Rodolphe El-Khoury - Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design

Shaping the City, 2nd Edition

Taking on the key issues in urban design, Shaping the City examines the critical ideas that have driven these themes and debates through a study of particular cities at important periods in their development.

As well as retaining crucial discussions about cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Brasilia at particular moments in their history that exemplified the problems and themes at hand like the megacity, the post-colonial city and New Urbanism, in this new edition the editors have introduced new case studies critical to any study of contemporary urbanism China, Dubai, Tijuana, and the wider issues of informal cities in the Global South.

The book serves as both a textbook for classes in urban design, planning and theory and is also attractive to the increasing interest in urbanism by scholars in other fields. Shaping the City provides an essential overview of the range and variety of urbanisms and urban issues that are critical to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.

Rodolphe El-Khoury is an urban designer and historian. He is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architecture and Urban Design at The University of Toronto. El-Khoury is also a partner in Khoury Levit Fong, an award winning practice that has gained international recognition for innovative design.

Edward Robbins, trained as an anthropologist, is Professor of Urbanism in the Institute of Urbanism, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design who has written and taught extensively about the relation of design to social theory and practice. Presently he is engaged in working on the challenges posed by cities in the south, especially the issue of poverty.

Shaping The City, 2nd Edition

Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design

Edited by

Rodolphe El-Khoury and Edward Robbins

Second edition published 2013

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 selection and editorial material, Rodolphe El-Khoury and Edward Robbins; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Rodolphe El-Khoury and Edward Robbins to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-415-58458-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-58462-3 (pbk)

Typeset in Univers Light

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

Rodolphe El-Khoury and Edward Robbins

Keller Easterling

Rem Koolhaas

Joan Busquets

Fars el-Dahdah

Sarah Whiting

Charles Waldheim

Jonathan D. Solomon

Paulette Singley

Victor J. Jones

Jonny Aspen

Richard M. Sommer

Mitchell Schwarzer

Teddy Cruz

Adrian Blackwell

Edward Robbins

Jonny Aspen is an Associate Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Joan Busquets is Architect Barcelona, Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Design School

Teddy Cruz is Professor in Public Culture and Urbanism at the University of California, San Diego, Visual Arts Department

Fars el-Dahdah is Associate Professor at Rice University, School of Architecture

Keller Easterling is Professor at Yale University, School of Architecture

Victor J. Jones is an Assistant Professor at University of Southern California

Rodolphe El-Khoury is Associate Professor at University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

Adrian Blackwell is Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo, School of Architecture

Rem Koolhaas is founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Edward Robbins is a Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Mitchell Schwarzer is a Professor at California College of the Arts

Paulette Singley is an Associate Professor at Woodbury University,

Jonathan D. Solomon is Associate Professor at Syracuse University

Richard M. Sommer is Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto

Charles Waldheim is Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Sarah Whiting is Dean of the School of Architecture at Rice University

The editors would first and foremost like to thank all the authors who contributed to this volume.

The editors and publishers also gratefully acknowledge the following for their permission to reproduce material in the book.

Rem Koolhaas, Atlanta 1995, Rem Koolhaas and The Monacelli Press, Inc, was first published in S,M,L,XL, by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, The Monacelli Press, Inc, New York.

Abu Dhabi and Dubai: World City Doubles is adapted and updated from a text published as Extrastatecraft from Perspecta 39, Re_Urbanism (2007).

Among several peers, colleagues and friends who have contributed critical insights and expert knowledge to the book the editors especially recognize and thank George Baird, Robert Levit, Jennifer Schirmer, and Nader Tehrani.

We thank the books production team for flawlessly orchestrating the publication of the work: Caroline Mallinder, Michelle Green, and Sarah Wray for the first edition; Louise Fox, Nicole Solano, and Fredrick Brantley for this second edition.

Rodolphe El-Khoury Edward Robbins

In the face of dramatic urban transformations, there has been a growing concern about how to develop a lively and engaging urban life. The rub, however, for designers is how to represent and make sense of this urban reality, how to comprehend it as an artifact that can be constructed and transformed, and how to make real the physical stage upon which urban socio-spatial practices are played out.

The challenge emerges out of the incalculable complexity of what we call the urban, composed as it is of so many different actors, groups, and institutions, and so many layers making up the sites and places of our cities. Adding to this complexity is the way different agents, forms, and practices create different sites that although not reducible to each other often inhabit the same location. Imagine the old 42nd Street in New York with its multiplicity of people; locals, tourists, day workers, prostitutes, johns, pimps, drug addicts and pushers, street vendors and more, sharing little in the way of practices and predilections but all found on 42nd Street amid its porno theaters, legitimate businesses, restaurants, and central transportation hub. At the other extreme, there are urban places that often are completely segregated and homogeneous in their form and social reality; gated neighborhoods, suburban enclaves, and public housing projects for the very poor. At critical points, this multitude of different realties makes up an entity that we might conceive of as a whole. While this whole sets out a structural framework to which we all respond, it neither penetrates nor circumscribes all aspects of our local cultural and social practices. It is because we are all part of the same urban universe yet live often in parallel worlds that are connected in different ways to the whole and to each other that it is problematic at best to think of the urban as a singular reality. More to the point, the whole is ephemeral; it is as if, to paraphrase Karl Marx, all that is solid is continually melting into air.