Concrete Cities: Why We Need to Build Differently

300 Pages·2021·36.607 MB·English

by  Rob Imrie

“I found this book interesting and stimulating. It is well written and I loved
reading it … the book is an important contribution to the existing literature.”
David Clapham, University of Glasgow
“With the madness of ‘build, baby, build’ tragically ascendant, even hegemonic,
Rob Imrie’s powerful, wide-ranging and fascinating book systematically and
cogently injects urgently needed sanity and judiciousness into the policy
discourse.”
David Imbroscio, University of Louisville
“A book that should be acted on rather than being simply read.
We’re drowning in an endless sea of concrete and, as Imrie potently argues,
we must build less and better.”
Federico Cugurullo, Trinity College Dublin
“A critical call for an ethics of care in a world obsessed with reconstruction in
cities from an eminent global urban scholar.”
Loretta Lees, University of Leicester

CONCRETE CITIES

Why We Need to Build Differently
Rob Imrie
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
Bristol University Press
University of Bristol
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© Bristol University Press 2021
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1 -5 292- 2051- 3 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-5292-2052-0 paperback
ISBN 978-1 -5 292- 2053- 7 ePub
ISBN 978-1 -5 292- 2054- 4 ePdf
The right of Rob Imrie to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover design: Namkwan Cho
Front cover image: Rob Imrie
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Contents

List of Figures vi
About the Author viii
Preface ix
1 Introduction: The Omnipresent Nature of Building 1
2 The Significance of Building and Construction 12
3 Building and the Construction State 36
4 Speculation and Building Booms 62
5 Disruption, Displacement and Dispossession 86
6 Demolition: Wasting the City and Teardown Building 110
7 Why Building More Housing Will Not Work 137
8 Building That Matters to People 156
9 Constructing for Species Survival 184
10 Building and Construction That Cares 209
Notes 228
References 235
Index 273
v
List of Figures

2.1 Göbekli Tepe 15

2.2 Ruins of Alexandria in Arachosia in 1881 17
2.3 The Pantheon, Rome 18
2.4 Remnants of Caesarea Maritima 19
2.5 The Transcontinental Railway, USA, 10 May 1869 22
2.6 The Crystal Palace, London 23
2.7 The Home Insurance Building, Chicago 24
2.8 The M8 motorway, Charing Cross in Glasgow 26
2.9 A sand- mining operation in the Red River, Jinping County, 30
China
2.10 A view across Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 33
3.1 The drowning of Hasankeyf, Turkey 40
3.2 The Crimean Bridge 41
3.3 East River suspension bridge, New York City 45
3.4 Panel Khrushchev house in Tomsk, Russia 46
3.5 The Hötorget buildings, Stockholm 48

3.6 Shanghai skyline 53
3.7 The Hopewell pillars, Bangkok 56
4.1 Insula dell’Ara Coeli, Rome 66
4.2 Garak, Seoul 70
4.3 Centre Point, London 71
4.4 One Hyde Park, London 78
4.5 St George Wharf Tower, Nine Elms, London 80
5.1 Circus Maximus, Rome 92
5.2 Parque Tercer Mileno, Bogota 94
5.3 View east along US Route 40 (former Interstate 170), 97
Baltimore
5.4 Nail house near Shenzhenbei Railway Station, Shenzhen, 99
China
5.5 Esher Park Avenue, Esher 102
5.6 The original Wootton Place, Esher 102
5.7 The new Wootton Place, Esher 106
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
6.1 The site of the demolished Buffalo Memorial Auditorium 113
6.2 Ruins of Messina 115
6.3 St Pancras Station, London, under construction, 1868 116
6.4 Cabrini Green, Chicago, 1999 121
6.5 The construction of town houses, Esher 126
6.6 A house awaiting demolition and rebuild, Esher 127
6.7 McMansion- style dwellings in Esher 129
6.8 Yurt, Turkestan, late 19th century 132
6.9 Kusakabe House, built in 1879, Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, 133
Japan
6.10 Triodos Bank, Utrecht, the Netherlands 135
8.1 The modular man 159
8.2 A stepped entrance to a dwelling, preventing ease of access 161
8.3 Anthropometric criteria for design and construction 162
8.4 A crossing point in Esher, without pedestrian controls 163
8.5 The moving pavement, Chicago 166
8.6 The Inclusive Design Play Space 170
8.7 One of the interlocking rooms 172
8.8 The sculptural garden 172
8.9 The exterior of the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First 175
House, Madison, Wisconsin
8.10 Graycliff, Buffalo, USA 176
8.11 The living room of Jacobs 1 177
8.12 Northern School for Autism – an aerial view (top) and the 180
learning area (bottom)
8.13 Northern School for Autism – internal junior courtyard 181
9.1 An abandoned aggregate quarry near Adelaide, Australia 188
9.2 BR- 319 highway, Brazil 189
9.3 Willis Tower, Chicago 191
9.4 A Pacific Northwest cob home 202
9.5 Te Kura Whare building, Taneatua, New Zealand 203
9.6 The Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes, Pittsburgh, USA 205
10.1 Hudson Yards, New York City 219
10.2 The Nest House, Argyll and Bute, Scotland 221
10.3 Reclaim the Streets 224
vii
About the Author

Rob Imrie was previously Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths University
of London and retains a visiting professorship. He spends much of his time
working as a bicycle mechanic and riding his cycle around the Surrey Hills
and beyond. He has written widely on issues relating to architecture and urban
design, urban policy and politics, and disability and the built environment.
viii
Preface

At the heart of this book is an existential issue of why we build, and why we
build in the ways that we do. The premise is that we build far too much and
too badly, and in ways whereby many of the needs of people remain unmet,
while despoiling and degrading ecology and the environment, or the very
biospheres that we depend on for our existence. There is an unprecedented
expansion in the rate and scale of urbanisation, and building activity is
occurring everywhere on the planet, from the construction of major
hydroelectricity installations, to transcontinental road and rail infrastructure.
The rationality of building revolves around a system of supply shaped by
speculation, or a political economy of construction that knows no bounds
or limits to building. Here, a building is conceived more as an object than a
liveable, vital, part of the biosphere, and as a commodity or means to realise
monetised value through its production and exchange.
This translates into a bewildering range of building projects and products
shaped by one of the most powerful, corporate, global industries. The
construction sector has its imprint in every aspect of our lives. It has the
world’s largest ecological footprint by using materials like concrete with
high levels of embodied energy and constructing office environments that
use energy- intensive air- conditioning systems, and it is implicated in the
large- scale, and escalating, conversions of green space to buildings and
constructed infrastructure. Its ecological impact extends from the sourcing
of forestry products from Amazonia used in flooring and related building
products, to the construction of dams that are implicated in the drowning
and destruction of settlements, and the displacement of different species.
There is no part of environments that is not affected by the actions of actors
in the construction sector, yet they operate with few restraints or checks.
Building is likely to be even more important in a post- COVID- 19
world, or part of a post- pandemic economics that, in the words of British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson (2020), is to ‘build, build, build’. This is a
depressing scenario, whereby what is offered is more roads, motor vehicles,
speculative development, vanity projects and construction-r elated pollution
and environmental despoliation. The world is awash with buildings and
ix