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New Urbanism Movement

And

Asian Cities Modernization

Illustrated Essay and Literature Review

Z3369458

Zisheng Lin

LAND2421

Project One

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Introduction

The New Urbanism movement origins in the late 19th century provides principles to

develop numbers of European cities. Its model is created by the understanding of

medieval cities and become popular during the City Beautiful movement in 20th

century. This essay focuses on the influences and developments of the New Urbanism

movement contributes to modern Asian cities. Also look at how the New Urbanism

development modified to satisfy the demand from modern Asian cities. There are

many Asian cities developed during 20th and 21st century which use the New

Urbanism principles as guideline to expand and grow, as a result, they contain

different characteristics from the Western New Urbanism development for solving the

issues that they are facing. The essay identifies the New Urbanism development

characters in Asian metropolises in order to search solutions for increasing population,

decentralizing the residential density and so on. This essay provides literature reviews

for the major reference: “Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory

and Practice” by Jill Grant. The book responds to the New Urbanism movement in

both theory and practical. And also acknowledges the Asian cities as key elements in

modern urbanism movements. And research the succession of Asian cities

development relies on the application of New Urbanism principles and integrated with

the local context.

The reasons of choosing this essay topic are the New Urbanism movement in Asia

provides successful strategies to solve the population concentration issue in cities,

further it contributes a lot in increasing the sustainability of urban development and

expansion of cities. And by foreseeing there is a 243000 growth in Sydney’s

residential population by 2030, the essay will inform some trends to the situation from

the study to the Asian New Urbanism development.

Asian cities expansion and New Urbanism Development

This section provides discussions for the relationship between Asian cities

development and the New Urbanism movement and also how they influence each

other. The definition of the New Urbanism movement is “New Urbanism is a

movement in architecture and planning that advocates design-based strategies based

on “traditional” urban forms to help arrest suburban sprawl and inner-city decline and

to build and rebuild neighbourhoods, towns, and cities.”1 Therefore New Urbanism is

also identified as Neo-Traditional Urbanism, the movement involves many different

contents such as Traditional Neighbourhood Development and Transit Oriented

Development, mixed uses and diversities of housing, Smart Growth and so on. The

New Urbanism movement demonstrates many scales of development from street

scape to regional planning. And New Urbanism encourages the transect of systematic

and organized model to go against the urban sprawl and highlights different land uses

1 Charles C.Bohl New Urbanism and the City: Potential Applications and Implications for Distressed

Inner-City Neighborhoods, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2000, p763.

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of each section within the model (Figure 1).

The New Urbanism movement started influencing Asia in early 20th century, and the

development beyond has expressed significantly characteristics of the design

principles in which “High density, compact form, mixed use, and extensive use of

public transportation”2. Many large Asian cities imply the New Urbanism principles

for the modern metropolis development such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, Tel Aviv,

Shanghai etc. During their development, they have shared the similar taste on

establishing the development, in Jill Grant’s description “East Asian urbanism pays

little attention to the public realm, has relatively little interest in heritage conservation,

design principles or vernacular

traditions.” 3 During the early

modernization period, the demand of

expansion from politics is significant,

especially in post-war period,

countries in Asia such as China,

Japan, Korea and Singapore have

desire of competition on economy

and politics to the developed

countries. The limited time of

requested demonstrates less attention

and value to the aspects that Western

designers due with (Figure 2).

The top-down urbanization strategy from the government is popular and powerful,

even the cities grow up fast and outstanding in terms on globalization and

infrastructure developments, there are many critics on the lack of indigenous

characters and conservation to heritage built environment. In fact, during the 20th

century the Western Traditional Neighborhood Development was most popular during

that period of time. “Gated residential enclaves, built in style of American “gated 2 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published, 2006, p 131. 3 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published, 2006, p 132.

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communities” are spreading out in the suburbs of Chines cities.”4 The Asian global

cities all contain with strong sense of New Urbanism urban fabrics which have

neighborhood, district and corridor. On the other hand, because of the existing urban

structure, the grid of Asian cities appears as organic shape which is different to the

origin checker board grid in most western New Urbanism developments. And this

organic urban fabric contributes to building up the identical quality for the New

Urbanism development. Also it provides a more context sensitive design strategy for

the city. Moreover, in order to embed the New Urbanism principles within the

existing urban form, the cities are integrated with two aspects harmoniously in

different scale.

Transit Oriented Development

One of the New Urbanism approaches is proposing the Transit Oriented Development

(TOD) to create linkage between urban and rural areas, the major content with TOD is

“a mix of uses and housing types (structured in relationship to distance from the

public transportation node), compact form, walkable streets, civic and commercial

centres along transportation corridors, well-functioning public transportation systems,

open space networks, and attractive public spaces”5. According to the statement of Jill

Grant the Asian cities highlight the characters of compact form, transportation

corridors and public transportation systems the most, they introduce the motor

way/high way system for urban, suburban and rural. Also after the cities demonstrate

the expansion of existing roads for vehicle, the city railway/metro system (Figure 3)

are invited into public transport. As a result, Asian cities are maximizing the

transportation benefit of the New Urbanism movement and increase the efficiency of

the city traffic situation. Comparing to that, the walkability of city is less important in

Asian cities. Using Hong Kong new territories as example, only 11.1% of the total

working population can travel between work and home by walking, most of the other

have to use public transport (78.4%), private vehicle (7.5%) or else(3%).6 One of the

major reasons is the concentration of employment in city which forces most of the

suburban workers travel long distance on road. Therefore the city continues its

centralization of economic value, employment and decline the sustainability of city.

Overall, in the modern Asian cities, the TOD becomes the vessel of city and connects

4 Fulong Wu, China’s emerging cities: the making of new urbanism, London: Routledge, 2007, p6-52. 5 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published, 2006, p 57. 6 Lam Hang Yee, A Study On An Evaluation of Sustainable Development of The New Town

Programme In Hong Kong, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2008, p62.

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the urban, suburban, and rural by infrastructures. For no doubt, the TOD supports the

growth of urban development in Asia as Jill Grant’s discussion on the achievement of

TOD. Yet the over-use of vehicle in Asia cause environmental concerns, and the

sustainability and development diversity is limited to its condition.

The Neighborhood Development in Asian cities

This section demonstrates the other New Urbanism movement’s contribution which is

the neighborhood development in Asian cities. The New Urbanism movement

contributes for creating and reinforcing the inner-city neighborhood. The

revitalization of existing urban conditions and adaptation to local context are critical

issues for the neighborhood of New Urbanism. The Traditional Neighborhood

Development (TND) (Figure 4) is an

approach that identifies sense of

place and strengthens the belongings

of residents and as Jill Grant stated

its value to city “Traditional patterns

and vernacular styles have a powerful

appeal in an era when heritage

conservation constitutes an important

cultural value and place-marketing a

significant economic value.” 7 The

Traditional Neighborhood

Development increases the social and

economic values in Asian cities by

introducing urban fabrics. Also the

TND promotes the metropolis

development

In Peter Katz’s book “The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community” it

states the 5 principles of an ideal Traditional Neighborhood Development “The

neighborhood has a center and an edge; The optimal size of a neighborhood is a

quarter mile from center to edge; The neighborhood has a balanced mix of

activities-dwelling, shopping, working, schooling, worshipping and recreating; The

neighborhood structures building sites and traffic on a fine network of interconnecting

streets; The neighborhood gives priority to public space and to the appropriate

location of civic buildings.”8 The contributions from the neighborhood development

are clearly expressed in Asian cities’ development. In early 20th century, the

neighborhood development in Asia focuses on transforming the Traditional

Neighborhood Development model to corporate with the existing urban sprawl.

Before the New Urbanism movement, most of landscape designs and open spaces 7 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p 59. 8 Peter Katz, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, New York: McGraw-Hill

Inc., 1994, p11.

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belong to private owners and the only public spaces are markets and streets. Via the

inspiration of the New Urbanism movement, landmarks and public open spaces are

constructed in order to identify the center or boundaries of neighborhood. The

hierarchy of public open spaces are built included public parks, plazas and squares,

market spaces, community gardens. Further the public parks during that period of

time contains classic Western public park design characteristics, for example the

Ueno Park (Figure 5) in Tokyo has central avenue access with the iconic cherry

blossom trees on both sides and connects the Tokyo National Museum with the

Shinobazu Pond which belongs to the Kan’ei-Ji Temple. The adaptive reuse of

existing temple and expand as Public

Park demonstrates an identical

Japanese civic park that provides

gathering, recreating, pedestrian

access to major facilitated buildings

and also Buddhism worshipping

function to the Taito district. The

Ueno Park like many other public

parks in Asian cities contributes the

landscape qualities of landmark and

public open space to the neighborhood

it belongs to.

Moreover, the development of

neighborhood in Asia has modernizing

its streetscape and the architecture. In

many Asian cities, the New Urbanism

developments in old districts have

remained the organic laneways and

alleys to conserve the traditional living

pattern for residents (Figure 6). The

conserved streetscape is different to

the urban sprawl, reason of that is the

form of streetscape has been

developed for over long period of time

and dynamically improves the

“common prosperity” of neighborhood

which is the public health, public safety, public morals and public convenience.9 The

integration of existing urban fabrics and the Traditional Neighborhood Development

principles determines the uniqueness of each Asian New Urbanism cities.

9 Howard Gillette Jr., Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the

New Urbanism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, p70.

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Asian Mixed-Uses Architecture

Additionally, the hybridized Architectural design innovated by the native engineers to

apply the mixed-uses buildings to achieve affordable housing and create a walkable

city. Jill Grant has provided the kit houses as example in Japan “In suburban areas,

modern interpretations of traditional housing form may appear alongside kit houses

called ‘American’ or ‘Canadian’ style: a smorgasbord of design options adapted for

the Japanese market.” 10 The Japanese mixed-building mentioned by Jill Grant

contains strong sense of 20th century western architecture which has higher building

height, glass façade and steel framed structure. The similar adaptation also occurs in

the other countries as the Shophouse-tenement (Figure 7) “This building form was

matched to a nested and hierarchical society of rentiers and renters which catered for

different degrees of social viability.”11 The intense mixed-uses building have a higher

density of usage and opportunity for both residential and retail uses, it increases the

efficiency of land uses in an intensive land use city. But there is also negative impact

“A tight mix of uses can create

environmental risks for residents.”12

Even there are disadvantages of the

mixed-uses buildings, the built-form

still spread out across country.

According the statement of Jill Grant

“After centuries of living at high

densities, the Japanese have

developed not only an urban

infrastructure that facilitates compact

form, but also cultural adaptations to

dealing with the externalities of small

spaces.”13The adaptability of Asian

citizens allows the succession of this intensive New Urbanism development in

metropolis whereas residents in European and American hardly contain with.

Therefore the functional aspect of built-form is really picked up by the New Urbanism

designers in Asia, and rapidly continues the modernization of cities.

10 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p 139. 11 Mar Phillip, Accommodating Places: a migrant ethnography of two cities (Hong Kong and Sydney),

Sydney: University of Sydney, 2002,p33. 12 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p148. 13 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p149.

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Conclusion and Findings

In Asia, most of cities are facing the challenges of all kind: rapidly increase of

population, financial crisis, citizens’ health and well-being issues, cultural and social

diversity. Comparing with developed countries, the developing countries such as

China, India, Thailand and so on are situated on issues with demographic, economic

and ecologic in an urgent level, some of the cities apply the New Urbanism movement

as strategy to solve those issues. As summarised by Jill Grant “Asian countries have

their own hybrid urban approaches that pick and choose strategies to fit their needs

and means…New Urbanism may draw on the principles that underlie patterns in

Eastern cities, but it cannot speak effectively to the cultural values and behaviors that

accompany oriental urban forms.”14 The major finding of this essay is to understand

that urban design needs to corporate with both the city and the design principles. And

that did illustrated in the New Urbanism development in Asian cities seems to be not

employed the full range of New Urbanism principles or practices, but the functional

and regional strategies are well-expressed for satisfying the demand from city

modernization.15 Besides in 21st century, most of the Asian cities transfer the priority

from functional economic development into more about the “Smart Growth” approach

which provides new trends on developing the urban sustainability and living qualities.

The future direction of Asian cities aims to achieve the same goals of the Western

cities.

Further finding in the perspective in Sydney, by predicting Sydney is going to share

the similar issues. Those solutions provided for Asian cities certainly inspire future

urban development of Sydney. There is a certain demand to provide intensive urban

development for the uprising population. And Rhodes residential development is the

best evidence for Sydney inspired by Asian New Urbanism cities and accommodates

density effectively for a whole suburb. The sustainability of urban design should be

adaptive to all situations. The intensive urban formats from Asian cities should

provide a significant precedent for future development in Sydney indeed.

14 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p149. 15 Jill Grant, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice, London:

Routledge Published ,2006, p205.

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The New Urbanism Mapping Poster

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Bibliography

Bohl Charles C., New Urbanism and the City: Potential Applications and Implications

for Distressed Inner-City Neighborhoods, North Carolina: University of North

Carolina, 2000.

http://www.botsfor.no/publikasjoner/litteratur/new%20urbanism/new%20urbanism%

20and%20the%20city%20by%20charles%20bohl.pdf (accessed April 3, 2014)

Gillette Jr. Howard, Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the

Garden City to the New Urbanism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2010.

Grant Jill, Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice,

London: Routledge Published, 2006.

Katz Peter, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, New York:

McGraw-Hill Inc., 1994.

Lowry Glen, Asia in the Mix: Urban Form and Global Mobilities – Hong Kong,

Vancouver, Dubai, Vancouver: Emily Carr University of Art & Design, 2010.

http://www.sfu.ca/~emccann/LowryMcCann%20AsianintheMix.pdf

(accessed April 3, 2014)

Michael Leccese, Kathleen Mccormick, Charter of the New Urbanism, 121-126, New

York: McGraw Hill Inc., 2000.

Phillip Mar, Accommodating Places: a migrant ethnography of two cities (Hong Kong

and Sydney), Sydney: University of Sydney, 2002

Wu Fulong, China’s emerging cities: the making of new urbanism, London:

Routledge, 2007.

Yee Lam Hang, A Study On An Evaluation of Sustainable Development of The New

Town Programme In Hong Kong, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2008.

hub.hku.hk/bib/B42555851/?bitstream=FullText.pdf (accessed April 3, 2014)

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Figures

Figure 1-Duany Plater-Zyberk, Co. “Rural-Urban Transect.” Center for Applied

Transect Studies.

http://www.transect.org/rural_img.html.

Figure 2-Image sourced by Wired Destinations website

http://www.wired-destinations.com/hotels/Hong_Kong/Hong_Kong_The_Country.ht

m

Figure 3-Images from various website for transportation infrastructure.

http://doctorbullshit.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/nanpu22.jpg,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Ahm_BRTS1.jpg,

http://www.hansens-hikes.com

http://choros.epfl.ch/webdav/site/choros/shared/Enseignement/Developpement%20ter

ritorial%20et%20urbanisme/08-09%20S2%20Villes%20d'Asie/Documents/6_Sujet_J

apan%20Urban%20planning%20culture_DTU%20Asie_0809.pdf

Figure 4- Ideal New Urbanism Neighborhood Model Illustrated by author.

Figure 5- Birdeye view image for Ueno Park. Available from: Synforest Inc.

http://dd.synforest.tv/synforest/sf-preview/bddvd/rda14/tokyobirds_cap_chap09_006_

uenopark.jpg

Figure 6-Urban fabrics of Taito district and Ueno Park. Available from: Google Earth

https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Taitō,+Tokyo

Figure 7-Chinese arcade building. Available from:

http://www.v8v8.org.cn/upload/image/20131019/20131019072954_18519.jpg