Category: urban administration

needed: more scale models as inspiration for urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, politics, urban administration, urban views3 Comments

Certainly, others have documented the value and recurring popularity of the scale model as an inspiration for comprehensive thinking about city form, both from the perspective of the seasoned observer or an orientation for the neophyte. From such a one-stop view, the relationships of history land use, transportation and the natural environment can be readily ascertained.

Around the world, such city models are regularly updated as urban landscapes change, a three-dimensional depiction of what American planning and zoning maps can only hope to inspire.

The scale model can clarify the unique footprint of the subject urban area, and visits to and photographs of the model’s venue can educate, advertise and identify challenges, opportunities and solutions.

Need we be limited to the desktop Sim City? Need such real life, physical models await artistic inspiration, world expositions or other landmark occasions?

Philanthropists and grant-makers: In a time of municipal fiscal restraint when such endeavors may not be otherwise achievable, why not fund cities that apply for the privilege of creating the scale model tool?

Muncipal Jerusalem's current scale model
Scale model of biblical Jerusalem

“citytank is alive”

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration1 Comment

The city lives in many online fora. A new one, Citytank, assembled and launched today by Seattle’s Dan Bertolet, is well worth noting.

Bertolet has assembled a wide range of local and national contributors to write in a focused fashion on the potential of cities, as a conceivable predicate for a true “think tank” on applied urban ideas.

The inaugural series, “C200” features a range of 200 word contributions—required reading for both ethereal and pragmatic “urbies” online.

Much of today’s urbanist dialogue features dueling claims to universal messages, which no one should own.

Through his creation, Bertolet has implicitly acknowledged this communal power of ideas, and has pledged to assemble the best.

Check out Citytank, here.

Photo: Screenshot from Citytank, March 15, 2011.

communicating urbanism–make no little plans, updated

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, politics, sustainability, urban administration14 Comments

Surely every self-styled urban visionary, and quotation-centric student of prose, knows the magic words attributed to monumental, “city beautiful” Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.“

A recent case-in-point came two years ago, when President Obama invoked Burnham in his inspirational speech, urging expansion of high-speed rail in America.

There is nothing wrong with such inspiration based on large visions and  diligence. But, Burnham’s words need updating in order to communicate enhancement of sustainable cities in the digital age.

Here is a start, with five alternative slogans, and why we should use them:

  • Make no long speeches, nor write articles of more than 800 words.

You know the score:  the digital age has amplified the art of efficient consumption.  To sell today’s message of the critical relationship of land use and transportation, jobs close to home and multi-modal forms of transit, punchlists are in, treatises out.

  • Make no statements or share no photos that cannot also be tweeted or communicated by Facebook status message.

Any successful urban adage, such as “@mayorsmith: we need form-based zoning in Anytown”, needs to be, well, what you just read.

  • Make no introduction of a new initiative without a youtube or vimeo video with catchy music and pedestrians.

Introducing a complete streets program or sidewalk dining?  Flip camera in hand, or you lose.

  • Make no statement about small business without allowing for street food and vegetables grown on adjacent parking strips.

It’s not about dining rooms or produce sections of supermarkets anymore.

  • Make no mention of children without poll results revealing no desire to grow up to a family car or a house, but to zipcars and downtown living.

No elaboration needed.

Tongue-in-cheek? Of course, but with a not-so-subtle message. In today’s America, we need even more New Age Burnhamisms in the quest to communicate urbanist messages with a populist voice.

density and multi-modal, by any other name

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, environmental and land use law, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, urban administration13 Comments

Does the messaging which encourages sustainable forms of development need to alter its vocabulary to be successful?

Yesterday, Wednesday, January 5, I presented on removing barriers to transit-oriented development, sustainable communities and brownfields to a group of real estate lawyers from around the country assembled for a continuing legal education conference in Vail, Colorado.

The presentation is embedded below, and addresses in summary form the range of design, regulatory, fiscal and political issues in metropolitan areas today (with a Washington State focus). Yesterday, it was presented as the basis for a post-recession vocabulary for lawyers as well as clients and peer professionals.

Formal and casual discussion after the presentation was informative. We talked about the ongoing challenge of implementing compact and infill development adjacent to transportation infrastructure. Topics included infrastructure funding, urban streetcar initiatives, and how to address elements of walkable, transit-oriented development to constituencies not initially familiar with urbanist concepts or supportive of increased density.

Some in the audience suggested alternative language to mask hot-button words. Tax-increment financing to fund new infrastructure for transit-oriented development became a “parking fund”. Density was acknowledged as forever outside of some people’s comfort zone. And new neighborhoods aimed at live-work proximity were discussed as sometimes problematic in light of potential restrictions imposed by competing forms of environmental governance such as stormwater and air quality regulation.

I was reminded of twenty years ago, when drafting rural cluster development ordinances designed to protect natural resources. To some “cluster” meant “clutter’. We needed to call such regulations something else–such as “conservation density subdivisions”–to make them acceptable in many venues.

All in all, yesterday’s post-presentation discussions were illuminating in their own right, in response to provocative themes–and a reminder of the importance of holistic dialogue in the evolution from well-meaning dogma to achievable professional and political consensus.

Colorado January 2011

what about “shapes of avoidance” on the landscape?

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, housing, placemaking, politics, sustainability, top posts, urban administration, urban views, vignettes8 Comments

The form of urban settlements and appearance of constituent structures reflect underlying culture and regulation.

In times of change, such form can alter, to reflect the impact of new or modified policy or regulation. Resulting shapes of compliance, such as the pattern of height, bulk and density dictated by a new downtown zoning code, has the potential to reinvent the urban landscape.

But the urban landscape can also be dramatically altered by “shapes of avoidance”.

Consider, in the context of everyday urbanism, those shapes and patterns dictated by avoidance of regulation.

Here, I am discussing not just spontaneous parklets and sidewalk tables of “guerrilla urbanism” or “pop-up” cities, but examples of urban form that result when policy or regulation is creatively defied on a widespread basis.

Call it the urban landscape’s manifestation of French/American microbiologist Rene Dubos‘ classic discourses on human adaptation to environmental change, Man Adapting and So Human an Animal.

A compelling example is the alteration of a southern Italian landscape in the 15th to 17th centuries premised on the avoidance of taxes or fees–the apparent explanation for the unique shape of trulli houses in Puglia–and the resulting appearance of the Itria Valley and the town of Alberobello.

As the story goes, conical houses that don’t look like houses were built without mortar for easy destruction so the Counts of Conversano could avoid property tax payments on permanent structures (such as residences) to the King of Naples.

What are today’s trulli?

Are they merely a list of unenforced zoning violations (e.g. unpermitted home occupations, illegal accessory dwellings, unsanctioned tent cities, vehicles on lawns) or perpetual temporary uses?

Given the extent of land use regulation today, could spontaneous, repetitive trulli-like “shapes of avoidance” define a sustainable urban landscape more interesting than those that are planned?

Or are the most visible “shapes of avoidance” now limited to freedom of expression in the ballot box and on urban walls?

After all, some might argue that graffiti and the recent electoral landscape are the trulli of our times.

This article was republished in SustainableCitiesCollective on November 14, here.