SPACE August 2024 (No. 681)
Rapid population decline is shaking the fabric of small and medium-sized cities to the core. To rebuild these cities, we need to move away from the inertia of regeneration and take a perspective that acknowledging change. This is where the Mid-Size City Forum comes in. They look at phenomena outside the metropolitan area and seek urban and architectural alternatives to the crisis.
[Series] The Possibilities Inherent in Extinction, Mid-Size City Forum
01 What is Happening Outside the Metropolitan Area
02 Thinning Phenomenon
03 Urban Perforation
04 Erasing Plan
05 Ad-hoc Architecture
06 Global Mid-Size City
07 Resilient Mid-Size City
08 Fantastic Mid-Size City
09 Outside of the Mid-Size City
If the pattern of ‘perforation phenomenon’ observed by the Mid-Size City Forum in the last issue is anything to go by, the old town blocks of small and medium-sized (hereinafter mid-size) cities will eventually lose much of their original shape. Here, the Mid-Size City Forum suggests minimal repairs instead of picking out new clothes: a method that uses decay pressure as leverage to prioritise erasing rather than building. The Medium-Density Urban-Rural Integrated City imagined in this way may be absent of capital, people, and young people, but it closely represents the shape of a mid-size city and the lives within.
Medium-Density Urban-Rural Integrated City. Strategic erasing and intervention in decaying blocks to create new forms in mid-size city.
It is challenging to expect large-scale development in metropolitan districts, particularly in areas where decay pressure occurs. Where such pressure is located, capital, people, and youth are typically all absent. Given such scarce resources, strategies are required that produce maximum impact with minimum intervention. To do this, we will first need to distinguish between those needing intervention and those not, and then prioritise those that do, beginning with the most urgent ones. We also need to mobilise the resources available to us. There are development pressures in large cities and the opposite decay pressures in mid-size cities. Just as large cities rely on the development pressure to create dense, built environments, can mid-size cities harness the decay pressure to develop new models of low-density cities? It is possible when one adopts the attitude of using that power rather than helplessly complying with the decay pressure or, conversely, resisting it. It requires a plan that shapes the city by erasing something rather than building something.
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※You can read the full article with more information on the SPACE No.681 August (2024).
Simulation of changes in block shapes in mid-size cities over the next 30 years. After 30 years, the block is nearly dismantled, its original form no longer recognisable.
