The architectural wonder of impermanent cities
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0:01 - 0:04On this planet today,
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0:04 - 0:09there are about 50 cities
that are larger than five million people. -
0:09 - 0:12I'm going to share with you
the story of one such city, -
0:12 - 0:14a city of seven million people,
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0:14 - 0:20but a city that's a temporary megacity,
an ephemeral megacity. -
0:20 - 0:25This is a city that is built
for a Hindu religious festival -
0:25 - 0:26called Kumbh Mela,
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0:26 - 0:31which occurs every 12 years,
in smaller editions every four years, -
0:31 - 0:34and takes place at the confluence
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0:34 - 0:38of the Ganges and
the Yamuna rivers in India. -
0:38 - 0:40And for this festival,
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0:40 - 0:45about 100 million people congregate.
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0:45 - 0:47The reason so many people congregate here,
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0:47 - 0:51is the Hindus believe
that during the festival, -
0:51 - 0:53the cycle every 12 years,
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0:53 - 0:57if you bathe at the confluence
of these two great rivers -
0:57 - 0:59you are freed from rebirth.
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0:59 - 1:01It's a really compelling idea,
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1:01 - 1:04you are liberated from life as we know it.
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1:04 - 1:07And this is what attracts these millions.
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1:07 - 1:11And an entire megacity
is built to house them. -
1:11 - 1:14Seven million people
live there for the 55 days, -
1:14 - 1:17and the other 100 million visit.
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1:17 - 1:19These are images from the same spot
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1:20 - 1:22that we took over the 10 weeks
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1:22 - 1:25that it takes for the city to emerge.
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1:25 - 1:27After the monsoon,
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1:27 - 1:30as the waters of these rivers
begin to recede -
1:30 - 1:33and the sand banks expose themselves,
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1:33 - 1:36it becomes the terrain for the city.
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1:36 - 1:38And by the 15th of January,
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1:38 - 1:40starting 15th of October
to 15th of January, -
1:40 - 1:44in these weeks an entire city emerges.
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1:44 - 1:47A city that houses seven million people.
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1:48 - 1:52What is fascinating is this city
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1:52 - 1:56actually has all the characteristics
of a real megacity: -
1:56 - 1:59a grid is employed to lay the city out.
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1:59 - 2:01The urban system is a grid
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2:01 - 2:04and every street on this city
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2:04 - 2:07goes across the river on a pontoon bridge.
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2:07 - 2:09Incredibly resilient,
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2:09 - 2:14because if there's an unseasonal downpour
or if the river changes course, -
2:14 - 2:16the urban system stays intact,
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2:16 - 2:20the city adjusts itself to this terrain
which can be volatile. -
2:22 - 2:28It also replicates all forms of physical,
as well as social, infrastructure. -
2:28 - 2:31Water supply, sewage, electricity,
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2:31 - 2:36there are 1,400 CCTV cameras
that are used for security -
2:36 - 2:40by an entire station that is set up.
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2:40 - 2:42But also social infrastructure,
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2:42 - 2:45like clinics, hospitals,
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2:45 - 2:47all sorts of community services,
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2:47 - 2:52that make this function
like any real megacity would do. -
2:52 - 2:5810,500 sweepers
are employed by the city. -
2:58 - 3:00It has a governance system,
a Mela Adhikari, -
3:00 - 3:03or the commissioner of the festival,
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3:03 - 3:05that ensures that land is allocated,
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3:05 - 3:07there are systems for all of this,
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3:07 - 3:11that the system of the city, the mobility,
all works efficiently. -
3:12 - 3:17You know, it was the cleanest
and the most efficient Indian city -
3:17 - 3:18I've lived in.
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3:18 - 3:21(Laughter)
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3:22 - 3:24And that's what it looks like
in comparison to Manhattan, -
3:24 - 3:2630 square kilometers,
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3:26 - 3:29that's the scale of the city.
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3:29 - 3:33And this is not an informal city
or a pop-up city. -
3:33 - 3:37This is a formal city,
this is a state enterprise, -
3:37 - 3:39the government sets this up.
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3:39 - 3:43In today's world
of neoliberalism and capitalism, -
3:43 - 3:47where the state has devolved itself
complete responsibility -
3:47 - 3:50from making and designing cities,
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3:50 - 3:51this is an incredible case.
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3:51 - 3:55It's a deliberate,
intentional city, a formal city. -
3:56 - 4:00And it's a city that sits
on the ground very lightly. -
4:00 - 4:03It sits on the banks of these rivers.
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4:03 - 4:06And it leaves very little mark.
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4:06 - 4:07There are no foundations;
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4:07 - 4:11fabric is used to build this entire city.
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4:11 - 4:15What's also quite incredible
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4:15 - 4:19is that there are five materials
that are used to build this settlement -
4:19 - 4:21for seven million people:
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4:21 - 4:25eight-foot tall bamboo, string or rope,
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4:25 - 4:27nails or screw and a skinning material.
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4:27 - 4:31Could be corrugated metal,
a fabric or plastic. -
4:31 - 4:35And these materials
come together and aggregate. -
4:35 - 4:36It's like a kit of parts.
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4:36 - 4:40And it's used all the way
from a small tent, -
4:40 - 4:43which might house
five or six people, or a family, -
4:43 - 4:47to temples that can house 500,
sometimes 1,000 people. -
4:47 - 4:51And this kit of parts,
and this imagination of the city, -
4:51 - 4:54allows it to be disassembled.
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4:54 - 4:56And so at the end
of the festival, within a week, -
4:56 - 4:59the entire city is disassembled.
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4:59 - 5:01These are again images from the same spot.
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5:01 - 5:04And the terrain
is offered back to the river, -
5:04 - 5:07as with the monsoon
the water swells again. -
5:07 - 5:10And it's this sort of imagination
as a kit of parts -
5:10 - 5:11that allows this disassembly
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5:11 - 5:14and the reabsorption of all this material.
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5:14 - 5:18So the electricity poles
go to little villages in the hinterland, -
5:18 - 5:20the pontoon bridges
are used in small towns, -
5:20 - 5:23the material is all reabsorbed.
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5:23 - 5:25Fascinating, it's amazing.
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5:26 - 5:30Now, you may embrace
these Hindu beliefs or not. -
5:30 - 5:32But you know, this is a stunning example,
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5:32 - 5:35and it's worthy of reflection.
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5:35 - 5:41Here, human beings spend an enormous
amount of energy and imagination -
5:41 - 5:43knowing that the city is going to reverse,
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5:43 - 5:45it's going to be disassembled,
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5:45 - 5:47it's going to disappear,
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5:47 - 5:49it's the ephemeral megacity.
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5:50 - 5:53And it has profound lessons to teach us.
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5:53 - 5:56Lessons about how to touch
the ground lightly, -
5:56 - 5:58about reversibility,
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5:58 - 6:00about disassembly.
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6:01 - 6:02Rather amazing.
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6:04 - 6:08And you know, we are, as humans,
obsessed with permanence. -
6:08 - 6:10We resist change.
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6:11 - 6:13It's an impulse that we all have.
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6:13 - 6:16And we resist change in spite of the fact
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6:16 - 6:20that change is perhaps
the only constant in our lives. -
6:20 - 6:22Everything has an expiry date,
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6:22 - 6:25including Spaceship Earth, our planet.
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6:26 - 6:30So what can we learn
from these sorts of settlements? -
6:30 - 6:33Burning Man, of course much smaller,
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6:33 - 6:35but reversible.
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6:35 - 6:38Or the thousands of markets
for transaction, -
6:38 - 6:40that appear around the globe
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6:40 - 6:44in Asia, Latin America, Africa,
this one in Mexico, -
6:44 - 6:48where the parking lots are animated
on the weekends, about 50,000 vendors, -
6:48 - 6:50but on a temporal cycle.
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6:51 - 6:53The farmer's market in the Americas:
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6:53 - 6:57it's an amazing phenomenon,
creates new chemistries, -
6:58 - 7:00extends the margin of space
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7:00 - 7:04that is unused or not used optimally,
like parking lots, for example. -
7:05 - 7:07In my own city of Mumbai,
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7:07 - 7:10where I practice
as an architect and a planner, -
7:10 - 7:13I see this in the everyday landscape.
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7:13 - 7:14I call this the Kinetic City.
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7:14 - 7:18It twitches like a live organism;
it's not static. -
7:18 - 7:20It changes every day,
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7:20 - 7:22on sometimes predictable cycles.
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7:22 - 7:24About six million people
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7:24 - 7:27live in these kinds
of temporary settlements. -
7:27 - 7:31Like -- unfortunately, like refugee camps,
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7:31 - 7:34the slums of Mumbai,
the favelas of Latin America. -
7:34 - 7:38Here, the temporary
is becoming the new permanent. -
7:38 - 7:42Here, urbanism is not about grand vision,
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7:42 - 7:45it's about grand adjustment.
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7:46 - 7:50On the street in Mumbai,
during the Ganesh festival, -
7:50 - 7:52a transformation.
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7:52 - 7:55A community hall is created for 10 days.
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7:55 - 7:57Bollywood films are shown,
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7:57 - 8:00thousands congregate
for dinners and celebration. -
8:00 - 8:03It's made out of paper-mache
and plaster of Paris. -
8:03 - 8:05Designed to be disassembled,
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8:05 - 8:08and in 10 days, overnight, it disappears,
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8:08 - 8:11and the street goes back to anonymity.
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8:11 - 8:15Or our wonderful open spaces,
we call them maidans. -
8:15 - 8:19And it's used for this
incredibly nuanced and complicated, -
8:19 - 8:22fascinating Indian game, called cricket,
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8:22 - 8:24which, I believe, the British invented.
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8:24 - 8:25(Laughter)
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8:25 - 8:28And in the evenings,
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8:28 - 8:30a wedding wraps around
the cricket pitch -- -
8:30 - 8:33Notice, the cricket pitch
is not touched, it's sacred ground. -
8:33 - 8:34(Laughter)
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8:34 - 8:38But here, the club members
and the wedding party -
8:38 - 8:41partake in tea through a common kitchen.
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8:41 - 8:44And at midnight, it's disassembled,
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8:44 - 8:47and the space offered back to the city.
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8:47 - 8:49Here, urbanism is an elastic condition.
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8:51 - 8:54And so, if we reflect
about these questions, -
8:54 - 8:56I mean, I think many come to mind.
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8:56 - 8:59But an important one is,
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8:59 - 9:01are we really, in our cities,
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9:01 - 9:03in our imagination about urbanism,
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9:03 - 9:08making permanent solutions
for temporary problems? -
9:08 - 9:11Are we locking resources into paradigms
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9:11 - 9:14that we don't even know
will be relevant in a decade? -
9:14 - 9:16This becomes, I think,
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9:16 - 9:19an interesting question
that arises from this research. -
9:19 - 9:23I mean, look at the abandoned
shopping malls in North America, -
9:23 - 9:24suburban North America.
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9:24 - 9:28Retail experts have predicted
that in the next decade, -
9:28 - 9:31of the 2,000 malls that exist today,
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9:31 - 9:3350 percent will be abandoned.
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9:33 - 9:38Massive amount of material,
capturing resources, -
9:38 - 9:41that will not be relevant soon.
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9:41 - 9:43Or the Olympic stadiums.
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9:43 - 9:46Around the globe, cities build these
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9:46 - 9:49under great contestation
with massive resources, -
9:49 - 9:51but after the games go,
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9:51 - 9:53they can't often
get absorbed into the city. -
9:54 - 9:57Couldn't these be
nomadic structures, deflatable, -
9:57 - 9:59we have the technology for that,
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9:59 - 10:03that get gifted to smaller towns
around the world or in those countries, -
10:03 - 10:08or are stored and moved
for the next Olympics? -
10:08 - 10:12A massive, inefficient use of resources.
-
10:13 - 10:14Like the circus.
-
10:14 - 10:16I mean, we could imagine it
like the circus, -
10:16 - 10:19this wonderful institution
that used to camp in cities, -
10:19 - 10:24set up this lovely kind of visual dialogue
with the static city. -
10:24 - 10:27And within it, the amazement.
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10:27 - 10:32Children of different ethnic groups
become suddenly aware of each other, -
10:32 - 10:34people of color become aware of others,
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10:34 - 10:37income groups and cultures and ethnicities
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10:37 - 10:42all come together around the amazement
of the ring with animals and performers. -
10:42 - 10:46New chemistries are created,
people become aware of things, -
10:46 - 10:49and this moves on to the next town.
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10:49 - 10:52Or nature, the fluxes of nature,
climate change, -
10:52 - 10:56how do we deal with this,
can we be more accommodating? -
10:56 - 10:59Can we create softer urban systems?
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10:59 - 11:01Or are we going to challenge
nature continuously -
11:01 - 11:03with heavy infrastructure,
-
11:03 - 11:06which we are already doing,
unsuccessfully? -
11:07 - 11:08Now, I'm not arguing
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11:08 - 11:11that we've got to make
our cities like a circus, -
11:11 - 11:14I'm not arguing that cities
must be completely temporary. -
11:14 - 11:16I'm only making a plea
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11:16 - 11:19that we need to make a shift
in our imagination about cities, -
11:19 - 11:22where we need to reserve more space
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11:22 - 11:25for uses on a temporal scale.
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11:25 - 11:28Where we need to use
our resources efficiently, -
11:28 - 11:31to extend the expiry date of our planet.
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11:31 - 11:34We need to change planning
urban design cultures, -
11:34 - 11:37to think of the temporal, the reversible,
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11:37 - 11:38the disassembleable.
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11:38 - 11:41And that can be tremendous
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11:41 - 11:44in terms of the effect
it might have on our lives. -
11:45 - 11:48I often think back to the Kumbh Mela
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11:48 - 11:50that I visited with
my students and I studied, -
11:50 - 11:54and this was a moment
where the city had been disassembled. -
11:54 - 11:56A week after the festival was over.
-
11:56 - 11:57There was no mark.
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11:57 - 12:01The terrain was waiting
to be covered over by the water, -
12:02 - 12:03to be consumed.
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12:03 - 12:06And I went to thank a high priestess
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12:06 - 12:09who had helped us and my students
through our research -
12:09 - 12:13and facilitated us through this process.
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12:13 - 12:15And I went to her with great enthusiasm,
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12:15 - 12:17and I told her about
how much we had learned -
12:17 - 12:21about infrastructure, the city,
the efficiency of the city, -
12:21 - 12:24the architecture, the five materials
that made the city. -
12:24 - 12:27She looked really amused, she was smiling.
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12:27 - 12:30In any case, she leaned forward
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12:30 - 12:33and put her hand on my head to bless me.
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12:33 - 12:37And she whispered in my ear, she said,
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12:37 - 12:40"Feel blessed that the Mother Ganges
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12:40 - 12:44allowed you all to sit in her lap
for a few days." -
12:45 - 12:48I've often thought about this,
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12:48 - 12:51and of course, I understood what she said.
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12:51 - 12:54She said, cities, people,
architecture will come and go, -
12:54 - 12:57but the planet is here to stay.
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12:58 - 13:02Touch it lightly, leave a minimal mark.
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13:02 - 13:06And I think that's an important lesson
for us as citizens and architects. -
13:06 - 13:09And I think it was this experience
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13:09 - 13:15that made me believe that impermanence
is bigger than permanence -
13:15 - 13:16and bigger than us all.
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13:16 - 13:18Thank you for listening.
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13:18 - 13:24(Applause)
- Title:
- The architectural wonder of impermanent cities
- Speaker:
- Rahul Mehrotra
- Description:
-
Every 12 years, a megacity springs up in India for the Kumbh Mela religious festival -- what's built in ten weeks is completely disassembled in one. What can we learn from this fully functioning, temporary settlement? In a visionary talk, urban designer Rahul Mehrotra explores the benefits of building impermanent cities that can travel, adapt or even disappear, leaving the lightest possible footprint on the planet.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:37
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz accepted English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The architectural wonder of impermanent cities |