By the early 1960s, when the Soviet Union was rejecting the urban planning ideas of the Stalinist era and actively introducing the principles of the Athenian Charter into domestic practice, calls for their revision began to be heard louder in the West. In 1963, Reiner Benham writes about the narrowness of the architectural and urban planning concept of the Charter and admits that its provisions, which until recently had "the force of the commandment of Moses" are perceived only as an expression of aesthetic preferences.
Ten years earlier, in 1953, at the ninth CIAM congress, a new generation of urban planners, led by Alison and Peter Smithsons and Aldo van Eyck, had criticized the division of urban areas into functional zones. They advocated more sophisticated models that would allow residents to identify with the surrounding area. “A person easily identifies himself with his own home, but with difficulty - with the city in which this hearth is located …“Ownership”(identity) gives rise to an enriching sense of good neighborliness. A short slum street is successful where a wide avenue is often defeated”[1].
However, their approaches, despite their declared opposition to the basic principles of the "modern movement", themselves largely followed these principles. The revision of approaches to urban planning and, in the end, a change in the prevailing urban planning paradigm in the world did not occur as a result of criticism within the professional workshop, but because of the increased civic activity of citizens who protested against the life-building policy of the city authorities, which demolished old districts and laid wide highways through the urban fabric. One of the symbols of such a protest, and later the guru of modern urban thought, was the American Jane Jacobs.
She was not a professional architect or urban planner, but working for the Architectural Forum magazine, she analyzed large urban projects and noticed that the implementation of many of them leads not to an increase, but a decrease in urban activity and, ultimately, to the decline and degradation of such territories. … In 1958, she received a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to Research Urban Planning and Urban Life in the United States, which resulted in the best-selling book Death and Life of Large American Cities, published by Random House in 1961. The Russian edition of this book came out only 50 years later, in 2011. In it, Jacobs sharply opposed the desire of designers to shape the city space according to the criteria of their own visual perception. She opposed this approach with a methodology for designing an urban environment based on knowledge of the economic and social functions and individual needs of residents. In her opinion, the city should develop on the basis of a diverse, mutually beneficial and complex mixture of places of residence, work, leisure, trade, ensuring the growth of social capital in the city (a term proposed by Jacobs). A serious discussion arose in the United States and other countries around the proposed ideas, which in the future had a great influence on the change in approaches to urban planning.
Subsequently, Jacobs published a number of books that develop the idea that it is cities, being the centers of production, exchange, trade, that act as generators of new types of activity in human society and, in the end, provide an increase in the domestic product, and the spatial organization of the city is critically important for ensuring such generation [2].
The understanding of these principles led, eventually, in the United States and Europe to a change in approaches to urban design and a turn from the principles of the Athenian Charter to the traditional phenotypic forms characteristic of the home era. These changes took place in line with the general cultural trend associated with the rejection of the sacralization of machine aesthetics and coincided in time with the global change of the cultural paradigm from modernist to postmodern, and economic - from industrial to postindustrial.
The city began to be perceived by city planners not as an architectural project and not as a mechanism that facilitates the implementation of the functions of work and rest by a person, but as a complex organism, all interconnected parts of which develop according to natural laws, and which contributes to the communication of people, their interaction, the emergence of new interactions as a result of such interactions. businesses, initiatives, activities. Under the conditions of functional segregation, such interaction is difficult.
The change in the urban planning paradigm was also facilitated by the aggravated competition of cities for investment, capital in the context of globalization, and, most importantly, in a situation of cessation of natural population growth in Europe and North America, for “human capital”. The quality of life (and the city authorities understood this!) Has become the most important instrument of such competition.
How can you assess the fitness of a city for life? One of the researchers who tried to find estimates of the quality of the urban environment was Henry Lennard, who in 1997 formulated eight principles of a city well adapted to life:
one. In such a city, everyone can see and hear each other. This is the opposite of a dead city, where people are isolated from each other and live on their own …
2. … Dialogue is important …
3. … In public life there are many actions, holidays, festivals that bring all residents together, events that enable citizens to appear not in the usual roles that they take on a daily basis, but also to show their unusual qualities, to reveal themselves as versatile individuals …
4. In a good city there is no domination of fear, the townspeople are not considered as vicious and unreasonable people …
5. A good city presents the public sphere as a place of social learning and socialization, which is important for children and young people. All townspeople serve as models of social behavior and teachers …
6. Many functions can be found in cities - economic, social and cultural. In the modern city, however, there has been a tendency to over-specialize in one or two functions; other functions were sacrificed …
7. … all residents support and appreciate each other …
8.… Aesthetic considerations, beauty, and the quality of the material environment should have a high priority. The material and social environment are two aspects of the same reality. It is a mistake to think that a good social and civil life is possible in an ugly, brutal and unattractive city.
Finally … the wisdom and knowledge of all residents is valued and used. People are not afraid of experts or architects or planners, but they are wary and distrustful of those who make decisions about their lives”[3].
Today, a number of rating agencies compare the quality of life in cities. One of the most authoritative is the ranking of the Mercer agency, which assesses the fitness of cities for life by ten factors: the state of the political, social and sociocultural environment, the situation in the field of health and sanitation, education, public services and transport, recreation, trade and consumer services, housing, natural environment. Vienna was recognized as the best in quality of life in 2012. Traditionally, the top lines of the ranking are occupied by old European, as well as New Zealand cities and Canadian Vancouver, the top twenty also include Ottawa and Toronto, Australian Sydney and Melbourne. US cities appear in the TOP 50 only in the second half of the list, and the best of them are "atypical", such as Honolulu, San Francisco, Boston. There are no Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern cities in the TOP-50 [4].
It is indicative that the most favorable for life are either old European cities, or cities that were built up according to the European type. By the end of the last century, society realized that of all the city models invented by man, only the historical one, formed by centuries of natural selection, is the most suitable for life. That it is impossible to adapt the city to the ever-growing motorization without losing its fundamental qualities and it is, rather, necessary to adapt the car to the city.
The most clearly modern principles of organizing the city were formulated by the adherents of the concept of "New Urbanism". There are from eight to fourteen such principles in different versions, I will offer you ten of the most common:
Pedestrian accessibility
- most facilities are within a 10-minute walk from home and work;
- pedestrian friendly streets: buildings are located close to the street and overlook it with shop windows and entrances; trees are planted along the street; parking on the street; hidden parking spaces; garages in back lanes; narrow low-speed streets.
Connectivity
- a network of interconnected streets ensures transport redistribution and facilitates walking;
- hierarchy of streets: narrow streets, boulevards, alleys;
- the high quality of the pedestrian network and public spaces makes the walks attractive.
Mixed use (multifunctionality) and variety
- a mixture of shops, offices, individual housing apartments in one place; mixed use within a microdistrict (neighborhood), within a block and within a building;
- a mixture of people of different ages, income levels, cultures and races.
Various buildings
variety of types, sizes, price level of houses located nearby
The quality of architecture and urban planning
emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, comfort of the urban environment, creating a "sense of place"; placement of public spaces within the community; the human scale of the architecture and the beautiful surroundings that support the humanistic spirit
Traditional settlement structure
- distinction between center and periphery;
- public spaces in the center;
- the quality of public spaces;
- main facilities used on a daily basis should be within a 10-minute walking distance;
- the highest building density in the city center; the building becomes less dense with distance from it;
Higher density
- buildings, residential buildings, shops and service establishments are located closer to each other to facilitate pedestrian accessibility, more efficient use of resources and services and create a more comfortable and pleasant environment for life;
- the principles of new urbanism are applied across the entire density range from townships to large cities.
Green transport
- a high-quality transport network connecting cities, towns and neighborhoods;
- pedestrian-friendly design with extensive use of bicycles, rollerblades, scooters and walking tours for daily commuting.
Sustainable development
- minimal impact on the environment of the building and its use;
- environmentally friendly technologies, respect for the environment and awareness of the value of natural systems;
- energy efficiency;
- reducing the use of non-renewable energy sources;
- increasing local production;
- walk more, ride less”[5].
These principles are now generally accepted in urban planning in European countries.
NOTES
[1] Quoted. Quoted from: Frampton K. Modern Architecture: A Critical Look at the History of Development. M., 1990. P.398.
[2] Four out of seven books written by Jacobs have been published in Russian: Jacobs Jane. Death and Life of Big American Cities - M.: New Publishing House, 2011. - 460 p. - ISBN 978-5-98379-149-7 Jacobs Jane. Economy of cities - Novosibirsk: Cultural heritage, 2008. - 294 p. - ISBN 978-5-903718-01-6 Jacobs Jane. Cities and Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life - Novosibirsk: Cultural Heritage, 2009. - 332 p. - ISBN 978-5-903718-02-3 Jacobs Jane. Sunset of America: Ahead of the Middle Ages - M.: EUROPA, 2006. - 264 p. - ISBN 5-9739-0071-1
[3] Lennard, H. L. Principles for the Livable City // Making Cities Livable. International Making Cities Livable Conferences. California, USA: Gondolier Press, 1997.
[4] 2012 Quality of Living worldwide city rankings - Mercer survey - How does Canada stack up? URL:
[5] Principles Of Urbanism. URL:
