What exactly is a city and what is urbanism? Does size only make a metropolis? Can you create a city out of sand like the Shiekhs of Dubai or is the city a breathing organism shaped through time like Lahore? Who or what shapes the city? Is a city a work of art like Florence or is it a feat of engineering and human endeavor like Venice? Does the built form affect human behavior and so shape us or do cultural and social aspirations and available technology define built space? Are cities repositories of human culture or ravenous consumers with a boundless appetite for land and energy? 

 

The city as portrayed in literature and the cinema is both the cradle and the crypt of human civilization. On one hand representing the best of what a civilization has to offer – in terms of dazzling sophistication, the spectacle of human imagination, organization and technology [Damascus of the Umayyads present day Tokyo]. Whilst alternatively, the city is represented as a cess-pool of inequality [Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis], corruption and squandered opportunities [Georg Pabst’s 1929 film Diary of a Lost Girl] and up for a nod at the calamitous end awards [think Sodom or Pompeii, or even New Orleans]. The former perception of the city is something that has been dubbed as the ‘shock of the metropolis’ which is a mental state that can be seen as a marker of a society in transition. While the latter reflects a shift from wide-eyed fascination to anxious disillusionment more ominously brings to the fore a self-awareness of disempowerment that city dwellers feel in a slanted urban environment. From this dual representation of the city a picture emerges that shows the city as more than a collection of people occupying a space in time the city becomes a dynamic force capable of programming human behavior. 

 

In the early years of the 21st century, the quest for resolving the city of the future is as vital as it was in the 1960’s. What appears to have happened is that despite enormous social changes and a world-wide construction boom, urban utopia has been reduced to the scale of a high-rise or a master plan. What is clear is that the naïve quest for the ideal city or the ideal human civilization through ‘functional zoning’ or free play has been watered down by reality. There is a growing realization in the West that the city needs to become more organic in its makeup and accommodate diversity, individuality and complexity at every level. 

 

The processes that guide a cities growth are now understood as a constellation of interests and motivations that dictate the physical form of a city. Everyone becomes an interest group in this world view, with each group protecting and promoting its own welfare. The way forward is to take all stakeholders along with you - to negotiate.  The urban designer has to take a bottom up approach based on ground realities, as opposed to a deterministic top down approach generally favored by departmental planners in our country.