GLOBAL
CITIES
Tate Modern,
20 June – 27 August, 2007
Nancy and I just attended the opening on Tuesday of GLOBAL
CITIES, the summer exhibit in the awesome space of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in
As one enters the Turbine Hall, one is confronted on the
bridge above the entrance to the exhibit with a huge graphic that announces the
central fact on which the show is based:
“In 2007 for the first time in history 50% of people on Earth are living
in cities.” Walking under the bridge,
one arrives in a darkened area where, on a wall to one’s right, a video
presentation of the overall themes of the exhibition is projected. It is as beautiful and entrancing as it is
informative. One of it’s most memorable
facts is that of the 50% of the world’s population currently living in cities
(a number that is projected to grow to 75% by 2050), fully one third live in
slums. It is clear that the nature of
the 
world’s
cities is going to have a huge and profound impact on the nature of life in the
21st century. Cities have the
potential to be environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive, and culturally
enriching—but they also can be quite the opposite. GLOBAL CITIES is an examination of some of
what works and some of what does not in some of the world’s most important
urban areas, with an eye toward those things that will make a difference in the
very nature of the world in which we are going to be living.
GLOBAL CITIES was curated by Ricky Burdett (Centennial
Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics,
advisor on architecture to the Mayor of
From the original fifteen cities examined at the Biennale,
GLOBAL CITIES presents ten:
·
Size
This section explores some of the most populous city regions of the world—the
greater
·
Speed
The
speed with which many of the world’s cities are growing affects their social
and physical structure dramatically. The
five cities featured in this section—
·
Form
This section provides an overview of the distinctly different urban forms of
five cities: 
imprint
of the flows and forces that shape our daily lives.
·
Density
Good urban design can produce desirable neighborhoods in cities across the
world by balancing dense development with access to open spaces and good
transport. Dense urban environments can
create sustainable cities… The four
models shown in this section compare, at the same scale, the number of people
living within the administrative boundaries of four of the ten cities… The peaks show high residential densities,
with the largest number of people concentrated in a square kilometer. They range from the high density of
·
Diversity
In an urban context, diversity—the level of variety within a city—is usually
interpreted as its ethnic and racial composition. But diversity has a much broader range of
indicators: the spread of ages and
incomes, education levels, the range of employment sectors, and people born in
the city versus newcomers… Urban
segregation can take various physical forms, from fortified residential
districts to business enclaves… Better integrated cities are usually designed
around shared facilities, such as public parks or accessible public
transportation systems, and a more continuous urban grain that connects rather
than separates communities. A variety of
different patterns are examined here, with reference to…
The art work selected to provide a visual “feel” for the
cities in the exhibition is mostly quite extraordinary. Some of the video installations are true
masterpieces: my favorites are Yang
Zhenzhong’s Let’s Puff (2002;
presented on two opposing walls—the one wall running a scene of the crowds
strolling on Shanghai’s pedestrian thoroughfare Nanjing Dong Lu, with the
second wall showing a young woman taking deep breaths and blowing toward the
first wall—and the people on the first wall apparently being blown backwards,
slowed down, or speeded up by the woman’s blowing at them) and Francis Alÿs’s Railings (2004; with alternating
repetitions on each of three adjacent walls of footage of the artist walking around three of London’s
wonderful squares, while running a drum stick across the metal railings, gates,
pillars, and even cars lining each square—resulting in a constantly mutating
montage of visual imagery and percussive rhythms). 
Other
video installations, while less artistic, are powerful in their content or
meaning, like Osman Bozkurt’s excellent piece Auto-Park/The Highway Parks of Istanbul (2003; a documentary about
small green spaces in the midst of life-threateningly dangerous encircling
highways, that are used for “relaxation” by residents who risk life and limb to
get to them only because of how deprived they are of access to any other open
space at all). And some of the
photography chosen by the Tate is truly breath-takingly beautiful—the most
magnificent example being Andreas Gursky’s
The information presented in GLOBAL CITIES—graphically as well as in text form—is riveting: it is totally comprehensible, profoundly interesting, excitingly provocative, and of obviously critical importance. It is rare indeed to find an exhibition that it at one and the same time so informative and so enjoyable. It is a thoroughly engaging experience that will draw you in and keep you entranced for as much time as you have to give to it.
The only generally unsuccessful parts of the exhibition—and they do not figure very large in the overall experience of it (many of them actually being on the peripheral second story of the exhibition)—are the commissioned projects by architects. Zaha Hadid’s Form Informing Urbanism—Parametric Urbanism was so cryptically written that it was virtually incomprehensible: until Ricky explained to me that it was a projection across certain conceptual building types of the eastward expansion of London along the Thames Gateway, I had no idea what it was about. Rem Koolhaas’s Dilemmas in the Evolution of the City was a rather pretentious and ultimately shallow piece of intellectual fluff. Mixtacity, a fanciful work by Nigel Coates, was at least quite amusing in its vision of the Thames Gateway with spools of yarn, giant hands, sugar cubes, and other found objects used to represent buildings of humorous cultural diversity and meaning.
To understand just how engaging and successful GLOBAL CITIES is, allow me to relate an observation I made on the third day of its being open to the public. Nancy and I returned that day to spend a couple of more hours absorbing the richness of the exhibit. It was a Friday, in the early afternoon, and the Turbine Hall was packed with visitors to the exhibit. The visitors were of all ages, and they were spending hours lingering in the Turbine Hall, confronting the images and texts, the meanings and emotions of this exhibit: intently looking, absorbing, animatedly discussing with each other (in more languages than I was able even to recognize, by the way), and often taking extensive notes. I even watched several visitors photographing passages of descriptive text! This clearly is an exhibition which is generating profound reactions.
For a fuller look at the exhibition, you may wish to view the extensive presentation of it on the Tate Modern’s own website, at www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/globalcities/default.shtm .
