April 07, 1998
In his essay ‘Living in a Post-Traditional Society’, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens describes the effects of the rise of what he calls ‘abstract systems’.(1) These are institutional networks of specialists who found their decisions and authority on scientific facts and methods. These abstract systems penetrate all layers of society, at a global level as well as at that of the everyday life of the individual. According to Giddens, in this phase of modernity we all continuously form part of experiments, some large, some small, whose outcome is as open and uncertain as the great modernist experiments which were concerned with humanity as a whole. Technology, in the general sense of the word, has a determining influence both materially and in the form of specialized social expertise.
The effects of this can be seen all over Asia in far more literal and extreme forms than in the West. If there is one thing that expresses the quintessence of contemporary Asia, it is numbers. This, of course, primarily relates to the population growth, migration from the country to the city, and the economy. The evidence of these phenomena is almost entirely numerical, though this has resulted in numbers being given a cultural value and, conversely, being able to express these values. That most of Asian architecture and urban design appear to us to be so unashamedly direct does not mean that it is without culture. On the contrary, it is precisely this that makes it an expression of the essence of our times. Numbers have become a universal language, allowing us to connect the most disparate of phenomena and distil systems from them. The knowledge of these systems and the values attached to them thus make it possible to operate using complex systems of laws and technical interventions.
With 6.5 million inhabitants, Guangzhou is the largest city on the Pearl River Delta. Unlike most cities in the region, which have grown up from practically nothing, Guangzhou has a long history. The city used to be called Canton and the city’s centre still has retained a largely traditional character – small streets designed for pedestrian traffic and a highly densified colonial centre. The city is growing extremely rapidly however. Between 1982 and 1993 the density of the population, measured in terms of the number of people per km2, has almost doubled, growing from 478 to 839.3.(2) Furthermore, the ‘floating population’ of migrants rose from 306,000 in 1980 to 1.3 million in 1989.
With the growth and density of Guangzhou’s population, the amount of traffic has naturally also increased. Although no figures are available, it is clear that since 1993 the number of cars in particular has risen enormously. The average speed of public transport has dropped from 17kmph to less than 10kmph since the 1960s. The city practically grinds to a halt during the rush hour. All these facts are constantly being measured. Throughout the city, day in, day out, there are men perched on top of viaducts counting the number of vehicles that pass beneath them. To alleviate the congestion, numerous infrastructural projects ranging from bridges and (ring) roads to an underground system have been developed. However, most characteristic of the city are the enormous viaducts that run either above an existing road, thereby multiplying the road’s surface area, or along existing riverbeds. Here the abstract system of traffic literally solidifies into what MVRDV would call a datascape.(3) Numbers take on a material form and give rise to a new and artificial landscape above the existing cityscape that attempts to connect with a much larger regional and supraregional scale. Not unusual in itself, perhaps, but the speed of developments and the contrast with the existing landscape has brought a spectacular quality to Guangzhou. One experiences this mainly below the new roads where – for the time being – the traditional city and traditional life continue to exist in some form as a kind of underworld.
According to Anthony Giddens, the creation of abstract systems is the reason why traditional ways of life are being disembedded, deprived of their original social embedding. We are now in a phase in which these ways of life need re-embedding.(4) This is literally visible in the river bed at Guangzhou. Below, in the underworlds, traditional life carries on in the markets, temples and small streets, where goods for the market are still partly delivered by boat. Above are the new roads that carry their users far away in no time at all. Shipping, pedestrian and motor traffic all use the same embedding, but, being much larger systems, they embed themselves in the area around the riverbed in an entirely different way. Steadily we see buildings lining the main roads wither and already, every so often, modern high-rise looms up.
As if in a strange dream, I remember a journey by autorickshaw in the evening rush hour during which I suddenly realized that the wide avenue along which we were driving was so crowded you could have crossed it over the heads and roofs of the rest of the traffic, and which was surrounded by buildings at least five storeys high and covered entirely in concrete panels. The dusk was not simply due to the lateness of the hour; the sun simply couldn’t penetrate down to the street below. The hallucinatory nature of the roar of traffic was caused by the reverberations inside this gigantic concrete arena.
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