Have any of these "new cities," anywhere, worked? My impression is "no."

Inspired by the astounding ambition of development in the middle east, Russia and China — cities of a half a million or more being planned from bare ground — I'll be posting a bit on mega-cities. So this article about Brasilia — Trouble in utopia as the real Brazil spills into Niemeyer's masterpiece — is worth reading for context.

Comments

[JRoth]

I'm not actually disputing your title thesis here - creating full-fledged cities by fiat seems quixotic at best - but I don't think Brasilia is evidence for it. For instance, form the linked article: "Parents say it remains a better, safer place for children than Rio or Sao Paulo." So, basically, Brazil is a tough country, with economic privation and social instability that makes all of its cities problematic. This is true in Brasilia and in Rio alike (arguably less true in Brasilia, but it's accelerating; they may be indistinguishable in 25 more years).

Further: it hardly seems an indictment of Brasilia that, designed for 500k, it has become home to 2.2M. Aren't failed cities the ones where no one wants to be? Presumably there are once-vast cities in Siberia that lie half-empty, now that people have freedom of movement.

Last: where's the line between unworkable "new city" and successful "new town?" There are certainly countless examples of the latter, scaling from new neighborhoods to garden suburbs and the various industrial new towns of the last fin de siecle (Pullman, Vandergrift, etc.). Is it simply that, above a certain scale, you can't create an all-new community in (say) 10 years?

[David Sucher]

Interesting points, JR. I'm not trying to say that it is theoretically impossible but only that Brasilia offers an example of how not to do it. And nothing I have read about the proposed new cities of SA, Kuwait etc leads me to think that they are thinking in evolutionary terms.

For example, Brasilia was lauded as being a work of genius blah-blah-blah when it was first built. But evidently it did not provide a template for expansion. So the new areas (and this is my understanding) have little relation to the original design. (Btw, is that accurate? I can't find anything on it except references that the expansion is in unplanned satellite cities of shacks.)

The neo-traditional plan of streets, blocks and lots allows for modular expansion/evolution. But the "artistic" approach ---and that's how it seems to me -- imagines the new city as a fixed and final form.

Specifically, I see no evidence in plans I have seen so far (admittedly few) that any attention is paid to values which I consider important and which gives a city "legs" (no pun intended) and that is its walkability.

So while it might be possible (and even desirable) to build new cities from bare ground which are "great," has it been done in the modern era? And that is a question.

[JRoth]

Your point about organic expandability is, I agree, critical. It more or less answers my question at the end of my comment - "new" communities can work if they're either compact and well-designed enough to survive as, essentially, villages (this applies to urban neighborhoods as well as to garden suburbs, I think), OR if they're able to expand without destroying what made them work at the original scale. So the urban plan of a "new" city like DC (granting that it took almost 100 years to really become urban) allowed for myriad nodes of urban activity, rather than a single center with concentric rings of less urban activities. The old gridiron lets nodes develop wherever they will. But an "expressive" or "gestural" scheme like Brasilia's simply can't develop in any meaningful way: it may or may not work as a full-fledged city, but whatever else happens, it can't adapt to.

One of the weird things in Brasilia is that they've built a giant mall right at the intersection of the two great axes. I don't recall how this came to be - whether Niemeyer had penciled in that location for commerce, and so it ended up an 80s-style mall, or if a developer essentially bribed his way into the midst of the artistic concept - but it's pretty emblematic of the ways in which Brasilia can't accommodate change without losing its character.

Also, of course - and this almost goes without saying - but the whole thing is monstrous in scale. Beautiful and amazing, but utterly inhuman (at least the monumental part, approaching the Pres. palace)

[David Sucher]

All I know is that I want to see it for myself, even though I have repeatedly heard "Don't bother."

[JRoth]

Oh, "Don't bother" is definitely wrong. To me, anyone with an interest in cities and/or architecture owes it to himself. There's simply no place else like it.

Plus, it's a cheap day flight from Rio (although I always tell people about Rio, "Don't bother." Hot, muggy, run down, and extraordinarily criminal).

[Brian]

Brasilia does look fascinating, in a Dystopian science fiction movie kinda way. I'd also love to see Chandigar, the photos make it look filthy and monstrous.

My brother got robbed in Copacabana. He also watched as the paraglider customer right before him crashed on the rocks below as the equipment failed. :(

Ah well...when the Drug War victims finally get out of prison in ten years and the veterans of the Iraq War who cannot cope are living on the streets, we will see our own version of social collapse and criminality. I can't wait.