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Building now
If we should be nostalgic about anything from the late nineteenth century, writes Harvey (2001) in his essay on the anti-globalist movement, it was the political will to forge an urban notion of public policy. This could be questioned when weighed against the spatial results of that time, but the philanthropic intentions of the pre-urbanist movement and the philosophy of its political guardians clearly characterises a nexus of policy and urban thinking. It could be argued that a culmination of this tradition had been reached after the Second World War, but in current urban development, general political will is a more mandatory than structural notion.
In the flux of the global economy, financial and economic positions of today's cities have been changed. Cities have become state dependent organisations based on political and economic self-management. Every new development or renewal project must attract taxpayers from higher income groups; a return on investments in infra- and superstructure must be balanced with the city's real incomes. Therefore, responsibility of the city politicians regarding city building remains as stated. They must find a way to deal with all possible investors and parties that can overcome pre-investment risk and guarantee successful development. Therefore, they have to follow the market economy and at the same time try to keep the course of their declared social and political goals. For this reason, city development strategy is paradoxically predominated by two opposing fluxes: paternalism of the state and the free market economy.
State paternalism has a long tradition in European urbanisation. It occurred for the first time in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, through developments of public parks, public facilities and workers' colonies. In the workers' neighbourhoods, built based on the model of the 'garden city', we find arrangements similar to the suburban developments of today. Both characterise low-density development with a terraced house typology of minimal size, private gardens and minimum community services. In both environments prevails a similar notion of formal sterility. There is no substantial difference, and only their physical arrangements - architecture of buildings and public space design - are different in proportion to their social status and building period. One of the characteristic examples is Siedlung Margarethenhohe, workers' settlement in Essen, built by the Krupp Building Corporation in 1909. Street profiles are wide, lined with trees, and small front gardens make the street even wider. Two or three levels high, the family row-house types have repeated elements that are organised in relation to the street, having a high impact and a cute, but monotonous, appearance. Every house of the same type has exactly the same relation to the street and if there is an encroachment space, it has exactly the same form and content. If one house has a canopy - all the others have the same; if the dwarf wall marks the boundary betweenthe front garden of one house and the pavement, it has to be the case withothers as well. Only small details as colour of the front door and small element as a lamp or name board are different.
But, the Siedlungs Margarethenhoehe, as well as Westhausen near Frankfurt, designed by Ernst May in 1925 and many others are built as hundred percent social housing developments. The social role and ownership status of those and contemporary developments built for the housing market are fundamentally different. Nowadays building standards established by the state are higher and more ambitious. What still stands as a foundation of the building process is the preservation of the built environment as a common asset that must maintain formal standards and equality that represents the social state.
In the context of a market economy, parties who share the financial risk in city development have a certain and discrete influence on city planning decisions. If necessary, plans must be adopted according to developers financial possibilities and market conditions. Their vision of living environments as mass-products must be regarded as a design framework to be followed by designers. In the age of free-market economy, this seems unavoidable. Influence of investors and other market players has unspeakable, direct and visible impact on the form of contemporary developments. However, besides direct influence through financial limitations of the design, their invisible, indirect impact on the development process is also present.
Among others, Habraken noticed that uniformity results from centralising design control. The same notion of uniformity can be recognised in contemporary building conditions as well. New settlements are essentially alike. Their character and expression seem like a valiant attempt at finding a unique form for exactly the same content and organisational pattern. Basically, the slight differences between brands of washing machines in the store window have something in common with differences between new developments in the landscape. New developments are functional, slightly different in form from the others, but without structural strength and identity. The problem essentially comes from the same production line of space that follows the market rules and inertia. This is why the similarity between today's new settlements and industrial products occur. They are nowadays programmed and built as products for the common consumer, built-up upon average norms, similar programs and the same financial requirements.
The prevailing uniformity of new developments on the urban scale usually tends to be diminished by the scale of their individual buildings. Hence, city as a conglomeration of differences becomes a contemporary ideal. In practice, various spatial patterns, building forms and forms of open spaces are the main tools to meet different cultures, desires and consumers' lifestyles on the housing market. It is a spatial strategy directed towards consumption-oriented society. At the same time, it is the common view of the professionals that, through this strategy, the notion of urbanity can be reached. Certainly, mixture of housing classes, typologies and different architectural forms are preconditions for an identity of the city, but in a limited sense. Developments based on this principle are still far removed from urbanity. At the same time, this strategy has disastrous effects on the visual unity of the neighbourhood. Some new developments seem much more as an architectural exhibition than a common living environment.
The source of this approach is not merely professional rhetoric. It comes from the contemporary market call for variety and a feeling of personal identity. As R. Tomkins wrote: '... because the consumer has so many more choices now (...) people don't like to be seen as 'normal' any more - they all want to be seen as individuals'. Developers 'have to drop the one-size-fits-all' approach and offer products 'more meaningful to different kinds of people'. In this concept, the freedom of self-expression and choice, the most common characteristic of present mass-culture, is paradoxically considered as something that should be controlled from developers or, to be more precise, to be designed for common consumption. But the scale and intensity of influence is primarily dependent on particular parties involved in the development process, including urban professionals. Most often it goes beyond the limits of settlements' spatial structure, street patterns and building typology. It follows an ideology of total market product, including small-scale elements and accessories such as garden, entrance door, lantern or canopy. The consumer should, by all means, be assured that he would live in a perfectly organised neighbourhood without any tension. Besides all mentioned factors, uniformity appears as a consequence of general, overall applied development strategy and the system of production being used.
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