Monuments for capital : the production of urban centralities for a global economy

Abstract

Keywords: Monument, CBD, Office tower, Podium, Global economy, China. The Central Business District (CBD) is the monument of the regional urban condition. A monument, which is expressive of financial competence and global connectivity. A monument for capital accumulation. The CBD of the global city is a representational tool manifesting bureaucratic capability and economic ambition. Historically originating in the United States, the CBD grew in an organic manner out the city's core and thus articulated a natural tie between congestion and financial growth - embodied in the typological invention of the skyscraper. Today the CBD of the developing city rises as a "pure" device of the planning and political authorities, a projection of the western paradigmatic "downtown" models into foreign contexts that fail to embody or represent the idea of their city or the collective domain of its inhabitants. Manifested as a cluster of towers, this urban and architectural project has seemingly detached itself from both context and content and appears to be increasingly self-sufficient. Yet while the CBD plays an essential role as a designed urban element that expresses financial progress, this thesis would contest its emphasis on the production of aesthetic contrast and uniqueness, and propose to consider it first and foremost as an operative device with real economic and social validity - not merely a representation of business but a business and an urban asset by its own right. Thus this thesis proposes a strategic revision of the typical CBD models by formulating a set of principles to correspond with key planning and design based challenges, namely issues of: Dimensional, Social, Symbolic and Organizational. These principles would hypothetically promote the mediation of contrast between the global capitalist drive for geographical expansion and the local circumstances that are often facing a process of radical transformation, while maintaining the necessary morphological flexibility and programmatic structuring, which is fundamental for the proper operationally of the CBD. China's current economic rise, which is both facilitated by and materialized in an intensive process of national scale urbanization and centralization, will be used as the geographic, economic and social context of this thesis. Operating within the gap between the automatic production of monumentality through the CBD and the geographic and political structure of the region, this thesis would conclude with a master plan proposal for a new CBD for the rapidly developing regional city of Chang-Zhu-Tan, the newly constructed capital of Hunan province.