Urban Sprawl

Sub-urban challenge, urban intensity and housing diversity.

All towns are faced with the phenomenon of urban sprawl, splitting, and fragmentation. The increasing use of the car, the development of out-of-town shopping centres, the increase in the number of leisure complexes, and the extension of business/industrial parks, seem to be leading inexorably to a “dispersed town” urban model. There is, visibly, a new will to act in these contemporary areas, in order to reorganise them by reviving the traditional planning ethos of European towns, and by associating this with the challenges of urban sustainability.The means to fulfil this need for the progressive transformation of the contemporary town are provided by the existence of land development opportunities and the appearance of a desire for spatial innovation that has been generated by the evolution of lifestyles. Individual autonomy is increasing, as is the diversity of social interactions within the same family, professional mobility, and the speed of communications; all of which lead to a more spread out town. On the other hand, there is a strong demand for a neighbourhood social life which needs to be rebuilt on new foundations. Architects responsible for transforming the dispersed town must ask themselves how they can give it a new set of values.

Diploma Studio proposes to tackle this issue at the interface between the urban planning level and the architectural level.How can the dispersed town be transformed into a sustainable town, ecological and urban, with its foundations in the new social and cultural demands that are currently emerging? How can the creation of new residential districts,with innovative typologies and complex programme briefs, be fashioned into a strategic urban tool?

Housing Diversity

Diversification is the main characteristic of the new demand for homes. Composite households, the young, the elderly, “nomads” (tourists or mobile professionals), have not found apt architectural responses in today's contemporary town. The housing product remains largely modelled on a limited number of types that are supposed to respond to all needs.The issue for Diploma Studio is to initiate new thinking on research into typological innovation. How can appropriate housing perspectives be offered to town dwellers with myriad cultural and social profiles? Several spatial logics can be pursued:diversification of typologies: open plan, duplex, triplex, through simplex, gardens, terraces, courtyards, etc.;convertibility of space: transformation and adaptation of a dwelling according to: the evolution of the family living in it, a succession of different occupants, changes in the overall requirements of the housing programme;creation of morphologically complex layouts: scattered houses, housing clusters, mix of houses and flats, typological mix of flats, etc.

Urban Intensity

Today, it is taken as read that technological change (mobility, communication) has not only strongly influenced urban lifestyles
but also the practices of urban dwellers. To live somewhere is no longer just to be “at home”, cut off from other daily practices: work, shopping, recreation, etc. While new technology links us to a virtual world, it has, in fact, brought about a demand for neighbourhood social intensity. We now want to work from, or nearby, to where we live, to shop locally, to invent new ways of social interaction, and to fill our free time with sporting and cultural activities without being obliged to travel great distances from our homes.The residential space proposed in the dispersed town is, however, nearly always mono-functional.Residential zoning has produced the large social housing estate and the private estate of houses, treated as two extreme forms of segregated housing model, which prevent, by their spatial structure, all neighbourhood social intensification.In today's contemporary town, how can one give housing districts a new dynamism, and favour the spatial intensification of the social life that can take place within them? A variety of approaches can be developed, indeed interwoven:- assembly of different forms of housing, that is, the creation in a neighbourhood of different types of dwelling designed for inhabitants with different households: dwellings for the elderly, students, single-parent families, etc.;- addition of associated services: new local shops, public services, sports and cultural facilities, etc.;- creation of conditions that will allow for the existence of a home/workplace interface: work space associated with the home, technologically high performance units for skilled trades and professions, small units of offices.

Sustainable Process

Areas affected by urban sprawl have not stabilised. They have often been formed through an accumulation of partial logics, and a variety of disparate interventions without any thought for overall urban ecology. As such, they constitute a favourable field for analysis in terms of sustainable development. On a European scale, they cover a wide variety of forms and situations. Besides large, emblematic sites, liberated by industry, which offer towns enormous scope for internal expansion, there is a wealth of potential in other more modestly sized, but nonetheless strategic plots of disused, and underused, land.

The aim of Diploma Studio is to work at research into principles of urban coherence in the dispersed town, but concentrating on specific elements that go beyond the historic principles of the old town, or of traditional urban composition. How can new logics of urban assemblies be conceived, that are adapted to the fragmented, heterogeneous territory of the contemporary town? How can a landscape be created that, while enabling mobility, will offer elements of urban coherence and environmental quality? The environmental approach must be linked to urban restructuring, in order to work:- on the scale of an entire area, where it is a question of creating compact residential platforms that both liberate and integrate natural space, that combat noise and other pollution from road and transport networks;- on the scale of these platforms, in order to manage natural resources (water, energy, etc.), and artificial elements (waste), with care to take into account the ecological and economic rules of networks;- on an architectural scale, in order to integrate technical innovations, to adapt the construction networks to the principles of diversity and of the convertibility of spaces, using materials that are nothazardous to health;- with the whole range of scales in order to introduce the question of nature as an element associated with housing (garden, neighbourhood space, park, etc.). To conceive new contemporary residential districts with the aim of sustainability also means taking into account the period over which a project is to be implemented. Students must, therefore, explain how their overall vision fits into a spatio-temporal strategy that takes into account local means of creating space.How can spatial lines of force be laid down which will give coherence to the urban project while opening up to a series of programmed interventions and appropriations that will call upon a range of players who follow a logic of opportunities?

In one sense, the word "fragment" means a small piece of a smashed object. So an "urban fragment" would be an ignored remnant of an urban area that has been broken up. But the word can be used in an opposite sense, to mean a vital part which is needed to reconstruct something, in the way that a fragment of pottery can be used to piece together a whole civilization. In this second sense, an "urban fragment" can precisely designate the way a small part of a town contains and symbolizes the entire town.Rethinking residential fragments is not, therefore, a question of "residentializing" neglected neighbourhoods, but of examining how the project can provide them with a physical, social and symbolic identity that firmly reflects the identity of the whole town.

Whatever their organization and history, today's urban areas in Europe are all characterized by a fragmented and heterogeneous structure. Shaped by specific societies and geographical situations, they all have one thing in common: the headlong expansion of towns in the decades following World War II. Apart from any questions of urban form, modern life is organized around new points of density or intensity which punctuate urban areas and supplement the symbolic and general function of town centres.

The ambitious public housing programmes of the 1950s to 1970s produced many large scale, single function developments. These are often poorly linked to surrounding areas and have become neglected, even stigmatised, with many social and physical problems. Their low densities and poorly defined spaces between buildings, sometimes with mature landscapes, offer opportunities for intervention. The challenge is how to revitalise them, both physically and socially; how to articulate them better as part of their urban context; and how to make the best use of the existing buildings and landscape, as well as
to intervene with new buildings that will improve the mix and intensity of uses.

In an effort to structure the ongoing sprawl, cities often resort to limiting the future expansion into clearly delimited zones. In their ambition to mark the difference between town and country, such extension plans often perpetrate the idea of the consolidated town. The question of exploring limits is therefore still highly significant for contemporary urban development. It should clearly be treated in a new and innovative manner, but remains at the heart of the meaning that architects and urban designers confer to the city of today.

Pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, motorcyclists, tram users... In today's towns, each group has its own territory, each its own speed. Not only must they all travel the same urban networks, they must also share them equitably. There must be room for vehicles of all sizes – from baby buggies and wheelchairs to trucks and lorries. The focus is now on creating "pacified" public spaces, where thoroughfares are fully adapted to modern urban life and all types of transportation can coexist harmoniously. Examples include a tramway route stitching together a sprawling urban fabric, a pedestrian underpass designed as a real street beneath the railway tracks, or a major transport node developed as a multimodal hub with its different functions superimposed. On a larger scale, a "parkland street" concept can be applied to ease the tensions of city life.

Each city contains enclosed areas, occupying many hectares urban territory: the cloisters, military barracks, hospitals, etc. These areas are often characterised by a deviating fabric, a large amount of open green space and specific building typologies. Closed for the public and often a blind spot in the mental map of the city, most people do not know what is inside these
areas; they only know the external facades and walls of the area which is often regarded as an inconvenient obstacle in the surrounding urban fabric.

Text of EUROPAN 7 presentation (partly paraphrased)