Digital BABA

INTERACTIVE SESSION VII:

Creating an Ecological Balance
Will local balances result in regional and cross-border balances? Will international treaties restore the ecological balance?

Creating Shared Prosperity
What will shared prosperity mean to each nation? Will an economic union or a political union be a good strategy to create shares prosperity?

Resource Person: Tay Kheng Soon, Principal Partner, Akitek Tengara,
Singapore/Malaysia
also found at: http://bbfld8.blogspot.com/2008/10/transcripts-interactive-session-vii_29.html

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SUMMARY TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS:

11:10 AM 10/29/2008

hiru introduces architect soon is an urban planner. rurbanization – combining rural and urban life.

tks (tay kheng soon): let me begin to discuss my own learning process. i started off as a typical architect with a passion to design and build things. there is a sociological concept to architecture (acht). the way we are educated is divorced from the reality around us. when we design a building we base it on books. we seek aprobation. we tend to model ourselves after the west. asian development in the last 30 years has been to catch up with the west. i call it tomato catch-up.

our lifestyles models, our models of well-being are determined by the models that we emulate.

so my learning process has been one of unlearning. to unlearn what we are inundated with. when china was rich and powerful, everyone followed china. same with india. same with greece.

there is a neuroscience aspect to this. we have two brains actually: the left and the right. the generation before me, every architect can draw in 3 dimension. in my generation, only half can draw. today, none can draw.

why? drawing is the interconnection between the head and the hand. the psychomotor coordination must move to do what the brain imagines. humans drew before they wrote. there is a disconnect.

what has this got to do with urbanism, with architecture? in singapore, everyone lives in high-rise building. children studies show never touch grass until the age of 6. let’s reflect on our own process. 30% of all inputs are visual. 10% are auditory. thus we see more than we hear. the rest involves the body. it takes physical involvement to understand an abstract concept. if the physical body is not involved in the abstract knowledge then conviction is weak. since ideas are fickle, it is easy to forget.

slides are then discussed [also found at blog: put link]

some ideas mentioned while slides are being shown:

- imagine what will happen when the middle class livelihood is possible for all people. the ecosystem will collapse because now there will be a more intense use of resources.

- what happens in the home when the woman succeed? the woman gets beaten up in the first year. after being beaten, in the second year the husband becomes her partner in business.

- modern = industrial. there is an overwhelming belief that to be modern, we have to industrialize, and to industrialize we need cities. we need to rethink this seriously. we can have modernity in a different economic format. modernization is simply the appropriation and deployment of contemporary technology. modernization is a style that is premised on an industrial style. modernity is the culture of autonomy. reason must prevail over piety and power. power cannot determine reason. reason prevails over power. aesthetics is a primary response to form and space, and independent of taste and beauty. morality is not predicated on any faith.

- the three magnets. the town, the country, and the town-country. the town-country has never been done. entopia rather than utopia. entopia means possible place. howard could not succeed given technology at his time. with internet and telecommunications technology, the possibility of town and country being integrated is available today.

- inevitable that all cities will be connected with each other. based on the paradigm that human life is best supported in a city. the “electronic cottage” is now a reality.

- Lee of singapre says: india must “urbanize quickly”. i think he is dead wrong.

- creative city. charles landry.

- richard florida: who’s your city.

- result of global competitiveness: picture showing singaporeans in summer wearing sweaters during summer.

- c. k. prahalad. the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

- factor four, doubling wealth, halving resource use. ernst von weizsacker. now the question is how do we appropriate, how do we incorporate technologies that feed right into the base of the pyramid. not all technologies are from the west. prosthetic leg is 100 dollars in india, in the US, it cost 18,000 dollars. the india leg can run, climb, jump. this is an example of

sense comes from the right side of the brain. you must put your body at risk to have sensory experience.

- from industrial modernism to a biological world.

- in hanoi, i met people who are very dedicated to restoring old buildings. young people there are beginning to go into the trade (architecture). the lure of factory jobs is very great.

- 3 questions were answer: national identity (preserving culture). you have given our villagers our option. rather than just factories, they can work with respect. you have offered an alternative lifestyle. in central vietnam, people were asked: if you were offered a job at even just 1/3 of your salary would you go back? YES. because of family, food, and quality of life.

- book: will the ship sinks the sea.

- story on left/right side. an artist name i couldn’t remember. then i read a book about how to remember. i used my thumb and rubbed it on a rough surface. kinistetic input. now i associated the memory with an experience.

- in the rural areas, 6000 support 1 official. today 40,000 support 1 official. in china today, this is the level of corruption. just last week, local officials now passed a law that farmers can now own their land.

- in urban situation, ezio manzini, professor in milan, talks about the problem of human capacity building, whether in countryside or cities. how do people auto-organize themselves? right now our ideology is a talk-down policy. build a model and apply to people. in singapore, decision making is centralized, and have made people incapacitated. you cannot be an administrator, in this day and age, that “looks after people in every possible way.” beware of falling coconuts. as if you cannot see it for yourself. this is an example of the city thinking too much for the individual. this actually kills the thinking of the people. the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

- how can people have a high degree of initiative and entrepreneurship? what is it that i can do that can increase the capacity of other people. the role of a leader is to produce new leadership, not to monopolize it.

- creative communities. democracy has to be redefined. democracy is the right to take responsibility, meaning the authorities must distribute the right to take responsibility. it must not be monopolized.

- if authority is decentralized, social-spatial becomes fully developed as each develops local needs.

- an experiment with 5 year old children to build a dome. when you use a mechanical connector, you make students not think. so we removed the mechanical joints, allowing them to innovate.

- in thailand, there people’s development association (pda). income from resorts are plowed back into humanitarian projects. typical farm children are left in child day care centers, where the guardians only know that they should keep kids quiet. there is no stimulation done. lamplaimat pattana school. i asked pda: how do you inspire the children to want to remain in the village. what kind of education should be given? answer: you must teach the children to learn to appreciate things as they are.

- typical classroom of 20 kids, selected by ballot. the kids make the curriculum. the kids decide to do what they want to learn today. the kind of education we got is to make us COMPLIANT CITIZENS, for our jobs and factories. our education made us useful for our jobs.

- character study. 10 year old made their own plan of the village, given their knowledge of the local village. imagine what they will do at 20 years old.

- the rich and powerful in the rural want to live like those in the cities. so they want to use industrial materials.

- village bank model. different from yunus. yunus charges 30%. in the village bank concept, pda has lowered the admin cost from 30% to 12%. how? you plant 10,000 trees to get 10,000 dollars. village bank has 24 people: 8 old, 8 middle age, 8 young. the teeners will become the future leaders.

- picture of the new asean. i didn’t realize the importance of the ring of fire. with the geothermal potential, like iceland, if we can tap the sumatra, java and philippines volcanos, we can imagine a whole power grid. we will have to rely on a variety.