In the previous post the Studies in Happiness, Economy and Sustainability (ISHES) asked the question “Can humanity as a whole be happy and satisfied without destroying the natural systems on which we depend?” It is in light of the second part of this question, “without destroying the natural systems” that I want to consider the writing of Manuel Castells, particularly regarding an issue not directly discussed by Castells: rural depopulation.
Manuel Castells explores the global network and its need for a location. The global network is functioning in two distinct and opposite ways. As a means of implementing “decisions” it operates globally. However, the space in which those decisions are made is local: “face to face.” It is this necessity for face to face interaction required by the “advanced services” that make them the “dynamo of urban growth”. “Knowledge sites and communication networks are the spatial attractors for the information economy” just as access to natural resources and power distribution had been the spatial attractors in the industrial era. While he acknowledges that previously established cities like London, New York and Tokyo are significant nodes in the global network he claims they did not create the network but instead have be co-opted and strengthened by it: they have been recreated by it.
The shift to a globalised world has had a number of dramatic effects. Firstly, it has created the mega-city regions that encompass large numbers of people over a large area, where 2,3 or 4 mega cities connect as nodes in a regional adjunct of the global network. He describes the “Southland”:the name given to the region that includes Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Tijuana and extends inland for about 100 miles (fig.1).
fig.1 Southland.
Secondly, Castells enumerates the flow of human population in response to the globalised world: the world is rushing toward the largest wave of urbanisation in human history. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) by 2030 over 5 billion people will live in urban environments while South America is already at 80% urban population, with Europe and North America not far behind.
A third effect, not discussed by Castells, is the depopulation of the countryside that corresponds with urbanisation. What should our response be to it? And if there are potential environmentally positive outcomes to be had there how do we achieve them now or in the medium and long term?
Rural depopulation should present an opportunity for the environment to regain some of the losses it has sustained since the Industrial Revolution. As people are lured by the “spatial attractors for the information economy” the land formerly used in agrarian economies, both peasant based or industrial farming, becomes free for other uses. The opportunity arises for the boundary between the economy and nature to be redrawn. However there is no reason to assume that this will happen in an orderly or timely manner.
Despite being part of a mega-city region the town of Temecula exhibits none of the dense urban fabric one might expect of a Global node (fig.2). Instead urban sprawl rolls out across the land as people aspire to a life in atomised, car dependent “MacMansions” (fig.3). Clearly, there is a market for housing that has no ambition to sustainability. Equally clear is that planning authorities and rural land owners on the urban fringe are able to subdivide and market this land long after this model of human habitation has been condemned by environmentally aware urban planners.
fig.2 Suburban Sprawl in Temecula, Southland.
fig.3 Close up of Suburban Sprawl, Temecula, Southland.
Of course, in other Global cities the model of the Ville Contemporaine is still being pursued (fig.4). Across China, as urbanisation continues apace, the ancient, dense hutong are bulldozed and replaced with high rise towers. This model is also used in new urban areas (fig.5).
fig.4 Le Corbusier’s Voisin Pan
fig 5. Contemporary Buildings in Beijing are remarkably similar to those recommended by Le Corbusier.
The implications presented by these 20th century housing models for redrawing the boundaries between nature and the economy are poor. One consumes land and maximises transport energy resource consumption and the other fails to deliver sufficient density while failing to meet criteria for quality urban living, mainly multiplicity of uses and a deactivated street front. From the point of view of redrawing the boundary between nature and the economy high rise is preferable. But it is not optimal.
It is the 19th Century example of cities like Barcelona and Paris with their 5 and 6 storey perimeter block developments that are able to contain the most number of people and do so in a way that provides good quality of life. The capacity of these cities to house their populations makes them the appropriate model for urban planners and policy makers when providing housing in and about the nodes of the Global City. Of course there are caveats to this kind of assertion , not least of which is that no form of housing will prevent the economy consuming the environment if a non-growth economic model does not prevail. But the Compact City Model (of which old Paris and Barcelona are representatives) may help us in the interim to contract our footprint until such a time as a sustainable economic model can be found.
References:
Manuel Castells, Globalisation Networking, Urbanisation: Reflections on the Spatial Dynamics of the Information Age: Texas, Urban Studies, A&M University, 2010
figs 1,2,3 & 5. Google Earth
figs 4. http://www.postalesinventadas.com/2011/03/la-cite-daffaires-de-paris-plan-voisin.html