“Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” My Urban Legacy by Prof. Barie Fez-Barringten www.bariefez-barringten.com Part One Introduction Green questions are rhetorical Red questions are interrogatives. Thesis and premises: How many of you ever thought about urbanism (populate) as a culture (condition) or that urbanism could be cosmopolitan (universal)? The title is the “Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” because it aptly describes who we are and what we face. The sooner we understand our culture and its peculiar characteristics the sooner we can manage our lives and improve our living conditions. Increases in population and density culture our personal, family and business lives. We are cosmopolitan and urban as we agree, disagree, peruse common goals, tolerate stress and congestion, discern between community and privacy and distribute precious resources. For example, an urbanized person negotiates traffic, crowds, street signs, home mail delivery, and crowded places of public gatherings, ambulating, few stars due to bright skies, pollution, live entertainment, public transportation, and close proximity to neighbors. The culture of cosmopolitan urbanism is both about those affected by population’s dynamics and the way they are able to utilize these affects to facilitate further population growth. Like any culture it can be inherited and once experienced, it can be conveyed and inherited by others. It is the responsibility of persons that have been cultured by urbanism to convey that experience to others to preserve the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism.   How many have ever thought of themselves as being affected by their environment and that an urban background can affect the way you think and behave? Culture is the development of the intellect through training or education and the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns including arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. Dense population, crowds and opportunities breed specific kinds of social behavior and unique metaphors, which affect individual persons, families and institutions. These in tern conversely contribute to develop the social, cultural and built environment. It is a conversation between an increasing collective as they add and reject persons and institutions and the environment they form to support their individual and collective interests enabling us to mature, authenticate and develop our identity. We are one with our surroundings and expect them to perform.   In our time, we wonder what can be done to make the urbs feasible, livable, and desirable, what are the problems, and how can they be mitigated? Sometime the problem looms before us.   What can we do to make the urb everyone’s identity, metaphor and home? I believe if we fit the city to the metaphors of the population and its diversity then more people will care and when more care, the city will greatly improve. After all, form should follow function, and the population will only care if the city is their metaphor.   So, who will do this and what can we do to foster urban quality? Is there one size fits all or are we already doing what’s right by acclimating and adjusting to the variables of our demographics, geography, climate, and socio-political necessities?   I believe when the A.I.A. asks, “What can be done to make cities livable” that the A.I.A. is taking responsibility for what they and others have neglected for several generations. I would put the question “what can be done to make cities livable and worthy to be called home”. The Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” wants “livability” to be home.   But we don’t always perceive our surroundings as home. Some would agree and others disagree that American rural, suburban and urban cities find themselves needing to mitigate the bad choices, carelessness and narrow vision of their past. Since I gave my fist lecture on metaphors and architecture at Yale University and established the Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments in New York City in 1970, I have watched as the rift widened between architects and planners and therefore cities further deteriorated. Can you identify any thing you do as having a particularly urban identity? Thankfully, there are a few that simply love cities the way they are and accept the city with all there pros and cons, as a matter of fact the more the apparent contradictions, complexities and anomalies the better. In these people are the seeds of hope but they are not usually the ones who take responsibility for shaping public policy, planning and design.   However, without pride, a personal sense of ownership and overwhelming moral and ethical mind I have found that states and cities become corrupt, permissive and pedantic frustrating those that love and invest their identity in the city’s metaphor and who believe their identity is authenticated and synonymous with the identity of the city and will accept most of any of its conditions.   What is the one thing that we all want in our home? However romantic and interesting are war zones and circuses, man’s interests cannot be nurtured and developed in such areas. We all agree that law and order by civilized behavior is desired and necessary. On the other hand, life is more than the maintaining law of order.   From the farmhouse in Iowa to the penthouse in Manhattan, we all call our country, state, city, neighborhood, and community and house our home. It is the repository of all our metaphors, hopes and dreams. It is very precious, valuable and worthy of our attention despite the many who merely make a business and career out of profiting and policing agreements by consensus.   I have learned that without passionate and urban educated professionals the choices presented is less often the better of two evils. And neither one of them engenders civic pride and ownership. In Florida, the problem is how to shift the pride away from a snowbirds city of origin to a persons’ Florida home. For those in Florida where Florida is their home state, the problem is restoring and building their pride and interest in a quality city. As without a vision, a nation perishes so without a personal identity and affiliation of one’s home we lose our initiative, creativity and authenticity. Already the implications have manifest themselves in avoidances and overwhelming acceptance of banality and boredom. Since form follows function, we all know we work harder for less and with limited choices. Our new gained affluence has provided us ways of maneuvering around in a very prescriptive and formulary life style. I believe, the more we have a point of view about this culture of cosmopolitan urbanism the more we can improve the way we live. So, who’s to blame? Despite the warnings, I find few that really care for the future and generations that will follow, I have seen many who believe that planning is really un-American, and look to destroy our past with little care for the future. Therefore, I believe it is the job of our institutions to educate and be the custodians of the urban metaphors, which will help us, choose and manage urban contexts. For years, learned journals have published my monographs on this subject and still universities and governments do not have a way of knowing the metaphors of their constituents save the markets of commercial developers and the public’s reactions to infringements on their privacy.   What can the individual do? I know that most are not in a position to choose large, medium or small urban contexts but rather to choose between rural and urban where these days’ most non-agricultural families choose sub-urban or urban clusters. On the other hand, if one chooses an urban context we may find ourselves managing its renovation, expansion or reaping its benefits and failures. Weather and climate aside, I believe an urban person’s first responsibility begins in choosing a city where he can find agreement and observe the qualities contributing to a better way of living. However, I observe that our society has come to rely on remedies and cures for everything hoping anything can be mitigated.   Does the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism make a difference? Take the extreme example of how New Orleanians persists in settling in below flood elevation areas as do homesteaders insist upon building in coastal flood areas. Such strong and determined will overcomes many natural obstacles and I have observed that in urban settings such people are a force for the right decisions. We can see the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism at work in the will that strives to overcome the inertia of the physical. The urban person strives to maintain the status quo.   What is one of the ideals in any urban environment? Aside from options and choices, our culture intuitively recognizes minimum standards that whatever the size, urban context is best balanced by a rural and undeveloped surround, which is often farming, mountains, forest, wetlands, or waterways. I believe it wrong when these lands are sub-urbanized reducing escape options and quality of life. It makes this new area subordinate to the urb and without its own identity. In this frustration and without a national policy I observe people continue to migrate to places where these choices are possible. I believe New Orleanians, as most urban places will be faced with arresting and reversing this very basic practice. As they do, urban densities will naturally increase and our culture will evolve a cosmopolitan set of values. What is the one word that means populating our surrounding land?   And how does sprawl it affect us? Sprawl dilutes personal identity We already know that the sprawl of the city’s structure and population damages urban lifestyle by adding time and expense to travel from the urb. For others, the only financially feasible option is the suburb because reasonable options are not locally available. So they surrender their urban for the sub-urban rather than downsize to a smaller urban. Such decisions are economically driven as mobile Americans find new employment, recreation, and business opportunities. I believe this is a disaster and while I am not in favor of birth control as a means of solving overpopulation, I am a believer in providing populations with quality urban contexts.   The problem has many vectors but because of population growth, immigration and migration urban mangers choose between permitting growth by new development on already platted urban and suburban land to accommodate that growth to consume undeveloped land. 231 Who are the parties that can correct the problem? It is citizens, educators and elected officials who are both interested in our context that understand urbanism who make better choices. In the late eighties construction permitting came to a screeching halt when Lee county introduced concurrency legislation which required all developers to first develop supporting and affected infrastructure prior to adding faculties which would burden the existing areas. The results did not slow or curtail growth because developers were able to meet the requirements and pass the costs onto potential buyers.  Has any one ever heard of concurrency legislation? But concurrency only highlights how urban sprawl adds infrastructure instead of using existing. It also shows how, even with this condition many developers still prefer to exercise their business in rural counties than to build in urban centers. The important exceptions are New York City, Singapore, and Shanghai, which expedited developers in the building process. All of these cities were desperate to recover their lost income and contributing populations. While their decisions tapped into the existing city skyscraper and dense population, metaphors it brought people back into the city and away from the suburbs.  Many of our “urbs” that have sprawled now try to prevent growth by local town fathers following many European models, which keep the distance from the urb to the rural to a minimum. It is called “no growth”.   I believe that this alone can stop sprawl and increase the quality of urban life. Many communities in New England practice this while others have lat the sprawl ooze out to connect many cities and form metropolitan areas; as a result, the urban clusters have deteriorated. 217 What is it that prevents leaders to change? We do not convey our culture of cosmopolitan urbanism. Highly mobile and transient communities have lost their ability to manage urban cities, buildings, and neighborhoods within metropolitan urban areas so that no one values their social, iconic and economic contribution to the balance and opportunity that citizens needs to thrive and grow. All because we do not have a vision and will for our urbs and continue to allow our lands to be absorbed by aggressive private real estate interest. I am all in favor of real estate as a business as I my self was once a Texas real estate brokers. But in our highly transient society, it is up to individuals and their institutions to be the surrogate and agent for society’s social ethos. Functional neighborhoods can be either victim or hero to combat the social and economic deterioration that contributes to the use of illegal drugs, crime, family separations and a much lower quality of life. Existing urban cities, buildings, and neighborhoods within metropolitan urban areas should be valued for there social, iconic and economic contribution to the balance and opportunity citizens needs to thrive and grow, all because we do not have a vision and will for our urbs and continue to allow our lands to be absorbed by aggressive private real estate interest.   What are some of the pros and cons to increasing density? Urban sociology In the urbs the social benefit to all income and socio-economic levels occurs when necessities dictates increasing densities and adding new buildings and communities. This benefits existing populations in poorer neighborhoods because it allow for entry-level citizens to make their neighborhoods relevant and personally metaphoric. As older occupants relocate to newer dwellings, others move and renovate. Often the neighborhoods become a mixture of people on differing socio-economic scales and diverse cultures.   It could even result in vest-pocket zone variances allowing for non-residential use where mixing both uses and economic social status often produces the best of both worlds for all citizens. But such a combination means mixing metaphors and aesthetics as well, which demands understanding the urban context. It is here where community verses privacy issues are identified, negotiated and sometimes reconciled. When they are not, the results are often disputes that result in violence and chaos as differing interest and tastes vie for their turf. In 1967, to research for my thesis Precinct Police Station to earn my masters of architecture at Yale the patrol car I was in drove into an urban block in Brooklyn to face a heated gun battle with shots being fired from several buildings on either side of the street. While both officers left the vehicle they put the microphone in my hand and told me to lay on the floor in the back and tell headquarters what was happening, this was a dramatic repeat of the squabbles I experienced growing up in tenements in the Bronx.   Later the officers told me that this was a daily occurrence and that it was caused by these neighbors inability to reconcile their claim to the neighborhood and their difference in life style and culture. I learned that to avoid such gun battles the metaphor of the urban city must be brought to the consumer to affect the way residents choose and influence public policy. They must either own, believe they own and be treated with the dignity and respect of a righteous citizen. For new cities, and in light of the dependence on foreign oil in dangerous places, our dependence on foreign oil would be greatly reduced by simply accommodating population increases in urban rather than sub-urban settings because urban contexts can be made economic and metaphorically attractive. I believe an economic urban design is the antidote to sprawl, expensive highways, power generation, grids, bridges, automobiles and fuel. I believe that one of the reasons the Europeans are not very sympathetic to the plight of American cities is because Europeans have practiced conservation while observing Americans squander its land, productivity, and natural resources.   What is being done now improve the urban experience? Recently I have observed an increasing number of responsible institutions initiating programs that encourage spatial beauty, complexity, contradictions, vulgarity, opportunity, and mixed uses and formed such initiatives as “New Urbanism”, “Smart Growth”, “Blueprint for America”, “Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) and in New York City in 1970 we formed the Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments.   America is as much a place as it is an idea and our cities are one of the world’s most ethnically diverse demographic populations, which insist cities, is workable, fun and beautiful. Cities are often both recreational and exciting to even announce something like “New York is a Summer Festival”! In America when a city or place in city does not work, it is abandoned and destroyed and the American culture moves on to create a better place.             Can we decide between right and wrong, provide options and still manage our environment? Hope and Vision It is for this reason I am optimistic and writing and lecturing on urbanism because I believe we can have the will if only we had the vision, and it is up to persons like myself to present this vision, a vision based on empirical models and workable ideals. I believe it is up to design professional’s not disinterested bureaucrats, lawyers and accountants to create works of art, metaphors, and lifetime contexts while protecting the health, safety and welfare of the general public. Right now communities have grown up with the benefit of the talent and committed professional s needed to create livable cities. However nice is Tamiami Trail, it will never match the Champs-Élysées and why shouldn’t it? American architects have come to accept the “strip” as a given in modern cities.   What are the creative opportunities to foster a culture of cosmopolitan urbanism? Recently non-rural city-constituents insist on a government, which has an urban mind, and culture, with people who are passionately urban and have a cosmopolitan point of view. A point of view unencumbered with provincialism but filled with compassion, education, and professionalism. The mass media and Internet condition populations to the extent that they are emerging to desire the things that only an urb can provide.   However while there are many commonalties between one and another urb there are also remarkable differences. Obviously, since not all cities can be the same, makers of the urban metaphor makes the strange familiar and likens one urban-type in terms of another.   The urban creators must be more than a technical architect or planner but a profession that includes the commonalities and differences on many levels of issues and complexities; it needs a “culture of cosmopolitan urbanism”.   It is both a science and an art! Such a culture knows the history of urbanism that deals with the increases in population and understands the urban mindset, providing intelligent choices so that citizens may choose and manage urban contexts in representative governments, their elected officials, bureaucrats and professional consultants.   Communities must ask whether their town-fathers, government leaders, elected officials, systems of government and laws are suitable for creating ideal cities, or, is it best left to the private sector which historically have been dictators, czars, pharaohs, feudal lords, and passionate industrialist who created most of the beautiful cities in the world by power and single-minded initiative. They also created the most despotic unhealthy and unsafe cites the world has ever known. Few, if any city, when first began have a good beginning. It is good that today, modern governments involve citizens to monitor decisions so that there can there be a city with the driving force of a people and their representative government, businessmen, corporations with a confluence of great and influential leaders. They debate whether to urbanize or not, to ruralize or not, to sub-urbanize or not, which is more appropriate and when, to extend or to renovate the existing, to build vertically rather than horizontally.   What should be the mix of rental verses owned properties and should these be built in higher or low density? Often, the unspoken is about people’s life-style metaphors and the diversity of populations, vocations, and backgrounds.   Some ask about the very rich, while others debate the pros and cons to encourage, discourage, control or limit growth, zone or not to zone and plan or not to plan, other communities argue in favor of leaving such developments totally to chance and without anyone’s intervention, for example, Houston does not have zoning. These are all valid debates and contribute to the increase of quality in the built environment, which is best for the majority of the affected population.       So, why aren’t the leaders doing their job? First of all, we are not conveying the culture of urbanism to them, by its very nature culture lives when it is received and conveyed. Aside from the checks and balances afforded by our democratic form of government, two party system and cultural diversity the plight of Southwest Florida is exacerbated by demeaning the primary professional whose education and calling it is to create and develop the built environment. Instead, the authority rests with planners who focus on infrastructure, politicians who focus on politics, and developers who are interested in profits, while one of the solutions would be a school of architecture, which educates and advocates. Yet another dilemma looms and that is a culture of pragmatism and precedence law, even with a version of statute of limitations it still is used to win variances to change approved plans. Everybody knows we are what we eat as we benefit when we choose the right foods we must build the right environments, both affect our being.     What are the two different ways urbanism occurs? To reify and convert the abstract concept of urbanism into a reality and identify some of the choices I have divided these two lectures on urbanism into two, one and a half hour (1 ½) plus 1/2 hour of questions and discussions to include Natural and evolving and corporately created, synthetic and mass- produced urban forms.   Natural cities include such cities as New York, Paris, Charleston, Leipzig, Florence, Madrid, Rome, Johannesburg, St, Petersburg, and hundreds of others. Cities which foster builders, general contractors and individual business to design and custom build on a small scale where individuals invest in apartment buildings, rental or condominium ownership.   This form of living is the metaphor of natural cities and their culture of cosmopolitan urbanism because people in natural cities gather together to: 1. Extract and manufacture products form natural resources 2. Exchange goods and services, 3. Attack others to acquire resources 4. Defend themselves from attack by a common enemy 5. Enjoy entertainment, recreation, and quality of life, 6. Farm and fish, 7. Import and export goods and services. 8. Pursue careers and work On the other hand, synthetic city-types and clusters are corporately created and include New Towns, Planned Unit Developments, Commercial and Industrial Developments such as English Mountain, Sugar Tree, Al-Khobar, Reston, and industrial cities in China and Saudi Arabia (Dhahran, Abquiq, Jubail and Yanbu). Where land is developed, buildings designed and systematically mass-produced, manufactured on site or in factories as products according to pre-designed stock plans and specifications by large real estate development corporations.   Can we plan for urbanization? Planning for urbanization Organic new town or the garden city  is a type of planned urbanization based on an advance plan of the type prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Planned urbanization on a mega scale is the construction of new towns by the Housing Development Board of Singapore.   Unplanned (organic) cities are the oldest form of urbanization. Examples can be seen in many ancient cities; although with exploration came the collision of nations, which meant that many invaded, cities took on the desired planned characteristics of their occupiers. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the cities, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometries. I believe that either can be workable depending on the scale and quality of the government and the professionals managing the urbanization process, of course, without a good board of directors setting good policy the mangers usually falter. I have an original study of the city of Baghdad which aptly describes the way the city was built by attaching one dwelling after another to each to form a gigantic honeycomb cluster. The west and the east both have different ways of forming their urbs.       99 UN agencies prefer to see an urban infrastructure installed before urbanization occurs. I recall studying a village in Peru where my best friends served in the Pease Corps, after a community effort planning a community the built the sewer, water and electric systems as well as the roads. They also started a system of making local building materials to build and trained laborers. Landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (public parks, sustainable urban drainage systems and greenways) which can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalize an area and create greater livability within a region.   My curiosity about “why my environment is the way it is” gave birth to a passion for urbanity, cities, architecture, and design long before I even knew my own identity. When I was a little boy, that curiosity was coupled with my building covered shelters out of a combination of blankets and wooden orange crates in our Hunts Point two-family house.   I therefore became the student and creator of the very places, which I was later to call my world, and when I became a member of the American Institute of Architects, I also became an authority on urbanism. As a young person, I did reconnaissance to find out where I was in this world and to make everything recognizable, familiar and gain control of my opportunities.   For me the city was a metaphor for my identity and I authenticated my self by these explorations and constructions. In much, the same way as did primitive man builds his first shelter and soon combined them together to form villages and agreements to develop them into civilized societies. Early Baghdad, and our New England towns and villages are examples where populations settled because of natural resources, waterways ands trade crossings.   Having said all of this about urbanity, I have always been metaphorically romantic about rural and small town life. I even enjoyed living in two venues for the twenty years we lived and worked in Saudi Arabia. So I am familiar with the plight of the so-called “snowbird”. My cosmopolitan involvement with urbanity is personal and peculiar to me. I am not trying to teach anyone here the basics of city planning but rather to encourage a love and passion for the built and created man- made environment and to hopefully provide a roadmap so that citizens may choose and manage urban contexts, we are in need of a culture of cosmopolitan urbanism.   In brief, to share the passion, I found myself involved in one of those basics that affect everyone but few give much thought, the culture of cities and urbanism. Armed with this passion it is possible for citizens to choose and manage urban contexts. Yes, the key is education. Much the way we are managing our health care I believe we must also learn to manage our contexts. I believe my mission in this CLL program is to impart that passion, the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism. 732 words What is the difference between cities and urban areas how is this distinction helpful to mange the control of cities? While urban is about city dwellers and being civilized to do so Urban is also the very "characteristic of city life” while urbane became restricted to manners and styles of expression. Urban renewal, euphemistic for "slum clearance”, is recorded from 1955. While a city is the result of the accord, agreements of citizens it may remain unurbanized. A part of cites may be urbanized while others remain undeveloped. There are many cites which have whole districts that remain under the control of one city or county municipality who choose to urbanize that land, for example, Fort Myers’ relationship to Lee County. Also, some say they visit a city and do not get the sense that they are in an urban environment. The form of civilization may be different from theirs. As an example, my houseboy from Thailand chastised the Saudi Arabia custom of closing shops for prayers as in Thailand commercial time is so precious that most stores time shares a particular location to earn a living, when one proprietor leaves another sets up to sell his goods.   There are cities, which have a complete infrastructure but are not urban because its institutions, public facilities and limitations on public movement are limited and restricted. Before the iron curtain fell many cites under the Soviet Union were such cities, certain cites in Saudi Arabia are other such examples, they are apparently “dead” cities. In this way urban is the life within the city while the city is the place and the urban is life or the structure, and things within the city. The city is the agreements of accord and “rightness” of the place and all those within are “right” while the urbs are what they build to supply their needs and necessities. For example with public funds, they may build highways, roads, rail and bus to encourage private developers to build places for commerce, industry and habitation. They also build sidewalks, parks and playgrounds for children. How does an urban culture shape a city? Typically, culture is inherited and passed on from one to another generation to authenticate and both the new and last generation while enriching each person and the collective society.   Urban culture is the culture of cities. Cities all over the world, past and present, have behaviors and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable rural areas. Urban culture is any of the behavioral patterns of the various types of cities and urban areas, both past and present. "Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members... Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to old age.” In terms of the behavioral psychologist and urban sociologist, it is the result of a person being conditioned by their surrounding context and its multiple specific experiences with the facilities in the context. Cities such as New Orleans, Galveston, Los Angeles, Butte, and Detroit come to mind. The epistemology of urbanism explains knowledge how do we know something is urban and not just a city and is they’re any absolutes about what distinguishes a good from bad city. Scores of philosophers and urban scholars have tried to sort through these issues while civilizations settle and develop homesteads and build villages. I began my formal journey under the greatest epistemologist of our time, now deceased after 91 years, my friend and mentor, Dr. Paul Weiss. Like me, Dr. Weiss, a distinguished professor at Yale and then Catholic University, was born and raised in New York and he spoke with a distinct accent. I set out to prove that, as art was a metaphor so was architecture and therefore architecture was an art because it too makes metaphors.   To do this I had to first find an absolute definition of “metaphor” and then demonstrate how elements of architecture performed this way. After years of research and many published monographs, I concluded that even culture is a metaphor. It is what people value and use to authenticate sustain and identify them. Their culture and the context of their culture are their “bridge “, address, and home root. It is their highpoint in a crowded world, which acts as beacon to guide them home and be their terminal to any journey.   What kind of urban people make a difference? Urban people are enamored with the “city” and although they disagree about many things, they do think about it but in their own empirical way. They can be introverted, petty, sophisticated or vulgar and share a vision of cooperating in a common vocabulary reaching for the sky and demonstrating their ability to be powerful and “god-like”. Heroism in a heroic city is an expectation amongst its inhabitants. Urbanites welcome heroes where many great cities have urbanized under the horsepower of its home- grown heroes. Urbanites are the center of one place and “every-where –else” uses them as a model. They, the city and the collective persons with the urban fabric are, not only right, but also possess a power of place and collective wisdom and resources. They seem to have a super-natural authority and collective self-righteousness. They know and can decide about the trends, fashion, arts, finance, products and consumer’s needs and desires. These tycoons and entrepreneurs include Trumps, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Drake, Gates, Rockefellers, Astor’s, Waldorf, Howard Hughes (Las Vegas), Henry Ford, Carnegie, Whitney, Ford, Mellon (Pittsburgh), and the Arabian Gulf King, Emirs and sheiks are some such people. In fact, none of the above may bear it out, but the allusion to being god-like (trend setters) permeates and fans the flame of the fantasy. The urbanite envisions the world with them at its center, emanating rays of light, products, words, songs, sounds, ideas, force, design, engineering, science, technology, religion, medical cures, and healing. For example, in 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family. These people received and conveyed the culture of cosmopolitan culture.       192 In cities like New York, Paris, Rome, Mumbai, Beijing, Los Angeles and then a year or even later things spring up in other smaller and secondary markets. Commerce plays an important part in giving a city its identity and vitality. It’s not all about profit but more the opportunity to peruse dreams, careers, family and relationships. It is the seed of a universal view and globalization. Most cities start with commerce exploiting resources and geographical assets before being a magnet to large populations. One can control unwanted influx of populations by curtailing employment. As citizens, we can choose to live in such a city made by others or ourselves be part of the driving force. Often this translates into electing officials who will carry out this job. In other cases, it is simply voting on legislation, which allows private developers to do this job in the private sector. For these very factors, many have abided in cities while others have deserted cities for want of calmer and more benign context. Some cities prosper under a strong and guiding mayor while other cities simply grow with a mayor who encourages others to lead. 103 Do urban persons affect the quality of the built environment? The urban person is a believer in the world and its potential to keep and hold mankind. Art flourishes in the urban environment because it is where creative like- minded artisans and craftsman are born, raised and hone their craft on the challenges and demands of the market. As Renaissance-kings and Queens hired and fostered artisans, so do the cities and urban populations provide fertile ground for invention, innovation, design, thought and ideas. Along with artisans, there are poets and writers who provide a libretto and describe the scenario of the urban context.                 What do urban minded persons build? Pedestrian appurtenances such as sidewalks, plazas, walkways, ambulatories, parks and playgrounds, street furniture, covered bus stops, train and airplane terminals, lookouts, and monuments are but some of the distinctive of both the natural and the synthetic urban city, whereas rural and sub-urban developments are predominantly accessed by horse and buggies or automobiles while, the pedestrian ways have much less of a priority and few people ever use these. Authors and planners such as Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch and Louis Munford wrote extensively about these urban features. It seems our quest is to bring rural pedestrian’s freedom into the city.   Space is another way of forming and perceiving cities where some cities are built as architectonic voids and solids, and others a series of free standing three dimensions solids perceived from the exteriors as shapes and forms as sculpture.   Most of the cities in Europe and the mid east and big cities such as New York, Paris, Cambridge, Barcelona, Florence, Rome, Venice, and Chicago are cities of a series and hierarchy of enclosed and bounded spaces. Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle are the largest examples of such of the sculptural cities.   What does overpopulation mean and how is this mitigated? The very idea of over population is a man made invention and its opposite in under population. It is only over when economists believe human, physical and financial resources cannot sustain a stable government. This is measured by a proportion of resources to the population and physically measured in scale. When a government is under populated, it usually means it has less people than it needs to meets its budget and maintains its programs.   Scale of cities can either attract or deter but in any case it is the scale of city’s utilities, support services, energy supply, vertical and horizontal transportation, commerce, industry, institutions, communications, and residential variety that motivates societies to urbanize in as dense and compact way as possible.     Scale is a proportion of one thing in relation ship to another and the larger and more dense the city the greater is the proportion of all facilities city per person where each person has access to the greatest number, sizes and quality of resources. Even the poorest is “city-rich”.   What are the advantages of higher densities? On the other hand, the more the density the more people share in the collective facilities and the more efficient is each support facility. For example, high-rises increase the numbers of people using one square foot of land, one foot or road, pipe, sewer line, power plant, elevator, train, or bus. The efficiencies translate into lower taxes and potentially higher standard of living if standards are based on access to the city’s amenities made possible and necessitated by scale such as hospitals, museums, parks, schools, universities, commerce, entertainment, rail and air transport and banking. It is on the matter of scale that Renaissance cities were designed and Mediterranean villages built. For example, my grandparents city of Rhodes, the city of Dubrovnik and the many shopping malls which have been designed to make the shopper at home. The other side of scale is its disproportionate relationship to the single human individual. And, this is what characterizes the urban from the rural where the urban is naturally more general, cosmopolitan, individualistic, and not co-dependent having lived with so many to not be familiar with all but adjusted to being a stranger amongst many strangers, not familiar but a learned friendliness as civil to make the enormous scale work. Urbanites are at peace with not knowing their neighbor as not knowing the workings, contents and interests of the whole city. Accustomed to being a cog a great wheel minds their own business while politicians and government officials keep the city going. Just get on a crowded elevator in a New York City skyscraper and try saying hello.                 618 What are the basic components of the urbs? Architect’s Urbs From an architectural point of view urban consists of structure, infrastructure, government, laws, agreements, ordinances, civilized society and civil behavior, consensus and concessions for public and private use, resources, and the provision of basic services, air, water, light, concerns for health and health services, tradesman and the ability to import and export as well as trade and exchange. Urban allow persons to ambulate and move about without infringing on the privacy, sanctity and sovereignty of persons, families and business interest. Urbs also harbor institutions created from the concerns for collective and ongoing remedies, and the development of the culture’s ideals in education, science, and art, as well as government, justice and communications. An institution in any city is an organization, establishment, foundation, society, or the like, devoted to the promotion of a particular cause or program, esp. one of a public, educational, or charitable character. While they have the form of a corporation, they are, importantly, not-for –profit and their board is a cross section of the peers of that institution. Urban centers often have institutions, which not only serve their own nation, but other cities and causes throughout the world. They are the early-globalized models for the globalization of the world. On the other hand, they are subject and scrutinized by the context in which they operate. It is conditioned by its history, settlement patterns, heroes, battles and treatise, and because all of real (royal) estate is never really owned but for beneficial use taken by hostile actions. Urbs are limited and bound by agreements by adjacent and continuous domains and their resultant configurations are a result of negotiations or victories. Just look at maps and you will see that there are many states with jagged and messy boundaries while others are absolutely straight and angular. The later are those created by mandate of law while the former evolved and settled naturally. Even the way we buy and sell real estate today is by offer and acceptance to rights and privileges.   What are the impacts of the government on urbanity? In a democracy, urban is a city that function, works and changes by the will and effort of its collective inhabitants, as example the way in which the cities of Naples, Fort Myers, Bonita Springs and Cape Coral have incorporated their communal interest. It is inherently communal, social to tolerate, adjust and accommodate both the private and collective rights of its citizens. The citizens of an urban city know their place and how it works .In what ever form of government the city is quite self-sufficient and run by individual, business, corporate and governmental self interest perusing their self interest and exchanging goods and services. The best urban city is disproportionably self-run with the least government intervention. It is a kind of benevolent anarchy.   Hong Kong is a prime example of a centrally ruled government leaving its hands off the working of its urban city, Jeddah and other Arab, Indian, and Pakistani cities do likewise. For an architect, as it was in Egypt, Greece and Rome the goal is to design and build a city which is the sum and substance of its citizens where constituents can achieve their hopes and dreams for both today and into the future. To achieve these goals the architect must know not only the culture of the people but the systems and resources to limit and bound the spaces, programs and resources they will utilize. In urban cities, these include many cultures combined into one and multiple systems of transportation, communication and education. The urban architect is a responsible, concerned professional doing serious and important work for the community he serves. 119 Urbanites use facilities as elevators, building lobbies, sidewalks, busses, trains, stores and shops, parks, and schools to culture, develop and mature. Urbanites are consumed and influenced by their environment the mass transit, massive buildings and vast complex of institutions. Modern cities are a matrix of vehicle and people conveyance of goods and services, utility lines, sewage, water, electrify, and emergency vehicle access. Cities are a complex machine inhabited by people defying the proverb that form follows function. It is more that people adopting to form while interior design mitigates the difference by adapting the form to fit the person. Education, Careers, Commerce, and Entertainment also mitigate the scale and visuals that mask the technology and scale of the city’s structure.   What is the crisis of urbanism in our culture? 66 The culture of cosmopolitan urbanism is not being conveyed nor inherited from one to another generation. What was a legacy of from past generations coming from Europe or developing from within the USA is not being conveyed. In some societies the value of the urban experience is being eclipsed by other social structures. In other societies it is being exacerbated by mismanagement and rapid population growth.   History of Urbanism Urbanism is a social, political, environmental, economic and geopolitical study affecting public policy, commerce and industry so that more colleges and universities are offering degrees in this important area of study and because of that I am pleased that many of Florida’s county planning staff is increasing qualified. However, without a college of architecture in South West Florida their well-intended efforts are often over looked by the courts. A local college of architecture would be politically and socially entrenched in the context and more persuasive.   Judges might think twice before overturning county staff’s recommendations if the staff were indigenous and educated in the venue of the court. Such a school would also educate and influence public policy affecting town fathers and developers. With such a school, the developers might even be the architects and local planners. And judges may even be former students and architects. Everyone but the real estate development industry and the farmer who may want to sell his land believe that urbanizing on undeveloped land is profitable. To both it is profitable but eventually it is profit at the expense of others.         What is pragmatic side of urbanism? On the other hand, taxpayers, consumers and hard-pressed governments know that existing cities and urban centers make it expensive, unwieldy and un-profitable to practice real estate development as developers can do on undeveloped land.   As a result in the forties residents seeking more square footage, and better quality living space at a lower cost in big cities across America relocated to subdivisions in what became known as the city’s suburbs. In this way, federal and state policies governing agricultural property influences sub-urban sprawl. On the other hand, inner city urbanites left because of price and quality, developers, counties and manufactures found it profitable, and the start of a national industry. Highways got built, with low cost oil, oil companies built more refineries, automobile manufactures convinced every one to have a romance with his vehicle, mortgages and credit companies proliferated, and the corporations eclipsed many small businesses.  On the other hand, there are millions of people now moving into urbs and even more that refuse to leave and endure some of hardships because they prefer the advantages. 209 Dale Johnson in “Lost in the Suburb s described a cultural and political gap that occurred in New Jersey and Ontario in the early 1990s when suburban voters began to outnumber urban or rural voters, and began to perceive that they were paying taxes to provide urban areas with services that were not duplicated in their community. Meanwhile, suburban communities would export problems to the cities, typically in the form of drug addicts, homelessness, smog, prostitution and other crimes serving suburban residents, and the need to accommodate a large number of commuters and their sewage and parking requirements.   As downtown residents and suburban voters became estranged, each perceived themselves subsidizing the other, and accordingly a common solution, called in both New Jersey and Ontario the Common Sense Revolution, transferred funds from urban needs to suburban sprawl, triggering a decline in urban quality of life in both places, as population further spread out and downtowns became more hostile to suburban visitors, the city of Johannesburg in South Africa is such an example.   To reverse this trend major cites have provided developers and builders with tax incentives, free land on deteriorated and abandoned property, expedited zoning and permitting, financing instruments and special mortgages, and the means to market the units before construction. 526 In other communities, cities, and towns have adopted no-growth policies and prohibited such development; either urban or other wise to occur while others have openly embraced the onslaught of developers to their undeveloped land. While I am in favor of representative government, I believe that without a steady stream of voices from continuants that urban blight is inevitable. We don’t much discuss urban blight in Southwest Florida but it is the bane of every densely populated municipality particularly caused by disenfranchised residents who lack a culture of cosmopolitan urbanism. However, much of Florida is suffering under a good policy called “smart growth” which after all its town hall meetings municipal development plans encounter the courts which continue to permit the absorption of wetland, watershed and fragile eco-systems, not to mention the increased demand to build more power plants, roads, and water supply. It seems that precedence law, free enterprise and rights of corporations often prevail. Over recent years, not a few private groups, universities, professional associations have come out against these practices including my very own American Institute of Architects, while even more are still finding ways to rationalize and convince the federal, state and local governments that further development of raw land is good. All of this while thousand of cites, towns and suburbs are deteriorating and failing economically, socially and ecologically. I believe America is squandering its wealth. Because urbanism is apparently hemorrhaging, coalitions are having an impact and public officials as they exert pressure to manage population growth, housing demands, immigration, transportation and affordability. Still the quality of the built environment is increasingly finding its ways to smaller elite who are over worked, over taxed and compelled to meet the cost of maintaining the metaphor of the cost of quality living units in existing urban centers, suburbs and emerging new towns and PUD (planned unit developments). Large developers have adopted the means and ways of large corporations focusing on profits by standardizing plans, policies, procedures and franchise and subsidiary operations. They are increasingly staffed with graduates of business management schools concerned with efficient ways of achieving customer satisfaction while maximizing profits. They do all of this while the middle class is compelled to have at least two sources of income to pay for two cars, mortgage and high taxes to pay for highways, power grids, utilities and water and support the overhead of these large corporate developers. The voices of the small architectural practice, craftsman and builder are made obsolete and unfeasible. More of them turn to the large corporation while town fathers yield to the lure of cash flow into their communities. Even in cities without zoning regulations, the results of litigation often grant variances to the Comprehensive Development Plans and favorable zoning. What seemed like a more affordable solution has now become even more costly in taxes, transportation, schooling, and the house itself. The question is would everyone live in high quality affordable and cost-effective big urban centers? Promoters exploit the house as castle myth to justify single-family house construction while others simply build tall buildings leaving lots of open space where the house as castle myth becomes a condominium. 392 What are some the ongoing things that are being done to deal with the crises? All this having been said, throughout the formation of cities, there has always been a group of people that were favored to live inside the wall and others who lived outside, and the ones living outside had to build their own habitats in any way they could.   It is only recently that governments took an interest in the way the city and its outside city walls accommodated the citizenry. In our time, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a good case in point where the government gives every subject an interest –free loan toward the construction of a home. I harkens back to when the U.S. Federal government gave settlers free land. It depends on the objectives so that the ends justify the means. Under various urban development acts and private initiatives, many big cities’ urb and squalor is being converted to livable communities reflective of its local residents. Once a person becomes a citizen he is entitled to the rights, privileges and protection afforded to citizens. Cities built inside the wall were fortresses and instruments of defense of the royal family and its treasures. Gated communities, new towns and other forms of private developments with deed restrictions are ways of providing residents choice, ownership and management rights, which maintain the quality of that context. However, urban clusters in urban cities are managed by neighborhood development agencies, both have evolved as good ways to urbanize. The people are being protected. Security and defense is American, and the goal of every urban settlement, from country, to state, to city. Whether urban or rural we incorporate to first and foremost to pay for fire and police protection.  However, cities still today repeat the same things as before where buildings outside the wall are influenced in styles, vocabulary and symbols by those inside the wall. Additionally, city layouts, building types and designs symbolically represent national and corporate beliefs in the forms of rooftops, finishes and models. Interior design, furniture, communication devices, media and the automobile have been great unifying factors. Houses are overbuilt with exaggerated multiple pitched roofs and exterior finishes likening them to castles, office buildings and hoses of worship. Just look at the advent of the boom in the computer designed pre-engineered truss industry in our SWFL counties. 274 Has current events had an impact on urbanization? Because most civilized societies think of their city as a fortress and collective power the terrible human tragedy of 9/11 and the many global terrorist assaults impact the urban psyche. Cities are now seeking a new metaphor of their densely populated urbs and sprawling cities. Not to say that terrorist couldn’t strike anywhere or at any remote place but suddenly dispersion of the population with bulky, uniform and inefficient vehicles have become very fashionable. People moving out of dense areas now believe they need bulky vehicles. In fact, the advent of the airplanes and bombs made all cities vulnerable. Still, commerce and individuals have rethought their personal settlement based on these new realities. However, no matter neither where we settle nor how many computers we own, economy, access to resources, socialization, identity and life support remains the advantage of what the city provides, and the urban city provides this to even rural communities. Even our choices to have a private single family house as a sign of citizenry, or a corporation to have its own building identity all harkens back to our most primitive metaphorical instincts. The anonymity of the urban multifamily dwelling for some is preferred over the ostentation of the merchant whose building roofline and form must rise above the others. Real Estate Developers and emerging political entities in urban’s adjacent counties tap into these logos, mores and folkways to overwhelm town fathers and government officials with rightness and worthiness of the metaphors they say they provide. Even post 9/11 automobiles are designed to be anonymous by being similar regardless of brand and cost.   If over population of the earth means that the earth has more people than resources or that we cannot redistribute the wealth and the resources what affect does over population have to do with increasing populations to an one city?   Because development of civilization results in urbanization, does it necessarily mean the removal of the rural character of a town or area?   Are we, as a members of the world’s family liable and able to mange the increases in population? Is urbanity the only answer and how do we mitigate the inevitable?   It seems only rational that while many of us may value agricultural and rural communities, as products of the city and the urban process we choose and wish to continue to improve our urbs.      Demographically, the term urbanize, denotes redistribution of populations from rural to urban settlements and these developments, which may or may not become cities. Rural to urban migration is the moving of people from rural areas into cities. When cities grow rapidly, as in Chicago in the late 19th century or Shanghai a century later, the movement of people from rural communities into cities is considered to be the main cause, the cause of the world’s overpopulation. Many argue that it is cities that are causing the worlds over population and that urbanization is therefore inherently wrong. Because this kind of growth is especially commonplace in developing countries, they further argue that in order to reduce the growth of the world’s over-population urbanization should be discouraged and made difficult.   Yet, rural migrants continue to be attracted by the possibilities that cities can offer, but often settle in shantytowns and experience extreme poverty. In Saudi Arabia, planners are diverting such increases to smaller towns building up their infrastructure and relocating business and industry, however, in their case, they still wish to increase their native population, however huge their unemployment of young Saudis. Since they are one of world’s largest welfare states and able to financially support populations these population increases continue at a rapid rate as do the construction of urban centers. But there are many other countries whose urban developments do not keep pace or by political conflict displace millions into tent cities out side the confines of the urban support centers. Indeed, the culture of cosmopolitan urbanity is a very weighty matter.                       One Hour Take a five-minute break: When we came back, we will examine Natural Cities. Break is only for 90 minute lecture. Natural Cities: 5,070 words on 21 pages How do natural cities form? Natural Cities are incorporated government entities formed by resident citizens with a confluence of circumstantial and haphazard events over a period of time; it is a city that has evolved over time. They can be tiny and small or mammoth and overpopulated. Yes, it once was created in a much smaller, rural, and primitive form and over time is renovated and adjusted to accommodate new policies, technologies and demographics. The city reflects the nature of its creators and subsequent inhabitants.   To live in such a place you have to be a pragmatist who constantly negotiates changing realities and expects challenges to the very basics of existence. You are on the cutting edge of growth, deterioration and the inspiration of man-made achievements. 244 Yes, Lee County’s City of Fort Myers and the City of Bonita Springs are such places. Whereas cities of Naples, Cape Coral and emerging Lehigh Acers are good examples of local synthetic man-made cities, not to be confused with local urban developments and enclaves. In today’s planning terminology they are considered urban really wide spread sprawl with very costly infrastructure relative to their population, industry and tax base. Whereas a Natural city is real or genuine when it reflects the character, interest, personality and pecuniary, social and political interest of its authors. It is economical and efficient. What the privileges are enjoyed in cites? A Natural city is driven by inhabitants wanting refuge, righteousness and sanctuary from chaos and confusion so as to grow family, business and prosper, to have a civil life with not only law and order but also infrastructure, potential and power. They are alive and vibrant with their own self-interest, backed by their determination to profit, and have a happy and successful population for themselves and their supporters. They create such cities as a monument to their greatness, which is often material, industrial, and commercial accomplishments, and are a legacy of their fortunes and fame. It is a variation of the way traditional cities were formed. And it is from this drive and vision that its inhabitants prosper and enjoy their life. The city turns them on. They are heirs of these creators and enjoy the legacy of their work.   To me a city is a toy and form of recreation and creativity to which I attribute many of life’s joys and great moments of happiness. Having lived and visited hundreds of cities and many countries of both the “haves” and the “have-nots” I am very grateful to have a blue passport, a great county and the blessings of cities. 239 For example, a city is a metaphor when I say, “I am a New Yorker”. I mean, “Were I a city I would be New York”. Silly isn’t it, but in the realm of ideas and matters of the heart, it is real. Natural cities lend themselves to metaphors that arise out convention because of the city’s long history and deep-rooted ancestry. Because a metaphor makes the strange familiar and “talks about one thing in terms of another”, one immediately characterizes a native New Yorker with the many images and values of the city, its’ crime, delinquent garbage collection, gangs, traffic, crowds, vulgarities, and other mean things. Not the arts, high fashion, financial district, millions of office workers, universities, museums, great hospitals, publishers and intellects, entertainers, performers and artist, etc. in general, a conglomeration of hyper-over-achievers. New York City is one America’s and the world’s great natural cities where over 200 years ago was the place of battles that won America’s freedom and the city, which was the nation’s first capital. To a New Yorker, New York is a metaphor because the city is currency that makes us authentic and part of a New York reality. And, this can be said for many other cities. The city authenticates our labors, strivings and ambitions into a homogeneous context of brilliance and success. It is no wonder why many New Yorkers are architects, planners and urbanist, especially native New Yorkers.   How do cities maintain their grip on our imagination? In a natural city, the reality may be all myth, hype and imagination but it is the very thing that theatre, baseball and football teams thrive as they identify their city and teams with their loyalty and pride. The culture of the city is that which changes, nurtures and grows us out of our own to the city’s nature. When I was a young man, I couldn’t stop going from one theater, museum, zoo, building, and street to another acclimatizing and adopting the streets character and moods. One of the most read articles in every Daily News paper showed a corner of the city before and after in recognition of the city’s ever-changing face. I was always attentive to see what the place looked like before. However, New York has not cornered the market on design professionals. Since every populated town is a kind of urban context many much smaller urban models have grown their version of architects and design professionals. When I first visited 72 natural European cities, I discovered that each city owned a separate and unique metaphor, description and uniqueness. In their own way, they were urban with many commonalities and distinctive differences. They were all sizes, locations and climate. Since then I have visited countless others to observe them evolve and adapt. Natural Cities manifest themselves in movies, books, poems, radio, stage shows, plays, songs, play, and games. In movies such as Casablanca, The East- Side Kids, Easter Parade, Detective stories such as the Mickey Spilane and the Mike Hammer series, Batman, Super Man and the Daily Planet, West Side Story, Rhapsody in Blue, and thousands of others. Those that love cities endure the rain, sleet and snow. They endure crime, dirt and filth. They endure interruptions of garbage collection, power failures, outrageous crime, and poverty. 251 What are the cities real support systems? Urbanization process Whether urbanity occurs in rural agricultural or urban industrial areas   man’s infrastructure prevails as the underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system. Man’s infrastructure is the basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons. It is these that prevail, not the nature, and the amenities as they do in rural and suburban communities.   In rural communities, nature prevails. However, it is the urban infrastructure that has sewn me into the mind of urbanity and enclosed my vision of the whole of life. It is the canvas upon which the city’s form is woven and designed. Because of this city-type as an art form, one’s life and world-context differs noticeably and is distinguished one from another. Yet when either is populated by a variety of families and diverse interests they must face the same issues but on different scales. In rural settings, man’s intervention is made by his personal relationships, dependence and handwork. In urban settings, such intervention is made by the overwhelming context and sheer volume of some trend, fashion, vocation, and opportunity. It’s a matter of the proportion of the relationship of the manmade infrastructure to the nature. People from the old urban cities go to newly developing urban cities bringing experience. Warnings, passions and visions were what I brought to Saudi Arabia.   What are the cities natural geographical derivatives? ·        River town ·        Trade route intersection ·        Terminal city; Shipping ports, Railroads and airports ·        Farming cities; Agricultural and cattle ·        Company town based on mining, manufacturing and industry. ·        Ocean cities and waterfront Can you name any others? ·        Resort cities ·        Results of victory of a war ·        Oil, coal and other mineral mining and exploration Cities ·        Tax-free districts in the Caribbean ·        Or there geographical location has been made redundant by another technology or geo-political event as the many river towns of the Mississippi and New England and resort cities on the Jersey Shore.   What are the human elements that often cause the formation and development of a city? Cities are heroic and made by heroes, entrepreneurs, and usually those whose interest lie in the place or circumstances surrounding, interesting and used by the place as trains, rails, ports, shipping, manufacturing, business, boat building, communications, telephone, telegraph, radio (Sarnoff), etc. Can you name some our area’s heroes? Edison, Collier, Mann, Carter; all the names on streets (McGregor, Heitmann, Hendry,  …………………………? 329 Cities can be large, medium or small and have dominant specialty in commerce, oil, coal, steel, manufacturing, agriculture and depending on the population and geographic area can be disproportionately overwhelming making it out of scale so enormous that makes it impressive and powerful.   New York is an outstanding example of this enormous scale. Many people feel dwarfed, lonely and oppressed because of the scale of such a city. It is this scales that design professionals are trained to create and mitigate to relate to individuals. It is the very thing that Michelangelo did when he designed buildings in Italy. While planners and politicians organize, two-dimensional plans and diagrams. A natural city is urban for many reasons including its infrastructure but more importantly because of its confluence of institutions, artistic, scientific, spiritual and commercial culture. A city is by definition a people in agreement and both reflects and serves its citizens while an urban city favors its buildings, infrastructure and facilities over its pastoral connection to the land and its citizens favor residing in close quarters without separate buildings and so called single family homes, they share building living in separate dwellings.   What are the pros and cons of a cosmopolitan city? A Cosmopolite has a universal, adoptable and diverse urban mind. But not all urban people are cosmopolitan and urban people can be very provincial.   Cosmopolitan persons are free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments, at home all over the world. Belonging to the entire world and not limited to just one part of the world, they are citizens of the world.   I have been a cosmopolitan person in an urban context that later learned to live in any context with my cosmopolitan point of view. Think of science fiction stories where the context and characters are dealing with non-domestic technical issues away for the mundane politics of our own time and place. We like the cosmopolitan in our clergy, educators, government officials (bureaucrats), etc. Who implements the Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism? The correct answer is everyone! But, urbanist are a specialist in the study and planning of cities and New Urbanism is an urban design movement that burst onto the scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s and tries to bring urban values into new and existing building contexts, but Urbanist are different from a rural and sub-urban mind.   New Urbanism implements the “Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” by shifting design focus from the car-centric development of suburbia and the business park; to concentrate pedestrian and transit-centric, walk able, mixed-use communities. New Urbanism is an amalgamation of old-world design patterns, merged with present day demands. 50 It is a backlash to the age of suburban sprawl, which splintered communities, and isolated people from each other, as well as had severe environmental impacts. Concepts for New Urbanism include people and destinations into dense, vibrant communities, and decreasing dependency on vehicular transportation as the primary mode of transit.   New Urbanist aim to reform all aspects of real estate development and their work affects regional and local plans. They are involved in new development, urban retrofits, and suburban infill. In all case, New Urbanist neighborhoods are walk able, and contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, they support regional planning to achieve open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing.   They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce how long people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein-in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic restoration, safe streets, and green building are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement's seminal document.   So how does Natural Cities expand? The answer depends on the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism as whether it will go vertical, horizontal, reconfiguration, co-habitation or sub dividing. There are many cultures where several families share one dwelling or apartments and dwellings are minimal sleeping rooms. In America, traditional urbanization exhibits a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area. When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. 136 A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown. Some considers this networked, polycentric form of concentration an emerging pattern of urbanization. They are simply reflecting how large natural urban centers evolved as they connected many population centers around industry, trade, transport, and ands commerce. Chicago, New York’s boroughs, and Detroit are famous for their ethnic and commercial neighborhoods and districts. We saw Leipzig’s new urbanist cluster neighborhoods shortly after the wall fell. A consortium of Saxon architect’s landscape architects and planners planned these. Each cluster had its own design team and theme. It is called variously exurbia, edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), or postmodern city (Dear, 2000). Los Angeles is the best-known example of this type of urbanization.   So who’s minding the store? Professional Urbanist While conveying the culture is really everyone’s responsibility architects limit and bound space and make metaphors; they design and control overall concepts and all the details of the built environment inhabited by people.   Architects observe, program, plan, design, schedule, specify and supervise the construction process. An architect’s education prepares him for managing being the arbiter between the occupant and those with the skills to construct. Because an architect is skilled in making building metaphors for people an architect is inherently urban and an advocate for all that best benefits the individual and collective society. The architect professes urbanity and is able to manage a variety of urban functions including being the mayor, city manager, councilman, commissioners, and real estate development.    For example, I not only planned cites and designed buildings in Saudi Arabia I also drew up business plans for billion dollar financial interest for members of the Royal Family and Saudi Arabia sheiks; I organized specific new ventures for Operations and Maintenance business, pipe manufacturing, fire suppression equipment, and medical and pharmaceutical facilities.   What are the different professionals that design build and manage an urban entity? When I was teaching in Saudi Arabia, many of my graduated architectural students have become mayors and city managers in Lebanon, Syria, Dubai and Iran. My monographs on “architecture as the making of metaphors” have been published in Saudi Arabia, England, U. S. of A., Lebanon, Turkey, and Finland. You can immediately tell the difference between cities designed by an architect by its spaces and three-dimensional solutions. Planners tend to think in two dimensions, linearly and abstractly. 490 Programmer: The first job I had when I graduated Pratt was to develop the program of requirements for several New York City Multi –million dollar interior design projects for New York City’s skyscrapers in mid-town Manhattan.   Urban Landscape Architects plan the location of buildings, roads, and walkways, and the arrangement of flowers, shrubs, and trees and this title was first used by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1863 who is famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City. Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant was a French-born American architect and urban planner who designed the first street plan for the Federal City in the United States, now known as Washington, D.C. Landscape architects work for many types of organizations—from real estate development firms starting new projects to municipalities constructing airports or parks. Working with architects, surveyors, and engineers, landscape architects help determine the best arrangement of roads and buildings. Urban design includes town and city squares, waterfronts, pedestrian schemes, and parking lots. City Planning is a department in many colleges and universities and is the activity of determining the: ·        Future physical arrangement and condition of a community involving an appraisal of the present condition, ·        A forecast of future requirements, ·        A plan for the fulfillment of these requirements, and ·        Proposals for constructional, legal, and financial programs to implement the plan. Interior Designers and Space Planners Later in the year, I will be teaching course in Interior Design. Urban interior designers are concerned about adopting spaces within residences, skyscrapers, malls, shopping centers and shops to the specifics of their occupants and really take up where most commercial architects leave off. Before I was an architect, I was an interior architect and designed buildings from the inside out. That is an architect who designs most commercial buildings without knowing who will be the specific occupant. Most such work is referred to as “tenant change” -work and is the job of first a space planner who determines the feasibility of the space to its potential tenant and then the layout. Once completed the interior designer begins the design work. Stores, malls, hospitals, banks, airports, railroad terminals and many other building types are the job of the interior architect otherwise known as the interior designer. You could think of much of their work as adopting the architectural standard building shell to the specific and peculiar requirements of the proposed occupant. Interior design is the process of shaping the experience of interior space and traffic flow through the manipulation of spatial volume as well as surface treatment. Not to be confused with interior decoration, interior design draws on aspects of environmental psychology, architecture, and product design in addition to traditional decoration. The distinction between interior design and 'interior decoration' is one relevant in the United States but not common elsewhere. In cities, residential interior design and decoration comprise a small but important field of work. \ What other professions form a city? Aside from programmers, city planners, landscape architects and interior designers, Constitutional, corporate and governmental Attorneys and law assist people who are in one accord to agree and formulate agreements, ordinances, statues and the very governments and institutions by which to incorporate their municipalities and behave in civil and orderly manner within their societies. It is in this way that a collection of people are able to become countries, states, counties, villages, hamlets, townships, boroughs, cities, and metropolitan areas. It is they who can make laws, which can help government and the people, be both pragmatic and ideal. It is this combination that allows great ideas to flourish while fighting crime and garbage collection.   How did I become an urbanist? In New York, I was a child explorer: From childhood, I have been curious as to why cities, building and streets are the way they are. I still ask how did they get that way, what is their make up and why were they formed. In urban South Bronx, I lived in densely pullulated tenements, two family houses in a sparsely populated Industrial Hunts Point and medium dense Pelham Parkway and apartments in Manhattan, Tennessee, Austria, Puerto Rico, and Saudi Arabia, a loft in Manhattan and single family homes in Florida, Tennessee, Saudi Arabia, College Station, a town house in Houston and manufactured home in North Fort Myers. And now we live in a country club with a small town communal atmosphere and many facilities. Many gated communities are a resource for recreation, entertainment, food, and even home health care.   As urbanites work, they become embroiled in aspect of the city’s support services. I practiced vocations, which bonded me to the city and its building types, commerce and industry. Because I hung drapes over a period of ten years, I worked in thousands of homes, for every ethnic and national background, on thousands of streets in hundreds of neighborhoods in every borough and nearby counties. I was a limousine driver for weddings and special events and delivered newspapers into many tenement buildings and neighborhoods. Likewise, I was a Good Humor Man in the streets of Brooklyn and conducted many Job searches in Manhattan and New Haven. I was a radio broadcaster, founded a New York Not for Profit community organization and founded two earth days with one on Union Square at Fourteenth Street and another in Central park. I designed and built large and small offices, lofts, lobbies, skyscrapers in Manhattan, and in Houston, Midland, Odessa, and Victoria Texas as well in Tennessee in Jackson, Severe and Walker counties, built all over Saudi Arabia; and, in Puerto Rico made an Island-wide plan for Public Libraries for all the municipalities as well as designing the Ron Rico Bottling Plant in Arecibo, El Mundo towers and other building in San Juan.   I poured my best into every project believing that it would contribute to the betterment of the lives of their occupants. I remember one nursing home I designed for renovation I stared at the windows of the 15 stories building and knowing that the view from the window would probably be the last the occupants saw of the world and therefore assured for beautiful landscaping. This was based on the recollection I had of my grandfather’s last moments waving to me from his Brooklyn Hospital’s window before he died when I was six years old.    991 About American cities, the architect Robert Venturi once proclaimed that, “plazas are un-American” and one of my mentors, Gerald Popiel, often noted how the highest building in medieval cities was the church and worship centers whereas the highest buildings in modern cities are the banks and commercial office buildings. America cities, as many other of the world’s well known cities have replaced and supplemented plazas with great boulevards and other expressions of consensus and agreement. Plazas and public meeting places are beginning to become a part of atrium malls, office buildings and office plazas. Even neighborhood commercial enters are focused around plazas as new urbanist make places for people to congregate. I was pleasantly surprised to see Washington’s huge plaza in Georgetown on the river and of course Boston’s Quincy market and its huge food plaza. These are all good urban features and attract people looking for the means to socialize. Of course in Manhattan, the Seagram building’s plaza on Park Avenue designed by my former professor, Phillip Johnson. Yet all of these in world-class cities are often reminiscent of the village green, Town Square, and county fair ground in smaller urban models. What it takes to prepare an urban professional? Using my self and my hometown as an example, I would like to explain what it takes to prepare an urban professional My teachers and mentors: I have been very fortunate to have great teachers and mentors, who loved cities and urbanism such as: 1. Paul Weiss, philosopher 2. Buckminster Fuller, theorist and visionary 3.  Louis Kahn, architect 4.  Mies Van Der Rohe, architect and founder of the Bau-House 5.  King Louis Wu, Yale teacher and architect 6.  Christopher Tunnard (who taught me about modern planned cities), 7.  Paul Rudolf who was originally from Sarasota and 8. Henry Pfisterer (Engineer for the Empire State Building), 9. Vincent Scully was born in New Haven, was my faculty advisor when I studied at Yale where he taught History of Architecture and was one of my thesis jurors, he spent a lot of time with me because I was a native New Yorker from the streets he loved and he wrote many books which deal with urbanity, cities and New York such as: Architecture; the Natural and the Manmade and American Architecture and Urbanism, And I worked for such architects as: ·Kahn and Jacobs designing high-rise office buildings ·Edward Durrell Stone, designing the State University in Albany. ·Morris Lapidus assigned me to design and detail high-rise apartment buildings and hotels and finally used my drawing as examples of his offices work in his book. Morris Lapidus was born in 1902 and brought the ambience of Odessa Russia to create the curvy, flamboyant Neo-baroque modern hotels that defined the 1950s 'Miami Beach' resort hotel style. He died at the age of 98 in Miami Beach, Florida. As a young man, Lapidus toyed with theatrical set design and studied architecture at Columbia University where I met my wife Christina. Truly, an urban thinker Lapidus worked for 20 years as a retail designer before moving to Miami Beach in the 1940s and designing his first buildings. He was a product and espoused urbanism in all his work. After a career in innovative retail interior design, his first large commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district now known as South Beach. The hotels were an immediate popular success. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the property he is most associated with, the Fontainebleau Hotel, which was followed the next year by the equally successful Eden Roc and the Americana (now the Sheraton Bal Harbor) in 1956. His son Alan who practices architecture in Fort Lauderdale survives him. ·Designs for Business and Gerald Luss assigned me to design very expensive huge interior spaces for banks, factoring companies and manufactures. ·Frederick Kiesler for whom I built the model for the Dome for the Dead Scrolls Museum in Israel. ·Serge Chermayeff for whom I did the graphics for his report using his theory of complementarities to the US bureau of Standards of Cites, campus and town planning. ·I was invited to teach Real Estate Development to Architectural students at the University of Houston and where ever I taught architecture in America I always urged students to get out of their suburbs and rural communities and learn “New York 101”. They could not really be architects unless they learned the lesson New York had to teach, lessons, which I learned in the first 21 years of my life. What are the Events and Projects that shaped New York? 1.  Settlers after the Revolution 2.  Port for trade and shipbuilding 3.   Clearing up the squalor 4.   Fire codes 5.   Building codes 6.   Establishing the architectural profession and American Institute of        Architects General Conditions between builders and Owners 7.   Subways: Irish and great engineering; tunnels 8.   Grand Central Station and Park Ave Railroad project 9.   Stock Exchange 10.  Air travel and airports 11. Robert Moses: parks and recreation 12. Quantity of wealthy merchants that settled and made their business in New York City such as Rockefeller, Astor, Mellon, Vanderbilt, Tiffany, etc. 13. Landmarks Legislation and preservation 14. Broadway, vaudeville, theatre, opera, ballet, museums, planetarium, parks, 15. Central Park 16. Consolidating the boroughs in to one city government 17. Use of iron, steel and fireproofing. 18.  Invention of the Elevator brought the invention of the skyscrapers to Chicago and New York as well as the Eiffel tower to Paris. Indians learned to walk in the sky and the construction industry was unionized. 19. Postal system delivering letters to every ones mailbox in every apartment, rain, sleet or snow. 20. The attack on the World Trade Center  Are there events and that caused a city you know to loose its’ population or quality of life? Here are the Projects that negatively affected New York City. ·        Robert Moses and his highways, which destroyed/divided neighborhoods and reduced the values of building and occupancy ·        A combination of affluence by tenants increased demand for improvements to rental properties, which could not be met by landlords due to increased property taxes and cost of construction. Building owners, contractors and real-estate business found low priced and unrestricted properties in adjacent unincorporated counties on which to build low cost and attractive housing. This along with Government backed home mortgages and veteran’s low-cost loans prompted the creation of what we call suburbs and later sub divisions, Planned Unit Developments, and New towns. The exodus out of the big cities devastated inner city neighborhoods and brought in drug dealers and crime. ·        The exodus nurtured itself as the more people left the worse things got. I remember how people would seek to go to Long Island and Westchester County to get bigger and more affordable housing. ·        “Project” buildings replaced “tenements” which destroyed neighborhoods and housed families within floors of large-scale buildings; the resulting anonymity became a perfect cover for the illegal sale of drugs. ·        Crime and narcotics moved into slums as Fort Apache #14 Precinct in the Bronx my old neighborhood in the Morrisania area of the South Bronx. ·        Low-cost new houses in the emerging suburbs were built off of unpaved roads in Long Island where you could buy a house with no-to-low interest VA loan for houses costing between $2,500 up to $6,000 made access possible by the construction of Triborough Bridge, Whitestone Bridge, the Long Island Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway.   What are the inherent negatives about a big old city and the Urban State of Mind? Despite all the wonderful things in a city its scale, size and complexity brings, rats, roaches, gangs, crime, murder, rape, theft, security and problems meaning that everyone has to be cautious about the time of day and the streets and neighborhoods visited. The city is not elegant but bawdy, vulgar and always on the cutting of edge of changing, de-construction, rebuilding as it adopts to new demands by commerce, demographics, economics and commercial opportunity. The city thrives on commerce and the labor of its inhabitants. It also is a self-redesigning, rebuilding and healing engine of humanity. All of these provide anecdotal justifications for corporate developers to market to fleeing residents.   What are the causes of renewed interest in urbanization? ·        Suburbs cost is becoming too high and unaffordable ·        Improved facilities for education and jobs in the city. ·        Quality of Life ·        Environmental, ecology and health ·        Education ·        Recreation, entertainment, and access ·        Commercial development and socialization   Is there an ideal urban natural city? Most ideal urban settings are broken down into communities and neighborhoods. In my neighborhoods we had immediate access to fresh produce markets, entertainment, recreation, socialization, schools in walking distance, public transportation including busses and subways, commercial development shops and shopping street, Cops on the beat, playgrounds, and a ethnically diverse neighborhood of friends and neighbors.   The key features of the apartment in the tenement in which we lived These features originated with the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism, building codes and available technologies.   ·Outside stoop ·Set back adjacent to the sidewalk ·Auto parking on the street ·The metal stairs down to the cellar in front of the building ·Place for coal deliveries and ash pick-up ·Cellar had a giant coal burning furnace and place for the pile of coal ·The vertical black painted iron grille ·The fire escapes on the front and rear of the building in front of most of the out facing windows. · The cornices on top of each building which form a frame to the line of the buildings, accentuate the line and evenness of the buildings, cap between the canyon formed by the buildings and the sky ·The mailbox area in back of the ground floor  (We never changed it keep the rent control in place) ·The inner lobby with large glass doors and white marble steps and landing · The front door to our apartment, which was notably: "A”, being the first one on the ground floor directly facing the street but separated by an eight foot access way with steel stair leading to the basement and surrounded by black steel vertical guard rail. ·The gas stove in the kitchen ·The ice box and the first refrigerator with its leaking ammonia ·Window box pantry in the kitchen ·Cloths line into the alley from our kitchen window ·The alley ·Window with their stained glass clerestory windows. · Painted-over windows, which got stuck and were very difficult to open because of broken chains, weights and paint. ·Linoleum floors described elsewhere ·Parquet floors · French doors between living room and my bedroom · Radiators and steam heat with radiator covers to add humidity ·The cocker roaches and mice ·Garbage pails and sanitation trucks and collection · Police car and fire engine horns, bells and sirens · Painting the apartment every two years because the led paint would peal, fall on the floor and get dirty · Molding and baseboards on the walls · Bathtub with legs · Roof tops, entrances, tarpaper, and games and play areas. · Fire hydrants in the summer · Parking cars; alternate side of the street; snow; cleaning the car · Street games: tag, rig-a-leev-eo, hopscotch, stick- ball, skating, foot scooter, race box with skate wheels below · Fie-escapes · Loews Movie Theatres: All lived together in tight quarters and went to the Loews movie theaters, which were furnished and designed to look like palaces. If you were to visit your favorite city what would be the places you would want to see? If I were to visit New York today, I would want to be a pedestrian because being a pedestrian is what I miss most about not being in an urban context to go: ·        window-shopping on Fifth Avenue ·        Visit Henri Bendels, Tiffany’s, Sacks, Bloomingdale’s, etc. ·        Ambulate on the boulevards and side streets ·        Explore the subways ·        Climb the stairs of the train’s elevated structures ·        Visit lobbies; see my old residences and streets ·        Snack pizzas and hot dogs as we walk ·        Visit Radio city Music Hall and Radio City underground ·        See the Rockefeller Center and Central Park ice skating rinks ·        Ride on the Staten Island Ferry ·        Visit the little mini-new town off of City Island ·        See my old schools ·        Walk down Southern Boulevard, Broadway and 42-nd streets ·        Visit central park ·        Visit the Bronx Zoo ·        Visit the new Hayden Planetarium ·        Visit Coney Island and get an Original Nathan’s Frankfurter ·        Walk down some back alleys and side streets One and a Half Hour has elapsed. Now there may be time (20 minutes) for questions and comments. Conclusion: My thesis that a “Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” assumes that increases in population and density culture our personal, family and business. We are cosmopolitan and urban as we agree, disagree, peruse common goals, tolerate stress and congestion, discern between community and privacy and distribute precious resources.  I hope I have shown “what can be done to make cities livable and worthy to be called home”. The Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” wants “livability” to be home. I believe the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism is life’s experience and a legacy worth cherishing and conveying.   45