Book: Zero City

BLURB

As the urban epoch accelerates, we have collectively placed our faith in cities, and specifically types of ecocities, as a remedy for all global environmental exigencies. However, the limitations of this urban model are rapidly becoming evident. Under the guise of sustainability, the new town* model and its many derivatives have resurfaced. Increasingly, large, insular ecocity projects are lauded in popular discourse, and even in academic circles, while the inherent drawbacks and poor track record associated with these urban typologies are often overlooked. Bold proclamations about their performance pervade the planning discipline, yet rigorous scrutiny—especially questioning how these new projects operate within their broader socioeconomic and ecological contexts—remains alarmingly sparse.

The fervour surrounding these projects, particularly in Asia, is understandable. As the challenges mount, there is a pressing need for meaningful urban solutions. However, Asia's urbanity defies entrenched notions of spatial planning and, by extension, conventional paradigms of sustainability. The increasingly muddled context renders self-contained and inward-looking projects more appealing, yet less effective. China's rise is a remarkable case in point. The radical transformation of China’s metro regions into rural/urban/industrial amalgamations serves as a cautionary tale of a new paradoxical urbanity: a hyper-suburbanised landscape where starkly contrasting socio-spatial conditions fuse into a vast but mundane monotony.

As cityscapes become progressively disjointed, we must adhere to the reality that most planning efforts are invariably counterproductive. The city can no longer be perceived as the result of a grand vision or an overarching design. More often, it is a by-product of our faltering attempts to impose order on the inherently unruly process of rapid urbanisation. The conflicting conditions this engenders, characterised by hyper-speed and stagnation, by oozing expansion and severe fragmentation, and by staggering built-up densities void of people, demand from the planning community to develop new tools that are firmly rooted in new theories.

China has provided the urban laboratory for the case studies and planning projects in this volume. They present a variety of non-static, cross-scalar, and site-specific models of urban renewal, all based on the principles of dynamic density*. These projects embrace rather than reject the city’s inherent compactness and complexity, harnessing new ways of experimentation for an increasingly amorphous and ill-defined habitat that is intrinsically adverse to empirical testing, yet as a complex adaptive system* thrives on its ability to evolve and adapt.

Ultimately, ZERØ CITY* concludes that, in order to promote efficient land use globally, a complete moratorium on new towns* is imminently needed. However, ZERØ CITY* is not just another dogmatic manifesto. This intentionally simplistic objective aims to alter the coarse of all urbanisation by limiting our scope to projects that are planned in line with the city's inherent tendencies, rather than fight against them.

About the Authors

ZERØ CITY* is written by Neville Mars based on projects by MARS Architects and its research arm, the Dynamic City Foundation, which brings together a broad team of experts in urban planning, environmental policy, and sustainable development.