Today marks the launch of a related site, UrbanPointofView, which provides a compilation and “portfolio” of my interdisciplinary approach to urban land use issues.
For an integrated summary of urban insights, at home and abroad, please see the embedded link below.
In the ideal urban setting, waterside venues are optimal places of human interaction, and are often destinations on longer treks across neighborhoods which Alex Steffen terms “deep walkability”.
Such venues are also symbolic of the politics of placemaking: who gets and who pays amid the unfolding challenge of how to fund and maintain?
The renderings of France and the United States below suggest five elements of the “walkable waterside” within the context of sustainable urban experiences–as presumed characteristics of smart growth and consistent with the touted norms of today’s walkable urbanism.
These modified photos add to prior myurbanist renderings here and here, which visualize the contemporary dialogue about multimodal urban experience, and aim to enhance our sense of the possible.
The displayed examples share at least the following elements:
1. Walking places.
2. Biking places, with enabled separation from other transportation modes.
2. Places of congregation, recreation and observation.
3. Intermingling of water-dependent trades.
4; Food along the way.
5. Natural settings blended with the urban fabric.
Even with the prospect of stimulus-era federal assistance, cash-strapped cities in challenging economic times often lack necessary resources to implement, maintain and sustain these elements of successful places. The legitimate budgetary needs of other, complementary urban needs, such as human service, public safety and infrastructure maintenance and improvements compete for the public dollars which result from taxes, bond issues and the traditional suite of urban revenue generation.
As a result, without more, the places we want may lose a competition for scarce resources in the world of local public finance.
Accordingly, what is the supplementary private role in public placemaking? Can we further innovate legally permissible public-private partnerships to assure the bright colors of rendered community?
In this case, perhaps compelling imagery of human interaction can beget further innovation.
One more, this time in the embedded video below.
Your urbanist friends will not like the Burb Twins, potential antagonists to the new development and consumption patterns which characterize Richard Florida’s The Great Reset.
Enjoy, and for the original “six postcards not to send to an urbanist,” click here.
Several earlier myurbanist entries assessed the complexities of urban issues in Israel and Jerusalem, ranging from light rail to perspectives on sustainability. Today, a dry brush filtered photograph, adapted to video, shows the multiplicity of issues at play in one urban view (view full screen if you can).
After all, in Jerusalem, it all depends where you stand.
“Ten measures of beauty descended to the world, nine were taken by Jerusalem.”
Talmud: Kiddushin 49b“Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel…”
Benjamin Netanyahu“That can be achieved by termination of Israeli occupation to the territories according to the international resolutions related, so the Palestinian State can be establish with Jerusalem as capital for such State.”
Ali A. Saleh“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”
Thomas Paine
In Jerusalem, the camera pans from the Old City’s Temple Mount, across the Mount of Olives, into the Kidron Valley (the legendary “Valley of Death”) and Silwan, currently the focus of well-publicized controversy concerning efforts by the Jerusalem municipality to demolish homes and relocate residents in favor of restored, archeological-themed parkland. For additional background, click here for an earlier myurbanist entry.