Category: placemaking

from the clippings drawer: the public plaza of old

On By Chuck WolfeIn infill development, lessons learned, pedestrianism, placemaking1 Comment

From the clippings drawer, here is a memory of how downtown public plazas were described some thirty years ago in Seattle, contemporaneous with William H. Whyte’s classic study of the use, non-use and unintended behaviors characteristic of such legislated places.

Please see below an embedded image of Linda Sullivan’s Seattle Times article. Zoom in to read the text, in which she examines, as did Whyte, how human behavior and preferences related to, and, in some cases, modified the original plaza designs of this urban downtown of 1979.

the elusive reality of “places” echoing places

On By Chuck WolfeIn infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, urban views7 Comments

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone
but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me

–Lennon and McCartney, Strawberry Fields Forever

Sometimes, as illustrated in photographs of Las Vegas, the purpose of place is at first unclear. At those moments, forgotten admonitions of legendary critics such as Ada Louise Huxtable can help refresh our understanding.

Writing in the New York Times in 1997, Huxtable cast a discerning eye on what she saw as increasingly augmented, synthetic and engineered American placemaking, premised on “[t]he remarkable marriage of technologically based and shrewdly programmed artificial experience with a manufactured and managed environment”.

“The dream of pedestrianism, so valiantly and fruitlessly pursued by planners who have looked to the past and overseas for models of historic hill towns and plazas”, she wrote, “has been aggressively naturalized; the social stroll has become a sensuous assault”.

In the intervening years, have we grown towards greater authenticity? Arguably, a new, pervasive focus on sustainability and alternative modes of transportation has broadened awareness and approach.

Whatever the answer, looking toward the New Year, there is no harm in revisiting Huxtable’s frame of reference, along with associated imagery.

Consider the risks of places with a purpose only to provide–without more–an illusion of places where we may want to be.

gift-wrapping the essence of urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, top posts, urban views11 Comments

Today’s populist urbanism celebrates the rise of the city, whether documented by census or science. Along the way, some note nostalgia when the long-time “Mom and Pop” store closes and urban places lose their distinction to author Jonathan Raban’s “rootless” feeling of anywhere.

Another facet of urbanism comes from that indescribable human dance of history, people and place that occurs when we simply like what we see. It is exciting when something resonates, such as purposefully preserved fragments of what was–more than Colonial Williamsburg or Sturbridge–but places which take us back to a sustainable set of circumstances with a simple, irrational gestalt: to live there for a year rather than a day, or to take the places home.

What if there were five neighborhoods connected by a trail? Or better yet, as illustrated from the Cinque Terre in northwest Italy, five towns, all self-contained, but symbiotic, micro-economies also connected by footpath, rail and water? What if they all had the magical amenities of street, square and housing within, terraced agriculture and spiritual retreats in the near-hinterlands?

The Cinque Terre towns of today have, in reality, evolved as a designated world heritage site and a national park with mechanisms to preserve and protect the cultural landscape (including often-abandoned hillside vineyards), and the internationally noted “look and feel” of interconnected towns.

Such regional “artifacts” raise the real question–need such places be facade-based shells, largely touristic, dominated in the summer by strangers rejoicing not just in local wine and pesto, but, ironically, the lack of cars and the wonders of a small-scale, interurban trek?

More than this year’s myurbanist topics of placemaking from ruins, learning from hill towns and chasing utopia, can the “we like what we see elements” be the stuff of daily life rather than a vacation? Similar sentiments dominate comparative blog and article references in recent months by Mssrs. Benfield and Epstein, who evoked ongoing work by Mahron and Mouzon, as well.

At this time of year such sentiments are worth repeating.

Over and above summer jaunts–and shipping home wine and pesto to remember and share–we should all bring home the gift of urban ideas. This gift honors not only of the spirit of the holidays, but also the spirit of implementation.

This article appeared in Crosscut on December 24, in Sustainable Cities Collective on December 20, and was featured by Kaid Benfield in his NRDC Switchboard blog on December 21.

urbanism chasing utopia

On By Chuck WolfeIn housing, infill development, infrastructure, lessons learned, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, top posts12 Comments

Generally speaking, the description of any Utopia that involves many details is apt to be an unconvincing way to present a principle which can be applied effectively in practice with immense flexibility as to details…
(Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Henry James, July 10, 1924, Papers, Regional Plan Association, Cornell University).

There is little doubt that a cadre of government, activists, academics and popular media are moving forward with fine-tuning today’s effort to reinvent cities in new contexts, with specific lists of attributes and goals. Among the inevitable focal points of any prescription: walkable, mixed-use communities with live-work proximity, green and sustainable features.

But the age-old dance of human and machine provides considerable fodder and fascination from history, including the risks of indiscriminate cliché versus social and market implementation realities.

The Vision, Chasing Utopia

In the 1920’s, planners in the New York region wrestled with how to re-plan cities and suburbs — “community planning”– amid the ascent of the automobile. Like today’s urbanists, they sought to educate decision-makers and ordinary citizens about compact development practices.

They had good ideas, inherited from Garden City thought, planned, compact industrial towns and utopian communities, which by and large have withstood the test of time

Like today, planning activities of a century ago sought improved residential quality, including a scheme which correlated scaled streets according to use, local stores, the community school, parks, playgrounds, open space, and social interaction among neighbors.

Some even thought about how to sell the message, and the intended audience for the neighborhood focal point. For instance, Shelby Harrison characterized the then-nascent neighborhood unit studies of his colleague Clarence Perry at the Russell Sage Foundation:

We need to reach large numbers of citizens who are not thinking very much in social or planning terms—among them builders, real estate developers, and local civic leaders. It won’t be so familiar to them, and the line of thought will have to be presented in some detail if the idea is to be made clear.
(Shelby Harrison to Thomas Adams, December 1926, Papers, Regional Planning Association, Cornell University.)

Voices from History

These principles were later criticized for oversimplicity, “architectural determinism”, and what we would today call a lack of concern for social equity. The community planning tradition attempted to incorporate the social cohesion observed in successful organic communities into new areas, assuming that such cohesion came with the provision of successful communities’ physical facilities. With the provision of churches, local stores, and other structures at the community level, the thought leaders of the time assumed all else would follow.

British sociologist Maurice Broady said it best in 1966. Architectural determinism was given credence in the neighborhood unit, he explained, not because it could be shown to be valid, but because it was hoped it would be so.

Broady elaborated on the British case, where the cohesion observed in low income areas was attempted in planned communities:

Of course people do meet each other and chat in pubs and corner shops. But not all pubs and corner shops engender… neighborliness. It is true that neighborliness is induced by environmental factors. Of these, however, the most relevant are social and economic rather than physical.
(Maurice Broady, “Social Theory in Architectural Design,”Robert Gutman, ed., People and Buildings, (New York: Basic Books, 1972), p. 174.

In 1952, the especially perceptive Catherine Bauer summarized how early planners often failed to understand the broader forces at play in the urban development process, or innocently overlooked the consequences of their actions:

What we failed to see was that the powerful tools employed for civic development and home production also predetermine social structure to such an extent that there is little room left for free personal choice or flexible adjustment. The big social decisions are all made in advance, inherent in the planning and building process. And if these decisions are not made responsibly and democratically, then they are made irresponsibly by the accidents of technology, the myths of property interest, or the blindness and prejudice of a reactionary minority.
Catherine Bauer, Social Questions in Housing and Town Planning (London: University of London Press, 1952), p. 25.

Implementation Today

Do we risk overselling smart growth concepts today, without taking heed of social and market realities? Absent large swaths of single-entity ownership, redevelopment of our current urban landscape is not easy—with limited raw land available for straightforward development without sophisticated mitigation solutions.

Today’s urban redevelopment is often beset immediately with particular expectations or requirements to help solve urban and regional problems such as affordable housing and transportation. As these are elements of cost, a developer must find a way to contribute to resolution of these issues with the allowances of the project pro forma. Allocation of funds towards provision of transportation and affordable housing infrastructure and/or mitigation must be balanced against design and constructability decisions (constrained site construction and demolition challenges, quality of building materials, lighting, etc.), allocations of uses, parking and open/street spaces and vegetation.

The bottom line? Today’s prescriptive goals for sustainable communities–not so different from those of the last century–require reality checks against the challenges of design, regulation and financing, and must be addressed at an integrated, practical level.

After all, as Olmsted said long ago, beware of selling implementation with Utopia.

defining provocative urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, top posts, urban views, vignettes29 Comments

provocative urbanism [pro·voc·a·tive ur·ban·ism] [noun]:  stimulating or controversial forms of urban community, which demonstrate vitality and human interaction reminiscent of traditional city life.

Amid today’s writing on cities, there is a theme afoot.  Something called provocative urbanism could define today’s excitement and communication about cities, as the focus of multiple articles, tweets, videos and lectures.

After all, we like cities when they work their magic of safe, dynamic and walkable multi-purposing, and provocative urbanism could aptly advertise such success.

No one has yet championed provocative urbanism among the many existing urbanisms of the airwaves. In particular, urbanism wordsmiths such as Yuri Artibise and Jason King haven’t kicked this tire (in fact, Yuri picked other monikers for his ‘P” Urbanism in his recent alphabetical list, starting with “paid”).

The Provocation

But just what are we provoking, and why and how?

Some of us are simply geeks about urban areas. Some see them as salvation—whether as city over suburb, or in the realm of economics, architecture, politics, law, transportation and health–or all together, in one of those silo-free nirvanas of sustainability, resplendent of both creative and contemporary buzz.

But a Google search for provocative urbanism produces surprisingly few results, and those which readily appear suggest an interesting theme: it is provocative to harken back to unplanned, spontaneous urban patterns in invoking our vision of the urban future.

In fact, one such Google result links to an essay on Richard Sennett’s The Uses of Disorder and champions urban complexity, randomness and conflict over prescriptive approaches that indiscriminately mandate technology (light rail) or policies (smart growth).

In an interesting, more structured parallel, Trent Noll has written recently in a Planetizen essay that the naturally occurring basics of placemaking (ie, comfort, variety, entertainment and walkability) have existed for time immemorial in successful cities, but today’s design challenge is a more purposeful implementation of such basics with a value-engineered mindset, to spur investment incentives for savvy developers.

At the center of provocation is the tension of imposition of order versus the wonders of a naturally changing city, often prompted by thematic catalysts and campaigns (e.g. Streets for All Seattle).

This tension is not new. Even in the 1920’s, colleagues of Clarence Perry critiqued his later well-known “neighborhood unit” approach in the context of the existing urban fabric of the New York region, then adapting to repercussions of automobile proliferation. Eminent Scottish town planner Thomas Adams wrote:

[D}iscussions… seem to suggest that neighborhood life is something that can be created. All city life is neighborhood life in some form. We should not discuss it as something that is non-existent and can be brought into being, but as something that exists in forms that need to be changed, improved and better organized. (Memorandum, Adams to Perry, January 23, 1928, Papers, Regional Plan Association, Cornell University).

Communicating the Provocation

There is something about the human condition that celebrates successful community, where and when we can co-exist safely, in a mutually supportive way. This especially rings true when this community can be conveyed through media that inspire the senses, much like the original experience of “being there”. As implied above, perhaps this celebration is most provocative when it occurs spontaneously, something seen more often in organic old world environments than in the new.

So, ironically, perhaps we wish to celebrate the successes of the unpredictable and disjointed as much as the successes of the prescriptive and planned. Unintentionally or outright, we often dwell in the incredible irony where the prescriptive and planned achieve what used to occur naturally.

Today, provocative urbanism can be communicated simply and democratically, which, frankly, adds even more provocation. With the wonders of technology and the grassroots web, we can now instantly connect around the world, and immediately display that the urban vernacular can be simultaneously multicultural and timeless, and that the two dimensions of print can easily become sight, motion and sound. Witness Seth Sherwood in the New York Times on December 1:

Damascus loves to flaunt its age. It claims to be the world’s oldest inhabited city — replete with biblical and Koranic lore, Roman ruins, ancient Islamic edifices and Ottoman-era palaces. But that’s not to say the Syrian capital is stuck in time. Dozens of centuries-old mansions have been reborn as Mideast-chic hotels, and fashionable shops and restaurants have arisen in the ancient lanes of the Old City. Throw in a fledgling generation of bars and clubs, and the age-old metropolis has never looked so fresh. [emphasis added]

In summary, today’s organizing institutions of land use–constitutional precepts of private property, or a zoning code or judge’s ruling–can be spun through time and space into a prospective dictionary term that adds even more color to the already crowded urban lexicon.

This article was authored as the introduction to a presentation, “Vignettes of Provocative Urbanism”, which will take place Thursday, December 9 in Seattle. Learn more via Great City, here.