Tower block failures: high-rise living and global urbanism

塔楼倒塌：高层生活和全球城市化

• 批准号: MR/S015558/1
• 负责人: Constance Smith
• 金额: $ 65.71万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FS015558%2F1
• 关键词: Tower; block; failures; rise; living

On 14 June 2017, a devastating fire broke out in Grenfell Tower, west London. On the same day, a tower block collapsed in Kariobangi estate, Nairobi, Kenya. In different ways, both tragedies exposed the injustices of urban politics, the volatility of construction materials, and disregard for regulations and planning. They also reanimated debates about 'proper' forms of urban living, the widening inequalities of contemporary urban life and what a desirable city should look like. This project will examine tower block failure as both physical event and in wider public discourse. I will investigate how failure emerges across multiple scales, from design and materials to politics and public opinion, and how this can set in motion new processes of demolition, construction and renewal. In this way, failure events act on the wider landscape of a city, animating webs of political, social and material effect. A Future Leader Fellowship will provide the flexibility and support to address such dynamics as they unfold, engaging with researchers, built environment professionals, artists, communities and buildings themselves to generate novel insights, exhibitions and impact-oriented strategies that work with the processes, materials, sites and people experiencing urban change.Cities in Africa, with high levels of informality, infrastructural breakdown and poor governance, are frequently depicted as places of urban failure. Yet these assessments are usually made through reference to urban norms established in the cities of Europe and America, as though there is a universal urban standard against which all cities should be measured. Whilst the Kariobangi collapses clearly reveal major concerns in Nairobi, this universalist approach is not necessarily the most productive for understanding urban failure. Not only does it mask diverse modes of city-making and context-specific issues, it assumes that Euro-American cities are a desirable baseline. But as Grenfell and the potent critique it ignited make clear, concerns about the failure of urban neighbourhoods, housing design or local governance in London are far from resolved. In the aftermath of catastrophic high-rise failures in London and in Nairobi, the question of what a resilient and sustainable urban world might look like has emerged with renewed force. These concerns are particularly pressing at a time of unparalleled urban change: by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in urban areas, with highest urban growth occurring in developing regions, particularly Africa. These are crucial challenges that this project aims to address through two critical objectives: how can the specificity of urban disaster in one city help to inform understandings of, and responses to, catastrophe in another? And what new approaches and collaborative methods do we need to grasp how the afterlives of failure are reshaping urban space, at a time of increasingly diverse urbanisation, as well as growing connectivity between cities of the world? As such, my research will have important potential applications and benefits for society and community wellbeing. This is a crucial and timely opportunity to develop new research pathways that address the resilience of urban communities and the nature of urban futures, strategic concerns vital to the development of the UK and Kenya. Using the tower block as a lens and combining urban anthropology with methods from urban studies, material culture studies and urban design, I am in a unique position to develop innovative empirical and theoretical approaches to advance understandings of what constitutes urban success or failure, not just for scholarship but for urban practice and urban life.

2017年6月14日，伦敦西部格伦费尔大厦发生毁灭性火灾。同一天，肯尼亚内罗毕Kariobangi村的一座塔楼倒塌。这两起悲剧都以不同的方式暴露了城市政治的不公正、建筑材料的不稳定以及对法规和规划的无视。他们还重新引发了关于城市生活的“适当”形式、当代城市生活日益扩大的不平等以及理想城市应该是什么样子的辩论。这个项目将研究塔楼的失败，作为物理事件和更广泛的公共话语。我将研究从设计和材料到政治和公众舆论，失败是如何在多个尺度上出现的，以及这如何启动拆除、建设和更新的新过程。通过这种方式，失败事件作用于城市更广阔的景观，激活了政治、社会和物质影响的网络。未来领袖奖学金将提供灵活性和支持，以解决这些动态发展，与研究人员、建筑环境专业人士、艺术家、社区和建筑本身合作，产生新的见解、展览和以影响为导向的策略，与经历城市变化的过程、材料、场地和人们一起工作。非洲城市的非正规程度高，基础设施崩溃，治理不善，经常被描述为城市失败的地方。然而，这些评估通常是通过参考欧洲和美国城市建立的城市规范来进行的，似乎存在一个普遍的城市标准，所有城市都应该据此来衡量。虽然Kariobangi的倒塌清楚地揭示了内罗毕的主要问题，但这种普遍主义的方法并不一定是理解城市失败的最有效方法。它不仅掩盖了不同的城市建设模式和具体的环境问题，而且假设欧美城市是一个理想的基线。但正如格伦费尔事件及其引发的强烈批评所表明的那样，人们对伦敦城市社区、住房设计或地方治理失败的担忧远未得到解决。在伦敦和内罗毕灾难性的高层建筑倒塌之后，一个有弹性和可持续的城市世界可能是什么样子的问题再次出现。在城市发生前所未有的变化之际，这些问题尤其紧迫：到2050年，世界三分之二的人口将生活在城市地区，城市增长最快的是发展中区域，特别是非洲。这些都是本项目旨在通过两个关键目标来解决的关键挑战：一个城市的城市灾害的特殊性如何有助于理解和应对另一个城市的灾难？在日益多样化的城市化进程中，以及世界各城市之间日益紧密的联系中，我们需要什么样的新方法和合作方式来把握失败的后遗症如何重塑城市空间？因此，我的研究将对社会和社区福祉具有重要的潜在应用和益处。这是一个重要而及时的机会，可以开发新的研究途径，解决城市社区的弹性和城市未来的本质，这是对英国和肯尼亚发展至关重要的战略问题。以摩天大楼为视角，将城市人类学与城市研究、物质文化研究和城市设计的方法相结合，我处于一个独特的位置，可以开发创新的实证和理论方法，促进对城市成功或失败的理解，不仅是为了学术，也是为了城市实践和城市生活。

项目成果

Introduction

介绍

• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-45763-1_1
• 发表时间: 2020-05-28
• 期刊: Jefferson’s Revolutionary Theory and the Reconstruction of Educational Purpose
• 作者: Burch KT

City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi's built environment

冰山之城：内罗毕建筑环境的物质性、表面和深度

• DOI: 10.1017/s0001972023000189
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Africa
• 影响因子: 1.2
• 作者: Smith C

Nairobi in the making. Landscapes of time and urban belonging

内罗毕正在酝酿之中。

• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Urban Geography
• 影响因子: 3.8
• 作者: H. H. Kochore

After Grenfell: accumulation, debris, and forming failure in London

格伦菲尔之后：伦敦的堆积、碎片和形成失败

• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.13907
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• 影响因子: 1.2
• 作者: Smith C

Collapse

坍塌

• DOI: 10.3167/fcl.2020.860102
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Focaal
• 影响因子: 1.1
• 作者: Smith C