I find that often, an excess of verbiage in a blog post detracts from an urban image. In cases where a natural setting blends with the built environment, the best summation is within the reader’s review and contemplation.
So, I will offer just one observation: Even without a devastating storm, our structures are easily overshadowed by daily expressions of climate nearby.
Image composed by the author. Click on image for more detail. © 2009-2013 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
In order to reckon with today’s urbanism, I suggest challenging your dreams and, like The Great Gatsby, the American Dream itself.
Recently, I went into a restaurant in a trendy urban neighborhood, excited by the prospect of something new in a former light industrial space. At first glance, I assumed a dream fulfilled, featuring more of what’s needed in a changing, post-recessionary city: Awnings with street appeal, a hybrid French-Italian name, an angular entry off of the sidewalk with diminutive, curbside seating and an implied European, old-world charm.
After sitting down, I found a diverse, fusion menu, at odds with the exterior. Then, I focused on discordant building materials, lighting fixtures, doors, tables and chairs, and the sense of place became both nowhere and anywhere. While one wall displayed some photos of the former building use, in total, the ambiance became vintage antique and consignment store, all in one. The place was well-appointed, and the food and service very good, but the experience communicated to me an incompatible melange of urban adornment.
I left, reminded of one of my favorite quotations from American literature about American Dream, in the form of the “green light”, the enduring symbol of hope with which F. Scott Fitzgerald closed The Great Gatsby:
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I may suffer from too much concern for the naturally occurring, qualitative aspect of urban places and surrounding neighborhoods, but my story is hardly about chasing overly conventional dreams. I agree with Edwin Heathcoate’s January 11 reminder in The Financial Times, that a “beautiful” city may demand no more than modest, spontaneous moments of experience.
I have also championed the composite, evolving city that is in formation, where spaces—whether residential or commercial—are shared, morphed or recombined in ways different from before. And I will celebrate with everyone when the clearly novel and chic succeed, such as couches on the beach in Tel Aviv, or the ice cream laundromat that I have described in my neighborhood.
But in this case, an eclectic hodgepodge—without a more real relation to its context and surroundings—brought me an uneasy pause. Without a more authentic tie to place, I perceived an unrealized vision, one that could easily disappear if the economic recovery cannot sustain.
Is the search for good urbanism in American cities the latest manifestation of the American Dream, a quest so aptly perceived and critiqued by Fitzgerald in 1925?
If places are not implemented with care, and if they leave a sense of the overly artificial and concocted, we may collectively and forever chase The Great Gatsby‘s symbolic green light at the end of Daisy’s pier.
Images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2013 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
Nothing has become more symbolic of city resurgence than hybrid “third place” venues, where in neighborhood settings, social and work lives merge by both night and day.
For me, this assertion is most interesting with illustrated detail. Photographs, I learned, tend to emphasize not only social activity and technological tools, but also the relationships of each to the city– visible through windows nearby.
Consider the three Seattle portrayals below. All show the merger of a public/private venue, technology and neighborhood from vantage points located both without and within.
Images of Seattle, Washington composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2013 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
In my own writing, I enjoy finding layered, historical illustrations of how people relate to the built and sociocultural communities around them. I have explained before how this exercise is not merely academic, but is also useful as a supplement to today’s urbanist dialogue and sustainable placemaking efforts.
Recently, I have devoted considerable time to associated research and photography in support of my pending book, Urbanism Without Effort. The book will be short and to the point, so unused sections remain, including the following freestanding principles and companion lessons, drawn from several snapshots of people and place. I offer them below, for further use and inquiry, as well as inspiration and adaptation.
Principle 1: When Placemaking, Account for Authentic, Visible Evolution (Lisbon and Porto, Portugal)
The story of Portugal is not always well-known, and it is a mistake to cast the Iberian peninsula as a lump sum proposition. Placemakers everywhere would benefit from a look beyond across-the border gems such as Barcelona to the complex and unique history that hides behind Portuguese cities.
These places project an organic, under the skin reality that can only be experienced by a visit and exploration. This is nowhere more so than in Lisbon, which I believe offers an instinctual urbanism that avoids much analysis, circumventing the brain for a direct hit on the soul.
Lisbon’s history and topography create an urbanity without pretense that seems best learned onsite and on foot. Porto is similar, with ample windows into how people of character blend with a venerable urban core.
In summary, these cities with their authentic voices provide the best of organic examples. Their context explains how color and sound frame large and small spaces alike, and concentrations of mixed uses offer a model for the compact central city that many have in mind today.
Lesson: The evolved look and feel of an urban place is not an overnight proposition.
Principle 2: Look for the Physical and Cultural Shells that Define Us (Malta)
Other places are more tangible, and display the shell of the city, and visible pieces of the urban puzzle–the underlying parts that make up the whole. The baselines of buildings, roads, names and language all provide context for new initiatives that address repair, replacement and evolution of infrastructure and infill development. In fact, I wrote last February how we can find inspiration from physical artifacts of place to help retrofit for the future . But in this instance, I refer to understanding not only old buildings or physical “ruins”, but other sociopolitical precedent that makes a place unique.
An unrivaled example is the island country of Malta, located about 50 miles south of Sicily, at the marine crossroads of Europe and Africa. The historic Maltese cities, such as Mdina and Valletta, present reality quite unlike any other. Inhabitants speak a language mostly derived from Arabic left by long-departed medieval rulers. They live among a built environment still reflective of the 3oo year rule of the Knights of the Order of St. John and a mid-16th century siege against the Turks that was once among the more prominent events in European history..
This is not an obscure antiquarian story, but illustrates a highly contextual place, a small country where the cycles of human history are readily experienced in little more than one day. All around are reminders of a shell framed by the only semitic language written in latin script, and physical and cultural remnants of vanished nobility. While local examples will be more subtle and likely less dramatic, we should remember and champion places with dramatic, definitional shells as inspiration for understanding the present city and its redevelopment potential.
Lesson: The defining physical and sociocultural origins of today’s cities continue to influence their redevelopment
Principle 3: We Can See it All in the Company Town, Evolved (Broken Hill, Australia)
The company town is often cited as another one-stop venue for urban planning precedent. While sometimes lumped with utopian efforts, this paternalistic, industry-developed community is also often referenced for a summary representation of the common elements of any urban place. These elements include housing, work, recreation, environmental concerns and public safety.
Today, Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia provides a snapshot of a major company town, in evolution from its former dependence on the country’s largest mining concern, BHP. The structure and function of the industry-based daily life is still clear in the layout of the town and the brown slag outcropping that still dramatically dominates the landscape. A thriving artist’s community, contemporary restaurants, retail businesses and social service agencies are also apparent.
In sum, what once was necessary to daily life now merges with the functions of the touristic, the artistic and a gateway to the Outback. We should look to such places as bellwethers of cities in transition.
Lesson: Urban places convened around a the need for human capital are not new, and remain laboratories for documenting change.
Principle 4: We Can Learn from Simple, Small-Scale Stories of Adaptation (White Cliffs, Australia)
Amid demonstrable instances of climate change worldwide, examples of adaptation to harsh weather show examples of human adaptability. Not far from Broken Hill, residents of the Australian Outback have implemented alternative forms of shelter (known as dugouts, descendant of opal mining days) to offset extreme heat. Conveniently, in White Cliffs, the Underground Motel shows the potential of local practice in the form of a novelty tourist attraction.
Surveying the landscape of White Cliffs and exploring the underground lodging halls may for now satisfy vacation curiosities, but there is a larger message inherent in a visit to such outlier venues. When we see examples of alternative forms of settlement, we also witness the ongoing potential–and likely increasing need–for adaptation in urban environments everywhere.
Lesson: Humans are capable of dynamic change and innovative adaptation–good news for tasks ahead..
Principle 5: Some Universal Urban Icons Reflect Human Nature as Much as Place
Finally, given the rich, authentic relationships between people and described above, should we be disappointed by the increasingly standardized symbols of urban evolution around the world? For instance, the ferris wheel has reentered the international urban imagination, and is seemingly omnipresent in cities competing on the world stage. The Seattle Great Wheel, built as a private business venture, but adopted as a symbol of the city’s emerging waterfront, here contrasts with an under construction version in Melbourne.
Why are these “observation wheels” reaching landmark status in some places when other, more vernacular gestures might better fit the context of a place?
My answer is not to cynically decry these wheels, but to consider them as the same exciting, moving observation points first explained by seventeenth century observers. Understanding their ongoing success–premised on fun and excitement–is consistent with my opening call for more studied reflection about relationships of people and the communities around them.
Lesson: Some urban icons show an important universal attribute of people experiencing place–the need for outright enjoyment in the process.
In summary,the five principles and lessons presented here are starting points for discussion, debate and potential conversion. I believe ongoing vetting of such principles and underlying examples– if discerned and discussed with care–is a remarkable toolbox, adaptable in context across space and time.
Images of Lisbon and Porto, Portugal; Broken Hill, White Cliffs and Melbourne, Australia; Red Tower and Medina, Malta; Seattle, Washington composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2013 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
I have written about cities at night many times before, most recently in the context of innate relationships between people and urban settings in my upcoming book, Urbanism Without Effort, (Island Press, 2013). I find especially captivating the range of imagery that flows from such relationships, which I term here “meetings” of light, people and the built environment.
I have also spent several years photographing these “meetings”, and each time, dramatic, often multicolored reflections suggest new, alluring stories of people and place.
For the month of February, eleven of my favorite night city photographs from 2011 and 2012 will be on display at Cafe Verite’s Madrona location in Seattle.
Here is a virtual preview–a teaser–of five of those photographs. They will appear onsite in a variety of 20 x30 inch and 16 x20 inch framed editions.
All images composed by the author in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia and Melbourne, Australia. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2013 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.