Category: urban views

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.

visual adventures of the urban bicycle

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability, urban views4 Comments

Today, across the world, in multiple contexts, the allure of the bicycle knows no bounds.

Commencing with the atmosphere of Florence, at night above, the images presented here provide multiple examples of the urban bicycle in practice, whether whimsical, functional or historical.

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

All images composed by the author in Canada, France, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Tanzania and the United States. Click on each image for more detail.

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.

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.