Generative Processes for Revitalizing Historic Towns or Heritage Districts

in-focus

Oct 8

Besim S. Hakim

Note: This is an extract from the published study titled: "Generative processes for revitalizing historic towns or heritage districts." The full illustrated study is published in Urban Design International, vol. 12, no.2/3, 2007, pp. 87-99.

Abstract

This study advocates the adoption and use of dynamic generative processes for town and neighborhood development vs. the use of static blueprints of ‘master plans’ that produce fabricated built environments. Instead, those that are the product of generative processes have attributes that can be described as dynamic complex adaptive environments that embody the virtues of complexity and sustainability. The article also discusses the components of a generative program and how they are utilized for revitalization projects that are located within historic towns or heritage areas. Two case studies – Albuquerque, New Mexico and Muharraq & Manama, Bahrain – are discussed to show how the principles of a generative program are applied. Over time, the results of such a program for revitalization will maintain the integrity, characteristics, and sense of place of the area by avoiding the static results that freezes the built environment and produces museums that are of interest to tourists rather than the people living there.

Introduction

What is a generative process? The goal of this short essay is to clarify what it is, and by doing so shed light on how it is different from the common processes of development currently used in many parts of the world. Although the essay addresses the context and problems of historic towns or heritage districts in cities, the insight gained is applicable to new development projects as well as it is valuable for formulating policies and appropriate codes for projects that incorporate generative processes in their implementation.

Two maps from Bahrain (see above) visualize the difference of the built environment that resulted from a generative process and a pre-planned and designed one. The latter type is based on a static plan in the form of a blueprint, commonly known as a “master plan” that describes what needs to be done and which generates a fabricated structure. Whereas a generative program is one that creates built environments that are guided by a step-by-step procedure within a reasonable time frame. In essence a generative process tells us what to do, what actions to take to build or revitalize buildings, rather than detailed drawings that tells us what the end-result is supposed to be.

Historic towns in many parts of the world were initially built following a generative process.¹ When confronted with the task of revitalizing such historic towns today we must create the conditions that will allow a generative process to function and thrive.²

A Generative system and its components

I will put forward the essential components of a generative system. This is adapted from my insight of how traditional towns emerged from such a system and from my experience in designing programs for revitalizing historic towns. It is therefore an amalgamation from both sources. A generative program must be composed of the following components:

I- Meta-principles comprised of ethical/legal norms that is derived from the history and value system of the society for which such a program is proposed.

To provide a concrete example of such principles I will use those that were predominant in Islamic societies. Similar principles were also predominant in non-Islamic societies around the Mediterranean (see my book titled Mediterranean Urbanism: Historic Urban/Building Rules and Processes, Springer, 2014). The following seven meta-principles are a part of ethical norms:

i- Good intentions are the basis for sound decisions.

ii- The basis for action is the freedom to act within one’s property, constrained by the ethical norm of ‘Beauty without Arrogance’, and by avoiding creating harm as stipulated in the following norms.

iii- Harm to others and oneself should be avoided, and if two damages should occur then, and only if necessary, accept the lesser of the two.³

iv- Respect the rights of older established conditions on the ground including existing buildings, and by extension accepting the idea of interdependence and cooperation between neighbors.

v- Respect the privacy of others, particularly avoiding the creation of direct visual corridors into private domains. In addition, where applicable due to local customs, avoid blocking the views of harbors and the sea.

vi- Do not debase the social and economic integrity of adjacent properties by changes or the use of one’s property that would create such harm.

vii- Local customary practices must be respected and followed, although with the passage of time changes to those customs might be necessary.⁴

II- Private and public rights are fairly and equitably exercised

In a generative bottom-up system most of the decisions affecting the built environment are made by the people in their neighborhoods. Rights that affect those decisions have to be clearly articulated and understood by the public. They are:

i- Right for abutting an adjacent neighbor, and the right of servitude and access. This will depend on the specific configurations of the site and buildings.

ii- Privacy rights – their protection and maintenance.

iii- Rights of original and earlier usage. This means that subsequent decisions and acts have to take into account existing conditions.⁵

iv- Rights for the full utilization of one’s property that include the right to increase useable areas such as building a Sabat (room bridging the right-of-way without creating obstructions to traffic), or increasing the height of a building within stipulated restrictions if those exist for a specific locality or site.

v- Right for using a part or all of one’s property for generating income, provided such use does not create damage to the neighborhood.

vi- Right of pre-emption of an adjacent property. This right provides the first option for purchasing an adjacent property by the neighbors.

vii- Right of Waqf property. The Waqf is an Islamic institution that allows owners of property to endow their property and the income it generates for charitable purposes.

viii- Right of inheritance by taking into consideration the impact it might have on division of a property. Public rights relate to transportation, infrastructure, and certain public facilities. The public authorities have to implement and maintain them.

III- Private and public responsibilities are properly allocated and implemented

Historically the responsibilities of private citizens and institutions in generative systems that were clearly evident in societies and cultures located around the Mediterranean basin were:

i- Utilizing the exterior Fina when needed and the responsibility for keeping it clean. (The Fina is a longitudinal space along the exterior wall of buildings about one meter wide. It has many useful purposes).⁶

ii- Informing the public authorities of any danger to the public realm from within private properties so that corrective action is taken. A typical example is the leaning wall that might pose a danger to passersby on the street.

iii- Each individual and family is responsible to maintain peace and tranquility with their surrounding neighbors.

Responsibilities of public authorities were:

i- Protecting the rights of the public.

ii- Building and maintaining public streets and sewer lines, water and electricity distribution and maintenance, garbage collection, and insuring that the public realm- streets and open spaces- are always kept safe.

iii- Protecting the integrity of local customs that are related to change and growth in the built environment.

iv- Resolving equitably problems and disputes that may arise between property owners, particularly between adjacent neighbors.

IV- Control and Management

It is important to establish a system of control and management that will be guided by the meta-principles and that would ensure private and public rights are fairly and equitably exercised, and that responsibilities are properly followed by private and public parties. Such a system of control and management should be based locally and must have legitimacy to the people living in the area or who will live there in the near future. One effective method that was predominant in many traditional societies was the system of neighborhood representatives, i.e. one person is elected or selected/identified by the majority residents of a neighborhood to represent them at a council of representatives. If a council system were not used, then each representative would have direct access to the ruling authority. In some traditional communities a council of elders was responsible for the day-to-day affairs of a community including matters that related to building activities.

That was all that was needed in traditional societies to correctly control and manage the built environment. However, with changes that occurred in many societies since the first half of the 20th century plus the introduction of the municipal system in countries that traditionally did not have them, an intermediary became necessary. This role can take the form of the Office of Arbitrator and his/her technical and secretarial assistants. It can be a small office or a large one depending on the size of the community that it serves. Ideally a council of neighborhood representatives should select the Arbitrator. His/her primary responsibility would be to liaise between neighborhoods and the municipal central authorities. This is necessary to maintain a healthy generative process controlled by the people, i.e. keeping it a bottom-up system. The Arbitrator will also be responsible for ensuring that all parts of a generative program function properly, and that the rights and responsibilities of private and public parties are respected and followed.

V- Rules and codes

Another important component of a generative system are the necessary rules and codes that can be followed during the process of growth and change and for resolving unforeseen conflicts between neighbors. It is preferable that such a system of rules and codes is compatible with the ethical/legal norms, the rights and responsibilities of private and public parties, and should also be linked in content to traditional local customs that are still viable socially and technically. They should also be proscriptive in nature and their intention clear, i.e. what is to be achieved must be understood by everybody involved in the generative process. They are to be open for interpretation in response to the peculiarities of each location and condition. Prescriptive codes that do not allow localized interpretation must be discouraged unless they are absolutely necessary. For examples of such codes see the published study in Urban Design International, vol.12-no. 2/3, 2007, pp. 87-99.

Highlights of two cases: Old Town Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the historic districts of Muharraq & Manama, Bahrain

The earlier case developed for the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1983⁷ was essentially based on two tools of a generative program: the appraisal process, and planning principles and guidelines that are to be used as necessary in specific parts of old town after a careful assessment and appraisal is made of a specific site and its surroundings. In other words, the generative program was designed for changes in the built fabric of an existing historic area that traces its history and its founding to 1706. The planning principles and guidelines were developed to ensure that results from change would maintain the character and sense of place of the historic district. To ensure authenticity the Spanish Laws of the Indies, that date back to 1573 comprising 148 rules and codes, were carefully consulted. These laws influenced the physical parameters of old town at the time of its founding.

The other part of the generative program that was proposed is the Coordination Process between the city authorities and residents/users of the area. In the case of Old Town Albuquerque it was made up of three components: (i) certificate of appropriateness, (ii) city investment in public improvement projects due to the large amount of land owned by the city in the area, and (iii) user participation in projects initiated by the private sector. A number of steps for implementation were suggested as a part of the generative program that was specifically worked out for this project.

The case of the historic districts of Muharraq & Manama, Bahrain was developed in early 2006.⁸ The generative program for this project, as it should be for every project, was developed from a careful understanding of the history and traditional processes of the two historic districts.⁹ Although the case of old Muharraq and Manama has similarities to other towns in the greater Islamic world, they also have certain unique attributes.¹⁰ The generative program, which I developed for revitalization of these historic districts, was designed to ensure that the changes that will occur would maintain the character and sense of place of each district. This is a similar goal that was established for the Old Town Albuquerque project described above. The general approach that I have used is similar to the outline of a generative program explained above. It remains to be seen if the centralized authorities of Bahrain will adopt a generative program that is based on a bottom-up decision-making structure. In other words, are the authorities willing to revert to a system similar to the one that created those historic districts in the first place? If they do, then it will demonstrate serious intention to revitalize those areas following a generative program.

Conclusions and the future of generative processes

In the past generative processes were the norm in most cultures, i.e. they were the type of processes that shaped the morphology and form of what we currently refer to as “vernacular architecture”. They were very different from current “modern” processes that have spread to many parts of the world.¹¹ It is difficult to imagine that generative processes will make a comeback soon. However, they can at least be used for revitalizing historic towns and heritage districts within cities. This will ensure that authenticity will be maintained when revitalization is undertaken by a generative process that is derived from the uniqueness of a particular site and a thorough understanding of its history. Such an approach can embrace the use of modern materials and technologies were necessary or appropriate. It will also encourage residents of such places to maintain, improve, or renew their buildings, knowing that these activities will ensure the continuity of the general character and sense of place of their neighborhoods.

To summarize, the following are the attributes that must be present in a generative process:

i- Agreed upon ethical meta-principles, derived from a locality’s history and customs, must be articulated. They have to be respected and followed by the residents.

ii- Private and public rights and responsibilities must be clearly assigned so that all actors and parties making decisions know what is expected from them, either as individuals or as public entities.

iii- Control and management: this must be worked out and established based on a locality’s history and customs as it relates to the function of the traditional generative process, including the interface between residents and the various public authorities.

iv- Traditional rules and codes must be identified and refined, revised if necessary, to be compatible with contemporary building materials, technology, and infrastructure requirements including transportation. New rules and codes might also have to be devised to ensure maintaining the character and sense of place of the historic area or district.

Author

Besim S. Hakim, FAICP, AIA, is a consultant in urban design and an independent scholar. He is Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Member of the American Institute of Architects, and a Harvard graduate in Urban Design. He has been researching and writing about traditional codes from the Mediterranean region since 1975. He has articulated how those codes shaped the traditional built environment so as to provide lessons and models for contemporary and future architects, urban designers, city administrators and officials, and lawyers, who are involved in formulating or revising codes and related implementation strategies. He has practiced architecture and urban design and also taught those disciplines for over two decades, and has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. His publications include five books and numerous scholarly and technical studies spanning the period from the 6th to the 19th centuries of the Common Era. The results are published in scholarly journals, book chapters and encyclopedias.

For the analysis and findings of how this occurred in towns around the Mediterranean basin since antiquity including areas under Byzantine control or influence and later as a part of the Islamic world. See publications by this author, some of which are available on: http://historiccitiesrules.com ↩
The analogy is very clearly described by Lewis Wolpert in his book The Triumph of the Embryo, 1991, page 17 under the sub-heading- A Developmental Programme: “If the cells in the embryo ‘know’ where and when to change shape, contract, or move, then it begins to be possible to envisage a program for the development of form.” And “We can think of this pattern of cell activities as being part of the embryo’s developmental program. It is a program that contains the instructions for making the shapes. A key feature of a generative program is that it can be made up of quite simple instructions, yet generate very complex forms.” From the same author in his Principles of Development, 1997, page 21: “All the information for embryonic development is contained within a fertilized egg. So how is this information interpreted to give rise to an embryo? One possibility is that the structure of the organism is somehow encoded as a descriptive program in the genome, which contains a program of instructions for making the organism – a generative program. Consider origami, the art of paper folding. By folding a piece of paper in various directions, it is quite easy to make a paper hat or a bird from a single sheet. To describe in any detail the final form of the paper with the complex relationships between its parts is really very difficult, and not of much help in explaining how to achieve it. Much more useful and easier to formulate are instructions on how to fold the paper. The reason for this is that simple instructions about folding have complex spatial consequences. In development, gene action similarly sets in motion a sequence of events that can bring about profound changes in the embryo. One can thus think of the genetic information in the fertilized egg as equivalent to the folding instructions in origami: both contain a generative program for making a particular structure.” ↩
The Golden Rule of reciprocity is very ancient. A number of web sites, available on the internet, discuss it. Socrates, Greek philosopher from the 5th century BCE, wrote: “Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.” ↩
Refer to the reference cited in note 10 below. ↩
Refer to the discussion in note 11 below. ↩
For a detailed description of the Fina and how it is to be used, and the rights and responsibilities of the residents to their Fina, see my Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles, London, 1986, pp. 27-31. ↩
Historic Old Town: Albuquerque, New Mexico—A Procedure for Guiding Change and Development Based on Patterns/Guidelines and Continuous Appraisal. For the Department of Community and Economic Development, City of Albuquerque, NM. Besim S. Hakim, Consultant, March 1983. Sixty-one page technical report plus appendices. Available at: http://historiccitiesrules.com ↩
This project was undertaken by the United Nations Development Program and the Bahraini Ministry of Municipalities and Agricultural Affairs, titled: Capacity Building for Enhancement of Urban Governance. I developed the Control, Management and Coding aspects of a generative program. My report was completed at the end of February 2006. ↩
When developing a generative program for a specific site, it is imperative to do so based on the locality’s history and customary practices that formed that built environment in the first place. Thus, such a generative program becomes unique to that particular project. ↩
For a detailed study of how customary laws and practices in each locality within the Islamic world achieved distinct architectural and urban form qualities, see my study: “The ‘Urf’ and its role in diversifying the architecture of traditional Islamic cities”, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, vol.11, no.2, Summer 1994, pp. 108-127. ↩
For example the temporal priority issue is very different from current practice. If someone has built something, then the person who comes later must legally pay attention to what is there and respond to it. This process is akin to weaving, i.e. the next act always responds to the previous act and completes it. Compared to current law, in most U.S. cities and also in other countries, that provides each person the same rights, regardless of the temporal sequence. Thus each project, and each lot, becomes an isolated island, with no significant relation to the whole, and is unable, for the same reason, to intensify the context in which it is located. A fundamental principle that was explicit in traditional generative processes is that a new construction shall not do harm to its surroundings. This is in reverse to the current approach of zoning law that is followed in most U.S. cities, which implicitly accepts that each case is different, by applying strict geometrical regulations blindly. Another important practice in traditional generative processes is negotiating decisions that may cause harm to the surroundings and the means to avoid them.