Category: everyday urbanism

a Thanksgiving holiday challenge: Bringing home history from another place

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, multimedia, pedestrianism, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views1 Comment

Often, to evoke the vision of an urbanist future, we reflect on images of public spaces borne of a sociocultural tradition from another place or time.

But with such indiscriminate references to walkable and compact, mixed use experiences, are we asking too much to bring the presumed richness of an evolved, world city to every American urbanist’s back yard?

A 2009 myurbanist entry contained video walks through Rome’s Piazza Navona and Campo di Fiori at night. Here’s another video of Campo di Fiori, and a link to the story of the place:

A former field, the location of gallows for minor offenses, a juncture of streets devoted to trades, a market by day and a haven of night life: do we do injustice to rich history by assuming we can recreate the physical form produced by this “back story”?

Six years ago, while on sabbatical from my law firm, I made a presentation that asked Cornell University students studying in Rome to reflect on the context of what they had learned.

The issue of context graced the handout, just as it graces the dilemma of imposing patterns from another history on an American urban pattern.

As noted, this dilemma may yield more questions than certainty in changing times, and a salient portion of the handout asked the students to consider the dilemma, described as follows.

Rome contains some of the world’s most successful “public spaces”. Assume you are an American planning director who receives a request from a city council member who has just returned from a trip to Rome. The council member wants to pressure local mall redevelopers to create a space reminiscent of Campo di Fiori at the center of a 1960’s era shopping mall which is subject to pending development approvals for a multi-million dollar renovation. What features can you insert in the development agreement draft to attempt such ambiance? Can successful public spaces be successfully legislated?

How would you respond to this question today?

A summary of the referenced handout appears below.

Rome Reg Doc

evolving aesthetics of the desert: form and function in Abu Dhabi

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, urban views1 Comment

myurbanist correspondent Fiona Cox (@coxlaw on Twitter) reports from the United Arab Emirates with first-hand perspectives on an evolving cityscape:

City centers, thriving urban regions and cultural hubs were far from the Abu Dhabi of a century ago–the dominant features of the place were tents or huts in a desert. But six decades later, shortly after the United Arab Emirates declared itself a nation, there was an opportunity to emerge as a new place, and embrace the best of everything worldwide: culturally, architecturally, environmentally and aesthetically.

On close inspection, today’s Abu Dhabi reveals a melting pot, with most of the population consisting of expatriates and immigrant workers, and the majority of architecture reflecting a purposeful intent to be seen as an indisputable business center.

Each skyscraper has a function: the ground floor is made up of small businesses, such as restaurants, hardware stores, clothing shops and dry-cleaners. The ensuing floors are made up of either corporate businesses or residential living. Perhaps even more notably, mosques abound.

Ironically, the most striking element of the city is that buildings which one might consider “traditional” are absolutely exceptional. The Sheikh Zayed Mosque, for example, is unlike anything else. It is vast and beautiful.

Although each element of the mosque was made elsewhere (marble from Brazil, glass from Italy, clocks from England, carpets made from New Zealand’s wool and crafted in Iran), each such part merges into something quite extraordinary.

As a whole, this mosque leaves the observer yearning for more examples of traditional architecture.

With the imminent building of new international renditions of the Guggenheim and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, the questions of form and function remain.

Will the urban design of the city continue to parlay a functional business center? Or will Abu Dhabi realize its potential to become a place of truly comprehensive aesthetic value?

auto-obedience in the city: a postcard

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, postcards, urban abstractions, urban viewsLeave a comment

Two cars and a stop sign, in snow.

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.

a Melbourne postcard of dapper urbandwidth

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, postcards, urban views, urbandwidth1 Comment

The “urbandwidth” concept, first mentioned here and in Planetizen, is illustrated by an after-work, city moment along a reclaimed lane near Melbourne’s Chinatown.