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July 23, 2014

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Designers of streets and parks, in pursuing ‘bigger is better,’ lose sight of human needs

“SPACE is the first thing whose magnitude impresses the child. It is the first magnitude which the child encounters in the world. Hence the child holds a big man to be a great man ...”

Thus wrote Karl Marx on Rheinische Zeitung on March 5, 1842.

In many respects, our officials and urban designers are little inferior to children in their impressionability.

In their relentless pursuit of the superlatives — the tallest (high-rise), the biggest (square), the widest (boulevard), or the highest (GDP), they have homogenized a land once known for diversity.

A panoramic view from the dizzy height of a high-rise will elicit “wow” from first-time visitors. But for a permanent resident compelled to confront this greatness daily, the novelty quickly wears off. Each day as I am approaching a great boulevard near my home, I am rather nervous, afraid I might have to wait for the next green light. It would mean a wait of at least five minutes on the concrete pavement, fully exposed to the scorching sun, with motor cars zooming past as they would on a superhighway.

Probably because big trees might interfere with a sweeping view of the boulevard, lawns and carefully manicured shrubs are generally preferred.

Only a few streets of old reveal why strolling along the roads used to be recreational. To my knowledge, the only place with a decent respect for the needs of pedestrians in new streets is an expat community in Jinqiao, Pudong. There they thoughtfully have dedicated bicycle lanes in place, in addition to well-shaded and secluded pedestrian lanes.

When we cease to conceptualize our worlds in reference to our own size, we begin to take pride in the dehumanizing aspect of technology.

Recently there was an article in People’s Daily about the author’s experience in going through Anxi County in Fujian, once known for its nearly 1 million mu (66,000 hectares) of tea plants.

The county once boasted several records in tea cultivation: the highest total area, yield, price, gross production, gross value, and exports.

When the writer visited recently, he came upon a scene of utter devastation.

The once well-covered mountain area is now devoid of any sign of vegetation, instead more evocative of the barren, arid Gobi Desert in China’s Northwest.

The current devastation is a result of continual cultivation of one single plant in a successively expanding tea-cultivating area, which calls for liberal use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In time, this led to severe breakouts of pests and land erosion.

This quirky obsession with scale, a highly important indicator of agricultural modernization, has led to cataclysms elsewhere. For instance in neighboring Yongchun, hundreds of thousands of mu have been dedicated to the cultivation of citrons. There too, the rich variety of hill and dale, of rich plantations — the Eden of botanical possibility — is reduced to a land of barrenness.

In many areas, there are high incentives for going for scale. For instance, it would be difficult for an agricultural base short of 1,000 mu to secure financial subsidies from the government.

This relentless pursuit of scale has been achieved at a cost of diversity.

Earthly life as it naturally occurs is infinitely diverse.

A naturally evolved forest will have its space fully exploited by trees, shrubs, and grass, with different animals occupying different ecological niches.

The complicated interdependency of the system actually makes it more resilient to external changes. But if you look around, in many southern areas where natural conditions favor sophisticated, tall trees, in recent years there has been a fever to cultivate lawns, which calls for meticulous human care in terms of manicuring, irrigation, fertilizing and weeding, which all lead to pollution.

One of the cardinal aesthetic principles is a proper sense of proportion.

A Chinese garden is beautiful because it is well-proportioned, with the well-executed crannies, nooks and partitions that prevent viewers from taking the scene at a glance. Its merits lie in its details rather than size. Some of the new parks today are recommended only for their sheer size, or an intentional lack of diversity — for instance a whole park dedicated to a single kind of flower. Any other flaura and fauna that might relieve its monotony is ruthlessly suppressed.

Rather than being an imitation of nature, these staple images of monotony are more a mockery of the natural diversity, a craving for mechanical neatness and a celebration of human arrogance.




 

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