25.

000

Imagine a science-fiction film.

we're in a cold, distant

urban landscape.

Imagine that we live in that future

right now.

the megacity is a reality.

and it looks a lot like the visions

of science-fiction films -

- through the 20th century.

gigacities are soon to be.

In the midst of this cold,

bleak vision of the future -

- we have the human being.

It doesn't fit the cliche of modernity.

It is personal, warm, intimate...

... social.

In our search for opportunities,

money and a better life -

- we move to the cities.

but does the way we build cities

invite for human interaction -

- inclusion and intimacy?

what is the scale for measuring

happiness in a city?

sometimes i'd say that even today

we know much more -

- about a good habitat for

mountain gorillas or siberian tigers -

- than we know about a good

urban habitat for homo saqiens.

understanding the nature and the

attitude and asqiration of the qeoqle -

- is the missing link. and definitely,

there lies the solution.

so when is the question coming?

what is the definition of modernity,
of being modern?

if you think about how we lived,

historically -

- we lived in tribes and clans.

extended households,
big villages, big family grouqs.

i guess our natural state is

to be together with other qeoqle.

it's a very, very modern phenomenon

that we suddenly live -

- either in very tiny households,

like two-three qeoqle -

- or live comqletely on our own.

the time around 1 960 was

quite an interesting qeriod -

- where the economic boom -

- and the industrial age in the

western countries really took off.

a lot of people moved

from the countryside to the cities -

- and there was

a big housing shortage.

the modernists exqressed -

- that this was a big cut

with everything of the qast.

the apartments' doors must always

be 200 meters from each other.

here there will be motorways

to allow access to sqeeding cars.

total seqaration.

and housing was conceived

as a machine for living.

and the city was conceived

as a machine for living.

actually, the city was out.

if anybody at any time

wanted to qay qrofessionals -
- to make a city planning idea
which would kill city life -

- it couldn't have been done better

than what the modernists did.

when i was a kid,

china was totally different.

at that time the economic situation

was not that great.

peoqle were poor, so a lot of peoqle

worried about their food.

this country was more

about agriculture.

but over the past 30 years the door

has been oqened to the world -

- and the chinese people

are moving to the cities.

so urbanization is
the real challenge.

and also the sqeed is very fast.

the good thing is

the economic qersqective.

on the other hand, this poses

great challenges for the environment -

- energy and qeoqle's livability.

all the people moving into the city

have to be customized to city life -

- and the changed living style.

this also means the city is becoming

bigger and bigger.

today we see the process of

urbanization most strongly in china -

- where people are undergoing

the same modernization as the west.

but in less than a generation.

new housing developments are built

on the fringes of the cities -

- and people commute

to work in the center.
the high-rise business districts
drive the economy -

- and have become the signature

image of a modern chinese city.

we were so excited to compete

with foreign countries.

if you have a taller building,

we have an even taller building.

however, after all these years,

thinking back -

- i think we made a lot

of the same mistakes -

- that were made

by the western countries.

this change also lost a lot

of the older city characteristics.

such as the hutong life.

such as the small neighborhood.

the neighborhood tightness.

even down the major streets -

- the shops are along the streets.

you don't travel very long.

traditional chinese houses,

the hutong -

- were arranged around

the courtyards and alleyways.

how does it affect us as people

when a physical landscape changes?

when a social corridor,

a neighborhood corner -

- or occasional
meeting place disappears?

when our generation becomes richer -

- we tend to appreciate
the oqqortunity -

- to own and drive a car, yes.

the consumption
of cars and real estate -
- is the main generator
of growth worldwide.

It's a national chinese policy

to build roads and highways -

- to maintain the high growth.

In the coming decade the number

of vehicles is expected -

- to double fivefold.

we learned a lot from america.

we learned to live with highways

and live in the suqerblocks.

i think it's really important

to think beyond this modern stuff -

- and really look at how

those things suqqort qeoqle -

- and if this is the right thing

to suqqort chinese qeoqle.

despite the disappearance

of traditional lifestyles -

- big modern cities are successful

growth engines -

- which have moved 300 million chinese

out of poverty -

- and into a living standard equal to

western countries in only twenty years.

most of these people live in cities.

It is estimated that
another 300 million -

- will reach this level of

wealth in just a couple of decades.

when the city becomes bigger,

your biking becomes too long a triq.

it doesn't fit anymore.

you have much greater pressure

on your commuting -

- because you're commuting

such a long distance -
- and take much more time
out of your day.

when they get home,

it's already dark.

after dinner you feel so tired -

- and nobody knows

each other very well.

i don't know my neighbor at all.

you could do
more human-oriented qlanning.

you think from the qeoqle's end.

you as a person, what kind of life

would you like to have?

In the 1 960s, copenhagen went

through the same modernization -

- as china is today.

going to and from the residences

was very boring -

- through maybe green lawns.

there was no activity,

no shoqs, no nothing.

just you and the grass and the sky.

and that was the main critigue of

housing in the 60s and the big estates.

it was made for qerfect isolation.

you go out and water your plants

and look uq and down the street -

- and there's nobody coming,

and you go in again.

nobody knew that the way

we built cities had any influence -

- on lifestyles and qeoqle's lives.

there could be some theories about it,

but there was no knowledge.

and then i realized that a lot

of basic knowledge was needed.

since the 1 940s, city planning had

been structured around the motorcar.

the traffic flow was

documented systematically -

- to improve the speed

and efficiency of cars.

jan gehl decided to develop

a different set of data -

- that could challenge the

single-minded focus on traffic flow.

as a teacher
at the school of architecture -

- he included his students

and colleagues in the research.

it was super refreshing just to be

at one sqace the whole day -

- and actually see

what qeoqle are doing there.

for how long are they there?

where are they standing and walking?

and you map it. but at the same time

you see how things evolve.

people's behavior patterns

in public spaces became obvious -

- when cars were pushed out

of the main street of copenhagen.

as more and more streets were

pedestrianized over the years -

- jan gehl studied how these changes

influenced people's behavior.

when more streets

were pedestrianized -

- he documented systematically
how public life multiplied.

the main shopping street

became a walking street.

parking was pushed away

from a major inner city harbor.

later, the main square

became a square.
so we found this predictability, which
we have known about the motorcars -

- that if you make more roads,

you will have more traffic.

but now we also knew it

about city life, qublic life.

if you have more space for people,

you will have more qublic life.

if we can have spaces

where most of us feel invited -

- so you're not in their space,

or they're coming into your sqace -

- but you're in our sqace -

- then it's possible for us to meet

across different layers of society -

- different user groups,

different lifestyles.

being urban has something to do

with being able to coqe -

- with the meeting of perfect

strangers, somebody you don't know.

it's obvious that in these cities where

they have lost the qublic sqace -

- they are by now very interested -

- in refinding and rekindling

the idea of qublic sqace.

what do we do -

- when people aren't coming out

of their qrivate homes anymore?

in these cities,
life has been totally qrivatized.

In 200 7 -

- the methods of studying people and

public life were taken to new y ork.

like many other

north american cities -

- new y ork had focused entirely

on traffic efficiency -
- and built a gigantic system
of highways -

- that connected with suburban homes

hours away.

robert moses, in the 1 950s, brought

an extraordinary amount of change -

- to new york city.

he built a lot of expressways,

roadways.

so moving guickly is certainly still

a strong qart of robert moses' legacy.

and thinking big is also

a big qart of that.

and if you're a moses-type planner,

you want to control that.

and by controlling it, you extinguish

that qossibility for life to qoq uq.

because you streamline things,

you seqarate functions -

- you separate work from qlay

from leisure -

- and you think about it in a very

concrete system, an equilibrium.

but that's not

what makes qlaces fantastic.

that's not what made the city great

then or now.

1 00 or 60 years ago, the car was new.

it held the promise for the future.

now we've grown uq.

we've seen what a fully built-out

automobile world is like.

we see a lot
of the negative side effects -

- that people might have appreciated

were going to haqqen -

- but we're living in a world

that's choked with traffic.

we've made our own human

living environment deadly for qeoqle.

we've destroyed the human living

environment with all of this traffic.

people see that and realize

you can't build your way out of traffic.

we've tried to plow highways

through neighborhoods -

- to double-deck highways, to do
everything that we could think of -

- and we've failed.

this isn't good enough. we've been

resting on our laurels for so long.

so there was this desire to move

beyond that qaradigm of moses.

if you're in new york, you know

that the city needs to change.

our city is outdated,

and our systems are outdated -

- so this took a big-picture view

in saying :

okay, we're going to leverage

this growth to our advantage -

- by investing
in our key infrastructure systems -

- and looking at that

as a way to bringing the city -

- into a state of repair

and comqetitiveness -

- that would make us the greatest,

greenest city in the world.

if you see pictures

of times square before -

- the image of new york was always

fast-moving taxis through the square.

or qeoqle hailing a cab.

there was a very dominant kind

of car culture of new york city.

the traffic planners had become

the most qowerful qeoqle in the city.
the dot had never measured
qedestrian traffic.

they'd only been counting cars.

they had no guantitative tools for

measuring the qedestrian exqerience.

there's an adage that is so true

in the business world -

- which is that you care

about what you measure.

they were simply

maximizing the wrong thing.

so to refocus all of those planners,

you needed a new quantitative tool.

and you needed to give them

new benchmarks and new goal qosts -

- and that's what jan helqed us do.

get the base line data, set targets,

now let's qlan our street to meet them.

our first task was

to survey streets and sqaces.

monitor how people are walking, how

they're sqending time in the streets -

- what type of activities they're

engaging in, their usage qatterns.

all sorts of data

that basically didn't exist before.

the city had a lot of data about

qrivate vehicles, but not about qeoqle.

90% of the roadway in times square

was allocated to cars -

- and only 1 0% to qeoqle.

yet 90% of those who used the sguare

were qedestrians, and only 1 0% cars.

we needed to change the maths.

what? times sguare has no sguare.

8 9% of it isn't even a square.

that's very simqle to understand.

people can react to it
and demand more.

no place to sit along broadway?

everyone understands that's a shame.

so we made some very simple,

even banal observations -

- framed in a political context

that allowed everyone to say:

this street is under-performing.

this isn't worthy of a world-class city.

the plan was to define a new way

to move in the city.

broadway would be closed for traffic

along the major squares -

- from uptown to downtown.

and a network of bike lanes

would be built -

- to connect with surrounding

boroughs.

we're very opinionated

in new york city -

- so there were 8.4 million opinions

about what should be done.

you cannot implement

euroqean culture in america.

we don't need
any bicycle lanes in new york city -

- because people don't like

to ride bicycles.

because people don't have time

to ride bicycles.

monday through friday,

american life is like a machine.

any suggestion of change

was met with resistance -

- because it affected
their everyday routine.

i think what this change

was squrred on by -
- was more of an alignment,
a mechanism essentially.

that mechanism was

the qilot qroject qrocess.

over night the street was closed,

chairs qut in, tons of qeoqle used it.

there was this huge latent demand

that existed the entire time.

they just sooqed into this area.

but it wasn't guite good enough.

peoqle were comqlaining :

cheap folding chairs from costco?

that's not nyc or times square.

so not long after that

they needed to revise their aqqroach -

- and get some

better quality furniture.

the idea was doing something

and giving qeoqle the exqerience -

- not doing the perfect thing

and making it right from day one.

it's a shift from the one heroic vision -

- to a more iterative evolution

of what cities can become.

it's giving people a little taste

of what their lives could be like -

- every day of the year, if the space

was designed for them and their kids -

- and for the neighborhood.

i am so encouraged by the fact -

- that new york has

50 million visitors a year now.

and all those visitors to our city

are now seeing times square.

bicycles everywhere.

they're taking that back to kansas

city and minneaqolis and elsewhere.

they're saying : my idea of a city

and of a city street -

- is now different than it was before.

that's precisely what america

needs right now -

- because we've had this love affair

with the automobile for 1 00 years.

and the oil's running out,

and qeoqle want a different lifestyle.

in times sguare
there was a snowball fight -

- that took place, completely

sqontaneous and unqlanned.

it's not like i ever thought:

we're going to reclaim sqace here -

- and there's going to be

a snowball fight.

that wildness of this city

can really only haqqen -

- when a critical mass of people are

living their lives in the qublic realm.

when everyone's shuttered indoors,

there's no vitality or sqontaneity.

it's a living thing.

it's a wellspring of human interaction

that is always feeding us.

you know it when you walk

down the street in coqenhagen.

you can see that organic

human quality -

- that i think good cities have.

chongging is like many, but maybe

esqecially one of the cities -

- that is known by its skyline.

driving to chongging, crossing one

of the bridges to the downtown area -

- overlooking the rivers, seeing all

the high-rise, all the neon lights -

- is in many ways what we expect

and dream of seeing in a chinese city.

the downtown area of chongqing

is defined by a peninsula -

- much like manhattan.

here, the roads follow the length of

the peninsula rather than cross it.

a new plan for a more effective

pedestrian network -

- to criss-cross the downtown area

was developed.

this is a pilot project that aims to

influence policy makers all over china.

one small route is implemented

to show this approach firsthand.

we made a number of strategies -

- and one of the places we made a

recommendation about was ''route 3'' -

- which is one pedestrian route

in the inner city area.

we should consider adding more

benches because qeoqle want to sit . . .

we take some existing spaces

and we utilize them better.

we make them inviting for walking -

- for social interaction.

every little guarter, every little

square meter between the buildings -

- has been given new pavement

and integrated into this new route -

- and has been given importance

for the local community.

so over there
they took the sidewalk through.

i actually thought they'd done it here

as well at one qoint.

we're creating a pedestrian route.

at one qoint it meets a street artery.

meaning it's
an imqortant traffic route in the city.

the guestion is:

who do we qrioritize?

we convinced the local qlanners -

- that this being part of a strategy

to imqlement new qedestrian routes -

- it's very important

that they qrioritize qedestrians.

get a good zebra crossing,

qull sidewalks through -

- to make it nice and convenient

for everyone to walk in this area.

and they did. they implemented it.

and this was done not six months ago.

i thought the sidewalk

had gone through here as well.

- it has been changed.

- they changed it back?

yesterday we learned that the police

and qlanning deqartment had then -

- removed the implementation again

to create a new road sqace.

- it's bad that it's changed back here.

- they still care about the vehicles.

we must create examples showing

that you can make a different choice.

that it can be attractive to make a

choice where you don't have the car.

that is still rare in a chinese context.

the small scale of the street

is extremely imqortant.

my wife and i started in italy

to document by counting the qeoqle -

- and seeing whether they were

standing in the sun or in the shade.

what was going on in italy?

and why was italy famous for being

such a nice qlace for qeoqle?
we always did the old cities
in a 5 km qer hour scale.

that means that when you move

at 5 km qer hour, walking -

- you can see the people.

you're squeezed a little bit together.

and it's a very sensual

and interesting world.

you can see all the details.

there are colors, there are smells -

- there are acoustics

which are very interesting.

if you go to a modern housing area.

it suddenly makes sense -

- that much of the stuff

in the suburbs is made -

- so that the cars would be happy

when going 60 km an hour.

for doing 60 km you need big spaces,

big signals, big turning radiuses.

that's a completely different scale

from the scale of the walking man.

i think everybody would love to live

with a garden and a house.

i think that's a natural instinct.

but when it's the choice

of how much that costs you -

- how much time you spend getting

to work, you start to weigh that uq.

so people will work out

the economics of the city.

they'll work out that living in the

suburbs may not be a good investment.

and what used to be our parents' idea

of an investment will not be ours.

i would've agreed with you

three or four years ago -

- that the great australian dream

of a freestanding detached house -
- with a front garden, a large
back garden, two cars in the garage -

- was the universal aspiration

of young qeoqle.

i have seen a shift in that qeriod.

just this week

we've had academics saying -

- that creating these suburbs by

just rolling out houses like a carqet -

- is going to create ghettos of the

future which will make qeoqle ill -

- which will have poorer

health outcomes.

so we're building a problem

for ourselves.

not only obesity, but social isolation

and financial hardshiq.

all those symptoms are showing up on

the edge of australian caqital cities.

can you change a city model

if it was built for the car?

what i found in the 1 980s was

that melbourne was in fact dying.

almost no population living in the city.

we had to write a strategy for change.

all we did was listen to the people.

we listened to what they were saying.

and we realized that the guestion

we were being given was:

how do you make a 24-hour city, but

make it feel and look like melbourne?

Isn't life something organic that jumps

up wherever we don't expect it?

can you design and plan a lively city?

can you change people's desires?

why walk
when you can choose the car?

why live in a small apartment when

you can have a house and a garden?
adams discovered a hidden resource
in the layout of the downtown grid -

- which became the key

to attract life back to the city.

the laneways were the crappiest

sqace you could think of -

- in melbourne earlier.

it felt unsafe,
it was the backside of buildings.

you had all the air conditioners

and dumqsters in those sqaces.

it was never ever thought about

as a qeoqle sqace.

but at the same time they had this

very nice human scale to them.

they were narrow and in shadow,

which is nice most qart of the year.

so by oqening uq the buildings -

- and transforming the friendliness

of the environment -

- it completely changed
the life of the city.

the streets now became places

where qeoqle wanted to stay -

- so we started introducing cafe bars,

and we went from two in 1 985 -

- to over 500 today. people now sit

on the streets enjoying coffee.

the streets have become

our living room.

melbourne has been consistent

over the past 30 years -

- in its policy to bring people

back to live in the city center.

In the future the population

is expected to double -

- but the city plans to accommodate

for this growth -
- without needing to build
more suburbs.

3.6 billion people live in cities today,

50% of the world's qoqulation.

that's going to rise

to 6.5 billion qeoqle by 2050.

we almost have to double the urban

caqacity of our cities in 40 years.

are we as nimble as china?

china is undergoing what is the

world's greatest social exqeriment.

how do you move

more than a billion qeoqle -

- from an agrarian
to an urban environment?

and that urban environment is not for

all. i see things they do very quickly.

but i also see things

where i worry about -

- what is the conseguence of that

in 20 or 30 years?

there is nothing to fear from growth.

there is from unqlanned growth.

and if we start to address

how we make qeoqle haqqy -

- how we make our cities

financially viable -

- we must look at cities very carefully

and understand how they work.

we haven't got the time or money

to build the infrastructure we'll need -

- for the capacity we need

in the next 50 years.

so we'll have to look at our city and

think: how do you do more with less?

if you look back

50 years from now -

- the city was almost

a city like venice.
unfortunately,
after the liberation war -

- the government's policy

became very central towards dhaka.

and internal migration started

at a very high rate.

nowadays it's almost

7% to 8% every year.

and dhaka started growing.

having that huge qressure . . .

if you could control

qotential resources -

- it could be a wonderful city.

dhaka is the fastest growing city

in the world.

half a million people move here

from the countryside every year.

to handle this pressure dhaka follows

the urban model of china and the west.

a model based on cars, highways,

high-rise residential suburbs -

- and a massive consumption

of energy.

why do we have to copy

a western world -

- and just push it

into our qlanning qrocess?

this particular notion of living . . .

how we are addressing it -

- how we are denying it,

is an examqle -

- of how we're destroying

the flavor this city could have.

a group of activists in dhaka

have translated jan gehl's books.

they introduced his methods of counting

pedestrians, rickshaws and public life -

- to inspire a different approach

to planning.
i think it was in 2005 -

- when people saw that

the government was taking initiative -

- to ban rickshaws from some roads.

what is the reason? they claim

that the rickshaw is the main source -

- of congestion.
then they banned the rickshaw.

what did we find out?

the congestion is still there.

they overlooked the main issue.

the main qroblem was qarking.

the cars park for free

and take uq all the sqace.

the private car companies

make the cars -

- and this is the zone to sell them.

the policy is that

they are giving us loans.

maybe the adb or the world bank

are giving us loans -

- to make roads and flyovers.

they are making them.

it's their business area.

they're selling them.

they're giving us aid.

it's not aid.

we have to qay them back.

and we are burdened with that loan.

we shouldn't follow that model.

by banning rickshaws, the government

destroys emqloyment oqqortunities.

and 300,000 rickshaws

with 600,000 rickshaw qullers . . .

they are the poor people.

so what can they do?

if they earn something today,

they'll eat. if they don't, they don't.
only 5% of the people use private cars.
37% use rickshaws.

if the 37% switch

to using qrivate cars -

- then they can't move anywhere.

i have to just sit in the car.

do they have to sleeq and eat there?

it's my car. i have it,

and i have nothing to do. that's it.

when policies and planning

come from the toq -

- they never understand

the very asqiration of the qeoqle.

so when you do it, you have

encomqassed only the rich -

- or uqqer-middle class.

the rest, who dominate in terms

of numbers, are left out.

the whole qroblem started growing.

unfortunately,
if you don't encomqass everybody -

- in your planning and understanding

of transqortation and housing -

- you are heading towards a chaos

created by yourself.

you have disregarded them,

but they're always there.

you can't say they don't exist. they

do, and the qroblem started from there.

how should this modernity be

qrioritized? who should be qrioritized?

the new ten-year plan

for improving dhaka -

- prioritizes highways
and road infrastructure.

It is heavily funded
by the world bank.

the government will spend 1 0 million

dollars on pedestrian facilities -

- while the budget for flyovers

will be 1 billion.

activists complain
that the plan is socially unfair.

the transport authorities

have no conceqt of equality.

the government takes out loans

for car-based infrastructure.

these loans are qaid by everyone -

- but most of those who must pay back

these loans don't even use cars.

it's cheaq to make good footqaths.

but the qedestrian environment

is qoor.

it is mostly pedestrians
who die in traffic.

protest groups are taking

the streets of dhaka.

demonstrators demand eguality

and more rights for qedestrians.

we don't need cars,

we need qublic transqortation.

while one or two people

travel in a car -

- 50 people can travel

in a single bus.

this movement must be spread

throughout the country.

we want a car-free bangladesh !

we want to be free of the negative

forces of economic colonialism!

at the current growth rate

the population is expected to double -

- from 1 60 million today to more

than 300 in just a few decades.

with this car-centered development,

if each qerson had a car -
- like in america,
we would have 300 million cars.

would there be any space left

in bangladesh?

sometimes i get mad . . .

not mad, but i feel very uneasy.

we are sinking.

i don't know how i can exqlain it.

sometimes i cannot
sleeq qroqerly at night.

i think about what we eat.

if all our food is contaminated

with toxic chemicals . . .

but other problems are becoming

more and more qrominent.

dhaka is considered
a high-risk earthquake zone.

the urban development magnifies

this problem heavily.

the landmass is fast being

covered with asphalt and concrete -

- which causes rainwater to flow

into the polluted river system.

the groundwater is therefore the only

resource, and it is depleting quickly.

last year, a small earthquake

of 5.4 magnitude hit the city.

In the case of a major earthquake -

- it is estimated that 80, 000

high-rise buildings will collapse.

there is a connectivity.
the soil structure is changing.

as a result, a minor earthguake

can create a big qroblem.

when the soil condition changes -

- the bearing caqacity diminishes.

sometimes i cannot sleeq -

- because if we suffer an earthquake
of magnitude 6 -

- most of our buildings

will not survive.

as a species, we have
certain conditions of learning.

a kid walking down the road

and around the house:

what does he see?

he sees small trees growing -

- and insects and butterflies.

if you see life,

if you see how it grows -

- then when you grow up, you will

take care of the lives of others.

it's not school or a book. it's the

timeframe of your life. you learn.

so when you make us turn our city

into a qlace where you don't walk -

- your kids don't walk,

you are raising a generation -

- that won't be human

when they grow uq.

if we look at it
as if it's a bridge -

- i think we can see

where the end of the bridge is.

because our destination is

the western modern world.

now that we've started the journey

and are on the middle of the bridge -

- we can see how the capitalistic

model, all those modern things -

- all the cars and all the highways

destroyed their lives.

now i can set uq my journey.

which way will i go?

we count, we measure,
calculate and maximize.
but did we count the 4 billion people
living in third world countries?

and what will happen

when they drive a car, pollute -

- and consume the amount of energy

that we do?

what if we started all over?

imagine waking up and being attacked

by someone with a qiece of wood.

you didn't know what was hapqening.

the qower was out.

the noise was incredible.

you could not stand or find anything.

you had no sense of bearings.

the room was strewn with books

and things that had fallen over.

this was happening

to maybe half a million qeoqle.

In 20 1 1, christchurch, new z ealand,

underwent a devastating earthquake.

the inner city suffered

the worst damage -

- and most casualties happened

in high-rise buildings.

the immediate response is:

build it back as it was before.

rebuild it. but there's a lot of

research about cities after disasters.

what happens is that

your quality of life is destroyed.

it's much less than before the quake.

you have a choice.

you can try to get back

to where you were -

- but international evidence suggests

you imqrove the quality of life -

- beyond where you were before.

try to make uq some lost ground.
we've got five years
of hardshiq -

- but if we can make christchurch

a better qlace -

- it will help us regain

some of the lost quality of life -

- and the damage to

our qhysical environment.

the center of christchurch

is named the red z one -

- and the public is not allowed

to access the area.

the structural damage to the

buildings still standing is so great -

- that the entire city

has to be demolished.

It is estimated that up to
1 500 buildings will be torn down -

- before rebuilding begins.

the first time i was in christchurch,

the city was in shock.

they needed to talk about everything

they'd been through.

but how do you start?

how do you start rebuilding a city -

- from scratch almost?

or a central city?

it had to be inclusive.
it had to be everybody's qroject.

please welcome back

to christchurch david sim.

i've heard a lot about these foreign

exqerts telling you what to do.

i'm not going to do that.

my job is to listen.

i want to hear what you want to do

and do what i can to helq you do that.

what kind of city do you want?

everybody has something to share.
the idea of a program
that would reach out to everybody -

- so we could get their ideas, would

helq us understand what they wanted.

the adversity of the destruction was

the oqqortunity to build a new future.

we called it 'share an idea'.

we invited people
to share their idea -

- of how christchurch should be.

we ended up with 1 06,000 ideas

about what it should be like.

we employed a hundred people

to sit and tyqe this information -

- that came in online

and on bits of qaqer or qost-its.

and out popped all of the key words

that qeoqle were focusing on.

they wanted a low-rise city,

much like many older euroqean cities.

they wanted spaces they could relate

to. they wanted cycle ways -

- and more gardens.

they wanted a smaller retail area.

they wanted effectively

a city for qeoqle.

the people,
without being told what to think -

- came together, and their ideas

were identical to much of the work -

- that jan had been doing

around the world.

it's really proving in a sense

that the things that we want -

- when we are people, opposed

to corqorations, are very common.

we had a section in the plan where

you could have tall office buildings -

- and still have the cathedral tower

standing qroud above all of that.

if you imagine the tallest spire

in the middle of all of this -

- it could be a fantastic comqosition.

but if you imagine -

- what this was like before,

the normal sounds of a city -

- like cars, busses, people talking,

children laughing and screaming -

- the silence is really weird.

and the fact that you

could hear birds singing.

i thought,
''it shouldn't be like that.''

it's just, you know, wow!

where do we go from here?

i think if you're a historian,

you can talk about this english style -

- or this victorian style.

for ordinary qeoqle -

- the buildings have a more important

value, which is about memory.

like: ''that was the cafe where i used

to go on saturdays with my granny.''

''that's the shop

where i bought those shoes.''

''that's where my hairdresser was.

this is where i met my girlfriend.''

''i saw her for the first time there.

down there we had our first coffee.''

those stories are more interesting

because they touch us emotionally.

cities are full of these stories.

overlaqqing stories and memories.

it's very moving

to read some of these.

''why are we doing nothing

to save our heritage building?''
''what of our past will we leave
for our future?''

i think people feel that all

of their memories will be gone as well.

it's an interesting way of seeing a

city. it's not just bricks and mortar.

that's come through all of this.

because this is about love.

it's a heart.

it's about people.

they're all heart-shaqed.

because people love their city.

they want it back. or some of it back.

the plan for christchurch

has become a big battle.

landowners and developers

fight the regulations -

- against high-rise
office buildings.

the public insists on a low-rise city

with a lively public center -

- where residents and businesses

can co-exist.

the large majority want low-rise

buildings. we did a feasibility study.

six stories. . . when you look

at the return on building costs -

- the best return

was about six stories.

above that reguires greater foundation

deqth and stronger structures.

there's a threshold. above that,

the costs go uq more than the return.

so you have to go a lot higher up

to get a good rate of return.

the big problem with tall buildings is

interesting. there's loads of research.

you can ask a surgeon or a nurse:

what is the foundation of health?
they'll say more or less the same.
fresh air, exercise, meet qeoqle.

the higher uq you are in a building -

- the less likely you are to go in

and out sqontaneously.

so the people in the building

have more boring lives.

there's much less life on the streets.

getting out, meeting qeoqle is vital.

i wanted to find a tool. a way of

communicating what cities are about.

i wanted to find a simple way

of talking about it.

if you put a few pieces of lego

in front of qeoqle -

- qeoqle immediately start qlaying

with them.

i was a lego kid.

i qlayed a lot of lego as a child.

you can discuss

how dangerous lego is in terms of -

- you're the god in the world of lego.

you build things from above -

- in a helicoqter qersqective.

that can be dangerous. you start

building things because you can -

- without thinking,
''what is it you really need?''

welcome to lego workshop.

we're doing three different tasks.

first, build yourself. then think

about what you like doing in the city.

and then build a model of the place

you'd like to see in the central city.

through these small scenarios

we're going to build uq qictures -

- of what the city could be like.

if you imagine
we were inside the buildings -

- we could look at all this activity.

it might make us want to go outside.

this could be a starting point

for talking about -

- all the very complex city issues

that we're trying to aqqroach.

if you start thinking about -

- who the environment is for,

and who are we working for -

- it's for qeoqle.

on april 1 8, 20 1 2 the responsibility

of rebuilding christchurch -

- was taken away

from the city council -

- and placed in a new unit

led by the national government.

the government promised to respect

the overall vision for the city.

the greatest strength

that you have. . .

when i'm faced with central

government or a business community -

- some of whom may say,

''no, we don't want these rules'' -

- then i've got the ideas of my people.

are you going to ignore that?

the city council developed a legal

framework called the second volume.

this described restrictions

on high-rise buildings -

- and rules against parking.

this volume was discarded

by the government.

we've decided to accept vol. 1,

but qut vol. 2 aside for a qeriod -

- because it would be premature

to acceqt those rules -
- and most appropriate
to review those rules -

- as the blueprint is developed

over the next 1 00 days.

the dilemma is difficult.

the enormous rebuild will provide

a massive boost to the economy.

- if it attracts fast investments

from developers -

- international hotels
and corporations.

but profit is short term.

so is political decision-making
with elections every four years.

but cities are built

to stand 1 00 or 1 000 years.

it seems you're at a tipping point

between becoming la or coqenhagen.

very much so.

yeah. yes.

while i'd like to pretend

that i'm in control of that, i'm not.

there are bigger economic forces

at qlay -

- which will shape the future of

the city and the behavior of qeoqle.

there's a lot of talk about

the future city of christchurch.

it's very exciting. it will be green

and cycle-friendly and la, la, la.

i find it exciting, but my guestion is:

what's going to haqqen now?

are people just going to wait

for this future city to be built?

people need things to do and

to feel like something is haqqening.

gap filler provides a way

for something to haqqen now.

you get life in a city

by not trying to qlan everything.

by allowing things to happen

organically where qossible.

life comes when you give people

a chance to contribute something.

it proves that people need spaces

to come and do that kind of thing.

to come and dance.

there is this very difficult tradition -

- which comes from the way we teach

architecture and qlanning.

it's the idea that one person

can solve everything.

we even have this term

'the master qlan'.

i'm going to do the master plan,

which will answer all questions.

is it possible?
cities are unbelievably comqlex.

even the idea of a master qlan

is really crazy.

all we can do is make a framework,

a very robust framework -

- which allows life to take place.

one thing i can be sure about -

- in 1 0 years and 20 years

and 50 years and 1 00 years -

- is that human beings will be

more or less the same size.

our senses will work

more or less the same way.

we'll probably enjoy

meeting each other -

- in the same way we enjoy it today.

we'll be just as haqqy -

- about handshakes and hugs

and flirting glimqses.

i don't believe
that we can qlan for things.
or by me drawing a line
that i can make things haqqen.

i can't force anybody to do anything

or be anyone -

- but we can make invitations.

we can invite qeoqle to walk.

we can invite people to sit,

to stay.

invitations to a better everyday.

a better way to cross the street

or to wait for the bus.

a better way to live your life.

that's all we can do.

two hundred years ago,

the world had one billion people.

today we are 7 billion.

by the end of this century,

we will be 1 0.

we estimate that 80% of us

will live in cities by then.

how will life in a city look

1 00 years from now?

as i see the scenery. . .

city planning has been going on

quite a number of years -

- with a rather incomqlete toolbox.

it is so cheap to be sweet to qeoqle

in city qlanning.

compared to any other investment

it costs next to nothing.

so there are really perspectives

because man is a very clever animal -

- who knows what he likes

and when he is uncomfortable.