Victims of the city

Architecture can bring people together, or divide them -- witness the skyscraper, costly, inefficient, and only serving small portions of the community. At TEDxPortofSpain, Mark Raymond encourages city governments to let go of their old notions of success and consider the balance of environment, economy, and society to design cities for social change.

We've been asked to address
the theme of changing conversations.

And I think certainly
in the field that I'm in,

that's a really important point to be at.

From the discourses that are going on
within architecture

as well as throughout society,

I think it is time to change
the way that we look at things.

As an architect, I've been involved
with architectural projects,

with urban planning projects,

and more recently, projects that engage
much more with the landscape.

Now I can see so many opportunities

and so many ways
in which design can contribute

and has the capacity
to effect social change.

And that's what I'm going
to talk to you today about.

Starting off, I think it might be useful
to talk a little bit about architecture,

because I think for many people,

architecture is a slightly
mystical activity.

Not many people know what architects do.

A lot of the time, I'm not sure
the architects know what they're doing.

But we try,

and it's important to try and embrace that

and try and understand what that means.

When I talk about architecture today,
I'm not talking about the profession.

I'm not talking about an activity that's
pursued by a select group of people

with some specialized knowledge.

I'm talking about architecture
in the bigger sense:

architecture in terms
of the room that we're in,

architecture as a pervasive activity,

architecture as the activity
that is the creation of shelter,

the creation of space,

the design and the creation
of spaces between buildings,

the landscape.

It's man's interaction with the landscape.

Our construction
of the built environment --

that's what I mean by architecture.

It's not a specialized thing.

And over the last, I suppose,
20 or 30 years,

with the predominance of the internet

and the wonderful
and exciting advancements

that are taking place in technology,

one of the things that has happened
is that our perception of the world

has become commodified.

It's become reduced in many ways

to a perception that is two-dimensional.

We spend a lot of our time,
a lot of our lives,

looking at the world through screens,

whether it's our laptops
or television screens

or monitors at airports
or in the workplace

or even our telephones are now screens.

And it has this effect of reducing
our perception of the world.

It expands it in many ways,
but it can reduce it,

it can turn into icons our idea
or our notion of certain concepts

or ideas that are, in fact,
maybe a lot more pervasive

than the two-dimensional image can convey.

And I think that's true
about architecture.

I think we've grown accustomed
to thinking about architecture

in a really primarily
two-dimensional way, in a flat way,

that the building is about
what it looks like, how it appears,

it's visual commodity.

But it's much more than that.

It's much more than an aesthetic
or just a sensory experience.

That's very important,

but it's much more than that.

It's a complex operation.

And a big part of architecture
and a big part of design

involves understanding the context
in which that design exists

or in which it's going to exist.

It's having the imagination
to try and predict or project

where the building
or where the urban space

or where the landscape
is going to be located,

how it's going to be used,

what are the operations,
what are the activities

that are going to take place
in that space.

And you might call those
the programmatic aspects of architecture,

the programmatic aspects of design.

And I think that in recent times,
we've tended to privilege

or put at a higher level

that visual sensory perception
or desire about architecture

ahead and in advance
of those programmatic needs.

We've tended to kind of
create monuments, create icons

that create a sensation or create effect,

without really thinking through
the value of the operation

that those places
or those spaces can affect.

And it's in that zone or in that area
that I think we need to start looking

or trying to understand

how architecture or how design
can really impact on society,

and how it can address
some of the problems

that we're facing.

The big buzzword in design
and in what I do

and I think what everybody does

is the idea of sustainability.

Sustainability is an idea,
a notion or a concept

that's triangulated by three very
important concepts or ideas:

the environment, the economy and society.

Well, the global economy seems to be
currently in a kind of meltdown situation.

A lot of work needs to be done there.

The environment
that we live in is challenged.

We've got global warming,
we've got rising tides,

we've got all sorts
of disasters taking place,

all sorts of things happening

that threaten the equilibrium of the world
and the environment that we live in.

And society itself
is also challenged and threatened

by some of the issues
that we're faced with.

I think we've heard about
some of those issues today

and the need to change the paradigm
in which we perceive those things.

It's really very crucial that we do that.

So how does design impact that?

How can how can I, as a designer,
or anybody as a designer

or any architect

or how can society --

in what way can design impact on that,

in what way can it affect that?

I'm going to talk today

about ways in which I think
design can impact on society,

very specifically on society,

and how that idea of design
can infiltrate the idea of society

and work with society
in the operations of society

in this programmatic way

to effect social change.

This is an image of Frederick Street
in the early part of the last century.

And I think it's a good image
in lots of ways.

It seems like that little triangulation
of the environment,

the economy and society

seems to be in a kind of balance.

So it seems that in cities
we can see that balance

that cities are symbols or ciphers

or ways in which we can we can understand
the confluence of those forces.

And through time,

there have been times when cities
have done that very successfully.

There are lots of examples
of very good cities

which have found themselves
at a specific moment in time

at a point of balance or equilibrium.

If we look at Port of Spain as a city,

and we consider the idea
that, once upon a time,

Port of Spain was just a little cluster,

a little fishing village
at the mouth of the St. Ann's River.

And yet it's grown to be
such a big, complex conglomeration,

a big conurbation of lots and lots
of complex ideas.

The Italian architect Aldo Rossi,

a 20th-century architect who died
at the end of the last century,

made a very profound statement.

He said architecture is the making
of the city over time.

I think that's a great statement,

because it talks, on one level,
about the individual production

and manufacture
of an object -- architecture --

and it talks about architecture
as being a form of cultural production,

as something that speaks to an issue

or speaks to ideas that are bigger
than the sum of the parts of the building,

and it relates it to the city.

It also suggested that it's a constant,
dynamic, changing process.

And I think that's a very
important thing to understand,

that it's also part of the program.

It's nothing to do with visual,
it's to do with the program.

It's how does this evolve,
what are the dynamics,

what are the components,
what are the elements

that contribute to the unraveling
and the creation of the city?

It also speaks to the fact that the city
is something that can be imagined.

In the same way as we can conceive
and imagine of a space or a building,

we can conceive and imagine of a city.

And it speaks to the idea
of the individual and the collective.

And it's that link --
the individual to the collective,

the idea of the civitas, the idea
of the society --

that I think is a really important axiom

for understanding
how design can infiltrate

and how design can effect change.

These are some images
of how Port of Spain evolved

over a relatively short
period of 200 years,

from a colonial plan that was developed
following some ordinances

sent out by the king of Spain,

called the Laws of the Indies.

Many cities in the Caribbean
and Latin America

were predicated and formulated on this.

It was a gesture, it was a single design

that addressed the needs
and the requirements

of those establishing
cities and new colonies.

And it expanded, and over time,
as trade began to develop in Trinidad,

the city expanded, and it grew,

and it started appropriating,
more and more, the surrounding landscape,

until it grew to pretty much
what we have today,

or what we understand to be
the city of Port of Spain.

But as we all know,

that process grew also on a kind
of macro scale as well.

We have the evolution and the development
of this big conurbation

that stretches from Port
of Spain to the west

and over to Arouca in the east

and seems to be continuing.

So we've developed
into this concept or idea

that far exceeds the original
Laws of the Indies plan.

And it's turned into a complex
arrangement and matrix

of infrastructures and complex issues,

issues that, in many ways,
have led to a lot of problems.

They've led to a lot
of infrastructural problems.

And we share this
with many, many cities in the world.

Cities all over the world
are expanding, they're increasing,

they're undergoing the same type
of development that we've undergone

to the point where the original Port
of Spain and the downtown Port of Spain

that used to comprise the city,
used to constitute the city,

has now turned into this sort
of megalopolis, this sprawl,

and it's difficult to comprehend.

And when we think of the problems,

we think of the infrastructural problems:
the water, the power,

the traffic congestion,

the crime, the segregation,
the polarization that exists,

the situation that has led to what's
happened in this country recently

with the state of emergency ...

Sometimes it seems
completely insurmountable.

It seems like we've got to a point
where we can't really control it

in the way that we can control
that original plan.

We can't really control this anymore.

It's almost as if we're
victims of the city,

rather than people that have willingly
or willfully designed the city

or formulated the city.

Another phenomenon that has happened
commensurate with these issues

of size and scale of infrastructure

is the predomination
of what I would call "typologies,"

different types of development.

We're all familiar
with the high-rise development.

This is some buildings in Hong Kong,

you know, the magnificent, tall structures
that cost a fortune to build.

But they predominate;

it's almost as if you can't have a city

unless you've got
a high-rise building in it.

They're symbolic, they seem emblematic
with modernity and development.

And then shopping malls
is another predominant type,

another prevalent type
that all cities want to have,

the idea that you can
concentrate all these shops

and all this retail activity in one place

and create an environment for people
to come and do specific retail functions

and purchase things and be
in a specific place at a specific time.

And then the highway, the idea
of cutting through landscapes

to create how it's to increase the speed

with which we can get
from one point to another.

And then we also have
suburban development.

These are all typologies

that are emblematic of the type
of development that has taken place

in modern cities, in Port of Spain
and cities all over the world.

Now, there's nothing wrong
with shopping malls,

there's nothing wrong with highways,

and there's nothing wrong with high-rise
buildings or suburban development.

What is kind of wrong
is that what we seem to be doing

is privileging types or ways of building

or ideas about building

above other really very important ways

of how we can conceive
or how we imagine space.

What about schools?

What about parks?

What about making streets
that are really comfortable to walk on

and the people are not confronting
traffic noise and congestion all the time?

Where is that in the equation?

It seems that with our focus on these
types of structures and these typologies,

which are motivated and driven
primarily because they generate profit,

they're part of an economic
consumer system,

they generate profit,
that's why they're favored,

that's why they are privileged
above other types of development.

But schools,

parks,

elements of cities that used to be really
significant and really important

are being diminished and marginalized

as a consequence of the focus
on this type of development.

They're undermining
the integrity of the city,

they're undermining
the capacity of the city

to accommodate social interaction,

to accommodate everybody,

because the other thing
is they're also exclusive.

To work in a high-end office,
you need to be qualified,

you need to be educated,

or you need to have
access or the resources

to get the qualifications or the training
that allow you to get the job in there.

If you don't have those,
you work outside somewhere.

We're not concerned about
what those places are like,

you just go and work somewhere else.

Similarly, those people that used
to live in the cities

or used to live and contribute
to the life of cities

are being pushed out because buildings
like high-rise buildings push them out.

There's a premium on land price
that pushes people out of cities.

People can't go to shopping malls
unless they've got cars,

because those malls are generally
located on the peripheries of cities.

People can't go buy things
in shopping malls,

because they don't have
enough disposable income;

they're not going to spend money there.

So those types of buildings,
whilst they work for sectors of society,

don't work for everybody.

They're not equitable.

Yet, an undue amount of attention
is paid by government, by society

on ensuring that those types
of buildings proliferate,

because they're seen as positive
aspects of development --

at the expense of types of building
and types of program

that could be beneficial to everybody,

types of program
that encourage interaction,

that encourage education,

that encourage people
to be with each other

and encourage a sense of community.

These types of development
dissipate society,

they disaggregate society,
they polarize society.

They create isolated groups of activity

to which access depends upon how much
money you've got in your pocket.

It's a polarizing and negative force.

We see it in this city,

and we're seeing it more
and more other cities.

And what ends up happening

is that we end up with this sort of stack,
that's like a time bomb.

At some point the system must collapse,
it's really not sustainable.

It's like the economic
system in the world today --

it's really not a sustainable system,

and we have to find ways of addressing it.

Design can't provide the solution,

but what it can address is some
of the conditions that people live with.

It can address some of the circumstances
in which people find themselves,

some of the areas of cities

to which people have
been shunted or pushed aside

because they can no longer
afford to live in the center,

and they can't participate
actively or fully

in this consumerized, capitalized system.

And we need to try and conceive
of how we can transform

these types of spaces,

how we can integrate the activities
that happen in these types of spaces

within a bigger picture,

how we can identify small moves
or small gestures,

whether through design or economic
initiative or social initiative

that effect change and that allow
transformation of spaces

that encourage and facilitate
greater participation.

And there are lots of ways of doing that.

And whilst it might seem complex
when we look at cities,

when we look at the aggregate parts
of cities, it may seem insurmountable.

But if we try and isolate individual acts,
individual ways of looking at things

and formulate a program, a manner or way
of understanding how we can do that,

then we can get nearer
to achieving or effecting

some kind of social change.

And there are examples in the world
where that's been done.

Barcelona is a really good example
of a city where people sat down

and collectively and actively
tried to conceive of ways

in which they could effect change,

and they did it very successfully.

And nearer to home, in Bogotá,

Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogotá,

when he took office, he decided,

"I'm not going to spend billions
of dollars on creating more highways.

I'm going to appropriate the funds I have,

and I'm going to create places --

parks that everybody can use,
public spaces that people can use."

And as he created, more and more
people came into those spaces.

And those spaces were very effective
in encouraging participation,

encouraging senses
of community amongst people,

getting people to come together

to forget what little trifling contests
they had between each other,

to start doing things together,

to start moving around the city together

and try to start acting together.

So there are ways of doing it;
there are models.

And it comes back to this idea of program.

What's our program?

Well, I think we want to create
equitable society.

Then we want to create societies

where there's active and equitable
participation for everybody

and where we can break down
some of those inhibitions, those barriers.

We can remove economic stigma,

we can remove stigma around race,

around where you live,
around all those factors

and try and bring people together
in constructed and effective ways.

In Trinidad, there are
a number of examples.

There are opportunities to do this
all over the place.

This is City Gate.

It's the entrance to the city
for tens of thousands of people.

People come in and out of it every day.

And yet, what they're confronted
with is pretty bleak, horrid, grey,

unwelcoming and sometimes unsafe

because of all the traffic zooming around.

And that space from City Gate
that moves up to Independence Square

could be a really wonderful experience,
you know, with landscaping,

with proper accommodation
of the sort of facilities and amenities

that people would need and would enjoy.

It could become a really
very important civic space.

This is the Prado in Havana.

It's just a notional idea
of how that space could be treated

so that movement
in and out of the city every day

becomes a really important
and uplifting transition

from the maxi taxi
to the place where you work.

In San Fernando we've got the waterfront,

which is a really very beautiful part
of this landscape in this country,

but is in complete neglect.

There are some really beautiful,
fine examples of 19th-century architecture

that form, in and of themselves,
some really fine spaces.

We need to we need to look at
those spaces, we need to appropriate them,

we need to determine uses for those spaces

that would encourage
all types of activity:

spaces for performance,

spaces for children to play in

and learn that it's cool and it's OK
and it's fun to be around other people,

spaces for people to do all the kinds
of activities that people like to do,

that they enjoy doing collectively

and that benefit society

and encourage people to interact,

regardless of their social
or economic circumstance,

or places for people to reflect,

parks, places for people to sit and relax.

And there are lots of ways we can do that,

ways in which we can address and look at
how we break down those barriers.

We can do it with architectural language.

We can look at the ways
that spaces are formulated

to break down divisions and barriers
between inside and outside,

between green and hard surfaces

and try and generate spaces
that really encourage interaction,

encourage people to do things together

and encourage a sense of community.

We need to mandate government,

we need to provide examples
to developers, to people

to generate that the benefit
of these may not be measured

in a financial return on investment,

but the social benefit to us all is really
immeasurable in the long run.

And if we do that,
I think we can demonstrate --

and we've demonstrated in the past that
designers had the capacity to do that --

I think if we can do that,
we can demonstrate to people

that society is an inclusive community,

and that if everybody is included,

and if everybody feels part
of the society,

then we have a much better chance
of ensuring a sustainable future.

Thank you.