Murah Khane rises from its own Ashes

Most of the news these days from Afghanistan isn’t all that positive. Standard fare is about war, terrorism, and security issues. However, there are some promising signs in the building sector that helped to restore a little bit of my faith in the future.

In the old city of Murad Khane there are over 200 workers digging the city out from under 2 m of accumulated dust, garbage, neglect, and the rubble of war. In some places the accumulated layers are almost 2 m deep.

Using techniques from traditional building the workers are rebuilding the city with its own ashes. When of the most interesting aspects of this project is that in a city of security in checkpoints, this project has none. The organizers state that the security of the project is based in the fact that it doesn’t look remotely foreign. The funds behind it may be from outside the country but the program itself is distinctly local. As a means of gathering support from the local community the project is not only teaching building techniques, but also the art of Afghan woodworking, ceramics, calligraphy and jewl making. In addition to this the program operates an emergency repair program to out locals fix their own homes that have been damaged by the fighting.

The program has a budget of just 4 million dollars but much like micro lending firms, the project is achieving a lot with a small amount of funds. “The mission is to regenerate Afghanistan’s historic areas and revive the traditional economy,” said John Elliott, a spokesman for the Turquoise Mountain Foundation which runs the project. “We’re working in the middle of Kabul, the very centre of the centre and there’s just a chance that if you can give some kind of economic underpinning to Murad Khane — an economic purpose, an educational purpose — it might act as a catalyst for the rest of the city and the rest of Afghanistan.”

“What we need is a patient approach to development here,” said Elliott. “I think it has to do with having smaller, more discreet projects. And if you could replicate that across the board, rather than having huge programs which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, having smaller, lower risk projects, then you might achieve something.” S

The Birth of the Shopping Mall, Welcome to Southdale Centre

The Interior of Southdale at its birth

The shopping mall is a controversial topic in urban centers; most people generally view them as being a major contributor to the rise of suburbs and sprawl. As part of our Historical Discourse series here at Urban Neighbourhood, we are going to look at the trajectory of this truly American institution through the urban landscape, both here in North America and abroad. An interesting factoid about shopping malls here in North America is that they are on the decline here and in the country that gave birth to them but still on the rise in other countries.

To start our history of the mall one can only start at its birthplace, Southdale Centre. Southdale center opened in Edina, Minnesota in 1956. The complex was the first climate controlled shopping complex, fully enclosed and featuring rival department stores. Minneapolis has an interesting relationship with the mall being the first city to house one, and the home to the largest mall in America, the aptly named Mall of America, which is just four miles away from its progenitor.

The Southdale mall was the brain child of Victor Gruen. He was a refugee from Vienna during world war two and got his start designing shops for other immigrants in New York City. He quickly became known and decried for his shop design utilizing eye displays, and arcades to pull customers into the stores he designed. It is reported that one critic complained that his stores were like mousetraps, once you got in, rarely did you leave without buying something. It was a comparison that would later be used on his shopping malls. It was partially the climate of Minnesota that gave Gruen his masterpiece. A number of what would later be termed strip malls had been built in California in the 1940s but none of these outdoor strips were really all that great for the Minnesotan climate. Gruen’s solution was to put in two rows of shops that faced each other and throw a roof on top, add in an air conditioning system that kept the whole thing at a comfortable 24C (75F) and the shopping mall was born.

Interestingly enough Gruen’s original plan for the shopping mall was a lot more community centered then malls have become today. He proposed that the center would become a central gathering place for the surrounding community. He also designed the plan in a manner similar to the type of infill developments that are being suggested to ‘fix’ these developments. The original plan called for the shopping center to be the centre piece of a 463 acre development that included houses, schools, medical facilities, parks and even a lake. However the original plan was never completed and the mall sits currently like so many other malls isolated in acres of parking lot. When the mall first opened it was designed to be complementary to downtown and most of the shops inside were satellite stores of downtown merchants. He envisioned the mall as a complement for downtown business to reach customers outside the city center.

Southdale today

In light of his original plan it is also interesting to note how many of Gruen’s original design idea’s he got right the first time. The mall is on a sloped site so people who enter on one side of the structure enter on a lower floor that those who enter on the other, thus ensuring better circulation, plus the balconies within the mall were all built low so that shoppers could easily see the stores on other levels. Gruen also detested cars, if you can believe it which is why he left them outside. He sought to recreate the feel of a European Town center which is why he added an Atrium where he envisioned that shoppers would stop and discuss issues over their coffees like they do in European Piazzas.

Stay tuned for our next chapter when we discuss mall culture. Its like ohmigod!

Maps when the world was especially vast.

An Eastern Metropolis

Maps are the way that most of us conceptualize the world. When someone asks you what the world looks like most of us picture the world map, and usually that map is the Mercator projection. North America up in the top left corner, Europe in the middle to right, Russia over in the top right, Africa lower middle and Australia down in the right. So much of our outlook has been shaped by these maps. Australians refer to themselves as being from ‘down under,’ everyone thinks that North America is just as big, if not bigger then Africa. This is mostly due to the proportions and layout of the Mercator projection. When people look at different projections of the world like an equal area projection it tends to make most people a little unsettled, the world tends too look wrong.

The Gulf of St Laurence During the Colonial Era

While I was a lecturer at Ulsan College I brought a copy of the “What’s up? South!” world map back from one of my trips home. After it had rolled off a conveyer belt in Newark, and slowly followed me back to Korea via a number of exotic airports I was finally able to put it up on one of my office walls. I had no sooner gotten it unrolled that one of my co-workers, the garrulous Professor Ahn came over to pay me a visit. When he saw the map I was trying to put up upside down, he asked me what I was doing. After explaining that the map was designed that we he instructed me to still put it with North at the top regardless of the way the writing was done on the page. South being up was just wrong and he quickly left the room, definitely a little unsettled. His reaction may seem strange when you write it down but if most of us are honest with ourselves we would have to admit that it isn’t that dissimilar from our own.

The same can hold true when looking back at historical maps, before satellites and google earth mapped every square inch of the planet for all to see maps of faraway and ‘new’ lands tended to inspire awe and a sense of mystery when you looked at them. Its possible to get a sense of what it may of felt like to look at this evidence of distant places that you may never have ever thought existed. The David Rumsey Collection is a vast online collection of historical maps, boasting thousands of historical maps that are digitized and accessible via the website. Looking at old area maps of the urban area’s that we live in can give a greater understanding of how these areas came to be. Not to mention its just kind of fun to look through them.

The New Village movement or What’s the name of the dictator that helped build Granny’s?

Believe it or not, this is part 2 in my history of the development of Korea.

So gather ’round, because today, little children, I’m going to tell you the story of the Dictator and the village.

During the Korean war, the president was Syngman Rhee, who, all told, was a wanker. He was outrageously anti-communist, which is why the American’s liked him, but he was also completely pro-me. In other words, even though the American’s had hoped to see democracy spring in Korea, what they ended up with was another life long dictator.  By 1960 the Korean people were sick of him, and gave him the boot.  He was rescued by the CIA and was set up in Hawaii. After Rhee there was a shortly lived republican government, then a coup by Park Jung Hee.

President Park was another strongman, but this time he had some vision. He rounded up the usual suspects, a group of gangsters and mob breakers, and handed them the countries future on a plate. These baddies were such players as the presidents of Hyundai and Samsung. Both companies later grew into massive global organizations, all backed up with Park’s money. There was more then just corruption though, President Park actually meant to build a country, and he did. He forced a highway to be built from Seoul to Busan, and pushed Korean soldiers into the Vietnam war, where they basically fought as American mercenaries, bringing home the dough to help propel their country. During this period he started a moved called the ‘new village’ movement.

The basic goal of this program was to build modern infrastructure in the country. Seoul had electric street cars in the 30s, but most of Korea in 1960 was still mud and wattle huts. President Park planned to change this. He gave each village a few hundred tonnes of free concrete. Then, the next year, whomever used the concrete best would get more. This lead to be building of industries, and a revolution in the countryside. The mud and wattle began to disappear, as newer (though still very traditional) concrete houses began to spring up around the country.

A happy house with late summer crops drying in the sun

Though these villages abound in the countryside, few remain in the cities. The houses were all traditionally designed, with small outbuildings surrounding a center courtyard and closed in by a large gate. These courtyards were the heart of the old villages, where all the veggies were dried (Korean food involves a lot of dried foods), games were played, life was lived.

But, as President Park was fated to be killed by his right hand man (who feared that Park was becoming a megalomaniac) the villages were troubled. Thanks to Parks massive reforms, underhanded business dealings, the extra-ordinary efforts of the common working man and woman, and plain dumb luck, Korea started to boom. With a modern boom comes urbanization, and the death of villages.  Though there are still tens of thousands of ‘new villages’ spread across Korea, the inhabitants are almost all ’silver citizens’. Korea is now one of the most urbanized countries in the world, and men who still make a living on the farm find it almost impossible to attract a Korean wife. 52% of rural weddings in South Gyeongsang province last year were Korean/S.E Asian weddings. Rural men are finding it easier to acquire a foreign wife who is willing to farm than a modern, urban Korean girl. The fate of the Korean countryside is in question.

New Village?

Toronto Rediscovered

So this post is mostly a little Canadiana for you all. Canadians are very familiar with the fact that Toronto is the city that many of us love to hate. It is our biggest city, the economic center of the country and has always occupied a peculiar place in the Canadian mind. When travelling Canadians will pull it out when comparing International cities, two and a half million people and the (formerly) tallest free-standing structure in the world (Stupid Burj Dubai.) At home Canadians tend to dislike Toronto, there is always some reason that it is not as nice as where they are from and Montrealers, well it’s best we not go there. Torontonians tend to just be oblivious to it all, confident in the knowledge they live in ‘one of the world’s most livable cities’ source.

Tonight thanks to Spacing We find a travel article written in 1982 for the New York times by Margaret Atwood. The article talks about they way she saw her city.

THE CITY REDISCOVERED

Published: August 8, 1982

MARGARET ATWOOD is a novelist who lives in Toronto. Her newest books, ”Dancing Girls and Other Stories” and ”True Stories,” a collection of poems, will be published by Simon & Schuster in September. By MARGARET ATWOOD

W hen I was growing up in Toronto as a child, in the 1940’s, I loathed it. I associated it with standing in the slush with dampness seeping through my boots, itchy bloomers, gray muggy skies, old ladies who hit your knuckles with the metal edge of the ruler if you didn’t know the words to ”Rule, Britannia.” Later, when I was in high school, I liked Toronto a little better, though not much. There did not seem to be a great deal to do, apart from sock hops, smoking in the washrooms and avoiding the appearance of being too interested in frog dissection. As for university, it produces angst in the best of us, and I was probably wrong to attribute mine specially to Toronto. Nevertheless, I did.

As I aged, I was pleased to discover that I was not the only person who found Toronto loathsome. Almost everyone else did too. Montreal was where international flavor, international finance and naughtiness (which meant, to Torontonians, wine with dinner) reigned supreme. New York was where the truly sophisticated hung out, and Buffalo was where you went if you couldn’t afford the other two. Toronto was … well, Toronto was where you lived when you weren’t having fun. The notion of anyone actually visiting Toronto, for any purpose other than to attend the sickbed of a moribund relative, was alien to me. I set my first published novel in Toronto (where else was I to set it?) but was so embarassed by the location that I never actually named the city and disguised the street names as best I could. Everyone knew that real novels were not set in Toronto.

Continue Reading the Article

IKEA 1, Breuer 1/2

In Urban Neighbourhood’s continued expansion as the posts get larger and the links get more numerous I am constantly coming across new things. Today over at archidose (a great blog devoted to architecture) I came across a post about what happened when an Ikea went head to head with the Armstrong Building, built in New Haven Coneticut in 1969 by Marcel Breuer. It is the age old story of old versus new, contemporary historic vs current economics. The Pirelli Building sat on a lot adjacent to where Ikea was building one of their stores, and needed parking spaces.

Marcel Breuer's 1969 Armstrong (aka Pirelli) Building, pre-IKEA

Click here to read more at archidose and see what happened when IKEA came to town.

The author also has the same thoughts about where parking should go as in our article about parking at asian department stores.

Old Korean houses

As I promised, this is the first entry in my series about the development of one of the world’s most crowded countries.

Unlike modern times, Korea’s population wasn’t always high, during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1920) it hung somewhere around 8 million. For a country (complete country) twice the size of Ireland, 8 million people isn’t densely populated. It wasn’t until the Japanese arrived with tenant farms and forced quotas did the productivity of the land increase dramatically, driving up the population as well. The centre of Korean life was always the village. Though Seoul was a city of approximately 1 million people during the Joseon period, most of the countryside was undeveloped, and the major cities of today, Busan, Daegu and Pyongyang were actually quite small.

The average Korean was quite poor, as the Joseon Dynasty followed the writings of Confucius, and believed that trade and commerce were at best a necessary evil and at worst a destabilizing influence on the people and the nation. Foreign trade was all but eliminated except the occasional tribute mission on Ming China. The main focus of the dynasty was on studying the Chinese classics, drawing all the nations intelligensia away from modernization, trade or military developments.

The rich people lived in wooden houses called Hanoks with floor heating and heavy tilled roofs. The poor lived in mud and wattled houses called Cho-ga-chib. The Hanok has been reborn in for the nouveau rich around the country, while the Cho-ga-chib are dying a slow death in villages around the country.

Hahwae

The floor heating system, called Ondol, is a uniquely Korean design. Traditionally the floors were heated by wood fires, as the rich houses were built on stone foundations. Korean winters, especially in what would become North Korea can be harsh, easily reaching -20C in some provinces.

The Hanok is characterised by the sloping roof and the and soft ‘U’ shape, whereas Chinese and Japanese roofs are straight. The shear weight of the tiles used in Hanok roofs is

A house within a temple compound

shocking. The roof beams must be on average 12 inches in diameter. This, not surprisingly, makes construction of modern Hanoks prohibitively expensive. Even if the land is affordable (which it isn’t) the cost of wood makes building a new Hanok a multi-million dollar project. One of the solutions is to replace wood with reinforced concrete painted to look like wood. From the exterior the difference is almost unnoticeable, but the house seems much colder than those built traditionally.

Hanok re-construction has undergone a bit of a renaissance in the last 10 years, with a number of Hanok design and construction courses being offered at local colleges. The government in Seoul has tried to protect various neighbourhoods, such as Bukcheon, but much of the restoration money has been misplaced as many of the original Hanoks were torn down and replaced with two story concrete ‘mock’ Hanoks with shops or restaurants built in, destroying the original character of the neighbourhood.

Original Hanok house in the mountains, a dying breed