I have experienced life in cities twice: Tehran, 24 years and London, 2 months; so my interpretation of the curiosities of the city is highly influenced by my life in Tehran, a layered city full of contrasts and contradictions in physical and social forms.
I believe cities are alive. Streets, buildings, alleys, parks, furniture and the space within them make up these unknown creatures, which us, the people, have the illusion of controlling them, while in fact, we are being controlled by their self-organized growth.
NOSTALGIA
Cities go through different phases during their growth. They are being reborn over and over again. But there is something that never changes. Something that attaches the cities to their previous living ages; and that is the history which I’d rather call it nostalgia. The memory of a city lives inside us. It is by recalling the familiar images of the city that we find a fixation toward a certain city - me towards Tehran.
What is going on in the design of the cities now- no matter having roots in politics, economics, or simply inattention - is that the memory of people is being washed away. People need a certain reminiscence to refresh a hidden memory inside them. I think no ideal city can be defined in the absence of the familiar elements.
AN URBAN FLOW
As soon as I shut the door of my house, I feel myself being pulled by a strong magnetic power. It is as if I lose my identity as an individual and suddenly become part of an ever-running flow of humans. This feeling lasts until when I get into the familiar work or study places… So the urban flow is defined in the in-between passages. The avenues and streets of a city are the main places which we experience the interaction with the strangers in an urban context. This sudden impressive change has always amazed me.
INFORMAL VS. FORMAL
The cities have always witnessed different styles of living, varying from palaces to temporary carton shelters, being the extremes. The amount of income plays a vital role in the social class and the place that people live in. And that depends on the economic and political orientation of the government. Most cities in the world suffer from discrimination and inequality of wealth distribution. What is interesting for me is the coexistence of these different scales and types of settlements and how people with the least incomes are pushed to living without the basic standards of life and creating an informal community all around the world. As of 2005, one billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, live in shanty towns.[1] This informal way of living seems to be found mostly in developing countries; one of which I come from.
Tehran
Shanty house Apartment building
IDENTITY
Thinking of globalization and urbanism, the first thing that comes to my mind is the cultural heritage and identity being lost in this process. People and cities are detached from their cultural roots while they try to connect themselves to this global flow. The result is a state of confusion and disorientation which is seen more in developing countries.
GOOGLE MAP STREET VIEW
The installation and use of the CCTV cameras all around the world seems to be following the security policies. Governments often initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance.[2]
A positive use of the cameras, is the street view provided by google. One may never have travelled to a city but can have an overall live concept of how it looks. I think for students like us, this is a good tool for observing different areas and neighborhoods of cities in relation to our research or design projects. It helps us design more realistically.
FUTURE CITIES
When I google ‘future cities’ I find these:
Water | Green spaces | Density | No humans | Bizarre volumes, scraping the sky or floating in the air | Out-of-this-world spaces full of horror and uncertainty
Is this really where we are going and what we are planning to design in the not-so-far future?
Maybe we have to reconsider our values.
