choosing place-receiving over placemaking, and why

On March 13, 2014March 16, 2021 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban abstractions, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effortLeave a comment

A footnote to the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

In 1997, I returned to Europe after a long absence. My Paris photograph, above, jump-started a then-dormant fascination with the scenery of urban life and form.

I later digitized the photograph, to enhance internal contrasts between the Eiffel Tower, the layered scene on the Pont d’léna and the Champs de Mars beyond. My goal? An indelible impression, evoking a provocative, dream-like quality, consistent with a profound place-based memory.

Call this informal process “place-receiving”, and not placemaking.

Is place-receiving composed of unique occurrences, limited only to when and where we, the users, find them? Can they be replicated? If so, how?

These questions raise a practical side—and a real challenge—in assuring that placemaking efforts dovetail with the human nature of place-receiving described here.

The challenge comes from today’s renewed interest in creating special urban places for people—whether public, private or somewhere between—often offered by design professionals or related consultants.

Sometimes, the look and feel of a remade urban place is not consistent with the human perceptions common to place receiving. A quick example from my hometown: Assertions that downtown redevelopment approaches and several features of the Seattle waterfront plan just don’t fit the context of local climate, local history and likely end users.

Sixteen years later, disassembling the Paris photograph, I see many central elements of what urban visitors, residents and design professionals aspire to, whether resulting from spontaneity, casual tactics, or more purposeful plans. The photograph suggests several words well within the vocabularies of placemaking, complete streets, green infrastructure or human-scale approaches.

Some summaries of these elements seem stale and full of labels. Others evoke emotion through climate, color and the built environment. Here are just five examples:

The pavement dramatically mirrors people approaching the Eiffel Tower on the Pont d’léna.
The Eiffel Tower, the Pont d’léna, an equestrian statue, cars, buses and people combine to enhance a Paris view and experience.
The grainy textures of infrastructure stand out along the Seine.
Water and pavement blend in Paris.
A red bus and red backpack stand out against the Pont d’léna, the base of the Eiffel Tower and the expanse of the Champs de Mars.

Other summaries could be more poetic, or more human in focus. And perhaps they should, because place and place-receiving occur as much in our minds as in the real world.

My take? In the end, we should focus more on place-receivers as the most authentic stakeholders of meaning in the urban experience. If people cannot place-receive with a sense of acceptance and inspiration, placemaking may mean very little indeed.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city,see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

revisiting a simple basis for common ground in urban settings

On February 9, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effortLeave a comment

A footnote to the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

Today, with snow on the ground in our region, some tongue-in-cheek Facebook threads with writer and friend Knute Berger, and later with Bellevue, Washington City Council Member John Stokes, alluded to the common bond and unifying effect of a snowfall.

In response to a Facebook version of the photograph above, in which I mocked an “envious” Seattle urbanist bird admiring Bellevue, Stokes wrote:

Nice little city we have over on this side of the lake, excellent photo. That bird is in a nice place too. Great region, unified today by Nature.

Much like my “placemaking” observations about the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl parade in last Friday’s The Atlantic Cities, this social media chatter focused me on another spontaneous event that bridged political and economic boundaries as a common experience: a uniform, visible cover on the land.

I returned to one of my favorite pieces of writing, and a 35-year fascination with the concluding paragraph of James Joyce’s 1914 short story, “The Dead“, included in Dubliners.

The short story’s ending stressed—not so subtly—the unifying effect of snow spread uniformly over a divided Ireland:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

A bit ponderous, perhaps?

Of course. But for me, it is a déjà vu about the potential for common ground.

In college, I was even more ethereal on the same theme, in a short story about snowfall in Jerusalem. Emulating Joyce, I toyed with a seeming unity of snowfall in a divided city—something I have seen journalists imply a few occasions since. (In particular, a New York Times reference barely two months ago cited joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts to assure safe passage of Israeli officials from Ramallah back to Jerusalem).

This déjà vu is a clarifying footnote to why I have embarked on a series about urban juxtapositions, overlaps and overlays. Thanks to the snow, and the Seahawks’ parade, there now is a new gloss on the suburb/city-based ninth entry of a week ago.

I’m even more convinced that analysis and dialogue about cross-silo experiences can help avoid a divisive undercurrent to the ongoing refinement of urban best practices— beyond traditional monikers of city, suburb, region and neighborhood.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city,see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

Seattle’s Super Bowl parade and placemaking lessons learned

On February 7, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration, urban views, urbanism without effortLeave a comment

Professional efforts to create great urban places have a lot to learn from unifying regional events that cut across silos of culture, age, income, or neighborhood. Such events need not be limited to rebuilding after a superstorm or earthquake—they can be as simple and spontaneous as one city’s celebration of its first-ever Super Bowl championship.
…….

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

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

Image composed by the author in Seattle.

the meaning of visual overlays at the edge of the city

On February 3, 2014February 2, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effortLeave a comment

Ninth in the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

Sometimes, a city looks like a suburb and a suburb looks like a city. That is the case above, and below, with comparable imagery from across the world, and across urban history.

In the first photograph, above, the foggy skyline of Bellevue—the so-called “suburb” flanking Seattle—contrasts with one of Seattle’s oldest single family neighborhoods in a particularly provocative way.

I met this glowing vision of a “suburban” center across Lake Washington on Saturday night, just after discussing Seattle’s ongoing debates on how best to accommodate new building height, and simultaneously achieve affordability, growth-related services and infrastructure.

In the second photograph, below, the fuzzy line between city and suburb resounds even more directly, based on the literal translations of place names dating back at least 1000 years. Mdina, Malta, the island country’s historic capital, contrasts with its surroundings, including the adjoining town of Rabat (to the left).

In the Maltese dialect (substantially based on Arabic), “Mdina” (like the Arab “Medina”) means “city”, and “Rabat” was derived from the Arabic word for “suburb” (الرباط) —but, ironically, Mdina was eclipsed in size and encompassed by the larger Rabat long ago.

The age old questions of urban boundaries and city walls matter less today in a physical sense, but these photographs both suggest that the political overlay of region, cities and neighborhoods still keep visible form, however counterintuitive. And this age-old juxtaposition of city and suburb, and their latent interrelationships still dominates today’s writing about cities.

Some revel in imagery of automobile-based suburban decline and creative reinvention and retrofit; those who write about resurgent suburban strategies in the face of “city” ascendance are now center-stage, including my two favorite books by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. (For a very recent, related sentiment, see also Jillian Glover’s thoughtful reflection from late January about suburbs as a laboratory for millennials to remake sprawl).

As for me, neither a true academic nor a design professional, I prefer the simple spirit suggested in this series—and the “ripple in time” that these photographs represent.

What we see every day can inspire thoughts and questions, policies and plans. To me, such images of the ambiguous edges of modern settlement are catalysts beyond labels. They show urban juxtapositions that should take us beyond traditional monikers of city, suburb, region and neighborhood, and to focus on the forces that are common to all. Examples include the basics common to all urban areas—movement, settlement, home-work connectivity and the modes of travel between.

Mdina and Rabat are place names that have outlived their meaning in Malta, something we might consider for our own language of urbanism.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

urban blending and the mythical search for ‘congruity’ in the city

On January 28, 2014January 29, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, environmental and land use law, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effort

Eighth in the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

Last week, a colleague in my day job contacted me in search of an expert witness in a large American city. This ask for a recommendation—and its premise—was not unusual for a pending design review process. His client needed a credible opinion that proposed development, flanking a current urban open space, would be “incongruous” with the existing use.

For many, a dramatic contrast in height, bulk and density is the recipe for “incongruity”. But, in a larger sense, don’t today’s urban centerpieces by definition show the latent “incongruities” of city life?

Think of Chicago’s Millennium Park, and its multifaceted and controversial history of funding snafus, cost overruns and debates about building aesthetics, security practices and public access. Should default discussion about an urban project really be focused first on surrounding building height and modulated, architectural solutions (sometimes termed “density with grace“)?

Actually, urban blending and any associated quest for balance are much broader topics, and my response to my colleague above was both quizzical and consistent with my New Year’s, series-framing premise: Once a potential urban overlap, overlay, or “juxtaposition” emerges, the search for harmony and agreement should travel far beyond physical limits, in a comprehensive fashion not limited by ambiguous words.

Many “experts” opining on tall, “densifying” edges of public open space are actually more concerned with broader issues, such as funding mechanisms that pay for the open space and improvements, as well as other key, urban “go-to” disciplines, including transportation and housing. This breadth of focus can lead to a very different view that leverages “incongruity” as the inevitable urban solution.

In other words, the “incongruity” that some would malign as an uneven landscape of height and imbalance, becomes a treasure-trove of irregular, provocative architecture and investment. This investment generates aesthetic and monetary capital to enhance, and not detract from, the public realm nearby.

. . . .

As often happens, consideration of these issues reminded me of something more fundamental and traditional—a mix of human imprints on the natural environment that I have written about before, a world away. In Iceland, I characterized much of what I saw there as an unforgettable balance of human settlement and dramatic surroundings.

As I said last year both here and in Atlantic Cities:

In Icelandic landscapes, in small towns, and in the resurgent capital city of Reykjavik, are scenes and stories that transcend nature, culture and the built environment. In the imagery of such places, we see scaled expressions of urban settlement and transport, both past and present, including dramatic examples of human interactions with the raw elements of nature.

In these photographs, the visual juxtaposition of fishing village and glacier, of small buildings and sky, is to me, nothing short of astounding. The harmony and agreement—the “congruity” that is the foil of this story—is clearly present where churches and outbuildings on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula honor natural surroundings with simplicity and scale.

In the city, can we, and should we, aspire to such purity?

How much should regulations, and battles of noble NIMBY and developer, dance around the prospect of such resplendent and ideal visions?

While under our regulatory system, the whims of subjective citizen commissioners may be kept honest by largely objective city staff, project proponents will almost always argue the real cost of materials and the balance of profit that complicate the limited aesthetic orientation proffered above. In a “densifying” urban core, the marketplace often varies from an implementable, smaller scale of development.

The point of showing a vision as clear as the Snæfellsnes Peninsula—supplanting for a moment Millennium Park’s big city dimensions—is not to dwell in a nostalgia of lesser scale overseas. Rather, by showing examples of authentic harmony and agreement—at least as I see them—we can distinguish the balance humans still carry out in the raw landscapes of simpler places from the vocabulary of balance we often seek downtown.

. . . .

When faced with a juxtaposition such as the problem presented—an “incongruous” urban development—I have learned both as practitioner and pundit not to dwell on the perfect extremes sought by proponents and detractors. Client permitting, I would rather spend time with the inherent compromises necessary when the discussion inevitably moves toward the merger of public and private realms.

If we remember these nuances in urban setting today, we will better understand that balance and “congruity” are not absolutes, but end-games with multiple meanings, dependent on context, and careful reflection.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

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Category: urbanism without effort

choosing place-receiving over placemaking, and why

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revisiting a simple basis for common ground in urban settings

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Seattle’s Super Bowl parade and placemaking lessons learned

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the meaning of visual overlays at the edge of the city

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urban blending and the mythical search for ‘congruity’ in the city

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