Category: pedestrianism

how the imagery of “urbanized” motivates better places

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, transit oriented development, urban administration4 Comments
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.

exploring success of the nighttime city

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban views39 Comments
Safety, proximity and interaction: the stuff of poetry, metrics or both?

If “cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night,” as the English poet Rupert Brooke suggests, then how many of us should fear for our safety in the urban darkness? Is a nighttime city better measured by the numbers, rather than by such human perception and poetry?

In my view, first noted here. Brooke’s poetry is a worthy start. His feline analogy creates the framework for five important qualities of 24-hour, magnetic places. The first, safety, spurs four more—mobility, proximity, commerce and interaction.

An ideal night street dining scene would increase city rank

We know the positives from these qualities: legendary, all-night coding jags in the technology sector, vibrant nightlife and night markets, to name a few. All can enable more robust evening public transit service and police presence through a credible political voice lobbying for still more.

While metrics may not be necessary to frame the look and feel of a successful city at night, more formal measures might further structure inspirational images of vibrance over emptiness.

Perhaps it is time for a moniker—-a “lumens score” or “urban illumination index”—to add to the indicators of a 24-hour city, something characteristic of the creative metropolitan meccas called for by the vanguard of today’s urbanist advocates.

I can see the maps, graphs and charts, not to mention the list: “Top Ten Cities to Achieve Brilliance Without Light”.

The relationship between darkness and urbanism has been studied several times in interdisciplinary fashion, and at least one MIT course has been devoted to the “interaction design” of the associated “world of night”. However, my sense is that these efforts remain far more at the cutting edge than they should.

Low interactivity, an incomplete street: a low "lumens score"

In discussion of public safety issues concerning urban areas, law enforcement, design and planning often remain in their respective silos, devoid of integration.

Ongoing neighborhood policing and social service initiatives should be more outrightly integrated with the renewed focus on environmental and urban design criteria for safe streetscapes.

Concepts of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” (CPTED)—frequently international in nature—have been present for decades and were implied in Jane Jacobs’ work.

CPTED principles on display in Melbourne

A recent visit to Melbourne, Australia, showed certain CPTED principles along neighborhood streetcar lines, including ample (glare-protective) night-lighting, territorial sensitivities to illuminated, sidewalk-oriented window areas, enhancement of the role of passing vehicles, transparent protection from weather at building entries, and low bushes and/or lower picket-type fencing along the street to limit access while allowing for entry visibility.

Similar safety-enhancement approaches to safety of female transit users have received wide attention. Many cities and civic associations (such as the Downtown Seattle Association) have also advocated for integration of CPTED principles.

Increased advocacy efforts for funding of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure will accelerate policy and regulation encouraging such principles for safety. This should lead to further discussion opportunities for “complete streets,” which include the dimension of lighting to facilitate wider, multimodal use over a longer percentage of the day.

From the street, hidden possibilities intrigue the imagination amid open and closed businesses, shadows and light.

When evening light and crowds merge to create a sense of safety, where walking and transit define mobility and proximity, if commerce goes on without the sun, then human interaction with the built environment is a demonstrated success.

If we need to energize this after-dark integration by goal setting, for a “lumens score” of 10 out of 10, time is of the essence.

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

is ‘urbanism without effort’ the best urbanism of all?

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability41 Comments

Real neighborhood experiences can provide a meaningful gloss on current discussions about how to make cities better and increase shared places for all.

On Saturday night, in response to an email, I went to the movies by walking 100 feet from my home. Admission was free. And it was not in the comfort of an isolated home or downtown space, but among some 20 neighbors in an everyday place, hidden and in plain sight: Monica and Michael’s alley entry, against Anne and Jerry’s retaining wall.

Our last “alley movie night” of the summer was an important reminder that a city neighborhood can experience community without really trying—an “urbanism without effort” that needs no thought leadership nor sound bytes—and is as natural as European street life in places we sometimes wish we were.

We can try awfully hard—sometimes too hard, in my opinion—to extol the virtues of the city by proselytizing and debating ideas and opportunities. In particular, the potential for American urban alleys remains in the spotlight. This attention, often aspirational, is well-deserved given the raw alley palette for remade narrow streets in the organic European tradition, pedestrian in scale, narrow, interesting and a natural focus for greening street life and new small businesses.

Recently, additional essays (e.g., Alyse Nelson writing in Sightline last week), have recalled alleys’ placemaking role within the urbanist toolbox. Specific, grant-funded work by Seattle’s Daniel Toole has emphasized the now iconic, reclaimed laneway precedent of Melbourne and beyond.

The challenges, of course, are how to pay for reclaiming and maintaining these alleys. And, as with many instances of infrastructure improvement, we must determine where and how the private sector can make a difference in implementing improvements and maintenance too costly for today’s municipal public transportation and utility agencies.

After all, it’s not just about clearing away the dumpsters. As I’ve related before in contributions to the urbanist dialogue (in myurbanist and on Seattle’s KUOW radio), public rights of way, stormwater system maintenance, pavement resurfacing and other forms of street improvement may be required in order to materially reinvent desired space.

Yet, in the meantime, there are ready and simple victories in residential alleys less known or described, where neighborhood is there for the taking.

Admittedly, not all of us have traditional alleys at our back doors (which we often treat as main entries), but those of us who do can readily avail ourselves of the once and future urbanism of alley reinvention. Those of us who don’t might find a driveway and garage to suffice for now.

Email, potluck food and drink, equipment setup, and a bedsheet-as-movie screen yield public space for community, not because of doctrine or dogma, but because it is as natural as the place next door.

The best urbanism is that which is already there to be nurtured, a practice that I highly recommend.


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

confronting the urban mirror

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views19 Comments

To my mind, one of the most compelling features of a provocative urban environment is a place where people watch people—which becomes a small-scale human observatory.

Such places are often indicative of safe public environments, including active streets, corners and squares. They are particularly prevalent in cultures where neighbors readily interact, and the seams between public and private are softer than zoning setbacks, while still allowing for a private world.

From Lecce, Italy today, I am focusing on qualities of urban spaces we can learn from, rather than oft-quoted metrics or other indices of success.

The sustainable cities we seek should include small places, where, as here, when the bustle of life begins in the morning and evening, people interact with facets of the city around them.

I suspect that workable density, in the city of the future, will abound with the types of spaces readily ascertainable from cities of the past.

We need places where we sit on the edges of the public realm and look in the mirror, to be reminded of who we really are.

All images composed by the author. Submitted from Lecce, Italy. For more detail, click on each image below.

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discerning successful elements of people, place and urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views, vignettes12 Comments

Nothing is better for advocates of urbanism than simple immersion in the look and feel of a successful, authentic place.

After a week of observation in the cities, towns and villages of Pugila, Italy, most notable is the age-old, multi-dimensional relationship between people and such places, especially given American aspirations—often rhetorical—for walkable and liveable cities back home.

Here, the people and place dynamic is intrinsic to climate and tradition, and naturally occurs amid commerce and curiosity, along streets, beside buildings and as a component of cross-town strolls. It can be read in faces, the simplicity of child’s play and nearby mealtime banter, often without pattern or prescription.

What elements might be isolated, and extracted for good use elsewhere?

Vignettes abound along streets and in public squares. Does a bouncing ball against a venerable door suggest certain types of urban playgrounds? Do open windows to the wind suggest building orientations that work? Do street vendors have lessons for markets and “street food” back home? What provides a sense of safety in crowds, at all times of day?

These illustrative questions suggest the power of imagery in inquiry about diverse urban settings, and only the beginning of adapting human-scale lessons from abroad to the often two-dimensional world of American urbanism.

Submitted from Otranto, Italy. All images composed by the author.

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