The City in History

As we look at urban planning in the coming millennium and the 21st century, it is most important for all of us to gratefully look back at the long history of urbanization all over the world and appreciate the achievements of those ancient city planners who had made the city the true cradle of civilization in whatever cultures they lived in.

Ours is the technological century. As we enter this new millennium there is the danger that we will continue to be dazzled by all the technological and scientific gizmos that dominate our rapidly globalizing and modernizing world.

Technology will either enrich human life or destroy it. In a couple of years, half of the world will be urban. Most urban citizens will be living in giant cities and metropolitan areas.

More and more people will be living in cities in greater and higher densities. Present urban areas will expand and develop from cities to mega-cities and to mega-urban regions. Can we do something to effectively cope with the challenges of this rapidly urbanizing world?

Population problem is rigorous. Asian holds almost half of the world¡¯s 6.2 billion people. The lesson that we learn from Shanghai and other Asian Mega-cities, then, is that it is extremely difficult to limit and control urban expansion. One way of dealing with the issue is by planned mega-urban development. Instead of trying to constrict the city¡¯s development by greenbelts, strict zoning regulations and control over investments that growth can be channeled in a planned way toward certain desirable urban centers.

The role of ideology in the planning of cities has been one of the most important factors in the development of Chinese cities.

What these ideological concerns tell us is that in the 21^st century, despite the dramatic technological and scientific advances that the world has achieved, the human condition remains threatened and fragile.

If no attention is paid to ideology, therefore, particularly that part of their ideology that seeks equality and justice, the cities of the 21^st century will become social battlegrounds and urban planning and administration will be relegated to policing and riot control.

The structure, planning and governance of rapidly expanding mega-cities and mega-urban regions constitute one of the most serious policy issues that face the world today.

Many learned people have raised the question of whether mega-cities and mega-urban regions are at all sustainable.

The most basic issue faced by urban authorities at present is how to achieve two very different and often self-contradictory objectives. The first goal is efficiency in the delivery of urban services. The second is active citizen participation in public decision making.

Achieving efficiency, however, often results in the bureaucratization of urban life. To deal with complex problems, we need stable organizational structures, predictable rules and routinized administrative procedures.

One of the most important challenges we face as we attempt to plan for cities in the 21^st century is the issue of scale. The planners of the past had planned for a super-human scale.

The information revolution has given human beings the great opportunity to make decisions quickly and efficiently.

The human scale and a good equality of life are important. The preferred sites of global trans-national corporations are tending to be cities of history and culture. Human technological innovations have brought about the most advanced devices for saving time. One of the most important challenges to the urban planner of the future, therefore, is how to plan the physical and human environment is such a way that human beings do not lose their innate sense of humanity.

Firstly, we need a generalist education for future planners.

Second, a good planner¡¯s education should stress full appreciation for the aesthetic aspects of urban design, for the flowing lines of architecture, for the beauty of nature and the colorful palette of the arts.

Third, planners for the 21^st century should be educated to think about process rather than about end products. Rigorous courses on research and planning methodology should be required.

Fourth, planners of the future should learn not to make too much of a distinction between theory and practice.

Fifth, future planners must be educated and trained to listen.

Sixth, the planner of the 21^st century must know how to facilitate group decision making in order to arrive at actions that reflect the general welfare.

Finally, the planner of the 21^st century must be humanist, someone who believes in the inherent goodness, goodness, goodwill, civic spirit and altruism of the average urban citizen.