A spontaneous and delightful redundancy enhances sense of place on the Royal Mile.
Image composed by the author in Edinburgh, Scotland. Click on the image for more detail. © 2009-2015 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
Category: urbanism without effort
from urbanizing to urbanism, 2014, according to Facebook cover photos
During a year filled with four trips abroad and two months away, many of my 2014 Facebook cover photos helped fill my yearly urban and exurban diaries.
Themes address the overlapping (and therefore hardly mutually exclusive) nuances of habitation, history, cityscape, landscape and ecology.
France, Italy, Monaco, Scotland, Spain and the United States all unfold below according to these categories, in a fashion intended to memorialize an extraordinary 2014.
Habitation
History
Cityscape
Landscape
Ecology
All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2015 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.
viewing urban, 2015
My first two images of 2015 really don’t need captions or narrative. At a glance, they show the viewable factors of context and color, light and dark, land and water, nature and structure, where people work and live and more.
These viewable factors are all rudiments of what we see in an urbanizing world, and suggest balances ripe for the ongoing dialogues of sustainability, climate change, the shared economy and assurance of equity along the way.
Happy New Year, plain and simple, from Seattle, urbanely photogenic for its first sunset portraits of the year.
Images composed by the author in Seattle. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2015 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.
towards canine equity in the city
Now is the time for the urban dog.
One of the most immediate cultural distinctions a traveler notices in France is omnipresent,well-behaved dogs, often quite unlike their detached American cousins (perhaps including my own). In a matter of a few weeks, I have assembled a mental diary of locational examples that illuminated the integrated role of multi-modal canine life.
Examples included sitting on adjacent train seats, in restaurant diners’ laps and on park benches next to owners. Not to mention my almost tripping over many, child-like, aisle-shopping companions.
These observations remind me, frankly, that we often regulate away the opportunity for certain, traditional life-enhancements in the interest of public health, something that probably made sense in a more feral age.
But if we are truly on the way to inevitable urbanization, I vote for the extension of the mixed use, sharable spirit to enable more equity for the urban canine.
I, for one, don’t mind sitting next to a well-behaved poodle, or shopping with dogs in both the Gucci in Cannes, as well as the Guccy Wawa located a few towns away.
Images composed by the author in Saint Tropez, Cannes and Fréjus, France. Click on each image for more detail. © 2009-2014 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.
on learning from urban immersion
How we experience purchases of coffee and baked goods may sound fairly trivial, and elitist.
But, based on my current immersion in the south of France, I have come to think these simple interactions offer valuable lessons for how to live in neighborhoods and cities. The rhythm of traditional transactions, with deep cultural roots, offers significant lessons about the role of expertise in daily life.
I saw it in Fréjus this morning in the wisdom of the coffee vendor. In a transaction that was more consultation than transaction, he custom-ground “moka sauvage” beans after carefully listening to our stated needs, about the flavor we were looking for, and how we prepare our coffee—in an Italian stove-top espresso pot. We emerged from his small commercial space with an impeccable recommendation. A fine diagnosis, I thought, from a doctor of arabica.
Similarly, yesterday, while sampling hot chocolate, in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, I watched a man enter and review the lemon pastry options de jour. After some discussion, reflecting the expertise of the vendor, he chose a lemon tart over a lemon cake. The dialogue was brief but refreshingly complete, something akin to a computer or camera purchase in another world. It was as if time had turned back to something that has always been or something that we are always searching for.
Inspired by the tradition of this pastry transaction, it was our turn. How to decide: a green tea sponge cake, with blackcurrant filling, or a dark chocolate mousse cake with coffee filling?
One or both, and if both, when to eat?
Again, the old world, pre-Apple Store suggestion by the shopkeeper: “Un gateau pour aujourd’hui, et un gateau pour demain” (one cake for today, and one cake for tomorrow), we agreed. And then the punchline, as the young woman switched to English with a beam in her eye:
“And, if you eat both today, you can come back tomorrow”. (She hopes, perhaps).
Lesson learned from this extended time away: Remember the urban rituals where you can still find them, whether closer or farther from home.
Images composed by the author in Fréjus and Roquebrune-sur-Argens, France. Click on the image for more detail. © 2009-2014 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.
For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.