Building and Dwelling

Fascinating talk at RSA looking at how we can get the urban environments which are good for us.

The talk was given my Richard Sennett, an academic and planning practitioner, who had recently written a book of the same title looking at the emergence of the urban age and the spaces which have worked well.

He felt that the idea of community led planning did not always work and had in the past led to segregation  and that in current times there is a demand in developing countries for gated communities  but he feels these lead to ghettoising other areas of the city. He did however praise Nehru Place in Delhi as a space which has developed by use into an open place where different religions and castes mixed.

He talked about the concept of open and closed spaces. Open doesn't just mean large and outdoors but spaces which were conducive to the mixing of people. He also looked at how to open up the edges of a city by placing public services on that edge to try to bring together from people from all areas of the city. He also advocated spreading development around a city rather than building one, large, iconic building eg small libraries rather than one large central one.

The Q&A session was interesting with his talking about how to build high density without building high rise.