As regards LARGE GREEN SPACES
In February of 2006 I
participated in an architecture forum on the internet. It was in
a thread which I had started, entitled "How
about experimental projects", proposing an image of the
"Urban Sector". Several false things were said
in criticism, the most absurd one being that green
fields of grass and ve- getation, if they are not part
of a single house garden, are ignored, neglected and
ultimately abandoned to degradation, because they don't
belong to anyone in particular and therefore no-one
will care about their fate and their maintenance. So
whereas by subdivi- ding lands into private gardens
to assign to single ground-floor houses it will be
assured that inhabitants will take good care of their own
properties and will ke- ep them in good condition,
larger territories ought to be useless and even a waste of
resources.
In designing the "Urban Sector"
I did not think of the question of property, of how much should be public, how
much private, of how territories and
resources may be subdivided and managed. I just considered the aspects
of architecture and Urbanisme, what
seemed to me to be an important and essential priority, and thought of
how to organize and compose that, without
any attention to the manners or the instruments. It wasn't a point of
the project. But the idea above which I summed
up in my own words sounds like utter nonsense.
Just
yesterday (one of the first days of spring), I went to the
resource
of the town, and, sitting on benches or a grassy field, I read a few pages of a
book. When the warm
seasons
arrive, I love to go to the park on weekends or whenever I can. On Saturdays
and Sundays, or on holi-
days,
I very often see large numbers of people who go there strolling, jogging, alone
or with company, with the
family
and relatives or friends, and they picnic, get a sun tan and whatever else.
Yesterday I happened to think
of
other parks and gardens that I've visited in other towns or cities, at
gh
it's different from the park in
saw
was as appreciated and as much visited.
It
seems to me that in all cities, especially the larger ones, more clogged up
with insufficient spaces, more pol-
luted
and noisy, where the motorized vehicles have too easily priority over the needs
of people, the most impor-
tant
and fundamental public places are the green, natural reserves, where you may
find earth, grass, trees.
Numerous
are the letters of complaint, being published in the papers, by citizens who
call for more green areas,
more
gardens and parks, where children may go and play, and where people may take a
break from the traffick-
ed
streets and the noise of the city. When these areas are not sufficient (which
is always), on weekends citizens,
who
can, go to the seaside or the mountains or the countryside where they really
can rest and relax.
I
suppose that those areas of the city need to be maintained and taken care of,
as any other place of public use,
but
I believe that green parks, nature, of vast extension and not of one single
private yard, is fundamental, es-
sential
to the well-being of inhabitants.