Considering Urban Retail: A Re-post at the Crossroads

As we head into 2009 with economists predicting the closing of as many as 73,000 retail locations across the United States due to dismal holiday sales, it seems like a good time to look back at one of Where's most popular posts from last year, "The Possibilities of the Post-Retail City," originally published in August of '07.


I just had my first exposure to Reverend Billy, the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping. After reading a Polis post about the Reverend's anti-consumerist group, I thought it was an actual church. To which I said: "Oh, excellent.

Of course, the CoSS is actually an act, with the "Reverend" being the stage persona of NYC performance artist Bill Talen. It's a send-up of streetcorner preachers and televangelists, and it sounds hilarious. Better yet, there's a point! Reverend Billy preaches against corporatist architecture and urbanism, advocating for sustainable, walkable communities with local economies. And while the site does pay lip service to independently owned local businesses, it is the Church of Stop Shopping, and one of their taglines is "Love is a Gift Economy!" Obviously, these people think that there are better ways for us to use all of that street-level retail space.

And that got me thinking: if there were no major retail chains and independents had to hold up the local economy, what would we do with all of that ground-floor space? Indeed -- and my upbringing in a capitalist society may shine through right here -- but where would we walk to? Certainly, there are plenty of places that we walk every day, but a large amount of pedestrian traffic is genereated by shoppers. And while it's not a requirement for these ground-level spaces that make up our streetscape be places of commerce, their presence is utterly vital to functioning neighborhoods. Often (these days) even moreso than upper-level residential windows, storefronts are the Jacobsian "eyes on the street" that act as a natural deterrant to crime.

Shopping is also a huge part of the social life in many (if not most) contemporary cities; in fact, that's just what Reverend Billy and his fake church take issue with. And whether or not you agree with the Church of Stop Shopping (or, as I'm sure many do, find it outright offensive), it's interesting to imagine a world in which shopping took a back seat to other social spaces as the dominant street presence. Imagining Paris without the Champs-Elysées or New York without Park Avenue sparks a giddy, no-holds-barred creative energy akin to imagining those cities in a work of science fiction or postapocalyptic literature.

To get an idea of what might fill the void, it might be interesting to see how social space is structured in places where gift economies (or at least barter systems) often already exist and retail strips are few and far between, at least in the traditional sense: slums.

An article from Forbes, mentioned briefly in a previous post at Where, described the socioeconomic situation of many older, established slums in Asia and South America thusly: "Many slum dwellers are in fact entrepreneurs, albeit writ very small. They recycle trash, sell vegetables, do laundry. Some even run tiny restaurants and bars for their neighbors." So while there are no Ginza Districts in the favelas of Rio, there is a social commerce to such places. Restaurants and bars remain important components of the neighborhood, which makes good sense; people have always come together over food and drink, and will continue to do so regardless of any freak evaporations of the retail sector.

Another thing that brings people together is knowledge -- or, more specifically, the exchange thereof. Another recent post covered McGill University's Edible Cities project in Kampala; the site for the students' project "includes a low-lying wetland area...where a youth cooperative practices brick-makings, providing work for otherwise unemployed youth...and a sloping dryland area where farming is [practiced]." While this is a very rural area being discussed (albeit in the context of a larger city), the Kampala site illustrates two more possible uses for a retail-less streetscapes: public workshops (which could cover a variety of topics in addition to brickmaking) and storefront hydroponic community gardens.

Heh.

If the second option seems somewhat far-fetched, the first is hardly at all; in fact, in the face of looming irrelevance in the digital age, libraries around the world are starting to take on a more social role in their respective cities, staging various events and programs to encourage public discourse and teach skills that cannot be learned with a mouse and keyboard. One of the most innovative library programs that I've heard of recently is in Medellín, the second city of Colombia.

Once the so-called Kidnappping Capital of the World, Medellín has made more news recently for building five spectacular modernist libraries (like the one in Santo Domingo Savio, pictured above) in its most impoverished barrios. One of the programs to utilize these new libraries -- which are equipped with computer labs full of brand spankin' new computers -- is HiperBarrio, which teaches teens in the barrios how to use blogging and other social media tools as a creative outlet for self-expression. Juliana Rincon, one of the founders of HiperBarrio, spoke of the program's inspirataion in a recent interview with Global Voices Online, saying, "It was amazing...telling these kids about blogs and finding out that they had no idea that there was something like a blog, that they existed. [Or even] that you could write online and have a virtual space to keep your writing, the videos you like, and pictures." Libraries, in this case, serve not just as containers for information, but as catalysts for the creation of new information and new ideas. Certainly, this kind of social space, the place of public learning, will play an increasingly important role in cities as we continue through the Information Age.

Whatever we come up with to fill storefronts and social spaces, shopping districts and neighborhood retail strips are unlikely to disappear within the lifetime of anyone reading this blog post. Still, imagining a world without retail can tell us a lot about how we use cities, why we do things the way that we do, and how we can improve urban places without courting Starbucks and Barnes & Noble for civic salvation. In fact, picturing your neighborhood without any shops selling anything other than necessities might be a great way to fall in love with the place all over again. That is, of course, assuming that you love your neighborhood -- and that you don't live off Rodeo Drive.

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That's all for now, folks. Best of luck to everyone in 2009. Let's hope it's not as bad as we're all worried it's going to be.

(Photo from Flickr user galitagreeneyes. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Urbanffffinds 028

WEEKEND READING: April 26-May 2, 2008

It's back! Did you miss it? Hooray for Weekend Reading.

ITEM ONE: First things first -- Jane Jacobs' birthday is coming up this Sunday. In her honor several cities around the US and Canada are hosting "Jane's Walks," free guided neighborhood tours. Whether or not you are living in a Jane's Walks city, make sure to get out and stroll around your neighborhood at some point this weekend.

ITEM TWO: Attributos Urbanos presents an awesomely thorough glossary of contemporary urbanism terminology. (via atlas(t))

ITEM THREE: CEOS for Cities on how homogeneity hurts innovation.

ITEM FOUR: NASA releases spectacular high-res images of cities at night, seen from outer space. (via The Map Room)

ITEM FIVE: Straightforward title for a great Planetizen post: Neighborhoods Are Building Blocks of Civic Life.

ITEM SIX: Jetson Green takes a look at deconstruction (material salvaging) and the green benefits. Video included!

ITEM SEVEN: We'll wrap up with some more watchable goodness. 'But it's supposed to be reading,' you say? Rules are made to be broken. Check out Peter Zumthor discussing his absolutely brilliant thermal baths in Vals (pictured).



(Photo from Flickr user Bau TW. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Designing SkyCar City: A Post-Studio History (Guest Post by Ella Peinovich)

Many notable architects and designers throughout history have created transportation-centric city models that represent the future or an idealized present. Historically, architectural movements have used these models to demonstrate their design fundamentals in a pure state to a world that did not, at that time, have the capabilities to achieve such idealistic forms. Each designer, in turn, walked a fine line between reality and fiction.

A few models worth mentioning would be the Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia’s Citta Nuova, and then, within the Modernist movement, Le Corbusier’s plan for Algiers and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. Later, the traditional utopian city changed when the line was officially crossed from being about the study of technological advances to science fiction, with Archigram’s Walking and Plug-in Cities. More recently, the 3D city model has been featured in the work of Dutch firms OMA and MVRDV through designs like the Hyperbuilding and the Five-Minute City.

Taking all of this into account, one can understand how overwhelming -- not to mention exciting -- it might be for a group of young architecture students to be presented with the open-ended challenge of creating such a complex city model by Winy Maas of MVRDV, a veteran to the topic. That was the situation I (and eleven of my classmates) found myself in during the last studio of my education in architecture.

“…create a city built for the use of a skycar, a city with 'streets' at any level, or perhaps empty of streets as we know them…”
-- Winy Maas, first day of the semester describing our assignment.

My studiomates and I were presented with an experiment: see how far transportation can shape architecture, with one constant variable -- the flying car. Winy had introduced us to a whole new set of Lego pieces; ones that were gravity-defying. We were to design a city that had no specific location, no city boundary, and no technological limits. This is a similar formula to those that have been at the heart of most city models in the past, except for the fact that we (twelve near-strangers) had no pre-established theory to drive the experiment.

We, with the guidance of our studio's co-leader, Grace La, quickly developed a pragmatic methodology of how to approach our design and then applied it to our hypothetical scene, assuming that humans would always be subordinate, or at least married, to our means of travel (this was also in line with the prescribed “sky car”). Ironically, though we were all architects-in-training, little time was spent designing architecture in the traditional sense. During our process, research, and developments we wore many hats: Urban Planner, Product Designer, Civil Engineer, Research Analyst, Historian, Editor, and then Architect. This mash-up of information with the added flavor of democratic group decisions more or less drove our re-imagining of the city form.

During this experience I learned some valuable design lessons. In no particular order of importance:

1) It is our responsibility as designers to address real issues rather than represent feel-good utopias.
A city model that is designed in reaction to current outstanding issues of common society (e.g. waste disposal, greening, traffic relief etc…) will likely get a lot of attention and praise. On the contrary, our city model chose to explore and build up a topic which currently carries a negative stigma. We suggested that, as a society, we accept that every person wants the freedom of having their own car. We chose to assume this desire of every individual and suggest that public transportation has no future. We feel our model holds its clout because it is based on realistic projections of where society IS headed, rather than where it SHOULD be.

2) Design by committee vs. the individual
When an individual is allowed to carry out an idea, they are able to create one conclusive and seamless design in a similarly seamless process. As soon as you allow everyone a voice, all you get is noise -- at least at first. It took my studiomates and I a while just to figure out how we could work together, which inevitably took away valuable design time. Admittedly I, and likely others, caved to the majority vote at different times during the design process just to move forward, and I know that many “place-holders” never got re-”placed”. However, I can confidently say that our design would not have been what it was without any one person in our studio contributing their input.

3) Build from the Bottom-up
I have to believe that the Modernists and Futurists had an idea for the final form of their models before they designed the infrastructure to support it. In my experience, a top-down method can be inefficient, continually having to cover its tracks along the way. Please do not misunderstand me; once a design has been established I think it is necessary to go back and implement the design diagram to every last detail, but I am referring the process of getting to your building diagram. On the contrary, we were very honest in our studies; we did not hide the unpolished edges that are always a possibility of functionally-driven design. Our process was prescriptive and built from the bottom-up.

4) Get Published
The most responsible thing a designer can do is contribute to the Industry by publishing and distributing their work. Being able to show something as a product of thought can create a much larger ripple than just talk, especial in a visually-oriented community. Work should be shared, flaws and all, so that others may see and critique in order to create dissemination.

There may be a conflict of interest for some in the architectural profession that view their work as an artform. But when you think of what has been entrusted to us by the public (e.g. to create efficient systems, reduce environmental impact, ect…) we owe it to everyone to find the best technologies to do the job, regardless of who authored them.

Now, well after the publication of Skycar City: A Pre-Emptive History, the record of my and my classmates' semester of city-building, it is up to the readers to make their own conclusions about the success of our research and model and decide whether it is worth mentioning alongside the great city models of the past.

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Big thanks to Ella Peinovich, a design associate at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill's San Francisco Office. Ms. Peinovich participated in a mixed studio, led by guest professor and MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas, of twelve undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Architecture and Urban Planning in the spring of 2006. The participants recorded their process and city model in the book Skycar City: A Pre-Emptive History.

Skycar City Studio co-leaders: Grace La, Winy Maas

Skycar City Studio participants: Bryan Howard, Tony Janis, Nick Moen, Ryan O’Connor, Trevor Patt, Ella Peinovich, Nick Popoutsis, Tarah Raaum, Gloribed Rivera-Torres, Scott Schultz, Tuan Tran, Andy Walsh

Edited 4/12/08 to include full list of studio participants.



Blogger's Note: The original post planned for tonight and announced on Sunday was going to focus on urbanism programs for kids in Singapore and Chicago. This post has been temporarily postponed, and will run at a later date. Sorry for any confusion!


Links:
Skycar City (Powells)

MVRDV-UWM Studio (Warning: absurdly long load time).

Brackets

(Photo from The New York Times. The full-size version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

The Future of (Urban) Shopping

"Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare."

That suggestion, originally made by Gorges Perec, is part of a longer quote sourced in a recent post at Pasta & Vinegar by blogger Nicholas Nova. Nova examines Perec's suggestion that we should "question [our] teaspoons," or look critically at things that we consider mundane or take for granted. "Make an inventory of you pockets, of your bag," the quote continues. "Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out."

Nova suggests: "Why is this important, maybe first to highlight how the mundane is intriguing. Beyond the descriptive level, it’s also curious wrt to innovation and design as it allows to ask question and possibly to nurture near future world." A previous Where post speculated on how streetscapes and shopping centers might evolve in a hypothetical, post-retail future. The more pragmatic way to approach this admittedly fantastical scenario would be to question the teaspoons of current retail environments as they exist today and think about how shopping might be a different -- but still essential -- component of urbanism a few decades hence.

A recent post at the David Report describes a design studio and upcoming panel discussion on the Future of Shopping. From that blog, I'll snatch another repurposed quote fragment: "Our culture is experiencing transition at so many different levels that we find ourselves at an unprecedented moment in history where we have begun to realistically re-imagine art, craft and design’s relationship to our culture, and its future...The future of luxury is an open question without obvious answers but it will be the young artists, craftspeople, and designers at Konstfack who will ultimately provide them. What will we be shopping for in the future? Bling Bling? The way things look now, it is more likely to be clean air and pure water."

The suggestion here assumes that the current transitionary period that humanity is experiencing will result in a fairly dire future. The commodification of clean air and pure water (which, to some extent, has already happened) will likely make shopping an even more important part of daily life. Imagine Wal-Mart selling de-particleized oxygen tanks in bulk, for the low low price of $259.99 a pack.

Purchasing essentials is, and will likely always be a tactile experience. It is quite common to buy a book without reading it first, or a CD without listening to it, but we are much more careful about buying things like food and shelter. In grocery stores, fresh produce is left out, unpackaged, to be groped and examined before purchase. Speaking of questioning tea spoons, think about your most recent trip to buy groceries. What was the ratio of things you'd tasted before to things you were trying for the first time when you rolled your cart up to the cashier's station? It's probably a safe bet that most of the food was familiar. And shopping for a new house or condo often takes months, with the buyer wanting to visit and experience firsthand the space that they might be purchasing to make sure that it meets all of their needs. What would the required commodification of air and water mean to urban retail environments?

Now swing the other way; let's end this post with some optimism. What will retail environments look (feel? taste? sound? smell?) like in the future if conditions generally improve for humanity? Retail is the essential element, the primary building block of the current globalized, megapolitan-level urbanism. Our infrastructure -- economic, transportation, and even social -- is largely built around shopping centers and commercial corridors. For better or worse, retail and commerce are often what give our society (and even our lives) meaning. With each successive generation, who you are and what you do are ever more tightly bound. So if our livelihoods and our identities continue to align more closely, it is very possible that urban commercial structures will become more diverse and complex. For retail, specifically, this could mean that shopping will become a much more immersive and meaningful experience, less about materialism for materialism's sake, and more about finding material goods that augment and/or enhance one's lifestyle in a productive way.

We see stores as boxes full of things that we can buy. But a retail environment has so much more potential than that. Rarely nowadays do store environments actually heighten the shopper's understanding of the products on display. If there is an effort to do so, it is almost never done at the middle class, mass market level. So how could retail environments change and adapt as consumers become, for example, increasingly environmentally aware, or as people become more interested in the related DIY movement?

The Reconfigurable House project sheds some light on this: "The project is a critique of ubiquitous computing 'smart homes', which are based on the idea that technology should be invisible to prevent DIY." The Reconfigurable House is an artistic experiment, an environment made up of easily manipulated experiential factors. Walking through the "house," a person can adjust everything from humidity to lighting to noise level. In a retail environment, this kind of technology could be used to expose and test products in an effort to build a consumer's trust. Shopping for a jacket becomes an entirely different experience when fitting rooms allow you to change the weather conditions to see how the garment holds up.

What would such developments mean for cities? It's hard to say. The visual impact of shopping corridors would likely remain the same. But the way that people interacted with stores, and the role that shopping played in daily life, would likely change. This has implied effects on everything from transportation planning to public space. What are some of the mundane aspects of contemporary retail districts that might provide some useful insight upon closer examination?

(Photo from The Style Press. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Question your tea spoons (Pasta & Vinegar)

The Future of Shopping (The David Report)

Reconfigurable House (2007) by Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer (Rhizome Inclusive)

Vital Risk

The Ansari X Prize offered $10 million to whoever could pull off the first non-NASA manned space flight in the US. It worked, and Virgin (of Megastore fame) will soon be offering commercial space flights as a result. The X Prize's founder, Peter Diamandis, had this to say about his inspirational award in a recent post in GOOD Magazine's Big Ideas series: "The Ansari X Prize experiment worked, just like when Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize for his transatlantic flight 80 years ago. We are genetically programmed to compete, and we do our best work, and take the highest risks when we go head-to-head for fame, fortune, or honor...X Prizes are one way to combat the risk-averse society that has developed over the last 40 years. As an American, I think risk-averse behavior is destroying our nation."

Diamandis, here, puts concisely into words what it seems like a lot of Americans are feeling lately: we have gone soft. The United States, one of the most dynamic and innovative nations in the history of human civilization, is falling behind other countries in many areas. Our telecommunications, internet, financial, and transportation industries -- among others -- are struggling to keep up with those in countries less tied down by byzantine policy and disturbingly well-established corporate hierarchies. The US is still a global economic leader, no doubt. Still, with China and India (not to mention little South Korea with its hyperfast 'net) nipping fervently at our heels, this country's position is not as assured as it once was. Our risk-averse behavior, which has manifested itself most blatantly in the nauseating wave of paranoia that has gripped Americans for the past seven years, is hampering our competitiveness in the global marketplace. At a time like this, visionaries like Diamandis are sorely needed.

That makes you wonder what the X Prize could do for American cities. As has been generally accepted as fact by now, the fortunes of contemporary nations are tied directly to those of those nation's major urban areas. In the United States, logic suggests that our lack of effective and innovative urban policy over the past half century (or more) has had more than a little bit to do with the US' threatened position at the top of the global economic heap. And with Scientific American recently having named the X Prize Foundation as the Policy Leader of the Year, it stands to reason that Mr. Diamandis might be able to do a lot of good by wielding some of his foundation's influence in urbanism-related fields.

As it turns out, he's one step ahead. The X Prize Foundation is currently sponsoring a competition to develop the world's most efficient vehicle -- with a minimum rating of 100 miles per gallon. Thanks to the auto and oil industries' ferocious lobbies, this kind of competition would have been unheard of just a couple of years ago. Now, the 43 entries are being prepared for the Detroit and New York auto shows. A 100mpg car -- designed and (hopefully) made in America -- is literally just over the horizon.

So take a minute, now, to imagine what the X Prize could do for the myriad of long-abused and misunderstood policy issues facing American cities. Private transportation is important in today's sprawling megaregions, but what might the X Prize be able to do to improve affordable housing, crime, or mass transit? The last of these was addressed in a recent op-ed piece in the LA Times (written, shockingly, by a policy analyst from the transit-loathing "Reason" Foundation), which asked: "The X Prize was just a $10-million purse, yet it helped induce the birth of private spaceflight as well as a host of technological innovations. Is it really so fanciful to think that it could conquer gridlock?" Here's the op-ed pitch for Los Angeles:

"The Metropolitan Transportation Authority carves out some of the $115 billion in transportation funding that's headed to the region over the next couple of decades to stage a contest....[and] creates two teams. Team A tries to lure as many motorists out of their cars as possible by building rail. (Note to referee: Ex-bus riders don't count as ex-motorists.) Team B must lure motorists to telecommuting. The team with the most ex-motorists after a set period of time wins the prize."

Game on!

(Photo from Flickr user phamthanhk45. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
X Prize (GOOD)

X Prize Foundation

Detroit 2008: Automotive X-Prize entries coming to Cobo (AutoBlog)

Create some healthy competition (LA Times)

The Craig Hartman Interview - Part II

This is the second part of Where's interview with Craig W. Hartman of SOM San Francisco about the firm's Treasure Island redevelopment plan. You can find the first part HERE.

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Where: Thanks for bringing up the neighborhood context, because that's exactly what I wanted to talk about next; you've provided my segue for me. The SOM San Francisco site has a description of the Treasure Island (TI) project and it goes into some of the details [of this plan], and one of the terms that keeps popping up in that is "island life." I got a kick out of that, because there's this idea of island life and, traditionally, I think you kind of think of the Caribbean -- you've got the drink in one hand and you're laid out on the beach and there are palm trees. There is a very relaxed and social connotation to "island life"...I'm interested in how you're creating community on this little island, because it is separate from the main city. As much as it has been integrated through transit, it's going to be sort of off on its own in some ways. So how is community built, and how is that urban lifestyle cultivated through the way that the site is designed?

Craig Hartman: That is really the crux of the issue here, and an interesting question, because I don't think anyone can really know what the nature of social and cultural life will eventually be on the island. The idea is to understand the unique culture of San Francisco and to try to find a way to transplant that to this island. And yet the island is a place apart and it’s culture is obviously going to morph into something that has its own character. I think most people would agree that one of the qualities of San Francisco culture is a very strong spirit of inclusiveness. I think there is an ethos held by the majority of the people who live here that accepts different lifestyles, and that an ethos that really honors the public realm; maybe even to give preference to the public realm over private interests. And there is certainly an ethos here that values environmental stewardship.

The social and cultural life of the island will evolve in a way that reflects the values of those who live there. What we are trying to do is to make the place one that provides a very rich set of public spaces that are consciously designed to encourage this idea of social connection and, hopefully, social inclusiveness. There are some very basic, pragmatic things being done about diversity of housing types that will cater toward a wide variety of demographics: of young single people, of families, wealthy people and people who have low and middle incomes. The idea is to make this a mix of the sort one would find in a real city, not an artificial, gated community with a single monoculture.

So we're trying to find ways in the planning of this island and the design of its architecture to enhance those qualities. That's what we mean when we talk about an urban ecology. We need to consider how we [can be] good stewards of the natural environment, but at the same time, we also want to think about the anthropological quality of this place, and that has to do with the culture. So on Treasure Island we are trying to weave the two together into a holistic ecology that brings together the natural environment and human culture.

And yes, "island life" as you suggest, brings Margaritaville to mind, but the intent is to make an authentic place that recognizes its unique place at the beginning of the 21st Century and in the middle of San Francisco Bay.


W: One of the big principles behind public space right now that's really getting a lot of attention is the idea of deliberately designing for a mix of different uses, too. In addition to designing for a large variety of people, you want it to be spaces that are used at all times of the day and night. Are these pocket parks a way of trying to make this -- I don't want to say a 24-hour neighborhood, because that has it's own cheesy connotations -- but was there an attempt to create social spaces that kept this neighborhood going at all times of the day and night, essentially?

CH: Yes and a lot of this is going to be evolving over the long gestation period of the island’s development period. Right now we are marking the basic intentions. As for the design, some of these parcels of land will be developed by various different developers. There will be many different architects involved over time. So all of these ideas will be evolving. Right now, we're trying to set in place a very strong framework that encourages certain things to happen. In terms of the smaller neighborhoods, the idea is that there will be a provision for flexible community space that provides a place for people to come together for various informal activities. These could range from someone setting up a fruit stand on a Saturday morning to providing a place for community gatherings or a barbeque or smaller retail-oriented spaces. Basics like dry cleaners or a shoe shop or coffee shops will be provided within smaller spaces spread throughout the neighborhood parks. This is an experiment that will be tested over time, to see how much and what kind of life these parks should have.

The development will also incorporate retail and entertainment -- restaurants, cafes, boutiques along grocery and produce and other neighborhood serving retail – in concert with the historic buildings along the Marina side, which faces Yerba Buena Island. The intention is to allow the neighborhoods to be fairly quiet places in the evenings with just the right balance of life, while having the high activity entry zone on the southeast corner of the island where everyone, residents and visitors alike, arrive. One of the challenges of broad mixed use is that the developer’s analysis has shown that this island cannot support a significant amount of office space. Therefore, [the plan] is heavily weighted toward residential. There will be some professional office space, but not a lot. I am sure that as excitement builds when the project starts there will be more interest by cultural institutions as well.


W: Let's step in a slightly different direction and talk about the architecture of the buildings on the site. You said that this is going to be developed over a long period of time, probably by different developers with many different architects, so...are there architectural guidelines for what's going to be built, or is it kind of a "design as you will" attitude, or how is that being approached? Because there's definitely a pretty solid aesthetic to the renderings that have been produced so far. It's very modern, with the crystalline towers...

CH: I worked on a series of ideas which we translated into a drawing for an exhibition that Darrin Alfred of SFMOMA and Julie Kim curated for the AIA in September called Street Cred. It was a speculative rendering of one of the streets on TI that does convey ideas I hope will be carried through in the island’s architecture. The drawings illustrate buildings that have a very strong orientation to the street. I worked with Tom Leader on the environmental ideas and you'll notice that the landscape favors a kind of riparian aesthetic that's much wilder, or natural, than what you might think of as usual in more formal urban landscape architecture. It is my personal belief that the defining architectural aesthetics must have an authenticity which includes the issues we have been discussing regarding setting and place and especially recognizes its temporal setting – that is, the beginning of the 21st century and contemporaneous aesthetics. How specific the base developers and the master plan architect can be in terms of the aesthetics of the island is going to be something that will be evolving. From a personal point of view, I am not a great believer in rigid architectural guidelines. As an architect, I've often found them unnecessarily constraining. Often they rigidly define a singular set of ideas frozen at a point in time and don't allow for the kind of contemporary spontaneity that happens when things are built over years or decades.

The architecture of great cities has an organic quality that incrementally develops. So the goal here will be to find a way to encourage a kind of familial overlay but with it variety. The important thing is that all the work be ambitious architecture. To achieve that requires recruiting the best and most talented design architects to work on the various components over time. It should be a rigorous process. I hope I qualify for a piece of it….


W: So the renderings that exist now, where there are generic buildings for the low-rises for the most part, there are the high-rises as well, which certainly have a more distinct look to them -- the main tower is what I'm thinking of, really -- so are those designed to be built as they look here or are those just massing studies or examples of what could be.

CH: Well they are massing studies, but they are inspired by a set of ideas that are consistent with the overall island design. These renderings represent a very clear attitude about the relationship between architecture and the natural environment. The low-rise buildings are designed to shelter public space from the wind. The height and scale are related to the scale of the spaces they define. We are working on making very narrow streets to create a sense of intimate public space and maximize the potential for social interaction. Most of the people on the island, approximately 75%, will be housed in these lowrise homes.

The mid-rise buildings are the ones that are typically positioned at each of the neighborhood parks we discussed earlier. These small towers mark each neighborhood cluster on the skyline, providing an overall sense of identity and place. These towers are intentionally placed on the north and west sides of these parks to allow the maximum amount of sunlight in the public spaces while providing a wind buffer. And the shape of the towers themselves, if you look at the plan, is a lozenge shape or kind of a rounded trapezoidal footprint. It's like a sailboat, with the bow pointed into the wind. We are presenting the smallest face to the west to let the wind slip by the building with minimum disturbance. Tall buildings can create what we call a "sail effect," where the face of the building that is the leeward side tends to lower wind pressure and bring wind down into public spaces. We have positioned these buildings on the island to minimize any negative effects of wind at the pedestrian scale.

Finally, the tall buildings as shown in the drawing are shaped in a way that is meant to convey a very organic aesthetic. The intent is to create towers that might be more aligned with a cyprus or a redwood than with a machine-made object. We are able to do this because our computers today allow us to analyze structures in ways that are much more supple and nuanced than we ever could have fifteen or twenty years ago. Consequently, we are able to create what was shown on that rendering: the form of an exoskeleton that provides for the seismic bracing of a tall building while allowing for a great deal of glass around the perimeter so we can have as much light as possible inside the building.

The shapes of the buildings will be tested further. The intent is to develop a language that reinforces the basic tenets of the island plan. The aspiration should be for a level of authenticity that can serve as an example to inspire those architects who come after us rather than writing down a set of rules that they have to follow. The most critical issue is to achieve a uniformly high level of architectural excellence, not architectural uniformity. This comes back to the need to consistently select the best design architects – and the need for a mechanism or process to make sure that happens over the course of the island’s development. It should be a highly sought-after honor in the 21st century, as it was for example during the last half of the 20th in Columbus, Indiana, to be selected to design a building at Treasure Island.

W: So it's more of a general aesthetic design than the hard and fast architectural code that, actually, the suburbs get a lot of flak for.

CH: Exactly.


W: The one question I wanted to ask to wrap up would be that I read something about this having some level of approval from the city...is it the plan that was approved?

CH: The basic land concept was approved by the TI Development Authority and has been very well received by virtually all stake holders and the public. But the process continues….

W: Alright. So what is the general status of the project right now?

CH: The general status is that is the negotiation process with the Navy regarding the transfer of the land is continuing. But I understand it is coming to a final resolution, so we are now re-starting again our detailed planning studies to take it to the next stage.

----------------------------------

Thanks again to Craig for doing this interview. Where is looking forward to seeing this project break ground!!



Links:
The Craig Hartman Interview - Part I

Bending the Grid (SOM) (photo credits)

Mapping Manifest Destiny @ The Newberry Library

From a curatorial standpoint, Mapping Manifest Destiny at the Newberry Library (which is in a gorgeous building, in case you were wondering) is an excellent exhibit. The gallery space where the maps are displayed is large and quiet, and the information is carefully organized into four color-coded areas that chart the history of the North American West through cartography. The four sections illustrate the progression of the continent from exotic terra nova at the edge of the world to civilized nation linked by a sophisticated network of railroads by defining the primary focus of mapmaking in four different eras of exploration. You can basically watch the centuries-long process of the formation of the United States (and Canada and Mexico, to lesser extents) take place in under an hour. In addition, scale is provided by the inclusion of maps that detail Chicago's own growth from a swampy outpost into a major transportation hub for the rapidly-growing nation. It's downright artful curation.

Oh, and the content is pretty good, too. ;-)

In fact, the collection is a perfect illustration of the fourth use of maps as explained by the Field Museum's Festival of Maps exhibit: these are maps that "bear witness to and shape history." The first two sections, which explore Maps for Empire and Maps to Serve the New Empire show the evolution of the shape of North America as ever more sophisticated cartographical methods and new knowledge about the continent became available over time. Centuries-old European maps are on hand, as are some of the earliest maps of several modern major American cities, such as San Antonio, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh (the last one being drawn and annotated by none other than the young George Washington).

Halfway through you'll find a real treat: William Clark's (of Lewis & Clark fame) original, hand-drawn map of the Corps of Discovery's exploration of the American West in search of an overland river route to the Pacific. The edges are frayed and the ink slightly faded, but this is history, staring you in the face. It almost glows; it gave me goosebumps.

While the first half of Mapping Manifest Destiny shows how the land manipulated the people that explored it, the second half shows how, once the continent had been properly charted, people then manipulated the land. This half is separated into Maps for Enlightenment and Maps for Business, and details the United States' growth into a commercial juggernaut. The gridded system of land surveying that directed property sales and distribution as the US expanded westward, spurred on by the ideology from which this exhibit takes its name, shows up here. Maps for Enlightenment features see nineteenth-century text books opened to maps (my personal favorite was the one that color-coded the world on a scale from Savage to Enlightened). Maps for Business covers Chicago's rise to dominance of the field of commercial cartography. Several maps and books by Rand McNally (the company largely responsible for the Windy City's cartographical supremacy) are on display. The Business section is rounded out by maps of the expansion of the nation's railroad system and the California gold rush.

Mapping Manifest Destiny is short, sweet, and to the point. It's certainly not the kind of thing you'd bring the kids along for (especially if they're the crying type -- the ceilings are high, and everything echoes) as the material is presented in a very mature way. But anyone interested in US history (or the art of exhibit curation) will find the Newberry Library's contribution to the FoM to be a truly enlightening experience.

IF YOU GO
Mapping Manifest Destiny is on display at the Newberry Library on Chicago's Near North Side until February 16th, 2008. The library's exhibit galleries are open Monday, Friday, and Saturday from 8:15 am - 5:30 pm, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 8:15 am- 7:30 pm; the galleries are free and open to the public. While you're there, check out Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Masters in the gallery across the lobby. A short bus ride down LaSalle Street is Encyclopedia Britannica's US headquarters; the building's lobby is host to a variety of maps from the Britannica collection, marking the company's contribution to the FoM.


Links:
Mapping Manifest Destiny (Newberry Library)

Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Masters (Newberry Library)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Festival of Maps

Mapping the Self @ the Museum of Contemporary Art

At first glance Mapping the Self, the MCA's contribution to the Festival of Maps lineup, takes some serious liberties in how it defines what a map is. But then, as the introduction to the exhibit plainly states, this exhibit is not about maps. It's about how artists use maps, both to define themselves and the physical, social, and emotional spaces that they inhabit and/or experience. In fact the very meaning of the word "map" is derived from the Latin word mappa, for the cloth that maps were drawn on. A map is an exploration drawn out on a physical surface. With the etymology in mind, the pieces at the MCA's exhibit fit the theme a bit more logically.

Save for a few larger pieces spread throughout the fourth-floor atrium (including a clever recreation of John Baldassari's Framed Heights), the bulk of the work in the exhibit is organized into two rooms; the first deals with artists' use of mapping to define and examine themselves, and the second with the way that they use maps to explore and reimagine the world around them.

A piece by artist Patrick McGee is a notable highlight in the first section as it explodes the traditional concept of the map at the same time that it asserts itself as one. McGee took measurements of his head to come up with a new system of units of measurement; the diameter of his head (the Fit) became the measurement of length, its volume (the immersion) the measurement of capacity, and weight (the burden) the measurement of mass. McGee's piece is both entertaining and thought-provoking, especially in the context of this exhibit. It represents, after all, the physical nature of the artist's head, but it also breaks the head down into very basic calculations and reevaluates the rest of the physical world in relation to the artist. It is a philosophical mapping of the idea of physicality; a delightful mindf*ck, if you will.

The second room contains pieces that look more like...well, maps, or at least more like what you might expect maps to look like. There are exceptions to this rule, but even a glance around this gallery will reassure anyone thrown off by the first section. Chicago plays a major role here as the physical place being examined and/or reimagined in many of the pieces on display, adding to the sense of familiarity. Works by Stephanie Nadeau and John Cage are highlights, but again, one piece sort of steals this half of the show. That piece, Paula Henderson's Extended Remix, takes Chicago's 77 community areas, color codes them by their majority racial demographic, and then puts them into alphabetical order. The boundaries stay the same, but the names and colors shuffle around, creating a vivid and rather jarring reinterpretation of this notoriously segregated city's racial landscape. It is a very different Chicago seen in this map; paired with Nareau's photographic piece Redlined, it makes a potent statement about the history of racial politics in the Windy City.

Overall, complaints about this exhibit are of the petty variety. Single plaques often hold the descriptions for multiple pieces, which can be confusing. Some of the work on display seemed to lack label or explanation altogether. The thematic nature of the two rooms gives the exhibit structure, though it can be a bit loose at times; as a result, some pieces feel a bit superfluous. But as a whole, the exhibit does what it sets out to do by providing a solid exploration of the way contemporary artists are using maps in very different (and very challenging) ways to explore what it means to be human, and what it means to be part of our society.

While Mapping the Self takes up a relatively small amount of floor space, don't expect to make it through this one on your lunch break. While that would be do-able in theory, in reality you can't really get much from this exhibit unless you plan on taking your time. With most of the art on display, you'll find your efforts well-rewarded.

IF YOU GO
Mapping the Self is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art until March 2nd, 2008. The museum is open 10:00am-8:00pm on Thursdays, and 10:00am-5:00pm Wednesdays-Sundays; it is closed on Mondays. The entry fee for the MCA is $10 for adults, $6 for students and seniors (both suggested). Tuesdays are free admission.


Links:
Mapping the Self (Museum of Contemporary Art

Maps: Finding Our Place In the World @ The Field Museum

About a fifth of the way through the Field Museum's Maps exhibit, I started to feel a bit giddy. As a long-time lover of maps, I'd been looking forward to this -- the centerpiece of Chicago's Festival of Maps -- for months, and it was clear early in my time at the exhibit that I knew that I would not be disappointed. Now, after having a day to reflect, I can honestly (and emphatically) say that Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is one of the most impressive museum exhibits I have ever attended.

Those are strong words, I know, so let that be my one burst of enthusiasm. Henceforth, I'll try to be as objective as possible...I'd hate to do that thing where I puff something up so much that it can't live up to my description. Not that I think it's possible to overstate -- oops, sorry. Almost gushed again.

Divided into seven sections, Maps begins by addressing what is probably the most common use of its subject matter: wayfinding. The content of this section is subdivided into two groups, the Itinerary (one route depicted) and the Network (many routes depicted together). The maps on display set the tone for the rest of the exhibit; there is a great variety of mediums, styles, and time periods represented. Highlights include a section of an ancient 60-foot Japanese scroll depicting the road from Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo), a 1940s road map of America with road trip routes taken by an anonymous family highlighted and annotated, and an original print of Harry Beck's revolutionary redesign of the London Tube map.

The second section of the exhibit displays maps that give structure to the world. While many maps may not be used directly for getting from A to B, they help us to develop a concept of the vastness of the world around us. The exhibit charts the evolution of mankind's understanding of the planet through maps, showing how they were used to record progress and redefine the world as our knowledge grew. The undisputed centerpiece of this area is a set of two large (about 4 feet in diameter, but I'm guessing) wooden globes -- one that depicts the earth as it was believed by cartographers to look (curiosities include the island of California off of North America's west coast and the near-absence of Australia and New Zealand, though overall it's surprisingly accurate) and the other showing the celestial dome above, with full-color representations (i.e. a scorpion for Scorpio) of the constellations.

Maps are also used, as shown in the third and fourth sections of the exhibit, to show important places and "bear witness to and shape history," in the curators' words. These two collections expand quite nicely upon the logic of the first two; the most obvious uses of maps are to chart the world and the routes that people use to move around it, but with a heightened understanding of the larger world, it makes sense that people started using maps to break the larger world down into smaller parts. Privatization and land division become central foci here. Several important names pop up up in a subset of the fourth section focusing on historical maps of the US: Lewis and Clark's map of their route is here, as are land surveys by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin.

Even more sophisticated maps make up the fifth section, which highlights maps that make the invisible visible. These are highly detailed creations that detail intangible or hidden details about places. One of Jane Adams Hull House's famous maps of Chicago blocks broken down (and color-coded) by ethnicity and income is on display (a print of the same map is included in the Chicago History Museum's Mapping Chicago exhibit). So is a huge, vividly-colored map of the geology of Great Britain, one of the first maps of its kind. Another first here is a small, unassuming map of northern Italy that is believed to be one of the first uses of shading to depict topography, pre-dating its common use in recent times by several centuries. A closer look at the plaque describing this piece reveals that its creator was none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Another of his quiet pieces, a plan to canal-ize the Arno, is nearby.

The sixth area is a showcase of maps that depict imaginary places. L. Frank Baum's map of Oz is here, along with several of J.R.R. Tolkien's hand-drawn maps of Middle Earth. This section contrasts nicely with the seventh, which shows maps in rather mundane use in everyday life. A RISK board, a needlepoint map of Great Britain, a kiosk showing mapping technology on modern cell phones -- these examples point out the many ways in which maps seep into our daily routines. This last section culminates in an interactive wall of video maps where you can touch cursors on large screens and navigate satellite imagery and zoom in on your hometown. (It can be a bit tricky to get these to work -- try holding your fingers a few centimeters away from the screen).

If there is one opportunity that is really missed here, it's that Maps does not spend any time on the way that the internet is currently democratizing the field of cartography. There is no mention of mashups or group maps or even Mapquest, the launch of which really was revolutionary moment for mapping technology (though Mapquest's prominence in online mapping has since been usurped by Google and Microsoft). In fact, I kept expecting to see this theme threaded throughout the other sections of the exhibit, but it never even made an appearance.

Overall, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is a suitably rich and creamy center to the FoM's gourmet chocolate. It's an exhibit that keeps you moving, looking forward to the next map even before you've finished reading about the last. If you don't live in the area but you've been looking for a reason to visit Chicago, this exhibit would even make a good excuse to come. If you live within driving distance and have even a passing or newfound interest in cartography, you have no excuse not to make the trip.

IF YOU GO
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is on display at the Field Museum until January 27th, 2008. The museum is open 9:00am-4:30pm, seven days a week; the entry fee for the museum and the special exhibit is $19 for adults, $14 for students and seniors, and $9 for children under 12.


Links:
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World (Field Museum of Natural History)

Why Do We Build Cities?

Against all odds, more than half of the citizens of New Orleans returned to their broken city after Hurricane Katrina to try to repair their homes and their communities. The process has been notoriously difficult, as the media continues to report, yet New Orleansians press on, living in FEMA trailers or under tarp roofs and trying to make sense of the legal nightmare of applying for aid.

Meanwhile, down in Pisco, those who lost their homes in the recent earthquake are starting to rebuild their adobe houses without any kind of supervision or safety regulations, Peruvian officials worry. At least part of the motivation is economic, as one can only build on the land that one owns or can lay claim to. These people need shelter, and they're addressing that need. But with the government promising aid and training for people rebuilding their homes, there is the suggestion that there is some other motivation, something below the surface, that is causing people to rebuild so quickly.

In fact, the rebuilding processes in both New Orleans and Pisco raise some interesting questions about the nature of urbanism. Why do these people rebuild instead of moving elsewhere? And if a city must be rebuilt, why start over in the same place? Why not build a new city in a place less prone to, say, flooding or earthquakes? What's the reasoning behind trying to rebuild a city that has been knocked down?

There is a social aspect to urbanism that underscores all of the other motivations for urban development. People, as has been well-documented by sociologists, generally like to be around other people (at least in close proximity, even if there is no direct interaction). Still, we generally think of cities merely as concentrations of power (both economic and militaristic) instead of what they are, literally: concentrations of people.

If our settlements can be leveled by natural forces regardless of size, and if their economic structures can be so easily toppled, why don't we all live in small towns or villages? They'd probably be easier to rebuild. They wouldn't be such a hassle to manage. In fact, one could make a convincing argument that a society made up of small towns, even operating with current technology, would be more sustainable than one composed of large cites.

So why the heck do we build cities, anyway?

A few weeks back, a research consortium with participants from Harvard and Cambridge Universities (among others) shared some interesting new findings from the excavation site at Tell Brak -- findings that seem to tell us a lot about the origins of urbanism. The researchers have found, by analyzing fragments of pottery scattered around what was essentially a core city, that the urban area around Tell Brak was developed in an organic way that suggests an entirely different reason for the founding of mankind's earliest cities.

Traditionally, the founding of these early cities has been attributed to various kings and religious authorities. In an article about the new findings, Scientific American quotes researcher Jason Ur: "Kings were quick to take credit for founding cities...We're taking royal inscriptions at their word, which could be a bad thing to do."

The informal growth of Tell Brak seems to suggest that, at their very beginnings, cities were founded because they provided a strong social network. This undoubtedly created economic and military power as early cities grew, but the original impetus was simply for people to gather in one place in order to improve their lives in some way (the researchers acknowledge that individual motivations were likely diverse). So Tell Brak illustrates at least one compelling argument for why we build large, impressive urban centers: we just like to be around each other.

In wrecked cities like New Orleans and Pisco, the large majority of citizens don't return because they look forward to the immense challenges of cleaning up environmentally devastated lots, tearing down the shards of their old homes, and rebuilding from scratch. They return because they are looking to rebuild the social places that existed before their city was ruined. They rebuild for the same reason that anyone builds in the first place.

They just like to be around each other.

(Photo from Flickr user mateollosa.)


Links:

Pay Heed to New Orleans' Plight (Associated Press)

Citizens in Pisco, Peru Informally Build Adobe Houses after Earthquake (LivinginPeru.com)

Ancient Squatters May Have Been the World's First Suburbanites (Scientific American)

Researchers rewrite origins of the urban sprawl (University of Cambridge)

WEEKEND READING: August 25-31, 2007

Even though blog posts in the urbanism 'osphere have been down recently (blame last minute summer vacations and the start of the fall semester) the quality of articles and posts has been pretty high. This week was another good one.

ITEM ONE: A large, thorough, and eye-opening account of life in the hypercity of São Paulo.

ITEM TWO: Some interesting musings on the shallow nature of the shockingly new city of Shenzhen and the loss of culture in China.

ITEM THREE: anArchitecture discusses the emerging problem of shrinking cities -- in Second Life.

ITEM FOUR: The difference between Tokyo and Little Rock? Broadband access. (Well, that's one difference, anyway).

ITEM FIVE: Spacing Wire marvels at the way design and art seem to be woven through every aspect of life in Barcelona -- right down to the (gorgeous) lightposts.

ITEM SIX: Police crack down on Geneva's squats, and airoots fears for the future of the city's underground culture.

ITEM SEVEN: Miami is in a bit of a pickle. 23,000 condos for sale, with another 25,000 under construction. Talk about market oversaturation...

Have a great weekend!

(Photo from Flickr user mariana_dias.)

Honku

Aaron Naparstek is one of the people behind the popular NYC transit media site called Streetsblog. He's also the author of a book called Honku that updates that ancient Japanese poetry form, the haiku, by using the very contemporary theme of automobiles; or, more specifically, how f*@#$ing irritating they are.

From the publicity site for the book: "Honku is a road rage anger management technique. The next time some jerk cuts you off or steals your parking spot, rather than succumbing to the rage, take a step back. Separate yourself from the moment and try to observe it with clarity and perspective. Then boil it all down into crisp and pithy 5-7-5 gem. That's a honku."

So simple, and so brilliant. On a personal note, I took a few poetry classes in college. As a result, I now find reading poetry as enjoyable as rubbing sandpaper over my corneas. Still, a quick, pithy haiku always puts me in good spirits. There are a few "favorite" honkus published directly on Naparstek's site, so I decided to pull a few of my own favorites -- the best of the best of the best, if you will -- and re-post them here for your enjoyment. Take a read through, and if you like what you see check out the site for more.

Gruesome hit and run
fatalities up ahead
how awful - I'm late.

Drove six hours to
the Mall of America
got some McNuggets.

Atlanta traffic
easy to see why Sherman
burned this city down.

There's a great little story on the Honku site about the inspiration for the book. As it turns out, these literary zingers started off as a a community art project. Enraged by inconsiderate, horn-honking drivers disturbing the peace in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Naparstek started writing the honkus and taping them to lightposts in the area. Soon, honkus written by other residents started popping up. The city council rep took notice, as did the police, and the local media. Of course, in New York, the "local media" is the New Yorker and the New York Times. That was probably somewhat helpful in getting this project to really take off. Heh. At any rate, all of the attention fixed the problem: the cops started ticketing honkers and the noise dropped dramatically.

So the next time you're confronted by a problem in your neighborhood, remember that the annoyances we assume to be unavoidable can be remedied through unconventional solutions. You can't fix everything with a haiku, but if someone had told you this story before it had actually happened, you'd probably have laughed at them. We big city folk have a tendancy to mistake cynicism for common sense. We need to stop that.

One more for the road, from yours truly:

Leaning out windows
drivers scream for green. A train
rumbles overhead.




Links:
Honku.org (Photo Credit)

Streetsblog

Conscious Urbanism: The Heidelberg Project

As the city that has fallen on the hardest times (in America, at least), Detroit has the most potential as a proving ground for new solutions. The city is a massive laboratory for urban theorists, developers, and boosters alike. How, many wonder, can Detroit be saved? Or can it be saved at all? Certainly one of the more interesting answers to these questions has come from Tyree Guyton, the man behind the Heidelberg Project, which has appropriated several blocks of the city's near east side into a spectacularly off-the-wall community art project/revitalization effort.

It's certainly not what you'd traditionally refer to as "revitalization," but that's kind of the point. On its website, the Heidelberg Project explains its vision thusly: "The Heidelberg Project envisions neighborhood residents using art to come together to rebuild the structure and fabric of under-resourced communities and to create a way of living that is economically viable, enriches lives, and welcomes all people." What this translates to in the physical environment of Heidelberg Street is a collection of abandoned houses -- and their surroundings -- covered in murals, knick-knacks, mannequins, coins, pie tins, pieces of repurposed trash, stuffed animals, and (literally) just about anything else you could think up. It's like the Watts Towers, but even more organic.

The Heidelberg Project teaches people who live and have grown up in desolate surroundings how they can change the public spaces that make up their neighborhood and how this change can affect them. It serves as an inspiration and a source of hope. So, of course, the city government has tried to kill the project several times. It has demolished a number of homes that were a part of the project on several different occasions, even though Heidelberg Street is an internationally-recognized project that attracts 275,000 visitors each year. As the project's Executive Director, Jenenne Whitman, observes, the fact that the city tried so hard to “squash the project … shows how powerful art can be." Indeed.

In contemporary society, public places themselves are not often thought of as art; actually, they are more often viewed as containers for art. The design of high-end contemporary places is sometimes considered artistically merited, it's true. But the more interesting and subtle artistic expression in the public realm is community usage. The creation of great places, after all, absolutely requires heavy human interaction. This is usually considered a confirmation of the artistic integrity of the place's design, but is it not an art form in and of itself? After all, don't communities transform unplanned spaces into vibrant public places as frequently if not moreso than they do planned places?

The bustle of urban streets and other public spaces in the city is sometimes refered to, quite poetically, as a great pedestrian ballet. And if this is true, it can be logically assumed that, while policy and planning choreograph parts of this ballet, each individual person moving through the city takes part in its choreography by making their own independent choices. People go to parks and plazas and promenades for so many reasons: to eat, to play, to run, to chat, to meet, to dance, to stroll. And by doing so, each person becomes an artist, taking part in the endless urban ballet. Simply to use the city, to exist within it, is a work of art. It's a lovely idea, no?

The Heidelberg Project is a very concrete visual manifestation of this ballet. It teaches the disenfranchised and the isolated how to shape the world around them into something beautiful. In a way, it is the most public kind of public place: the kind where the planned social infrastructure failed, and the people moved in, did what they do, and created something really useful.

Links:
The Heidelberg Project

Heidelberg Turns 21 (Model D) (Photo credit)

The Possibilities of the Post-Retail City

I just had my first exposure to Reverend Billy, the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping. After reading a post (over at Polis) about the Reverend's anti-consumerist group, I thought it was an actual church. To which I said: "Oh, excellent.

Of course, the CoSS is actually an act, with the "Reverend" being the stage persona of NYC performance artist Bill Talen. It's a send-up of streetcorner preachers and televangelists, and it sounds hilarious. Better yet, there's a point! Reverend Billy preaches against corporatist architecture and urbanism, advocating for sustainable, walkable communities with local economies. And while the site does pay lip service to independently owned local businesses, it is the Church of Stop Shopping, and one of their taglines is "Love is a Gift Economy!" Obviously, these people think that there are better ways for us to use all of that street-level retail space.

And that got me thinking: if there were no major retail chains and independents had to hold up the local economy, what would we do with all of that ground-floor space? Indeed -- and my upbringing in a capitalist society may shine through right here -- but where would we walk to? Certainly, there are plenty of places that we walk every day, but a large amount of pedestrian traffic is genereated by shoppers. And while it's not a requirement for these ground-level spaces that make up our streetscape be places of commerce, their presence is utterly vital to functioning neighborhoods. Often (these days) even moreso than upper-level residential windows, storefronts are the Jacobsian "eyes on the street" that act as a natural deterrant to crime.

Shopping is also a huge part of the social life in many (if not most) contemporary cities; in fact, that's just what Reverend Billy and his fake church take issue with. And whether or not you agree with the Church of Stop Shopping (or, as I'm sure many do, find it outright offensive), it's interesting to imagine a world in which shopping took a back seat to other social spaces as the dominant street presence. Imagining Paris without the Champs-Elysées or New York without Park Avenue sparks a giddy, no-holds-barred creative energy akin to imagining those cities in a work of science fiction or postapocalyptic literature.

To get an idea of what might fill the void, it might be interesting to see how social space is structured in places where gift economies (or at least barter systems) often already exist and retail strips are few and far between, at least in the traditional sense: slums.

An article from Forbes, mentioned briefly in a previous post at Where, described the socioeconomic situation of many older, established slums in Asia and South America thusly: "Many slum dwellers are in fact entrepreneurs, albeit writ very small. They recycle trash, sell vegetables, do laundry. Some even run tiny restaurants and bars for their neighbors." So while there are no Ginza Districts in the favelas of Rio, there is a social commerce to such places. Restaurants and bars remain important components of the neighborhood, which makes good sense; people have always come together over food and drink, and will continue to do so regardless of any freak evaporations of the retail sector.

Another thing that brings people together is knowledge -- or, more specifically, the exchange thereof. Another recent post covered McGill University's Edible Cities project in Kampala; the site for the students' project "includes a low-lying wetland area...where a youth cooperative practices brick-makings, providing work for otherwise unemployed youth...and a sloping dryland area where farming is [practiced]." While this is a very rural area being discussed (albeit in the context of a larger city), the Kampala site illustrates two more possible uses for a retail-less streetscapes: public workshops (which could cover a variety of topics in addition to brickmaking) and storefront hydroponic community gardens.

Heh.

If the second option seems somewhat far-fetched, the first is hardly at all; in fact, in the face of looming irrelevance in the digital age, libraries around the world are starting to take on a more social role in their respective cities, staging various events and programs to encourage public discourse and teach skills that cannot be learned with a mouse and keyboard. One of the most innovative library programs that I've heard of recently is in Medellín, the second city of Colombia.

Once the so-called Kidnappping Capital of the World, Medellín has made more news recently for building five spectacular modernist libraries (like the one in Santo Domingo Savio, pictured above) in its most impoverished barrios. One of the programs to utilize these new libraries -- which are equipped with computer labs full of brand spankin' new computers -- is HiperBarrio, which teaches teens in the barrios how to use blogging and other social media tools as a creative outlet for self-expression. Juliana Rincon, one of the founders of HiperBarrio, spoke of the program's inspirataion in a recent interview with Global Voices Online, saying, "It was amazing...telling these kids about blogs and finding out that they had no idea that there was something like a blog, that they existed. [Or even] that you could write online and have a virtual space to keep your writing, the videos you like, and pictures." Libraries, in this case, serve not just as containers for information, but as catalysts for the creation of new information and new ideas. Certainly, this kind of social space, the place of public learning, will play an increasingly important role in cities as we continue through the Information Age.

Whatever we come up with to fill storefronts and social spaces, shopping districts and neighborhood retail strips are unlikely to disappear within the lifetime of anyone reading this blog post. Still, imagining a world without retail can tell us a lot about how we use cities, why we do things the way that we do, and how we can improve urban places without courting Starbucks and Barnes & Noble for civic salvation. In fact, picturing your neighborhood without any shops selling anything other than necessities might be a great way to fall in love with the place all over again. That is, of course, assuming that you love your neighborhood -- and that you don't live off Rodeo Drive.

(Photo from Flickr user galitagreeneyes.)


Links:
Rev. Billy Ready for Close-up (Polis)

The Church of Stop Shopping

Two Billion Slum Dwellers (Forbes)

Kampala Project Information (McGill School of Architecture)

Red de Bibliotecas (en español)

HiperBarrio: Local Stories, Global Audience (Global Voices Online)

Additional Weekend Reading

Two more things to add to the list:

SO GREAT! - Hugh Pearman's top-notch critique of the Global Cities exhibit at London's Tate that turns into a riff on starchitecture and its shortcomings. Some of the best architectural writing I've read in a while.

SO WHAT? - The U.S. Govermnent has made the embarassingly insipid promise to build/restore/preserve 1.5 million units of affordable housing over the next ten years. That's half of the estimated need stretched out over a decade (in which the need is most likely going to increase). This is the kind of move that counts on what sounds like a big number to mask the fact that very little is actually being done. The richest country in the world has absolutely no excuse not to provide basic, safe, and affordable housing for all of its citizens. Now.

Sorry for the preaching...I'm just so completely fed up with this kind of smokescreen bombast that I needed to vent. Publicly.

Everyone is Watching You

Reality TV has been decried as death of American culture, entertainment for our most base and unflattering instincts, and one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. At the onset of the Reality TV era there was no lack of color when writers aimed to describe the medium's potential effects on our society. Despite this valiantly verbose effort, it is now difficult to find someone who, when pressed, won't admit to liking at least one or two Reality programs. Over time, even the medium's loudest detractors just got used to it.

But what no one has called Reality TV yet, to my knowledge, is a critical part of the mass indoctrination of society into a culture of constant surveillance. This thought came to me as I was reading about a new art installation/publicity stunt/marketing campaign/reality show from HBO that "illustrates the underlying truth that sometimes the most revealing stories are the ones you weren't meant to see." Via images projected onto the walls of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan, passersby can look into the private homes inside, watching as the inhabitants move about their "daily lives". It's yet another evolution of the Reality TV form, this time taking down yet another wall: the one provided by the explanation that what we are watching is merely "a show". (I have to admit: it's pretty engrossing, especially considering the total absence of dialog or any form of explanation for what one is watching.)

Our defenses are being broken down, slowly. As our culture becomes increasingly comfortable with Reality TV that moves more and more toward presenting actual reality as a form of entertainment, we are being lulled into a false sense of security with the surveillance of our own lives. Manhattan provides another perfect example thanks to the Institute for Applied Autonomy's iSee project, which has mapped all of the CCTV cameras in the city (as well as several others.) In a recent interview with WorldChanging.com, an IAA representative (members are anonymous) had this to say: "It's true that many people are comfortable with surveillance of public space, especially when confronted with the usual choice between privacy and security. With iSee, we tried to subvert (or at least complicate) this binary." The resultant maps certainly achieve this: seeing the shockingly large range of the streets under constant surveillance, one wonders whether these cameras, "put up by individual building owners [with] their data...increasingly managed by third-party private companies" (IAA again), provide security or eliminate it entirely.

Privacy, after all, is commonly equated with security. But in an urban environment, when we are surrounded by so many other people, our expectation of privacy is lowered. In a densely populated place, safety replaces privacy as the central focus of security efforts. So in the city, we are especially vulnerable to surveillance efforts -- and the thwarting of the London carbombings by the large network of CCTV cameras in the West End only increases this vulnerability. I left the question of how to deal with increasing surveillance open at the end of last week's post on digital urbanism. Now, I'd like to look at some possible answers.

Perhaps the most disturbing piece of tech news I've read lately comes from Smart Mobs, where the authors highlight efforts by Cornell University researchers who are injecting microfluidic sensors into unborn insects. "Of course, when they grow," Smart Mobs exposits, "these insects still carry the sensors. And if this works, they'll be used for monitoring and security surveillance." Apparently, this is something that the US Military has been working on for a while now (not in conjunction with Cornell). And with the promised advancement of nanotechnology over the coming years, it's not hard to imagine a future in which every airborne insect is a "bug" in more than just a literal sense. In 1984, George Orwell (hard not to mention him when writing about surveillance) described a world in which people were perceived to be under constant surveillance. In Orwell's imagined future, even the threat of being watched by the walls was enough to keep the masses in line. And a world in which even the insects can't be trusted is a world in which subversion is next to impossible.

In what is certainly most representative of the present situation [of the ideas discussed in this post], blogger Glenn Weiss offers up a less dire, if not exactly inspiring idea on his blog, Aesthetic Grounds. Weiss describes a Parisian film festival that highlights films made with and for cell phones and marvels at how some of these mini-films reclaim the device that has bound everyone so closely by providing the viewer with a moment of quiet immersion: a sort of imagined privacy. "Is this the future?" Weiss wonders. "Even with some private territory in an apartment, will only mental privacy survive in the megacities? When the cell phone provides an avenue for almost anyone to enter your space, are these short mental moments of isolation the new reality of intimacy?

Perhaps the most upbeat perspective on the future of surveillance is in one of last Friday's Weekend Reading topics: Harvey Feldspar's [fictional] Geoblog, from Wired. In it, author Bruce Sterling imagines the life of a so-called geoblogger in the near future (2017, to be exact). Feldspar is voluntarily monitored at all times thanks to his constant blogging and a GPS tracker installed in his Moleskine-sized computer/phone/everythingelse, the Sensicast-Tranzeo 3000. This futuristic jet-setter shows us one way of dealing with increasing surveillance: embrace it. Learn to control the system before it controls you.

As surveillance becomes ever-more pervasive, people will determine how to deal with it on an individual -- or even local basis. Perhaps paranoid subdivisions filled with houses featuring lead-lined walls and airtight mirrored slat windows will spring up in and around cities. Or maybe features like Helio's Buddy Beacon (which seems so disturbingly invasive right now) will become the norm, with everyone being able to find everyone else, and some innate desire for privacy will force us to form some kind of new social honor code. To paraphrase that famous line: when everyone is a watcher, who's watching the watchers? Everyone.

So is mass surveillance a good thing? A bad thing? The most probable answer is that it is neither. Like Reality TV, it's just another thing we'll have to get used to.

(Photo from Flickr user Semi-detached.)


Links:
HBO's "Voyeur" Projected On NYC Building (CitySkip)

Interview With the Institute for Applied Autonomy (WorldChanging.com)

iSee (IAA)

The hunt for the London Terroristsm (The Independent)

Autonomous insect cyborg sentinels (Smart Mobs)

The New Cell Phone Privacy in the City (Aesthetic Grounds)

Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future (Wired)

Helio Buddy Beacon