Some great past posts by kosmograd include;

06. The Manhattanisation of Bilbao

05. The City Destroyed by its own Beauty

The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis’s book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds. bldgblog has a great two part interview with Mike Davis worth reading as a follow up.

Helsinki is no.10 most expensive city on the planet in the twice yearly report, though its clear using New York and therefore the American Dollar puts European cities automatically at a price disadvantage. However the story of the top 10 is expensive European cities and I think that’s pretty accurate, and that comparisions between Euro currency Cities are probably more accurate again. (via)

Finnish Designer Timo Niskanen was runner up in a design to design a shelter in a cart. It enables a homeless person to carry around his belongings with him and have somewhere to sleep at night. He got funding and has brought his design onto the streets of Helsinki. It is a great way to raise awareness of the homeless and hopefully provide impetus for some more permanent solutions. As a design though I thinks it is an elegant solution, keep an eye out for it on the streets of Helsinki. More at carry on.

The Town of Kiruna in Sweden is cracking apart. Like an earthquake in slow motion the ground near Kiruna cracks and sinks in an ever widening circle which is beginning to tear apart the city. A huge Iron ore Mine to the west of the town has caused the earth to subside around the mine at an ever expanding rate, and like an earthquake, the earth displaces in an ever widening circle creating cracks and subsidence and destroying buildings. This slow motion earthquake will last another 100 years has already begin to encroach into the city and will reach the centre soon. What’s the solution? The town will have to move.

The Existing City
Kiruna is a climate adapted planned city started in 1900 and designed with small scale irregular streets and blocks after Camillo Sitte or Kevin Lynch. The winding streets protect the inhabitants from the bitter winter winds.

Kiruna was built as a ‘model society’ in line with ideals that had evolved in Great Britain, and it became one of the biggest Scandinavian social projects of all time. Town planning, housing construction, transportation and education were adapted to the climate and to the needs of the people, on a scale never before attempted. The construction of Kiruna became one of the century’s great social innovations, and something which still permeates the whole community and makes it a site of considerable socio-historical interest. -via Kiruna website

The Future City

The Mining company IKAB have with Arketekter Wilhelmson come up with a new city plan to enable the city to move. It is very interesting. As you can see from the graphics it visually is modelled on cell or microbe structures which define elongated city blocks while also remaining faithful to an urban pattern that’s not gridiron. The plan goes further IKAB published a pdf called New Kiruna outlining the vision for the city with ski centres and glass domed areas. How this progresses in the future will be of interest, as other cities and communities have to adjust to changing environments and deindustrialisation.

Sami Parliament

The Sametinget or Sami Parliament in Sweden is due to build a new parliament building in Kiruna from a winning competition design by Hans Murman Arkitekter earlier this year. As soon as they won apparently they were asked if the building would be relocatable. I’m not sure why this wasn’t part of the brief as the reloaction of the city is not a new problem. But it would be a shame if this gets in the way of the building of the parliament, as its a good project

Particularly interesting is the way that the building eaves start and finish in the ground giving no traditional elevation, shrugging off the snow everywhere, but also looking like an upturned hull of a boat or deformation of the land, something quite apt considering the possible fate of Kiruna, also worth noting the Ice Hotel is near Kiruna in Jukkasjärvi and Aalto won a competition to design Kirunas’ council building (1958) but the council decided to build something much less inspiring…..lets hope history doesn’t repeat itself.

With China facing an urbanisation of 300 million people in the next twenty years, it will not only face a massive expansion of its current cities but will have to build some 3 to 400 new cities to do this. Along with India, the rate of growth, urban change, and industrialisation will dwarf anything seen in human history before. Arups from their London HQ are masteplanning this project, it is really worth listening to them talking about it on a bbc interview. The picture above may look a little like a Dubai wet dream but it will be an important milestone as either success or failure depending on whether its’ technology and thinking can spread beyond its boundaries and whether it will become a real city or holiday suburb to Shanghai. The Economist also has an excellent article on it.

Espoo may be getting a spa,hotel, movie centre, multipurpose arena, and 270m long indoor ski-centre in one if Evata can get the backing for this scheme. Another mega-commercial project around the outskirts of Helsinki. See the helsingin sanomat article .

The NAI has an exhibition on now about the New Orleans flooding in which 6 design studios collaborated to propose ideas for the rebuilding of new orleans . They were MVRDV , UN Studio, West 8, Huff + Gooden Architects, Morphosis, Hargreaves Associates. They also seems to have recently aquired the back cataloge of OMA’s projects, the OMA archive.

Helsinki city planning departments english website has an interesting flash video covering the four current major urban building projects within the city at Arabia Waterfront, Pikku Huopalahti, Ruoholahti and Viikki. This gives a good overview of current urban strategy, architectural work and planning in the city. Planners are not my favourite profession exactly but what they are doing here is quite interesting. The architectural work covers much ground too from the deeply Miami beach uncool of Pikku-Huopalahti to the modernist eco-friendly Viiki developments.They are also going to be building on the Eastern Harbour a whole new ‘waterside quarter’ where the docks are currently.

Also see 3d model of helsinki

the article this quote is from is actually about density in cities and what role it plays in the life of the city. But I couldn’t resist th, cite quote. (from kottke.org)