urbanism | priorities by ryan coghlan
shifting cities
ryan coghlan
actually predict what can come and that we would want to resist it. But as numerous individuals and history have shown we are often wrong about the first and cannot do the second.2 So what is our alternative? Simply becoming passive riders on a shifting geology hardly seems better. Yes, we’re now open to a better city, but we are also open to the possibility of a much, much worse one. In between these extremes of total control and total freedom lies a middle ground. We can recognise that we can’t predict our cities’ futures with certainty, but also know we can predict and want to stop some specific changes from happening. In short we can aim to create cities that can adapt along with their geology. How adaptable should our cities be seems to depend on where in the city we are. We are probably more willing to accept change at our grocers then in our own house. But if there is no fixed amount of adaptability that will work for all places, we need a method to help decide what the right amount of adaptability is for a particular place. * To begin to think out what a method might look like, let’s examine a section of False Creek in Vancouver, BC and decide what’s the right amount of adaptability there. We first need to answer – adaptable to what? An area or city simply cannot be made to adapt to everything, so I’ll focus on asking how this area can adapt to earthquakes, given the city’s earthquake risk. We need to determine what parts of the area are vital to it and absolutely cannot change. Here the residential skyscrapers and
The geology of a place is, in a very real sense, a record of change. Sediments pile on, compact, and form a record of what a place has been throughout its history. We can see when floods occurred, when glaciers came and went, when earthquakes struck. They tell us what has come and often what could come. And if we follow these records about the ground to the cities above the record of change continues. Building styles have changed over time, cultures have come, stayed, left, and different groups have (or haven’t) managed to find a place within the geology of the city. This record of a place, its geology, never remains still. Buildings are dismantled and replaced, mountains are worn down by the wind, new groups migrate to an area and shape the cultures already there. Geological change can be welcomed, but they are more often unpredictable, even undesirable. Our typical response to geologic shifts has been to build cities that are increasingly resistant to change. For instance, cities require buildings able to cope with more and more powerful earthquakes1 and enact zoning bylaws that to keep neighbourhood aesthetics static over time. On the face of it, these moves make sense – when faced with something as powerful as an earthquake and the unpredictability of what can follow, it is reasonable to want to preserve what exists now. And often these approaches manage to do what they plan to do – they preserve the existing geology of a city, or at least the aspects we want to preserve. There are two gambles we make in this approach to geologic upheavals. First we gamble that what we have now is better than what could come after. And second, we gamble that we can
above: study area with adaptable areas in colour, resistant areas in gray below: study area post-shift
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ryan coghlan
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