Category: urbandwidth

a tale of two Nighthawks–recalling the indelible urban image anew

Posted by Chuck – October 30, 2010

This year, both my law practice and writing have featured unforgettable images of urban issues and examples, using photographs, as visual supplements, to compare traditional organic urbanism with emergent perspectives.

I have framed many references with the camera’s “biography” of urban points in time.

But I’ve also been a religious reader of today’s urban pundits, and tried to contrast their verbiage on the power of the city-as-settlement with the imagery of urban moments and city places.

Traveling yesterday from big city to small, the contrast of words to photos was apparent while reading the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Katz in Time Magazine. Katz promotes our cities as America’s necessary investment future (also in video here)–places of ideas and economic engines to harness and take us forward–while leaving behind the romantic notion of small town America. According to Katz, economic incentives should be focused on large urban areas if we are to compete on the world stage.

Maybe true, I thought, but reductionist in a way that not only could subtract from the everyday, ordinary moments and interactive elements we wish to recreate in our cities, but also could rob us of the small-scale imagery, the pictures that can motivate us to ponder more than just broad-based words of economic might. And, as a footnote, perhaps Katz’s words are just a bit too bereft of emotion and compassion to reflect the recessionary years which have so affected us all.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942), via Wikipedia (fair use)


On cue, an indelible urban image which has been much critiqued and recreated for almost 70 years appeared anew. At a breakfast destination in a smaller city, still in early morning darkness, an apparition showed none other than the classic scene from another place in another time–Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks–his most famous painting, the 1942 New York late night rendition said to illustrate the loneliness and isolation of urban life.

However, this morning’s deja vu showed the start of the day in a university city, without the larger metropolitan potential for the booming synthesis called for by Katz, but nonetheless a place of ideas and stimulus for change–a place both urban and small town at once.

First glance evolved while experiencing the dawn version of Nighthawks today. Amid an upbeat small city crowd, there was resilience and interaction both additive to Katz and the opposite of Hopper.

After entering, interacting, listening and leaving, it became clear that new imagery, however similar to Hopper’s masterpiece, frames a new narrative. Today’s angular diner scene, and customers within, suggest that all cities with a future need not be lonely, metropolitan megalopolises, but rather places where the positive elements of human interaction can manifest the baseline for all of our urban potential.

This article also appeared on SustainableCitiesCollective, here, on November 4 and was adapted for seattlepi.com, here, on November 2.


two postcards of an urban sunrise

Posted by Chuck – October 20, 2010


simple urban amenities at the public edge: a comparison

Posted by Chuck – October 19, 2010

An eclectic Provence window below introduces a back and forth conversation between American facades (to the left) and their counterparts (to the right), contrasting often uneventful stylistic reserve and usually empty balconies with traditions of rich color and plantings, angular perspectives and private spaces speaking outward to the street.

What if American cities legislated brighter color amid windows, balconies planted green and encouraged flags and hanging laundry? What if homeowner associations and rental contracts required vegetation and decoration of the interface with the street below?

For all of today’s urbanist dialogue about density, transit and proximity of home and work, an enhanced urban look and feel can also derive from practicing simple traditions of visual diversity.


inspiring the redefinition of urban public space

Posted by Chuck – October 13, 2010

Here’s a review and look forward, focused on the expanding redefinition of American urban spaces, such as sidewalks and streets, and a symbiotic recalibration of the flanking private domain.

An April 2010 myurbanist entry, “from ancient Rome to sidewalk Saturdays in America”, observed context and possibilities:

In several entries, myurbanist has challenged American placemaking advocates to consider pragmatic approaches when borrowing from qualities of foreign urban spaces, recalling their evolution over thousands of years under different sociocultural circumstances. Likewise, the blog Emergent Urbanism recently cautioned to be mindful of the “patterns of place”.

In American efforts to move from the food court back to the street, we should consider first our own cultural context, and without political will, the tendency of traditional street use permitting and related, safety-based regulatory regimes to discourage more expansive public use of rights-of-way for nontraditional street and sidewalk use.

Certainly, policymakers, the development community and community leaders are gaining momentum through focus upon sidewalk dining ordinances, complete streets programming, and compact and walkable transit oriented developments. But in a time of recession and financial constraint, reinvention will not appear overnight, and allegiance to traditional regulatory schemes dies hard at the interface of public and private property lines.

We then proposed that every Saturday morning, American cities invoke a “quick win”, and allow temporary and selective sidewalk use for two hours. mindful of safety, yet relaxing of bureaucracy.

In the interim, American cities have continued to experiment with redefinitions of traditional uses of the public domain, including street closures, “parklets” in parking spaces and bicycle-oriented suspensions of ordinary traffic.

In particular, the mainstream press has featured coverage of the expansion of streetside dining in the Pacific Northwest premised on relaxed permitting requirements, and urbanist blogs have referenced growing American experimentation with the street as a dining venue.

What else is possible? Here, from afar, is more evidence that street and square, beach and byway all have a greater and unrealized multipurpose capacity, ripe for recalibration in ever-evolving America.


This article also appeared on SustainableCitiesCollective, here, on November 4.


two postcards: patterns of habitation and the horizon

Posted by Chuck – October 7, 2010

Viewed from above, organic forms of settlement often echo the topography of place, display spontaneous patterns and converse with the sky.


the inadvertent wonder of a strategic urban view

Posted by Chuck – October 6, 2010

If a hill town can be an icon of placemaking (as posited here), then the associated strategic view, often guarding a valley, can be an unintentional aesthetic wonder.

Here, the Roya Valley shines in the splendor of an autumn sunset from the terrace-like and historic Saorge, France.


The reinvented color of London urbanism

Posted by Chuck – October 1, 2010

In a walk across a world city, a city that works, experience is framed by very simple things–color and light and the ambient sounds of people and place–and a feeling that somehow public and private spaces are interacting seamlessly, safely and with mutual respect.

Despite the flat overcast light, London this week showed brightness beyond memories of the industrial age. Amid cars and buses and bluster and irregular wear on ornamental facades from long ago, there was vibrancy and clues of reinvention–exemplified by brighter colors, bike sharing, classic urban green and safe spaces, and resplendent sidewalk banter and life.

Perhaps it was imagination, or application of some sort of urbanist filter not present in youth, but storefronts seemed less like gateways and doors less like barriers, sidewalks more like living rooms and neighborhoods more surrounding of public squares, transit stops and car-dodging splendor.

Even if only a hopeful snippet of impressions ripe for realpolitik exception and detraction–for a few hours in late September, from Covent Garden to Neal’s Yard to Piccadilly to Regent Street, from Hyde Park to Knightsbridge and Chelsea and back–it was a movie-like stroll–all about the most famous of urban places becoming new again.

For a full screen slideshow of the merger of history and future, and/or to see more detailed images, click below.