The world is urbanizing. But is it doing so in a truly urban fashion, or is it merely a way of noting that ‘urban’ can be defined as ‘not rural?’

This is one of the concerns Vishaan Chakrabarti brings up in his discussions of ‘hyperdensity’ and his book making the case for a truly urban future: market-driven, transit-supportive, and more dense and urban than what we have today. Chakrabarti notes that this isn’t meant to denigrate suburbanism, but to merely level the competitive playing field and to stop direct subsidy of suburbanization.

ArchDaily links to a video of Chakrabarti speaking before a panel of big names in architecture and academia at Columbia University. They summarize as follows:

Through the compelling representation of statistics, Chakrabarti makes a concise case for the benefits of investing efforts in a development strategy that is based on dense cities. By identifying issues in modern infrastructures, current city planning policies, and paradigms within the design and construction fields, he paints a new urban landscape.

And the video:

[youtube http://youtu.be/ZBC_Pa1a6bc]

In the panel discussion, Bernard Tschumi notes that the ideas Chakrabarti presents are not new; to which Chakrabarti asks rhetorically, “then why are we in this mess?”