If you’re passionate about cities, you’ll get your civic rocks off with ‘Urbanized’

"A good city is like a good party – people stay longer than really necessary, because they are enjoying themselves.” – Danish architect Jan Gehl, in Urbanized

 

Bogotá or Brasilia? Copenhagen or Phoenix? Cape Town or Mumbai? Santiago or New Orleans? While director Gary Hustwit’s colossal new doc Urbanized doesn’t aim to spark international tensions, it makes certain things abundantly clear. For instance, for each of these city duels, you’ve got a clear winner and loser. At least, where urban design is concerned. In each of the former cities, forward-thinking planners and policymakers are devising custom-made solutions for problems afflicting their cities. In Bogotá, you have former mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who long advocated that “parking is not a constitutional right” and implemented measures to ensure bikes would be given priority over cars. In Cape Town’s improvised Khayelitsha township, the implementation of well-lit walkways has increased residents' safety. In Santiago, Brad Pitt may not be around, as in New Orleans, to transform the Lower Ninth Ward into Malibu dream homes. But Chile’s Lo Barnechea social housing project took the smart approach by involving the end users, getting their input on what would be their priority: bathtubs or water heaters? The answer might surprise you.

New York City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden (center), in Urbanized

As the world’s population reaches the 7 billion mark, there couldn’t be a better time for the release of Urbanized. An utterly engrossing, five continent-spanning look at carefully chosen urban design case studies, documentary filmmaker and all-around design junkie Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified) does his homework, speaking with the world’s foremost architects, city planners, policymakers and thinkers. A public art project in Brighton tracking residents’ electricity usage, contentious corporate development in Stuttgart to tear down a cherished city park, New York’s sustainable revamp of decaying train tracks into a gorgeous High Line walkway: Hustwit boldly asks his interviewees what kind of city they apire to live in. As Montreal inches closer to next year’s municipal elections, it’s high time someone at city hall got their Urbanized fix. Gérald, Louise, Richard: please bring pen and paper to Cinéma du Parc. After all, Montreal now barely registers on lifestyle magazine Monocle’s Top 25 Most Liveable Cities Index, and it’s no surprise why (poor road infrastructure, widespread corruption, inadequate health care). To help restore the city's former luster, this class with director Gary Hustwit is now in session.

 

Bogotá's former mayor Enrique Peñalosa (Urbanized)
 

NIGHTLIFE: Urbanized constantly shifts between notable successes and epic failures in cities around the world, but you get the sense there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, because the problems and realities of urban dwellers are so different from one city to the next.
Gary Hustwit: Definitely. For instance, the BRT [Bus Rapid Transit] bus system in Bogotá has been replicated in some cities where it has worked, but it’s also been tried in Cape Town, where it was a complete failure. Mostly because of the different ways that people use public transit and how people get around in that city. There is no plug and play solution. That doesn’t mean you can’t look at the ideas behind these projects, and try to tweak them to fit a different city model. But when it comes down to it, there’s no perfect city. No city in the world gets it right in every area.

Even Copenhagen?
Even Copenhagen! (laughs) That’s what’s so interesting. There’s always been this quest or modernist pursuit to design the perfect city. Like if there would be one design that would make life wonderful for everyone. And it has never worked; I think it’s impossible. You can’t force people into a certain way of behaving in the city. You really have to look at how they naturally behave and design after that, versus trying to force certain activities in certain places, with particular segments of the population.

 

Dharavi slum, Mumbai (Urbanized)

A few of the film’s pundits allude to the fact that rapidly developing nations like China and India could be setting themselves up for disaster if they keep trying to apply a “20^th century recipe” to building their 21^st century cities. How pressing of a concern is that?
A huge one. The amount of traffic and the increased road infrastructure in cities like Mumbai, for instance, is pointing in that direction. A lot of those cities in the global South are just getting overwhelmed by migration, by more people coming to the city. So most of the solutions they’re trying to employ are basically band-aids… I can’t understand how Mumbai functions right now, let alone if you add another 15 million people over the next 20 years. But I think that’s the challenge in how to plan the city in a way that enables that kind of growth, while not making the same mistakes we’ve made in Western cities, which is building further and further outside the city and build more highways to get people in.

And I guess one of the big problems in that part of the world is that car ownership is not just about transportation, but also a status…
Exactly. There’s a freedom and status to owning a car. And we’re only seeing the start of that phenomenon. So I think in Beijing, car registrations just in the past 5 years have gone up from 3 to 5 million! We’re only going to see more of that in Chinese and Indian cities. It’s hard, because what do you tell those people? You can’t have cars? “Sorry! We learned the mistakes here in North America, so you can’t have automobiles in Mumbai, I’m very sorry! (laughs)” Those cities are going to have to learn those mistakes on their own, and I don’t think they have the resources or the luxury of time to really think progressively or differently about how to deal with the situation. They’re just trying to stop a flood.

 

Unchecked sprawl in Phoenix, Arizona (Urbanized)

You interview a real estate developer in Phoenix – the sprawl capital of North America – who does his best to argue in favour of massive suburban development, alluding to the American dream of home ownership. Another of your interviewees argues that “defining sprawl is like defining pornography: you know it when you see it.” What’s your take on cities like Phoenix?
I don’t think that developer’s perspective is a minority opinion. I think most people at least in the United States believe that. And in a sense, I don’t think it’s an either/or situation. You can have your three quarter acre lot and swimming pool if the community is planned well, if it’s near mass transportation, if it’s transit-oriented development, if it’s not just a group of massive housing development some 30 miles outside the city, just because that’s where the land was cheapest.

In Phoenix’s case, and a lot of the times, I think it’s just unchecked development that is the real problem. I don’t think it’s the people who are buying the houses. It’s how the city has been designed and the lack of strong planning officials needed to steer that development so that it doesn’t lead to sprawl.
 

What I found most refreshing about the film was how enthusiastic the interviewees seemed to be about the challenging times ahead for urban design. One of your pundits declares that “this is the century for city lovers; this is when it happens.” How do you anticipate things playing out?
I think we’re seeing more involvement of citizens in the process, and more people not waiting for city government to improve something in their neighbourhood, and just doing it themselves. We don’t really have to choice but to be optimistic for the future of cities, there’s not really an option of failing. And the more energy, creativity and thinking go into these issues – not just from professionals, but from all of us – is what’s going to bring a lot of solutions to the challenges our cities currently face.

 

Urbanized | Now playing in Montreal | Cinéma du Parc | 3575 Du Parc 
A number of urban planning experts will moderate post-screening discussions. See cinemaduparc.com for complete listings.
Cinema du Parc also screens Hustwit’s Helvetica (November 19 ot 21) and Objectified (November 22 to 24).
urbanizedfilm.com