Category: everyday urbanism

documenting people and place, by fives

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views7 Comments

In 2007, I began an organized effort to document cities, towns and villages in a systematic way, with attention to how people blend with place. Almost five years later, I have amassed a work in progress, comprising a collection of thousands of photographs from around the world.

Recently, I reviewed all of the assembled images with the following goal: Provide five summary photographs of everyday life from five continents over the five years since the effort began, and write a paragraph about each one.

Today, after considerable review, five such photographs and descriptions appear below.
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Australia. The irony of a livable, transit-conscious city was clear in Melbourne. In the refashioned urban core of Federation Square, passers-by admired none other than a fast car. There are always exceptions to the best of urbanism.


Asia/Middle East. Streets often tell stories for the ages. On Jerusalem Day in 2010, Israeli security forces cordoned off residential streets in the Old City. The 43rd anniversary of the Six Day War showed the inherent complexity of one of history’s most disputed places.


North America. What once were drive-ins are now for walking. In Seattle, the iconic Dick’s Drive-In Restaurant showed continued vitality earlier this year in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood.  In this part of the city, car access to fast food is trending away.


Europe. In Nice, the famous Promenade d’Anglais showed multimodal splendor, with bicycles and pedestrians protected between cars and the shore. With Blue Beach in the background, the motion symbolizes vibrant city life amid the palms.


Africa. In Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a Masai village recalled the basics of shelter and an agrarian, mercantile way of life. Here, villagers welcome visitors with a jumping contest, surrounded by huts, color and a feeling that tradition can last forever.
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Five photographs of contrasting places are little more than brief introductions to select stories not fully told. Like my documentary effort, they are works in progress. But if nothing else, they hint at the complexities of what we try to interpret every day.

For me, I see shades of gray, open for bridging, exploration and reinterpretation in a world far less simple than it sometimes seems.

All images composed by the author.

finding new meaning in the definition of place

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, multimedia, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views18 Comments

While passing through Depressa, Italy in August, I began some earnest thinking on the impact of a name on a place. In Depressa’s case, based on a passing roadside view, things ironically seemed happy enough.

My fiancee and brother tolerated my five minute absence from the car to obtain photographs. “You can’t make places like this up,” I thought.

Since returning home, I’ve noticed an uptick in articles about place names, welcome signs and other such urban symbols. In particular, Kaid Benfield wrote last month about misaligned names assigned to new developments, such as a town center that does not serve as a central urban place.

Like longstanding Depressa, new places can present environments nothing like their labels. But, given that “sense of place” is now often the most important item on the urbanist checklist, we expect that place names will be not only inspiring, but sincere.

Finding apt names for places is just the beginning of today’s creation of urban centers, real and imagined. Even more than names generated by land speculators and subdividers, random generation tools now support role-playing games online and general fascination with fantasy places, ideas and depictions.

In this spirit, during a desktop trip, it did not take long to find Newmount Crossing, or, likewise, Countryfield and Dover Grange; I learned about both from an online name generator, here, of the sort referenced in the Benfield article.

One of the most straightforward town name generators now online produces five names per web browser refresh, while others adopt sometimes amusing British (try “Guildswinshot on Pine, East Sussex”) and other themes.

Google searches reveal that more than names can be invented spontaneously by web-based tools. Instant cities are described well by another sort of random generator, which provides alternate, concise city descriptions.

For instance, the “city generator” provides several short summaries, including the following:

This small, well-populated city on the fringes of civilization is best known as a cultural mecca. The majority of its inhabitants are involved in agriculture, and it is considered noteworthy for its beautiful central square.

Such places can also be randomly mapped, with some inputs based on density and other attributes varied to produce this example:

At a more detailed level, other readily accessible tools provide additional, creative variables and manipulation potential.

Consider the “perfect city generator” described in The Pop-Up City, last year:

This “city generator”, known as Suicidator, can plainly render some heart-throbbing simulations, and is free to download as an add-on to the Blender 3D “content-creator” engine.

For me, Suicidator and Blender were essential downloads, because of a fascination with similar tools in use by friends and colleagues at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. In cooperation with several sponsors, the Runstad Center is currently developing a land use simulation tool for local decision-making known as Decision Commons.

Within a half hour of downloading Suicidator and Blender, I rendered the following virtual metropolis, which shows at least two dense town centers with corridors between:

In summary, my lesson learned through travel from the irony of Depressa to the creativity of the desktop, is, at one level, full of gimmickry and wry humor. At another level, the lesson is both mind-boggling and sincere.

From one person’s perspective, a real encounter with name and place, became an adventure through radical change in how cities are named, created and envisioned.

My experience shows that together, we all have innumerable opportunities to model visions of a better place, based on far more than generating a name.

Photograph and screenshots composed by the author. The Suicidator video is in the public domain.

remembering urban growth, from idea to implementation

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, housing, infrastructure, placemaking, politics2 Comments

For many of today’s advocates of creative cities, success cannot be achieved soon enough. Common aspirations of sprawl avoidance, compact development, dynamic public spaces, ecosystem integration and multimodal transit are increasingly touted in both the public and private sectors.

Organizations such as the Urban Land Institute (ULI) provide associated, implementation-oriented goals through mission statements. ULI’s mission, in part, prioritizes the responsible use of land and creating and sustaining thriving communities.

In reality, much time often passes between aspiration, mission statement and common acceptance and/or implementation. Good ideas evolve and often merge along the way. And always, land use planning and regulation are impacted by fundamental principles of safety, jobs, education and the politics of place.

Today’s city-oriented visions are often traced to an urban livability and walkability perspective, with Jane Jacobs as the most touted precursor. Historic suburban development patterns are usually the villains of the story. But even those historically vested in suburban single family home ownership suggested reform in land development practices earlier than we often remember.

These calls for reexamination were notable—not for any urgency placed on abandonment of the car—but for a mid-course, suburban damage control assessment based on many ideas that retain currency today.

About the same time as the publication of Jacobs’ comprehensive, classic article in Fortune Magazine, “Downtown is for People”, a 1959 video entitled “Community Growth, Crisis and Challenge” shared several nascent ideas for innovation in land development and regulation.

This video project of the National Association of Homebuilders (in cooperation with ULI and the American Institute of Architects and the predecessor to the American Planning Association), presented an in-process critique of sprawl, long commutes and increasing land costs, and suggested research and implementation of a regionally-based rethinking of development patterns, with urban planning as a necessary intervenor.

Ironically, Rick Harrison’s 2010 newgeography article examined the video’s message, found it largely unheeded and questioned whether sole reliance on transit-oriented density as the only definition of the sustainable city going forward.

For perspective, I suggest a read of Jacobs’ article, linked above, and a view of the video, embedded below. Both offer then-emergent best practices as a basis for much of today’s critical thinking:

From the video, note the inherent, still prevalent themes and challenges of American land development, including:

  • An outright concern with land affordability and the importance of a mixture of housing types
  • Commentary addressing the notable absence of regional planning
  • Attention to the defensive use of zoning regulations rather than working more creative development incentives
  • The challenges of funding infrastructure for new development
  • The impact of sprawl, on land, resources and accessibility
  • Appropriate separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic
  • Rethinking streets (although still with a presumption that creative cul-de-sacs and curvilinear patterns might trump the grid)
  • An orientation towards designing with the land
  • The potential of cluster and compact development
  • The challenges facing the creative innovator

Clearly, the video is dated, particularly in the seeming assumptions that suburbs and not repopulated cities will be the only harbingers of future growth. It remained for Jacobs and her followers to speak to the best ways to approach the redevelopment of urban cores.

However, there is a not-so-hidden revelation in both pieces: 52 years ago, today’s issues were increasingly clear, and many solutions were already forecast or known.

Successful implementation warrants mention, and many current sources of information regularly celebrate city and neighborhood achievements, through new projects, purposeful reinvention or spontaneous solutions. Examples include longstanding, “best practice” aggregators such as Planetizen, the newer Sustainable Cities Collective, as well as TheAtlantic.com‘s new sister website, The Atlantic Cities.

Such celebration is appropriate, to chronicle how today’s mission statements continue to influence urban development at a time when how we live, work and travel is undeniably changing.

But looking back and reflecting fuels a new question: What will the pundits of 2063 say about the evolution and merger of our ideas of today?

Image composed by the author. Video reproduced subject to a public domain creative commons license.

how city gates define urban space

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, urban administration4 Comments
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

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, politics, urban administration10 Comments

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.