very quickly due to its linear nature. As the city moves on. The buried concrete caverns are disassembled and re-used in the new district. 

The pedestrian highway: down the centre of the city on the surface level is a series of covered travelators which move at various speeds. Similar in organization to the motor highways of old, this is organized into fast and slow lanes, the fastest of which travel at 50 mph.  Between lanes are accelerator and decelerator ramps which transition the speed from one lane to another. Traveling in this way the inhabitants of the city can usually get to wherever the need to be within a 35 minute "accelerated walk". 

The chartered path: The crawling building, crawls through fields, and through ruined landscapes in search of green pastures to sustain its population. Resources such as  materials and food are taken from the farmland alongside. This is a time for farmers along the chartered path to become wealthy as they produce great amounts of crops for the cities consumption. After the city has moved on this land is always over farmed and bled of nutrients-a desert. The now wealthy farmers either join the city as nouveau riche or move away to unspoiled lands.  

The war path: The warpath is the snail trail of paved surfaces that is left in the cities wake.  It is scattered with a few building remnants that were either too rotten to be re-cycled as new buildings, or were left to those of the old generation who were so attached to them that they chose to stay behind. At first those who remain, are close enough to the living city to still survive but as years go by the city moves out of reach. Those left behind are usually old, and do not survive for long.   

The walk down memory lane. This refers to walking from the newer city to the older parts of the city. Many inhabitants enjoy this walk into the past, into their childhood, seeing the slowly decaying remnants of what was once the modern city. It is a pleasant walk, though the further down one goes, the landscape of billboards which were once used for advertisements gradually change, being replaced by banners of the city which convey the cities mantra -  "the city must move on"

The city cemetery

The cemetery is the nickname given to the last bay just outside the city boundary that is under deconstruction. The buildings are in ruin, the surfaces ripped out. Here, in the newly exposed earth, is the place where the city comes to bury its dead among the building ruins.  The place has a heavy air of letting go of the past. Processions lead through the threshold of the boundary of the living city to its last bay. As their loved ones are laid into the ground, grieved onlookers ceremoniously sprinkle seeds onto the bodies of their loved one. To hide the devastating sight of the warpath from the average citizens, the view to the warpath behind is blocked by a giant banner repeating the cities mantra "we must move on" displaying a happy family having a picnic in a lush green landscape. 

As these lands are abandoned to the war path, the seeds thrown in with the dead will grow with the nutrients of the body. With time, perhaps centuries or millenia, a new growth will once again take over the war path and re-fertilize the nutrient desert the city leaves in its wake.