Challenges Of Urban Design And The Role Of Development Practitioners

When Charles Montgomery discussed what really makes our cities good places for us to live in through his book “Happy City: Transforming our lives through urban design” he discussed the connection between every day’s patterns and experiences of the city dwellers to their health, happiness, productivity, growth and even desire to live. He argued that suburban expansion isn’t an ideal planning movement; it increases the car dependency and individualism which reduces the human interaction, not only between people but with their living environment. People who live in smaller cities with walkable distances tempt to be happier individuals whom impact is more positive and progressive towards healthy social environment.

Today we live in very stressful, self-cantered cities where our commuting time is actually longer than vacation time, economic and social demands are pushing everyone to do more and think less and social cohesion is mostly digitalized. While the world is witnessing the most progressive era of modern history; the challenges we face today are not only threatening the human development but human existence, Global warming is a fact, disasters and conflicts are a devastating reality and scarcity of natural resources is a huge challenge. Among all challenges that our cities are facing today; the capacity for adaptation to global events seems to be the toughest and most difficult to achieve, yet, the answer to all crisis. “Everything remains inherently connected to everything else. ” Charles Montgomery*¹ Globalization and the expansion of multicultural societies have put urban design under a huge amount of pressure to balance between meeting - so called- the Global development standards in one hand and serving the actual needs and desires of communities. In a time when the accelerated growth in economy is raising; the race for power and investments is an international competition, and creating opportunities for investments within the city is a requirement, that if not available will affect the economy and social development of any given society. As a result, governments and decision making authorities moved toward massive industrialization which lead to massive urbanization, unfortunately, in many cases without proper long term planning, which leaves Millions of people suffering to survive in urban areas. Therefore, the pressure on development practitioners to mind the gap between both sides is increasing along with the urge to apply bottom-up methods of development that serves the society first.

According to an article published by the World economic forum; the rapidly increasing population density in cities can create severe problems, especially if planning efforts can't cope with the influx of new inhabitants. The result may, in extreme cases, be widespread poverty. Estimates suggest that 40% of the world’s urban expansion is taking place in slums, exacerbating socio-economic disparities and creating unsanitary conditions that facilitate the spread of disease*².

Inadequate habitat and social inequality are among the most challenging factors of the major housing issue that our modern cities are facing. With more than half of the world population living in urban areas, rapid urbanization caused many planning failures in providing fair and adequate level of habitat for the low- moderate - income population. The majority of these groups live in highly congested areas that are full of substandard or illegal housing with major issues as lack of basic services, unhealthy living conditions, lack of safety and privacy, unemployment, weak educational systems, social exclusion with no actual demonstration of civil rights, which affect not only the individual behaviour and growth, but also make major causes of Air and water pollution, sanitation issues, health issues, safety issues and increase of crime rates; which eventually creates a weak social structure within the city. Are we truly liberated? Do we have a choice to choose where to live? As cities continue to grow the housing challenges are becoming more complex, there are multiple factors affecting the vision of adequate and affordable housing for all habitat, the most important ones are connected to poor planning decisions and economic interests. Low- moderate - income groups tempt to live in old houses in the middle of the industrial and business districts in the cities, the upgrading and reservation of those households require not only huge financial support that those vulnerable groups can’t afford but also some changes in building regulations and land-use, other medium income groups tempt to live in sub-urban areas where houses are slightly cheaper compared to same housing standard in the city centres, yet, would spend more communal time. In the case of Amman - The Jordanian capital- the local government’s solution for the market demand of housing, especially after the up-normal growth in number of population caused by the devastating events in the Middle East was apartment buildings and urban sprawl.

The municipality have changed some land-use and building regulations to provide a profitable investment opportunities for buildings developers, which cause an enormous increase and expansion of these congested apartment buildings that lacks some basic design principles. Yet, the Jordanian multicultural population haven’t had a choice but to live in these available houses as the land value and construction cost are very high. The lack of communal recreational spaces inside these apartment buildings and the lack of public spaces between these buildings have created an inconsistence and disconnected societies. With the lack of a proper public transportation issue, Amman is suffering from high traffic stress, un-controlled urban expansion that is threatening to the Architecture and social identity of the city. Efficient and effective urban transport can significantly contribute to achieving objectives of adequate living and social justice, socio-economic objectives, energy dependency and climate change. Walkable cities are more consistence and healthier to achieve sustainable development for any society, but this is not the ideal case in our cities today. Un-controller urbanization and car dependency put those who can’t afford buying a car in exclusion from the city life, as being involved and connected to all events and spaces the city is offering requires easy access and reach. Putting the population under the pressure of choosing between living in high density areas or moving to sub-urban areas and buying cars to be able to move freely inside their own cities, cause an enormous increase of bank loans, which could lead to major financial crises as the one that happened back in 2008. Housing Affordability and mobility planning are among the most basic and important challenge that we are facing today that require huge efforts from development practitioners and governments together with the financial sector to be achieved.

Conflicts and disasters are among the major causes of immigration. Immigration to urban areas seems to be more desired by refugees who are looking for better opportunities. Yet, majority of those groups live in harsh living conditions and suffer from social exclusion. Social exclusion is expected in cities that aren’t providing proper environment for social inclusion for its people before immigrants. Yet, people tempt to gather around and create small societies within the city structure that share a certain ethnic religion or race or common interest. Those groups provide great opportunity for practitioners to demonstrate bottom-up participatory design methods to achieve social change and development. Participation of these ethnic groups and minorities in the planning and development decision making process will not only defeat exclusion but will set an example of fair demonstration of human rights and social justice. Urban areas and industrialization play great role in Climate change if it’s not the major cause of it, urban expansion and building industry are responsible of more than 35% of CO2 emissions only in the United States and mobility take the responsibility of almost 30%. Those figures makes our cities a major threat to our climate.

Energy consumption and Oil dependency are also great threat as our cities require a lot of energy to function. Those major challenges require a solid adaptation for more environmental friendly building materials, better mobility planning and full adaptation for renewable energy resources, Architects and planners take huge role in the demonstration of these solutions, as communities tempt to know the best building techniques that fits their environment as part of their building heritage. Yet, with the major urbanization movement and the continuous attempt of government to build bigger. Political and economic parties are great stakeholders in this process, reduce CO2 emissions in our cities require commitment from decision making authorities, development partitions role is to push for finding better solutions backed-up by the society and to create communication lines with decision making authorities to push for change.

Due to climate change and the change in the global political environments, our cities today are facing high rate risk of disaster, man-made or natural disasters would affect those who live in high density areas more, as buildings are closers and sometimes sharing structure. Post disaster recovery is a very sensitive phase where architects and planners should focus on long-term sustainable development of the community before the new spaces, considering their past, present and their future in the process of re-building. Yet, for cities planners, the pressure to apply more disaster risk deduction techniques is increasing, building resilience cities is a basic answer for this, yet our cities and subjected to major political and economic pressures that push for different approaches and major challenges against sustainable development, especially in the post disaster recovery process. As practitioners, being aware of those pressures and being fixable to manoeuvre those challenges to achieve what is best for the society.

In conclusion, All Humans share the same desires to live freely and adequately, we seek opportunities for growth and development wherever they are and our cities are our playground, the psychological impact of our cities on us is higher than we realize, development practitioners and authorities should pay extra attention to create spaces that aim for unity and justice. Cities of the future should promote principles of justice and dignity, fairness and inclusion, and no-one no matter what their economic status is or their ethnic race is should be excluded from the process, Habitat is a human right and cities will never reach their full potentials without providing a healthy environment for their habitant to reach theirs.