Table of contents for N. 110 in Topos

BAUCHPLAN).(TOBIAS BALDAUF, RUPERT HALBARTSCHLAGER, MARIE-THERES OKRESEK, TATJANA OSHIMA, FLORIAN OTTO The intentions appeared noble when the now defunct Greater London Council was planning to build a system of separate pedestrian pathways in the 1970s. They were to be elevated above the ever-expanding car traffic, hovering above the tumult of the city. The real–and only–reason, however, for building the so-called pedways was to keep motorized traffic as undisturbed by pedestrians as possible. As in all industrialized countries in that era, personal motorized transport in Great Britain was growing at a staggering pace. Citizens loved the convenience of their fashionable vehicles on four wheels. In the early 1960s in Great Britain there was one car per every 13 people; the ratio halved within the next five years. Pedestrians were not only viewed…

Between 2010 and 2013, road traffic deaths as a demographic figure increased by 32 percent in low-income countries. By 2030, annual passenger traffic will exceed 80 trillion passenger-kilometers–a fifty percent increase; global freight volumes will grow by 70 percent; and an additional 1.2 billion cars will be on the road by 2050–twice the current number. Based on the current rural accessibility index, about 450 million people in Africa–or more than 70 percent of its total rural population–are estimated to have been left unconnected due to missing transport infrastructure and systems. In 2012 transport was the largest energy-consuming sector in 40 percent of countries worldwide, and in the remaining countries it was the second-largest energy-consuming sector. Currently less than 18 percent of the world’s population has ever boarded an airplane.…

I have lived in Los Angeles for three years now and spent the first two driving past this bus stop on the corner of Santa Monica and Vermont. Contrary to most, I loved getting stuck at the red light. This momentary pause gave me time to observe the colors, shadows, and interesting mix of commuters. Since then, I have visited and documented the bus stop over fifty times, using a fixed frame in the same location as a platform for observation. In the beginning, I focused primarily on photographic composition , but as time went by my attention shifted to the people occupying the space and why they were there. In Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, the French philosopher Roland Barthes unpacks the effects of photography on its viewers. One…

topos: Bill, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you! I have a set of questions on highrise buildings, vertical transportation and urbanization. Which actually drives which? Some people say building skyscrapers is the driver, there are others who say elevators and vertical transportation technology are the driver. There are possibly more, such as economics or challenges of urbanization. What is your take? BAKER: Well, if you go back to the very first skyscrapers from the late 19th century, the drivers were structure and vertical transportation. That really hasn’t changed. They are the dominants in the generation of a tall building. The structure to hold it up against the forces of nature and the vertical transportation to make it useable. Those are the technologies that are constantly evolving to…

The “Stuttgarter Strasse” renewal project in the Baden-Württemberg town of Schwieberdingen near Stuttgart, Germany, was part of a larger local redevelopment project. This included, among other things, improved traffic control and the associated calming of traffic at the eastern entrance to the town, numerous new tree plantings along the road, charging stations for e-mobility, new bicycle paths with corresponding racks, are organisation of parking space and bus stop bays, crossing aids such as push-button traffic lights for pedestrians, and the reduction of excess traffic areas such as turning lanes in favour of wider pavements and planting areas. Manufacturer Nusser Stadtmöbel was commissioned to provide all the site furniture at the centrally located Vaux-Le-Pénil Plaza–named after Schwieber dingen’s French twin town. Wooden platform serves as the centre of the plaza The…

Your gaze meanders across the distant view. The eye scans the all-encompassing slope facing you. Small paths cross the dry, dusty, light-flooded landscape, winding their way between miniature houses and cairns. Now and then there‘s a splash of colour, which is mostly sky blue. But this is in contrast to the sky itself, which is not blue. This is a place full of loneliness, without life. A place for the dead. The Virgen de Lourdes Cemetery in Lima, Peru, which covers over 60 hectares, has been the final resting place for thousands of Limeños since the 1950s. For their children as well, as the ZONA NIÑOS sign points out. The camera's shutter release is triggered by photographer German Villafane, who was born close to this place. He too could have…

topos: Patrick, how do you see the future of cities? NATHEN: I see it as very crowded. If you take into account that in 2050 nearly 70 per cent of the world’s population will be living in urbanized areas, it is to be expected that cities the world over will morph into highly compact, massively cramped metropolises. This will obviously lead to a surge of inner-city traffic, but also an increase of traffic between city and country. Permanent congestion will be the rule instead of the exception. Not even to mention the intensification of air pollution and other environmental impacts. topos: This sounds distinctly negative. What would have to happen, in your view, for the city to be able to offer a positive future? NATHEN: Mobility will have to change.…

In his 1516 book Utopia, Thomas More coined the new word that he chose for the title to describe “how things should be” on a manmade island ruled by an ideal government and based on the rejection of greed, money and private property. Although he was not the first to explore the concept of an ideal society–Plato already described a Communist-type city-state ruled by philosopher-kings in The Republic–More was the first to physically detail the space of utopia. The concept of utopia refers to a non-existing place or optimal place, playing on the ambiguity between the Greek prefixes o? or ε?, pronounced roughly the same in English. The ambition to describe an ideal, conceptual world had a major influence on the design of the built environment, as testified by the…

The Surf Isle Modules by Streetlife provide a multifunctional and playful solution for public spaces. The 2D/3D wave-shaped street furniture designs upgrade user possibilities by offering a variety of ways to relax and sit. The Surf Isle components are modular (standard 300 cm x 150 cm) and can be combined and placed in semi-custom configurations, creating unique ‘micro landscapes’ with great diversity in use and aesthetics. The wave-shaped podiums are made out of hardwood slats (7 x 7 centimetres) with a raw hot-dip galvanized steel base (or CorTen) that can be RAL-colour coated as well. A double-layer powder coating offers a higher level of protection, increasing the durability of the steel base. A more sustainable variant of the Surf Isles can be equipped with All Black. All Black is made…

LAURI MACMILLAN JOHNSON is professor and director of the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Arizona and is a recognised scholar of design theories in history and contemporary landscape architecture, cultural landscapes, and children’s environments. KIRK DIMOND is is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Arizona. He is enthusiastically engaged in teaching and researching landscape services and design at the intersection of art, science and engineering, with lessons from the Sonoran Desert. Landscape architect Steve Martino and artist Jody Pinto collaborated in a design competition for an 8,000 square metres remote section of Papago Park–a 3-hectare site that includes the Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden. This area is at the boundary between Phoenix and Scottsdale that was formally held by…

UTE STRIMMER Urban areas are growing and encountering new challenges. Cities are getting louder and louder, traffic is increasing, streets are getting more congested and the air is getting more polluted. These are all factors that affect people's quality of life. More and more cities are therefore looking for alternatives to cars, buses and trains in order to find answers to their traffic problems. Planners are increasingly advocating inner-city cable car systems as a means of mass transport: What has primarily been used in mountainous areas to open up valleys is now beginning to provide traffic relief in cities as well. Cable cars can connect nodes within transport networks and expand a city's transport infrastructure, for example by linking rail networks on the ground or extending tram lines that don't…

In a recent work visit to Manila in the Philippines, we had a morning meeting scheduled. “The taxi will pick you up from the hotel one hour beforehand.” A full hour of driving? We expected a location outside the city, hoping to catch beautiful views from the car. When checking the destination, we were surprised to discover it took place in a nearby district, a mere seven kilometres away. “That’s ridiculous!” we thought. “Why sit in a car for an hour when we can cycle to the location much faster?” Back home in Rotterdam, a seven-kilometre trip is a no-brainer; thirty minutes of relaxed cycling does the trick. This was one reason we went with the Dutch Cycling Embassy to Manila–to export the great quality of life that a cycling…

CONSTANT CAP Non-motorised transport is the most widely used means of transport in both urban and rural Africa. More person-miles are travelled on foot everyday by urban residents than are travelled on any other form of transport. However, this type of transport is the most neglected form of physical mobility in African cities. Statistics reveal, for example, that in the Kenyan city of Nairobi about 45 per cent of the city’s citizens use walking as their primary means of movement to and from work or school. However, the city lacks safe, comfortable and universally accessible non-motorised infrastructure. Evidence from recent data obtained from the National Transport and Safety Authority shows that Kenya’s pedestrians are the most vulnerable in terms of road fatalities. The country’s 2019 road fatality statistics indicate a…

Los Angeles is one of the most widely broadcasted cities in the world. Popular images of the urban landscape–looming mountains, rows of palms reaching for the sky, and evening light shimmering along downtown high-rise facades–tend to have a familiar frame: the car window. In his 1973 essay, Ode to a Freeway, journalist Steven V. Roberts likens the freeways of Los Angeles to “movable galleries, unfolding new city scenes with every turn” (Roberts, 1973). While many argue that car-centric mobility was the original building block of Los Angeles, a closer look at the history of urban growth actually suggests otherwise. Martin Wachs, a professor of City and Regional Planning and of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, argues that the electric streetcar defined the modern urban boundaries of Los Angeles…

A large segment of Europe’s population lives in small -and medium-sized cities, in polycentric networks along transportation lines or waterways, in suburban agglomerations or at the fringes of metropolitan areas. In this urbanized territory–for which we coined the term urbanes land1–infrastructures, agriculture and production, businesses and housing merge in a fascinatingly operational, albeit fragmented landscape. To date, it falls short of its potentials and does not receive the attention it deserves. Yet, urbanes land is hardly included in public discussions on climate change adaptation, spatial justice or green infrastructure, although it covers large areas, is home to millions of people and full of economic development. It is characterized by intermediate density.2 Statistically the areas account for being urban without corresponding to the common notion of “real cities”. Reversely, truly rural…

To elevate oneself from the earth is a dream that is as old as humankind itself. While this dream has become a reality in the age of the modern elevator, it is intrinsically tied to the design of tall buildings and skyscrapers. Vertical transport technology comprises a means to confront the fact that the only way left for sustainable high-density urban development is up. Cities are the centers of urbanization on a global scale, and the overwhelming majority of humankind will be living in urbanized areas in the not all too distant future. Population densities will increase further, while the availability of scarce land will decrease. The continuous, sprawling horizontal expansion of cities is no longer feasible nor sustainable. If cities need to go up, elevators are the key to…