Page 65 - Vertical City

NETWORKS OF THE CITIES 65

Our roads and networks are now congested and
the costs of their use and maintenance are increasing
steadily.

Dependence on the automobile due to the sprea-
ding out of constructions is more and more critical as
the planet’s population urbanizes.

Babies from the 1950s are now “senior citizens” in
their pavilions and less apt to master the use of a car,
they depend on the vehicle of their child just as a small
child depends on the vehicle of the parent, unless they
live in isolation.

It is the actual dilemma of the polarity between low-
level and tentacular cities, developed with little planning,
now extended to precarious economies where the
absence of networks increases poverty and exclusion,
and the vertical cities, even badly or not planned, (as
in China) that could enhance connectivity in correlation
with growth and wealth.

ɣ equally expresses not only the importance of initial
investment, but also operational and maintenance costs
that increase in an excessive manner in the monocentric
city.

“Historical” networks, in the order of their occur-
rence: sewers, water distribution, gas, electricity,
telephone and now data could only be progressively
integrated buried under the existing roads. The pres-
sure of traffic has also led to underground infrastruc-
ture for trains, metros and road tunnels.

Our traditional cities indeed do not happily accom-
modate aerial networks, whether electricity, telecom-