Author: Chuck Wolfe

Charles R. (Chuck) Wolfe, M.R.P., J.D. provides a unique perspective about cities as both a long time writer about urbanism worldwide and an attorney in Seattle, where he focuses on land use and environmental law and permitting. In particular, his work involves the use of sustainable development techniques and innovative land use regulatory tools on behalf of both the private and public sectors. He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, where he teaches land use law at the graduate level. He contributes regularly to several publications including Planetizen, CityLab/The Atlantic Cities, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Grist, seattlepi.com, and Crosscut.com. He blogs at myurbanist.com.

the new frontier of pothole urbanism?

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views4 Comments

Here’s an idea, not new, but worth repeating. Make those nasty, cordoned off potholes what they already are—untouchable neighborhood open space.

Potholes are a perennial, international urban topic, given their tendency to damage unsuspecting vehicles, threaten bicyclists, and impede all modes of traffic. We debate their origin (“did they really start in ancient Rome!?”), allow them a starring role in politics and feature their long repair time as prime examples of budget shortfalls and sponsored fixes here and abroad.

In large cities, repair times can lag. Ironically, because of their usual location firmly within the public domain, private sector or charitable attempts at repair are often deemed inappropriate by transportation officials.

In the interests of health and safety, if they are going to be unattended risks, why not mark them with style like Steve Wheen, London’s “pothole gardener“?

Indeed, make them monuments, green them up—or, more purposefully, fence them off—as yet another pocket of reclaimed guerrilla urbanism.

As the new traffic-calming “woonerfs”, such mini-parks might just accelerate some people’s desired evolution away from the car.

coloring the urban experience

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views17 Comments

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it.

–Pierre Bonnard, Painter and Printmaker

Consider the role color plays in an everyday urban experience, how and why.  No  matter that some aspects of color in the city are naturally occurring;  manipulation of color is well within the reach of most city dwellers, and is one of the most easily and affordably altered urban characteristics.

Here are ten observations.

Color:

  • Defines different facets of the natural environment and contrasts the natural and built environments.
  • Further differentiates elements of the built environment, such as building types or features.
  • Highlights people as well as places.
  • Is an indicator of commercial activity, and subliminally compels attention to vendors and merchandise.
  • Contrasts and defines messages on public and private signage announcing regulation, location and the opportunity for transaction.
  • Brightens rights of way and frames journeys across alleys, roadways and in various modes of transport.
  • Whether natural or artificial, can illuminate the urban night, and can provide a sense of safety in darkness.
  • Provides visual contrasts that stimulate the urban experience.
  • Can be particularly uplifting when enhanced by the sun, especially sky and water blues, vegetation greens and building-paint reds.
  • Can be used to awaken and inspire as part of a local improvement effort.

The following international images illustrate these observations, and, how in defining the urban experience, color is a major influence.

How can we marshal the potential of urban color while retaining a legally appropriate balance between public regulation of the private realm? I suggest this question is as important to cities—and far less discussed—than many other elements of today’s urban agenda.

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For a recent provocative view of the role of color in architecture, see last year’s post by Ana Maria Manzo, here.  Click on each image for more detail.

“diagram no. 3” and more memories of the roots of urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking4 Comments

In the course of an 1848 speech, Benjamin Disraeli said that “a precedent embalms a principle”.

Today’s first myurbanist entry identified early principles of Roman “placemaking” as captured by Vitruvius.

This second entry recalls an intriguing diagram from almost two thousand years later which may have played a similar foundational role.

Writing in Green-Belt Cities in 1946, Frederic Osborn noted his candidate for the roots of a neighborhood focus in city planning— “precisely [within] the principles of development so lucidly expounded in” Ebenezer Howard’s 1902 Garden Cities of Tomorrow “and exemplified in the two Garden Cities which Howard founded…”

“He reinvented the neighborhood unit idea, which is to be found in More’s Utopia, and is implied in our system of local-government wards, but had been forgotten by townsmen…”

Osborn no doubt refers to Howard’s proposal that “… it is an important part of the project that each ward, or one-sixth part of the city, should be in some sense a complete town by itself, and thus the school buildings might serve, in the earlier stages, not only as schools, but as places for religious worship, for concerts, for libraries, and for meetings of various kinds….”

'Diagram No. 3', the school-centered ward. The modern origin of neighborhood planning? From Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902

Here, Howard encapsulated much of the neighborhood unit and then-contemporary “community center” movement, foreshadowed Clarence Perry by some 20 years, and, in his “Diagram No. 3,” perceptively showed the school at the ward’s center, a railroad station at the ward’s corner, and industry separated at the periphery.

As noted before, the challenges of integration of neighborhood and the city are not new, and may forever live on.

remembering the roots of urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infrastructure, sustainability, urban views3 Comments

“HAVING laid out the alleys and determined the streets, we have next to treat of the choice of building sites for temples, the forum, and all other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility.”

—Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Book 1, Ch. VII, ca. First Century BC

envisioning the urban wind: a postcard

On By Chuck WolfeIn infrastructure, postcards, sustainability, urban views2 Comments

Rock Port, Missouri generally gets credit as the first wind-powered city in the United States.

But the aesthetics of such sustainable examples–modern wind turbines–often lack the flair of dreams.

What if the edge of a wind-powered city looked more like the Greek island town of Mikonos?