top of page
  • Frederick Rickmann

THE FAILURE OF CITY PLANNING

This desert of rubble was photographed in 2014. It’s the place where I grew up, lived with my family, played with the kids in the neighbourhood, went to school, did shopping with my parents. It is totally destroyed. That might not be so unusual in this age of urban renewal. Old disfunctional buildings must gave way to new. The tragedy of the photo is not that the rubble comes from the building I lived in. The rubble is from the buildings which were planned and built to replace the original old buildings. The whole area have been demolished and laid waste TWICE in the last 35 years.

As a child I grew up exactly on this spot in the centre of Dundee, Scotland.
As a child I grew up exactly on this spot in the centre of Dundee, Scotland.

What kind of city planning is this? How come we have a generation of architects and town planners who see their own work binned within their present working career. What kind of wasteful society do we have that allows this colossal waste of materials, effort and capital?

 
bottom of page