STUFFED TO DEATH

Previous posts (A LIFE LESSON - 13 of april 2012  and 21/04/2012) mentioned and briefly introduced the intrinsic relation linking economy to urban forms. 


As zoning seems to have been the inconscious urban consequence of an economic rationality based on division of labor and efficiency, it could be instructive to study different contemporary urban projects to see what they have in common, and see if any underlying and hidden economic tendancy (hidden as "not being part of the project official purposes") could sweat out of those similarities.


In others words to what are we adapting the city nowadays ? 


Exemples from France are pretty interesting as all the biggest urban projects of the last decade,  in Paris but also in Lyon, Le Havre and Marseille, built to replace large empty spaces left by old industries, occupy the last rare spots available inside the city. This privileged location gives them even more importance as an illustration of how city life is conceived for the years to come.


Les Docks Vauban - Le Havre - opened in 2009
Old docks have been transformed into a "shopping, leisure, culture" center. 60 000 m2 shops and restaurants, one Gaumont cinema, one supermarket, one exposition center. 

 

La ZAC de Bercy - Paris 1995, opened in 2001

The whole project contains a parc (very successful lanscaping job), housing (also successful), but the core activity is, as the project quotes "a shopping village, animated all year by the recreative and cultural programmation of the Altarea company". Waw, sounds like fun. It also has a Gaumont cinema.  The project presents itself as "an art de vivre dedicated to culture, gastronomy, nature and adventure". Gastronomy ? chain restaurants like "Hippopotamus", "La Compagnie des crêpes". The adventure ? Yes. Indeed. There's a travel agency where you can buy trips to everywhere in the world. So exciting.

Lyon-Confluence, Lyon - 2007

Massive project (70 hectares), with a care for some mixity, with housing and offices. Core project : a shopping-leisure center, "le pôle des loisirs". Designed by a great architect Jean-Paul Viguier, but still a just a mall.

Les terrasses du port, part of the Euroméditerranée program - Marseille - 2014

"une offre inédite", "a completely unique and original offer" with lots of shops and restaurants completely unique and original, managed and promoted by the giant Hammerson, real estate compagny who spread the same kind of mall all around the world.

 

From those 4 exemples, something can be said about the way city life is pictured for the future :

we only eat and shop. This is our main activity, organised for us by people with good intentions. 

Its not like we needed more places like this, we already have them, we already can buy perfume and smartphones in large quantities. The stressing thing is our complete incapacity to create something else than a mall when we decide to build a brand new part for the city.

Of course one could argue that eating, drinking and buying is what you do in a city but you don't want to do it when it is orchestrated on purpose from the begining like that, like you're some labs rat with identified needs and predictable behaviour. 

Those places are not built for the citizens and their leisure time. Its a money machine pretending to be the new place for fun. Its actualy funny to see it as a factory, and the customers as workers, producing wealth.

Despite the improvements in environnemental standards, the efforts made in architecture, the "respect of the historical context" (they kept the old rails, the old walls, etc) and some functionnal mixity by adding housing here and there, those urban projects are still problematic : they support a bad economic model and a bad idea of what a city should be. 

The funny thing is that by following this completely sterile path for our national economy and our own industry, we look like the third-world when it comes to malls. Look what they do in Singapore as a "leisure center", that's what I call a "leisure center".

Garden´s Bay, Marina Bay, Singapore, Malaysia, 2012

Marina bay, Singapore, Malaysia

We can not compete right now on the leisure center side obvisouly, since unlike Malaysia we don't feel the insane happiness of being suddenly very rich and modern and the urge of showing it in the most outragious way, so we might as well try to follow a different way.

AP