Category: sustainability

rediscovering the urban eye of a child

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views12 Comments

Well-composed photographs are an essential part of understanding urbanism. I have suggested before that writing about city life (in an urban diary) can be best enhanced with a camera. A recent overseas trip only strengthened that point of view.

Prior to rediscovering four photographs, now digitized here, my thoughts about cameras did not entertain the child’s sense of the city. But upon rediscovery, I recalled a not unusual, hand-me-down dynamic of family tradition. My father was an urban planning professor, and, while growing up, I watched him photograph for purposes of later sketching, teaching and advocating the role of urban imagery.

In a 1965 article (M.R. Wolfe, “A Visual Supplement to Urban Social Studies”), he argued that several then-leading studies of American communities (e.g. Lloyd Warner’s Yankee City and Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown) partially missed the mark because they lacked diagrams and pictures:

Many social studies of communities refer implicitly or explicitly to urban form without so much as a picture, map or diagram. Yet visual material can make a contribution to understanding the urban environment itself, the interrelationship of society and environment, and the development of techniques for study and communication.

Acknowledging an inherited penchant for city observation only spurred a further question—will my own children, now college age, have similar inclinations?

My daughter, who is a geography major, hinted at some further inter-generational osmosis, while studying in Italy this past summer. My son, who is a journalism major, seems to be a different sort of chronicler, with a focus on words and artwork for now.

Several commentators have recently written about the role of children in defining the urban environment going forward. Kaid Benfield, citing to Scott Doyon, wed smart growth and smart parenting, and the merit of a child-oriented approach to help define community livability.

Witness their cited measures of success such as safe trips to buy a popsicle.

A child’s safe popsicle journey is only the foundation for urban exploration. Given the symbiotic relationship between parenting, children and defining community, we should offer opportunity whenever possible for children to photograph and interpret cities.

For instance, what if we were able to send children around the world, on a kid’s photo contest with an urban twist? What if we gifted such journeys and a camera, and said:

“Look around and decide what you like about what you see. Take photos and explain them by telling us what is important to you, including what you wish was around you in your city.”

The rediscovered photographs illustrated here provide a retrospective example of such a gift. I took them in 1968, on one of several opportune trips with my urban planning professor father. They were taken with my first true camera—a Kodak Instamatic—which produced the 26mm, grainy renderings now emulated by iPhone applications such as Hipstamatic.

Frankly, I do not remember taking these photos, nor whether I was imitating the shots my father might have taken moments before. But 43 years later, here is my belated “contest entry” explanation of what I liked and was trying to show:

  • Cities organized around important public places, like churches and squares and towers.
  • Monuments located in these public places, some new, and some that have been there a very long time, to honor people or events from history.
  • Notable walking areas where people were separated from cars.
  • Cities that honored the water around them, and built themselves so that things were close together and work was close to home.
  • Cities where, in the face of a wall, there were different layers from several eras, that told the story of how the city grew.

Twelve year olds today need not wait almost half a century before answering “what you like about what you see.”

And I’ll wager that even without the benefit of my admitted hindsight, their answers, and urban diaries, would advance the dialogue of communities ripe for inheritance and renewal.


All images composed by the author in Rovinj and Split, Croatia, and Udine, Italy in 1968. Click on each image for more detail. Cross-posted in The Atlantic on September 23 and Sustainable Cities Collective on September 22.

recollecting ‘the discovery of the street’

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, housing, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability9 Comments

Some of the best thoughts about tomorrow’s urbanism come from yesterday’s observations.

A case in point is a quick-read essay entitled “The Discovery of the Street,” by J.B. Jackson (1909-1996), one of the twentieth century’s most noted commentators on the American landscape.

Jackson tells us what is organic, wondrous and ethereal about life in cities, through a bittersweet history of public space, from medieval markets to the modern freeway.

No matter that the Jackson piece is “legacy” in form and only partially internet-accessible (preview here in Glazer and Lille, The Public Face of Architecture). Jackson’s classic writing spins a most relevant story, an ambiguous tale about the raison d’être of today’s urbanism: reclaiming the human and natural systems which underlie the city, as first principles of urban reemergence from within, rather than sprawl to afar.

According to Jackson, likely writing in the 1970’s, the symbol of the modern city is a collection of streets as seen from above, a mere “cartographic abstraction” of implied richness, because the bird’s-eye relationship between public byways and private space is how we now understand urban areas. In contrast, Jackson described the foundational and compact, vertical city of towers amid a landscape perceived by the medieval resident of long ago—who did not need to understand public streets and spaces—while living a straightforward human and animal-propelled life of short journeys to work, church, market and neighbors.

The medieval, vertical city, however imperfect, was represented by a idealized symbol of the divine (a religious construct), “miniature versions of a celestial prototype: a walled city divided by two intersecting streets into four quarters.”

Jackson’s essay came to mind in my recurring legal work over the past few years addressing responsibility for environmental cleanup and the nature of public and private ownership as related to highways, arterials, streets and alleys, and associated advocacy about who is fiscally responsible for assuring public safety adjacent to private places. I had consulted his work frequently long ago, in the context of my Master’s thesis and a later book chapter I wrote on neighborhood planning, summarized here.

His masterful narrative focuses on the 11th century, and how laws, which once regulated classes of people (e.g. feudal lords, citizens, traders and merchants), evolved to regulate places. From the dawn of the geographically delineated, regulated marketplace through the evolution of transportation technology, advances such as the harnessing of multiple horses and pivoted front wagon axle resulted in the surrounding city taking on a different shape. Jackson recounts how forms of public assembly further developed, and streets and squares changed to accommodate both commerce and necessary vehicular space. Land became a commodity as lots to be created, measured and and taxed, with buildings to be designed and regulated:

Almost at once the town authorities recognized the street as a versatile tool for exerting control. In one town after another ordinances regulated the height of buildings, the pitch of their roofs, even their design, which had to be suited to the social standing of the occupants. City building plans were detailed… In the additions to existing towns the dimensions of the lot were prescribed, and all houses were taxed on the basis of frontage. The fact that each house owned half the width of the street in front of it encouraged each business or each household to expand its activities on to the street and to use the space for its convenience. As a consequence the civic authorities legislated questions of health and safety….

People learned to perceive a new kind of public space where previously there had merely seen a succession of alleys and passageways, a crooked interval between houses. Now they discovered a continuous space with a quality—and eventually a name—of its own…

The main point for invoking Jackson today, is that in order to achieve a successful city—a place of congregation in the social science, rather than religious sense—we must understand the backstory of organic human association. We must further honor Jackson’s inquiry as to why stones and huts—density based on human association and interdependence—evolved into public and private spaces with the associated loss of a human scale.

As his essay concludes:

It was in this tentative and almost unconscious manner that the street in our European-American model began a career that became increasingly spectacular and then culminated in the freeway. Imperceptively and over many generations our vision of the city shifted from the cluster of towers and spires to the perspectives of avenues and streets and uniform-sized lots. The celestial model, never easy to discern in the dark medieval spaces among stone walls and crowded huts, has been at last forgotten; the map, the diagram, the coordinates are what help us to make sense of the city [emphasis added].

In my view, Jackson’s subtle synopsis ends with an ironic, yet nostalgic judgment of a milquetoast, mapped reality, He implies missed opportunities to create more ideal, scaled spaces which look across and upward rather than down from above.

Jackson might have spoken more directly, but, in my opinion, he invoked a laudable, now familiar challenge to the post-freeway world—to remember the importance of the organic landscape of neighborhood, towers and spires lost before we can remember.

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.

exploring the sustainable city of stone

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability16 Comments

In the provinces of southeastern Italy, the landscape is changing, as a new world of alternative energy infrastructure blends insular hill towns, turbines and solar panels across traditional farmland. Yet, on the same horizons other, age-old reflections of local sustainable practices echo time-honored human traditions, as lessons for urban reinvention in a networked world.

We need to discuss these lessons more often.

For two August weeks observing the cities, towns and villages of Basilicata, Molise and Puglia, I pondered how these reflections of people and place could inform American aspirations—-often rhetorical—for compact urban centers which incubate ideas and offer solutions.

On the surface, daily urban life was readily presentable as resilient urban settings, often rendered among strolling, night crowds—a public realm reflective of climate and tradition. Amid commerce and curiosity, along streets, beside buildings and as a component of cross-town strolls, American urban density advocates can easily find justification in the residual Europe they want to see: venerable town centers, captivating facial expressions, the simplicity of child’s play in streets and squares, complemented by nearby mealtime banter, often without pattern or prescription.

Yet, behind today’s compelling imagery, there is the back story of history responsible for today, including lessons from fantastical places ripe for ready reference by urbanists and futurists who drive today’s smart cities conversation.

An example is Matera, in Basilicata, currently a city of 60,000, with a unique legacy that frames a remarkable setting of almost 10,000 years of continuous human occupation. There, the history of urban ecology, from sustainability to squalor, inspired UNESCO to designate a World Heritage Site, while its old Jerusalem-like aura captured several movie directors, including Mel Gibson, who used Matera to film The Passion of the Christ.

Matera’s legacy is a place of precedent for the sustainable city of the sort I wrote about last month in myurbanist, referencing the recent summary of sustainable city characteristics by Harvard Professor Joan Busquets. in Busquets’ concise framework, the most sustainable cities integrate natural geography and systems (such as water) into the urban fabric, provide a comfortable city center and have long-lasting, flexible designs.

According to Busquets, the sustainable city is also the historical city, and in this context, Matera readily provides examples of both sustainable urban practices reusable today, as well as the consequences of failure of long-term, sustainable systems. One lesson in particular shines through: a sustainable model must be resilient in the face of population expansion, and new economies and politics in order to stand the test of time.

UNESCO has repeatedly used Matera as an educational case study. An associated Baltic Sea Project educational guide for “observing and innovating urban ecology” (portions of which are summarized here), laments how Matera’s sustainability depended on its isolation, was undone by the trade and commerce of a capitalist world, and champions its local examples as inspiration.

Ironically, Matera’s focal point, the sassi (literally “stones”) cliff dwellings, are not readily apparent on entry to town today. They are hidden, essentially as artifacts, in two urban valleys adjacent to an ancient, cave-hewn river bed below the modern city. Yet in their time, the sassi were an exemplar of sustainable practices and textbook marriage of habitation, infrastructure and ecosystem.

The sassi of Matera included dwellings which successfully adapted to both a cool, moist winter climate and hot and dry summers. Their story is one of systems integration and efficient infrastructure—the use of natural (later extended) cliff dwelling caves for food storage, housing and urban social and commercial functions. Cisterns, built into the rock underneath such dwellings, collected channeled rainwater, and non-polluted, fresh water was successfully preserved in winter for year-round use.

As a largely self-sufficient settlement of 10,000-20,000 inhabitants into and beyond the Middle Ages, Matera grew its own food supply—nearby gardens were provided by the roof of the next cliff dwelling below. Waste, wastewater and manure were recycled. Building material was comprised of the local chalk-like sandstone (tuffa), and building stone was perpetually recreated from inner extension of the caves into the cliffs. In this sustainable world, there was little need for significant means of transportation other than to and from nearby agricultural lands, and the urban form remained largely unchanged until the eighteenth century.

Then, in a century of widespread trade revival, Matera became less isolated and the sustainable systems management of habitation, food, water and waste broke down. New residents from elsewhere brought overpopulation of the sassi. The water collection system was broken and fouled by the use cisterns as dwellings for less privileged inhabitants. As water use increased, the capacity to safely conserve it was lost. Ultimately, animals lived in close quarters with humans, and waste management systems lost integrity.

Ultimately, through the advocacy of Carlo Levi’s writing in the 1950’s, Matera’s poor and crowded living conditions, low life expectancy, high infant mortality rates and disease infestation became well known. Governmental intervention forced abandonment of the sassi until the 1990s, and the relocation of over 15,000 people. Architect Pietro Laureano—known for expertise in the urban ecology of the sassi—championed the sassi’s legacy of sustainability and adaptation to the local environment, and by 1996, Matera received its UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

As the Baltic Sea Project study concludes, in championing the local sustainability solutions of Matera, even in today’s more complex world:

The sustainable town of Matera from the past showed a balanced ecology based on low consumption of local resources and recycling. Almost no materials or food came from abroad, trade and transport was extremely limited to the surrounding agricultural land and based on land transport done by animals or people. This transport constituted at the same time the communication lines. Muscular power and wood for fire, oil for light were the scarce energy sources used. The town stayed literally unchanged and independent of external supply through hundreds of years, with very little growth in population.

Its decline as sustainable habitation came… because of rapid immigration in a period (18th Century) of growing World trade.

During the last two centuries, neither the basic population nor the political powerful landowners, traders or governors wanted the sustainability and independency continued. They wanted to profit from the market.
…

In many countries, planners and entrepreneurs have developed local urban technology, mostly green housing, zero energy buildings, electric transport systems, but also urban ecology projects for a full-scale towns or suburbs, though still local solutions.
…

Nevertheless local solutions have shown a variety of options, and the importance of using local ideas, resources and materials is inevitable. It is simply one of the fundamental components of urban ecology, as well as it is a strategy “to break through the barriers” for unsustainable urban development.

Can the principles of Matera be successfully reintegrated in a more complex world where regional, national and world markets impact local autonomy like never before? We seem to talk like they can, with carbon-neutrality goals and tool-based approaches to transportation, water, waste, power and communication systems, including energy districts, rainwater collection, urban agriculture, bioswales, innovative architectural approaches, to name but a few.

In my view we are trying to recreate the golden age of Matera on a wide, sometimes indiscriminate scale, couched in language of inspiration, rather than precedent. Yet, the sustainable cities we seek should incorporate qualities we can learn from Matera and other documented human traditions.

Don’t get me wrong. The city of the future should be dynamic and abound with the wonders of new ideas and technology aptly catalogued in this month’s special issue of Scientific American. But I suspect that its success will also be readily ascertainable from sustainable examples of the past.

All images composed by the author in or adjacent to the sassi of Matera, Italy. 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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