Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Leap-Forward' economic booms in these cities, such as one can witness from Shanghai to Kuala Lumpur, from Shenzhen to Bangkok, etc., have forced the arch itectural-urbanist and artistic worlds to come up with urgent, brave but highly polemic ideas, strategies and solutions to re-configure the cities by constructing innumerable h igh-rise buildings and multi-level transportation i nfrastructures , among other urban facilities. Designs of the new constructions are often following the logic of global economy that pursue quite limiting models of thinking, efficiency and configuration. A kind of 'passe-partout', global design, similar to a catalogue of goods in supermarkets, has been invented out of necessity and become the main approach to urban expansion, wh ile the border between urban centre and outskirts is fading away due to the unl imited invasion of urban isation . Local conditions, especially historical and cultural traditions, are hardly taken into consideration wh ile superficial simulacras of the local and traditional decorations are occasionally added to make the catalogue design adaptive to the local reality. This strange combination of global models and local tunings becomes a routine in the recent urban development throughout the Asia Pacific region wh ile similar cases can be seen in other continents. The Dutch arch itect Rem Koolhaas summarises such a phenomenon as a 'new system of efficiency and speed' and identifies the newly expanded cities as 'Generic Cities'. For him, th is new genre of city can probably become a truly inventive way of u rbanism and will be globally influential. It can even impact on the over-stable and establ ished design world in the West and alter their strategies to develop western urban spaces. It's true that the Koolhaas mediation of the 'Generic City' is now exerting considerable influence on the new generation of European architects. Many young Dutch arch itects and urban ists, as well as sociologists and artists, have begun to pay close attention to the h igh density of their own countries and strive to achieve the task of accomplishing the utopian project to turn the Netherlands into a veritable city-state, a kind of high tech 'Generic City', providing comfortable conditions for new l ife in the era of global isation , without forgetting to conserve some spaces for cows and windmills. It's interesting to observe that today the tension and mutual influence between different parts of the world, between the global and the local, is no longer a one­ d irection infl uence but truly multi-directional, a mutually beneficial d ialogue. It is precisely here that the negotiation between the global and the local is intensified and critical questions raised . Observing the same situation of rapid urban expansion and construction, architects living inside the Asia Pacific region often have d rawn very different conclusions with d istinct interpretations and visions compared to 'Generic Cities' coined by Koolhaas. The Beij ing-based architect Yung Ho Chang , one of the leading figures in the new generation of Asian architects in the 1 990s, has pointed out in a recent interview with me: 'What is generic is that Generic City is not generic enough . . .' The irony is, as Chang analysed , that the real ity of u rban expansion in Asia is generating very d ifferent types of cities due to their d ifferent histories and current conditions, in spite of similar strategies practised by them. What is common is that they all are products of hybrid mixtures of global influences and traditional and local factors. Also, they are all upgrad ing themselves into world class global cities. However, the ultimate outcomes of their different strategies and ways of development, in spite of intense exchanges and networking among them, are obviously distinct from one another. Shanghai remains Shanghai, Hong Kong remains Hong Kong while Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta, etc. are trying their best to make up their own identities. In fact, their current and future development are the best examples of how new types of 'glocal' cities are being invented in the negotiating process of globalisation at the turn of the mil lennium . Together, they become a crucial part of the new network of 'glocal' cities. Yung Ho Chang's research on Beijing's contemporary urban evolution, entitled Temporal Cities, Thin Cities is a convincing attempt to theorise the situation in a h ighly personal way. He scrutin ises the urban reality in Beijing today and discovers that the evolution of different parts of the city, from the traditional centre to the new business districts, can be measured by the differences of the speed of traffic, among other elements. They embody different degrees of globalisation , or hybridisation of global influences and local reactions, in different parts of the city. Based on this analys is, he tries to develop a 'micro-urbanism' to improve the existing urban condition. Instead of continuing with the tabula rasa way of u rban mutation , he calls for light interventions to negotiate spaces for various and specific programs demanded by different inhabitants so they can continue to l ive in their local and personal ways of l iving in 1 02