Architecture's influence on the city, esp. Christchurch

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Does architecture and design really make that much difference to our happiness, our identity or our ideals?

The beauty of architecture can be uplifting to even the most practical people. One walk through Paris and the height and consistency of the buildings will fill you with a sense of continuity and protection, while their beauty and craftsmanship awes. People travel the world to find ruins, monasteries, or skyscrapers that they admire. The practical purposes of architectural intelligence are far harder to convince people of. 

But architecture can make a huge difference in ways that we never realize, even in vital ways such as influencing crime rates. The Yale Law Journal suggests that the high crime rates of inner cities are related to the physical environment rather than the conventional explanations (poverty, unemployment, poor schools, and the like). Researchers from the paper establish four architectural concepts that can used to decrease crime using architecture; increasing an area’s natural surveillance (its visibility and susceptibility to monitoring by private citizens), introducing territoriality (by demarcating private and semiprivate spaces), reducing social isolation, and protecting potential targets. In this way Architecture can have a very real and tangible impact on our lives, helping us feel less vulnerable alone in the city. 

 

The rebuild efforts in Christchurch provide architects and designers making buildings and public places with an opportunity to design a smart city, which actively prevents crime, and all through creativity! The Press explains that these design professionals ‘don't normally prevent crime. But there’s a growing movement afoot to make architects do just that, and if this movement gets legs, Christchurch could become a global leader in crime-fighting architecture.’ I’m not sure what the movement getting legs entails, but to extend the metaphor, if Christchurch can take this international research in it’s stride, we could see ourselves racing to the forefront of Architectural crime prevention and jumping feet first into a swimming pool of dreams and happiness. 

Post Earthquake, I attended the TEDx Christchurch conference as part of YouthVision2050, and heard countless talks about the different approaches to redevelopment a city can take after a disaster. GapFiller, the I am project, and many architectural experts made their pitches, and showed how influential architecture is to the running of a city and to residents’ lifestyles. One talk that has stuck with me was Majora Carter’s ‘Greening the Ghetto,’ shown on video. (Watch online at http://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html) In an Article for The Root Carter describes setting up projects to stabilize the riverbank and estuary areas of the Bronx River, urban forestry and green-roof installation. The area that Carter focused on had one of the lowest parks to people ratios in the entirety of New York. She instigated the development of the first riverside Park development that the South Bronx had seen in 60 years. Citing Bogotá, Columbia, Carter also describes how an increase in pedestrian areas and footpaths led to greater foot-traffic, provoking a drop in crime rates and even a decrease in littering, reinforcing the influence a city’s design can have on crime. 

The conference was full of ideas for a pedestrian only city, increased bike lanes, more parks and open areas, youth centres, concert halls, high-rise high-population density city dwellings, fresh fruit markets and green roof vege gardens, even a redistribution of the suburb structure. There were calls for greater environmental sensitivity, greater representation of Maori culture within the city, and more efficient transport options. It’s an exciting time to be an architect in Christchurch, and I only hope that the city we gain will be distinct and successful in half of the ways suggested. 

Architecture can influence life on a far smaller scale than that of a city’s design, and with bewildering subtlety. Ann Jarmusch, in an article for ‘Architecture Critic,’ points out that studies have shown that students achieved higher test scores in classrooms with increased natural light, and that, according to research done in London, unfashionable "hospital green" walls did help speed the healing process. I’m more inclined to believe that it’s the pudding cups or watching three seasons of Friends in as many days. My big brother would probably claim that it’s having the ability to urinate without getting out of bed #catheterscanbehandy. In San Diego, hospital patients, their families and medical staff reported positive effects from exposure to uplifting art and healing gardens. It is incredible that environmental psychology can actually aid physical recovery.

Even in your day-to-day life design is creating specific habits for you. You’ll never enjoy a leisurely meal in a fast food restaurant because the hard plastic chairs keep you moving, encouraging fast turnover, elevator floor numbers and seat numbers on aeroplanes are all placed at or above eye level to help us avoid eye contact with others and thus feel less crowded in these potential claustrophobic environments. Environmental psychology reveals that architects influence, in subtle ways, the paths by which we live and think.

In summary, never underestimate the power of architecture, or the difference that you can make to your city. Architecture because it could save you from being shanked, aid a speedy medical recovery, or simply cheer you up on a cold shitty day, when you can wrap yourself up safe and feel entirely at home. The difference that you can make to your city, because it may be the case that you have to jump through hoops to gain funding or publicity for your initiatives, but if Carter has taught us anything it’s that individuals, especially those who live and breath their local environment, can fix the things they see to be lacking in their neck of the woods. If you’re interested in Christchurch’s development, go to http://www.futurechristchurch.co.nz/, and if you’re interested in anything else at all, type it into the search bar at http://ted.com/. And finally, if you’re studying architecture, best of luck, do something amazing with it.