Category: urban abstractions

in the city, we cannot live by social science alone

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, sustainability, urban abstractions, urban views16 Comments
Seattle at dusk, March 9, 2011

On March 8, Professor Edward Glaeser, a currently popular author on the subject of cities, applied his template for success to Seattle in a New York Times blog piece. He found our city to exemplify an ideal urban model, a former one-industry wonder now both economically varied and culturally cerebral.

According to Glaeser, we avoided Detroit on Puget Sound–with brains, a diverse, innovative economy, building height and the reach and influence of the University of Washington.

Glaeser’s piece is great press—the stuff of boosterism and for use as evidence in corner of higher education, in the face of looming budget cuts in Olympia.

But the essay lacks the essence of Seattle from the street, the qualitative sense of the city’s success from the look and feel of direct and knowing experience. It only hints at the personal interaction and bond with where we have chosen to live, or are destined to stay.

So, to offset the glory of Microsoft and Starbucks, Amazon and Nordstrom, apocryphal metrics and Glaeser’s convenient reference to fewer tall buildings than you might think, I decided to return to first principles and capture the authentic bustle of a March day.

The photograph above purposely compresses Seattle’s intensity, with the zoom lens illusion that three blocks are one, and that West Seattle is a hill above the downtown waterfront. Why? Because a populist article without an anchored essence is incomplete and calls for so much more than the notion that “smart people” come to a place and create a marketplace of wonders.

I have watched the city change since I was aware of cities, and wanted to imply change based on my own abstract dialogue with the local urban experience.

On this theme of relationship with built surroundings, I also reached out to a talented friend, a teacher and former lawyer-turned writer in New York City, Annie Q. Syed, and asked for her best “prose of place”. She did not disappoint, and suggested her remarkable rejoinder to the classic E.B. White essay about New York City.

Simply entitled NYC, Syed begins with the compelling “New York City is an impractical, yet awe-inspiring, relationship you cannot quit”.

Syed’s one sentence, the rest of her always integral, personal words, and a photo-based urban walk at rush hour reminds me once again: In the city, we cannot live by social science alone.

anomalies of urbanism, new city edition

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

In recently incorporated cities without a history of purposeful zoning, mixed-use urbanism can be more anomalous than in other urban settings.

Here, on the same street, kitch and handcuffs are but a block away.

a postcard of an emboldened urban aura

On By Chuck WolfeIn postcards, urban abstractions, urban views, urbandwidthLeave a comment

Towards dusk in Seattle, four buildings gain strength as they discuss Neal Peirce’s article, “Cities as Global Stars“, a timely piece addressing the central place of the urban future.

streets in plain view from a distance

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, myurbanist international, pedestrianism, urban abstractions, urban views, vignettes7 Comments

A new trend features photographers’ translations of Google Street View scenes—accompanied by remarkable creative messaging—often topical to urban issues.

One such effort, Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture, focuses on challenged American cities such as Camden and Detroit, and displays a world remarkably opposite the technology used to depict his presented scenes. Click here to see his groundbreaking work.

Similarly, words are not always necessary to describe how public rights of way are used around the world, and travel is not a prerequisite of viewing the interaction of foot, wheel and pavement.

Here, without more words, are portrayals of a Sunday morning visit to Japan, Mexico, Brazil and Finland, with both familiar and novel interactions in plain view.

Credit the wonders of Google for these street-oriented images, and Mr. Rickard for inspiring the myurbanist use of camera and software to enhance such virtual visits from afar.





the community bulletin board, remembered

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, urban abstractions, urban views6 Comments

Before social networking, central posting places in urban settings blended local culture with information provision. In concentrated urban neighborhoods, the tradition lives on, and should not be forgotten.