Architects at the UN

Security check is in a seedy and overcrowded tent rigged up on the once open platform at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. Among those who enter the worn but glorious interior this morning are local architects, planners, developers, and political appointees. The chamber of the Economic and Social Council Chamber (ECOSOC in UN talk) soon fills up with delegates from such distant points as Singapore and Switzerland, mayors from as far afield as Bogotá and Istanbul. The day is dedicated to exploring how communities are dealing with “sustainable urbanization in the information age.” On the agenda are social equity, bridging the digital divide, and best practices in development, building, and communications—all this at a time when about one billion people have limited access to food and water, and much of the world’s population has never made a phone call.

Among the organizers of the event is the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Archi­tects. Its participation as moderator focuses the forum on the built environment. Everyone is looking for ways to integrate open space and nature into dense cities, upgrade old and aging infrastructure, or find fin­­ancing as well as creative approaches to building new infrastructure where none exists. There’s talk of long-range planning, energy management and savings, environmentally responsive construction and training for local jobs in green-building techniques, mixed-use neighborhoods served by mass transit, and applying digital communication to everything from obtaining building permits to managing traffic and encouraging political engagement. There’s evidence of a global understanding that each human settlement is a unique cultural, geographic, and cli­matic expression of its people, who are poised to connect with others in distant places.

Suha Ozkan, chairman of the World Architecture Community, reminds us of the shifting politics that got us into this lovely wood-paneled room of many languages. “The dynamics of the twenty-first century are very different from the twentieth,” he says, adding that before the Soviet Union’s collapse nearly 20 years ago “people talked to each other as enemies. Now the world has become one, and today’s issues require a team approach.”

But it may take a long time, longer than most people can afford to wait, to achieve such worldwide neighborliness. The wealth of cities is wildly varied. In Singapore, 90 percent of the population owns a home; in Porto Alegre, Brazil, every kid will soon have an electronic address. In contrast, Dar es Sal­­aam, Tanzania, struggles for survival; people running small businesses there make $1 a day, and 70 percent of them live in dangerous settlements as traffic jams choke the roads and pollute the air.

As I leave the UN on that warm spring evening, my mood swings between hope and despair. I’m happy to see architects leading a public discussion about the built environment. Surely, their participation can lead to more functional, humane, and beautiful cities. But the numbers I heard throughout the day keep hammering in my head: hundreds of mil­lions of people starving in cities around the world; in Newark, New Jersey, just across the river from where I live, an acre of land could support hundreds of jobs, but today there is one job per acre.

Clearly, the global community is waiting for thousands of creative ideas to bring it into the twenty-first century. Design, with its problem-solving processes and ethic of making the world better, can be at the forefront of proposing smart solutions for everyday needs. Are designers ready to take on this world-changing task?