Friday, Jan 28, 2022 • 52min
Listen Again: The Life Cycles Of Cities (2020)
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Original broadcast date: November 15, 2020. Cities are never static; they can transform in months, years, or centuries. This hour, TED speakers explore how today's cities are informed by the past, and how they'll need to evolve for the future. Guests include archaeologist Alyssa Loorya, architects Marwa Al-Sabouni and Rahul Mehrotra, and landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom.
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Manoush Zomorodi
Alyssa Loorya
Marwa al-Sabouni
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Transcript
Verified
Break
Manoush Zomorodi
00:16
Hey, it's
Manoush
, I live in New York City
and the other day I had to run an errand in a neighborhood where I used to work years ago. I hadn't been back there since the pandemic started and my visit felt like time travel, the bar where my coworkers and I used to celebrate special occasions. It is now an empty storefront, but our favorite restaurant seems to be thriving.Share
00:40
It's got this beautiful outdoor pavilion built for dining alfresco. This neighborhood, this city is changing to meet the times and that's what this episode is all about.
Share
00:53
It's called, "The Life Cycle of Cities" from
Bangkok
to a pop-up city in India to homes in Syria
. We explore how urban life morphs and changes and what that history says about the humans who live there.Share
01:09
This show first aired in November 2020. It's one that the team and I really love. I hope you enjoy it again or for the first time. I'll be back next week to kick off a special series that we've been working on for you. Meanwhile, thanks so much for being here.
Share
01:25
This is the
Ted Radio Hour
. Each week, groundbreaking Ted
talks.Share
01:32
Our job now is to dream Big
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:33
Delivered at
Ted
conferencesShare
01:35
To bring about the future we want to see
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:37
Around the world
Share
01:38
To understand who we are
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:40
From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you
Share
01:45
You just don't know what you're going to find
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:47
Challenge you
Share
01:48
We have to ask ourselves like why is it noteworthy
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:50
And even change you
Share
01:51
I literally feel like I'm a different person
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:53
Yes
Share
01:54
Do you feel that way?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:56
Ideas worth spreading from
Ted
and NPR
Share
02:02
I'm
Manoush Zomorodi
, if I asked you to picture a farm in New York City
, you might sayShare
Alyssa Loorya
02:12
I mean come on, there are no farms in
New York City
and Lord knows as a child, I was like there are no farms in New York City
. New York City
is all steel and concrete.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
02:21
But a hundred years ago the city looked a lot different.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
02:25
The surrounding areas were just farm after farm, after farm.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
02:30
This is Alyssa Loorya
Share
Alyssa Loorya
02:32
I am a historical archaeologist focusing on
New York City
historyShare
Manoush Zomorodi
02:36
And I recently met Alyssa for a tour of the historic
Hendrick I.
Lott House
.Share
Alyssa Loorya
02:41
Let's go for a walk, I want to go for a walk, welcome to the
Lott House
.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
02:45
Thank you
Share
02:46
It's a 300-year-old farmhouse in urban Brooklyn.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
02:50
We are in the middle of the block. The Oldest portion of the House was built 1720. The newer portion of the house was built 1800. So if we were standing right where we're standing right now say 200, 250 years ago, what would be surrounding us?
Share
03:06
Farm fields, dirt roads, cows, chickens on Fillmore Avenue there were two large barns and it was a farm. It was an active-
Share
03:16
Alyssa and her team have spent the last decade excavating and cataloging the
Lott House
, finding artifacts from generations of The Lot Family, a tiny slice of life helping Alyssa trace how New York City
came to be New York City
.Share
03:32
And all of that is one piece of a larger puzzle, that is the fabric of a house. It is the fabric of a neighborhood, the fabric of a community and that just grows and expands one onto the other'til you know, eventually you have an entire city.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
03:55
Okay, can I have a tour?
Share
Alyssa Loorya
03:57
Yes, you can
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
03:58
Okay
Share
03:59
Okay. I'm going down some steep stairs into what looks kind of, I'll say it a dingy back room, and it's got a sink that looks like it's from a hundred years ago, and it is, is it okay?
Share
Alyssa Loorya
04:11
It is? This is the original sink and wash tub.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
04:13
No kidding.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
04:14
Obviously
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
04:15
As you would expect with a 300-year-old house, they discovered some surprises.
Share
04:21
You just shone the flashlight up into the ceiling and there's nothing, there is no ceiling, it goes right up into another room.
Share
04:26
So there was a trapdoor there. It's hard to see, and it's extremely dirty and precarious.
Share
04:31
It turns Out that the lot family enslaved 12 people
Share
04:35
Yeah, you know, we have some of their names, Paul, Harry, Mary, Hector, Hannah, Mall, Kate, Powell, Tyrone, Tom, Hannah and Jacob
Share
04:52
You know, these were men and women.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
04:55
And several years ago we realized that there were two Garrett spaces, two attic spaces above this kitchen, and it was on either side in these Garrett spaces that we found materials that we believe were placed by enslaved persons beneath the floorboards.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
05:13
This included things like a pouch tied with hemp string
Share
Alyssa Loorya
05:16
Corncobs that were placed in the shape of an X or a cross representing
The Kongo Cosmogram
, which is the West African religious symbolShare
Manoush Zomorodi
05:24
Half an oyster shell
Share
Alyssa Loorya
05:26
And a child shoe. A very crude handmade child shoe.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
05:31
When you found those things though, what did that tell you about who was using the space?
Share
Alyssa Loorya
05:36
It tells us that the enslaved person or persons who occupied this space maintained a spiritual life that was connected to the place they came from originally. And I think that's important to recognize because the goal of the enslaver's was to break a connection with the home because you wanted to break that person.
Share
06:02
But the reality is they maintain that cultural tie, they maintain that heritage in their own way and that's part of what this represents, that they did have their own cultural and spiritual life.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
06:17
These artifacts are just a glimpse into the worlds of the people who live there and of course it's the people who form the character of the city.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
06:26
It's like a time capsule
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
06:28
Life in and around the
Lott House
changed so much over the course of 300 years, Alyssa, and her team found out that in the early 1800s, Hendrick lot freed the 12 people he'd enslaved. And it's believed the house later became a stop on the underground railroad.Share
Alyssa Loorya
06:47
The top of the stairs is the room with closet within the closet and that's where they hid the slaves.
Share
06:52
And is this it right here?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
06:53
And this is it right here.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
06:55
Fast-forward another 100 years, the city was rapidly developing with fewer and fewer farms And then came the 1918 pandemic.
Share
07:05
You know, we've been kind of going through the house and packing a lot of the artifacts and remnants and among the things that we found was an old surgical mask
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
07:13
At another 100 years and here we are standing in the same house dealing with another pandemic in a city that looks completely different.
Share
Alyssa Loorya
07:24
You know, we can point out three centuries of architectural fabric, and you know, it's how often do you have a house that has that. You know, I take a moment and I take a step back, and I think about the last person to live in the house, Ellis Saddam. She grew up on a farm.
Share
07:44
You know, I have a picture of her in a cart being pulled by a pony with her cousin And there's nothing but farm fields, open fields around them. And then between 1920 and 1930, the population around her increases 1600 percent.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
08:04
How overwhelming is that?
Share
08:07
To grow up on a farm. And then literally she had 7000 people move in and become her neighbors.
Share
08:14
A city is never static. It can transform in months or centuries rise with an influx of workers and industry or fall because of war, weather or plague. And after this past year, a lot of us are wondering what will happen to urban living this time.
Share
08:36
So today on the show ideas about the life cycles of cities, how the cities of today are informed by the past and how they'll need to evolve to survive in the future. For Alyssa Loorya, even though cities constantly change, some things do stay the same here she is on the
Ted
stage.Share
Alyssa Loorya
08:58
When people think of archaeology, they usually think of dusty old maps, far off lands, Ancient civilizations. You don't think
New York City
and construction sites yet, that's where all the action happens. And we're never sure exactly what we're going to find beneath the city streets.Share
09:16
Archaeology is about everyday people using everyday objects like the child who may have played with this small toy or the person who consumed the contents of this bottle.
Share
09:28
This bottle contained water imported from Germany and dates to 1790. Okay, we know New Yorkers always had to go to great lengths to get fresh drinking water. Small island, you really couldn't drink the well water.
Share
09:43
It was too brackish, but the notion that New Yorkers were importing bottled water from
Europe
more than 200 years ago, truly a testament to the fact that New York City
is a cosmopolitan city always has been where you could get practically anything from anywhere.Share
10:02
I'm still amazed, you know, when I'm in the middle of Manhattan streets, and we're digging and there's all this early 20th century and mid 20th century infrastructure, and how could anything possibly be left yet? You know, there we are.
Share
10:19
We find, You know, the remnants of an old water well that dates to 1790 and that's fabulous. It's, you know, these little pieces that just get left behind and you know, as modern day new Yorkers in the early 21st century, we're leaving our mark, our mark might look a little different.
Share
10:44
We certainly aren't leaving our trash where we used it. You know, garbage gets shipped out now. So archaeology will definitely look different in the future. And a lot of it probably will revolve around the built environment.
Share
10:58
It'll revolve around our infrastructure, our buildings, and you know, how do we inhabit our spaces? And we are in many ways, we're like caretakers for, you know, this part of the city's history, this part, this chapter of the city's story. And I think
New York City
has many more chapters left.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
11:18
I'm wondering when you, you know, when you talk about this, does it make you feel sad? Or do you see it more from a scientific documentary in perspective?
Share
Alyssa Loorya
11:31
I think the only thing that makes me sad is how fast some of the historic fabric can be lost in
New York City
. You know, we really are a city where you can have an entirely new skyline in less than a decade and that was never more apparent than right after 9/11 where the whole skyline, you know, the skyline changed overnight and then less than a decade later we built a new one.Share
11:60
So
New York City
is amazing in that way and New York City
has always been changing. But I also feel hopeful because I know that these are just chapters in a story and that cities, you know, let's face it. Sometimes cities do fail, nations fail. And they've reinvented the reborn people are still there. It's just, it's a different form. And I think that's a hopeful thing, not a sad thingShare
Manoush Zomorodi
12:33
I guess, finally, I just want to ask, you know, all the work that you're doing, thinking about the
Lott House
, City Hall Park
is another site that you mentioned in your talk, the water bottle imported from Germany, all the things that you found. Why is it important to learn about the farm? And I guess just all the things that happened before we were here in the city, what's the significance of that, do you think?Share
Alyssa Loorya
12:58
I think having a, in a way, a well understood past is the best way to help build your future. There are all these, you know, classic comments about don't repeat the past that we need to learn from our history.
Share
13:17
It's one way of learning from our history, but it's like how did the city become what it is today? It's important. Good, bad and ugly. It's important not to ever forget any aspect of our history and I think we are such a multicultural fabric.
Share
13:40
The human population is a multicultural fabric. It's important to know how we've treated each other in the past. You know, most people will not do um something so fabulous that their name gets listed in a history book down the road. Yet we are all part and parcel of the fabric and the community that enables our cities, our communities, our neighborhoods to turn.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
14:11
That's urban archaeologist, Alyssa Loorya, you can hear her full talk at ted. com. On the show today, the life cycles of cities. I'm
Manoush Zomorodi
, and you're listening to the Ted Radio Hour
from NPR
.Share
Break
Manoush Zomorodi
15:49
It's the
Ted Radio Hour
from NPR,
I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and on the show today the life cycle of cities, including some very difficult chapters in one city's history. So let's start just if you wouldn't mind, just tell us where you are right now.Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
16:07
Well, I'm in my home in
Homs
Syria
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
16:11
And how would you describe it?
Homs
, I meanShare
Marwa al-Sabouni
16:14
At the moment you mean? I mean dead
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
16:19
Dead?
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
16:20
Dead yes, It's a dead city with every sense of the world
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
16:24
This is
Marwa Al-Sabouni
.Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
16:26
You know, my city homes was predominantly on international news for almost five years.
Share
16:33
We turned out of
Syria
where three years of civil war has left-Share
16:36
They call
Homs
, "The Capital of the Revolution” the old city of Homs
.Share
16:38
Was quite seen as the capital of revolution, now is mostly controlled by-
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
16:44
Marwa
was referring to The Syrian Civil War
when between 2011 and 2016 government and rebel forces fought each other from strongholds inside the cityShare
Marwa al-Sabouni
16:55
And the violence that happened and the conflict that went on for several years, almost five years of shelling and killing and destruction ended by having more than 60% of the city a rebel
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
17:10
While the city was being shelled around her,
Marwa
stayed indoors raising her two young kidsShare
Marwa al-Sabouni
17:16
We were trapped for almost two years in our block, and she was also working. I have a PhD in Islamic architecture, and basically my professional life started during those 10 years of war.
Share
17:32
I mean I lived in the city for five years of destruction now, I mean the other five years are of decline.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
17:40
I mean you say that the city is dead, but I hear a lot of traffic nearby as well.
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
17:45
Well, the definition of this city is that trade is dead, production is dead in that sense, but I mean people are moving. It's good that you are hearing traffic, but you should see how many days those cars are queuing now for a few days, not hours around the neighborhood like in loops.
Share
18:08
It's a daily challenge to deal with all the problems that the situation is bringing into our lives and the drain of not only the resources, not only the nature, but also the drain of people. And when they are that tired and when you lose all of those resources, it brings out the worst in people.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
18:30
In 2016,
Marwa
gave her Ted Talk
via Skype from her apartment in homes which was still under siege at the time.Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
18:39
When I look at my destroyed city, of course I asked myself what has led to this senseless war?
Share
18:45
Syria
was largely a place of tolerance historically a constructive variety. Accommodating a wide range of beliefs, origins, customs, goods, food, how did my country, a country with communities living harmoniously together? How did it degenerate into civil war, violence, displacement and unprecedented sectarian hatred.Share
19:07
There were many reasons that had led to the war, social, political and economic, but I believe there is one key reason that has been overlooked and which is important to underlies. And that reason is architecture
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
19:20
Architecture
Marwa
believes that architecture lays the foundation for how people live and interact in cities, and she says that sense of harmony and community that came from different people living side by side, tt was because of how traditional Syrian cities were designed like Homs
.Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
19:43
Yeah, basically. I mean you have centuries of Islamic civilization and the remnants of different rules and different styles from the Mameluke, Hubert, Ottoman, but also you will find other layers like Roman, even Hellenistic.
Share
20:04
All of these layers are intertwined into one urban fabric that reflected itself also on the social fabric. So what was interesting for me is to see how different religions lived side by side. You have the mosque built in front of the church and you have the christian neighbor living next to a muslim neighbor.
Share
20:28
The old Islamic city in
Syria
was built over a multilayered tasks. People lived and worked with each other in a place that gave them a sense of belonging and made them feel at home. They shared a remarkably unified existence.Share
20:42
But over the last century, gradually, this delicate balance of these places has been interfered with, first by the urban planners of the colonial period, when the French went enthusiastically about transforming what they saw as the un modern Syrian cities, they blew up.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
20:57
In 1923, French colonialists took over
Syria
And within 20 years reshaped and redesigned the old cities.Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
21:06
So what they wanted is to here as much as they can from the Islamic city which they thought is too intertwined, too chaotic for them. And they wanted, you know more of colonial rule, they wanted to expand the roads so their tanks could go in, they wanted to create gaps in the density of the city, so they have more control.
Share
21:33
They called them improvements, and they were the beginning of a long, slow unraveling. The traditional urbanism and architecture of our cities assured identity and belonging not by separation, but by intertwining. But over time the ancient became worthless, and the new confident. The harmony of the built environment and social environment got trampled over by elements of divisive urbanism that zoned community by class creed or affluence. Communities started to distant apart from the very fabric that you used to enlight them.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
22:07
Okay, so between 1923, the French redesigned the old cities, and they start building neighborhoods outside the city walls and in your talk you say that this was the beginning of a long, slow unraveling. What do you think was kind of the domino effect?
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
22:27
I mean, this is the beginning of the class division before that. You had the rich and the poor. You couldn't tell by the exterior of the house how much wealth the resident had. But when you build the posh, villa and the boulevard housing, the appearance is that there is a line that you are crossing here, and the same happens also to sect.
Share
22:52
So you had a neighborhood that will be for the orthodox christians and another one for catholic christians and another one for Muslims. So this segregation and urbanism also reflected itself on the social life and with that comes antagonism. It was the perfect atmosphere for civil war.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
23:13
And how did you see that people were divided? Like how did that play out?
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
23:17
I mean, this war is very complex and I don't want to simplify it. But then also you had people who were killing each other on the basis of religion and also belonging to which party or to which faction you belong to, and based on the answer of this question people killed each other
Share
23:39
But you had just started a family, You had just started your career as an architect. Why did you stay when all of this was going on?
Share
23:47
Well you have to imagine, I mean it's a very long period of time that each day sometimes brought a new challenge. So I mean if you asked me, why didn't you live because there is no way anybody could leave. I mean people flee in that phase, they left everything. They couldn't take a shoe, a shirt, they couldn't take a backpack sometimes, they fled in the trunk of a car. I mean it's the danger that was outside was greater than the danger of staying put
Share
24:20
But also over time a sense of responsibility. I mean this war put us in existential threat, and you have to ask, what is the purpose of my life, why I am here, what should I do? And the answer was to have faith and to try to bring in some good towards those who are around you that was kept us where we are.
Share
24:49
Hopefully the war will end. And the question that as an architect I have to ask is how do we rebuild? There is a neighborhood here in
Homs
that's called Baba Amr
that has been fully destroyed. Almost two years ago, I introduced this design into a U. N Habitat Competition for rebuilding it.Share
25:08
The idea was to create an urban fabric inspired by a twig, capable of growing and spreading organically echoing the traditional bridge hanging over the old alleys and incorporating apartments, private courtyards, shops, workshops, spaces for parking and playing and leisure trees and shaded areas.
Share
25:28
Even simple things like shaded places or fruit plants or drinking water inside the city can make a difference in how people feel towards the place and whether they consider it a generous place that gives or whether they see it as an alienating place full of seeds of anger.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
25:45
I mean, it's pretty amazing you submitted this design to rebuild one neighborhood in homes while all the shelling was taking place around you. So can you tell us more about your vision like how you are imagining that this new design can change life in this neighborhood?
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
26:02
I think people would be more connected. I mean, neighborliness is one of the prime aspects that we should as architects and planners seek to reinforce and seek to introduce in our designs, moreover, the connection with nature. So when you surround yourself with the two, I think the cycle of thriving in the city becomes enabled.
Share
26:29
Mean, the trends of sustainability and green architecture and all sorts of what seems very benign concept sometimes simplify those connections into a mere facade, which I think is not at the heart of the matter of settling people in. You have to find links between the life of the people and the life of like I said, neighbors and nature
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
26:58
Do you have hope that homes can rebuild even if it is just one of those integrated buildings at a time that you have designed?
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
27:08
Definitely, I mean after the destruction, usually there comes the phase of reconstruction of rising out of the ashes and people survived by those moments, right? And countries are rebuilt in that way throughout history.
Share
27:24
So I think we are here to have hope, and we should never stop trying. This is the belief I go by in my life. And sometimes like I said, it will get you tired but not defeated. So of course I have hope and I would like to think I'm one of those who are dreaming of this better future for my country.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
27:50
That's
Marwa Al-Sabouni
, she is an architect and author of the book, "The Battle for Hom". You can see her full talk at ted. com. On the show today. The Life Cycles of Cities, and up until now we've talked about how cities change based on how we humans built them. But for some cities, the natural environment has just as much to do with their rise and fall literally.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
28:21
At this very moment with every breath we take, major Delta cities across the globe are sinking, including
New York
, London
, Tokyo
, Shanghai
, New Orleans
as well as my city Bangkok
.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
28:39
This is landscape architect
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
on the Ted
stage.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
28:45
The reality of
Bangkok
metropolitan region is a city of 15 million people living, working and commuting on top of shifting muddy river delta Bangkok
is sinking more than one centimeter per year And we could be below sea level by 2030.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
29:09
Delta cities lie on soft river soil, soil that slowly compressed by the weight of the skyscrapers and city life above. Eventually these cities begin to sink and
Bangkok
is sinking fast. Years of pumping up groundwater has left the soil even more unstable. And worse climate change has intensified the rainy season and more rain has meant more floods.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
29:42
As a child, I remember I really have fun with the floodwater.
Share
Speaker 5
29:46
This is
Kotchakorn
on Ted's
Pindrop Podcast.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
29:50
I would just play, my dad would just have the boat for us, and we just like play with the flood, and it's such a significant fun part of my childhood that I'm able to like swim in the foot and all the things, and it's like a joyful moment for me. But after the cities grow moderns, we have even more problems with how we deal with flood, and it's become a big disaster
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
30:24
In 2011, Thailand's monsoon floods were the most damaging in its history.
Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
30:30
Millions of my people, including me and my family were displaced and homeless. Some have to escape the city, many were terrified of losing their home and their belongings, so they stay back in the flood with no electricity and clean water. For me, this flood reflects clearly that our modern infrastructure had made us so extremely vulnerable to the climate uncertainty.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
31:06
While
Bangkok
soil is soft, its surface is covered in concrete and pavement, and that means there's nowhere for all the water to drain. And so now during the rainy season, the streets fill up like bathtubs and they can start to flood in just 30 minutes.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
31:23
But in 2012,
Bangkok's
biggest university held a design competition for 11 acres in the heart of the city. And Kotch
had an idea to slow the flooding and sinking, and her idea was inspired by monkey cheeks.Share
31:38
The monkey's cheeks, when the monkey eat its food, it store its food in the cheek. And when the monkey is hungry, they eat this little food that they store.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
31:48
Kotch
proposed turning the land into a park with giant tanks installed underneath this way when the rains come, the water fills the tanks and can get used later during the dry season.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
32:00
So the monkey cheek is like the big retention area that will help the city hold the water
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
32:06
Kotch
won the competition and Centenary Park opened in 2017. It has an amphitheater playgrounds, a huge green roof and native wetland plants that filter the water.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
32:18
And there are water bikes, people can pedal and help clean water. That exercise become an active part of the park water system. When life give you flood, you have fun with the water. Centenary park gives room for people and room for water, which is exactly what we and our cities need.
Share
32:47
This is an amphibious design. This part is not about getting rid of flood, it's about creating a way we can live with it and not a single dobs of brain is wasted in this park. This park can hold and collect a million gallons of water. Thank you.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
33:14
Kotch
admits that her project is just one tiny solution for a huge problem. But she says architecture can help delta cities slow, they're sinking and cope with climate change in small but strategic ways. They just need to be open and nimble.Share
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
33:31
Yeah, this is our life. In a sense we are like a Buddhist country as well and the foundation of this Buddhism, the culture is really adapt to change. And as a landscape, we deal with change all the time
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
33:48
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
is a landscape architect and founder of the poorest city network. You can watch her full talk at ted. com and check out Ted's
podcast Pindrop, Kotch's
interview came from their episode about Bangkok
and many thanks again to our friends at Pindrop for allowing us to share it with you on the show today. The life cycles of cities. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and you're listening to the Ted Radio Hour
from NPR
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Manoush Zomorodi
36:09
It's the
Ted Radio Hour
from NPR,
I'm Manoush Zomorodi
and on the show today ideas about what cities have been and what they could be and how one of the world's largest cities isn't really a city at all. At least not a permanent one.Share
Rahul Mehrotra
36:29
The
Kumbh Mela
is a Hindu
festival which occurs every 12 years, and in smaller versions every four years, it is located at the confluence of The Ganges
and The Yamuna
Rivers to sacred rivers. And this festival celebrates a belief in Hinduism that if you bathe at the confluence of these two rivers during the celebration of the Kumbh Mela
, you were freed from reba.Share
37:02
Now this festival is sort of set up for 55 days at the confluence of these rivers for this celebration, a temporary city is set up. It's a city that houses 5-7 million people depending on the cycle in the demand. And it is believed about 120 million people visit. And so it is considered to be the largest gathering of human beings on the planet.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
37:33
This is
Rahul Mehrotra
, he's an architect and a professor at Harvard
, and he attended the Kumbh Mela
Festival in India a few years ago, the largest gathering of human beings on the planet. I mean that just, it's, I don't think my brain can actually comprehend what having a 100 million people in one place at one time. Like what? What is that like Rahul
?Share
Rahul Mehrotra
38:01
Yeah, that's that's incredible. I know, I know it's mind-blowing because you know, it's like all of Mumbai or all of Mexico City descending to one kind of spot for a day. So the numbers are absolutely mind-boggling, but I think also what's really mind-boggling is the fact that The settlement is set up in many ways to replicate a real city for 55 days.
Share
38:25
And what's fascinating is in India the monsoon in its full fury till the end of August and into September. And so the waters of these rivers at that confluence recede only in october and early november. And this festival opens around the 15th of january. So between six and eight weeks, an entire city and its infrastructure is established to accommodate seven million people. And that's what's really mind blowing.
Share
38:55
Now, this is not a pop-up city as one would tend to call it, but it's a deliberate state enterprise. It's the government that plans for a year in advance and orchestrates infrastructure, orchestrates the management of the production of the city. So it's rather deliberate and that's what's also rather amazing.
Share
Marwa al-Sabouni
39:16
Here's more from
Rahul
on the Ted
stage.Share
Rahul Mehrotra
39:19
What is fascinating is this city actually has all the characteristics of a real mega city. A grid is employed to lay the city out. The urban system is a grid and every street on the city goes across the river on a pontoon bridge, incredibly resilient because if there's an unseasonal downpour of the river changes course the urban system stays intact. The city adjusts itself to this terrain, which can be volatile.
Share
39:53
It also replicates all forms of physical as well as social infrastructure, water supply, sewage, electricity, there are 1400 CCTV cameras that are used for security by the entire station that is set up, but also social infrastructure like clinics, hospitals, all sorts of community services that make this function like any real megacity would do. 10,500 sweepers are employed by the city.
Share
40:28
It has a governance system of Mela Adhikari or the commissioner of the festival that ensures that land is allocated their systems for all of this, that the system of the city, the mobility all works efficiently.
Share
40:42
You know, it was the cleanest and the most efficient Indian city I've lived in, and it's a city that sits on the ground very lightly. It leaves very little mark. There are no foundations, fabric is used to build this entire city.
Share
41:02
What's also quite incredible is that there are five materials that are used to build this settlement for seven million people. Eight foot tall bamboo string or rope, nails of screw and a skinning material, could be corrugated metal, a fabric or plastic.
Share
41:21
And these materials come together and aggregate. It's like a kit of parts And it's used all the way from a small tent which might house five or six people or a family to temples that can house 500, sometimes a thousand people.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
41:39
I mean as an American, I just keep thinking about all the garbage that must be left behind by this, but actually you say the footprint is very minimal.
Share
Rahul Mehrotra
41:48
Absolutely, and you know, there are a couple of reasons for this one is of course they are very efficient in terms of collecting garbage where garbage is placed for every block and who collects it. It's incredibly efficient. But there's also another aspect which is worth considering which is that you know, this is a religious retreat.
Share
42:08
So people go with very little, they consume very little and they are very mindful of waste. So it's not only an example of a city which treads on the planet very lightly because there are no foundations, everything is just built on the sand bar. But also people, human beings tread in the city very carefully nimbly lightly and minimizing waste and minimizing consumption.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
42:37
I mean you present this case study as an architect, as a professional, as an expert in your field. But I wonder did you feel a spiritual illness there that surprised you in any way
Share
Rahul Mehrotra
42:51
Very much. And the one thing that stays with me is it was incredibly noisy. I mean in every block their groups chanting and praying and celebrating and you know, I mean I think for those of our listeners who know anything about Hinduism or have gone to a
Hindu
temple, you know, it's about bells being rung, it's people chanting and it's about celebrating life in all its glory and creation, right?Share
43:25
As opposed to that when you go to a church, it's very solemn, the silence, there's grief right? You know, these are kind of diametrically opposite experiences. So imagine going to a city with seven million people with about 500
Hindu
temples all celebrating simultaneously.Share
43:47
It was a city that was alive 24/7, there was something happening everywhere all the time. And you know the camaraderie, the sense of community, you feel this intensely, you know for example, you could walk into any block that belongs to a religious subgroup and there is a dining facility 24/7, community kitchen, that's an operation. Anyone can walk into any block and just sit down there, and you'll be served a meal.
Share
44:20
It's an amazing sense of a feeling of community of belonging and that was really very moving in some ways
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
44:28
And when it's time when the festival comes to an end, what happens then
Share
Rahul Mehrotra
44:32
The last days of the festival intense celebration, it's about offering thanks to you know, the Mother Ganges and the rivers, the sacred rivers and within a week the entire city is dismantled, and it's dismantled very easily almost as easily as it's constructed.
Share
44:55
Because what's interesting is that the entire city that's above the ground that is all the space that makes for dwelling is made out of four or five materials. That's why it's built so quickly. But that's why it's also disassembled so quickly and if you go back there in a week's time, which is what we did.
Share
45:16
All you see on the sandbar is maybe coir mats at the most, which are all degradable, and you know, when the monsoon arrives three months later, I mean all of that is flushed off the land and really there is no memory, there is no trace.
Share
45:37
This is a stunning example, and it's worthy of reflection. Here human beings spend an enormous amount of energy and imagination knowing that the city is going to reverse, it's going to be disassembled, it's the ephemeral megacity. And it has profound lessons to teach us lessons about how to touch the ground likely about reverse ability, about this assembly.
Share
46:06
And you know, we are as humans obsessed with permanence, we resist change. It's an impulse that we all have, and we resist change in spite of the fact that change is perhaps the only constant in our lives. Everything has an expiry date, including spaceship, earth, our planet.
Share
46:29
And so if we reflect about these questions, I mean, I think many come to mind. But an important one is are we really in our cities and our imagination about urbanism making permanent solutions for temporary problems. Are we locking resources into paradigms that we don't even know will be relevant in a decade? This becomes I think an interesting question that arises from this research.
Share
46:57
I mean, look at the abandoned shopping malls in North America, suburban North America retail experts have predicted that in the next decade of the 2000 malls that exist today, 50% will be abandoned. Massive amount of material capturing resources that will not be relevant soon.
Share
Speaker 9
47:17
Or the Olympic stadiums around the globe, cities, buildings under great contestation with massive resources, but after the games go, they can't often get absorbed into the city. Couldn't these be pneumatic structures, deflate. Herbal. We have the technology for that that get gifted to smaller towns around the world or in those countries or move are stored and moved for the next Olympics. A massive use of inefficient use of resources.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
47:48
You talk about urban planning in terms of what you call the kinetic city, that cities don't all have to be made from cloth and designed to wash away like the
Kumbh Mela
, but that cities should have some degree of elasticity and that really reminds me of how cities have been responding to the pandemic in the past few months.Share
48:08
Like for example, you know, allowing restaurants to take over the streets for outdoor dining. It strikes me as kind of a new way of thinking though about cities and structures around us.
Share
Rahul Mehrotra
48:19
Absolutely, and you know whether it's cities or buildings, we lock ourselves in an end state imagination of something almost assuming we're doing this to last forever, but we don't accept that the intent or what we aspire to use it for might actually change and what the pandemic has done is completely unsettled that sense of predictability, you know, and it will be important, and I think it's critical for us as a species to now ask how much of our resources we are locking in to serve what purpose.
Share
48:58
And I think the other way I might kind of frame that is to say that even as designers and planners and architects, we tend to think in absolute solutions and in absolute terms, right? This is the absolute solution for something.
Share
49:13
But I think we've got to begin to start engaging on this planet with designing transitions, designing ways we transit from one state to the other. When we plan for or respond to questions related to climate change, we've got to use the temporal scale because there are things that happen in the short counts, right? Because of climate change are drought somewhere.
Share
49:37
Movement of an influx of demography and you suddenly have to deal with refugees or other issues or wildfires. You know, things that happen suddenly. But we've also got other problems that are looming which are on a much more stretched kind of temporal scale, which is how the oceans are going to rise or what the implications of that might be.
Share
49:60
And we've got to calibrate this as a society carefully as designers planners, architects and society more generally, because we otherwise have these knee-jerk reactions and only either focus on the short term or as a country or a society or a city focused on the long term. And that leaves us sometimes unprepared for one or the other.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
50:22
Earlier in this episode, um I went to visit uh Alyssa Loorya. She's an archaeologist who studies he here in
New York City
. And I went to visit one of the sites where she's working. And this is a farmhouse that's about 300 years old. And it's funny when I went to visit her, and we felt she showed me all these artifacts that were left behind by generations passed.Share
50:46
And I felt a real appreciation for the permanence of that structure for all, that the way people lived can inform us about how we live now. But I think what you're saying is we also need to adapt the leave no trace mentality as we think about the future of cities. And I see that now in a way that didn't that I didn't when I went to visit this, this old farmhouse.
Share
Speaker 9
51:14
Absolutely, and you know, I think it's not a matter of one or the other. It's not that we should only be making impermanent cities, but I think we've got to calibrate what we do in ways that we don't lock resources and make more permanent things that we don't need to. So one way of looking at it is through the life cycle of materials, right? That go into making buildings or the life cycle of buildings by extension, right?
Share
51:41
What if we actually imagined that we needed a convention center, but in its present form, just the way society is organized and what our needs are. Maybe we might need to renew our thinking about this in 15 years or in 20 years. And what if we set ourselves the challenge that we make something that could be dismantled and recycled in 20 years,
Share
Rahul Mehrotra
52:03
Now that is a completely different imagination of building, right? All of that will have to get nimble. And so I think it's a combination of both. It's not a choice between a permanent or an impermanent city, but it's a choice between how we can configure both those together. And I think we as human beings, and as societies and as nations tend to swing from one end to the other, right?
Share
52:29
It's too much capitalism or too much communism. We very rarely tend to kind of let that pendulum rest in the center. We are restless as human beings, right? And I think that's also true for our attitudes to planning and to design. And I think we need to calibrate this better so that we embrace both the permanent and the impermanent when appropriate.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
52:53
That's architect
Rahul Mehrotra
. He's the author of "Kumbh Mela
: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City." You can find his full talk at ted. comShare
53:06
Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about "The Life Cycles of Cities". To learn more about the people who were on it, go to ted. npr. org and to see hundreds more Ted talks check out ted. com or the Ted App.
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53:22
Our Ted radio production staff at NPR includes Jeff Rogers, Sanaz Meshkinpour, Rachel Falkner, Diba Mohtasham, James Delahoussaye, J. C Howard, Katie Monteleone, Maria Paz, Gutierrez, Christina Colla and Matthew Cloutier. With help from Daniel Shuqin.
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53:40
Our intern is Farrah Safari. Our theme music was written by Rammstein. Arab Louis. Our partners at
Ted
are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan and Michelle Quint. I'm minutia Manoush Zomorodi and you've been listening to the Ted Radio Hour
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Manoush Zomorodi
Alyssa Loorya
Marwa al-Sabouni
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
Rahul Mehrotra