Photograph by the author. Click on image for more detail.

Analyses of Seattle’s downtown rebirth seem to be in vogue of late, both from here and afar. From Jon Talton in The Seattle Times to Richard Florida inThe Atlantic Cities, writers are holding up small mirrors to the central city-scape—like the “Claude Glass” used by landscape painters of old—to create motivating and exciting images of of the evolving economy of the city I call home.

These perceptions showcase a walkable, creative-class city where transit meets the commerce of the future. However, in reality…

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry at The Atlantic Cities, “The Quest to Make Regulatory Reform Work in Seattle”. For the remainder, click here.

Image composed by the author.

How will the city of tomorrow reflect adaptive reuse of the city of today?

I don’t think we ask that question broadly enough, and our day-to-day, property-specific incrementalism can easily overshoot the greatest lessons from history for today’s city politics, regulation and economic constraints.

A hometown case in point, last month, transported me from Seattle to Croatia (virtually) for inspiration about why we should think beyond limited geographies, time frames and lifetimes when we discuss urban redevelopment options.

Recently, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Seattle-based Preservation Green Lab made urbanist media headlines (including Emily Badger’s January 25 Atlantic Cities story) with a report stating the environmental benefits of green retrofits of historic buildings, as compared to new, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient construction.  In addition, a local church restored as townhouses joined the list of intriguing Seattle adaptive reuse projects typical of national trends.

But almost simultaneously, Seattle Times columnist, Nicole Brodeur, described a protest-free goodbye in my Seattle neighborhood (the same neighborhood of the ice cream laundromat and alley movie night, previously profiled) to a neighborhood icon.  A 112-year old, iconic repair garage and offices (demolished in early February) will soon become the nostalgically named “Pike Station”, comprised of new, live-work townhouses, complete with a courtyard and intermixed retail.

The purported upshot of the local story—that the building’s had a good life and the new use is commendable—is clear in Brodeur’s headline: “Sometimes it’s OK to let an old landmark go”.

How did our predecessors handle these issues in simpler times, when reuse was a practical necessity?  What can we learn from those stories?

As our surroundings evolve, can we create incentives and inspiration for transformational places that are sustainable in form, function and attention to the past?  I have touched on these questions before, when highlighting hill towns as placemaking icons and profiling Italy’s re-emerging Matera, the UNESCO World Heritage site also termed “the sustainable city of stone” (in The Atlantic last year).

When considering these questions about a transition from old to new, focused  more on a city than buildings, for me there is one place  that deserves a very hard look: Split, Croatia (another UNESCO World Heritage site).  Amid the old town center within and next to the ruins of the retirement palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, adaptive reuse is defined at first sight on an urban scale—a place which began as something different from it is today, yet lives on in the new clothing of another age—as more juxtaposition than reinvention.

I was lucky enough to first visit Split in 1968, in the old Yugoslavia, and to return many times in the years that followed. It’s not a stretch to say that its impressionable story explains my legal work in urban redevelopment. There, the survival and reuse of historic elements tells a valuable tale of sustainability, with lessons learned about human capacity to reuse and adapt the built environment.

Shortly after 300 A.D., on the site of Split’s town center, workers completed Diocletian’s Palace.  Diocletian was the first Roman Emperor to voluntarily abdicate, and retire in the modern sense; he viewed the palace as a purposeful respite from power in his home region, possibly for medical reasons.  

After Diocletian’s death, the palace was first a refuge for exiled imperial family members.  Then, through serendipity, after destruction of the nearby Roman city of Salona by the Avars and Slavs at the beginning of the seventh century, the palace became a shelter for fleeing citizens, later a medieval town, a Renaissance regional center, and eventually a major city—surprisingly, with core elements of the palace still prominent today.

Thomas Swick’s essay, Croatian Pop (South Florida Sun Sentinel, 2000, and later reprinted in The Best American Travel Writing, 2001) captures the spirit of Split best, with a poetic vent which rivals the best descriptions of active public places:

I slid through more right-angled alleys that deposited me into an hallucination: a sunken square hemmed in by antiquities. The delicate remains of a colonnade filigreed one side, and the skeletal façade of a temple, now buttressed by brick… Spotlights dramatized the age-blackened columns, giving the scene a crumbling magnificence, while the cafe tables spread across the peristyle provided a jarring contemporary note. So that welded onto the indoor/outdoor motif — niches and statuary under the stars — was the even more compelling one of ancient and modern: teenagers flirting on ruinous walls; couples drinking in the shadow of the gods. It was like stumbling upon a cocktail party in the Roman Forum.

How was this scene created?

In essence, the palace, which spanned almost 10 acres, contained enough elements of classical urbanity—including the gridded crossroads of a military camp (the ancient castrum and its standard roads, the decumanus and cardo), as well as several ceremonial spaces and religious structures—that when repopulated after the destruction of Salona, it became easily adaptable to what we now consider urban uses.

This unintentional convertibility shows an interesting evolution over time;  A mausoleum became a cathedral, the cardo became the winding medieval street that remains today,  the crossing of the decumanus and cardo at the peristyle (a classical courtyard below the Emperor’s apartments) became a baptistry, public square and historic urban center, and the Emperor’s apartments became the structural framework of a residential area.

Image credits: Comparative aerial photos from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license; Pike Station garage, narrow Split street and Professor Myer R. Wolfe sketch via the author; panorama embed via Peter Watts/panoramicearth.com. Click on each image for more detail.

A similar version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic Cities and was recently republished on Crosscut.

As I’ve recently written, visual urban nostalgia has a place in today’s dialogue about cities. Historical photos, videos and reconstructions of a pre-car era, including imagery of more walkable places are all sources of inspiration for a more sustainable urban future. And they are brought to us, by and large, by the internet.

Click on a link, and the romanticized past appears as a visual analogue to a sound byte about “then and now”. But what about the sound byte itself? For example, as I asked last year–amid “street scenes and carriage jams”— what did the social nature of traffic interactions actually sound like in the late nineteenth century?

The problem is that sound is amorphous, and not easily reconstructed, however important a role it may play in the quality of the urban past, present and future. Consider the “phonautogram” efforts of Thomas Edison colleague Charles Batchelor in 1872 in an urban setting. Click here for a barely audible recording of New York City’s Metropolitan Elevated Railroad, 40 feet away.

Nonetheless, study of “soundscapes“—particularly in the urban environment—has grown from its academic foundation in Vancouver by R. Murray Schafer in the 1960′s. The urban soundscape is an increasing focal point worldwide. Sound-based urban initiatives appear both as prospective planning tools and as historical, documentary exercises to inform an urban past.

Prospectively, soundscapes are an element of the urban environment. Soundscape proponents argue for assistance from the aural as well as the visual, in order to facilitate the identity of a place through careful, qualitative attention to how it sounds.

For instance, one click, here, provides background on the “acoustic landscapes” in Cologne, Germany, and the evolution of Schafer’s thinking when applied to modern Berlin. The Goethe Institute provides perspective from American American Yukio King, who worked on Berlin sound issues:

As at Helmholtzplatz in the East Berlin borough of Prenzlauer Berg. All you could hear there a few years ago were barking dogs and clinking beer bottles. Now that many young families have moved into the neighbourhood, the cries of children drown out these sounds: which King feels has enhanced the area in acoustic terms.

In addition, King attempted a dialogue in another Berlin neighborhood which emphasized the benefits of classic :

In his 2007 project Urban Soundmarks, he not only documented the soundscape of a neighbourhood in Neukölln, a disadvantaged area in the south of Berlin, but drew up an urban planning concept that incorporated sound design and presented it to the borough council. His suggestion was that open-air cafes or a market could acoustically improve this relatively quiet neighbourhood.

Historic attention to soundscapes literally echo the visual and focus on hearing as well as seeing the qualities of cities over time.

Scholars have focused on the recreation of urban sounds to aid in the understanding of historic urban experiences, sometimes at an IMAX-like level. Berlin’s National Museums provide a good, ongoing example in this year’s dramatic exhibition about the ancient. classical city of Pergamon. Sounds accompany a panoramic reconstruction, as “[a]udio impressions including day and night simulations, complete with sunrise and sunset, and ambient sound effects that recreate life in an ancient city, allow the visitor to experience a whole day in Pergamon.”

Similarly, Pittsburgh-based non-profit Public VR‘s website offers an in-process reconstruction of ancient Pompeii’s theater district, which is silent for now, but will soon contain ambient sounds composed with simulated ancient Roman musical instruments.

In another effort, funded research has allowed multinational work on reconstruction of urban soundscapes in renaissance Spain through the study of “musicians, performers, institutions, composers, instrument makers, copyists, printers, consumers, blind balladeers and many others across a broad social spectrum”.

Whether directed to shaping the future soundscape or understanding past examples, one thing is clear. Sight and sound both play roles in understanding cities, and the role of sound is ripe for further exploration.

Pergamon graphic courtesy of Berlin National Museums. All other images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.

A similar version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic Cities.

In the images above, the historic American yard and parking strip reappear as balcony and roof garden in an urban condominium setting on the left. Meanwhile, as shown on the right, nearby conventional neighborhoods show exposed yard and curbside space beyond mere front lawns.

In the end, what do the images show about American cities, private residential property and the curbside next door?

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry at Sustainable Cities Collective, “Reading the Eclectic Urban Curbside”, and includes additional text and images. For the remainder, click here.

Rethinking allowed uses in city rights-of-way can change the look and feel of streets in unexpected fashion—especially when the focus is on more than the ambiance of sidewalk cafes, benches or clocks. One example is the impact of sandwich board signs, something I first noticed last year when researching the key role of corners in reconsidering neighborhood spaces.

Sandwich board signage, also known as “A-frames”, can be easily traced to nineteenth century urban roots. Local businesses rely on them for advertising and wayfinding, although they often impede the pedestrian traffic around them, block sight lines, or distract the vehicular traffic passing by.

Like sidewalk cafes, sandwich boards are making a comeback. Often prohibited in the past, they are now permitted, but regulated in scope. In many cities, such as Aspen, Colorado, the approach replaces the outright prohibition with specific conditions in certain parts of the city:

Sandwich board signs are intended for special sales, the advertisement of unique menus or offerings at restaurant establishments, and for businesses that are difficult to locate. Only one (1) sandwich board sign is permitted per business and a permit must be obtained. The size is not to exceed six (6) square feet per side. These signs are only permitted for retail and restaurant businesses within the CC and C-1 zone districts. Restaurants may use one (1) sandwich board sign if it is located on adjacent private property. Additionally, sandwich board signs may be used continuously by those locations identified on the City of Aspen Sandwich Board Sign Location Map. Amendments to the map may be made administratively by the Community Development Director.

Elsewhere, such as Seattle, sign dimensions and locations are similarly prescribed, subject to street use permit application processes, location criteria and fees ($146 for the first year) largely administered by the City’s Department of Transportation.  Generally speaking, businesses are entitled to use them, but questions inevitably arise when the signs are placed at some distance from the business, or in a way that constricts safe passage.

As a lawyer interested in the “on the ground impact” of policy and regulation, in this case I find the picture of implementation more interesting and dynamic than the actual permit criteria.  With a return to a neighborhood base built around multi-modal street life, the images here show sandwich boards as both fascinating symptoms and emblems of the changing city.

Perhaps because of business necessity and the the simple, homespun nature of sandwich boards, users assume flexible placement of such signage is appropriate.  Recently, one Seattle blogger took to moving sandwich boards to the side of sidewalks, reporting those he suspected as illegal. He also expressed ironic concern over potential city liability for any case of trip and fall.

Whether compliant or not (see my earlier essay on the role of “shapes of avoidance” on the landscape), I think the real question is how more random, simple signage such as sandwich boards typifies the popular essence of today’s urbanism. When a sidewalk is “occupied” in a more minimal fashion, is a fee really appropriate? Other than standards assuring public safety, are there aesthetic risks which cities should manage?  In summary is this a market that should largely go unregulated?

If public safety can be assured by simple criteria governing location, timing, size and shape, I offer five criteria for why sandwich boards should stay:

1. Homespun simplicity sells.

2. Artisans need work and small businesses need affordable ways to shine.

3. Well done signs bring character to neighborhood.

4. Sandwich boards can supplement permitted façade signage and increase the prominence of a small business.

5. Perhaps most important, like other forms of pop-up urbanism, removal is an option.

In summary, we should foster and encourage quick fixes that innovate. If done right, aren’t sandwich boards one example that can literally show the way?

All images composed by the author.  Click on each image for more detail.

A similar version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic Cities.

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry at Sustainable Cities Collective, “Writing About Cities: Courtroom Rules or Virtual Frontier?”. For the remainder, click here.

First image courtesy Google Street View. Second image composed by the author.

An abandoned cable car bridge in Seattle (pictured here in multiple views) could carry the same message of reinvention as New York City’s celebrated High Line, the notable elevated railway-turned-park.

In “The Necessity for Ruins” (1980), landscape essayist J.B. Jackson explained that such leftover edifices often inspire us “to restore the world around us to something like its former beauty”.  I’ve often written of Jackson’s advocacy for the use of ruins—not for what we now call “urban exploration” of abandoned places—but to reclaim what worked before.

With Jackson in mind, I often look for walkable, bikeable and transit-oriented places, reminiscent of times gone by. Such places are already inherent in the evolving city around us—remnants of earlier land uses and infrastructure eerily similar to what pundits call for today. These leftovers merge with changing lifestyles, and illustrate firsthand Jackson’s championing of accessible, nostalgic vestiges of an urban past.

In Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood (as illustrated by these photos), the city of 2012 overlays the city of 1930.  As the use of automobiles increased, infrastructure, such as the former cable car bridge, went out of service. In 1940, the cable car line was abandoned and replaced by a bus line.

These images of Frink Park (a portion of the 1903 Olmsted park plan), are consistent with today’s urbanist ideals, and show the juxtaposition of the bridge, bicyclist and pedestrian.  On the old track-bed, a piece of the park now continues, and becomes a trail through the hillside woods above.

How would Jackson interpret the cable car remains? Have they been lost to time, or are they an example of the inspirational reminder which Jackson describes? 

I choose the Jackson view.

Nearby, today’s light rail is assuming the former role of the cable car.  The Sound Transit tracks proceed northward, as the buildout of the region’s light rail system continues. In the next decade, light rail will turn east as well, and cross Lake Washington, not far south of the cable car’s former terminus—a dock for a long discontinued trans-lake ferry.

As Jackson noted, “Ruins provide the incentive for restoration, and for a return to origins”.  So too, they give incentive for finding your own “High Line”, often just next door.

Initial image courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives. Remainder of images composed by the author. Click on each image for detail.

A similar version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic Cities.

How will the city of tomorrow reflect adaptive reuse of the city of today?

I don’t think we ask that question broadly enough, and our day-to-day, property-specific incrementalism can easily overshoot the greatest lessons from history for today’s city politics, regulation and economic constraints.

A hometown case in point, last week, transported me from Seattle to Croatia for inspiration about why we should think beyond limited geographies, time frames and lifetimes when we discuss urban redevelopment options.

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry at The Atlantic Cities, “What the History of Diocletian’s Palace Can Teach Us About Adaptive Reuse”.  For the remainder, click here.

Image credits: Comparative aerial photos from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license.

Welcome to a new orientation towards city ruins—where Photoshop and urbanism have something in common—as shown in the accompanying image of the archaeological site of Pompeii.

First, the original photograph blends with four Photoshop “adjustment layers”, including monochrome and sepia versions of a formerly all-color background.

Second, as a result, modern visitors show a more contrasting, layered hue against an excavated Roman street scene, over 2000 years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Ironically, the Photoshop and urbanist layering combine to suggest a pedestrian-oriented, narrower right of way, often championed today, centuries after Pompeii’s demise.

Amid the partially restored grid of a celebrated ruin, the human scale transcends time. Ancient and modern intermingle in a way that words alone cannot describe.

Image composed and manipulated in Adobe Photoshop (Version CS5) by the author. To further explore Pompeii by Google Street View, click here.

Many of us who write about cities like to share rediscovered videos from times gone by. The videos are especially notable when ideas with currency today are discussed in other contexts, providing opportunities to compare, contrast and sometimes be humbled by history.

Here is a prescient video from 1948, about “Charlie”. This cartoon protagonist champions the basics of the new town movement in post-war Great Britain—a Garden City-inspired effort intended to ease housing shortages. The first phases of the movement brought to the city planning lexicon names such as Stevenage, Crawley, Hemel-Hempstead, Harlow, Hatfield and Basildon (see Osborn and Whittick’s classic The New Towns (1963) for the full story).

An interesting tidbit: as the video explains, the “neighborhood centre” was a key premise of the British new towns—based on the guiding principles of the Reith Report as implemented through the New Towns Act of 1946.

Similar to then-contemporary American “neighborhood unit” principles, the new towns commonly featured structured neighborhoods of 5,000-10,000 inhabitants with at least one elementary school, local shops on two sides of a triangle or flanking a square with a church or public house.

What can we learn from the ever-optimistic Charlie (who ends the video on a bicycle)? Take a look at the video above, or review the script below, courtesy of the British National Archives:

Charlie: Our town was going to be a good place to work in, and a grand place to live in, with plenty of open spaces; parks, and playing fields where people could enjoy them, flower gardens, and of course there’d have to be an attractive town centre too, with plenty of room for folks to meet. Good shops, a posh theatre, cinemas, a concert hall, and a civic centre.

Chairman: We have to plan the residential area next. Let’s consider it as a series of neighbourhoods and take any one of them. Now – how shall we plan? Most important of all is the child. So we’ll need pedestrian routes for the pram-pusher. Nursery schools within 400 yards of every home. Primary schools within safe and easy reach. Each neighbourhood must have its own.

Voices: “Churches” “Community centre” “Shopping district” “And lots of pubs – right next door to me” (answer) “Oh no, you don’t.”

Chairman: Oh, there’ll be a pub quite near enough for you. And finally, we started on the houses. The site was planned for maximum sunshine and then everyone could take his choice.

Charlie: Detached houses – semi-detached – terraced houses. Flats for people who wanted them – hostels where the young folks could get together, and bungalows for the old ones.

And so we moved right in. I’m telling you – it works out fine; just you try it!

Modernize the script, and take away the industry-avoiding colonization of the hinterlands. Consider the neighborhood vision with jobs close to home. I would argue that the city neighborhoods sought by the creative class, multi-modal “Charlies” of today are nothing new, right down to the hoped-for micro-brew a short walk or bike ride away.

A similar version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic Cities.

How should we define meaningful urban places? Who should set the stage?

Both are key questions in managing cities of the future.  The answers are not new.

Harvard Professor John Stilgoe argues for personal observation of the built environment. The title of Stilgoe’s most noted book, Outside Lies Magic (1998), sets the tone for self-inquiry.

Similarly, journalist-turned-urban authority Grady Clay explains how the “undisclosed evidence” of the form and patterns of cities awaits personal discovery.

In Close-Up: How to Read the American City (1973), Clay wrote:

And where are we? Grasping at straws, clutching yesterday’s program, swamped by today’s expert view, clawing at the newest opinion polls, but neglecting that limitless, timeless, boundless wealth of visible evidence that merely waits in a potentially organizable state for us to take a hard look, to make the next move.

Last August, from Italy, I recalled places for people-watching, where “we sit on the edges of the public realm and look in the mirror”.  I cast such places as indicative of safe public environments, including active streets, corners and squares.

But what about more direct observation of place, akin to the teaching of Stilgoe and Clay?

Here are three images of human interaction with urban places. In two cases, history surrounds, and in one case, an intersecting natural environment provides both modification and contrast.

From these images, what is clear?

I suggest five points:

• Humans both occupy and look within and without bounded vantage points.
• Nature, including light, color and climate complement human interest in and perception of the built environment.
• Place observers may expect a result, or a revelation, as part of an evolving story.
• Cities should help such observation by people.
• The stories behind the observers in each image could inform goals and objectives for a city’s future.

In conclusion, without vantage points, we dishonor individual needs.  The images show people observing place in a way that is intrinsic to who we are.

Clay would likely agree:

Experts may help assemble data, specialists may organize it, professionals may offer theories to explain it. But none of these can substitute for each person’s own leap into the dark, jumping in to draw his or her own conclusions.

The spontaneous involvement of the people in the images above shows a path to meaningful urban places. Every city-dweller has a story, a “leap in the dark”, conscious or not.  

The best placemaking may result where developers, designers, decision makers and pundits let astute, everyday users have their say.

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.

While the Colorado Rockies saw long-awaited snow this weekend, depths remain historically low.  Signs caution of “early season” conditions (more typical of November),  yet the economic impact is still unclear—resort revenues benefitted from robust holiday traffic through New Year’s Day.

This background—a low snowpack and its potential impact on the economic base of resort towns—provides an ironic gloss to my annual presentation at a national continuing legal education conference in Aspen.

Hence, an unoriginal, yet salient question: What of cities and towns built on climate-dependent activities, and the consequences of over-dependence on consistent weather?

After all, enthusiastic, robust tenets of urbanism usually rely on similarly strong, underlying economies.

The presentation is embedded below, and addresses—in summary form—several urbanist ideals, as well as the interplay of market preferences and public policy initiatives in two key areas: redevelopment in concert with new transit infrastructure, and reuse of formerly contaminated properties within urban cores.

Understanding the Domain of the Urbanist Lawyer

Posts from 2009, 2010 and 201l comment on earlier January visits and presentations in Colorado..

Image and presentation composed by the author.

The urbanist calendar published on Monday was, admittedly, a visual provocation, setting a stage for thought  about important urban issues for 2012. I see great merit in such urban exploration with a descriptive, rather than prescriptive approach.

But there is another provocation—from 2011 professional experiences and featured articles—that offer several themes that I expect will also endure.

Here is a synthesis of themes to watch, and why, based on my own encounters, and those of clients and friends.

As illustration, I offer citation to several of my articles as they reappeared in the trend-capturing Planetizen (after original appearance in one or more of myurbanist, The Atlantic, The Atlantic Cities, The Huffington Post, Grist, Sustainable Cities Collective and Crosscut) .

The themes span six subject areas, below.

More Roles for Social Media

Evolving communication technology has forever changed how we analyze and discuss the city.  Social media demands straightforward and sometimes trite efficiency.  Yet it provides for mainstream discussion of topics which were once the arcane domain of the legal, design and public policy professions.   “Even more so” is a safe bet for 2012.

• Make No Little Plans Without Twitter

Renewed Attention to the Romantic City

If we walk between the towns of the Cinque Terre in Italy, then why not capture this “essence of urbanism” at home?  Can an architect and a lawyer from politically diverse countries (and who have never met) together envision a collaborative professional approach which captures universal ways to read the evolution of urban places?

Compelling, illustrated ideas will always have a place in the urbanist agenda, including next year.

• Rethinking the Essence of Urbanism
• Understanding the World’s Urban Transition

Additional Counterintuitive Solutions for Infrastructure and Economic Development

Even “the humble pothole” is eligible for rethinking and reshuffling in the city of 2012.  My tongue-in-cheek story rode the guerrilla urbanism theme. Never-ending possibilities for innovation abound:  Consider the zip line between hill towns, taking the romantic setting to a new perception of the possibilities of place.

With governmental shortfalls still in the picture, creativity, analysis of privatization and related discussions will continue.

• Potholes as Parks?
• Placemaking With Zip Lines

New Types of Regulation and Urban Places

In Seattle, a diverse group convened to consider and recommend land use regulatory reform focused on market flexibility and job creation, both needed foci for 2012.  The Seattle City Council will consider the associated ordinances shortly.

In the mean time, with the closures of Borders’ bookstores nationwide, I urged cities to think about ways to assure “no net loss” for places where people can congregate and spend time together, a.k.a. “third places”.  I also illustrated the potential of the “pop-up”  ice cream laundromat, as an example of the “fusion business” that are increasingly a symbol of the evolving shareable-space city.

Similarly, my recent summary of the Urban Land Institute’s cutting edge “What’s Next?” report showed several ways cities will reshape and evolve over the next decade, based on converging, multiple socioeconomic forces.

• Neighborhood Sustainability the Focus of New Code Ideas in Seattle
• “No Net Loss” for Third Places?
• Fusion Businesses as Indicators of Urban Change
• How—and Where—Should We Live?

Ongoing Importance of Urbanism Without Effort

There will be no shortage of continuing discussion of placemaking in 2012.  Yet “alley movie night” showed that sometimes, we already have what we seek, and urbanism without effort is the best urbanism of all.

• Urbanism Without Effort

Additional Ways to Conceive of Urban Opportunity

Finally, here is a dialogue that may never end.

2011 was a year of protest in public places, which reinvigorated what will be a continued interest in urban gathering places, such as classic squares and city centers.  Other ways to conceive of the city also show potential.

As examples, I focused on the historic role of street corners around the world, and asked whether city vitality is best measured—by five qualities—at night.

One lingering and important consideration:  Not everyone lives in cities, nor is urban life a foregone conclusion.  In that context, I told the story of Lumana, a Seattle-based micro-lending and economic development organization focused on Ghana’s countryside—with a question—should we be more focused on rural than urban areas in the developing world?

• The Importance of Corners
• Is a Vibrant City Best Measured at Night?
• Is Urban Life Overrated?

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.

Picture this about 2012—an urbanist calendar with places in mind—framed by international snapshots in time.

Each month of this urbanist calendar could echo experience, and provoke optimism through depiction of people and place.

Here is my composition, and perspective, from Seattle and beyond.

January:  Street Vending (Arusha, Tanzania)

February:  Street Watching (Matera, Italy)

March:  Street Blending (Vancouver, Canada)

April:  Life Amid the Creative Class (Gates Foundation, Seattle, USA)

May:  Urban Bicycles at Rest (Florence, Italy)

June:  Iconic Skyline (Seattle, USA)

July:  Urban Density at Work (Valetta, Malta)

August:  Transportation Choices (Nice, France)

September:  Nature in the City (Seattle, USA)

October:  Nightlife (Moscow, Idaho, USA)

November:  The Storefront at Rest (Lucera, Italy)

December:  The Laneway  (Melbourne, Australia)

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.