To Plan Or Not To Plan?

22/03/2017

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To plan or not to plan? That is the question set out by eminent urban designer Wu Wenyuan as she reminisces on a changing life within the development rush of Guangdong. The once sleepy port village of Shekou, like so many traditional settlements, grew through haphazard “non-planned” growth, but in so doing created a ‘development soup’ frequently espoused as a beacon of harmonious living. Yet recent glittery and expensively considered expansion areas have failed to capture the powerful essence of the older, organically formed mixed neighbourhoods.

Image: AZ QuQTES

In his 1966 seminal work ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’ Robert Venturi explored design approaches that openly drew lessons from architectural history and responded to the everyday context. His buildings typically juxtaposed architectural systems, elements and aims, to acknowledge the conflicts often inherent in a project or site. This "inclusive" approach contrasted with the typical modernist effort to resolve and unify all factors in a possibly less functional yet complete, rigidly structured and simplistic work of art. 

​​​Whilst not directed at Urban planning there are myriad parallels that can be taken from Venturi’s tome into how rapid growth in China has been shaped by the smoothing and simplistic lines of the planner, creating ‘centres’, ‘layers’ and ‘axes’ on pretty two dimensional renderings that completely fail to relate to the cultural, social or environmental complexities. 

Olmsted Park Boston 2015, the hidden hand of man Image: Bikeable

The ‘Father of Landscape Architecture’, Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park in New York, wanted his designs to stay true to the character of their natural surroundings. He referred to “the genius of a place,” a belief that every site has ecologically and spiritually unique qualities. The goal was to “access this genius” and let it infuse all design decisions. This meant taking advantage of unique characteristics of a site while also acknowledging disadvantages. 

​​Olmsted believed the goal wasn’t to make viewers see his work. It was to make them unaware of it. To him, the art was to conceal art. And the way to do this was to remove distractions and demands on the conscious mind. Viewers weren’t supposed to examine or analyse parts of the scene. They were supposed to be unaware of everything that was working. 

One critic wrote of his work, “One thinks of them as something not put there by artifice but merely preserved by happenstance.”

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Shenzhen Shekou, An Urban Utopia? 

​by WuWenyuan

Image: Apecland

WuWenyuan

​General Manager and Chief Designer of Apecland Design Co.LTD. 
Guest Lecturer of Landscaping School of Peking University 
Guest Researcher of China Development Institute
Presided over 40 projects in architectural design, construction, international consultancy

Related Video:

My Dream City by WuWenyuan

Shekou Seaworld, now a major entertainment district of Shenzhen. Image: Apecland

​Despite numerous mentions as an example of idealism and innovation since the period of “Opening Up and Reform”, Shekou doesn't have a physical space that matches its renown. Shekou's urban district has contributed little to discussions in urban planning over the last 30 years. It might have been praised as a most suitable city to live in, yet Shekou has never been promoted for its layout. Is it because those early planners and developers missed something? 

​Traditionally, cities follow a template in their design layout, whether commissioned through autocracy, or evolved through development practice, which conveys the ideals and values of early planners, even when transfigured beyond recognition by ever-changing historical events. Common technical terms such as centre, axis and layer are frequently heard in general planning, and can find their counterparts in graphic design. However, a look at Shekou's layout really distinguishes its decentralised and deformalised layout from others.

Shekou Aerial Image: BWPI

​Shekou's Non-planned Growth
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Neither the earliest office buildings, nor the China Merchants Plaza, once considered Shekou's power center, commanded extensive road networks or avenues in its surroundings. The same could be said about the distribution of Shekou's business facilities; completely decentralised. This is a reflection of early Shekou residents' utopian and non profit-oriented urban dream.

​The most defining slogan of Shekou, above those common terms “Time is Money”; “Efficiency is Life”; “Action Speaks Louder than Words”, is “To build a human paradise of living and working”.' Pioneering builders developed their design and building principles outwith beauty of form from this unknown slogan. When people talk about "suitable", they are actually talking about utilising the best of our abilities, and the entirety of humanity  here represent a social ideal that entails empathy and egalitarianism.

The once small port settlement of Shekou under initial land planning. Image: Apecland

Simplicity of Planning
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​There has been heated discussion about social utopian ideals of Shekou. Usually, utopia isn't restricted to space. Utopia is not usually a city. The interpretations about utopia for reference are also very ambiguous. Utopia is a 'perfect place', which doesn't necessarily exist. However, as a geographer once remarked, any social value and behavior, regardless of its abstractness, can always be visibly and visually reflected.

​​​A look at Shekou's initial land development reveals its simple planning principle, a section of quayside land, transportation routes and their surrounding land areas within a 1000-acre land region. It makes one wonder how the early Shekou settlers developed such an imaginative human dream from such extremely simple land planning. ​​

Image: Nanhai Hotel

​Planning seemed unnecessary for its initial functional layout. Factories along freight harbours, hotels along ferry piers, and even the earliest villas by executives of oil companies, all take into consideration the balance between work and accommodation. Since no Shekou-wide buses were available, residential zones are all near to offices and factories. No village areas have been removed, despite the working class Sanyangkaida and Huasi areas sitting next to Haibin Park, once the most luxurious residential zone. Taizi Avenue, one of Shekou's major through streets is headed by a "T" due to failed land negotiations with Nanshui district about its extension. All of these are intolerable defects in urban form and layout from the perspective of modern planning and design. However, the confident Shekou people are capable of achieving the urban ideal of building the most suitable place to live and work by going off the beaten track based on pragmatic functions and an equal and free society.

​An urban ideal is not about the city's form, but about the orientation.

Image: Apecland

​Human Connections

​Compared with the recently implemented system of affordable housing, staff housing has been provided in Shekou since its infancy. Distribution being based on a principle of employees awarded choice of accommodation based on the length of their working years. The fifth floor was always the most popular choice, however, when it came to our turn to choose, the sixth floor was the only suitable option we had. At that time, I was working in the planning agency of Shekou, while my husband worked in real estate. The neighbours in the fifth floor were a couple of regular workers, with the husband a steel bender in the harbour and the wife a restaurant waitress, who were allowed to choose rooms first because they'd been working there for a long time. By modern standards, all staff accommodation then was basic in planning. However, it endowed me with the best community experience I ever had, with its social diversity and a sense of positivity and health.

Image: Apecland

Every day after work, I could update myself by listening to various community talks about stocks and policies, while my daughter learned ice skating, swimming and riding bicycles from a retired Harbour Authority neighbour. At the age of 4, she could buy breakfast without being cheated and would always get extra care from neighbours. It is true that today we all move into various kinds of high-end and individualized apartments with clear-cut boundaries and find our place in the social hierarchy, but we become increasingly segregated from one another. The individualistic and luxurious houses of today have become a bitter irony against the loss of social diversity brought by human connections.

An urban ideal is not about where it starts from, but about where it leads.

Image: Apecland

​​​​Conflicts Inherent in A Site

As a planner with 20-odd years' experience, the most common thing for me is to illustrate my urban dream on a drawn plan. But it is clear to me that those cities formed on paper are made up by romantic dreamers. We all enjoy the urban structure in being rich and complicated, but are without the enthusiasm to address the problems, pressures and changeability that arise from that richer structure. That's why, by accident or design, we then impose a series of restraints and barriers to access of public space, damaging its collectiveness and making its content duller and less dynamic. 

Shekou Relcamation Image: Graphic courtesy of Mary Ann O'Donnell

​My first foothold in Shekou was in the district of Shuiwan, a single apartment where it never occurred to me that vegetation, office buildings, luxury hotels, city squares, high end apartments, restaurants, garages and shoe-fixing stalls could be all mixed together in a small area within a radius of 800 meters. I looked at the area in plans and found no architectural sense of aesthetics and order. Is the reality wrong, or are we just lacking idealistic imagination?

The old street at Shekou Seaworld, now redeveloped. Image: Apecland

​​Judgments by non-locals about a space's beauty of form are meaningless. Public space is a city's largest cultural product and influence, as well as a breeding ground of collective spirit and aesthetic habits. Shaped from simple mud bricks extracted from the harbour, the entertainment area of “Sea World” once enjoyed an open piazza. During the 2003 renovation of the Sqaure, I came for several days of exploration, finally realising that this place was the living room of a city, every niche it contained allowed equal access for all, the very basis for urban diversity and sustained prosperity by recognizing the need towards commercial activity. The small photo studio, where my first picture was taken after arriving in Shekou, has now been forced to retreat to the very edge of the square however due to rising rents following constant upgrading and gentrification. Sometimes it crosses my mind that perhaps it will be my time to give up the Shekou living room once this photo studio finally vanishes into expensive air...

Location of Shekou Image: BWPI

Read the original article at Apecland

Image: Apecland