The Two Creative Classes

Many of mankind’s greatest achievements are products of the urban cauldron. That the density, heterogeneity and social environment of cities leads to more rapid innovation and idea sharing should not surprise many, but it’s worthwhile to examine and understand the mechanics of the relationship between cities and their cultural products.

Richard Florida’s Creative Class thesis has garnered much attention since he introduced it in 2002 with The Rise of the Creative Class. That book’s main point—cities that manage to attract members of the “creative class” benefit economically and socially in comparison with cities that don’t—seems to dovetail nicely with the notion that cities are innovation hubs.

The relationship between the two ideas, however, may not be entirely harmonious. While the coffeehouses of early 20th century Vienna may have produced the likes of Arthur Schnitzler and Karl Kraus, those literary talents didn’t necessarily equate directly with Vienna’s economic vitality. Likewise, the music scenes that emerged from New York and Cleveland in the 1970’s came out of urban decay, and didn’t necessarily effect a change in those conditions.

The Creative Class, on the other hand, is expected to translate that same intelligence into economic activity. When civic leaders develop incentives to attract this demographic, their goal is generally not art for art’s sake—not that it should be. Municipal government should not be charged with giving a city an arts scene, but it’s reasonable to charge city leadership with creating economic activity. That, in short, is what the Creative Class program means for mayors and city councils.

So far, so good. City leadership can take a laissez-faire approach to the arts and a hands-on approach to the local economy. The trick, though, is not to stifle the former by attending to the latter. A city can attract plenty of creative types who will start companies and go out to eat four times a week, but the incentives employed to attract those groups might inadvertently extinguish the scenes that don’t pay and don’t spend. If it becomes too difficult to live cheaply in a city, the will to tinker or experiment on a minimal income might dwindle or vanish. The two aforementioned groups need not be mutually exclusive, however, and as planners and elected officials articulate their vision for a given city, they should remain conscious of what both creative classes have to offer and encourage each to exist in that city.


(Photo from Flickr user nickmickolas.)

A New Urban Environmentalism?

I'm not sure if there's anything left to say about Van Jones, the Obama administration's special adviser on green jobs. An article by Elizabeth Kolbert details his efforts to address urban poverty and global warming by putting people to work on green infrastructure projects. Jones explains his plans in a recent NPR interview. His work has captured the imagination of many, but does it represent a promising new form of urban environmentalism?

Jones is a political star. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1993, he moved to the Bay Area and began advocating for human rights in urban communities. He fought effectively to keep people out of jail, in gainful employment, and safe from police brutality. Jones traces his environmental interest to a talk by Julia Butterfly Hill, explaining that he admired and identified with her efforts to save a redwood tree. The two found common ground in helping people and things considered disposable.

At a meeting with Nancy Pelosi in 2007, Jones brought up the need for a Clean Energy Jobs Bill. The idea caught on and was included in the Energy Independence and Security Act less than a year later. He has since published a book called The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. In today's political climate of economic crisis and recovery, this concept makes environmental concern more politically viable. It has rallied unions, corporations, politicians, and local activists behind alternative energy as an agent for job creation.

Still, there is skepticism about the merits of combined solutions to global warming and poverty. Some see a lack of environmental concern among less affluent communities as a major impediment. Others point out that environmental conservation places disproportionate strain on people living in poverty. Some policy experts see the two problems as too distinct to be addressed with a joint solution. Jones responds by explaining the benefits of a holistic approach that encourages combined efforts. He considers poverty alleviation without environmental consideration a short-term fix, resulting in greater problems down the road. He adds that people living in poverty will support environmental causes that address their most pressing needs.

Jones looks for points of agreement and makes the most of them. He peppers his speech with clear and memorable phrases that express shared interests, often playing with different meanings of the word green. At the same time, he's not shy about applying pressure against powerful opponents (skills sharpened fighting police brutality in the 1990s). Of course, it will take more than consensus and coercion for his current efforts to succeed. The jobs will have to be efficient and provide better sources of energy. A certain amount of financial loss is acceptable in return for long-term gains, but the gains have to materialize. Given the widespread support for these ideas, the timing is right to make them work.

So, is Jones at the forefront of a new urban environmentalism? His work is different from environmental justice movements that have fought to improve ecological conditions in marginalized communities. Jones adopts the discourse of sustainable development, with a focus on poverty alleviation. He aims for consensus around human needs, rather than proposing a radical alternative to current forms of environmental management. As far as labels go, his ideas integrate three potentially conflicting -isms: social, capital, and environmental. His emphasis is clearly on the social, but only in the sense of prioritizing human concerns. If this renders him a socialist, then even Milton Friedman would be socialist. In reference to the urban, now that Jones is advising on green jobs for the entire country, his focus will have to expand to include suburban and rural communities. He has successfully articulated a vision that links inclusive economic prosperity with long-term environmental care. While this isn't new urban environmentalism, it is something more comprehensive and very worth pursuing.

(Credits: Photo of Van Jones from Green for All; Photo of Julia Butterfly Hill from Earthfirst; Photo of smoke stacks from the Hunter College Department of Geography; Photo of Milton Friedman from In Defense of Liberty)

Think Big. Freak Out.

Daniel Burnham's line "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood" is probably one of the most famous quotes to come out of the field of urbanism. It's also one of the most thoroughly abused. Burnham's maxim about aiming high is used by proponents of megaprojects like Atlantic Yards (the poster child for megaprojects, you see) in defense of superblocks and devastatingly overbearing towers. In truth, Burnham did not stop where the quote does. The quote is almost always truncated, cutting off much of the great planner's intent. The full quote reads:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big. (via)

The idea of a noble, logical plan becoming a living thing is about as far from the logic of the contemporary commercial megaproject as you can get. Giant developments that have become commonplace in cities like New York, London, and Chicago over the past two decades are designed to eliminate risk, to minimize mess. They are, in a word, sterile. Burnham was talking about creating plans that are dynamic, and that improve their surroundings, not wall themselves off from them.

So if it's not the four-tower 3,000-condo 250,000 square-feet-of-retail megacomplex, what does a grand plan look like? What can we do to stir mens' blood, to re-engage the many millions of people who have become disconnected from the urban environment, who have willfully or accidentally removed themselves from the discourse? In the face of increasingly grave problems, how can citizens be energized to turn their cities into the viridian green, environmentally-restorative engines that we have heard so many advocates call for them to be?

There are no small changes that need to be made. I refuse to parrot, any longer, the absurd myth that changing your lightbulbs or using a fabric bag to pick up groceries will save the world. The words "hogswaddle" and "poppycock" come to mind (apparently climate challenge turns me into a Dickensian lower-class Brit). It's true that these things add up, but public opinion on fighting climate challenge is waning; people are growing tired of the issue. The public is, of course, fickle, so this should come as no surprise. The bite-size formula is not going to work. The ante must be upped.

For planners, architects, and urbanists, this necessitates a call for big plans. We need so many more Burnhamian Big Ideas. It's time to re-think infrastructure, and architecture, and every tiny component of every city. All things can be re-imagined; we're starting to see these kinds of big ideas in playful fits and starts. Defunct airports can become magnificent tree-covered mountains; parks can be used as psychological and environmental rehabilitation centers; whole cities can become stand-in icebergs; we could build rivers in the sky, and fill them with floating classroom-ferries. Nothing about our cities is set in stone -- not even their geography. And as nature starts to change our cities in new ways, we need to re-think how our cities interact with nature.

Perhaps the greatest piece of infrastructure that cities have at their disposal, in terms of reimagining and regenerating the cityscape, is often also the last remembered. People -- the citizens that use the city, kick it, punch it, pull it down and lift it up a hundred million ways each day -- are brimming with ideas about how to make their cities better. The images in this post, for example, are from a collection of entries to a public call for the reinvention of Coney Island. This is the crazy shit that people come up with; it follows that what they want to start seeing more of, in addition to genuine, solid plans for making cities work better, is some freaky, crazy shit.

Here's a proposal; the seed of a big idea, perhaps: let loose. Think about the most unchangeable features of your city, and try to imagine them changed. Don't just daydream; come up with Big Ideas, grand plans for revolutionizing the way that your city works. Get crazy, and put down on paper the ideas you wouldn't dream of bringing up in a meeting at work. Then upload them and share them with everyone who has a computer and a set of working eyes. We need more sky rivers, more radical civic interventions, and more acid-trip theme parks. More than ever, we need very, very Big Ideas. And if we try hard enough, if we come up with enough crazy shit, maybe we'll be able to shock more people into caring about how their city works, and what it looks like. No one cares if you tell them the airport is being turned into condos and a dog park. Heads turn when you suggest that it be geo-engineered into an urban Matterhorn. It doesn't have to happen. It just has to get people to pay attention.

Burnham wisely noted that each generation's sons and grandsons would do things that would stagger their forebears. Make your grandparents proud; go freak out on your city.


(Photo from MASNYC's Flickr gallery.)

Time to Reassess the Boxscape

Home in suburban Milwaukee for the Thanksgiving holiday this past weekend, I was finally dragged, kicking and screaming, into my very first Super Wal-Mart. From an urbanist's perspective, it was horrifying; one massive indoor space with a seemingly endless procession of aisles filled with every piece of crap you could imagine, stretching off to -- literally, it seemed -- the horizon. Indoors. It was the diametric opposite of "finely-grained." But the experience got me on the newly-minted bandwagon of architects and planners wondering aloud about how big-box and chain retail might be better integrated as metro areas shift and change over the coming decades. Redemption is not impossible for such places.

Last month, Wendy Waters wrote about new research from the University of Alberta that suggests that the presence of large, indiscriminate retailers like Wal-Mart can actually improve independent retail in the area by forcing owners to re-strategize and become more specialized in what they offer consumers. This makes plenty of sense: business owners that do nothing in the face of increased competition are hardly the kind of flexible, dynamic people that add to a local economy; nor are their businesses likely to be the ones that add to local character, which is often one of the most loudly mourned of the assumed casualties when big boxes come to town.

Wonkser (and long-time Where blog crush) Ryan Avent made another recent argument in defense of chain retail, suggesting that it strengthens urban economies and brushing off the argument that chains kill local retail:

Should we be upset when new chains move in? No, not really. There are reasons that chains do well nationally, namely, convenience and price. We should hold chains to high design standards, but there’s no reason to deny local residents access to chain retail. I have seen folks argue that chains are bad because they take profits elsewhere, but this is essentially an autarkic argument–that we’d be better off doing everything for ourselves. Obviously, that’s not the case. Successful businesses provide value for consumers, and preventing those businesses from operating here would deny consumers that value. Sometimes scale economies are important, such that national chains can deliver sharply lower prices. This is good for local consumers, who should be free to decide when they want to spend their money on independent retail and when they just want the best deal available. Moreover, many District [of Columbia] firms benefits from national and international business. A local only model leaves everyone poorer...

...It’s important to remember that chains can complement indie business. Some folks want to spend their money at an indie home furnishings store and save money by shopping at Giant. Others want to save money on their furniture by shopping at Target, and go all out at a local organic grocer. It takes all kinds.

Avent also makes the case in his post for the densification of areas looking to increase commercial vibrancy. In urban areas, where parking is scarce, businesses must draw on the local population for revenue; thus, independent retail flourishes in densely populated areas; the residential use must come first. It follows, then, that anyone looking to increase the diversity of businesses in an area currently starved for independent, specialized retailers should focus on increasing residential diversity. Re-thinking big box stores like Super Wal-Mart will require a residential component of some sort. We've been seeing this type of thinking slowly take shape as malls have begun incorporating condos over the past decade or so; more recently, strip malls have started looking at residential retrofits as a solution to waning consumer interest.

I can't help but wonder what it might be like to live in, around, or on top of a reclaimed Wal-Mart. The idea that the suburbs of today will look vastly different a few decades from now is an enticing one, but it's still difficult to imagine what, exactly, they might look like. Hopefully, as urbanists, we can learn to stop avoiding these stores entirely (I know I'm not the only one who does it) and start thinking more constructively about their future uses. The sooner the better, it would seem.

(Photos from Flickr user austrini, and from bustler.net. The original full-sized versions can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Energie Tales

Like Fairie Tales, only a bit less connected to reality!

Case in point: Discovery News, today, brings us this report on a competition between several teams of researchers to find a way to turn car exhaust into an energy source. Sigh. Where will it end?

It may well be that recycled car exhaust winds up being a genuinely useful source of energy. I won't dispute that (nor do I have any sort of scientific background to back up such a dispute if I were to try). But doesn't it seem like the things that "researchers" are trying to cull fuel from keep getting more and more...far-fetched? Every time you turn around, there's another story about another mundane, thoughtless bit of waste from our society's daily workings that just may be the source of energy to rescue us from oil dependency! It's getting to be a bit hard to believe any of it.

What's next? A plan to collect dead skin cells from under the blades of used razors to create a biomass engine for powering Las Vegas? Or perhaps an ingenious discovery that shed cat hair is ten times more efficient, when burned, than gasoline if mixed with a teaspoon of the sludgy goop left in the drain-catch after you wash the dishes?

I can see it now: millions of people toss out their dishwashing machines (which will then be melted down to be used as another recycled fuel source involving dead fish and broken Tickle-Me Elmos), and buying cats. The cacophony of feline mating calls fills wealthy enclaves as neighbors cross-breed their pets in an effort to get enough kitty-biomass to get the Beamer to work and back. Driving to the grocery store for more cat food, you see a man hunched over a large, frantic Tabby, combing frantically as the cat claws the air; "Come ON, Patches! Goddamnit, I need to get to WORK!"

Or maybe ethanol will save us all. Oh, excuse me while I go fix my eyes. I just rolled them so hard that they got stuck that way...


Edit: I realized just after posting this that it contrasts pretty sharply with this post back in June. Oh well...chalk one up for fatigue.

Urban Sandboxes

CEOs for Cities recently relayed an interesting story from USA Today that has some interesting implications for older, depressed urban centers as Gen Y and the Millennials gear up to make their mark on history:

Tulane's applications almost doubled from 17,572 pre-Katrina to 34,100 this year. As one Loyola's vp of enrollment told the paper, "Students know they are coming down to have an adventure. It's a great time to be part of something... the rebirth of a city."

NOLA and other struggling burgs -- think Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Baltimore, or even smaller cities like Canton, Reading, and Flint -- together provide a unique opportunity in their hard times. These are the urban sandboxes, the cities that present young people trying to prove their mettle with the opportunity to do so in new and interesting ways. Desperation breeds innovation out of necessity.

Previous generations have tried and blundered efforts to turn Rust Belt and Northeastern cities back into growing, productive urban hubs. We now know that stadiums, riverwalks, and high-end condos have a limited (if any) effect on cities. What is encouraging about the surge of interest in New Orleans is that the challenge of repairing the city is so blatant, and so thoroughly un-glamorous (try as Brad Pitt might to change that).

Perhaps this is an early sign that the next generation of urban innovators gets that top-down, aesthetic-focused efforts aren't what improves a city; indeed, the "fix downtown and the neighborhoods will follow" theory is proving itself to be pretty weak over time. Could the interest in the Big Easy mean that tomorrow's civic leaders are now planting the seeds, as college students and recent grads, for a reversal of this process?

Besides -- if Millennials can fix Detroit, the "Greatest Generation" mantle may be up for grabs.

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

Electri-City

From the look of things, the zero carbon high tech eco-city of 2030 might not really look that different from the boring old present of 2008. Innovative minds are coming up with new ways of harvesting power from just about everything, reducing the need for crazy-looking turbine towers or solar-paneled skylines. What happens if everything becomes its own source of energy? Obviously, this seems like a Green pipe dream, but speculate for a moment. What might humanity do with a global surplus of power?

In the meantime, we can marvel at the creative thinking below and wonder if, one day soon, our curtains might be powering our laptops and televisions.

So where might we be getting our electricity from in the near future?

Our toilets? (Architecture.mnp)

Our walls? (Jetson Green)

Our clothes? (MIT News)

Our curtains? (Electricpig)

Our sidewalks? (core77)

What are some common, overlooked aspects of the urban environment that might be able to generate usable energy if harnessed in a new way? With suburbs densifying and evolving and becoming more self-sufficient nodes in polycentric megacities, the potential seems endless. So many people, so many opportunities for a volt or two.

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

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.)

The Next Street Art

Say there was a place that had some special meaning to you. It could be the alcove where you had your first kiss, the alley where you were mugged, the square where you participated in an important rally, or the location of an historic uprising. Good or bad, we all infuse places with our memories. This is what makes physical places so powerful, and why peoples' opinions and experiences of the same place can be vastly different. Places are what people make of them. Now, technology could be making it easier for tech-savvy street artists to etch their own experiences and opinions onto physical places, communicating the artists' own sense of a place to others who pass through it.

Barcodes are most commonly used in retail environments, but their size and informational storage capacities make them ripe for adaptation for more inventive uses. In Japan, barcodes are now being applied to gravestones to store and transmit information, when scanned, about the deceased. The idea here is that family members will, through videos, photos, and stories, be able to reconnect with the deceased in a less mournful, more celebratory way. Imagine "a sort of gravestone based, family fueled, wiki of the dead."

This technology could easily be used in public spaces to represent a political viewpoint or a historical event. Imagine walking down a street for the first time and noticing a bright green barcode sticker affixed to the facade of a building. Using a scanner-enabled mobile device, you could access a website loaded with the history of the building site, or a series of short stories about the surrounding blocks, or photos of a lifechanging event that a stranger experienced in the very spot where you are standing. Reading or viewing material like this would give the place a new gravitas, and would change your perception of what might otherwise be a mundane stretch of asphalt and brick.

RFID tags are another method of remote-storing information that, thanks to increased range, provide the opportunity for a bit more mischief. With the technological know-how, a clever street artist could program a chip to send a text message or photo to any wi-fi enabled mobile device passing by. Imagine again: you're walking down a street and you pass a hidden RFID tag; your phone rings. You answer. An audio recording plays, recounting a woman's personal account of a riot that took place across the street a decade earlier. Later, walking through a park, your text alert sounds. You open the message to find a set of coordinates and the time of an upcoming event, perhaps a flash mob or a constructive riot. Or, perhaps, a photo of the view from the very place that you are standing, hyperlinked to a database of stories and photos of places around the city (along the lines of Invincible Cities, linked below).

While they would only be accessible to those with the proper devices to read the information that they stored, RFID tags and barcodes have distinct advantages over more traditional forms of street art like posters, graffiti tags, and murals. For one thing, they are smaller, and less intrusive. While this could be seen as a weakness (especially for barcodes, which require direct interaction), it is also a strength in that RFID tags and barcodes are less likely to prompt their own removal than more readily noticeable artistic interventions. These tiny storage units can also provide more vivid, personalized accounts of events or viewpoints, and have the potential to be more impactful on their viewers.

RFID and barcode street art has the potential to turn the urban environment into a virtual minefield of information. While the potential for abuse by malicious hackers or marketing drones is there, the idea of being able to literally "tag" a place with multimedia information is an exciting one. Perhaps it's already being done. Anyone know of some examples?

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


Links:
Barcodes on tombs to connect with the dead (The Inquirer)

Invincible Cities (Thanks, Pete!)

W(e are )here

The following post contains the introduction that this blogger wrote for the W(e are )here show, which opens today at the Intermedia Arts Gallery in Minneapolis. The show is being curated by the founders of Solutions Twin Cities, one of whom happens to be Mr. Colin Kloecker of BLYGAD fame. If you're going to be around the Cities at all between now and May 9th, 2008, do stop by and take a look. For more information, see the link at the bottom of the post.

------------------
During the Age of Discovery, great explorers crisscrossed the planet in search of uncharted territory. They left a visual legacy in the maps that recorded their journeys, and with each new discovery, mankind's knowledge of Earth grew. One can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to live in a world that was seemingly growing larger by the day. The very concept of "where" -- humanity's understanding of our relationship to the world around us -- was expanding.

Today, the internet revolution has democratized exploration in ways that Columbus and Magellan could never have imagined: everyone has become an explorer. New cartographers are adding their personal explorations to existing maps and creating new records of their own experiences. If that which is observed is inherently altered, it follows that a person's experience of a place directly changes the place itself; places are what people believe them to be. That means that today's maps are about much more than hills, valleys, rivers, and roads. Maps have become tools for examining the emotional, sociological, and philosophical aspects of the human experience.

The concept of "where" is changing once again, expanding to include increasingly minute and varied facets of our world. The ever-ephemeral sense of place is created by human interaction with the physical world. Maps have always charted changing systems, but in the internet age the more intense focus on the hyperlocal has sped up the rate at which cartographers work. Slower-moving features of the planet -- shifting continents, growing cities, and eroding shorelines -- have already been adequately mapped; places are now being recorded as they exist for short periods of time. New maps record what could be termed the "hypercurrent."

Within this gallery, you will find a sampling of how cartography is being redefined by this change in scale. Whether recording a tiny patch of previously unremarkable forest floor down to the tiniest twig and blade of grass, reorganizing the contents of the Bible to visualize cross-references and social relationships, or taking a fresh look at urban growth by examining the construction date of houses currently on the market, today's cartographers are rethinking how the world around us is recorded and represented to assert the fact that we are here. This new breed of explorer is taking the impersonal maps and graphs of yesterday and making them deeply personal.

Welcome to the New Age of Discovery.
Where is expanding. W(e are )here.


Links:
W(e are )here (Intermedia Arts)

Solutions Twin Cities

Blog Like You Give a Damn

WEEKEND READING: March 22-28, 2008

Sorry for the slow week. Regular posting should resume after this weekend. In the meantime, there's always plenty of weekend reading to go around!

ITEM ONE: First off, a bit of self-promotion. I have a new post up at Next American City projecting some possible outcomes of the rise of online virtual worlds and increased advertising in Western culture. The French Quarter as an export? Perhaps...

ITEM TWO: WorldChanging with a stirring piece on the powerful political act of optimisim.

ITEM THREE: Is your city a "Paris" or a "London"? Read this Economist piece comparing the two euro-glam-capitals and ponder that question for a bit. (Via Pittsblog)

ITEM FOUR: PlannersWeb takes an in-depth look at the role of urban planners in a Chavez-led Venezuela.

ITEM FIVE: Core77 reports on the book containing the radical designs generated by participants in eVolo's '06, '07, and '08 Skyscraper Competition. Flashy stuff. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: Speaking of radical architecture, Richard Florida posted news of a massive floating city-cum-cruise ship. This definitely falls under "You gotta see it to believe it."

ITEM SEVEN: Over at Interchange, Barbara Faga looks at the somewhat comical tug-of-war in public perception of which is worse: density or sprawl.

Hasta luego; enjoy your weekend.

WEEKEND READING: March 8-14, 2008

Lots of good stuff this week, but Item One is a must-read for everyone.

ITEM ONE: This week marked the (unfortunately early) end of South Central Tour, a fantastic, photo-rich blog documenting an epic trip through South and Central American cities with two infamous street artists, Above and Ripo. Take a look back through the group's stops in Rio, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and a bucketload of other cities. (Photo credit)

ITEM TWO: Speaking of South American cities, here's a great article on the idealism, overpopulation, and developing crime problems of Brasilia.

ITEM THREE: Kazys wins for title of the week -- "Take the bus to the internet." The post doesn't disappoint.

ITEM FOUR: Another literary excerpt from Archidose, this one examining the struggle between technology and nature in architecture and urbanism.

ITEM FIVE: Space & Culture provides some great links about "desire lines."

ITEM SIX: Another eloquent commentary on how cities can be used to combat global warming. (Via Civic Nature).

ITEM SEVEN: Karrie Jacobs goes searching for the soul of Times Square, with interesting (and, of course, beautifully-written) results.

Traffic has been abnormally high lately at Where; thanks for the great week. Now you have a great weekend.

Do the Gedanken, Win a Copy of Hyperborder

Everybody loves a contest, right?

In an effort to generate some reader participation and get the creative juices flowing around here, Where is turning Monday's Blogedanken into a contest. Entries should be added as comments to the original post.You can enter as many or as few of your five results from the exercise as you'd like, but no more than five entries per person, please.

The contest will run between now and March 22nd, at which point I'll narrow the entries down to the most creative/funky/innovative/entertaining of the bunch (yeah, it's subjective, I know) and open things up to a public vote from March 23-30. The winner will be announced on Monday, March 31, and will promptly receive, via mail, a copy of PA Press' book, Hyperborder.

We're on the honor system here, folks, so play fair. Best of luck!

Architectural Revision

The term "revision" means, literally, to "see again." And in a recent article for the Toronto Star, Christopher Hume inadvertently showed how revision is sorely missing from the urban design dialog today.

Early in the article, which discusses the gentrification of Toronto's Liberty Village neighborhood: "Speaking of parks, there is virtually no green space anywhere here; perhaps the city should finally grapple with the issue of Lamport Stadium, which is so rarely used it could easily be demolished to make way for a park." And then, shortly thereafter: "recycling...old structures ensures a level of integrity and sustainability vital in an age of global warming."

So what gives, Mr. Hume? Why no love for Lamport Stadium.? Surely, if Vienna can figure out how to turn gasometers into a dazzling residential complex, Toronto can pull off the conversion of a stadium into a park without wasting all of that energy by tearing down the existing structure, no? As the urban affairs critic of the largest newspaper in one of the world's few truly global metropoli, Hume is, by default, a major voice in the current discussion on how cities should evolve. It is telling that he would so quickly dismiss a stadium that would probably be relatively simple to convert to public green space.

Culturally, many of us still think of old buildings as things that should be demolished to make way for that which is new, shiny, and more immediately perceived to be "green." But while converting stolid brick warehouses into luxury condo complexes is all well and good, architectural revision is a field with no horizon. Every underused or unattractive building can be rethought and retrofitted to become something that better serves the needs of a surrounding community. It just takes some spitshine and imagination.

How could Lamport Stadium be revised, as a piece of architecture? While an actual Torontonian would probably have the best answer, let's give it a shot. First off, as can be see in the above image, there is very little physical structure to the stadium. The bulk of the site (the playing field) is at-grade, or at least near it. The elimination of any gates or perimeter walls and the conversion of the obscenely large surface parking lot on the southeastern end of the site would create a sizable, T-shaped open green area that could be made quite lovely by a good landscape architect. The wings of green space that currently flank the stadium could be converted to community playing fields with shaded seating areas under the bleacher structures.

The bleachers themsevles provide the best opportunity for out-of-the-box thinking. How could large, clunky concrete structures be revised to serve optimally as part of a public park? While there are many possibilities, the first that comes to mind is: terraced community gardens. With the removal of most or all of the seating and the addition of some permanent soil beds, the porous concrete structures would be the perfect support system for a vertical farm, to be tended by Liberty Village neighbors.

Check out the picture of Lamport Stadium to the right. Cover the steeply-sloped back sides of the bleachers with solar panels or photovoltaics, retrofit what are assumedly locker rooms in the podium under the arched structure, and you've got a zero-energy community center for cold or rainy days. Heck, once you get going, this is more fun than it is challenging.

Revising and rethinking our buildings is a critical step that needs to be taken for us to move closer toward a truly sustainable form of urbanism. What are some strange buildings that could be revised to better serve your city's needs?

(Photos from Google Maps and Flickr user antifuse. The original full-color versions can be viewed by clicking the photos.)


Links:
Liberty Village highlights poor planning (Toronto Star)

Creative Recyling: Gasometer City (Treehugger)

Blogedanken: The Wishlist

Strange title, no? To explain: the term "blogedanken" is a portmanteau of "blog" and "gedanken," a German word that translates, roughly, to "thought experiment." Tonight, a blogedanken for your entertainment and mental exercise. After the first part, you'll need to highlight the text to see the next three. Resist the urge to look ahead -- go one at a time, or it won't be any fun.

1.) Spend ten minutes brainstorming every bit of urban designery that would be on your ultimate wishlist for your city. Does your city need a more efficient subway? Better street life? A giant sculpture of Chuck Norris? Go crazy. Get creative. This is the easy part. (Here's a great example featured in Weekend Reading two weeks ago, in case you need inspiration).

2.) Now go back over your list and decide which fifteen things would be your top priorities if you could put together your ideal plan for your city. Think carefully -- what would really make your city a better place to live?|||

3.) Next -- without changing the order of your fifteen priority items -- circle the first, sixth, and eleventh entries on your list. Now try to come up with a way that you could combine all three into one grand, symbiotic piece of urban design and/or policy. Repeat the process for the groupings of items 2-7-12, 3-8-13, 4-9-14, and 5-10-15. Again: Go crazy. Get creative.|||

4.) You should now have five innovative, wildly imaginative urban solutions unique to the challenges that face your city. Post your favorites in the comments section of this thread. Floating sustainable fast food culture villages? Tribal teen centers hung from the bottoms of elevated high-speed train tracks? Tax breaks for city workers who rent their homes and volunteer with local nonprofits? Show us what you've got.|||

Go get your gedanken on.

EDIT: This blogedanken is now officially a contest. You can enter as many or as few of your five results from the exercise as you'd like, but no more than five entries per person, please. Entries should be added as comments to this thread, and only participants who complete all four steps will be eligible to win. Entries will be accepted between now and March 31st, at which point I'll narrow the entries down to the most creative/funky/innovative/entertaining of the bunch (yeah, it's subjective, I know) and open things up to a public vote from April 1-10. The winner will be announced on Friday, April 11, and will promptly receive, via mail, a copy of PA Press' book, Hyperborder.

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

WEEKEND READING: March 1-7, 2008

Let's shake things up a bit this week. Instead of summaries of the seven Weekend Reading items, how about some teaser quotes?

ITEM ONE: "It's interesting to see the major changes in our urbanism - as well as to see the fact that the inherent nature of place is difficult if not impossible to erase."

ITEM TWO: "Now that the George W. Bush era is almost over, the world needs a place to archive the legacy of the 43rd president...If you felt your vote didn't count in 2000, it will certainly count here." (Photo credit)

ITEM THREE: "As February gives way to March, Brand Avenue begins its third year online! A few highlights and/or personal favorites from the last year."

ITEM FOUR: "The New City YMCA, where Jeremy played sports for free after school, has come down, and the basketball courts—the great equalizer, where rival factions of the Gangster Disciples would come together to play—have been replaced with a Blockbuster, two Starbucks and a grocery store that has its own sushi station. 'Those courts brought the community together,' says Jason. 'All of this thrown out for condos.'"

ITEM FIVE: "Eventscape's Kapsel is a multisensory functional space that can be set up anywhere in a busy office or elsewhere to create an oasis of relaxation and calm. Based on a lightweight tubular frame, the space can be skinned in any material, with no restrictions on size or form."

ITEM SIX: "Is there an architectural paranoia? And, if so, what would the treatment be – walking tours of all the unmarked buildings downtown? Nights spent alone with your psychoanalyst in empty suburban houses?"

ITEM SEVEN: "Active Social Plastic takes on cultural ephemera, turning its lens to architecture, urbanism, design, interaction, landscape, music and literature, among other leanings."

Have a great weekend!

WEEKEND READING: February 23-29, 2008

Happy Leap Year everyone! The crappiest month gets a whole day longer...Seriously, y'all, I hate February. Hooray for Weekend Reading, right?

ITEM ONE: TNAC becomes NAC, and kicks off a contest to come up with a tagline. The response so far has been El Lame-o, so go make some noise.

ITEM TWO: A massive wishlist for Hong Kong, Asia's Global City.

ITEM THREE: Pop City talks to Urban Design Associates honcho Don Carter about the eight things Pittsburgh needs to become a 21st Century City. It's about the Steel City, but many of Carter's points can be applied universally.

ITEM FOUR: Richard Florida frames urban development with an article about the Sex Pistols, and some interesting conversation follows.

ITEM FIVE: The Ground Floor explores the relationship between density and safety in urban areas.

ITEM SIX: Planetizen takes a look at Rotterdam's new "Blue Building" (seen in last week's Urbanffffinds).

ITEM SEVEN: A detailed written account of the soundscape of the boomtime Chinese city.

Have a fantabulous weekend, everyone! This blogger's headed home to Milwaukee for the weekend.

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

The Staten Island of Tomorrow

The following comment was made in response to a post at the NY Times blog Dot Earth about the future of suburbia:

"The answer to can we uninvent Suburbia is Queens, which in my youth was essentially a suburb and is now a city. Before that in my father’s time it was Brooklyn, a borough of little villages, and more recently Staten Island. The best way of accomplishing this is through good urban transit. In the DC area where I now live, the biggest mall (Tyson’s corner) is in despair trying to attract a new Metro line. The most successful new malls (White Flint and Pentagon City) are on the Metro."
— Posted by Eli Rabett

Building on yesterday's post, how plausible might it be to link Staten Island to Brooklyn or Manhattan with an underwater tunnel neighborhood? Would it be possible to extend the 1 train from South Ferry to Tottenville? Could an entire transit corridor lined with high-density underwater apartment complexes and shopping centers finally provide a high-speed link between the forgotten fifth borough and "The City"? Lord, maybe they could bring back the 9 so that it could run express and actually serve a purpose.

But then, who would want to live in New York Harbor? Something tells me the view is less than pristine.

Still, it's an interesting concept; Staten Island as the new frontier in New York City...

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


Links:
Can We Uninvent Suburbia? (Dot Earth)

The Endless City Q&A

After a tiny bit of prodding, the folks at Phaidon sent over a review copy of the recently released book The Endless City, edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, and containing essays by the likes of Saskia Sassen, Enrique Peñalosa, and the indefatigable Rem Koolhaas. Where will feature a review of the book soon, but first, another treat from Phaidon; the editors were asked a series of questions. The following is a selection of the highlights from the record of this Q&A.

What are the main issues that you think people should be concerned about when it comes to city growth?
The book has a section titled ‘Issues’ that we hope synthesizes the complexities of urban growth. In it, a number of the contributors outline key issues but approach them from a variety of viewpoints. For example, Richard Sennett argues that ‘over determination’ can kill the vitality and growth of urban centers. Cities need to be dynamic and its physical forms and functions need to be endowed with the capacity to respond to indeterminate, unpredictable forces. Frank Duffy applies a similar idea when explaining the urban office, so ‘adaptability’ is the central issue they both cover. Another issue the book clearly prioritizes is sustainable development. The contributions from Guy Battle and Nicky Gavron, along with the Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari essay, all detail urban growth strategies that respond to the environment and the challenges of climate change. Another central issue summarized by the three essays by Gerald Frug, Enrique Penalosa and Geetam Tiwari is governance and civic participation – cities need to allow for a multiplicity of voices and actors as well as a variety of experiences but there needs to be an agent or authority that can intelligently negotiate this multiplicity and still get something done. Tiwari explains this with particular reference to the forces dominating the informal sector. Both Anne Power and Sophie Body-Gendrot elaborate on this as well as some of the other pressing sociological concerns that urban designers, policymakers and the general public confront in the act of city making. Of course it goes without saying that quality design is the ingredient that delivers a truly remarkable city and allows individual places to flourish. The essays by architects Rem Koolhaas, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron all contribute various reflections about how to reconcile a variety of factors and perspectives enmeshed within the city’s physical reality. It should be noted that many of the essays in the Cities section resonate with the broader themes in the Issues section as well. The result is a cross-sectional analysis between the six cities [New York, London, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mexico City, and Berlin] and the global world with issues finitely referenced to specific urban conditions.

What world cities do you expect to go through the greatest changes in the 21st century?
The fastest growing cities are in Africa and across Asia and its up to the next generation to make sure their development does not repeat the mistakes of cities in the developed world – this means Lagos and Kinshasa, Mumbai, Deli and Dhaka, as well as Shanghai and Jakarta. It is projected that by 2030, over 4 out of every 5 urban dwellers will be in the developing world so this will have huge implications for the global economy. At the same time, mature cities such as London and New York City, Berlin and Mexico City need to ensure that their future growth reconciles their layered history of planning mistakes and prioritizes sustainable transport and inclusive, contained growth.

The book talks about the importance of cities learning from each other. Can you explain that? For example, what can NYC learn from Shanghai? Can small cities learn from big cities?
There are countless examples of cities looking to other cities when deciding how to invest in their future growth and health. Congestion charging in NYC wouldn’t be a viable option had London not demonstrated how it could be done, and Mexico City’s Metrobús is a stunning success modeled on the Transmilenio in Bogota and of course Curitiba. Ideas must be partnered with implementation strategies and learning often is a matter of scale. So yes, small cities can learn from big, and vice versa. The essay by Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari describes how small cities can serve as incubators for innovation precisely because of their scale. Understanding how cities implement large projects such as the Olympics in London, doing it with the right amount of investment in public space, has a lot to do with acknowledging how the city and individual neighborhoods have developed over time and how open space serves to socially integrate people from disparate backgrounds. The contributions of both Saskia Sassen and Enrique Peñalosa emphasizes this learning, especially in the latter how urban centers in developed countries are recovering from their love affair with the car, delimiting the access of automobiles in favor of public transport. Cities in developing countries could learn a lot from this. Most importantly, in order for ideas to transfer from one city to another, there needs to be a complementary understanding about how policies, decision making and funding align to facilitate implementation. Frug’s essay explains how the power structures of the six cities vary and what impact permutations to each city’s existing systems could have on local and regional planning mechanisms.

What are the key ideas that you want people to take away from reading this book?
The 34 contributors to the book – along with the hundreds of policymakers, politicians, academics, architects, planners, and urbanists involved with the Urban Age project which forms the basis for The Endless City – all believe that cities can offer a better social and economic life for its citizens. Now that half the world’s population live in cities, there is an urgent need to take stock of the new urban condition and find an approach to dealing with it. City sprawl should be contained and there are innovative strategies for creating high density, highly liveable environments. We want to help those charged with running and making cities understand the relationship between the socio-economic and spatial characteristics of cities – and we want the general public to understand how sustainable urban development can actually improve the physical form of their cities and the quality of their lives.

Are you hopeful for the future when it comes to our cities?
Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, offers an incredible explanation for why we should all be hopeful for the future of cities. Cities offer the potential for ‘quality of life equality’, i.e. access to green, open space and social and economic mobility as well as physical mobility. Across the world, people are moving into cities at an alarming rate – and not just mega-cities but smaller cities comprising an overall urbanized region. Most importantly, the twenty-first century will be increasingly focused on reducing both the overall sum and per capita production of carbon emissions, and as emitters of 75 per cent of the world’s pollution, cities are the battleground on which the future and health of our planet will be determined.

Is there any way for ordinary people to make change in their own cities? Do you have any recommendations for someone who wants to get involved?
Ordinary people make change in their city everyday. They do this by opting for public transport instead of a private car, by holding their government officials responsible for the quality of the built environment, and by advocating for equal access to green, open space. Ensuring that there is investment in sustainable forms of transport, and that access to healthcare, education and community services does not depend on how much money you make or the wealth of your locality. Most importantly, if you don’t know what your community is doing locally to advocate sustainable urban development, then join a forum and find out. Participate.

(Thanks, Faye!)

(Photo from Flickr users thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog and howzey. The original full-color versions can be viewed by clicking the respective photos.)

WEEKEND READING: February 2-8, 2008

Did you know that it can actually rain slush? Like, the rain is semi-frozen, so as it hits the ground it collects and forms massive fraeking rivers of slush in the middle of streets. It's true. It happened in Chicago this week. It was the worst winter weather I've ever seen, and I'm from Wisconsin. By the way, here's your Weekend Reading. :-)

ITEM ONE: Great article on the recent trend in happiness-focused urban policies.

ITEM TWO: Interchange post by Greg Smithsimon about sustainability and the importance of having plans for change "lying around."

ITEM THREE: Strange Maps covers "America: The Mall" with an enlightening essay.

ITEM FOUR: Just discovered a fanastic new blog called Making Maps. Take a gander at this post on the principles of map design.

ITEM FIVE: Pruned covers some fabulously futuristic designs for a park in Venice. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: WebUrbanist's "5 Innovative Industrial Designs for Ecological Living" will have you rethinking the way you interact with everyday objects.

ITEM SEVEN: In the realm of Crazy-But-True, there is apparently a group trying to raise $10 billion to build a dome over Chicago to ward off nasty winter weather. After this week, I almost want to contribute. Best part: they've already raised $233,085.

No more slush rain this weekend, but it's supposed to get down to ten degrees Fahrenheit. Winter here sucks, y'all. Hope your weekend is warmer than mine!