THE NEW LANDSCAPE

URBANISATION IN THE THIRD WORLD

By
Charles Correa

Name : Prachi S. Rathore

Class : FO.Y.B.Arch (A)
Roll no.: 20
About the book

• Name of the book : The New Landscape

‘urbanization in the third world”
• Author : Charles Correa
• Year published : 1987
• Publications : Butterworth Architecture in north
America.
• No. of pages : 144
Review

■ Charles Correa is known, both here and abroad, mainly as an architect. But his book
shows that his heart lies in city planning.
■ The New Landscape is an impassioned plea to abandon concepts of planning based
on preconceptions of what cities ought to look like, which are borrowed from the
industrialized countries of the "north", and to design not just cities but homes that
meet the needs and suit the pockets of the people who will live in them.
■ The message of the book is thus intensely human, in fact, this lucidly-written and
brilliantly-illustrated book is suffused with a concern for human beings and the
quality of their lives.
■ According to author's thesis that each civilization, each society, has already evolved
not only the architecture, but also the patterns of urban development that most
closely suit its climate, topography, economic activity, family relations and social
habits.
■ Thus the first necessary requirement in a town planner is humility. He must not only
discard most of his "western" preconceptions (and this means most of what he has
studied in schools of planning and architecture), but must study how people actually
lived and still live in the traditional parts of his society.
■ Above all. he must study how they designed their houses, how they built them, with
what they built them, and how closely they grouped them.
■ Correa believes that cities cannot be planned, They grow organically out of the
needs of the people, and of those who are drawn to them. Since these needs are
social - inasmuch as they are born of man's relationship with other men - cities
become the personification of the societies that have built them.
Three major changes
the delicate balances between town and country which existed before:
■ the industrial revolution, the revolution in transport and the revolution in health.
Each of these has put limits to natural, unplanned growth, that must be reorganized.
■ The first has created hazardous processes, materials and wastes that make it
necessary to separate the living areas from the factories.
■ The second has made it possible to travel 50 km by a suburban train in the same
time as it took people of ancient Athens to walk or ride 3 km to work. This has
expanded the physical limits of the city and laid the foundations of the megapolitan
of 15 and 20 million inhabitants that are springing up everywhere.
■ And the third has created a rate of urban population growth that was never known
before.
■ Despite this, the author argues, the essence of the planners' task has not changed
because the needs and aspirations of the people who live in, and move to, cities
have not changed. The challenge before him is to understand these and to ensure
their fulfilment in the changed circumstances in which city growth is taking place
today.
■ Lastly, it is necessary to note what Correa's book does not do. The New
Landscape does not try to tackle the central problem that third world governments
face - which is how to make shelter affordable to the poor. Roughly half the cost of a
home is accounted for by land.
■ Bringing these within the reach of the poor is possible but not easy. In fact, in scores
of projects throughout the world, these costs have been brought down or are being
brought down through the use of new technologies, simple materials and new
methods of financing.
■ Correa's book offers a valuable insight into how the problem of urbanization and
shelter can be tackled, but it does not provide a complete answer.