Mor Temor

1. Introduction

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The world's first cities arose between 4500 and 3500 B.C. in the valleys on the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, and the Indus. The coming of the city marked a sudden alteration in the character of human existence: with it came the invention of writing, the specialization of labor, the acceleration of technology, and the beginnings of science. Today in every advanced country the city is man's principal way of organizing his living space (Kevin, 1991).

The population of the world is exploding. The rising flood of urbanization is surging outward from the center and engulfing the surrounding countryside. Congestion festers within and eats about the edges. Communications are breaking down. Medical science sustains health and prolongs the lifespan. Famine and pestilence are no longer the levelers of excess population in most of the world. Nuclear war may be. If humans are to live on, the urban pattern they occupy will require major unraveling and reweaving. Much understanding will be required, and the nature of the metropolis will undergo severe examination.

People in all walks of life have raised their voices against the inequities, the ugliness, and the congestion of the city. Human beings have demonstrated a consummate ability to build tremendous structures. The construction of a skyscraper is a remarkable feat, but the high-rise has struck a popular chord by default rather than by design. It is presumed to compensate for high land cost and thus maintain a semblance of economic balance. In reality it induces ever-mounting land prices. Every urban dweller is familiar with the consequence: intolerable congestion.

The attraction of the skyscraper is undeniable. The drama has been eloquently expressed by Le Corbusier. His utopian scheme, in1922 in Paris, was a city of magnificent skyscraper towers surrounded by a broad and sweeping open space. The city was a huge park. Sixty-story office buildings accommodating 1,200 people per acre and covering only 5 percent of the ground area were grouped in the heart of the city. The transportation center, railway and airfield, was the hub. Surrounding the sky-scrapers was the apartment district, eight-story buildings arranged in zigzag rows with broad open spaces about them, the density of the population 120 persons per acre. The city was designed for a population of 3 million.

Le Corbusier argues concentration versus congestion. He demonstrates that his city will concentrate the people, conserve the daily hours they consume in horizontal travel, and direct this time into productive effort and leisure (Mario, 1999).

With the positive thrusts of railway, highway, and airway, new dimensions penetrated the twentieth-century city. The railway and the highway is shaped to the contours of the land. Continuity is uninterrupted by natural obstacles; with almost defiant sureness bridges span chasms and tunnels pierce mountains. Unimpeded continuity is essential and insistent. Almost unnoticed, this new dimension has forced a new scale in city building.

An appropriate form for the future city has not yet emerged. It is significant that whatever the direction taken in the search for a new urban form and however persistent the trend of decentralization, the idea of the city is not forsaken. The complex and diverse functions are reshaped, regrouped, reorganized, but the constituent elements of the city are not abandoned. The commerce, the industry, the cultural institutions on which our society depends for its spiritual and material enrichment are retained (Eisner, 1992).

Arch. Mor Temor