Category: infill development

contemplating ‘the genius of a place’

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, urban views16 Comments
The genius of the old ways, near Cortona in the 1950's

If universal questions about the dynamics of place need a stage to be answered, there is no better theater than Cortona, Italy, home to Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, and a symbol of the romantic ambience of a simpler life.

There, American expatriate and film producer Sarah Marder left a long career in the banking industry to produce a pending documentary, The Genius of a Place, which tells both a personal and universal story based on 25 years of observing a commercial transformation from a tradition-based, agrarian economy to dependence on tourism and world renown.

The film’s title is no accident, echoing English poet Alexander Pope’s exhortation that we “consult the genius of the place in all”. The film crew followed suit, listening to evidence from the Etruscan past to today.

Despite the idyllic hill town setting (and interviews with well-known icons including Mayes herself, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Irons), Marder insisted to me from Milan this week that while the movie was filmed in Cortona, the focus is far broader. “We see Cortona as a symbol for places all around the world facing similar challenges, undergoing rapid change, growth and construction.”

The film crew is pursuing what Marder terms “a balanced approach”, examining the benefits and drawbacks of this transformation. For instance, interviews depict a more dynamic town economy of new jobs and businesses, but also convey how the town center population has dwindled from a post-War high of roughly 7000 to less than 1500 today.

Marder at work in Cortona's main square

Similarly, townspeople explain how, as real estate prices have climbed, locals have sold older dwellings in favor of larger homes in outlying areas. The clear message is one of a changed commercial fabric, with stores now catering almost exclusively to touristic whims, not residents’ needs.

Footage also shows familiar urban challenges, Cortona style. Like many tourist centers, parking availability is often limited. In peak seasons, trash piles grow next to dumpsters. A well-digger explains the need for increased well depths based on substantially increased water demand.

From my perspective, in bridging common urban growth experiences worldwide, Marder’s endeavor is both remarkable and sincere. What happens to an authentic place forever altered by unexpected notoriety, such as Mayes’ arrival, books and films? How is tradition changed and culture compromised? How should growth be managed and a sustainable local economy preserved?

These are not casual questions about the impacts of tourism, but rather about best practices going forward, based on legacies potentially lost. As Marder explained during our several recent discussions:

As I saw things begin to change starting around 2000, I wanted to find a way to document some aspects of Cortona before they changed beyond recognition or repair. I especially wanted to document the way of life of the elderly, which resemble life from centuries ago, because I could see that it would soon be extinct. Ironically, I seemed to be among the few noticing. From the perspective of many, it was a non-issue—most people embraced their day-to-day concerns and were not worried that the town might change in unsatisfactory ways. For them, the town’s well-being followed from a legacy of the past 3000 years.

In fact, places like Cortona, with special topography, viewpoints and strategic advantage, have long driven human settlement. I wrote last year how historic hill town settings are instructive for more than romantic vacation ambience—they contain important lessons about successful human settlement.

These settings blend with natural surroundings; keep up a pedestrian identity, with limited vehicular access; emphasize aesthetic principles (views to and from); communally group institutions around public open space; carefully merge public pathways and private dwellings; offer efficient living spaces and allowance for density; as well as display innovative bases for water collection and storage and management of sewage and stormwater discharge.

An ancient borgo, or tiny village, in Cortona's surrounding countryside

With similar factors in mind, Etruscan choice of city location was typically a matter of utmost importance, carried out by specialized elders who knew how to apply the right criteria for a suitable site. Marder confirmed that as late as the 1950s, town residents were still using 2000-year old Etruscan wells scattered throughout the town.

Considering all that Marder and her team have achieved to date, the film could offer an enviable case study. In Genius’ merger of celebrity together with dozens of interviews with ordinary, yet thoughtful people, insightful views about placemaking in a global economy emerge. In the specific case of Cortona, Marder implicitly wonders whether tell-tale, accidental notoriety should be envied or avoided, mitigated or embraced.

Although Cortona’s recent growth has come mainly from tourism, in conversation, Marder focused instead on new development that has accompanied the town’s fame. She considers tourism just one of the many types of development a place can pursue, usually in a relatively unenlightened way:

All places understandably seek economic development. These same places then find themselves at some point wrestling with the side-effects of development that they didn’t ponder or manage particularly well. They didn’t foresee the future repercussions of their actions and have compromised their place through myopic behavior. That’s something sad and yet we, the creative team, believe it’s a universal story, something that is happening to communities all around the globe.

Until the film’s completion, the best summary of Marder’s message is through the film’s trailer, embedded below, as well as a variety of clips on YouTube.

The team behind Genius has the ambitious goal of a 2013 Sundance Film Festival début, an honor granted to just 1 in 50 films. Plans for 2012 include distilling 4000 minutes of footage into an about 90 minute film by September.

Meanwhile, people often ask the production team if the film is going to propose solutions to the questions presented. While neither a lawyer nor an urban planner, Marder said she is routinely pressed to generate “some policy, law or methodology”, something she said that she “is in no place to do”.

However, she has bigger plans that mirror the best of neighborhood outreach, visioning, and charrette. She hopes that the film will become a tool for promoting “local stewardship on a global level”, perhaps as a catalyst for touring workshops for engaging viewers on the unintended consequences of development in their own town or city.

“Is it Utopian to believe that people in communities could band together to safeguard their respective special place’s long-term interests?” she asked.

My answer honors the efforts of Marder and her film crew. As an alternative to traditional growth management approaches, legislative hearings and city council deliberations, perhaps we all should keep an eye on The Genius of a Place.

For more details on the film and production schedule, visit the film team’s website, here. Historic photo of Cortona-area oxen by Prof. Duilio Peruzzi. Photo of “Genius” on-set by Antonio Carloni. Photo of Cortona-area countryside composed by the author.

why ordinary urban experiences motivate change

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, sustainability, urban views11 Comments

One of my favorite motivational scenes, that inspires city reinvention, is the one above.

The photo shows the first part of the Nice, France tramway—a city-center transit line which has helped change an automobile-oriented downtown. Experiencing this image in real-time, applying the full range of human senses, compelled my understanding of what is achievable amid the urban fabric of today.

Immersion in the real look and feel (and sometimes sound and smell) of a more compact and sustainable local experience can feed arguments for change, justify expenditures or tell how to cast a strategic election vote. Personal involvement is the most powerful and verifiable way to champion the city cause, over and above mere acceptance of empirical data, article prose and illustrations.

Unfortunately, when it comes to these far-away urban places, not all of us have real-time access to the inspirational modern projects served by transit, or the historic monuments, streets and squares that illustrate the potential of creative city life.

How best then to inspire others’ personal preferences for cities? How do we translate in real terms the popular arguments in favor of urban density and moderated use of the automobile?

I have written a fair amount on similar supplements to popular visions of how cities “should” be.  My past proposals include developing one’s own urban diary, considering the real challenges of “bringing home history from another place” and outlining the risks of developing “place-echoing” venues with a purpose only to provide––without more––decorative facades of more desirable places.

When advocating for clients or researching transit-oriented development topics, I have found that often the most daunting task is to cast an ideal new goal (such as re-engineering transit-based places next to single-family neighborhoods) as something of value, convenience and pleasure that will improve day-to-day life.

Here are three, perhaps non-traditional thoughts about how to bring messages home in a meaningful way.

By example. How to further the potential of a green tramway, even if it means giving up something accustomed, like street parking? Acceptance and excitement about the concept might occur through indirect, yet powerful experiences:  while sampling a local streetcar and understanding its convenience, suffering a long commute and its related frustration, or vicariously in a phone conversation with a friend who has just had a real-time experience in a far-away place where such transport exists.

Only when an abstract goal has such personal meaning can it be complemented through example, such as the photograph of Nice, France.  For some, such as property owners along a planned transit improvement, commitment may only be achieved after receipt of an ample compensation award by a transit agency to “sweeten” the deal.

By gestalt. Consider the value of a surprise event that recalls something well-known to you.  My own such experience was a sudden brush with a famous painting early one morning, where a similar, modern view resulted in a new perspective.

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting (from 1942) has long symbolized the loneliness and isolation of urban life.

That Hopper painting, much critiqued and recreated for almost 70 years, appeared anew to me in a university city (Eugene, Oregon), in early morning darkness.

But, ironically, inside the new “Nighthawks” setting was an upbeat, small city crowd with resilience and interaction—the opposite of Hopper’s interpretation of urban life—an environment which suggested the positive elements of human interaction as the baseline for all of our urban potential.

By local reinvention. A logical place for firsthand observation is close to home, where local action can supplement big ideas through demonstrable implementation, such as a reclaimed natural system, a dedicated restoration of a creek in urban woods.

One such “scaled” lesson learned comes from a historic urban park network, partially restored by neighbors, working with the Seattle Park Department. Seattle’s Madrona Woods story, accessible here, shows us how and why.

Note the city woods, then (1909), and now (2011):

And see the new pedestrian bridge, and restored Lake Washington shore:

While photographs, artwork, numbers and the written word are accessible to most, in my view, limited access to real-time experience of place is a challenge to urbanist sermons and rankings.  I find that successful advocacy and implementation is more about facilitating real and personal commitment in others than in proselytizing about the abstract, and for that, we need more accessible experiences.

In the end, urging people to witness and experience their own examples, gestalt and local reinvention may become the most successful advocacy of all.

Image of Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper via Wikipedia, fair use. 1909 postcard of Madrona Park courtesy of City of Seattle. All other images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail.

how city gates define urban space

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, urban administration4 Comments
The city gate of old: form follows function

In a time of urbanization, “arrival cities” and metropolitan regions with multiple urban centers, should a city provide an entry differentiating itself from its barrios, suburbs and exurbs?

Today’s post continues as an exclusive entry on Sustainable Cities Collective. For the remainder, click here.

how temporary and simple places can define city life

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability12 Comments

Just imagine an efficient scene of shuttle transit from a large parking area to your destination, a compact service district. At the end of the shuttle, medical services, a bank, food, drink, entertainment and public restrooms greet your arrival. The spirit of human activity and community are everywhere.

We know these qualities as the ideal characteristics of urban density, of transit-oriented development and of successful, traditional or new “infill” neighborhoods. We also know these qualities as reflective of simple and basic underlying human needs.

And that is exactly the point, as the description above is not of a city, but of the staging and administration area for the obstacle course known as Hell Run, “the most kick-ass mud run on earth”.

Participation in a temporary gathering place, whether it is the staging area for Hell Run, Burning Man or a county fair, remind us of the fundamentals of human settlement, and the framework elements we are trying to recapture in rethinking cities today.

In fact, several authors have addressed the more purposeful creativity of Burning Man, and have debated the urbanistic standing of temporary or nomadic encampments, or, as Nate Berg has noted, city-like places.

I am particularly interested in core services that appear in such places, whether they last for one day or several, and what their inadvertent presentation and implementation tell us about human nature and first principles of association in urban areas. As Aron Chang recently wrote in adapting the work of Ellen Dunham-Jones, Christopher Leinberger and others, embracing traditional human qualities and day-to-day life patterns is essential if historically sprawl-based suburbs are to be successfully reinvented.

For me, the look and feel of the Hell Run staging area was actually a gestalt reminder of more profound, simplifying experiences in Tanzania earlier this year.

There, witnessing daily life was a “back to basics” reorientation which confirmed the underpinnings of cities as conceptualized by the Richard Florida model: places to creatively reinvent human capital from the ground up, taking people’s common and creative potential to higher levels.

I am not arguing event planning as a replacement for urban planning. Rather, I am using visual examples to agree with those who have acknowledged the human aspect of urbanism over top-down prescription or unsustainable patterns of growth.

As illustrated, temporary and less developed places can look eerily similar in the way fundamental human services are congregated and presented to the public, and I would venture that these are the true building blocks of cities everywhere.

It is beyond these building blocks—how our cities and those of the developing world continue to grow, and how growth is administered—where the real challenges continue.

Last March, in a baseline examination of the fundamentals of housing and the wheeled vehicle, I focused on a nagging question brought home from Tanzania and which recurred at the Hell Run staging area: Do we sometimes regulate away the urban vitality of our cities by attempting complex, prescriptive fixes — aimed at modeling or reclaiming what used to evolve naturally — and ironically squelch the first principles of human shelter and transportation suggested above?

Inherited forms of shelter and age-old methods of transportation are to residential zoning and infrastructure planning what oral histories are to Gutenberg — the backdrop of rich tradition for codification and institutional creation. If safety and well-being are maintained, such institutionalization may be laudable for preserving practices or legends otherwise lost with time. However, if the result is lost functionality, needless complexity, discrimination or prohibitive expense, the institution may need reexamination.

For instance, what if a zoning code is no longer cohesive, or impedes rather than accomplishes societal goals?

What if the automobile is overused, at increasing expense, when bicycle, cart, or other transportation would do, with the value added of health and exercise?

Sometimes this contrast of fundamentals to complexity, or of a different place and tradition, can refocus priorities, and warp the senses.

In the words of the postwar Italian writer and Invisible Cities author, Italo Calvino:

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

Consider Tanzanian roadside stands and the traditional forms of transportation used when a car is either unavailable, inaccessible or inappropriate. Commerce and people can move, without regulation. Wheels and the human body go places in ways we have forgotten. Innovative, human-propelled transport, often with goods attached, knows no bounds.

While not literally Calvino’s cities, images from the developing world, coupled with temporary places such as the Hell Run staging area, “exchange their form”. Together, their initial modesty suggests that through the complex evolution from initially well-meaning institutionalization, we risk losing what is most human about places we live.

So, in building urban community, it remains imperative to reassess—with simplicity in mind—and to always remember first principles, such as shelter and the wheel.

All images composed by the author near Karatu, Tanzania and Carnation, Washington. Click on each image for more detail.

exploring success of the nighttime city

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban views39 Comments
Safety, proximity and interaction: the stuff of poetry, metrics or both?

If “cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night,” as the English poet Rupert Brooke suggests, then how many of us should fear for our safety in the urban darkness? Is a nighttime city better measured by the numbers, rather than by such human perception and poetry?

In my view, first noted here. Brooke’s poetry is a worthy start. His feline analogy creates the framework for five important qualities of 24-hour, magnetic places. The first, safety, spurs four more—mobility, proximity, commerce and interaction.

An ideal night street dining scene would increase city rank

We know the positives from these qualities: legendary, all-night coding jags in the technology sector, vibrant nightlife and night markets, to name a few. All can enable more robust evening public transit service and police presence through a credible political voice lobbying for still more.

While metrics may not be necessary to frame the look and feel of a successful city at night, more formal measures might further structure inspirational images of vibrance over emptiness.

Perhaps it is time for a moniker—-a “lumens score” or “urban illumination index”—to add to the indicators of a 24-hour city, something characteristic of the creative metropolitan meccas called for by the vanguard of today’s urbanist advocates.

I can see the maps, graphs and charts, not to mention the list: “Top Ten Cities to Achieve Brilliance Without Light”.

The relationship between darkness and urbanism has been studied several times in interdisciplinary fashion, and at least one MIT course has been devoted to the “interaction design” of the associated “world of night”. However, my sense is that these efforts remain far more at the cutting edge than they should.

Low interactivity, an incomplete street: a low "lumens score"

In discussion of public safety issues concerning urban areas, law enforcement, design and planning often remain in their respective silos, devoid of integration.

Ongoing neighborhood policing and social service initiatives should be more outrightly integrated with the renewed focus on environmental and urban design criteria for safe streetscapes.

Concepts of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” (CPTED)—frequently international in nature—have been present for decades and were implied in Jane Jacobs’ work.

CPTED principles on display in Melbourne

A recent visit to Melbourne, Australia, showed certain CPTED principles along neighborhood streetcar lines, including ample (glare-protective) night-lighting, territorial sensitivities to illuminated, sidewalk-oriented window areas, enhancement of the role of passing vehicles, transparent protection from weather at building entries, and low bushes and/or lower picket-type fencing along the street to limit access while allowing for entry visibility.

Similar safety-enhancement approaches to safety of female transit users have received wide attention. Many cities and civic associations (such as the Downtown Seattle Association) have also advocated for integration of CPTED principles.

Increased advocacy efforts for funding of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure will accelerate policy and regulation encouraging such principles for safety. This should lead to further discussion opportunities for “complete streets,” which include the dimension of lighting to facilitate wider, multimodal use over a longer percentage of the day.

From the street, hidden possibilities intrigue the imagination amid open and closed businesses, shadows and light.

When evening light and crowds merge to create a sense of safety, where walking and transit define mobility and proximity, if commerce goes on without the sun, then human interaction with the built environment is a demonstrated success.

If we need to energize this after-dark integration by goal setting, for a “lumens score” of 10 out of 10, time is of the essence.

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