Category: urban abstractions

a simple portrait of an urban place

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, postcards, urban abstractions, urban views9 Comments

From time to time, a single image captures the look and feel of city life, and successfully depicts an urban place where people come together.

This morning, I had the opportunity on the “Place Matters” radio show to explain the role of photography in placemaking, as a tool to better define the personal, contextual experience of a neighborhood or city venue.

The interior scenes of “the three B’s”—barbershops, bars and billiards—often mean as much as the magic of street and square when portraying the personal interactions of cities, towns and neighborhood.

To me, this proposition demands an example, and the photo above portrays such an interior space within a dense urban neighborhood after midnight.

As I wrote last summer about the closures of Borders bookstores, such imagery says more than is apparent at first glance about how local, sustainable “third places” foster the spirit of human collaboration.

Photograph composed by the author.

reconsidering shapes of avoidance on the landscape

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, sustainability, urban abstractions1 Comment

Last year, I asked what elements of today’s urban landscape occur in spite of urban land use policy and regulation, and form “shapes of avoidance”. I provided a historical example, and suggested modern counterparts. That was before Occupy Wall Street and its progeny.

Nate Berg’s November 22 article in The Atlantic Cities posed compelling questions about how today’s public spaces can accommodate the Occupy Movement.

Berg asked whether the Movement “may be a mechanism to change the way we think about what we as a public want and need from our public spaces”.

In visiting the public spaces used by Occupy Seattle and Occupy DC in the past weeks, I saw a potentially new form of public space, institutionalized, not by top-down authority, but in spite of it.

Accordingly, Berg’s question recalled my thoughts from November, 2010, slightly amended from the original, below.

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The form of urban settlements and appearance of constituent structures reflect underlying culture and regulation.

In times of change, buildings, landscapes and objects transform to show the impact of new or modified policies or regulations. And the resulting shapes of compliance—such as the patterns of height, bulk and density dictated by a new downtown zoning code—can potentially reinvent the urban landscape.

But the urban landscape can also be dramatically altered by “shapes of avoidance”.

Consider, in the context of everyday urbanism, those shapes and patterns dictated by focused avoidance of regulation.

Here, I am discussing not just spontaneous parklets and sidewalk tables of guerrilla urbanism” or “pop-up” cities, but widespread examples of urban forms that result when policy or regulation is creatively defied.

Call it the urban landscape’s manifestation of French-American microbiologist René Dubos‘ classic discourses on remarkable and unpredictable human adaptation to environmental change, Man Adapting and So Human an Animal.

A compelling example is the alteration of a southern Italian landscape in the 15th to 17th centuries premised on the avoidance of taxes or fees—the apparent explanation for the unique shape of trulli houses in Puglia, Italy—and the resulting appearance of the Itria Valley and the town of Alberobello.

As the story goes, local inhabitants built the conical houses—that don’t look like houses—without mortar. This method allowed easy destruction, so the Counts of Conversano could avoid property tax payments to the King of Naples on permanent structures (such as residences).

What are today’s trulli?

Are they merely a list of unenforced zoning violations (e.g. unpermitted home occupations, illegal accessory dwellings, unsanctioned tent cities, vehicles on lawns) or perpetual temporary uses?

Given the breadth of land use regulation today, could spontaneous, repetitive trulli-like “shapes of avoidance” define a sustainable urban landscape more interesting than planned examples?

Or are the most visible “shapes of avoidance” now limited to freedom of expression in the ballot box and on urban walls?

After all, some might argue that graffiti and the recent electoral landscape are the trulli of our times.

All images composed by the author.

This article was republished in similar form in the Fall 2011 issue of ARCADE, Architecture and Design in the Northwest.

documenting people and place, by fives

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views7 Comments

In 2007, I began an organized effort to document cities, towns and villages in a systematic way, with attention to how people blend with place. Almost five years later, I have amassed a work in progress, comprising a collection of thousands of photographs from around the world.

Recently, I reviewed all of the assembled images with the following goal: Provide five summary photographs of everyday life from five continents over the five years since the effort began, and write a paragraph about each one.

Today, after considerable review, five such photographs and descriptions appear below.
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Australia. The irony of a livable, transit-conscious city was clear in Melbourne. In the refashioned urban core of Federation Square, passers-by admired none other than a fast car. There are always exceptions to the best of urbanism.


Asia/Middle East. Streets often tell stories for the ages. On Jerusalem Day in 2010, Israeli security forces cordoned off residential streets in the Old City. The 43rd anniversary of the Six Day War showed the inherent complexity of one of history’s most disputed places.


North America. What once were drive-ins are now for walking. In Seattle, the iconic Dick’s Drive-In Restaurant showed continued vitality earlier this year in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood.  In this part of the city, car access to fast food is trending away.


Europe. In Nice, the famous Promenade d’Anglais showed multimodal splendor, with bicycles and pedestrians protected between cars and the shore. With Blue Beach in the background, the motion symbolizes vibrant city life amid the palms.


Africa. In Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a Masai village recalled the basics of shelter and an agrarian, mercantile way of life. Here, villagers welcome visitors with a jumping contest, surrounded by huts, color and a feeling that tradition can last forever.
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Five photographs of contrasting places are little more than brief introductions to select stories not fully told. Like my documentary effort, they are works in progress. But if nothing else, they hint at the complexities of what we try to interpret every day.

For me, I see shades of gray, open for bridging, exploration and reinterpretation in a world far less simple than it sometimes seems.

All images composed by the author.

finding new meaning in the definition of place

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, multimedia, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views18 Comments

While passing through Depressa, Italy in August, I began some earnest thinking on the impact of a name on a place. In Depressa’s case, based on a passing roadside view, things ironically seemed happy enough.

My fiancee and brother tolerated my five minute absence from the car to obtain photographs. “You can’t make places like this up,” I thought.

Since returning home, I’ve noticed an uptick in articles about place names, welcome signs and other such urban symbols. In particular, Kaid Benfield wrote last month about misaligned names assigned to new developments, such as a town center that does not serve as a central urban place.

Like longstanding Depressa, new places can present environments nothing like their labels. But, given that “sense of place” is now often the most important item on the urbanist checklist, we expect that place names will be not only inspiring, but sincere.

Finding apt names for places is just the beginning of today’s creation of urban centers, real and imagined. Even more than names generated by land speculators and subdividers, random generation tools now support role-playing games online and general fascination with fantasy places, ideas and depictions.

In this spirit, during a desktop trip, it did not take long to find Newmount Crossing, or, likewise, Countryfield and Dover Grange; I learned about both from an online name generator, here, of the sort referenced in the Benfield article.

One of the most straightforward town name generators now online produces five names per web browser refresh, while others adopt sometimes amusing British (try “Guildswinshot on Pine, East Sussex”) and other themes.

Google searches reveal that more than names can be invented spontaneously by web-based tools. Instant cities are described well by another sort of random generator, which provides alternate, concise city descriptions.

For instance, the “city generator” provides several short summaries, including the following:

This small, well-populated city on the fringes of civilization is best known as a cultural mecca. The majority of its inhabitants are involved in agriculture, and it is considered noteworthy for its beautiful central square.

Such places can also be randomly mapped, with some inputs based on density and other attributes varied to produce this example:

At a more detailed level, other readily accessible tools provide additional, creative variables and manipulation potential.

Consider the “perfect city generator” described in The Pop-Up City, last year:

This “city generator”, known as Suicidator, can plainly render some heart-throbbing simulations, and is free to download as an add-on to the Blender 3D “content-creator” engine.

For me, Suicidator and Blender were essential downloads, because of a fascination with similar tools in use by friends and colleagues at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. In cooperation with several sponsors, the Runstad Center is currently developing a land use simulation tool for local decision-making known as Decision Commons.

Within a half hour of downloading Suicidator and Blender, I rendered the following virtual metropolis, which shows at least two dense town centers with corridors between:

In summary, my lesson learned through travel from the irony of Depressa to the creativity of the desktop, is, at one level, full of gimmickry and wry humor. At another level, the lesson is both mind-boggling and sincere.

From one person’s perspective, a real encounter with name and place, became an adventure through radical change in how cities are named, created and envisioned.

My experience shows that together, we all have innumerable opportunities to model visions of a better place, based on far more than generating a name.

Photograph and screenshots composed by the author. The Suicidator video is in the public domain.

experiencing the sonata of density

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, multimedia, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views9 Comments

Take a creative break from today’s active discussions about urban density with a sonata that examines compact development examples from across the world.

To view, click on the video below.

All images composed by the author. Music composed by the author and Oscar Spidahl, and performed by Mr. Spidahl on a Steinway Model B at Sherman Clay, Seattle.