Author's Forum on Urbanism – La Città Sana (The Healthy City):The New Garden City for the Post Covid-19 World

we're going to give them a minute or so and wait for people to come in and then we're going to get started here okay i'm gonna go mute myself okay so i think we're going to get started and folks are going to continue to come in and but i'm going to share my screen so welcome to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time the webinar series is a platform for senior members to engage debate and collaborate on the pressing issues of the day and the author's forum is a series within on the park bench which discusses recently published books by urbanists or of interest to urbanists and today we're going to be talking about the book uh la sita sana the healthy city the new garden city for the post covin 19 world with co-author gabrielle talia vente and a discussion with interviewer duru tadani and you can register for our coming webinar next week december 21st also at 12 noon with architects eric gost of urban design associates and brian o'looney of 20 20 gals and partners who will discuss trends in urban housing and how architectural types may respond uh to these changes that are taking place right now and david kim of anderson kim architecture and urban design a senior board member will be the interviewer so go to cnu.org slash resources slash on the park bench and i want to remind everybody about cnu 30 in oklahoma city coming up now and next in less than four months march 23rd through 26 2022 it's going to be cnu's first or in person congress since 2019 everybody is looking forward to that meet your colleagues learn from some of the best urban designers in the world who will be there walk the city and learn from oklahoma city oklahoma city has done some amazing things in terms of bringing back its downtown and adjacent neighborhoods and cities all across the u.s even the world can learn from some of the things that oklahoma city has done you can register now at cnu.org cnu30 and i want to remind everybody to join or renew your membership and being a current member you can save 200 off we've seen you 30 registration and you can check your membership status today because many people think of themselves as seeing you members but don't always have a current membership at this time but find out members.cnu memberships to look up your membership status and we've got a great show today uh with gabrielle talia vente who's an architect and full professor of architecture at the university of ferrara italy he's been a primary figure of the movement for the european urban renaissance and the new urbanism in europe since the 1990s and he's co-author of uh la sita sana and uh durota dhani architect and urbanist is the moderator and interviewer today as a design principal and partner he has completed projects the world over guru is also an author of many books including the recent visions of seaside and he has been a producer of of many of these authors forms i'm rob studiville editor of scene use public square the healthy city the new garden city for the post coven 19 world explains the characteristics of a healthy city it's re its development starting from the spanish flu pandemic of 1918 1920 and its various declinations starting from the garden city up to the 15-minute city passing through the experience of urban villages and garden pocket neighborhoods and this healthy city uh topic is going to be a topic that the world is going to be discussing over the next few years what is a healthy city and we've got uh this is going to be a great discussion today a great beginning of that time discussion and we're going to have a brief presentation from gabrielle followed by a discussion with duru followed by q a from the audience so please use the q a function of zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you and i'll now pass this on to gabrielle talia so you can share your screen gabrielle okay okay thank thanks a lot i i really have to thank uh dear and rob for this kind invitation would you do full screen um ah yes yes yes yes just a second how is it there is a kind of stuff ah wow what happens why ah we did it before but apparently no right lower right little screen there with a line through it yes but there is a kind of pop which is avoiding me from if you move your mouse to the lower right you'll see yeah yeah keep going that's it presentation there you go oh fantastic thanks dear thanks okay so uh why why first we did this this book um a kind of 20 years ago uh we did a couple of books on uh right on the new urbanism and and another one on the garden city then of course kovid arrived and there was really no need of such an experience to understand the value of a healthy city we knew it even even before covet 19 has been only a kind of incredible gigantic scientific experiment and we just demonstrated exactly what we knew that if you live in a healthy city you have a lot of advantages without covered first of all for the post-covered world but in case in the unfortunate case you have to suffer and pass through a pandemic experience if you live in a healthy city is far better donatello and i we have been collecting data since the beginning of the the pandemic in order to check whether the pattern of the 1918-1920 spanish flu was in fact repeating because there were several similarities and it was interesting for us to understand whether the pattern was really repeating or not and what are the differences between the 1920s and the current one but of course there was no need to understand through the covet what an elfi city is or what a sick city is the healthy city is a city in principle where you can walk it's a city based upon the workability it's a city where people have access to the public realm very easily where people have shops and activities around the corner where people live in cross ventilated houses or apartments the healthy city is a city where every day 365 days a year you can walk to work to leisure uh to entertainment for jogging whatever and so finally thanks let's say to the lockdown and and the amount of time that we had that we we we kept on uh collecting materials and and finally publishing the book of course the book is published with the data of july this year july 2021 but what is amazing is that when you check that some data that you find in the book like for instance the data of covered death in some metropolis like the australian ones like perth like brisbane you find that after almost five months since the book was published the data are exactly the same the good news is that the death rate is stable at zero nobody dies in the last five months in perth nobody died in brisbane whilst when you make a comparison for instance the largest australian city metropolis which is sydney five more than five millions inhabitants and you make the comparison with the region where bologna my hometown is emilia romania in italy emilia romania is a kind of 4.4 millions inhabitants well today actually this is the the ratio between the two uh 620 okay increasing unfortunately in sydney but in in the region in the middle romania region it is 13 700 deaths and it is in a region made of dozens of cities towns villages where the population is spread all over the territory so this is a kind of striking contradiction in a metropolis you have a less much less a dramatic better condition than in a region so why why this of course the australian government made an incredible did an incredible good job in in preventing the spreading of the virus with very uh strict regulations but in fact the the the former the fact that metropolis cities are garden cities but let me say are mostly new urbanist cities that has proved to be absolutely successful now the problem is that the reaction by people by inhabitants after after the lockdown the first the second and let's let's hope that we are not going into the third one people are in europe at least fleeing the city this is a dramatic consequence of of the pandemic here you see the data in paris it is the um the ratio how many how many kids how many children left schools in the last two years in in the entire municipality of paris 7.9 of kids are not anymore present but in fact the latest data are for 208 000 inhabitants of paris have left the city in the last two years 200 000 inhabitants out of a population of 2.3 millions it's an amazing eight nine percent absolutely consistent with the fleeing of kids from schools so where where where these kids where these families have gone somehow like in the us unfortunately people try to flee the cities because they see the city as a kind of problematic environment where the spreading of coffee is much more easier and where where do they go let's say this is an article from le figaro the the main french newspaper and the figaro immobilier the real estate section of the newspaper speaks about the fleeing of people to the countryside of course and to the suburbs what they are looking for is what you see in this image they are looking for single family houses and unfortunately you find in europe you find a single family houses where in the countryside fortunately in in the villages that are still present and now unfortunately in the suburbs that are being built like in the us so the big issue is let's provide an alternative for people who want to find a safer urban environment a green urban environment if they want to find an environment where to take kids to school in a pedestrian way and live in a single family house is it possible to do that out of a suburb yes it is in fact this is the data of adelaide they now imagine a delighter in the light in in australia 1.3 million inhabitants today for death out for kovid milan italy which is same population 1.3 millions is six thousand dead and this is the amazing the fantastic graph of uh brisbane adelaide perth cities where people fortunately you see this is the best ratio in in brisbane is zero nobody dies this is a fantastic fantastic good news and of course australian wise europe was under lockdown in february 2021 this year in australia there was the uh the australian open part of the grand slam tennis tournament the interesting thing is that in australia the gdp per capita has not dropped down as much as in italy it is much much better even during this two years of pandemics but then we have tried to collect data from different experiences there are many many cities from from europe and from the us and this is for instance a striking comparison between santa barbara california and bologna italy my town now the ratio is almost three to one in bologna people die three times than santa barbara today both cities in a different way from the australian ones they have increased the number of deaths during the last five months but the ratio is always the same three to one now there is an interesting um analysis of how bologna had so many deaths first of all because out of the historical center the rest of the city is made of huge concrete blocks apartments and and people live in a kind of cage without cross ventilation depending of mechanical artificial vertical connections with underground parking with the problem of elevators etc and when they get out to to go for shopping now imagine that in italy uh during lockdown all shops all local neighborhood uh commerce commercial activities were shut down only big moles were open so it was a kind of tragic trap people living in a kind of cage the perfect environment for the spreading of kovid then they get out for shopping and where do they go for shopping here in a huge box with a queue with the same stuff artificial ventilation etc now it is interesting because the italian policy was very different from the french and the portuguese policy towards commercial activities during lockdown italy has shot shut down all the small shops france and portugal they have done exactly the opposite well the result today is that if you if you take the same amount of population 60 millions you have that both france and portugal have 30 000 less death than italy maybe of course there are other reasons but it is in interesting to see how the big moles have affected the spreading of kovid at least in italy and of course medicine science the doctors always tell us that if you go if you have a kind of social distance if you disperse yourself in dozens hundreds of small shops is better for avoiding the concentration that you find in a big mall and of course if you live in a single family house with a garden with fresh air with the sun if possible and cross ventilation is better too now how what we can do today this is the second portion of of the second part of the book well we can we can look at what the previous pandemic the 1920s has done today we have something more comparing with the 1920s where for instance the concerns that the 15-minute city is an advantage and it is becoming popular and of course of this 15-minute city is the ratio the the the fundamental element that has shaped all the european towns and cities and the image that that you find the graph the very famous graph is in fact a graph which is directly linked to water leon clear as always stated that if you live in a 15-minute city you live in a true city and that of course the motorized parole and thai city has nothing to do with the european traditional city but today it is not only about traditional city but it is about healthy so how the 15-minute city works so this is a this is an addition to the 1920s spanish flu experience well the 9 the 15 minute city works this way you have everywhere a kind of corner shop available for your need you can walk there you have no need to take a car or to take a kind of mass transportation and there are of course several examples of urban villages like here in london the famous wimbledon one again related to tennis and of course we we know perfectly how the best healthy city works it's a city which is in balance with nature where the natural and the artificial environments coexist in the best way so how the concept of the healthy city developed well it started in the nineteen after the first war you know there was a tragic flu that we call spanish even if it's not sure that was spanish what is sure is that the spanish newspapers were the only one who were devoting time to the spreading of the flu the other newspapers were in fact interested and and busy with the the war the first world war that was everywhere in europe and of course uh the doctors the governments uh told the citizens to do exactly what they did today were a mask and of course there was a tragic situation in hospitals the data figures are about 50 to 100 million death caused by the 1918 and 1920 spanish flu and the problem was that there was no vaccine no possibility of vaccination no antibiotics nothing so medicine tried to find out a solution for providing people with a better environment and this is the graph of the the the mortality in american europe during the the spanish flu now somehow it looks exactly like like the current or the contemporary covey the 19 and the the bad thing is that there is a third as you can see there is a third wave and we hope that will be less dramatic this time than the previous ones how people reacted the reaction was go to go building garden cities go building new cities where you can live in a healthy environment where you can have fresh air where you can have a garden where you can walk because walking is much better for your healthiness every day and without antibiotics and without vaccination is even more relevant and there was an incredible process of foundations and this is the famous coral gable uh garden city one of the largest in the war in in florida and then venice and and then all the others by john nolan but the same stuff happened exactly in europe uh in france for instance osgore possibly the new garden city has to be in connection close to the seaside because breathing the the fresh air coming from the sea from the ocean doctors were saying it's much better for your healthy but not only along the coast there was a kind of mass foundation process of new garden cities these are the this is the map of the 35 new garden cities built in the 20s and 30s all around paris it's an incredible process where in fact you find a kind of urbanist city if you like it's a garden city with with shops with a center with a pedestrian pattern and with a reasonable density which is a kind of key factor today you have to find an environment where you have fresh air where you have a garden but at the same time you have to provide the city with a reasonable urban density in order to allow the corner shop to be there and not only resort but even social housing and this is the largest the largest garden city built in europe is dagenham in in london a hundred and eight thousand inhabitants city built in the 1920s and 1930s and with public transit with a center with the shops with a kind of urban environment entirely social housing same stuff you find in ireland in dublin this is the marino garden city which is a 100 percent social housing with the traditional the english tradition of circles like bath and and you you see the garden city which is built as a reaction as a as a response to the pandemic in germany close to berlin you you find out uh a surviving garden city the gartenstadt stucken built by um by uh german architects according to to the lesson of eric tesenov and paul schmidtener was the main the chief architect of this garden city same stuff you find in in spain this is this is a plan quite interesting for for for new urbanism and this is a city that you find along the highway from andalusia to madrid is called the villanueva de franco was built after the the spanish civil war and and of course you have all the australian uh garden cities the cities the metropolis sydney melbourne brisbane perth adelaide which in fact was a city founded before the official ebenezer hour the garden city book of the late 1800s adelaide was in fact taken as an example for the garden city and it is a fantastic piece of new urbanism with pedestrian access to shops and activities and without basically without the huge malls that you find both in american suburbs and today unfortunately even in european ones and this is the new possibility that i think we have to to build a new urbanist city for the post-cover world which allows people even in small town houses to have the luxury of a single family house the single family house can be urban there is no need in fact to go suburban there is the possibility the technical possibility and you can choose the style you prefer and sometimes you can have a very interesting combination of garden city and sport like like for instance the possibility to watch an important tennis tournament or of course for your pets is is a kind of nice but the kind of nice is that in a in a garden city you can find today also shops and activities at a pedestrian distance and the new addition to the garden city of the 1920s is the urban village like you find in many european cities but also in american ones now of course the village as a the success of the village was was something a precedent of the pandemic in the 90s in the early 2000s there was a kind of flea from northern europe to the mediterranean villages because of internet thanks to internet and so many many germans british or scandinavian went to in to southern spain portugal italy france and live in a village now living in a village means to have in a way the accessibility the pedestrian accessibility that you have in a in a in a metropolis simply at a different scale and this different scale which was becoming very popular through a movie like the goodyear in fact is a pattern also for metropolis because in fact we find garden cities and garden villages and urban villages even in metropolis you find it in london but you find it even in in paris paris is plenty of urban villages the most famous one is monmouth of course it's an urban village single family houses but but but with public square with shops restaurants etc and not only montmartre you find it the opposite part of the city the southern paris this is an urban village existing and plenty of social housing all these uh houses are in fact social housing done in the 20s this is social housing and of course exactly as in montmartre you find the urban center with with shops restaurants activities swimming pool public buildings libraries whatever so i think this this is the amount of tools that we have today to provide people with an alternative to the fleet of suburbs if they wanted to live in a safer urban environment if if they want to live in a garden area the garden area can be even within the city and we have a kind of a range a wide range of possibilities possibilities we have the garden city we have the urban village we have the 15-minute city and urban is can be i think we think the the best way to provide the post covered 19 world with a wide range of new possibilities uh to build an alternative to suburbs which is healthy for every day not only for the pandemics but really for the ordinary life i wanted to remind everybody to use the q a function of zoom to ask your questions and we should probably be getting to a discussion with duru pretty soon gabrielle are you done with your presentation yes yes yes okay okay that was it so uh you know one of the amazing things about this book is the collection uh of uh places that you have documented in the book and a lot that i wasn't familiar with uh and um you know it's really a pleasure to look through the book and see places from all over the world that you know adhere to these principles but i want to get to this issue but you talked about an appropriate or a reasonable density uh so how do you describe a reasonable density this is this is tricky yeah so i want to you know want to you know dwell some more on that okay let's say uh let's let's start with the the garden city principle uh ibenezer over the pattern is 80 80 inhabitants per actor this is this is the let's say the reference to the for the garden city now actually uh if we consider the density of the municipality of paris today is close to 230 240 inhabitants per hectares which means three times the garden city urban density now what is interesting is that if you if you calculate the the urban density of several european cities take for example my hometown bologna and you don't take of course the the countries that you take only the built area then you find that the the urban density of bologna today is 48 48 inhabitants per actors three thousand three hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants on nineteen thousand hectares which means is almost half the garden city pattern because because of course the the the built way the huge concrete blocks were built leaving huge empty areas now what we what we find in the urban villages or in the in the in the garden cities built in the 1920s and in the australian ones is that the urban density is is higher than the uh the original ebenezer over the pattern is 110 120 the maximum we found was 130 inhabitants per hectare which is which is a good which is absolutely i think a good urban density to allow uh shops activities and the kind of pedestrian experience that we find even in the larger um cities like like like the like paris i i think if the the the range between 80 and 150 can be uh the the the range we can use to build a healthy city today okay so for an american audience it's 33 to 60 inhabitants per acre i just want to translate that because we we tend to think here at least we tend to think in acres don't take any hectares but yes so 33 uh inhabitants uh okay what about the uh the scale the vertical height do you prescribe to the uh the idea that should be more than four stories well uh let again let's try to um to focus on on what we have discovered through this uh terrible experience um we have discovered that uh it is clear that uh urban urban not urban density but the architectural type which is uh the con the box the the the apartment [Music] box building uh five to six to seven ten more is depending on on elevators is depending on mechanical and electrical uh systems and the problem of cavities that we have now evidence that the virus is spreading in in these elements so in a way i think we should try to find a kind of limit which allows us to have the reasonable density and to avoid not not let's say as a kind of ban but but the the the goal for our planning i think the three to four stories building is is the optimum together with all is in between which which somehow for instance is what leon crea has always explained was the best scale for a europe a traditional european city and it's amazing that this is today becoming more and more coherent with the idea of the healthy city [Music] so someone just mentioned um that they'd like it likely to translate it to per square mile and that comes to 21 000 per square mile just uh an anonymous attendee would like us to uh so 21 000 per square mile that's that's you know pretty dense still um i mean i think you can get a fair amount of transit and retail supported in in that uh within those numbers uh of 33 per acre uh so that's great um let me see uh stephanie asks uh please tell us uh what you observed and what you recommend in terms of public space typology we need to be provided that needs to be provided so uh public space uh space within these within this you know uh yes i think i think there is a there is a um there is a wide variety of possibilities um we start from the traditional urban piazza uh which is a pave one with with the shops or public buildings all around but then of course we have the the traditional british square and we in all its declination means uh the circus of the crescent whatever we can have parks of course of the play the american playground is i think is is a fantastic tool to introduce for instance in the european city the european city has no playground there is no possibility to play sport outside today is even more relevant after the pandemics because of course the concept of healthy city is to practice every day a kind of healthy life and walking is part of this process but if you have if you had the chance to practice sport around the corner like like in a playground this is a fantastic experience that for instance american cities can teach european ones because they do not have this kind of public space and of course parks parks too the best way to separate urban neighborhood or urban villages within a metropolis is to use public parks like like in like in london like like in paris it's a is a very effective way to build a huge city or a metropolis too even using the park the green as a way to connect at the same time connect and and separate the different urban areas yeah we were talking earlier that um the problem with a lot of uh garden cities is that um they get infringed upon so that the green belt or what's surrounding them making them discreet um soon gets eaten into uh by suburban sprawl so you don't get that transition uh off the green belt uh you get the parks within which in most cases stay true but uh they don't um we don't really get the uh the outside the exterior belt which you get so often in europe but a lot of the examples you showed uh european examples do have a green corridor around uh the town and it's limit so it kind of limits the growth um so maybe in the european condition that could also be playground uh you know be used for playgrounds or i mean it's currently used for agriculture in most cases agriculture yes of course of course i think also agriculture is a new concept that has to be introduced within within the city because for instance the possibility to have small agricultural areas within the city is today becoming very very popular and and of course we know that that was a kind of traditional way to build cities within the medieval cities agriculture was possible within in in the urban lots and because of course the medieval city had the priority to defend itself and sometimes it was not convenient and safe to get outside the walls today it's it's an important ecological and and economical argument small agricultural areas within the city and i think new urbanism has this great advantage that can talk and implement of course the the the garden city concept which in fact has evolved because the one that you find in the 1920s is in fact slightly different from the the first generation let's say of lechworth whirlwind hempstead garden suburb it's and and this transition from the original pattern to the new one adapted to to the new conditions i think this is what makes garden city interesting but but this is urbanism it is new urbanism can that can provide the culture and the technical means to operate it now so you know in many cases we have um someone talks about the box you know the incipit box that is around the suburban suburban areas um is it possible uh to retrofit those uh without the knowledge you know so you might demolish one or two to get an urban pattern but uh that's also a possibility uh it doesn't have to remain those and there are some exact very good examples at least in the usda some of the early and urbanist projects that digs down et cetera done by uda actually inserted streets within these large compounds and really made them more like neighborhoods as opposed to projects so that's another little piece that can be applied in the toolkit and transforming some of these places so let's talk about a newer uh most of the this is always a question that comes up about traditional and modern architecture i know that you've been involved in some art deco like projects on the outside of paris where the architecture is completely modern yes done for developers but still based on these principles yes the uh let's say the the problem is that um the easiest way in in europe today the easiest way to to give people what they ask today which is we want to live basically they want to live in an open air pattern the best way is of course for europeans to have a single family house which for american is the standard but for europeans is absolutely the exception is a kind of goal so today developers are providing the easiest way which is usually the suburbs sometimes like you mentioned in outside paris there are examples where there is a more urban area but using always modernist patterns like like for instance the apartment block in the modernist way without shops first of all not a line along the street so not creating the urban environment that that we need if you if we wanted to to have a city and in fact those areas actually operate on a daily basis exactly as suburbs so people get out from the apartments take the car and go to the mall so the the the the simple architectural pattern the simple architectural building is is in a way preventing uh the the citizens from having a true urban experience they they do exactly as they live in in a in a conventional american suburb because of architecture because because the pattern is always the isolated object within within a huge plot i was talking about some of the newer projects uh done by maurice and yourself uh that does have mixed-use buildings yeah in the suburbs uh so really though they are still apartment buildings they provide all the services on the ground floor is that a pattern that you see might be uh you know moving along coming being accepted by developers well well fortunately the experience that we had um where where where in were absolutely successful uh sometimes even let's say to my astonishment because i didn't expect for instance that shops were taking and becoming uh fashionable uh in so so so fast like like they did uh the problem is it depends uh let's say it depends on local mayor local municipalities europa is is very different from from the us because in europe there is a kind of public um [Music] policy uh for for architecture for instance today the european union is providing uh a kind of guidelines uh according to the bauhaus uh 1920s experience and the the the problem is that you are successful in doing some um interventions uh in in the areas outside of the city but then at the same time you have the the national and and supernational structures nightlife for instance the european union in brussels who are uh producing a public policy funding with a lot of money modernist projects uh the same projects that you you you find in the european periphery done in 1950s 1960s so this is the kind of contradiction yes what we did somehow is is he is a source of hope and inspiration it works the problem is that every day you have to fight with what comes from a higher level which is the global political structure well every place starts to look like every place else you know you are now so [Music] so we have a few more questions uh in here which i'm kind of trying to go through um so uh john massengale asks if your book was available in uh in america and then amazon right yes amazon also the uh also the the publishing um the publishing company who did the the book uh apparently is providing the same service and a friend of mine who is living in singapore has tested it it works apparently but amazon amazon is the main one yes and is it going to be translated into english uh it depends i'd like it depends it's very interesting even though i don't speak or read italian i found it extremely interesting because i could follow along with you know the images and some of the graphs um so and you know it's it's just a tremendous collection of places as i said earlier that i wasn't aware of um so let's uh let me throw a little monkey wrench in here uh you are familiar with chandigarh which is uh you know what's when it was done of course uh modest modernist siam uh ideals but um the buildings are set back here greenery in front of every building between the road and the greenery now you know acts as a filter uh and uh surprisingly it you know it is one of the most sought after it's referred to in india as a garden city if you can believe it because the vegetation after now six seventy years has grown so much that it you know you really cannot see the buildings so it's probably the most desirable place in india right now to retire as a retirement community and also they're expanding it not in the same unfortunately not in the same spirit but expanding it in a kind of suburban way to try to capitalize on this move to the city but chandigarh you know in its very early conception didn't have these leisure rallies that cut through their every block even though the blocks were huge you could transverse the city by not actually going on a road so you had these you know all the creeks i mean the little waterways uh produced these leisure valleys and all the public amenities like the museums and schools etc were placed along dispatch they're very difficult to get to unless you have a bicycle you could get get around pretty well on a bicycle but you in most cases you need the car because of the the great distances but one of the sectors uh sector 22 uh which is right next to the bus station just south of the bus station uh it's probably the most successful you know it's it's a golden section 2500 by 4 000 or 2600 by four thousand feet um so you know hundred whatever thousand plus meters down the long dimension and uh it's the one block because of its proximity to the um to the uh bus station is where you have a complete mix of income group in that one block so you get two schools you get a little shopping along the the road that cuts through the middle and you get in this incredible variety of housing types from the poorest literally the poorest subsidy uh subsidized housing that's basically one one room house within the courtyard all the way to you know larger buildings away from that a bus stop at such a central bus stop so how would you categorize that uh phenomena of a place like chandigarh uh within this uh this i think this is interesting we should first of all i regret not to be able to visit it directly uh next next time i go to india i definitely have to go there i i think it's it's uh it's an interesting uh combination uh it's it offers uh the possibility to introduce modernist architecture within an urban an urban pattern maybe the green the green is in fact a good way to to soften the the let's say the arch the hard way of modernism of conventional modernism [Music] the important issue is that it was conceived to be a city and somehow some somehow because because of its original idea and because indian inhabitants where indian people were accustomed and able usually traditionally to build cities then they have been able to create a mix and i like very much that this kind of natural or organic intervention when the community somehow takes over a rigid plan and makes it a more more friendly daily day on a daily basis uh i'd like to visit it really i i'd like to visit it yeah there's a lot of transformations that have occurred there um mostly grassroot transformations that uh fill in the gaps the planning did not fill in you know so the inconvenience of the sector planning and the segregated zoning has been kind of circumvented by ingenuity and grassroots initiatives so now it's just it's you know uh and i got you know a comment that jennifer hurley a new urbanist made when she was visiting it with me was she looked around and said you know i'd rather be here than houston and because it was much more vital and dynamic and you know it was a lot going on it felt like you know plus the population and you know the density and all that is there's a lot of life and activity in a place like that and now with the greenery having matured it's a very desirable place of a little bar but kind of a little bar a little bar but you know we're talking about garden cities that word has been transformed at least in the indian context when you say garden city that you know bangalore used to be a garden city but the trees have been wiped out for high-rise buildings or all the gardens have been wiped out whereas now chandigarh in fact because of its tremendous setbacks uh has those green spaces i wanted to remind people that we're now at the end of our hour we are going to be posting this um video online in a day or so but we'll continue to ask maybe a few more questions before we end it all okay and uh it is recorded so if you um are running out of time you can come back and rob the post the session so gabrielle uh any other insights do you want to share with us well i the the apart from the data the data were really a kind of surprising ones because i expected that uh i i made the intuition was that the the pandemic will somehow perform like the spanish flu but in fact there was what strikes me is that when you compare the the situations we did the the calculations on on many cities usually we did let's say an italian city a french city and an american one and we tried to to take uh same population for instance hundred thousand two hundred thousand now what is striking is that you always find a ratio let's say three to one means um and it is it is interesting because like like the bologna example proves things are a bit more complicated when in the in the media you you usually listen or read about the urban density the tricky thing is that it is not we know it is not exactly the urban density is really the the architectural type and the the environment uh produced by that architectural types that create or not the conditions for the virus to spread and in fact the big moles the big boxes are an incredible evidence of of that problem um what we what we discover comparing for instance the italian situation which is one of the worst in terms of mortality rate in europe well in fact italy has done this kind of policy shut down every every little tiny shop and just open the huge malls so you you could imagine the crowd the crowd the incredible crowd that one was somehow a kind of experiment because they they were recreating the bad pattern of the apartment building exactly outside with the big box i think this is a this is a great lesson that we can learn because we have a lot of arguments let's say against the the suburban mall but this is another one adding to that it is not safe because it it is much better to spread people in in thousands of tiny little shops is much safer is is better for the everyday life is much better in terms of economics local economics the local economy works much better but it is also much healthier which is the new thing do you think there might have been a decision uh caused by let's say you know the new buzzword supply chain that smaller smaller shops weren't able to get goods as delivered as much as the larger big boxes was that a response you think from the government in that that in that direction um the the situation the situation is getting is getting interesting for instance in europe the the big success the gigantic success of amazon today is is right i think because of the pandemic people have discovered and in a way is is bad for the big boxes because somehow somehow people have learned that there are two ways to do shop today one is if you have the shop nearby around the corner right they have discover that is even safer the second one of course is amazon but what is in between the the big boxes is let's say the old appears to be the old way to do a and much more dangerous than than the the other two ones so the the big chains are trying to adapt to this new condition which is completely new which is absolutely a new experience for for everybody so a couple questions one uh is about the spanish blue how much do you think the spanish blue influenced the garden city i i think a lot because it was it was a kind of explosive phenomenon um if you take the if you take italy only as an example in between the 20s and 30s italy built some 200 new towns and cities 200 and the pattern was always the same trying to find a healthier solution in in balance with the countryside the best uh location always to the seaside like sabaudia for instance but but many others were built uh all around italy and of course even in in libya because as at that time italy was ruling libya you find it so the spanish flew has given the garden city the opportunity to be developed on a on a mass a gigantic scale it was uh regarded as the best solution everywhere france germany italy great britain america of course in america florida california all all the garden cities but that that great explosion of garden cities in the 20s was was really influenced by by the spanish flu i recently visited mondello in sicily outside of palermo just north of palermo another garden city along the water with a beautiful casino clubhouse in the middle of the mediterranean you know quite a stock wonderful little piece of fairytale architecture in the middle of the water you know so i was uh so you know um harvard's harvard blackstone is asking about um this pendulum swinging back because now we've got internet as you said uh really pushing the issue that you don't really have to live you can live just about anywhere you want and what this pandemic has also shown us is that most people don't have to be in an office location they can be remote so that might spawn help spawn more of these places that provide a quality of life the i i well there is the possibility it is different to to it is very difficult to to predict the future but let's say there is a chance there is a chance and of course it depends i i think it depends really on on on our on our ability to to spread the message that it is possible to make a good use for instance of the home working yes you avoid commuting you avoid taking the car and and driving an hour two hours a day and that time you can save for going to the square nearby to find the people at the restaurant to meet people to enjoy a kind of social life so uh internet and the homeworking can can be supportive of a new wave of new urbanism if you allow me to say so i think i think it's a it's a possibility because in fact it breaks the connection of commuting commuting was in a way forced by the fact that people were living in a place outside the city and they had to go to a gigantic box office let's say box today this is breaking or in a way softening it will not be so mandatory as it was before a lot of people have understood that discover that working by home is not that bad as a kind of several advantages now i think it's up to us to tell them okay now let's experience find out how living working at home in an urban village close to a square close to a public plaza see how how beautiful that is can be how your life can be improved on a daily basis yeah i think uh the the issue is that there's just not enough beautiful places you know so uh when you build one when you build anything that's remotely beautiful it instantly escalates in price making it unaffordable um so that you know we need the one solution might be to build more and more places you know so uh more people have the opportunity to live in beautiful places uh you know um let's see there's some more questions uh but they're really long questions and some of them are statements so i'm having trouble uh but uh there's a question about um whether the central city can be made more livable by infusing one housing that happens now there's lots of office buildings have been converted to house and on it attempting to it's very expensive and difficult uh and also to inject biophilic uh design gardens etc into the city because a lot of cities lack green space you know so there might be another opportunity to start to retrofit some cities i mean we have retrofitting suburbia which is you know can be quite difficult but in the city grid system uh you know uh parking lots could be converted to gardens and department buildings could bring those so that's another possibility to introduce these principles that you've been talking about in existing cities and also in small towns [Music] all have the dna of what you're talking about but don't have the economic engine or for some reason have lost the economic engine uh so right exactly exactly the the the experience of uh let's say the mediterranean village in the last 20 years before before covered the village had an incredible success because because of the internet basically to fact two factors internet and let's say the european union it means that starting from the year 2000 people in europe had the opportunity to live like in the us so let's say within the same organization at a state level well the village has proved to be a kind of micro city because you find everything really in the city of course you don't find the huge university the best university is not there the best hospital is not there and planning i think today can and should incorporate that lacking issues on on a regional scale because in fact we have a pattern that that works if you take the the area of southern france from let's say from nice to marcel you find hundreds of villages where where people live and and you and the population is completely uh is mixed there are people there are italians americans germans it is is an international global condition in a small tiny urban piece now i think that this concept on a regional scale rationalized with with the the correct uh the infield of what is missing like that can be another option one possibility is to act at the micro level within the existing city the possibility is to act at the retrofit level of suburbs and and then at a regional level using villages and connecting them on on a regional basis that's another option we can we can provide people with [Music] great uh let's see um so uh something the historians in the group talk about the garden city actually happening uh the concept of the garden city happening before um the pandemic uh you know those uh those ideas came out much before uh and i just wanna i don't know but in your research whether you came across a book called looking backwards 2000 to 1887. it was written by the american bellami uh and uh evidence that howard was a big fan of this of bellamy's work and he it has a very political agenda to the garden city idea where it's much more communal to living in a garden city is much more communal and uh much more sharing of resources uh and anyway that book was read by and he does claim that it influenced him now the book came out in 1887 and it projects out 113 years looking back what has happened in the past hundred years and of course the world's a wonderful beautiful place because of all these uh small microcosm garden cities or communes or whatever however you want to call them which are all self-sufficient and uh have access to agriculture so i don't know whether you came across that but it isn't interesting no yes i i i know that and and i'd like to remember that the original let's say the original the the birth of the garden city was the reform the movement for social reform uh it was a the william morris news from nowhere uh the early socialist utopia of nine of them 1800s and that was the way in fact even the original title deru is interesting the original title of the book was not garden city but but was tomorrow a peaceful path to social reform i think this is interesting then the success was so great that it became garden city but garden city was the mean through which you could achieve social reform i think we should not i'm trying to get to that that it was really a social reform and a very kind of utopian idea at least in looking back it's presented this very utopian idea and it was very much supported by the labor forces you know uh because uh uh the industrial revolution and the differences etc and wealth um you know between the haves and have-nots uh so it was supposed though morris did disagree with uh this idea the communal idea of sharing so he was well aware of uh well aware of that so yeah so uh i don't know rob tell us how many people are left or uh whether we should continue well i mean um uh if you guys want to ask one more question and wrap it up i think that would be good okay let's try to find uh there's questions about online shopping complicating the last mile of delivery uh how can we better balance the use of the city streets in the garden city so the last mile you know how do we make it more efficient uh in terms of deliveries we talked about amazon uh but i think one one solution that's happened here is the common pickup point where you they don't bring the goods to your house but they bring it to a center where you pick it up and that's you know that's a possibility of not clogging this clogging all the streets um i mean it's got yes it is back and forth it depends on how many of those distribution those little centers you have but i know that that's becoming a very popular option if you want the goods sooner because you know and once i think they start charging back for delivery right now prime is so convenient without uh delivery charge but at some point i'll have to stop that it just can't be affordable anymore so but uh anything else i mean you had uh tell us once you wrap up with those ten points that you had at the end of the book ah that that was uh let's say the funny funny part of the book we we tried to make a uh 10 10 very brief tips on how to to build a an healthy city very simple uh of course the the healthy city should be accessible it means accessible by every means first of all you you should be able to have access on a pedestrian basis you should second tip you should have always a commercial street where you can walk to so the healthy city is a place can be defined only where you can find a street where you can walk tutu for shopping if you don't have it it's not healthy because of course you have to take care or whatever but usually car and go shopping you need to have a public garden in in your neighborhood to have a healthy city because of course the garden provides you with the minimal green ratio for the everyday life and then the plaza you need to have like in a village you the restaurant the place where to find restaurants bar cafe the place for social life uh to to to have another dimension out of the internet the internet one this is very this is very very important for we should never forget that the healthy city starts from very simple uh elements which are very physical like really when we talk about the shops shops around the corner means you really get out and out of at the corner you find you find the shop but the shop should be can be there only if there is enough urban density and this is a kind of important and strategic balance we should always keep in mind because otherwise even the aesthetic of a beautiful traditional garden city will not provide us with a really healthy city because the healthy city as the aesthetics but as also the shops the the public places nearby and that's why we tried to to put 10 simple elements a kind of checklist whether you have or not and what you should follow in order to accomplish the ltct project okay that's awesome well thank you um gabrielle for a wonderful uh presentation and a discussion and thank you duru once again this will be posted uh the video for people to watch again uh probably tomorrow and uh people will be notified of that but uh um thank you very much well thanks and gabriel it's always a pleasure to talk to you oh thank you thank you all great great experience uh as always and thank you thank you do you want to say that uh for people who don't know gabrielle's work because he's very modest uh he's been uh doing these we are now trying try nowadays in bologna for how many years when did you start those exhibits more than 20 years so we did five five exhibitions published five books collecting hundreds and hundreds of built and built projects but especially built ones on urbanism and traditional your urban planning so uh you know you're very modest about that but you've been around and you've been doing this research for a very long time and sharing all this knowledge with a much wider audience so for that i really want to thank you uh personally after my own heart when it comes to sharing information so thanks for being here thanks rob for all your help with this and uh hopefully we'll see you next week everybody have a good day thanks thanks ciao bye bye