“HAVING laid out the alleys and determined the streets, we have next to treat of the choice of building sites for temples, the forum, and all other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility.”
—Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Book 1, Ch. VII, ca. First Century BC
Rock Port, Missouri generally gets credit as the first wind-powered city in the United States.
But the aesthetics of such sustainable examples–modern wind turbines–often lack the flair of dreams.
What if the edge of a wind-powered city looked more like the Greek island town of Mikonos?
After reading Eric de Place’s commendable mini-history of the “War on Cars” in Sightline last week, I started thinking about an alternate reality, where humans do things differently, like somehow delivering heavy, bulky items without reliance on motorized vehicles.
What would that look like?
It would look like Seattle 105 years ago.
Thanks to Sherman Clay, Seattle (via Oscar Spidahl) for photo use.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.