The Many Facets of Human Settlements. Papers Prepared for AAAS Activities in Connection with HABITAT: the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements

393 Pages·1977·35.19 MB·English

THE MANY FACETS OF HUMAN
SETTLEMENTS
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
Papers prepared for AAAS Activities in Connection with HABITAT: The U.N.
Conference on Human Settlements
Editors
IRENE TINKER and MAYRA BUVINIC
Office of International Science,
American Association for the Advancement of Science
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First edition 1977
Reprinted 1979
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The Many facets of human settlement.
Symposium sponsored by the Office of International
Science of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science during the AAAS annual meeting for 1976.
1. Cities and towns-Congresses. 2. Human ecology-
Congresses. 3. Environmental policy-Congresses.
I. Tinker, Irene. II. Buvinic, Mayra. III. American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Office of
International Science.
HT107.M36 1977 301.36 77-6307
ISBN 0 08 021994 2
Published as special issues of the journal Habitat, Volume 2
Numbers 1-4, and supplied to subscribers as part of their
normal subscriptions.
Printed in Great Britain by Express Litho Service (Oxford)
HABITAT. An International Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1/2, pp. 1-3. Pergamon Press, 1977. Printed in Great Britain.
The Proceedings of the American
Association for the Advancement
of Science
FOREWORD
The United Nations has been holding a series of world conferences on vital issues
of international concern. The current round, starting with the conference on environ­
ment, are clearly meant to be global consciousness-raising activities. The American As­
sociation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Office of International Science,
encourages contributions to these issues from the international scientific community.
Pursuing this goal, the AAAS itself sponsored activities in connection with the U.N.
conferences, beginning with Population, where it produced a report entitled Culture
and Population Change for the United States delegation and held a small seminar to
discuss the interaction between culture and population in thirteen countries. In 1975,
International Women's Year, the AAAS sponsored a seminar on "Women In Develop­
ment". The seminar, co-sponsored by United Nations Institute for Training and
Research (UNITAR), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Mexi­
can Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), was attended by 96 participants
from 55 countries who gathered to examine the adverse impact of development planning
on the situation of women.
This year the Office of International Science (OIS) convened a two-day symposium
on habitat during the AAAS Boston Annual Meetings (18-24 February, 1976), that
was attended by thirty or so scholars and policy makers. This symposium reviewed
scientific thinking on habitat by addressing questions such as: Can cities be redesigned?;
Can services be improved?; Is urban living at the root of many health problems?;
Where and how should people live? The OIS also collaborated with Science magazine
(the journal of AAAS) in identifying scientists and humanists in the U.S. working on
some of the many facets of habitat. As a result of this effort, articles highlighting interna­
tional and energy problems facing human settlements have appeared in Science through­
out the year.
1977 will see two specific, more focussed conferences of the United Nations, one
on water and the other on desertification. AAAS is planning a pre-conference seminar
on desertification as an expansion of the long-standing activities of the AAAS Committee
on Arid Lands. The culmination of this series of world conferences will come in 1979
with a conference on science and technology for development. This conference could
well integrate this development cycle of U.N. conferences and show how technology
can contribute to the solution of these worldwide concerns. Thus it is all the more
important that the scientific and technological information related to the previous endea­
vours be given the widest possible audience.
1
2 Foreword
With the publication of these proceedings in the journal HABITAT, Pergamon Press
gives concrete form to our objectives. The publication (in two issues and also in book
form) of a selection of papers presented at the Boston symposium, the articles initially
published by Science, and previously unpublished papers provides the international
audience with a comprehensive sample of the main scientific issues in this interdisciplin­
ary and policy oriented field.
Like prior themes, habitat was chosen by the U.N. because the problem of human
settlements have a global impact and require urgent and concerted action. Also like
the former ones, habitat has, however, a multitude of dimensions and takes a variety
of shapes from country to country, from area to area. Perhaps even more than some
of the other U.N. themes, habitat is also a problem that we all confront directly, rich
and poor, developed and underdeveloped. (While, for instance, the population explosion
affects industrialized nations only by implication, cities both in the industrialized and
developing regions suffer continuous crisis.) All these features are clear in this publica­
tion. Articles in areas that range from finding solutions to the present energy crunch,
to articles tackling the behavioral problems characteristic of modern métropoles and
the psychological reactions from living among tall buildings, show the many dimensions
habitat takes. The problems of urban areas are evident in articles dealing with industria­
lized countries such as Japan and the United States, and in those dealing with cities
in Latin America and Asia. While it is evident in these latter articles that urban problems
are shaped by the country's stage of development and the inhabitants' culture, it is
also quite clear that urban problems are no less critical in the rich countries of the
world.
Solutions to our human habitats, stated at the Boston symposium and reiterated
in these readings, first and foremost entail the recognition that they have to fit specific
situations. Action has to be grounded on local needs and values; the "transfer" of
solutions without understanding and considering the physical, socio-economic, cultural
and psychological character of habitats and dwellers are bound to fail. Success will
come only when solutions are worked out in consort with local people, when their
wisdom and customs are taken into account, as well as when the economic realities
of the particular situations are considered. (Although it cannot but sound harsh, it
was stressed that housing projects should be grounded on the economic realities of
the slums, for instance, rather than on the unattainable and perhaps even Westernized
ideals of the planners.)
Much hope is placed on devising efficient solutions through technological innova­
tions—from further developments in hardware, especially communications and informa­
tion systems, to the application and use of less complex or intermediate technologies.
In fact, one of the articles argues that we are ready for a new period of inventions
that will change the character of our settlements, and another states that the most
promising and economizing technologies will come not from the industrialized but from
the developing world, where the need and thus the incentive for the creation of small-
scale technologies is greater. Lastly, solutions are seen as requiring different attitudes
and behaviors. Solutions will not work if people, who use, create and dispose of our
habitats, do not want them. The question here is how can we change people's behavior
and values, and how well can negative economic incentives change people's habits?
The purpose of this year was to make researchers, policy makers, and the public
aware of the problems of human habitats and of their urgency. Now it is time to
act. One of the first steps is research, especially research that can evaluate the effects
Foreword 3
of policy making. To make better decisions we need more and better statistics, but
primarily, research that can provide us with sound evaluations of existing habitat pro­
grams and experiments. The Boston symposium also emphasized the importance of
understanding processes and keeping people in the habitat equation when doing
research.
Lastly, in her closing statements, anthropologist Margaret Mead, current chairman
of the Board of Directors of AAAS, stressed the need to rely more on observation
and visual statements when doing research on habitat and less on questionnaires and
verbal statements. The obvious visual nature of our habitats, she said, is a unique
opportunity for researchers to have tangible data that avoids language and other inter­
pretation barriers, and should not be overlooked.
Acknowledgements—Nicholas Raymond, United Nations, was most helpful in establish­
ing initial contacts with Pergamon Press. To him, to the publishers and their staff,
and to the contributors to this supplement go our sincere thanks.
December, 1976 Irene Tinker, Program Head
Washington, DC Mayra Buvinic, Research Associate
Office of International Science
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
HABITAT, An International Journal. Vol. 2. No. 1/2. pp. 5 12. Pergamon Press. 1977. Printed in Great Britain.
I. HOW TECHNOLOGY SHAPES LIFESTYLES
Advanced Urban Systems:
A World Wide Opportunity
JOHN P. EBERHARD
AIA Research Corporation, 1735 New York Avenue.
Washington, DC 20006, USA
While human settlements can be viewed as a concentration of problems, and while many
observers seem to believe that rational analysis is based on problem identification, there is
also justification in thinking positively about human settlements as a market opportunity for
future innovations. The inventions which provided the technical basis for the rapid growth
of urban areas in this century were the result of special conditions existing in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. There are a new set of conditions emerging in this final quarter
of the twentieth century which will likely spur a new set of major inventions out of which
mankind can fashion human settlements in the twenty-first century. The HABITAT Conference
comes at an opportune time for the recognition of this turning point.
BACKGROUND
For most of human history, the materials and techniques utilized in the construction
of human settlements changed slowly. With the exception of monumental buildings
which progressed through a series of evolutionary changes from Greek and Roman
times to Colonial America, most of the world's buildings, modes of urban transportation,
communications and "metabolic" systems were essentially unchanged for 2000 years.
For eighteen of these twenty centuries, the materials and forces available for building
remained fixed—timber, stone, brick, wind, water and animals. As human settlements
increased in size they were just extensions of the same artifacts used to build villages.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century a set of conditions surfaced to bring about
a rapid change in the hardware systems out of which a new urban format could be
designed and built, and with which major redesign and rebuilding was made possible
in every city in the world.
In 1877 the telephone was invented and followed in quick succession by:
the incandescent lamp in 1880
the electric trolley car in 1885
the subway in 1886
the automobile in 1889
the elevator in 1889
the skyscraper in 1889.
During the same 12 years, all of the ingredients were put together to introduce indoor
plumbing connected to municipal sewer and water systems, and central heating became
an alternative to the fireplace with the invention of coal-burning furnaces and the cre­
ation of mining and distribution companies. Thus, in 12 years of invention, all of the
hardware concepts were created out of which the modern city has evolved. Product
5
6 John P. Eberhard
improvements such as the substitution of oil and gas as fuel for central-heating systems
have occurred since 1890. Some new inventions such as radio, television, air condition­
ing, and reinforced concrete construction, have occurred in this century, but essentially
all of the major inventions for a new generation of urban systems came into use at
the same time.
CONDITIONS FOR INVENTION
The set of inventions which produced this second generation of urban settlement
patterns were not just accidents of history. While they were not unique to the United
States, it was here that the conditions which created the context for producing and
exploiting these inventions were perhaps the most evident. The forces at work included:
(1) A shift from agriculture to industry as a major employer; and a shift from rural
to urban locations for industrial plants, resulting in a rapid growth of urban areas.
(2) An associated decline in the quality of life for the urban dweller as cities became
crowded. Movement systems, dependent on horse-drawn vehicles, created congestion
and pollution of intolerable levels. Crude sanitary conditions seeded disease and epi­
demics. Crowded buildings of wood construction produced fires of crisis proportion.
(3) The concentration of business centers forced up the value of urban land to prices
which were no longer compatible with low-density uses.
(4) A generation of inventor-entrepreneurs were stimulated by great leaps in our
knowledge of how to harness science to the mechanical arts for the creation of new
artifacts.
Men at work by the end of the Sixteenth Century were beginning to supply the pursuit of
knowledge with earthier methods and more mundane aims than had marked the pursuit thereto­
fore. The concern turned more and more from speculation and received opinion to careful
observation and from the search as enobling exercise to the search for useful evidence.
Elting Morrision, in From Know-How to Nowhere
(5) Financial stimulus was provided to the exploitation of inventions by the creation
of the corporate form of business enterprise which made it possible for large numbers
of people to pool their capital for investment purposes. This displaced earlier dependence
on the wealthy patron as the only support for new ideas. At the end of the nineteenth
century the profits of such corporations were very large, stimulating an interest in new
investments.
(6) Most importantly, there was (in the United States) a tolerance for the creation
of new institutions, new businesses and new municipal forms of government that dis­
placed existing solutions. There was even a period of tolerance for the creation of mono­
polies which could exploit inventions like the telephone, or build sewer and water utili­
ties. A largely Christian society saw the profitable business enterprises as one of "God's
creatures". The necessary legal base for the capitalization and diffusion of new ideas
was thus established.
DIFFUSION ON A WORLD-WIDE BASIS
Having created the basic inventions for a second generation of urban settlements,
and having demonstrated that the performance of these new inventions and the systems
of which they were a part were clearly advantageous to large urban areas, the nations
Advanced Urban Systems 1
of the world began everywhere to create the conditions for their introduction. Regardless
of their form of government, the opportunity for advancing the performance character­
istics of cities were so clear that everyone wanted them. New multi-national corporations
spread across the globe to manufacture automobiles, elevators, electrical generation
equipment, etc. New companies were created in industrial countries to produce local
variations of furnaces, plumbing fixtures, structural steel, and trolley cars. Most of those
countries that have newly emerged in the world as independent nations were, at the
turn of the century, a part of an empire that assured the introduction of the inventions
into their major cities, even if the country lacked the capital or business enterprises
to produce their own artifacts. The raw materials needed to supply these new world-wide
developments were not equally distributed so that some nations—with a large natural
resource of petroleum, or copper, or iron ore—were the focus of economic and even
military struggles to gain access to their resources.
EMERGING CONDITIONS FOR NEW DEVELOPMENT
Since the turn of the century, especially ever since World War I, most of the inventive
capability of the world has been turned towards areas other than human settlements.
A very large number of product improvements in the basic nineteenth-century inventions
have emerged—with the automobile being the clearest example—but (with a few excep­
tions mentioned earlier) no basic inventions have emerged to change the nature of
human settlements as physical artifacts. In most of the world, public funds have been
invested in inventive talent—now formalized into research and development institu­
tions—which has concentrated on weapon systems, space programs and atomic energy.
In the private sector, a large number of consumer products—from nylon stockings to
garbage-disposal units—have emerged to stimulate new business opportunities and
create international economic competition.
While those of us in the world with sufficient disposable income to afford the new
consumer products probably feel that they have added to the quality of our life, we
know that this has not been the case for most of humanity. With rare exceptions,
such consumer products have had little impact on the form, or operational character­
istics, of human settlements. While nations have created new frontiers for big science
and technology as a result of investments in weapons, atomic energy and space pro­
grams, and while some would argue that these investments may produce by-products
or "spin-offs" for the things of our lives, there is reason to question these marginal
benefits in terms of any improvement in human settlements. The more direct results
of such research, such as the recent conflict in Southeast Asia, have demonstrated that
wars tend to be the marketing of economic surplus in one nation to other nations
that are not voluntary recipients, and that in the process urban fabric is destroyed
that is never able to be adequately replaced.
With a decline in investments in space programs, with a questionable future for the
peaceful use of atomic energy, and with a hopeful decline in the need for more advanced
weapon systems, we have before us a precondition for a new period of invention. The
enormous intellectual, human and institutional resources now devoted to research and
development in the advanced industrial nations are ready to exploit new market oppor­
tunities. In the developing countries of the world, the "new economic order" calls for
a reassessment of the use, development and marketing of natural resources. Ready or
not, the cities of the world probably are the most visible and most likely targets for
8 John P. Eberhard
the scientific and technological entrepreneurs of industrial nations and form the natural
markets for the new economic order.
FORCES AT WORK TO STIMULATE NEW URBAN INVENTION
In addition to the preconditions mentioned above, there are a set of conditions evident
in most of the world that seem to replicate the potential of the 1880s.
(1) In spite of every effort by governments, urban areas are experiencing rapid expan­
sion throughout the world. The world-wide shift away from agricultural societies and
the rapid increase in population seem to indicate a continuous growth of already estab­
lished cities and their metropolitan areas.
(2) Every city in the world seems to be experiencing a decline in the quality of life
of its citizens. In the largest cities, with the greatest concentration of the nineteenth-cen­
tury inventions, the problems appear to be the most acute. Automobile congestion has
become intolerable; sewer and water systems are overburdened and wearing out after
decades of patching; air conditioning causes brownouts in the electrical systems; and
tall buildings now cause fire conditions of frightening proportions.
(3) The speculation in urban land has made the market price of land in major cities
too expensive to be used for traditional solutions to dwelling units. The value of urban
land, even in socialist countries where land is not traded in the market-place, is no
longer likely to make tolerable the large amount set aside for streets and parking areas
to accommodate automobiles. For these reasons, and many others, the ownership and
use of urban land is the subject of reform proposals everywhere.
(4) In addition to the market-hungry institutions of research and development sug­
gested earlier, there are new corporate forms of government and private industry emerg­
ing. In the United States, the Comsat Corporation (established to exploit space tech­
nology for satellite communications) is a clear example. Even in socialist countries,
ways are being explored to combine public institutions with profit stimulation to benefit
from the advantages of both.
(5) There is a disenchantment with science as an intellectual pursuit divorced from
human need. The end of the scientific "honeymoon" was signaled, in the United States,
by the elimination of the Science Advisor to the President, and new directions, such
as the Research Applied to National Needs program of the National Science Founda­
tion, began to appear. There is, once again, an interest in linking knowledge to practical
applications.
(6) Most importantly, perhaps, there seems to be a restlessness with continuing to
allow the domination of the market place by the existing institutions and corporations.
In many nations, especially in the United States, we have institutionalized the nineteenth-
century urban inventions. Many of our professional societies were formed by those
who design and incorporate the existing inventions into cities; local governments are
organized into departments with the names of the inventions; building codes and archi­
tectural specifications are organized into chapters with titles related to the inventions.
Even our universities tend to have departments and degrees organized to teach the
use of these inventions. These institutions are all about as old as the inventions which
spawned their formation, and consequently, are not likely to be the locus of major
innovations. However, with the rise in consumer rights, community participation in
policy decisions, anti-trust legislation, and constitutional reinforcements by the courts
Advanced Urban Systems 9
of equal opportunity, the legal base for new concepts which will create new institutions
in the urban public market place of the United States, seems to be in order.
GOALS FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
The idea of systems analysis, systems design, and systems engineering, one of the
major intellectual tools of the post-war period, can be useful in thinking about human
settlements. When the idea of systems design is correctly linked to human needs, and
when performance criteria emerge which are derived directly from those needs rather
than known solutions, we are in a position to harness the conditions for invention
and innovation to an opportunity-related perspective. Urban systems, conceptually and
in practice, are complex sets of skilled persons, their institutions, tools and techniques,
and physical spaces and equipment (or the "hardware" components of the system), all
of which are required by their combined interaction to perform a function. Examples
of existing urban systems include educational systems and health-care systems. An educa­
tional system will consist of skilled persons, such as teachers, administrators, and support
personnel; institutions such as school boards, teacher unions, and colleges for educating
teachers; tools and techniques will range from textbooks and blackboards to audio­
visual equipment; and hardware components would range from school buildings to
school buses. All of these components may provide the community with good education
or poor education, and all of them are subject to elimination, substitution, or innovation.
Most educational planners accept these constituent elements of the system as given
and attempt to improve the system's performance by attention to such details as teacher
education, new school construction, or school bus scheduling. Developing countries
tend to model their plans for educational systems on the existing solutions in developed
countries. Seldom do policy-makers in any country consider advanced systems concepts
based on the development of new "hardware" components, and yet, historical examples
would show us that hardware innovations in urban systems have been responsible for
many of the major improvements in overall systems performance.
It should not be necessary to point out that cities are for people, not for automobiles,
streets, buildings, or telephone systems. We tend to see London, New York, or Tokyo
as huge man-made artifacts rather than to recognize such cities as vast collections of
mankind assembled under a local government in order to manage their collective settle­
ment. People require several basic things from their physical environment.
(a) Shelter of various kinds in which to live, work, learn, worship, and play. The
system of shelter in any settlement further requires that it is safe, provides for the
common good, and supports a healthy environment. Notice that this requirement is
not defined in terms of houses, offices, schools, and churches—those happen to be exist­
ing solutions to the basic requirement. Caves once served many societies as shelter,
and ships can, for those who live on water, serve the same function.
(b) Paths and means of movement are required between shelters. In primitive settle­
ments these might be a dirt path along which people walk and animals bear burdens.
Modern cities would include systems of highways and automobiles in two dimensions
and elevators in the third dimension.
(ci Information-communication systems are needed for members of the settlement
to know what is going on, be aware of danger, manage their joint endeavors, control
the flow of traffic or people, etc. In primitive societies, the solutions may be as simple
as drums that signal danger, and town bulletin boards on which notices are posted.