City Dwellings: City of Towers

This photo was taken of the multi apartment buildings, Olera Heights on Circular Road, San Fernando. The Olera Heights Housing Development was constructed by UDeCOTT in order to fulfil the Government of Trinidad and Tobago’s vision to provide affordable housing to the citizens of this southern city, while at the same time not sacrificing comfort and quality. The most significant trend in the design of urban housing in the last fifty years, from a social point of view, has been the steady reduction of dwelling space and the intensification of building use. The trend has been forced by the rising cost of construction and increased competition for land. I believe the design of the space outside the dwelling units; corridors, lobbies, grounds and non dwelling facilities, was poorly designed. Most housing projects seem designed to minimize or to prevent accidental and casual communication between people and the informal gathering of people.

The Olera Height dwellers may have certain needs:

There is the need for exercise by children, teenagers and adults and the more limited the space within the dwelling the more desperate the need.
There is the need for some sunshine and fresh air.
There is the need to just get ‘out’, especially mothers with small kids, children and old people.
There is the need to somewhere like shops or church etc.
There is the need to do some household chores which would be much better done outside or it may not be done indoors, like washing your car, drying clothes etc.

Source: http://www.123rf.com/photo_6165820_urban-planning-background-concept-glowing-light-effect.html

A key vision which had a considerable impact on twentieth century urban planning was that of the ‘city of towers’ proposed by the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier. He proposed an ideal for the ‘good city’ which would address the perceived problems of nineteenth century urbanization. His work can also be seen as a reaction to the problems of congestion and slum housing in early twentieth century Paris, the city he lived and worked in for most of his life. Corbusier developed his planning principles in two key visions: Contemporary City (1922) and the Radiant City (1933). His paradoxical solution to the problems of the crowded, disorganized by city was to decongest cities by increasing their density, also to improve circulation by increasing the amount of open space and by careful geometrical design. Corbusier’s views on urban planning were therefore quite authoritarian; he believed that the design of cities was too important to be left to the people and that schemes designed by experts should be imposed from the top-down (Hall and Barrett 2012).

'Radient City' by Le Corbusier
Source: http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2005/12/france_le_corbu.html

In multi-story apartment buildings, visibility has been achieved in some housing developments by the construction of wide exterior corridors. They provide outdoors-upstairs areas for the convenience and pleasure of everyone: a place to sun the baby, dry clothes, get small children out from under foot without taking them downstairs, or a place for the adults to sit out in the fresh air. Single- family or row house developments have achieved it by arranging the row of dwellings or the single family houses in the shape of a three-sided rectangle (Bell 1972).

The process of planning should make articulate what it is that people want and need and what space provisions should be made. The pride and warmth of feeling that come when members of a community have beautified their own home are basic to the creation of social community (Bell 1972).

References:

Hall, Tim, and Heather Barrett .2012. Urban Geography. London and New York: Routledge Publishing.

Bell, Gwen. 1972. Human identity in the urban environment. London: Butler and Tanner Ltd.