Bad news: in the coming year we will probably be broadsided by another crisis (a flu pandemic, worldwide crop disease, global sequence of ‘Big One’ earthquakes, cyber meltdown or extended civil protest) which will worsen the collapsing world economy, setting into motion a domino effect of operational failures that will to lead systematic breakdowns of infrastructure and services in urban centers.
Good news: sometimes a plan hatched for one problem works even better for another. The Urban Prosperity plan proposed by the US president-elect is billed as an initiative for market recovery. It is intended to “stimulate economic activity” through federally funded programs by improving urban areas. This plan seems even more apt to implement should another crisis occur. There won’t be a need to stop and redraw its scope since what it outlines is what would be needed in the case of a double-whammy.
Though it is packaged as a recovery plan it is really a new cities plan. In its most immediate sense it seeks to improve the depressed economy through urban development: to prop up markets by creating jobs to build infrastructure, transportation systems, public facilities like libraries and schools and to implement clean building technologies. But the plan is more ambitious and far reaching. It does more than try to improve cities as a means to an end, it aims to transform what cities are. Instead of calling for maintenance repairs and incremental upgrading, it looks to make a new kind of living environment where cities operate efficiently at a regional (rather than municipal) scale with advanced forms of collective transportation and sustainable infrastructure systems. The declaration of such a plan in itself expands the horizon of possibilities for what we as architects can design, and more importantly, it offers a historically unique opportunity for a developed nation to have a second chance to make a smart form of city. Hopefully, it won’t come down to an additional series catastrophic of events to realize such a plan. But it probably will.
