Category: urban administration

telling the placemaking story

Posted by Chuck – November 27, 2011

“Place matters” is a familiar declaration. Its common use shows that profiling places, especially creative, urban places, is very much in vogue. For instance, the phrase graces the Atlantic Cities masthead, is the title of a New York City project that protects distinctive local environments, frames a non-profit corporation and is a campaign of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Similarly, the term “placemaking” has reached critical mass. The founder of the place-centric Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Fred Kent, recently recounted the increasing role of PPS around the world, including an interview in The Atlantic, here.

While placemaking is not a profession, it is certainly a practice that has spread across multiple disciplines, far beyond design and planning roots.

One placemaking premise is to avoid politics and pedantic debate (such as “new” v. “landscape” urbanism)—one of the tenets of the movement is efficiency, often without “starchitecture” or directed urban redevelopment. Rather, placemaking is frequently a low-cost, facilitated exercise which helps enhance people’s faith in their cities and neighborhoods.

Accessible media about placemaking includes articles (e.g. Lisa Rochon in the November 25 Globe and Mail), webcasts (e.g. last year’s National Endowment for the Arts panel discussion here), and the currently touring film by Gary Hustwit, Urbanized. In my home town, the Seattle Times’ “Seattle Sketcher”, Gabriel Campinario, often champions placemaking concepts through his regular, community-based illustrations.

Since writing my article last week on how best to portray city life, I have been pondering which form of media is best-suited to convey the stories of places where people want to live.

Based on my own familiarity with the role of public comment and expert testimony in regulatory decision-making, including the influential voices of citizens at a public hearing, I began a search for compiled, consolidated voices on a variety of topics addressing what makes a livable place. I wanted more than generic “happiness surveys” and similar, more data-oriented presentations.

I concluded that we need more than instructive YouTube videos, such as the Streetfilms series. Rather, we need a syndicated, “60 Minute”-style production, which offers interviews about the universality of placemaking, while distinguishing the narrative, custom stories of varied communities.

Then, I discovered such a radio show is already at work, on the other side of the country, in Miami: Place Matters, with Dr. Katherine Loflin.

From my direct follow-up with Loflin, it is clear that the show is off to a promising start.

Place Matters runs Thursday at 11:00 am EST on Miami’s WZAB, 880-AM. It is podcast accessible, and Loflin’s interviews and unique focus are well worth a listen. According to Loflin, it is the only nationally focused radio show in the country explicitly devoted to placemaking:

Through the show I wanted to bring on representatives of diverse systems in “community” (i.e., political/municipal leaders, young people, corporate, philanthropy, researchers, planners, university presidents, filmmakers, celebrity, technology folks, everyday residents etc.) and have them at some point testify how their work and/or background informs a discovery or conclusions that “place matters.” My thinking was if you could look at my guest list and see a very diverse group of folks coming to the same conclusion on the importance of place from their perspective, it would make a powerful, almost universal, statement.

As a veteran, former program director at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Lead National Expert on Knight’s Soul of the Community project, in partnership with Gallup, Loflin is no stranger to the relationships between people and place. The study’s findings on what ties people to their communities helped to frame the show’s concentration.

Loflin explained the project as backdrop to her pursuit of a radio show:

We had been doing well-being studies for a while. They have been called happiness studies, well-being surveys, indicator projects, and the like and they stay important. But they only tell half the story.

Soul of the Community went further. To understand our experiences and existence, we looked at personal outcomes in the context of place—why people wanted to live where they do—and why location matters to them to begin with. We then derived roadmaps of indicated action. These roadmaps are available for further use to help grow people’s attachment to a place and perhaps impact economic growth as a result.

When we spoke last week, Loflin’s graduate degrees in social work with journalistic and community practice concentrations were clear. I asked her about the show’s goals, and about the challenges of translating placemaking to the public over the air. She replied enthusiastically:

Being the only nationally focused radio show on placemaking, the show was an experiment at first. But clearly audience interest and feedback shows a continued need for a 30 minute shot of placemaking each week, perhaps even an hour, as this topic continues to take off and take root across the country.

Through the show, I wanted to raise the placemaking conversation, reflect that conversation back to the field and provide a platform to show the wide range of sectors coming to the same conclusions about the importance of place. I think I am off to a good start, but there is more to do and many more stories, ideas, research findings, and thought leaders to showcase in order to move the field forward.

Loflin’s “good start” is notable in its diversity, and often builds from Soul of the Community findings. The first show featured PPS’s Kent in late September. Loflin’s further shows have featured several on-the-ground examples in Detroit, Toronto, and Chicago.

Based on my review of several of the podcasts, Loflin’s common themes show important sensitivity to the specific context of a place, from the Detroit renaissance to technological opportunity to inventory place in Chicago, and she is most fond of a very key point: Soul of the Community findings show that Generation Y will often move to a city without guarantee of employment, if the place has draw for other reasons.

Her guests largely center on approaches to community development, based on local preference rather than any tendency to unthinkingly adopt a best practice from another place. She clearly allied with Kent in her inaugural interview: look to what community members want, especially younger representatives. Rather than “bag the buffalo”, seek lighter, quicker and cheaper ways to revitalize a community.

Among her more recent guests: Nick Arnett, age 19, who is central to an effort to make Fort Wayne, Indiana a better place with his 12 cities in 12 month placemaking tour, and Sarah Marder of Milan, Italy, who is in the process of filming The Genius of a Place about challenges to Cortona’s unique identity after the attention brought to the town by the work of Frances Mayes (see my piece on Marder’s work here).

I asked Loflin why, given her show’s uniqueness, she chose a title, Place Matters, which was in frequent use already. “Well, honestly, I didn’t know when I started that quite so many things and organizations already use that moniker,” she said. “However, my reasoning when I was formulating the show was that I found myself saying it so much in my speeches—it was a core message.”

She elaborated on her as-applied focus:

After I discovered that so many others use “place matters”, I researched it further and found that still in fact my show’s message and focus was unique as a nationally focused showcase/platform/clearinghouse for place. Plus, as part of Soul of the Community, we really centered on the dissemination and practical application of a project that some argue was the first to empirically show that place matters in real, measurable ways.

Loflin’s interviews suggest the potential for even greater focus by moving beyond her current themes and involving the more project-oriented architects, developers, elected officials and others (even lawyers), whose practices implicate the evolving city.

I asked Loflin, in closing, whether, without such specifics, might a radio show premised on popular terminology become an overbroad proposition. Perhaps predictably, she explained her step-by-step approach:

When you’re trying to get entire community systems to think differently about place, you have to start with the big ideas, and you have to get an initial following in all sectors to help spread the word. Recently, I have begun to showcase resident-led projects, where frankly I see the best placemaking ideas originate – and I think many local leaders, planners (and lawyers) would agree. Perhaps leaders will end up following local residents’ lead in some cases! But I also have a couple of mayors already offering to be guests in 2012 and hopefully they will encourage their counterparts in other cities to listen to the show and adopt a place-focused approach to their leadership as well. In 2012, I’m hoping that those stories can continue be told and provide community leaders and residents with a stream of placemaking ideas and projects that inspire the betterment of their place.

Loflin’s answer illustrates the importance of integrated and inclusive placemaking discussions. Place Matters may be among the best venues to tell the story in a new and universal way.

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.


should the ‘creative class’ be more rural in the developing world?

Posted by Chuck – October 27, 2011

Rural Africa, ripe for city skills, without cities

Microfinance—the practice of personal small loans to spur creativity in developing nations—had well-known rural roots. Of late, I had assumed that the practice had become a city-based endeavor, in concert with other programs, targeting the world’s burgeoning urban populations.

Time in Africa earlier in the year did not change that perception.

However, after following up with community economic development friends back home, I learned that fostering a rural middle class should spur reflection among those passionate about cities. Sometimes, finding a way to keep a meaningful rural existence trumps city life.

According to Cole Hoover, Director of Programs for Seattle’s Lumana, whose work focuses in rural Ghana:

Although there is an amazing potential for growth and innovation in cities and urban areas in Africa, I think it is important to recognize that it’s not for everyone. Many people do not have the resources or connections to migrate to cities and some, quite frankly, even when possible, do not want to do so.

Lumana is a small, Seattle-based organization founded by young, multi-national entrepreneurs. In Ghana, Lumana helps people reach their personal and financial goals through microfinance, business education, planning for savings and local mentorship. Lumana also employs four Ghanaians who work in rural areas, out of choice and for connection with their communities.

According to Hoover, these Ghanaians have affinity for their home villages, fellow residents and a slower pace of life. In addition, they take pride in helping to lead operations that can make rural areas more livable.

Hoover’s observations confirm Lumana’s rural-based initiatives:

There is an amazing amount of people who appreciate their traditional way of life and the slower pace that rural life allows. We initially got involved working in rural Africa because its people are some of the most underserved in the world. It is our goal to use our programs to do community economic development that increases opportunities for rural people and makes it easier for them to thrive in the villages they choose to call home.

Lumana's Cole Hoover, in Seattle

Today, microfinance work focuses on cities more often than not, leaving a huge amount of underserved populations in rural Africa, said Samantha Rayner, Executive Director of Lumana. Rural areas experience poverty based on disconnection from services and resources.

“Poverty does not just mean having no money,” Rayner explained. “It means having no opportunities”.

Hoover told the story of “Anna” from the village of Dzita.  ”Anna” was a case study of Lumana’s accomplishments since 2010, helping rural Africans get limited available resources, including access to basic services, such as health care, drinking water, education and a consistent income.

It was in rural Dzita, not a large city like Accra, that Lumana also helped villagers understand how to make their businesses more profitable and to prepare for unforeseen emergencies by creating specific savings plans for education, future businesses and emergencies.

In addition, in a three-day class, villagers typically learn to better understand supply chains, small and medium-sized businesses and how they influence and affect the total economies of the rural communities.

“Rural Africa is an amazingly beautiful place,” explained Hoover. “You see and feel it in the bright-colored clothing, laid back way of life and support of a close-knit community of hardworking and collectively minded people”

I queried Hoover on the fundamental precepts of urban poverty, something I saw firsthand in several instances overseas, and considered in recent writing about Gary Hustwit’s film, “Urbanized”.

Hoover acknowledged the shared burden of urban and rural poverty. But he cautioned that for many people in Africa, moving to the big city is not the goal:

Rural areas still have many endearing aspects that people are sad to lose when forced to move on when faced with a lack of opportunity. Rural Africans are some of the most amazingly resourceful people on earth. They live with a little, and do a lot. Despite the constant poverty many experience on a daily basis, they learn to get by, supporting themselves and those who they love.

Rayner elaborated on the limits facing older generations in rural areas:

They have been around and have deep roots in these communities, including families, established businesses and homes. However, many times, they struggle to make ends meet, because of the lack of opportunities. We try to help by addressing their limits on accessing capital and teaching better ways to save and make good business decisions with the money they earn. With many of these people, their life is in the rural villages, so we want to help make it easier for them to thrive there.

Based on Lumana’s learning about generational views of the city, the children often do not want to leave their villages. Both Hoover and Raynor contrasted American assumptions about their own “Gen Y”—often labeled as an increasingly urban-oriented cohort.

Rural communities appeal to younger Africans, at a fundamental level, said Rayner:

Many young people are not rushing to the cities because they want to, but because it is their only option. A growing number of young Africans are flooding the big cities in search of jobs, leaving behind a better quality of life at home. Many are there to advance their career, go to university or to make increased amounts of money with opportunities only available in the city so they can remit money back home to their families living in the rural areas.

Based on Lumana’s three years of work in Ghana, young people who move to urban areas often do not get better jobs, a university education or more income for their families back home. Rather, many end up living in worse conditions than circumstances they left, in areas far away from those they hoped to help.

Ironically, concluded Hoover, “many are looking for ways to advance their careers, become educated and then return to the rural communities they love best.”

Sitting with Lumana representatives back home in Seattle, I could only wonder whether recent emphasis on cities risks losing sight of universal principles, easily forgotten in an all too competitive world.

Hoover and Rayner referred me to their lead Ghanaian loan officer, Eric Fiazorli, who spoke of helping the rural poor, his family and community. His closing words need no elaboration:

Working in my community is important and I want to find ways with my life to change the rural places I love so much. I want the future to be better for my family to grow up here.

For more about Lumana, click here, or see this recent video from Seattle’s PBS affiliate:

All photographs composed by the author. The KCTS-9 video is in the public domain.


how city gates define urban space

Posted by Chuck – October 11, 2011

The city gate of old: form follows function

In a time of urbanization, “arrival cities” and metropolitan regions with multiple urban centers, should a city provide an entry differentiating itself from its barrios, suburbs and exurbs?

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry on Sustainable Cities Collective. For the remainder, click here.


remembering Steve Jobs, and the art of land use persuasion

Posted by Chuck – October 6, 2011

Steve Jobs’ last public appearance was as a land use advocate, presenting plans for Apple’s circular new headquarters to the Cupertino City Council just four months ago tomorrow.

“Pretty cool” and “like a spaceship has landed” made the news last June, because Jobs was talking like pundits expected, while framing the rollout of something special, fresh and new.

Notwithstanding Jobs’ emphasis on heavy landscaping and subsurface parking, Philip Langdon has criticized the proposal in urbanist circles for its fenced, office park setting of glass and the auto-centric suburbia of old.

Familiar architectural critics have also cross-examined the premise of London’s Foster+Partners’ design. The Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Hawthorne termed it nothing short of a “retrograde cocoon”, while Paul Goldberger in The New Yorker last month questioned whether the building’s enormity would leave Jobs’ last contribution to his company as the least meaningful of his career.

I’m suspending judgment on the building for now, to focus on style and Jobs’ relentless pursuit of dreams. Last June 7, the way he presented and argued, with retiring charm, lit up the room.

Three years of law school does not teach that kind of persuasion. Such artful persistence was Jobs’ magical power, a quality which we should always remember.

Video courtesy of City of Cupertino, City Channel. Click on video to see Steve Jobs’ presentation.


how the imagery of “urbanized” motivates better places

Posted by Chuck – September 29, 2011

Seattle-based writer and futurist Alex Steffen (left) joins Gary Hustwit on stage

As a survey text in visual form, Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized is a frank introduction to the buzz about cities in our age of right-minded sustainability. Lurking amid the narration and vignettes is a scalable world view where the car is no longer king, and community priorities rather than government mandates often set the agenda for change.

Seattle had the chance to view Hustwit’s new release last night, and in my estimation, the audience saw local issues reflected back from the screen, as will city-dwellers everywhere who attend an Urbanized presentation. Hustwit clearly succeeds in highlighting a universal cast of diverse and sometimes conflicting stakeholders who must balance and integrate ideas, technology and economic forces characteristic of an urbanizing world.

Other articles about Urbanized have set the stage well, among them a Hustwit interview in TheCityFix, a review by Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times (who notes Southern California is missing in Hustwit’s lexicon) and a concise entry by Nate Berg on the new Atlantic Cities site.

In short, Hustwit, while not an architect or urban planner, aptly synthesizes the hottest urban issues—from carbon neutrality to safety to human-scale transportation. He employs voices of the well known, the lesser known, and fast-moving urban imagery, which guides the film from Mumbai to Santiagp, to Brasila, Bogota and around the world.

I’ve written lately about the value of imagery in conveying the messages of cities. In this context, Urbanized gives rich meaning to street scenes, infrastructure, and the single building as part of an urban framework.

Through the film’s masterful editing, reality abounds.

Santiago slum dwellers participate in the design of new dwellings, and choose bathtubs over water heaters to escape the communal shower left behind. Brasilia is a planned joy from the air, yet a disconnected trek for the pedestrian. Beijing, with narration by architect Yung Ho Chang, becomes a city of wide avenues no longer a place where friends cross paths. Adjacent to Cape Town, in the township of Khayelitsha, a community project team builds safety through light and other urban design features.

Hustwit also honors his cast and blends them skillfully with their environments.

Former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa is one with the bus rapid transit and bicycle infrastructure which made his reputation. Landscape Architect James Corner hears the noises around him on New York’s High Line and acknowledges them as an undeniable piece of the urban experience. And the camera is loyal to the anthropological perspectives presented by Danish urban designer Jan Gehl as he suggests angles of view characteristic of evolved homo sapiens in their urban habitat.

While some have said that Urbanized is more primer than graduate seminar, it is still a must-see as a one-sitting wonder. Seldom do we get to see the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Katz espouse optimism for cities as opportune laboratories for reinvention and competition, within moments of dramatic scenes of tension between citizens and government. Hustwit has a knack of mixing and matching, and merging problem with opportunity.

A visual triumph, Urbanized could nonetheless feature more cities, reference more history and, sometimes better blend the film’s talking heads with the community they espouse.

Yet the film says more than meets the eye, and in my view, issues an undeniable challenge to all who embrace cities: capture ideas, and make better urban places going forward.

Initial image composed by the author at the Egyptian Theater, Seattle.


assuring sustainable third places in the city

Posted by Chuck – July 23, 2011

Last week, while the Seattle City Council gave final approval to more street food vendors in public places, Borders Group Inc. began its liquidation of most remaining Borders bookstores, including locations in destination American downtowns.

This is related news, because both items are about how public and private uses and spaces mix in urbanized areas. Both raise questions of “no net loss” of urban, and downtown “third places” and how to make a more livable city.

In my view, despite the today’s international focus on urban street food vending, the paradigm left behind by Borders leaves bigger questions for back-to-the city devotees.

Some definitions are in order. “Third place” is a decades-old term championed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg for venues which bring people together in the tradition of the American colonial tavern or general store. The idea remains central to urbanist thinking, and describes those places, other than home or work, where we gather, debate and trade. “No net loss” is a term borrowed from the vocabulary of wetland conservation, and allows for replacement of lost assets with equivalent resources.

“No net loss” is the essence of sustainability.

In the last decade, as forms of home and work evolved, conceptions of third places changed as well—from larger footprint commercial spaces such as Borders, to mid-size bookstores (e.g. Third Place Books), to back-to-the-commons public spaces and the pop-up agora. Street food vending is somewhere in the mix as an expanded place of ambience and employment—and to all but certain bricks and mortar restauranteurs—a likely urban benefit.

In response to the Borders news, some pundits, like Josh Stephens in Planetizen, have called for a better, non-Walmartian reinvention of the bookstore. In his view, big boxes—even when urban— destroy Mom and Pop purveyors. Amazon and Kindle aside, he makes a good case for a new, post-recessionary wave of independent urban bookstore startups. For those bookstores, I hope that he is right.

But as to third places—and I am going to assume that “big books” uses can play such a role—there is something bothersome about the final demise of Borders’ urban core locations. While perhaps an opportunity for the independent competitor, what of the potential loss of third place uses in high-value urban downtowns?

Will the prime square footage occupied by Borders have similar, third place potential once reclaimed? Will replacement uses provide the equivalent, fusion business purposes of books, coffee, lecture and song?

Last week, CNN Money was also abuzz with the the re-realized location efficiencies of heading back downtown. In that spirit, let’s hope that downtowns retain dedicated uses of value to those soon to arrive.

Both the private market and public policymakers should work together on the potential prize of livability: assuring the sustainable, no net loss of square footage devoted to urban third places.

All images composed by the author.


making big urban ideas happen through idea management

Posted by Chuck – May 25, 2011

Lately, there is no shortage of reporting about big urban ideas and visions of what will make places great.

For David Roberts, writing in Grist, the answers are conceptual, e.g. assurance of ecological sustainability and density, while Crosscut contributor Mark Hinshaw lauds great projects in the making through citation to the “verve, variety and vitality” of James Corner’s early rethinking of the Seattle waterfront—with a city-wide focal point in mind.

But where is the realism, and why does it matter?

In a recent Financial Times article, Edwin Heathcoate dissected the ever-popular lists of great cities and acknowledged that such rankings are often based on individual taste—in response to the qualities that the identified cities present.  However, Heathcoate’s goal was not to organize a ‘liveable city” list based on successful implementation of a big urban idea.

For me, as a practitioner, I am anchored on the “how” to make big urban ideas happen. Once a big idea is vetted—whether in an authoritarian or democratic way—what assures its success? Most particularly, what if, from Day One, the vision pushes comfort zones of the achievable; politically, legally or monetarily?

I suggest reality-checks from the beginning, which includes careful and contextual due diligence—reflecting back and showing some immediate grounding of what detractors might argue as the pie-in the-sky.  Call it “idea management” in the urban arena.

To return to the Seattle example, on the waterfront:  Grand, “make no little plans” visions are afoot, in a purposeful, unconstrained exercise led by james corner field operations that contemplates a merger of natural systems and urbanity. With a considered framework (summarized nicely by Cristina Bump here) a presentation in Seattle by Corner and his team last Thursday night brought the potential of a new city orientation towards the city’s nascent Elliott Bay, with the potential of reclaimed beaches, green piers, terraced topography-sensitive runoff and new, waterside gathering places.

Hinshaw frames the successful rebirth of the Seattle waterfront by artful hint—now is not the time for curmudgeons—rather, it is the time for courtship in an urban Spring.

Regeneration of the waterfront in Seattle and other cities worldwide (see plans for Perth, Australia, here) is but one example of potential implementation of the big urban idea. But big ideas can fail without the idea management of due diligence—a catalog of what will, can and could happen.

Without a simultaneous catalog of due diligence checklists (even if they are kept under cover), visions risk repudiation and rancor. In reaching this conclusion, nothing has impressed me more than first-hand learning from the Jerusalem light rail project —off budget, off schedule, full of geopolitical questions and implementation snafus.  Ironically, as I recounted in 2010, project implementers noted that:

BRT [bus rapid transit] is more viable in Jerusalem given far less need for excavation and utility relocation, and, echoing sentiments in other Israeli cities, probably should have been the mode of choice to begin with.

The project is almost done today, with opening scheduled for later this year—five years late.

So in conclusion, I suggest no moderation in the generation of big urban ideas, no doom-saying.  But I hope amid all of the vision, the checklists are forming.

Even beyond the seemingly universal challenge of funding for vision, the pitfalls of process and delay remain—concerned neighbors, overlapping agency jurisdictions, related regulations and other stakeholder review will often come to light.

Through idea management, let’s use existing tools and invent new ones so that big urban ideas do not die before their time.

All photographs composed by the author. Seattle waterfront graphic courtesy of City of Seattle/james corner field operations.