Future Cities, happiness and place
In this Blog, we explore the power of place in informing a new paradigm on happiness in Future Cities - How we can plan future cities to be foster well being?
Cities are human creations that are the culmination of
millennia of collective efforts in trade, shelter and Leisure. So, why now, we
are so concerned about their future? Is not it that in our concern that an
underlying unanswered question begs to be revealed.
Are cities under threat of extensions?
And therefore, we are so concerned about their future.
Certainly, cities in the future have been fascinating to
philosophers, thinkers, painters and even Hollywood movie makers. The end
segment of the Planet of the Apes is a demonstration of the apocalyptic
perspective where skyscrapers of New York were submerged with ocean waves.
What justify this fear? What legitimize it? What is it this
aching question that triggers it or is triggered by it? A closer look to the
recently numerous exhibitions on the future of cities show the face of an unprecedented
technological innovations that transforming our concepts of urban space.
We are in the nascent emergence of a fourth industrial
revolution and unlike its precedents, it is challenging what is human as its
core as artificial intelligence opens the doors to a different race.
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| Planet of the Apes - Final Scene |
Who gets to be transformed into that race which is heralded
by neuro-scientists as better and faster problem solvers? Unfortunate, none that
the middle class and lower middle class which performs low to medium skilled
jobs that are under threat. In that sense, the question is valid for ‘’the City
‘’ now celebrated as the concentration of global flows of trade and people is
in fact the seat of the bourgeoisie of economic development, the seat of the
Middle class born of diverse rural migrants, foreign migrants and aspiring
professionals through the anonymity disguising their roots would be able to
forge an alternative destiny.
Will artificial intelligence submerge the urban space?
According to Richard Florida, Clarck, Sassen and dozens of
urban thinkers and leaders rethinking prosperity and live-ability on a local
scale , Place is the one component that the current industrial revolution
flirts with rather than erase it.
The ‘’locale’’, the ‘’address’’, the ‘’destination’’, the
‘’place’’ still prevail in social media, smart cities and websites. Designers
have tried for decades to comprehend, understand ‘’Place’’.
As an elusive ghost, the design process, this mental tool
for expressing the ultimate in forms , approached it wither with awe or with
the awareness that there I a dimension that we feel, we think about, we sense
but does not respond to the Cartesian concrete framework that we think through
our spaces.
A ‘’Place ‘’ has an essence,
a sense which attracts its dwellers, visitors and imbibe with meanings their
thinking process; meanings that are only live-able in it and through it.
Sense of Place
What is that which forms the ‘’spirit ‘’of ‘’Place’’? How it
is read and realized through human consciousness? And how a point in space
would become a source of inspiration over millennia becoming mentally
constructed over decades, ages and civilizations? Does in this that each city
is really trying to become in its quest of self-actualization? Is this which
each city is striving to embody as a definition of ‘’happiness’’? Is this what
the quest for Place is a quest for this presence experienced in the present but
transcendental beyond space and time? Is it the ultimate expression of what the
collective energy of city dwellers is?
The question then poses itself to our minds.
“”How the ‘’space ‘’within the ‘’city’’ could be designed to
embody ‘’sense of place’’ as an ultimate expression of city happiness?
Is it the biophilic experiences that a city offers when it embraces
nature rather than perceived itself separated from it?
Is it the human scale that a city revers so much that its
skyscrapers bow in humility to the Mind of their Makers?
Is it the ability of a space to allow flows of people to contemplate,
reflect and be mindful so that their collective energy adds to the city sense
of place?
Is it Art, as the ultimate expression of emotional
creativity that inhabits the space and changes its procession into an experience?
Is it the Free Will guiding diverse activities, communities,
groups, ethnicities into a group understanding towards the universality that we
share?
How the Happiness caused by sense of place becomes live-able everyday?
How the human mind will inhabit the future city?
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| Proposed Model for Smart Sustainable Districts 4.0 for planning and designing urban districts that are dense , socially inclusive , biophilic and capable of embedding smart technologies and Artificial intelligence - Copyright Reserved - Nadine Bitar (2015) |
The future is a human construct
The space is a human construct
Reality is a function of the human mind
As such, is this pursuit of the Happiness in the future of
the ‘’city is in essence a pursuit of the human minds to join in answering what
can connect them beyond the ordinary that technology is claiming everyday ?
Is it a leap of faith on the concept of ‘’the City’’ as the
physical manifestation of the joint awareness of the collective?
It is this deeper question that has at last revealed itself.
