Page 10 - Vertical City

10 The vertical city

population 4, buried utilities infrastructure, and streets
hedged by parked cars that are difficult to navigate are
no longer affordable for public authorities whether the
costs are for investment, operation or maintenance.

Both vertical and horizontal networks must be
viewed in a new light as to best use and for the benefit
of polycentric cities. They are more complex than those
imagined by the architects and urbanists of the first
half of the 20th century, and the questions as to their
conception and their management is at the center of
this reflection.

In the same way as our “classical” low buildings, inno-
vative high-rise buildings and the clusters of small cities
planned with comprehension that reflect the cultural
values and the unique character of the site 5 can now be
realized.

Is it therefore necessary and safe?
Worries as to the technical security of high-rise buil-
ding, whether it be protection from hurricanes, fire or
earthquakes can be eased, just as fears of driving or of
air travel have been. They must be balanced with, for
example, protection from major urban fires, the safety
of the population and prevention of repeated flooding.

4 The success of the industrial model, based on scale of economy for
the production of objects and services and the competition among
producers, which incites them to concentrate on their own market-
place, are even more effective when targeted to a dense popula-
tion. Little else matters whether the cities are mono- or polycentric
as long as the market is dense.

5 In the sense that Christian NORBERG-SCHULTZ considers the
question in Genius Loci, Brussels, Editions Mardaga, 1997.