Culture of Congestion and Sprawl
Koolhaas’s discussion on layering and unrelated individuality of the vertical villas as part of the Culture of Congestion reminded me somewhat of urban sprawl that has been stacked up. When people began leaving cities and moved to create suburbia, this was done for people’s supposed best interest at the time and was related to growth and innovation. However, it was taken too far and resulted in furthering dependence on cars and led to excesses of poor planning and unsustainable practices. I wonder if an excess of multifunction and mixed program or poorly regulated programming and growth could eventually devolve into vertical sprawl rather than efficient and sustainable practices. Could this emphasis the negative quality of congestion rather than the benefits of density and mixed program?
That is an intriguing question John.There are social concecuences to both of this models and we can see some of the effects of hyper density in some developed Asian cities. However, I think the trade off is that density is much more efficient in an urbanizing world. I think solving the issues of dense urban areas is a better approach to improve how we live than solving the issues brought up by suburbia.
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