Growth is essential for survival. It involves adaptation and evolution working in synergy—allowing the individual to develop the required qualities to perform day-to-day activities with ease. They pick up new skills from our surroundings. After all, nobody is growing in isolation. Some competition or a set of supportive audiences become catalysts to the growth process in the time to come. Each day is a fight or a flight to reach the same result.
To become someone that matters and achieve greatness. The goal we chose to have, something different, something unique, something no one else has thought of, or something majestic which strikes awe in the minds of the observer. Cities are not any different from people!
Adaptation and Order
Cities don’t have any particular fixed way of growth (no two cities are alike). They adapt to the existing situation and grow to accommodate the different activities in themselves. A City acts as organisms within a fixed set of norms, which determine the upper and lower limits of its spread. These set of norms were set up by prominent thinkers of history, who understood the need to set some boundaries to the growth of spaces.
Pablo Picasso also says that one must understand the different rules and learn them like a professional. At the same time, he talks about breaking the rules like an artist. These so-called rules are in place to establish a specific order in the lives of people. This adaptive ability of humans – to set rules where all of the species (including themselves) are affected by it makes them unique.
Restraints and Entropy
The constitution of different countries lay down guiding principles for its citizens to follow. Failing to live within this set of the established and accepted order of the society leads to punishment. But even so, people are not away from doing things their way and often committing punishable offenses in the dark. It is common to see the breaking of rules to be associated with a sense of accomplishment. It is common to see such behavioral patterns in teenagers, where the rebellious character of people comes out evidently. Anybody who has energy tends to move towards a state of entropy. Growing takes such energies to a large extent and involves a large number of elements working within a set of rules. But what if these restraints are lifted?
City and Future
We often come across futuristic cities in sci-fi movies or abstract drawings. Embellished with space cars, tall buildings, no greens, sophisticated devices, levitating structures, and more marvelous characteristics, it sparks a sense of creativity and awe in the mind of people. Even the games of today break the realities of the existing world and provide us an experience of how the world would look like in the future. The level of detailing and striking similarity to elements make such works highly appreciated and captivating. However, the main catch here is most of them don’t talk about the process that is involved to reach that futuristic state.
It’s fun to see the result of a process, but most of us forget that the journey to that point is what makes it unique. The city of the future does not merely pop up overnight. Every settlement has a story behind its growth. It reflects the people living in it and accentuates the culture of the place. However, the common concern of most planners and thinkers in the far deviation from the culture and values, to make way for innovation and modernization.
Building without Restrictions
If we allow the growth, people will grow as per their needs and profit. The available land would be taken up gradually by people having more resources. However, this process would happen in phases.
Phase 1 would mark horizontal growth, covering larger spans of land (with diminishing green spaces). And there would be less or no land left green by the end of the century. Also, city centers would start to grow upwards due to space crunch. Cities would cover the land with urban built spaces with occasional aesthetically pleasing parks.
Phase 2 would mark a period with higher conscious community involvement in the growth. The remaining weaker sections would start to retaliate against the rich. It would be the age of extreme chaos where people would fight over resources and spaces. The city would keep growing upwards, using the smaller buildings as a base. A thick canopy of skyscrapers would grow-restricting the entry of light into the lower levels of the city.
Phase 3 would be the time when peace would be attained out of the sweet chaos of life. Technology would finally catch up with the fast blooming growth and account for all the things which were not possible before. The cities that have developed into different levels would now have every facility at each level, which would become one civilization. This synergy would lead to a Utopian civilization that was born out of a dystopia. Destruction or dysfunctional systems drive society towards a proper functional system incorporating the aspirations of those living in it. It is an ode to the statement, “To get, one must sacrifice.”
