TheUrbanDesignReader (The Phenomenon of Place, Part 3)

THE URBAN DESIGN READER
Second edition
The second edition of The Urban Design Reader draws together the very best of classic and contemporary
writings to illuminate and expand the theory and practice of urban design. Nearly 50 generous selections
include seminal contributions from Howard, Le Corbusier, Lynch, and Jacobs to more recent writings
by Waldheim, Koolhaas, and Sorkin. Following the widespread success of the first edition of The Urban
Design Reader, this updated edition continues to provide the most important historical material of the
urban design field, but also introduces new topics and selections that address the myriad challenges
facing designers today.
The six part structure of the second edition guides the reader through the history, theory and practice
of urban design. The reader is initially introduced to those classic writings that provide the historical
precedents for city-making into the twentieth century. Part Two introduces the voices and ideas that
were instrumental in establishing the foundations of the urban design field from the late 1950s up to
the mid-1990s. These authors present a critical reading of the design professions and offer an alternative
urban design agenda focused on vital and lively places. The authors in Part Three provide a range of urban
design rationales and strategies for reinforcing local physical identity and the creation of memorable
places. These selections are largely describing the outcomes of mid-century urban design and voicing
concerns over the placeless quality of contemporary urbanism. The fourth part of the Reader explores
key issues in urban design and development. Ideas about sprawl, density, community health, public
space and everyday life are the primary focus here. Several new selections in this part of the book also
highlight important international development trends in the Middle East and China. Part Five presents
environmental challenges faced by the built environment professions today, including recent material on
landscape urbanism, sustainability, and urban resiliency. The final part examines professional practice
and current debates in the field: where urban designers work, what they do, their roles, their fields of
knowledge and their educational development. The section concludes with several position pieces and
debates on the future of urban design practice.
This book provides an essential resource for students and practitioners of urban design, drawing
together important but widely dispersed writings. Part and selection introductions are provided to assist
readers in understanding the context of the material, summary messages, impacts of the writing, and
how they fit into the larger picture of the urban design field.
Michael Larice is Associate Professor of Urban Design and City Planning at the University of Utah –
College of Architecture and Planning. He is a licensed architect, planner, and urban designer.
Elizabeth Macdonald is Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Departments of City and Regional
Planning and Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning in the University of California at
Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. She is a licensed architect and a principal in the San
Francisco-based firm Jacobs Macdonald: Cityworks.
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THE ROUTLEDGE URBAN READER SERIES
Series editors
Richard T. LeGates
Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning, San Francisco State University
Frederic Stout
Lecturer in Urban Studies, Stanford University
The Routledge Urban Reader Series responds to the need for comprehensive coverage of the classic and
essential texts that form the basis of intellectual work in the various academic disciplines and profes-
sional fields concerned with cities and city planning.
The readers focus on the key topics encountered by undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars
in urban studies, geography, sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, culture studies, and
professional fields such as city and regional planning, urban design, architecture, environmental studies,
international relations, and landscape architecture. They discuss the contributions of major theoreticians
and practitioners and other individuals, groups, and organizations that study the city or practice in a
field that directly affects the city.
As well as drawing together the best of classic and contemporary writings on the city, each reader
features extensive introductions to the book, sections, and individual selections prepared by the volume
editors to place the selections in context, illustrate relations among topics, provide information on the
author, and point readers towards additional related bibliographic material.
Each reader contains:
Between thirty-five and sixty selections divided into six to eight sections. Almost all of the selections are
previously published works that have appeared as journal articles or portions of books.
■■ A general introduction describing the nature and purpose of the reader.
■■ Section introductions for each section of the reader to place the readings in context.
■■ Selection introductions for each selection describing the author, the intellectual background, and context
of the selection, competing views of the subject matter of the selection and bibliographic references
to other readings by the same author and other readings related to the topic.
■■ One or more plate sections and illustrations at the beginning of each section.
■■ An index.
The series consists of the following titles:
The City Reader
The City Reader, fifth edition – an interdisciplinary urban reader aimed at urban studies, urban planning,
urban geography, and urban sociology courses – is the anchor urban reader. Routledge published a first
edition of The City Reader in 1996, a second edition in 2000, a third edition in 2003, and a fourth edition
in 2007. The City Reader has become one of the most widely used anthologies in urban studies, urban
geography, urban sociology, and urban planning courses in the world.
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URBAN DISCIPLINARY READERS
The series contains urban disciplinary readers organized around social science disciplines and professorial
fields: urban sociology, urban geography, urban politics, urban and regional planning, and urban design.
The urban disciplinary readers include both classic writings and recent, cutting-edge contributions to
the respective disciplines. They are lively, high-quality, competitively priced readers which faculty can
adopt as course texts and which also appeal to a wider audience.
TOPICAL URBAN ANTHOLOGIES
The urban series includes topical urban readers intended both as primary and supplemental course texts
and for the trade and professional market. The topical titles include readers related to sustainable urban
development, global cities, cybercities, and city cultures.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ANCHOR TITLE TOPICAL URBAN READERS
The City Reader, fifth edition The City Cultures Reader, second edition
Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout (eds) Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall with Iain Borden (eds)
URBAN DISCIPLINARY READERS The Cybercities Reader

Stephen Graham (ed.)
The Urban Geography Reader
Nick Fyfe and Judith Kenny (eds) The Sustainable Urban Development Reader,
The Urban Politics Reader second edition
Elizabeth Strom and John Mollenkopf (eds) Stephen M. Wheeler and Timothy Beatley (eds)
The Urban and Regional Planning Reader The Global Cities Reader
Eugenie Birch (ed.) Neil Brenner and Roger Keil (eds)
The Urban Sociology Reader, second edition

Jan Lin and Christopher Mele (eds) FORTHCOMING
The Urban Design Reader, second edition Cities of the Global South Reader
Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald (eds) Faranak Miraftab and Neema Kudva (eds)
For further information on The Routledge Urban Reader Series please visit our website:
http://www.routledge.com/articles/featured_series_routledge_urban_reader_series/
or contact
Andrew Mould Richard T. LeGates Frederic Stout

Routledge Department of Urban Studies Urban Studies Program
2 Park Square, Milton Park, and Planning Stanford University
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN San Francisco State University Stanford, California 94305-2048
England 1600 Holloway Avenue fstout@stanford.edu
andrew.mould@routledge.co.uk San Francisco, CA 94132
(510) 642-3256
dlegates@sfsu.edu
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Plate 1 T he Avinguda Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain exemplifies the substantive concerns and collaborative nature
of the urban design field. The avenue functions as a diagonal four block connector in the Eixample District
between the two great bookends of Catalan Modernista architecture (Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church
and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau by Lluís Domènech i Montaner). Begun in the early 1900s,
the semi-pedestrianized street is organized around a central median that has a single lane of restricted
through-traffic to either side. A variety of urban design elements come together here to create a place of
urban comfort and sociability: height controlled perimeter buildings, ground-floor retail and cafés, a variety of
seating choices, regularly planted shade trees, innovative paving design, exuberant street lamps, trellis
structures, bollards to control traffic movement, and seasonal adaptations. The Avinguda Gaudi is an excellent
example of how streets have become the primary public realm space of cities – and illustrates the integrated
nature of the urban design field for the built environment professions: architects, transportation engineers,
planners, developers, city officials, and landscape architects. (Photo: M. Larice)
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The Urban Design Reader
Second edition
Edited by
Michael Larice
and
Elizabeth Macdonald
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First edition published 2007
Second edition published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Editorial material and selection: Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald;
individual chapters: the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The urban design reader / [edited by] Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald. –
Second edition.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. City planning. I. Larice, Michael, 1962– editor of compilation. II. Macdonald,
Elizabeth, 1959– editor of compilation.
NA9040.U68 2012
307.1′216–dc23
2012013702
ISBN: 978-0-415-66807-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-66808-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-09423-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Amasis and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk

by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
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To Javi (ML)
and
To Jake (EM)
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Contents
List of plates xiii

Acknowledgments xv
Prologue xvii
PART ONE: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS IN URBAN DESIGN 1
Introduction to Part One 3
“Upsurge of the Renaissance” 5

Edmund N. Bacon
“The Islamic City: Historic Myths, Islamic Essence,

and Contemporary Relevance” 13
Janet Abu-Lughod
“The Family of Eyes” and “The Mire of the Macadam” 25

Marshall Berman
“Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns” 36

Frederick Law Olmsted
“The Meager and Unimaginative Character of Modern City Plans” and

“Artistic Limitations of Modern City Planning” 45
Camillo Sitte
“Author’s Introduction” and “The Town–Country Magnet” 53

Ebenezer Howard
“Ideology and Aesthetics” 62

William H. Wilson
“The Neighborhood Unit” 78

Clarence Perry
“The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way” and “A Contemporary City” 90

Le Corbusier
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x C on T en T s
PART TWO: FOUNDATIONS OF THE FIELD 101
Introduction to Part Two 103
“Josep Lluís Sert’s Urban Design Legacy” 106

Richard Marshall
“Introduction to The Concise Townscape” 118

Gordon Cullen
“The Image of the Environment” and “The City Image and Its Elements” 125
Kevin Lynch
“Author’s Introduction” and “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact” 139

Jane Jacobs
“A City is Not a Tree” 152

Christopher Alexander
“The Significance of A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas” 167
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
“Collage City” 178

Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter
“Introduction,” “The Life of Plazas,” “Sitting Space,” and, “Sun, Wind,

Trees, and Water” 198
William H. Whyte
“Conclusion: Great Streets and City Planning” 214

Allan B. Jacobs
“Toward an Urban Design Manifesto” 218

Allan B. Jacobs and Donald Appleyard
“Dimensions of Performance” 229

Kevin Lynch
“A Catholic Approach to Organizing What Urban Designers Should Know” 235

Anne Vernez Moudon
PART THREE: GROWTH OF A PLACE AGENDA 259
Introduction to Part Three 261
“Prospects for Places” 266

Edward Relph
“The Phenomenon of Place” 272

Christian Norberg-Schulz
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C on T en T s xi
“The Problem of Place in America” 285

Ray Oldenburg
“Critical Regionalism: An Architecture of Place” 296

Douglas S. Kelbaugh
“A Crisis in the Urban Landscape,” “The Origins and Theory of Type,” and
“Legitimacy and Control” 307
Brenda Case Scheer
“Charter of the New Urbanism” 328

Congress for the New Urbanism
“Themes of Postmodern Urbanism” 332

Nan Ellin
“Introduction,” “Preface: The Current State of Everyday Urbanism,” and

“Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Private Life” 344
Margaret Crawford
“The Generic City” and “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” 358

Rem Koolhaas
PART FOUR: DESIGN ISSUES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT 373
Introduction to Part Four 375
“What is Sprawl?” 378

Oliver Gillham
“Density in Communities, or the Most Important Factor in Building Urbanity” 399

Eduardo Lozano
“Introduction,” “Physical Activity and Public Health,” and “Urban Design

Characteristics” 415
Lawrence D. Frank, Peter O. Engelke, and Thomas L. Schmid
“Introduction,” “The Changing Nature of Public Space in City Centres,”

and “Whose Public Space?” 443
Ali Madanipour
“Profit and Place” 459

Ian Bentley
“Urban Dualities in the Arab World: From a Narrative of Loss to

Neo-Liberal Urbanism” 475
Yasser Elsheshtawy
“The Urbanism of Ambition” and “China Reinvents the City” 497

Thomas J. Campanella
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xii C on T en T s
PART FIVE: ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES 515
Introduction to Part Five 517
“An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture” 519

Ian McHarg
“Principles for Regional Design” 525

Michael Hough
“Landscape as Urbanism” 534

Charles Waldheim
“Discourses for Landscape and Urbanization,” “The Production of

Waste Landscape,” and “Drosscape Explained” 544
Alan Berger
“Planning for Sustainability in European Cities: A Review of Practice

in Leading Cities” 558
Timothy Beatley
“Urban Resilience: Cities of Fear and Hope” 569

Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer
PART SIX: URBAN DESIGN PRACTICE NOW AND TOMORROW 581
Introduction to Part Six 583
“Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?” 585

Alex Krieger
“Designing the Urban Design Studio” 595

Elizabeth Macdonald
“Design Guidelines in American Cities: Conclusions” 601

John Punter
“The End(s) of Urban Design” 618

Michael Sorkin
“A Third Way for Urban Design” 635

Kenneth Greenberg
Epilogue 641
Illustration credits 643
Editorial credits 645
Copyright information 647
Index 653
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Plates
1 The Avinguda Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain iv

2 The Place des Vosges in Paris, France 2
3 The Sculpture Garden at New York’s Museum of Modern Art 102
4 The Textile Souk in the Bur Dubai District of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates 260
5 Retail development of the One New Change Shopping Mall in the City of London 374
6 The Southeast False Creek Development in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 516
7 The Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois 582
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many people who made this book possible. We are extremely grateful for
the assistance we received from many of the contributors whose works are included herein and who
have inspired us in our professional and academic careers.
Series editor Richard T. LeGates has been a great source of guidance during the process of putting
this volume together and getting it to publication. Routledge’s The City Reader, edited by LeGates and
Frederic Stout, and The Sustainable Urban Development Reader, edited by Stephen M. Wheeler and
Timothy Beatley, served as instructive and inspiring models for this reader. We particularly wish to thank
Andrew Mould, our editor at Routledge, who has encouraged this project from the start. Thanks as well
go to Faye Leerink, our editorial assistant at Routledge, along with Zoe Kruze and Melanie Attridge, the
editorial assistants who helped us with the first edition, and also to Emily Senior and James Rabson
our Production Editors for the Second Edition and Steve Thompson, our Production Editor for the First
Edition. In addition, we owe a large debt to the several anonymous reviewers who gave us helpful and
wise comments on the book’s content. We are grateful to the Routledge team for their constant advice
and patience in the production of this volume.
We would like to thank the following institutions for their financial assistance in helping to produce
the various editions of this book: the University of Utah, the University of California, Berkeley, and the
University of Pennsylvania. We are thankful to Tony Dorcey, Director of the School of Community and
Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia for his help with the first edition. This support
remains invaluable. Several people helped us with technical support throughout the permissions, editing,
and writing process. People we would like to thank include our permissions managers and editorial
assistants John “Jack” Robinson (second edition) and Molly O’Neill Robinson (first edition), as well as
our wonderful student assistants on this second edition: Liz Gray and Robin Kim, and those from the
first edition: Marcela de la Peña, Bryan Sherrell, Garlen Capita, and Corinne Stewart.
Michael Larice is grateful to the many people who provided personal support in the preparation of
this volume, including: his very patient partner, his family, his students and colleagues, his mentor Jake;
and of course, all those that help on a daily basis – Julie Harper and the other RSL soccer cousins who
provide levity and release, Monday nights at the Republican, and importantly – the café life of Salt Lake
City, and in particular Coffee Garden at 9th and 9th where he found an accommodating third office.
Elizabeth Macdonald would like to thank her husband, Allan Jacobs, for helpful editorial comments
during the writing process and most particularly for his constant support and sense of humor. As well
she is grateful to the many students over the years that she has had the pleasure to work with, who
provide a constant source of inspiration.
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Prologue
After the success of the first edition Urban Design Reader, this second edition is constructed and
published to capitalize on continued interest in urban design by a growing audience: students and
educators, stakeholders, and professionals – but also in response to the rapidly evolving global uncer-
tainties in future city-making. Around the globe, the number of urban design students, educators, and
professionals continues to grow with each passing year. Urban designers are increasingly being hired by
municipal planning departments, private sector design firms, institutions, and governments. The growth
of academic programs in the field has been remarkable; and the literature on practice, process, history,
and theory has burgeoned. When it was born in the 1950s, urban design practice was dominated by
academics and professionals in the traditional built environment design fields (city planning, architecture,
civil engineering, landscape architecture) who labored in discussions over the conceptualization of the
field and their roles in designing and developing cities, projects, and places. Since then, the discussion
has been joined by a host of varied participants with a new focus on outcomes – and now at a much
larger scale – and with a greater sense of urgency over an unpredictable future. Disciplinary squabbles
over the terrain of the field continue, similar to the first discussions that organized the field at the first
urban design conferences a half century ago. To move forward in response to the temporal challenges
we face collectively, these professional differences will most likely need to dissipate and new collabora-
tive efforts emerge if we are to address the insurmountable environmental, resource, population, and
infrastructure issues of the near future. This second edition provides a series of updated readings that
re-introduces the field and helps us to understand some of these staggering challenges.
Over the last decade, the field of urban design has experienced a decided upswing of attention in
both the academic and popular press. In particular, overlaps between urban design and the allied fields
of public health, economic development, and environmental sustainability have received considerable
attention. New employment opportunities are expanding across the built environment professions, in
particular for those who can collaborate in team situations. Design and planning firms increasingly search
for employees who possess multiple skill sets, are technically savvy, understand design process, and
communicate ideas effectively. Within the development community, employers look for colleagues that
easily interface between design professionals, public officials, and community stakeholders. For the
public sector, urban design is increasingly seen as strategic place-making associated with larger city
goals. It is becoming an integral part of urban amenity provision for visitors and residents – and important
for a growing horizontal labor market that allows workers to move according to desired lifestyle choices.
However, recent concerns in preparing for a less secure and resource-constrained future are driving
new interest in resilience, sustainability, and systems thinking – while at the same time continuing to
address present-day livability and ensure high quality of life.
Differences exist between the content of the first and second editions. While many selections have
been retained for their continued pertinence and “staying power” – other pieces have been retired. As
the world of communication and information access becomes more democratized, many of the first edi-
tion selections are now easily available; especially the material on urban design elements, best practices,
and design guidelines. These seemed less crucial for inclusion this time around. As such, a handful of
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xviii P rologue
pieces have been put aside in favor of selections that help with moving forward. New work has been
included on the internationalization of the field, alternative design theories, and the evolution of practice.
These new inclusions draw on recent contributions of an expanding literary field. In choosing the selec-
tions we continued to seek highly readable material drawn from a variety of perspectives. Debates that
were present in the retained pieces from the first edition continue across these new selections in the
second edition, and readers are cautioned that some of this writing is meant to provoke.
In editing the second edition, we remained aware of our core mandate: helping to shape the next
generation of urban designers. This edition will continue to provide a comprehensive introduction to key
aspects of the field: its precedents, early foundations, current challenges, and approaches to practice.
Each reading is introduced by way of a short essay that summarizes significant content, the import
ance and context of the piece, information on the author, and supplemental readings related to topical
material. Selections we retained from the first edition have been updated since the time of their initial
publication. Due to space limitations we have not included every last word or work on every topic,
with some selections abridged for length. In editing the readings we were also compelled to omit some
of the visual material because of space considerations. References to material in other sections of the
original works were also omitted, in addition to excessive footnoting, citation, and bibliographic referenc-
ing where it was less connected to key messages. At times we have inserted headings and subtitles to
help frame writing that is out of context from original formats. Our primary intention in editing the selec-
tions was to give readers the essential and most important material from each original piece. For those
pursuing advanced perspectives, beyond an introductory sampling, we strongly encourage you to dig
deeper into the supplemental readings we reference throughout the reader.
As we selected and edited material for this new edition, three themes emerged as resonant with the
trajectory of the field. These appeared between and across the six parts of the Urban Design Reader
Second Edition – through sections on historical precedents, foundations, place-making, urban develop-
ment, environmental challenge, and practice. Resonance surfaced between voices and time periods that
often seemed disconnected. These three themes deal with the evolution of the field and begin to address
its current terrain.
The first theme to emerge was the need to recognize the many differential urbanisms existing in the
world, and the inappropriateness of a universalized good, best, or singular formula that can be applied
to all of them. This recognition may suggest the abandonment of universal design tactics. Urban pluralism
disavows standardization – generalizable prescriptions turn problematic – best practices raise questions
of application – design strategies become contingent. In a 2011 article, urban design Professor of Prac
tice Jonathan Barnett of the University of Pennsylvania described over 60 contemporary urbanisms at
play in current design discourse – each of them either vying for attention or particularized response. At
times these urbanisms represent physical and historical traces of specific form processes, for example,
Jane Jacobs’ Greenwich Village or the Las Vegas Strip described by Venturi and Scott Brown; at other
times they seem like normative prescriptions, for example, Corbusian modernism or Clarence Perry’s
Neighborhood Unit. The selections begin to highlight how varied cultural processes impact design
outcomes: for example, the impact of faith beliefs in shaping Islamic cities – or the as-of-right planning
processes that result in sprawl or Post Urban dissatisfaction. In response, the rise of place-making
strategies is born of the need to differentiate cities in a global marketplace of competition, combat
placeless urbanism, build local value, create economic resilience, and promote a sense of place-based
pride.
An evident second theme is growing: design pragmatism and urgency in response to environmental
uncertainty, resource depletion, and unsustainable development patterns. We found in many of the more
recent readings an underlying belief in green urbanism, resiliency promotion, and integrated systems
thinking. While many agree on the potential threats in failing to address each of these, debate continues
to exist from partisan quarters. More troublesome is the difficulty in transferring concern over these threats
into cohesive and effective action. While cities and planners regularly address resident livability issues
or quality of life goals that benefit present-day consumption over the short term; more problematic is
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P rologue xix
shepherding action that addresses uncertain conditions over the longer term. Whether in the spectacu-
lar development of global Dubai or the car dependent suburbs of sunbelt America, moving toward
sustainability and resilience will not be an easy task. This highlights the vast gulf that lies between
agreeing on a problem and deciding how to move toward rectifying it. While flashpoint shocks to the
system (such as environmental calamities or unexpected spikes in energy costs) may wake us up over
the short term to the need for action, ensuring this type of focus over the long term is harder to sustain.
Collective action to thwart the “death of the unknowing frog in the slowly boiling water” will require
conscious, long term, and concerted action by designers, developers, governments, and citizens. We
all seem to be on the bandwagon, but how will it pick up speed? How can we overcome initial inertia
and get it rolling in all the many directions we must go?
Through many selections, a third and final theme resonates on the need for the disciplines to come
together in collaboration. From the start of the “urban design project” at the Harvard Conference in
1956, we often note a disciplinary antipathy between the various built environment professions. Part of
this has to do with the need for individual design authorship; sometimes it has to do with professional
bias. This difficulty in the shared project appears again and again in value differences and priorities
lacking agreement between developers, engineers, activists, architects, planners, and urbanists (whether
of the “Landscape” variety or the “New”). The theme runs through the book in varying shades, until we
see a new call for collaboration in the final selection by Ken Greenberg. To deal collectively with the
global environmental and resource issues confronting cities – whether expressed through sea-level threat,
environmental degradation, or skyrocketing energy costs – urban designers will require a better under-
standing of disciplinary roles and a mutually supporting clarification of design objectives. Affinities between
each of the traditional design professions are more easily uncovered when agreement is reached on
shared threat and when design participants raise long-term public interests over short-term private
objectives.
These themes can be found throughout the structure of the book. Part 1: Historical Precedents in
Urban Design reviews clarion moments in the design of cities from Renaissance and Islamic cities to
modernist prescriptions – all of these predating the establishment of the urban design field as a project
of the academy. In Part 2: Foundations of the Field, we assemble important early writings by academ-
ics, advocates, and practitioners from the 1960s to the 1980s, who focus on debates, methods, and
theories in reaction to failed mid-century design and planning. Later works in this section retarget intel-
lectual efforts toward principles and guidelines for improving the urban design performance of cities,
streets, and open spaces. In Part 3: Growth of a Place Agenda, readings illustrate aspects of twentieth-
century placelessness and corrective place-making strategies by urban designers and the built environ-
ment professions. Of note are selections at the end of this section that describe the existential reality
of postmodern urbanism, everyday urban places, and the reality of post-urban attitudes. Part 4: Design
Issues in Urban Development brings together a set of authors who each focus on a pressing issue
related to city building. Ideas about sprawl, density, community health, public space, and developer
motivations are the focus here. Selections in this part also highlight important international development
trends in the Middle East and China. Rather than focusing solely on the downside of global climate and
resource threats, Part 5: Addressing Environmental Challenges offers a series of constructive design
methods for highlighting the corrective roles of ecological process, landscape, sustainability, and urban
resiliency. The final section, Part 6: Urban Design Practice Now and Tomorrow, examines professional
practice: where urban designers work, what they do, their roles, their knowledge areas, and their edu-
cational development. The section concludes with several provocative position pieces on the future of
urban design practice.
As part of Routledge’s Urban Reader Series, The Urban Design Reader reaches a broad audience
of people committed to improving the function, pleasure, and survivability of cities into the future. In the
introductory urban design courses we teach, one of the first lecture objectives is a frank discussion on
the definitions, opportunities, and frustrations of a career in urban design. Whether one becomes a
“direct designer” (who masters technical and graphic skills, communicates design ideas with aplomb,
9780415668071_A01.indd 19 10-26-2012 3:16:35 PM

xx P rologue
and produces design as part of a project team in the private or public sector), or an “indirect designer”
(who typically works for the public sector in guiding vision exercises, public participation, regulatory
frameworks, design guidelines, or oversight on behalf of the public’s interest in urban design success),
this hybrid field offers plentiful opportunities for those who have a deep appreciation for city-making and
the creative process. The field can be humbling in its need for constant adaptation, its long timeframes,
and its necessary collaborations – but these are also its strengths. It requires practitioners to be fluent
in a variety of skills and disciplines – and become great communicators. It favors the curious adventurer,
the creative puzzle solver, and the concerned citizen – all of whom thrive on the excitement of the urban
experience. In our own personal development as designers and educators, we continue to be inspired
by the literature, the debates, student discovery, and the diverse positions within the field. We come
back to these readings often; they continue to surprise us with new take-aways and re-appreciations.
We hope this material inspires readers to the great joys of city-making, like it has for us.
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Part one
Historical
Precedents in
Urban Design
9780415668071_P1_01.indd 1 10-26-2012 3:16:43 PM

Plate 2 T he Place des Vosges in Paris, France is the oldest fully designed square in the city. Constructed under
Henri IV in the early seventeenth century as a royal palace in the Marais District, the square has become the
prototype for the traditional European residential square. The square’s design is remarkably simple: a uniform
four-story arcaded perimeter wall, a fenced public realm space, a symmetrical park, an equestrian statue and
bosque of lindens at the center, alleés of clipped linden trees forming a secondary enclosure, plenty of bench
seating and lawn space, and fountains at each of the four corners. Today the Place des Vosges has become
an important and imageable part of Paris’ public realm; attracting both young and old – lunchtime visitors
and weekend picnics – lovers and people watchers. (Photo: E. Macdonald)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
The contemporary urban design field is commonly understood to have had its birth in the mid-1950s,
spurred by wide-ranging concerns related to diminishing environmental quality, both ecological and urban,
and the emergence of a number of theorists and practitioners whose voices crystalized these concerns
and pointed toward more environmentally conscious and humanistic approaches to city-building than the
functionalist approach espoused by modernism. The ideas and design approaches of these thinkers are
explored in Part Two of this reader. But first, it is important to understand what came before, the many
ideas and practices that preceded and helped shape the modern urban design field. Here, in Part One,
we explore some of the most important historical precedents in urban design, particularly those that still
resonate and continue to influence today’s urban design theory and practice.
The world’s many historic and more recent cities are rich with physical urban forms. Different eras,
times, geographies, and economies have produced a variety of urban physical forms that come to us
as precedents. So, too, have people from different times and places produced various theories of what
makes “the good city.” Present-day urban designers have access to a wealth of experience, design
theory, and urban form precedents to draw upon. Some historic ideas and urban forms complement
and build upon each other, while others present radical breaks with earlier ideas and ways of building
cities. The history of urban form and ideas about good city form have not followed a single, steady path.
New physical form ideas – grand diagonal avenues, curvilinear residential streets, garden cities, traffic-
protected neighborhood enclaves, high-rise towers – come and have their impacts, then retreat or move
in another direction, only to be reborn later or to disappear. For urban designers, it is important to know
and understand the origins and impacts of the many different forms that make up today’s cities, includ-
ing their theoretical foundations, in order to understand why urban fabrics are the way they are, and to
have a rich palette to draw upon when creating designs for the future.
The historic ideas and practices we explore in Part One primarily come from the mid-nineteenth to
mid-twentieth centuries, although for greater context we first look at the forces that shaped early Islamic
cities and the flowering of urban form ideas that arose during the Renaissance period. This is not to
undervalue earlier design ideas and physical forms, but rather to present the most useful set of readings
for present-day students and practitioners. The ideas and physical forms that have their roots in the
modernization processes that started in the early 1800s, with what is commonly referred to as the in-
dustrial revolution, are those that most powerfully resonate with our current condition and have had the
greatest impact on the form of modern cities. The social and economic changes that accompanied the
industrialization of European and North American cities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies brought forth some of the worst living conditions seen before or since in the western world.
Central areas of cities became densely built, overcrowded, heavily polluted, and highly unsanitary. New
physical form answers as well as socio-economic reforms had to be found for those conditions, and a
host of concerned people came forth with answers.
Before exploring nineteenth- and twentieth-century precedents for urban design, we start with two
pieces that present and analyze urban forms and theories about design coming from earlier times. First,
a reading from Edmund N. Bacon’s seminal Design of Cities, a path-breaking book in the urban design
field, connects us with design ideas and professional practices of the Renaissance. We learn about
how, with the invention of perspective drawing and the rise of a humanist desire for visual order, architects
took on a major new role as arrangers of urban space. Next, a relatively recent journal article by Janet
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4 INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
Abu-Lughod analyzes the cultural forces that shaped the form of traditional Islamic cities in the Middle
East and North Africa. Although Islamic cities have long been described by western scholars as having
an “organic” urban form, this reading takes a contrary view, arguing that their form derived from cultural
processes that profoundly influenced resulting physical forms. It is an important work that helps debunk
the myth of organic urban growth that all too often creates nostalgia for earlier ways of city-building.
We turn then to the wealth of ideas and forms that sprang from industrialization. The urban modern-
ization process, in physical terms, can be said to have started with Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction
of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. The two poetically written selections from Marshall Berman’s excellent
book, All That is Solid Melts into Air, evoke the feeling of the time and the enormous social changes
wrought when the city was opened up with wide new boulevards and public spaces. The glittering café
life that developed along the tree-lined boulevards stood in stark contrast to the poverty of surrounding
working-class areas, and people for the first time had to contend with fast-moving city traffic. The next
reading, “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns,” is a classic writing by Frederick Law Olmsted,
the father of the American Parks Movement. Written at the same time that the remodeling of Paris was
going on, and taking partial inspiration from Haussmann’s parks and boulevards, it extols the virtues of
large picturesquely designed urban parks for bringing together diverse urban populations and providing
relief from the stresses of urban life. Woven within the narrative is a vision for suburban expansion that
includes separated land uses and picturesquely designed residential districts.
The reading from Camillo Sitte, two chapters taken from his book City Planning According to Artistic
Principles, which was written at the very end of the nineteenth century, directs attention to the aesthetic
deficiencies of the rectilinear street and block patterns that had come into vogue. He urges a re-appreciation
of the picturesque layouts of medieval cities, particularly arguing that important public gathering spaces and
public buildings were much better defined and emphasized in a picturesquely laid out urban fabric, with its
twists and turns and juxtapositions of spatial sizes, than in regular and uniform grid patterns. Rather than
looking back to earlier urban forms, another idea from just before the turn of the twentieth century identified
large industrial cities as the root cause of modern society’s ills and put forward a radically new approach to
city-building. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City idea, published in a short monograph, proposed decentralizing
urbanization and building regional networks of small self-contained cities set within agricultural greenbelts.
While Howard’s proposal was expressed only in diagrammatic form and contained within it radical ideas of
social reform, it was the captivating image of melding the city with the countryside that captured people’s
imagination and soon transformed town planning practice. Although the theoretical Garden City idea remains
inspirational to many, in real-world practice it soon morphed into the idea of picturesquely designed and
leafy green suburbs. Concerns about the ills of industrial cities also spawned the American City Beautiful
Movement, which flourished during the first decade of the twentieth century. Very different than Howard’s
visionary theoretical approach, the practically focused City Beautiful Movement was concerned with cleaning
up and beautifying the public realm of existing cites. William H. Wilson’s piece “Ideology and Aesthetics,”
taken from his book The City Beautiful Movement, provides a good overview of the short-lived and now
somewhat maligned movement, identifying how and why it came into being and its lasting influences.
By the late 1920s, widespread ownership of automobiles had transformed many cities into places where
the public realm was congested with traffic, leading to a new sense of crisis that was spawned by safety
concerns and the perceived need to create areas of refuge from the vehicle onslaught. It was within this
context that Clarence Perry originated the neighborhood unit concept, which proposed an altogether new
way of designing cities to control traffic and keep it away from residential neighborhoods, using strategies
that included street hierarchies, superblocks, and inwardly focused pod-like development. First presented
within the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, Perry’s idea had enormous influence on
the form of future residential areas in the United States, spawning the ubiquitous suburban subdivision.
Finally, two pieces from The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning present in Le Corbusier’s own words his
disparagement of pre-modern urban forms and his vision for the rationalized modern city that would become
such a paramount force in urban planning and architecture throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
His vision compelled the massive urban clearance and redevelopment schemes and urban highway building
programs of the 1950s and 1960s, which destroyed the fabrics of so many American city centers.
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“Upsurge of the Renaissance”
from Design of Cities (1967)
Edmund N. Bacon
Editors’ Introduction
The roles and filters of urban designers in the process of city-making evolved dramatically during the Renaissance
with the humanist desire for visual order, the discovery of mathematical perspective, and new conceptions
of space related to time and experiential movement. Early in Design of Cities, Edmund Bacon notes that a
fundamental shift occurred from the medieval city, which was composed intuitively, perceived simultaneously
from different viewpoints, and well integrated to its environment – to a perception of the Renaissance city
that was dependent on the personal filters of designers at specific geographic locations and moments in
time. The rise of one-point perspective in design practice elevated the individual eyes of designers and their
particular focus to new importance (typically targeted at works of art or ecclesiastical and civic buildings of
the powerful). In addition to reinforcing the power of capital and elite interests, Renaissance designs based
in visual order and one-point perspective emphasized harmony in building design, the linearity of streets, and
faster movement through the city. As a result, designers occupied a heightened role in urban decision-making
processes, either in predicating new designs or in responding to the design of others (see the section on
“Principle of the Second Man” herein). Despite Bacon’s suggestion that the form of a city is “determined by
the multiplicity of decisions made by the people who live in it,” the influence of the Renaissance designer to
evoke a singular vision suggests anything but a participatory multi-stakeholder process of design. Renaissance
reliance on the designer’s perspective elevated the role of the design eye and created a new elite class that
was able to direct the focus of others and create perceptual harmonies where none previously existed.
Bacon’s intention in writing Design of Cities was to investigate the many decisions that influence urban
form and to expose the various individual acts of will used in making the noble cities of the past. This par-
ticular reading from the book is notable not only for the specific innovations of the Renaissance, but also
because it echoes debates that were occurring at the time of its publication in the mid-1960s over the role
of designers and planners in making cities. Emanating from Jane Jacobs’ critique of elite planners and design-
ers in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Bacon politely refutes the notion of incremental growth
and the ad hoc city that was gaining popularity in the mid-1960s. He rejects the notion “that cities are a kind
of grand accident, beyond the control of human will,” and instead contends that designers should assume
responsibility for expressing “the highest aspirations of our civilization.” In addition to highlighting key theories
of city design, it is of little surprise that examples throughout the book accentuate individual acts of will by
well-known designers through history, including Hippodamus of Miletus, Michelangelo, Sixtus V, the Woods
at Bath, Haussmann in Paris, and Le Corbusier. As a well-positioned practitioner and academic who recognized
the ground-shift beginning to occur in the planning field toward more participatory design, Bacon was sensi-
tive to the need for “democratic feedback” and participatory project review to ensure that people’s needs
were met. Yet at the same time, he could not deny his own professional standing as a leader in the field, his
faith in government to improve society on behalf of the public interest, and the power of individual design
ideas that are “necessary to create noble cities in our own day.” Although public participation in design
practice is increasingly valorized, the role of personal agency in creativity and design leadership is still debated.
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6 E dmund N . B acon
Edmund N. Bacon (1910–2005) was a planner and educator, who studied at Cornell University and the
Cranbrook Academy of Art under the renowned Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. He worked as an architect
and planner in Flint (Michigan), China, and Philadelphia, before becoming managing director of the Philadel-
phia Housing Authority and later executive director of the City Planning Commission from 1949 to his retire-
ment in 1970. He taught for a time at the University of Illinois and then the University of Pennsylvania between
1950 and 1987. He focused much of his design and planning career on the City of Philadelphia, where he
achieved fame in the popular press in the mid-1960s, including a cover article in Time and a feature in Life
magazines. Alongside significant efforts to preserve and restore the city’s historic core, his visions and projects
transformed the city. While some, such as Penn’s Landing, Market East, the redevelopment of Society Hill,
and improvements to Independence Mall, were hailed as successes, other modernist proposals for downtown
expressways and various mega-projects were met with opposition. This experience as a practitioner undoubt-
edly helped shape his perspective on urban history and the role of the urban designer as a pivotal participant
in the larger urban development process.
Other general urban form histories include: Leonardo Benevolo, The History of the City (London: Scolar
Press, 1980); Sir Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization (New York: Pantheon, 1998); Mark Girouard, Cities and
People: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Spiro Kostoff, The
City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1991) and The City
Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1992); A.E.J. Morris,
History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution, 3rd edn (New York: John Wiley, 1994); Lewis
Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformation and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1961); Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Towns and Buildings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, original
1949); Aidan Southall, The City in Time and Space (London: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Paul
Zucker, Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
Important books focusing on Renaissance urbanism, architecture, and urban design include: Leonardo
Benevolo, Architecture of the Renaissance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978); Peter Murray, Architecture
of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Schocken, 1997); Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age
of Humanism (Chichester, UK: Academy Editions, 1998, original 1949); James S. Ackerman, The Architecture
of Michelangelo (New York: Viking Press, 1961); Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books on Architecture: The
1755 Leoni Edition (New York: Dover, 1987); and the important text that was instrumental in shaping Renais-
sance architecture and urbanism, Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture (New York: Dover, 1960).
The coming of the Renaissance brought new energy, century, they set into motion a process of orderly city
new ideas, and a new rational basis for city exten extension which culminated in the great expression
sion in accord with the new scale of city growth. of the emerging ideas of the Renaissance, Piazza della
It was in Florence that the Renaissance first found Santissima Annunziata. The design of Brunelleschi
full expression. for the arcade of the Foundling Hospital set a level
In 1420 the building of the dome over the of architectural excellence that was continued
octagonal walls at the crossing of the cathedral of around the square by later designers, so creating a
Florence, designed by the architect Brunelleschi, was spectacular architectural termination for the much
far more than a brilliant achievement of building earlier plan of movement from the cathedral.
technology. It provided Florence with a psycho Figure 1 showing the cathedral dome illustrates
logical and visual center which became the orien the direct physical relationship to it of both the
tation point for much of the later work. Piazza della Santissima Annunziata and the Uffizi
When the Servite monks decided to lay out a extension from Piazza della Signoria to the Arno
new street through property they owned, from the River. This shows the partial network of inter
cathedral to their church of Santissima Annunziata, connecting streets and squares and the principal
probably during the second half of the thirteenth church buildings that suggests the beginning of a
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“ U psurge of the R enaissance ” 7
city-wide design structure on a new scale, an idea

that reached full magnificence in the later develop
ment of Rome.
O
PRINCIPLE OF THE SECOND MAN N
E
Any really great work has within it seminal forces
capable of influencing subsequent development
around it, and often in ways unconceived of by
its creator. The great beauty and elegance of
Brunelleschi’s arcade of the Foundling Hospital
found expression elsewhere in the Piazza della
Santissima Annunziata, whether or not Brunelleschi
intended this to be so.
The first significant change in the square, fol
lowing the completion of the arcade in 1427, was
the construction of a central bay of the Santissima
Annunziata church. This was designed by Michelozzo
in 1454 and is harmonious with Brunelleschi’s work.
However, the form of the square remained in doubt
until 1516, when architects Antonio da Sangallo
the Elder and Baccio d’Agnolo were commissioned
to design the building opposite to Brunelleschi’s
arcade. It was the great decision of Sangallo to
overcome his urge toward self-expression and fol
low, almost to the letter, the design of the then
eighty-nine-year-old building of Brunelleschi. This
design set the form of Piazza della Santissima
Annunziata and established, in the Renaissance
train of thought, the concept of a space created
by several buildings designed in relation to one
another. From this the “principle of the second
man” can be formulated: it is the second man who
determines whether the creation of the first man
will be carried forward or destroyed.
Sangallo was well prepared for the decision he
faced, having worked as a pupil of Bramante, pos
sibly on the plan for the Vatican Cortile, which was
the first great effort of the Renaissance in space-
planning. Sangallo’s arcade is at the left (in the map
Figure 1 Florence – showing three stages in the of 1629), and in the center are the fountains and
development of the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata at the equestrian statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand
top; the Duomo and Baptistry at center; and the Piazza I sculptured by Giambologna (placed there as a
della Signoria, the narrow courtyard of the Uffizi Palace directional accent in imitation of Michelangelo’s
to the Arno River, and street connections to the Ponte siting of Marcus Aurelius in the Campidoglio).
Vecchio over the Arno River at the bottom. Drawing by Behind these are the architect Caccini’s extensions
Alois K. Strobl. of Michelozzo’s central bay, forming the arcade
of Santissima Annunziata, which was completed
about 1600. Figure 1 shows three stages of the
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development of this piazza in relation to the design orientation, disorientation, and reorientation to a
structure of Florence. new set of relationships.
The quality of Piazza della Santissima Annunziata
is largely derived from the consummate archi
tectural expression that Brunelleschi gave the first DESIGN IN DEPTH
work, the Innocenti arcade, but it is really to
Sangallo that we owe the piazza in its present form. One function of architecture is to create spaces to
He set the course of continuity that has been fol intensify the drama of living. [ . . . ] Figure 1 shows
lowed by the designers there ever since. the way in which the pavilion of the Uffizi projects
out into the street by the Arno, giving the effect of
seizing the flow of space along the river’s course,
IMPOSITION OF ORDER and pulling it into the Piazza della Signoria.
The principle of the recession plane and of
It is impossible to enter Piazza della Signoria (at design in depth is illustrated by . . . the shaft of
the base of the previous map) at any point without space contained by the Uffizi walls and framed
being confronted with a complete and organized by the arch at the end (which) links the planes
design composition. The powerful impression re together and focuses on the cathedral dome, with
ceived is largely due to the interplay of points the result that its importance is drawn into the
in space defined by the sculpture with the formal space of the square. [ . . . ]
façades of the medieval and Renaissance buildings One of the most remarkable aspects of the
behind them, a Renaissance ordering of the space Piazza della Signoria, the plane in space established
of a medieval square. by the line of sculpture from Hercules and Cacus to
If one enters by Via Calimaruzza in the north the right of the Palazzo Vecchio’s entrance, on to
west corner of the square, looking east, one sees the copy of Michelangelo’s David, to Ammanati’s
a view of Bartolommeo Ammanati’s massive white Neptune fountain, and ending in the figure of
statue of Neptune, which is silhouetted against Cosimo I on horseback, starts and ends in the
the shadowed north wall of the Palazzo Vecchio, physical sense, but in spirit extends in each direc
and the dark equestrian figure of Cosimo I by tion, exercising extraordinary influence in all parts
Giambologna stands sharply outlined in the cen of the square.
ter of the sun-bathed Palazzo della Tribunale di
Mercanzia. The view from the northeast shows the
buildings on each side of the narrow street framing MICHELANGELO’S ACT OF WILL
the steeply vertical composition of the Palazzo
Vecchio and its tower. The equestrian figure and Only by reconstructing the Capitoline Hill as it
the figure of Neptune almost overlap, forming a existed before Michelangelo went to work on it
plane in space, which reinforces the direction of can we comprehend the magnitude of this artist’s
movement of this approach to the square. genius in creating the Campidoglio. This master
The view suddenly opens up at the entry point work forms a link between the early Renaissance
of the Via Vacchereccia in the southwest corner. expressions of urban design in Florence and the
Neptune now appears at the center of the Palazzo great Baroque developments in Rome.
della Tribunale di Mercanzia’s façade, and Cosimo The drawing by J.H. Aronson, see Figure 2,
I has moved to the center of the richly rusticated based on various sketches by artists of the period,
façade of the palazzo on the north side of the is an attempt to reconstruct the area as it existed
square. The Loggia dei Lanzi, on the south side of in 1538, when Michelangelo began work. It shows
the square, acts as a fulcrum at the point of junc the Palazzo del Senatore at the top and the Palazzo
ture with the Uffizi. dei Conservatori at the right. [ . . . ] The formless,
As one walks about the square, the variously unplanned relationship between the medieval
placed sculptural groups appear to move in differ Palazzo del Senatore and the Palazzo dei Con
ent directions in relation to their backgrounds and servatori was complicated by mounds of earth,
to one another, involving the onlooker in continual columns, and an obelisk. There were also the
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O
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E
Figure 2 The Capitoline Hill before reconstruction by Michelangelo. Drawing by Joseph H. Aronson.
statues of the two Roman river gods, on each side to Pope Paul III’s orders to recreate the Campidoglio
of the entrance to the Palazzo dei Conservatori. as the heart of Rome.
This, then, was the physical situation with which The approach Michelangelo took produced one
Michelangelo was faced when he reluctantly acceded of the great masterpieces of all time. The actual
9780415668071_P1_01.indd 9 10-26-2012 3:16:45 PM

basis for the artist’s design was an enormous intel arise. [ . . . ] The completion of the stairway of the
lectual achievement. By a single act of will he Palazzo del Senatore and the positioning of the
established a line of force on the axis of the Palazzo Marcus Aurelius statue establish a relationship
del Senatore, a line which in effect became the between two architectural elements in space. Each
organizing element that pulled chaos into order. of these is modest in extent, yet of such power
[ . . . ] that the feeling of order is already present and
the drive toward the larger order is irreversibly set
in motion.
DEVELOPMENT OF ORDER Michelangelo had designed a new tower to
replace the unsymmetrical medieval one, but his
In their discussion of the angle between the two design was only vaguely followed when the tower
flanking buildings of the Campidoglio, and its sig was finally, in 1578, replaced by another.
nificance in relation to perspective as diminishing A comparison (between Aronson’s two drawings)
or increasing apparent distance, antiquarians some reveals the admirable skill with which Michelangelo
times seem to lose sight of the fact that this angle introduced a totally new scale into this space. He
was determined long before Michelangelo started modulated the façade of the Palazzo del Senatore
work. What Michelangelo did was to repeat the by establishing a firm line defining the basement,
angle already set by the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and above this he placed a monumental order of
symmetrically on the other side of the axis of the Corinthian pilasters. These interact effectively with
Palazzo del Senatore. Accepting this angle as a the colossal two-story order of the flanking palaces
point of departure, he set about to treat the space which sweep from the base to the cornice in one
it created. The decision he made is remarkable mighty surge.
because it contained elements of two violently
contradictory points of view.
On one hand, Michelangelo saved the basic ORDER ARRIVES ON THE CAPITOL
structure of the two old palaces which he found
on the site by confining his efforts to the building One of the greatest attributes of the Campidoglio
of new façades. On the other hand, what he did composition is the modulation of the land. Without
was to create a totally new effect. One might have the shape of the oval, and its two-dimensional
thought a man of such drive toward order and star-shaped paving pattern, as well as its three-
beauty would have swept away the old buildings dimensional projection in the subtly designed steps
in order to give free rein to his own creative efforts, that surround it, the unity and coherence of the
or, conversely, that such modesty would have design would not have been achieved. The paved
led to a hodgepodge compromise. Michelangelo area stands as an element in its own right, in effect
has proved that humility and power can coexist creating a vertical oval shaft of space which greatly
in the same man, that it is possible to create a reinforces the value of the larger space defined by
great work without destroying what is already the three buildings. [ . . . ] The product is a space
there. which, apart from its beauty, still serves as the
On orders of the Pope, and against the advice symbolic heart of Rome.
of Michelangelo, the statue of Marcus Aurelius The Campidoglio was designed some thirty-
was moved from San Giovanni in Laterano to five years after Bramante made his great plan
the Campidoglio, and Michelangelo positioned the for the Vatican Cortile, and it followed by just
figure and designed a base for it. The 2nd drawing over twenty years Sangallo’s plan for the second
by Aronson (Figure 3) shows that the first act was arcade in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in
the setting of this figure, and by that single act Florence. While the Campidoglio incorporated ideas
the integrity of the total idea was established. contained in each of these earlier works, it went
Aronson’s first drawing (Figure 2) shows, in the far beyond them in the degree of integration
extremely disorganized front that the Palazzo del between the architecture of the buildings, the place
Senatore presents, the degree of imagination neces ment of sculpture, and the modulation of the land.
sary to conceive the order that eventually would Furthermore, it established more powerfully than
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O
N
E
Figure 3 Campidoglio by Michelangelo. Drawing by Joseph H. Aronson.
any previous example the fact that space itself STIRRINGS OF THE NEW ORDER
could be the subject of design. In the richness of
its forms, the Campidoglio heralded the arrival of The first hint of the system that would lead to the
the Baroque. new order came from the artists using the new and
[ . . . ] glittering tools of scientific perspective. We have
9780415668071_P1_01.indd 11 10-26-2012 3:16:46 PM

already seen how these stemmed the intuitive flow of applying new-found Renaissance principles to
of experience which led to the organic design of the solution of the interior form of the building,
cities in the medieval period, and, how they led to and then to the façade. In the seventeenth century,
positive advocacy of organized confusion. after almost two hundred years of experimenta
In a drawing of Antonio Pisanello, who lived in tion, the flow of energy was reversed. The design
the first half of the fifteenth century, we see the vitality began to spill out of the building into the
beginning of a new idea of design. [ . . . ] In Pisanello’s streets of the city around it. The designer, having
drawing, he is fascinated, not with the shape of mastered the internal building problem, now
mass, but with the shape of space. He has created cast his eye on the building’s environment, and
a tunnel of space articulated by the series of reces expended his extra energy in a euphoric flow of
sion planes, through which his figures move in design activity to create a setting for his structure.
depth toward the pull of the vanishing point. [ . . . ]
This sets into motion the idea of architectural The lines of energy (in Baroque design) radiate
design, not as the manipulation of mass but as outward from a central source in a manner similar
articulation of experience along an axis of move to that of Baroque design. The energies of the
ment through space. It was provided by exactly the design expired in the depths of the city, the points
same basic scientific technology, but this was of expiration themselves creating a form – as,
employed in a different way, which led to a libera for example, a piazza connected with a Baroque
tion of the designer’s thinking, and set into motion church. Out of this grew the deliberate planning
a new ordering principle in city design. Over the of a network of lines of design energy on a city-
next two hundred years, one can observe a con wide basis, providing channels for the transmission
tinuous growth and development of the seminal of the design energy of buildings already built and
idea contained here, in its acceptance by designers at the same time creating locations calling for a
and its application on a vast scale in actual con new design energy in buildings yet to come.
struction on the ground. It was the extra energy of the Baroque period,
[ . . . ] resulting from the confidence inspired by the
mastery of design technique, which produced the
great interaction between structure and setting.
INSIDE–OUTSIDE RELATIONSHIPS [ . . . ] Similar exuberance was expressed in the
Roman plan of Sixtus V for a city design structure
Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the binding the points of design energy into a total
energy of designers was absorbed in the problem system.
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“The Islamic City: Historic Myths,
Islamic Essence, and Contemporary
Relevance”
from International Journal of Middle East Studies (1987)
Janet Abu-Lughod
Pre-industrial and pre-modern cities are often used as examples of organic development – where urban form is
thought to be physically determined by geography, local materials, technology, climate, and other conditions –
and where populations have responded to context through craft-based creativity and local innovation in settle-
ment patterns. Casual observers of “organic urbanism” tend to look at these places as either haphazard and
unplanned – or with a wistful nostalgia and romanticism; often categorizing or over-generalizing them as ideal-
ized urban types. In accord with the work of urban historian Lewis Mumford, Janet Abu-Lughod reinforces the
message that internal rationales exist to explain their urbanism, and that human culture has had a more important
impact in shaping and differentiating urban form than mere physical determinism. While not discounting the
role of context response, she suggests that while Arab-Islamic cities have certainly been shaped by physical
determinants, socio-cultural processes better explain the variety of urbanisms across the Middle East; where
Isfahan and Fez might be as different as New York and Los Angeles.
In this journal article, Janet Abu-Lughod describes the cultural forces that shaped (and continue to shape)
Arab-Islamic urbanism. She is highly critical of over-generalizing and the orientalizing tendencies of western
authors in describing urban form in the Middle East. In particular she sees urban form as more than a product
to be classified, but rather as cultural processes that help to explain varied form. In this realization, she is able
to move beyond a mere historical analysis of Islamic city form that often results in replication of the past, and
begins to suggest ways for planners and designers to focus new efforts on cultural processes that are more
contemporaneous. In a nuanced manner, one of her missions is also to de-mythologize the Arab-Islamic cities,
often providing critique of social practice in their manifestation, including class, gender, and religious dis-
crimination in space.
In deconstructing the processes that have impacted urban form, she focuses on three key ideas that are
crucial in understanding the manifestation of Arab-Islamic cities. While acknowledging that Islam is an urban
religion that requires regular gathering for prayer (either in daily or Friday mosques), the first of these ideas
is the segregation of space within the city for believers and non-believers. Founded in religious law, urban
Islam reinforced distinctions between classes of people based on faith, behavior, and background, if not also
on differences in domestic economy. Residential segregation was often a matter of the voluntary self-sorting
of households; often with the variety of believers (Christians, Jews, Moslems and other mono-theistic adherents)
choosing to live together in neighborhoods – or conversely to segregate themselves according to comfort
levels (much as we see ethnic neighborhoods self-sorting in the US). We can see how the distinctions be-
tween believers and non-believers continue to shape urban form today in the Arab-Islamic world – with the
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 13 10-26-2012 3:16:56 PM

14 J ane T A B u - L u G H O D
spaces of hotels, business, entertainment, and western lifestyle activities occupying very different urban spaces
than the domestic space of local believers.
Her second hypothesis about the shaping of Arab-Islamic cities concerns gender segregation within the
space of the city; for purposes of cloistering and shielding women from the unwanted gazes of men and
strangers. The provision of segregated spaces for males and females (as well as children) becomes one of
the most apparent and defining design principles in shaping the built environment (both in public and domes-
tically within the house). These design devices include: meandering streets that hinder visual access, screened
windows and balconies, carefully placed exterior transition spaces, and social cues to warn families of pos-
sible dangers.
Abu-Lughod’s third point focuses on neighborhood function and the absence of a unifying central author-
ity in providing either security, open spaces, or services – all of which were primarily and historically supported
by district-based organizations/clans. These largely become issues of turf and territoriality and how district
security is provided at the local level by residents themselves rather than depending on centralized authority.
This is a point reinforced through the larger religion, where little central authority exists for universalizing and
administering Islam – allowing local interpretation to suffice instead. This hypothesis suggests the difficulty of
establishing centralized planning culture in those places where self-reliance has provided either a security
blanket or a safety net in the past. This, of course, is changing in many progressive Middle Eastern cities, as
infrastructure, service, and security provision are more efficiently delivered on a city-wide basis than a local
district basis. Yet, the turf realities of a district orientation continue to challenge and vex many places today.
The way forward for Islamic cities is to focus on the processes that originally made these places, rather
than any shallow recitation of form, which Abu-Lughod suggests as inauthentic, unsatisfying, colonizing, or
orientalizing. At the end of this writing she puts out a call to Arabs to take up the task of planning and design-
ing new Islamic cities – places that might avoid the historical gender, class, and religious discriminations of
the past. Noting that the world is becoming more egalitarian, connected, and integrated, she urges municipal
governments and city-makers to respect the beauty, cultural practices, and faith principles that continue to
be admired without false urban form replications. For planners and designers, understanding the forces that
shaped the Arab-Islamic city are crucial to its survival, in terms of infrastructure and housing upgrade, future
sustainability, and in its assumption of new global roles. The writing by Yasser Elsheshtawy later in this edition
begins to deconstruct and critique some of these global city strategies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. For those
in the West, including expatriate planners and designers (as well as political leaders), better understanding
of Arab-Islamic city processes might help to establish new respect and approaches for engagement – but
might also serve as an example for how to link cultural processes back home to better and more relevant
urban design outcomes.
Janet Abu-Lughod is one of the pre-eminent scholars on Arab and Islamic cities. She taught at the Uni-
versity of Illinois, the American University in Cairo, Smith College, Northwestern, and most recently at the New
School for Social Research in New York City, where she is a Professor Emerita. One of her most influential
writings is Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250–1350 (London and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991), where she illustrates the history of Eurasia’s pre-modern world-system, which predated
the current global system championed by Wallerstein, Friedmann and others. Her other key publications in-
clude: Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Rabat,
Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles: America’s Global Cities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); From Urban Village to
East Village: The Battle for New York’s Lower East Side (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Changing Cities (New
York: Addison, 1991).
Other authors, such as Stefano Bianca, have written more extensively than Abu-Lughod on Arab-Islamic
morphology and how urban form has reinforced both gender and district security. These include issues of
over-looking, male and female space in public, the use of roofs and courtyards as family space – and importantly,
the morphological relationships between the domestic unit as the cell of a neighborhood cluster (with limited
street or public realm access), and how these clusters come together in a fractal/cell-like manner to form cities.
Bianca also helps to deconstruct the primary physical components of some Arab-Islamic cities: courtyard
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“ T H e I slamic C i T y : His T O ric M y T H s , I slamic E ssence , an D C O n T emp O rary R ele V ance ” 15
house, pillared hall, souk, service building/madrassa, and caravansary. At times he forgets Abu-Lughod’s
message about urban form differentiation through the region; neglecting descriptions of market plazas, forts,
infrastructure, and paradise gardens of other Middle Eastern / Eurasian regions. Another author of note, Besim
Selim Hakim, uses the explication of Islamic religious passages to connect faith principles with urban form
manifestation.
O
Seminal works on Middle Eastern and Islamic cities include: Nezar Alsayaad, Cities and Caliphs: On the
N
Genesis of Arab Muslim Urbanism (New York: Praeger, 1981); Besim Selim Hakim, Arabic-Islamic Cities E
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Hooshang Amirahmadi and Salah S. EI-Shakhs (eds), Urban
Development in the Muslim World (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 1993);
Tsugitaka Sato, Islamic Urbanism in Human History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Stefano
Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000); and Paul Wheatley,
The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001).
At the present time of a resurgence in Islamic be- another in an isnad of authority we intend to trace
liefs, the question of the Islamic city has once again here.
come to the fore. In many parts of the Arab world, One of the earliest codifications of the charac-
and especially in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, teristics of the Islamic city, at least the earliest
urban planners with a newfound respect for the generally cited in subsequent literature, was William
great achievements of the past are searching for Marçais’ 1928 article, “L’lslamisme et la vie ur
ways to reproduce in today’s cities some of the baine.” The article introduces several themes that
patterns of city building that have been identified appear over and over again in subsequent discus-
as Islamic. They have been influenced, whether sions of the Islamic city.
wittingly or not, by a body of literature produced The first is that Islam is essentially an urban
by Western Orientalists purporting to describe the religion. In support of this contention, Marçais
essence of the Islamic city. notes that Muhammad himself was an urbanite
suspicious of nomads, that the leadership cadres
of the early Islamic proselytizers were members of
THE ISNAD OF THE ISLAMIC CITY the urban bourgeoisie of the Arabian peninsula,
and that the requirement that the Friday communal
In some ways, historiography takes the same form prayer be solemnized at a congregational mosque
as the traditions of the Prophet. The authenticity made urban living necessary for the full Muslim
of any proposition is judged by the isnad or “chain” life. Marçais uses an earlier link in the chain of
by which it descended from the past. Certain chains Orientalism when he cites Joseph Ernest Renan,
are deemed more trustworthy than others. One the French philologist and historian, to legitimate
makes reference to an earlier authority in order to his view. The phrase he quotes is a simple allegation:
substantiate a statement’s authenticity or truth. The “The mosque, like the synagogue and the church,
truth, therefore, is only as good as the isnad (chain) is a thing essentially urban (citadine). Islamism [sic]
of its “construction.” is a religion of cities.” This quotation is particularly
The first part of this essay is concerned with intriguing because it undermines the whole enter-
the criteria of authority, chains of authenticity, and prise of defining the unique character of the Islamic
the construction of reality in Orientalist scholarship. city; it suggests that Islam shares with Judaism and
Its thesis is that the idea of the Islamic city was Christianity the same quality of urbanity.
constructed by a series of Western authorities who However, Marçais makes a second point as well.
drew upon a small and eccentric sample of pre- He notes that new cities were often founded by
modern Arab cities on the eve of Westernization new powers/dynasties in Islamdom, thus acknow
(domination), but more than that, drew upon one ledging that Islamic civilization was not merely a
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 15 10-26-2012 3:16:56 PM

set of religious beliefs and laws but also a function- the courses were given to students from the
ing society that was Islamic in the sense that it various schools. Near the mosque, the religious
organized the life of Muslims into a community center, we find the furnishers of sacred items,
not just of believers but of doers. the suq of the candle sellers, the merchants of
Finally, Marçais introduces several character incense and other perfumes. Near the mosque,
istic elements of the physical city. Citing the North the intellectual center, we find also the book-
African historian Ibn-Khaldun, Arab geographers, stores, the bookbinders and, near the latter, the
and legal doctrines, he reaches a definition of suq of the merchants of leather and the slipper
the Islamic city that he contends is quintessential: [babouche]-makers which also use leather. This
a city must have a congregational Friday mosque introduces us to the clothing industries and the
and it must have a market/chief bazaar nearby. commerce in cloth, which occupy so large a
Associated with the jāmi sūq (mosque-market) com- place in the life of Islamic cities. The essential
plex was a third physical feature of Islamic cities, organ is a great market, a group of markets
the public bath (hammām), of functional significance that carry the mysterious name, Qaiçariya. The
to prepare believers for the Friday prayer. Paraphras Qaiçariya . . . [is] a secure place encircled by
ing Renan, though, we might note that when the walls where foreign merchants, above all Chris
church was also the temporal power, medieval Euro tians, come to display their cloth materials brought
pean cities were also defined by the presence of the from all European countries. The Qaiçariya, placed
cathedral and the marketplace in front of it. Thus not far from the Great Mosque, as in Fez or
far, therefore, we have only a very modestly etched Marrakesh, for example, is a vital center of eco-
idea of the Islamic city, one that poorly distinguishes nomic activity in the city. Beyond the commerce
it from cities in other religious/cultural contexts of textiles, of the jewellers, the makers of hats
and one that has as yet no topography. [chechias], we find the makers of furniture and
The ideas of William Marçais were incorporated of kitchen utensils . . . Farther out are the black-
into two articles written by Georges Marçais, namely smiths. Approaching the gates one finds places
“L’urbanisme musulman,” and “La conception des for caravans . . . then the sellers of provisions
villes dans l’Islam.” The former, in particular, con- brought in from the countryside . . . In the quar-
stitutes an important link in the chain of construct- ters of the periphery were the dyers, the tanners,
ing the Islamic city. The 1940 discussion begins and, almost outside the city, the potters.
with a paradox alluded to earlier by William Marçais,
namely, that despite the fact that Islam was a reli- It is very important to note here that virtually all
gion carried by nomads, it was essentially an urban of the cases cited by Marçais in his article are North
religion: the mosque created the Islamic city. He African. Note the specific references to babouches
notes as well the importance of baths and of mar- (slippers), chechias (tarbushes), Qaicariya (cloth
kets in the making of the Muslim city. market) – Maghrib terms that are not generally
It is Georges Marçais, however, who gives a used in other regions. Note also the contemporary
morphology to the Islamic city. He notes the dif- reference to foreign (i.e., European) merchants.
ferentiation between non-residential and residential These articles, then, set forth the physical
quarters and the fact that residential quarters are characteristics of the Islamic city primarily as they
often specialized by ethnicity. Finally, he describes were observed in North Africa. Much less attention
the physical organization of the city markets which was paid to the social organization of the city nor
he suggests are ordered in a certain hierarchy which was any attempt made to explore the underlying
is not completely accidental. I quote at length from causes of the particular patterns found in Islamic
this section because it is to appear again and again cities. This task was essentially left for Robert
in subsequent works, either in quotation marks or Brunschvig, in his often cited “Urbanisme medieval
paraphrased. et droit musulman.”
In this crucial piece, Brunschvig argues that it
I have said that the center was occupied by the was customary law, applied by judges, that over time
Great Mosque, the old political center, the reli- yielded the type of physical pattern found in the
gious and intellectual center of the city, where cities of Islamdom . . . In Gustave von Grunebaum’s
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 16 10-26-2012 3:16:56 PM

earlier book, Medieval Islam, there is only the brief- greater distinction between in and out of the house.
est discussion of the role of the city in Islam. The In brief, it seemed that social patterns of gender
author merely notes that “Islam, from its very segregation and social patterns of proscribed foods
outset unfolding in an urban milieu, favored city were the chief religion-linked variables distin
development.” He further remarks that only in a guishing Muslim from Hindu quarters in mixed
O
city, with its Friday mosque, its markets and, pos- cities . . . This, of course, was not a true test of the N
sibly, its public baths, can the duties of the religion case, so I also tried to compare the urban patterns E
be fully performed . . . He holds with Marçais that, of Muslim origin cities with those of Hindu (or
in contrast to Western medieval ones, Muslim Vedic) origin cities. Here again it was possible to
towns lacked municipal organization. Also following make the distinction. Cities originally occupied
their lead he suggests that this lack of municipal by Muslims or substantially expanded by them had
government was compensated for by the ethnically far more convoluted street patterns than cities
specialized quarters with their own sheikhs. Further, founded by Vedic/Hindu populations. The latter
he accepts the views of Louis Massignon that guild- were arranged more regularly, had straight streets
like organizations of trades knitted the social organ unencroached by structures, and achieved privacy
ization together, a view which has subsequently largely through court-houses rather than alleys and
been rejected by Orientalists. dead-ends. On the basis of this, it seemed that the
[ . . . ] most probable cause of these differences might be
The fact is that most studies still focus on a the nature of the law of real property, rather than
single case and try to generalize rather than start religion per se.
with the more fundamental question: Why would The next logical test was to examine the litera-
one expect Islamic cities to be similar and in what ture about Muslim cities elsewhere. With reference
ways? to Africa south of the Sahara, scholars thought there
Before this, however, a brief biographical note. were significant differences between Islamic versus
I went to India in the late seventies, looking for non-Islamic cities. African cities inhabited by Muslim
(and hoping not to find) the Islamic city. To my populations were said to contain complex and
surprise, it was easy to distinguish Muslim from narrow street systems, courtyards, and the spatial
Hindu urban quarters. Several cues seemed to trig- segregation of males and females.
ger a subliminal response. First, the ratio of males And finally, informants suggest that cities in
to females on the street and in public places was Muslim areas of Asia (Indonesia and China, for
higher in Muslim than in Hindu areas. Second, example) exhibit distinctive street patterns, noise
butcher shops and trades related to hides and levels, and a sense of Islam. By the time one comes
animal products were located almost exclusively in to these cases one is sure that if there is something
Muslim areas. Third, it seemed that the decibel Islamic about cities, it must be more than simple
level of sounds was higher and more animated in architectural patterns and designs, since the archi-
Muslim quarters, of which the call to prayer was tectural vernaculars become increasingly distant
only one of the added elements. from Damascus and Fez.
These semiotics were chiefly in public space; it What, then, can it be that is distinctive?
was harder to penetrate semiprivate and private It is easy to say what it is not. It is not a form
space, except in several Hindu areas to which I per se. The careful reader will have noted that the
had personal entree. The quarter, in the sense of Orientalists’ discussions of the Islamic city focus
a semiprivate lane or courtyard apartment house, on a unique conjunction of forces that created a
seemed as typical of poor Hindu areas as of Muslim few cities they take to be prototypical. The forms
areas, but circumspect behavior outside the private of these cities at certain points in time are taken
living quarters seemed less in Hindu than in Muslim as ideal types and are further abstracted to obtain
areas. One explanation for this might be differences a final ideal that is created out of congruent forms.
in the rules of veiling. Hindu women veil primarily This, they suggest, was (is?) the Islamic city. Not
before close relatives (especially fathers-in-law) only scholars but present practicing Muslims look-
whereas Muslim women veil chiefly from outsiders. ing to build new Islamic cities have accepted this
Given this, one would expect Muslims to make a approach and are trying to find in the planning and
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 17 10-26-2012 3:16:56 PM

architectural repertoire of the past the tricks and contingent more upon the state of law and order
techniques that will reproduce it. However, these than on shifts in religious ideology. This is a clear
approaches – scholarly or practical – miss the point. indication that religion was not the determining
Cities are the products of many forces, and the variable.
forms that evolve in response to these forces are However, to say that Islam was not the only
unique to the combination of those forces. A city cause of urban form is not to say that it was unim-
at one point in time is a still photograph of a com- portant. On the contrary, it was a crucial contribut-
plex system of building and destroying, of organizing factor in shaping cities within its realms. It
ing and reorganizing, and so on. In short, the contributed in several important ways.
intellectual question we need to ask ourselves is: First, it made rough juridical distinctions among
Out of what forces were the prototypical Islamic population classes on the basis of their relation to
cities created? the Umma (community of believers) and thus the
state. These distinctions were available in the rep-
ertoire of territoriality and could be translated
WHAT CREATED THE “TRADITIONAL” into spatial segregation under certain conditions.
CITY IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD? Furthermore, the frequent inability of the state to
transcend communal organizations and the laissez-
A modest list of the forces that created the tradi- faire attitude of the state toward civil society left
tional Islamic city would include: a terrain/climate; important functions to other units of social organ
a technology of production, distribution, and trans- ization that strengthened them. Since many of
portation; a system of social organization; and a these functions were vicinal ones (such as maintain-
legal/political system that, in Islamic places and ing streets and utilities, guarding turf, providing
times, could vary considerably. lighting, and supervising and sanctioning behavior),
It is exceedingly hard to unpack this complex and since many vicinal units were composed of
bundle to determine the extent to which Islam socially related people, what we would call the
influenced any one of them at any point in time. neighborhood became a crucial building block of
We must dismiss terrain entirely as being Islamic, cities in the Arab world during medieval and even
even though the Arab region in which this genre later times.
of city building was developed had a characteristic Second, by encouraging gender segregation,
climate/terrain as well as a historic inheritance that Islam created a set of architectural and spatial
encouraged common solutions. We must also dismiss imperatives that had only a limited range of solu-
technology as being Islamic, for there is nothing tions. What Islam required was some way of divid-
religious about pack animals, handicraft production, ing functions and places on the basis of gender
small-scale market arrangements, and so forth, any and then of creating a visual screen between them.
more than there is something religious about terrain This structuring of space was different from what
and climate. Once one eliminates the influence of would have prevailed had freer mixing of males
these factors, one is left with exploring the social, and females been the pattern.
political, and legal characteristics of Islam that Finally, one returns to the system of property
shaped, but did not determine, the processes laws that governed rights and obligations vis-à-vis
whereby Islamic cities were formed, transformed, both other property owners and the state. Such
and transformed again. customary laws and precedents set in motion a
Let us begin with an extreme statement: namely, process whereby a pattern of space was continually
that the division of the Middle Eastern–North reproduced. Of primary importance were the pre-
African city into a nested set of territories with existing rights of individual or collective users of
clear markers and defended borders was not Islamic land and immovable property. Of secondary import
per se but was reflective of a social order that had ance were the rights and responsibilities of prox
much in common with other societies based upon imate neighbors, followed by those of more distant
the family writ large (tribalism, clans, and ethnicity). ones. Then, at last, as a residual, there was the right
Fluctuations in the strength of the markers and the of the collectivity or larger administrative unit.
degree to which boundaries were defended, were Under such circumstances, access to entrances took
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priority over major thoroughfares or the reservation One must look for a common creator of boundar-
of land for public purposes. ies. There may be an overarching Islamic reason
I would like here to speculate on these three for the latter. Islamic property laws about differen-
themes, drawing upon evidence from both medieval tial responsibility to neighbors and control over
and modern time periods. accessways to dwellings may have been partially
O
responsible for the typical cellular pattern found in N
residential quarters of medieval Islamic cities. E
TERRITORIALITY IN THE ARABO-ISLAMIC However, I see Islamic law as an adaptive mechan
CITY ism for helping the society to achieve its goals
rather than as a deus ex machina determining them.
One of the most striking features of the cities of Therefore, we must go behind the issue of how
the Middle East and North Africa, certainly during imageable cells of residence were created and main
medieval times but to some extent persisting feebly tained to explore why they were so typically the
to this day in the older residential quarters, is its building block of urban society. This brings us, then,
subdivision into smaller quarters whose approxi- to the three hypotheses I would like to advance.
mate boundaries remain relatively constant over
time and whose names continue to be employed
as important referential terms, even when they do TURF AND JURIDICAL CLASSES
not appear on modern markers of street names.
In contrast, in his study of neighborhoods in States that make juridical distinctions among resi-
Chicago, Albert Hunter found that territorial names dents lay the foundation for what can evolve into
seldom persisted for even a generation, much less a system of spatial segregation. It is a necessary
a hundred years, and that there was widespread but, however, not a sufficient cause of residential
disagreement both as to the recognizability of many apartheid. That is because social distance and
neighborhood designations and as to their geo- physical distance are not necessarily the same thing.
graphic extent and borders. To some extent, the By social distance, we mean the degree to which
contrast between the persisting boundaries and open egalitarian interaction is blocked or, rather,
nomenclature in Arabo-Islamic cities and the unclear the amount of work that must be done by two
and changing character of Chicago neighborhoods parties to overcome social barriers to intimacy. By
can be attributed to spatial design and markers. physical distance, we mean the degree to which
Kevin Lynch, in his brilliant book on urban form, physical contact is blocked by space or, rather, the
The Image of the City, tried to probe, through men- amount of work that must be done to overcome
tal mapping, the psychology of spatial borders and spatial barriers to face-to-face contact. Clearly, we
spatial concepts; he concluded, interestingly enough, can all think of cases in which maximum social
that some quarters and cities are more imageable distance can coexist with minimal spatial segrega-
than others. There is no doubt in my mind that the tion (master–valet, master–house slave) and, con-
historic quarters of Arab cities were built to be image versely, other cases where minimum social distance
able in a way that gridiron-planned Chicago was not. can be sustained over great physical distance (loved
The design of the Arabo-Islamic city, with its ones in other countries). Indeed, it is generally when
convoluted paths, was intended to subdivide space lines of social distance become less marked that
into relatively permanent quarters, but a recogni physical distance is intensified.
tion of this fact simply begs a question. Medieval Medieval Islamic cities certainly did maintain
European towns were equally devoid of right angles the distinction between juridical classes through
and through streets; they also were subdivided into social distance (as evidenced by sumptuary regula-
potentially organizable subpockets. Nevertheless, tions. The semiotics of clothes, body postures, and
they are quite different in physical pattern and were so on), but spatial distance was not always a mech-
quite different in social organization from the medi- anism for maintaining social distance. On occasion
eval Arab city. though, particularly during periods of tension,
One must look for more than design to explain physical segregation was employed to intensify the
the signification of turf in the Arabo-Islamic city. social boundary markers.
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 19 10-26-2012 3:16:57 PM

For example, a juridically different category in city contributed by Islam. It is important to remem-
most Middle Eastern theocracies consisted of the ber, however, that the rules of turf were not only
dhimmis (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians enjoy- to establish physically distinctive regions; more
ing a special status of protection), who, where important, they were to establish visually distinctive
relevant, might be sub-classified by specific faith or or insulated regions. The object was not only to
place of origin. Always there were rules governing prevent physical contact but to protect visual pri-
their behavior and regulations concerning their col- vacy. Line-of-sight distance, rather than physical
lective responsibilities to the state. Often there were distance, was the object of urban design. Thus,
specific restrictions on the occupations open to them. Islamic law regulated the placement of windows,
Occasionally, there were rules specifying consump- the heights of adjacent buildings, and the mutual
tion patterns (whether they could ride horses or responsibilities of neighbors toward one another
were confined to mules and the like) and even per so as to guard visual privacy. Architecture assisted
mitted dress. For the most part, these regulations this process. Not only the devices of mashribiyya
do not seem to have been viewed as oppressive. (lattice-wood) screening but the layout of houses
(When they became so, as, for instance, during the and even of quarters created the strangely asym-
reign of al-Hakim in Cairo, they occasioned great metrical reality that women could see men but men
comment about the sanity of the ruler, indicating could not see women, except those in certain rela
how great a deviation from normal they were.) tionships with them. Here is Stanley Lane-Poole’s
Residential segregation, however, was not invari- description of an Egyptian upper-class house in the
able and was seldom involuntary. Voluntary con- nineteenth century:
centrations are noted over and over again in urban
histories, either in relation to certain economic [As one enters the house there] is a passage,
functions (Coptic quarters near ports in Cairo) or which bends sharply after the first yard or two,
to certain political advantages (Jewish quarters near and bars any view into the interior from the
the palace of the ruler). Such concentrations facil- open door. At the end of this passage we emerge
itated the exercise of self-rule in matters of per- into an open court . . . Here is no sign of life;
sonal status and helped, in the proximity-based the doors are jealously closed, the windows
city of the time, to gather the density required to shrouded. We shall see nothing of the domestic
support common special services and institutions. life of the inhabitants; for the women’s apart-
These common services and institutions, in turn, ments are carefully shut off from the court. The
created markers for quarters that indicated to out- lower rooms, opening directly off the court are
siders who was supposed to live there and indicated those into which a man may walk with impunity
to insiders that they belonged there. and no risk of meeting any of the women . . .
But there were certain times and places where [another] door opens out of the court into the
the potential for physical segregation was translated staircase leading to the harim rooms, and here
into the creation of absolute segregation by jurid- no man but the master of the house dare pene
ical status. In Moroccan cities, for example, Jews trate . . . When a man returns there, he is in the
were not segregated into ghettos until the nine- bosom of his family, and it would need a very
teenth century. The promulgation of a new govern- urgent affair to induce the doorkeeper to sum-
ment regulation was rationalized as being required mon him down to anyone who called to see him.
for the safety of the Jewish population and it was
not enforced for long. But one need not take the testimony of a foreign
[ . . . ] observer to substantiate the universality of some
of the principles. In the aqsār (castles) of southern
Morocco, one can find the same bent entrances
GENDER SEGREGATION AND designed to create a visual blind spot. Urban build-
THE ARABO-ISLAMIC CITY FORM ing regulations were replete with requirements that
the doors of buildings occupying opposite sides of
The creation of male and female turf is perhaps the street must not face one another, another mech-
the most important element of the structure of the anism of visual control.
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Similarly, within the dwelling, the ideal was to A large number of activities take place in the
segregate public from private space so that males harah passage which in other parts of Cairo, or
could circulate without interfering with the move- even during different historic stages of the
ment and activities of females. Obviously, this harah, would be restricted to the physical setting
was possible only, if at all, for the very wealthy, of the dwelling . . . The manner and form of
O
such as the household home that was described familiarity with which various intimate activities N
above. are carried out in the harah passage make it E
evident that the alley is actually considered by
A typical old house includes a wing for the men, both sexes to be a private domain. Members of
usually on the first floor, with an access to the the two sexes in the harah treat each other with
garden and to the ground floor balconies. In this familiarity similar to that existing among mem-
part of the house the head of the household has bers of the same family. Even outside the harah,
his sleeping room, study, guest rooms, and sitting any male resident is responsible for protecting
rooms. The second and third floors belong to any female member of his harah. He is further
the women; one is for daily living and another responsible for what she does, and he has the
for receiving guests. right to interfere in her activities if he finds them
inappropriate.
For the poor, no such absolute segregation was
possible. Rather, signs and codes helped regulate As one can see from this discussion, the family
spatial symbiosis, often by rules that governed is simply written larger when it is impossible to
timing. achieve the physical and visual separation required
The most obvious semiotic of sexual segregation between strangers . . .
in the Islamic city was the sign used in front of the It is clear that when densities are high and
public bath to indicate ladies’ day. Subtler signs houses too small to contain the manifold activities
governed other divisions of time and/or space, women are supposed to do in them, the spillover
however. Take, for example, the zone just outside space becomes appropriate as semiprivate space
the houses that share a common accessway in a and co-residents who might inadvertently have
dead-end quarter. These are found in most parts visual access are appropriated into a fictive kinship
of the Arab world, from the Fertile Crescent to relationship to neutralize danger. Dress is an import
Morocco. I have elsewhere termed this space semi- ant part of the semiotics of space. As Nadim notes,
private space, a third category between public and “clothing which is acceptable for a woman within
private that is found infrequently in sex-integrated the lodging is also acceptable in the harah.” Nor is
societies but is also often found in sex-segregated it only in Egypt that such adaptations take place.
societies. Elizabeth W. Fernea’s descriptions of her Street in
The fact is that the ideal of separation between Marrakech indicate that when women ran next door
the sexes is best achieved by the wealthy, who can within the enclosed portion of their street, they did
afford to duplicate space and can afford the servant not cover themselves as fully as they would have
or slave girls who were never guarded from male had they been going into public space. It was all
sight or contact. Most poor women were less able in the family. Clearly, then, one of the reasons why
to meet the ideal. For them, the family writ large the older pattern of city building has been main-
permitted the doing of tasks as well as the protec- tained in many sections of Arabo-Islamic cities,
tion from strange males because the local neighbor- even today, is that it is still well adapted to the
hood was an extension of the home and therefore complex demands for visual privacy for females.
the family. The blind alley or dead-end court street I am often struck, as I wander around Arab
[harah] was such a device for achieving this com- cities, with how easy it is to tell whether I am in
promise between the exigencies of life and the public space or have blundered into semiprivate
directives of female seclusion. Nawal Nadim has space. I have often tried to identity the markers
written very sensitively on this subject in her con- that indicate this. A sudden narrowing of the path,
temporary anthropological study of life in a poor particularly if that narrowing has been exaggerated
neighborhood passageway in Cairo. by the implanting of low stone posts or even a pile
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 21 10-26-2012 3:16:57 PM

of bricks, is a sign of the shift, especially when the The rather more rigid segregation between
road widens again soon afterward. Even when the commercial and residential quarters in the classic
spatial semiotics are absent, however, the personal Islamic city has been attributed to the need to
ones are present. There is the questioning look or separate private (that is, female) from public (that
the approach of someone wanting to help but is, male) space. Whatever the cause, such segrega-
clearly also wanting to know. tion certainly did have important effects. It left
Institutions have been retained from earlier periods, to the residential areas a large measure of auto
one of which is the nadorgi (from nazara, “to sight”), nomy since many of the public functionaries (the
who, in Nadim’s Cairo hara, was responsible not supervisors of the marketplaces or the supervisors
only for overseeing proper behavior between male of public morals) operated largely in the commer-
and female harah residents but also for spotting cial sections of the city. Neighborhoods handled
strangers. As she describes it, the: many of their internal functions on a more ad hoc
basis, being unable to afford more commercialized
nadorgi . . . is responsible for keeping an eye on services.
those entering the harah and detecting their A second factor that strengthened the neigh
movements. He is usually someone whose shop borhood was its role as protector. I would like to
or house is close to the entrance to the harah explore the issue of turf and defended neighbor-
where he remains most of the time. Besides hoods because I find the literature produced by
being a source of information concerning Orientalists on the role of dhu’ar (militant), futuwwa
external movement into the harah, the nadorgi (chivalrous society), and so forth, in the medieval
can provide equally valuable insights into the Islamic city highly deficient in a sociological sense.
internal movements of the various harah resi- I have been struck over and over again with the
dents . . . Whenever illegal activities occur in the fact that the traditional Arabo-Islamic city was
harah, and in most cases this is the smoking designed to maximize what Oscar Newman has
or trading of hashish, the role of the nadorgi termed defensible space.
becomes vital since he quickly warns of the In the introduction to his book, Defensible Space:
entrance of outsiders into the harah. The nadorgi Crime Prevention Through Urban Design, Newman
will approach the outsider under the pretense writes that he is trying to find an architectural solu-
of wishing to help him find whomever he wants. tion to the rising disorder in American cities. He
This tactic serves two purposes: first, it detains claims:
the intruder and secondly, it provides the nadorgi
with information about the outsider’s destination Architectural design can make evident by the
and contact. physical layout that an area is the shared exten-
sion of the private realms of a group of indi-
We shall return to this point when we investigate viduals. For one group to be able to set the
the other function of the neighborhood in the Arabo- norms of behavior and the nature of activity
Islamic city, namely, defensive space. possible within a particular space, it is necessary
that it have clear, unquestionable control over
what can occur there. Design can make it pos-
THE NEIGHBORHOOD AS A KEY sible for both inhabitant and stranger to perceive
ELEMENT IN CIVIL SOCIETY AND that an area is under the undisputed influence
THE STATE of a particular group, that they dictate the activ-
ity taking place within it, and who its users are
The final way in which Islam shaped the traditional to be. This can be made so clearly evident that
Arabo-Islamic city was through neglect, ironic as residents will not only feel confident, but that it
that may seem. By failing to concern itself with is incumbent upon them to question the comings
matters of day-to-day maintenance, Islamic states and goings of people to ensure the continued
often encouraged the vitality of other sub-state safety of the defined areas. Any intruder will be
functional units. One of these was definitely the made to anticipate that his presence will be
residential neighborhood. under question and open to challenge; so much
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 22 10-26-2012 3:16:57 PM

so that a criminal can be deterred from even Residents are particularly likely to intensify their
contemplating entry. defense when the order in the outside society
Defensible space is a model for residential becomes weakened.
environments which inhibit crime by creating Historically, in Arabo-Islamic cities, the neigh-
the physical expression of a social fabric that borhood has been in dialectical process with the
O
defends itself. external society. When central power was strong N
and when the citywide hierarchical structure was E
Certainly, what Newman has just described is the working smoothly, agents of the central administra-
Arabo-Islamic semiprivate quarter par excellence, tion operated within the neighborhoods to provide
but is the picture as benign as he has drawn it? information to the center and ensure conformance
Yes, the neighborhood defends itself, but perhaps with central directives. This was certainly the case
it is defending its criminal activities or its warfare with the sheikh of the hara in Cairo at certain
with the rest of society. Two non-benign parallels points, when he was essentially an informer for the
present themselves. These are boys’ gangs and police as well as for the muhtasib (inspector of
the militia turf in embattled Beirut. Both offer a morals). He acted, in his capacity as real estate
seamier view of the defensible space advocated by expert, to “steer” or supervise who should have
Newman. access to vacant dwelling units in the quarter.
Boys’ gangs were certainly a feature of Arabo- Sometimes, the neighborhood was an administra-
Islamic cities in the past and continue to be present tive subset of the state.
today . . . We recognize the organization of local More often, however, the quarter played the
young males for the defense of their quarter . . . We opposite role, that of a defended neighborhood,
recognize the gang leader . . . and we recognize his particularly when chaos reigned. One reads, in the
role . . . Even the so-called codes of chivalry are to historical accounts, of civil strife/invasions/street
be found in boys’ gangs. battles and the recurring phrase, “and people closed
Urban sociologist, Gerald Suttles, predated the gates to their harat.” Alternatively, to gain con-
Newman in his conceptualization of a “defended trol over the city, conquerors always had to destroy
neighborhood” which he defined as a “residential the gates to the harat, as Napoleon’s forces did
group which seals itself off through the efforts of when they invaded Cairo.
delinquent gangs, by restrictive covenants, by sharp One has only to think of contemporary Beirut
boundaries, or by a forbidding reputation.” He goes to have these phrases take on fuller meaning.
on to specify the conditions under which defended During the height of disorder, virtually every block
neighborhoods become important in cities (and belonged to a different group or faction. Checkpoints
here he is discussing places like Chicago, not Cairo, blocked entry and exit to these defended territories.
and yet the applicability is obvious): Often, barricades were constructed at the boundar-
ies. The opposite side of defense was also evident.
Granted the inability of formal procedures of During the Israeli siege, neighborhood assistance
social control to detect and forestall all or even was organized by block committees which allocated
most forms of urban disorder, some additional vacant apartments, oversaw the rationing of water
mechanisms seem necessary for the mainten use, and distributed food and medical relief as
ance of order. Among the available mechan needed. One cannot resist reading back into history
isms, a set of rules governing and restricting to evaluate some of the roles neighborhoods for-
spatial movement seems a likely and highly merly played in the Arabo-Islamic city.
effective means of preserving order. Such a set
of rules has some fairly obvious advantages:
it segregates groups that are otherwise likely CONCLUSIONS AND A NOTE OF
to come into conflict; it restricts the range of WARNING
association and decreases anonymity; it thrusts
people together into a common network of social In the first part of this chapter, I attempted to
relations that overlap rather than diverge from deconstruct Orientalist thinking about the Islamic
one another. city by showing not only that the idea itself was
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 23 10-26-2012 3:16:57 PM

“created” on the basis of too few cases but, even Arabo-Islamic world. It must be recognized that
worse, was a model of outcomes rather than one one cannot do that without being willing to live
of processes. By that I mean that the goal was to with the three conditions mentioned above, namely:
generalize about a specific form of city at one long (1) juridical distinctions between Muslims and/or
historic moment without unpacking the various citizens and outsiders; (2) segregation by gender
causes of that particular outcome. That form was and a virtually complete division of labor according
then equated with the Islamic city, regardless of to it; and (3) a fully decentralized and ex post facto
whether there was anything especially Islamic about system of land use and governmental regulation
the causes. over space. In today’s world, these three are con-
The reason it is important to criticize this sidered retrogressive.
approach is that in a number of Arab countries First, modern states accord basic rights and
today planners are trying to re-create Islamic cities responsibilities in an egalitarian manner – at least
– but by means that are terribly inappropriate in theory. Where distinctions are made on the basis
because they focus on outcomes rather than proof ascribed status, they have attracted the criticism
cesses. Such planners hope, by edict and ordinance, of the world.
to preserve and to build new cities on an Islamic Second, throughout the world, there has been a
pattern. It should be clear by now, though, why this trend toward increased equality between the sexes.
approach is likely to fail. Integration, not segregation, has been the ideal
Cities are processes, not products. The three toward which many cultures are moving.
Islamic elements that set in motion the processes Finally, modern municipal governments stress
that give rise to Islamic cities were: a distinction the provision of community facilities through a
between the members of the Umma and outsiders, centralized system and stress the establishment of
which led to juridical and spatial distinction by laws that apply to whole classes of places and uses,
neighborhoods; the segregation of the sexes, which that is, zoning laws, building codes, street alignments,
gave rise to a particular solution to the question subdivision regulations, and so on. Such regula
of spatial organization; and a legal system, which, tions, as I have tried to show, are the antithesis of
rather than imposing general regulations over land the assumptions and mechanisms of property law
uses of various types in various places, left to the under Islamic legal approaches.
litigation of neighborhoods the detailed adjudica- Therefore, none of the conditions still exist that
tion of mutual rights over space and use. These would permit us to reconstruct Islamic cities by
three factors were Islamic per se. design. Only a view of the Islamic city such as that
However, in addition, the historic cities that held by earlier Orientalists would allow one to even
developed in Arabo-Islamic lands in pre-modern entertain such a notion.
times were deeply influenced by such non-Islamic That is not to say, however, that we could not build
factors as climate, terrain, technologies of construc- better cities in the contemporary Arabo-Islamic world
tion, circulation, and production, as well as political if we paid closer attention to some of the true
variables, such as the relation between rulers and achievements of the past and if we learned from
the ruled, the general level of inter-communal strife, them. The historic Islamic city often achieved com-
and fluctuations in the degree of internal and exter- munity, privacy, and beauty. It would be wise to seek
nal security. Furthermore, the nature of any Islamic these same goals, even though the old means are
city at any point in time was the result not only of no longer available. Since cities are living processes
the contemporaneous nature of these variables but rather than formalistic shells for living, they cannot
the inherited forms that took shape under earlier be built by us. We can only encourage them to grow
and different circumstances. in the desired direction. Can we nurture neigh
It is clear, then, that one does not have the borhoods that are supportive but not defensive?
capacity to re-create Islamic cities by edict. One Can we foster privacy not for women alone but for
has only the capacity to create conditions that households? Can we guard the rights of neighbors
might set in motion processes that, in the past, while still applying laws consistently? That is the
generated the forms of the traditional city in the task Arab city planners must set for themselves.
9780415668071_P1_02.indd 24 10-26-2012 3:16:57 PM

“The Family of Eyes” and
“The Mire of the Macadam”
from All That is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity (1982)
Marshall Berman
By the mid-nineteenth century, following the industrial revolution, many cities had become extremely crowded,
especially those contained by protective city walls, such as Paris and Barcelona. From 1853 through 1870,
Georges Eugène Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine during the rule of Napoleon III, implemented large-scale
public works in Paris that included carving wide boulevards through the dense medieval city center, laying out
boulevard systems in peripheral areas to promote urban development, turning former royal hunting grounds
at the edge of the city into large new public parks, and redesigning existing city parks. Drawing on Baroque
axial planning ideas, the new boulevards linked important public places – train stations, public markets, civic
buildings, and parks. A municipal sewer system was built under them and many thousands of trees were
planted along them. The boulevards were lined with mandated six-story buildings sporting uniform empire-
style façades and mansard roofs. Ground floors of these buildings held cafés and restaurants. At the time,
Haussmann’s work was looked upon as a model of city modernization, and the boulevards were much admired
worldwide. However, particularly following the excesses and failures of the modern urban renewal projects of
the 1950s and the self-reflection this engendered in the planning profession, Haussmann’s Paris has been
much criticized on the rightful grounds that it displaced large numbers of mostly poor people, and that it
was an expression of political power meant to clear out working-class neighborhoods that were hotbeds of
resistance and made it easier for Napoleon’s troops to move through the city and break up political unrest.
In All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982)
Berman looks at Haussmann’s Paris and the new boulevards from a different perspective. Writing at a time
when the positivism associated with modernity was being highly criticized and dismissed, he dared to call
attention to the expanding nature of the new urban forms Haussmann introduced into Paris. Within the chap-
ters on Paris (other chapters discuss St. Petersburg and New York City), which use as their starting points
poems written by the nineteenth-century Parisian poet and flâneur Charles Baudelaire, Berman discusses the
reactions and social changes that came from people’s encounters with the new boulevards. He characterizes
the boulevards as the most important invention of the nineteenth century because they physically opened up
the city, giving breathing room and creating spaces – the cafés, restaurants, and wide sidewalks – where
new forms of urban public social life could develop, while at the same time they forced the middle and upper
classes to confront the reality of urban working-class poverty because people from the dense surrounding
neighborhoods spilled out onto the boulevards. The boulevards also introduced the beginnings of modern
traffic into the city, because their wide and unencumbered roadways allowed private carriages to move at
much faster speeds than previously possible.
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 25 10-26-2012 3:17:04 PM

26 M a R sha L L B e R man
As well as giving a vivid impression of the changes wrought by the new boulevards, Berman’s account of
Haussmann’s Paris gives us insight into the complexity of the modern public realm and its physical forms,
and the often neither-black-nor-white outcomes of urban design projects – there are generally both positive
and negative effects associated with any urban design undertaking. One of the lessons to be taken from study
of Haussmann’s transformation of Paris is the power of an appointed civil servant to transform a cityscape.
Latter-day civil servants who have had enormous influence on their city’s built form include Robert Moses,
chairman of New York City’s Triborough Bridge Authority and park commissioner during the mid-twentieth
century; Ed Logue, the director of Boston’s redevelopment agency in the 1960s; Allan B. Jacobs, San Francisco’s
planning director during the late 1960s and early 1970s; and Larry Beasley, Vancouver’s co-director of planning
since the 1990s.
Marshall Berman is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (CUNY),
where he teaches political philosophy and urbanisrn. His other writings include The Politics of Authenticity
(New York: Athenaeum, 1970), republished by Verso (2010); On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle
in Times Square (New York: Random House, 2006); and New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg
(London: Reaktion, 2007), co-edited with Brian Berge.
Other resources on the subject of Haussmann’s Paris include Nicholas Papayanis, Planning Paris Before
Haussmann (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004); Howard Saalman, Haussmann: Paris Transformed
(New York: G. Braziller, 1971); and Michel Carmona, Haussmann: His Life and Times, translated by Patrick
Camiller (Chicago, IL: I.R. Dee, 2002). A book by Haussmann’s landscape architect Adolphe Alphand that
contains plans and sections of Paris’s new boulevards and parks has been reprinted: Les Promenades de
Paris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1984).
It is interesting to note that while Haussmann’s classic boulevards were considered the height of modern
street building in the latter half of the nineteenth century, by the 1930s they were considered outdated in the
United States. These boulevards have a wide roadway in the center for fast-moving through traffic and narrow
roadways on the side for slow-moving local traffic. The roadways are separated by tree-lined medians, or
malls. The three-roadway configuration came to be considered dangerous by traffic engineers and they ceased
to be built. However, three-roadway boulevards (or multiway boulevards, to use a recently coined term) are
currently being looked to as a possible solution for handling large amounts of traffic in cities, where it is
necessary to do so, without deadening the local environment. A book that documents extensive research into
multiway boulevards is Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth Macdonald, and Yodan Rofe, The Boulevard Book: History,
Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
THE FAMILY OF EYES with all its power it lit the blinding whiteness of
the walls, the expanse of mirrors, the gold cornices
OUR FIRST primal scene emerges in “The Eyes and moldings.” Less dazzling was the decorated
of the Poor.” (Paris Spleen #26) This poem takes interior that the gaslight lit up: a ridiculous profu
the form of a lover’s complaint: the narrator is sion of Hebes and Ganymedes, hounds and falcons;
explaining to the woman he loves why he feels “nymphs and goddesses bearing piles of fruits,
distant and bitter toward her. He reminds her of pâtés and game on their heads,” a mélange of “all
an experience they recently shared. It was the even history and all mythology pandering to gluttony.”
ing of a long and lovely day that they had spent In other circumstances the narrator might recoil
alone together. They sat down on the terrace “in from this commercialized grossness; in love, how
front of a new cafe that formed the corner of a ever, he can laugh affectionately, and enjoy its
new boulevard.” The boulevard was “still littered vulgar appeal – our age would call it Camp.
with rubble,” but the cafe “already displayed proudly As the lovers sit gazing happily into each other’s
its unfinished splendors.” Its most splendid quality eyes, suddenly they are confronted with other
was a flood of new light: “The cafe was dazzling. people’s eyes. A poor family dressed in rags – a
Even the gas burned with the ardor of a debut; graybearded father, a young son, and a baby – come
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 26 10-26-2012 3:17:04 PM

“The Family of Eyes” 27
to a stop directly in front of them and gaze raptly vards through the heart of the old medieval city.1
at the bright new world that is just inside. “The Napoleon and Haussmann envisioned the new
three faces were extraordinarily serious, and those roads as arteries in an urban circulatory system.
six eyes contemplated the new cafe fixedly with an These images, commonplace today, were revolu
equal admiration, differing only according to age.” tionary in the context of nineteenth-century urban
O
No words are spoken, but the narrator tries to read life. The new boulevards would enable traffic to N
their eyes. The father’s eyes seem to say, “How flow through the center of the city, and to move E
beautiful it is! All the gold of the poor world must straight ahead from end to end – a quixotic and
have found its way onto these walls.” The son’s virtually unimaginable enterprise till then. In addi
eyes seem to say, “How beautiful it is! But it is a tion, they would clear slums and open up “breath
house where only people who are not like us can ing space” in the midst of layers of darkness and
go.” The baby’s eyes “were too fascinated to express choked congestion. They would stimulate a tremen
anything but joy, stupid and profound.” Their fas dous expansion of local business at every level,
cination carries no hostile undertones; their vision and thus help to defray the immense municipal
of the gulf between the two worlds is sorrowful, demolition, compensation and construction costs.
not militant, not resentful but resigned. In spite of They would pacify the masses by employing tens
this, or maybe because of it, the narrator begins to of thousands of them – at times as much as a
feel uneasy, “a little ashamed of our glasses and quarter of the city’s labor force – on long-term
decanters, too big for our thirst.” He is “touched public works, which in turn would generate thou
by this family of eyes,” and feels some sort of sands more jobs in the private sector. Finally, they
kinship with them. But when, a moment later, “I would create long and broad corridors in which
turned my eyes to look into yours, dear love, to troops and artillery could move effectively against
read my thoughts there” (Baudelaire’s italics), she future barricades and popular insurrections.
says, “Those people with their great saucer eyes The boulevards were only one part of a com
are unbearable! Can’t you go tell the manager to prehensive system of urban planning that included
get them away from here?” central markets, bridges, sewers, water supply, the
This is why he hates her today, he says. He Opera and other cultural palaces, a great network
adds that the incident has made him sad as well of parks. “Let it be said to Baron Haussmann’s
as angry: he sees now “how hard it is for people eternal credit” – so wrote Robert Moses, his most
to understand each other, how incommunicable illustrious and notorious successor, in 1942 – “that
thought is” – so the poem ends – “even between he grasped the problem of step-by-step large-scale
people in love.” city modernization.” The new construction wrecked
What makes this encounter distinctively mod hundreds of buildings, displaced uncounted thou
ern? What marks it off from a multitude of earlier sands of people, destroyed whole neighborhoods
Parisian scenes of love and class struggle? The that had lived for centuries. But it opened up the
difference lies in the urban space where our scene whole of the city, for the first time in its history, to
takes place. “Toward evening you wanted to sit all its inhabitants. Now, at last, it was possible to
down in front of a new cafe that formed the corner move not only within neighborhoods, but through
of a new boulevard, still piled with rubble but them. Now, after centuries of life as a cluster of
already displaying its unfinished splendors.” The isolated cells, Paris was becoming a unified physical
difference, in one word, is the boulevard: the new and human space.2
Parisian boulevard was the most spectacular urban The Napoleon-Haussmann boulevards created
innovation of the nineteenth century, and the new bases – economic, social, aesthetic – for bring
decisive breakthrough in the modernization of the ing enormous numbers of people together. At the
traditional city. street level they were lined with small businesses
In the late 1850s and through the 1860s, while and shops of all kinds, with every corner zoned for
Baudelaire was working on Paris Spleen, Georges restaurants and terraced sidewalk cafes. These cafes,
Eugène Haussmann, the Prefect of Paris and its like the one where Baudelaire’s lovers and his
environs, armed with the imperial mandate of family in rags come to look, soon came to be seen
Napoleon III, was blasting a vast network of boule all over the world as symbols of la vie parisienne.
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Haussmann’s sidewalks, like the boulevards them hundred sentimental songs. In fact, these private
selves, were extravagantly wide, lined with benches, joys spring directly from the modernization of pub
lush with trees.3 Pedestrian islands were installed lic urban space. Baudelaire shows us a new private
to make crossing easier, to separate local from and public world at the very moment when it is
through traffic and to open up alternate routes for coming into being. From this moment on, the
promenades. Great sweeping vistas were designed, boulevard will be a vital boudoir in the making of
with monuments at the boulevards’ ends, so that modern love.
each walk led toward a dramatic climax. All these But primal scenes, for Baudelaire as later on
qualities helped to make the new Paris a uniquely for Freud, cannot be idyllic. They may contain
enticing spectacle, a visual and sensual feast. Five idyllic material, but at the climax of the scene a
generations of modern painters, writers and photo repressed reality creaks through, a revelation or
graphers (and, a little later, filmmakers), starting discovery takes place: “a new boulevard, still
with the impressionists in the 1860s, would nourish littered with rubble . . . displayed its unfinished
themselves on the life and energy that flowed along splendors.” Alongside the glitter, the rubble: the
the boulevards. By the 1880s, the Haussmann pat ruins of a dozen inner-city neighborhoods – the
tern was generally acclaimed as the very model of city’s oldest, darkest, densest, most wretched
modern urbanism. As such, it was soon stamped and most frightening neighborhoods, home to tens
on emerging and expanding cities in every corner of thousands of Parisians – razed to the ground.
of the world, from Santiago to Saigon. Where would all these people go? Those in charge
What did the boulevards do to the people who of demolition and reconstruction did not particu
came to fill them? Baudelaire shows us some of larly concern themselves. They were opening up
the most striking things. For lovers, like the ones vast new tracts for development on the northern
in “The Eyes of the Poor,” the boulevards created and eastern fringes of the city; in the meantime, the
a new primal scene: a space where they could be poor would make do, somehow, as they always did.
private in public, intimately together without being Baudelaire’s family in rags step out from behind
physically alone. Moving along the boulevard, the rubble and place themselves in the center of
caught up in its immense and endless flux, they the scene. The trouble is not that they are angry
could feel their love more vividly than ever as the or demanding. The trouble is simply that they will
still point of a turning world. They could display not go away. They, too, want a place in the light.
their love before the boulevard’s endless parade of This primal scene reveals some of the deepest
strangers – indeed, within a generation Paris would ironies and contradictions in modern city life. The
be world-famous for this sort of amorous display setting that makes all urban humanity a great
– and draw different forms of joy from them all. extended “family of eyes” also brings forth the
They could weave veils of fantasy around the multi discarded stepchildren of that family. The physical
tude of passers-by: who were these people, where and social transformations that drove the poor out
did they come from and where were they going, of sight now bring them back directly into every
what did they want, whom did they love? The more one’s line of vision. Haussmann, in tearing down
they saw of others and showed themselves to the old medieval slums, inadvertently broke down
others – the more they participated in the extended the self-enclosed and hermetically sealed world of
“family of eyes” – the richer became their vision traditional urban poverty. The boulevards, blasting
of themselves. great holes through the poorest neighborhoods,
In this environment, urban realities could easily enable the poor to walk through the holes and out
become dreamy and magical. The bright lights of their ravaged neighborhoods, to discover for the
of street and cafe only heightened the joy; in the first time what the rest of their city and the rest
next generations, the coming of electricity and neon of life is like. And as they see, they are seen: the
would heighten it still more. Even the most blatant vision, the epiphany, flows both ways. In the midst
vulgarities, like those café nymphs with fruits and of the great spaces, under the bright lights, there
pâtés on their heads, turned lovely in this romantic is no way to look away. The glitter lights up the
glow. Anyone who has ever been in love in a great rubble, and illuminates the dark lives of the people
city knows the feeling, and it is celebrated in a at whose expense the bright lights shine.4 Balzac
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“The Mire of the Macadam” 29
had compared those old neighborhoods to the Baudelaire knows that the man’s and the
darkest jungles of Africa; for Eugène Sue they woman’s responses, liberal sentimentality and re
epitomized “The Mysteries of Paris.” Haussmann’s actionary ruthlessness, are equally futile. On one
boulevards transform the exotic into the im hand, there is no way to assimilate the poor into
mediate; the misery that was once a mystery is any family of the comfortable; on the other hand,
O
now a fact. there is no form of repression that can get rid of N
The manifestation of class divisions in the mod them for long – they’ll always be back. Only the E
ern city opens up new divisions within the modern most radical reconstruction of modern society
self. How should the lovers regard the ragged could even begin to heal the wounds – personal as
people who are suddenly in their midst? At this much as social wounds – that the boulevards bring
point, modern love loses its innocence. The pres to light. And yet, too often, the radical solution
ence of the poor casts an inexorable shadow over seems to be dissolution: tear the boulevards down,
the city’s luminosity. The setting that magically turn off the bright lights, expel and resettle the
inspired romance now works a contrary magic, and people, kill the sources of beauty and joy that the
pulls the lovers out of their romantic enclosure, modern city has brought into being. We can hope,
into wider and less idyllic networks. In this new as Baudelaire sometimes hoped, for a future in
light, their personal happiness appears as class which the joy and beauty, like the city lights,
privilege. The boulevard forces them to react will be shared by all. But our hope is bound to be
politically. The man’s response vibrates in the direc suffused by the self-ironic sadness that permeates
tion of the liberal left: he feels guilty about his Baudelaire’s city air.
happiness, akin to those who can see but cannot
share it; he wishes, sentimentally, to make them
part of his family. The woman’s affinities – in this THE MIRE OF THE MACADAM
instant, at least – are with the right, the Party of
Order: we have something, they want it, so we’d OUR NEXT archetypal modern scene is found in
better “prier le maître,” call somebody with the the prose poem “Loss of a Halo” (Paris Spleen
power to get rid of them. Thus the distance be #46), written in 1865 but rejected by the press and
tween the lovers is not merely a gap in com not published until after Baudelaire’s death. Like
munication, but a radical opposition in ideology “The Eyes of the Poor,” this poem is set on the
and politics. Should the barricades go up on the boulevard; it presents a confrontation that the set
boulevard – as in fact they will in 1871, seven years ting forces on the subject; and it ends (as its title
after the poem’s appearance, four years after suggests) in a loss of innocence. Here, however,
Baudelaire’s death – the lovers could well find the encounter is not between one person and an
themselves on opposite sides. other, or between people of different social classes,
That a loving couple should find themselves split but rather between an isolated individual and social
by politics is reason enough to be sad. But there forces that are abstract yet concretely dangerous.
may be other reasons: maybe, when he looked Here, the ambience, imagery and emotional tone
deeply into her eyes, he really did, as he hoped to are puzzling and elusive; the poet seems intent on
do, “read my thoughts there.” Maybe, even as he keeping his readers off balance, and he may be
nobly affirms his kinship in the universal family off balance himself. “Loss of a Halo” develops as
of eyes, he shares her nasty desire to deny the a dialogue between a poet and an “ordinary man”
poor relations, to put them out of sight and out who bump into each other in un mauvais lieu, a
of mind. Maybe he hates the woman he loves disreputable or sinister place, probably a brothel,
because her eyes have shown him a part of him to the embarrassment of both. The ordinary man,
self that he hates to face. Maybe the deepest who has always cherished an exalted idea of the
split is not between the narrator and his love but artist, is aghast to find one here:
within the man himself. If this is so, it shows us
how the contradictions that animate the modern “What! you here, my friend? you in a place like this?
city street resonate in the inner life of the man on you, the eater of ambrosia, the drinker of quintes-
the street. sences! I’m amazed!”
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The poet then proceeds to explain himself: believe that art and artists exist on a plane far above
them. “Loss of a Halo” takes place at the point
“My friend, you know how terrified I am of horses at which the world of art and the ordinary world
and vehicles? Well, just now as I was crossing the converge. This is not only a spiritual point but
boulevard in a great hurry, splashing through the a physical one, a point in the landscape of the
mud, in the midst of a moving chaos, with death modern city. It is the point where the history of
galloping at me from every side, I made a sudden modernization and the history of modernism fuse
move (un mouvement brusque), and my halo into one.
slipped off my head and fell into the mire of the Walter Benjamin seems to have been the first
macadam. I was much too scared to pick it up. I to suggest the deep affinities between Baudelaire
thought it was less unpleasant to lose my insignia and Marx. Although Benjamin does not make this
than to get my bones broken. Besides, I said to particular connection, readers familiar with Marx
myself, every cloud has a silver lining. Now I can will notice the striking similarity of Baudelaire’s
walk around incognito, do low things, throw myself central image here to one of the primary images
into every kind of filth (me livrer à la crapule), of the Communist Manifesto: “The bourgeoisie has
just like ordinary mortals (simples mortel). So here stripped off its halo every activity hitherto honored
I am, just as you see me, just like yourself!” and looked up to with reverent awe. It has trans
formed the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the poet,
The straight man plays along, a little uneasily: the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.”6
For both men, one of the crucial experiences
“But aren’t you going to advertise for your halo? endemic to modern life, and one of the central
or notify the police?” themes for modern art and thought, is desanctification.
Marx’s theory locates this experience in a world-
No: the poet is triumphant in what we recognize historical context; Baudelaire’s poetry shows how
as a new self-definition: it feels from inside. But the two men respond
to this experience with rather different emotions.
“God forbid! I like it here. You’re the only one who’s In the Manifesto, the drama of desanctification
recognized me. Besides, dignity bores me. What’s is terrible and tragic: Marx looks back to, and his
more, it’s fun to think of some bad poet picking it vision embraces, heroic figures like Oedipus at
up and brazenly putting it on. What a pleasure to Colonnus, Lear on the heath, contending against the
make somebody happy! especially somebody you elements, stripped and scorned but not subdued,
can laugh at. Think of X! Think of Z! Don’t you creating a new dignity out of desolation. “Eyes of
see how funny it will be?” the Poor” contains its own drama of desanctification,
but there the scale is intimate rather than monu
It is a strange poem, and we are apt to feel like the mental, the emotions are melancholy and romantic
straight man, knowing something’s happening here rather than tragic and heroic. Still, “Eyes of the
but not knowing what it is. Poor” and the Manifesto belong to the same spiritual
One of the first mysteries here is that halo itself. world. “Loss of a Halo” confronts us with a very
What’s it doing on a modern poet’s head in the first different spirit: here the drama is essentially comic,
place? It is there to satirize and to criticize one the mode of expression is ironic, and the comic
of Baudelaire’s own most fervent beliefs: belief in irony is so successful that it masks the seriousness
the holiness of art. We can find a quasi-religious of the unmasking that is going on. Baudelaire’s
devotion to art throughout his poetry and prose. denouement, in which the hero’s halo slips off his
Thus, in 1855: “The artist stems only from him head and rolls through the mud – rather than being
self. . . . He stands security only for himself. . . . He torn off with a violent grand geste, as it was for
dies childless. He has been his own king, his own Marx (and Burke and Blake and Shakespeare) –
priest, his own God.”5 “Loss of a Halo” is about evokes vaudeville, slapstick, the metaphysical prat
how Baudelaire’s own God fails. But we must under falls of Chaplin and Keaton. It points forward to a
stand that this God is worshipped not only by century whose heroes will come dressed as anti-
artists but equally by many “ordinary people” who heroes, and whose most solemn moments of truth
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will be not only described but actually experienced of Parisians who walked. The macadam pavements,
as clown shows, music-hall or nightclub routines- a source of special pride to the Emperor – who
shticks. The setting plays the same sort of decisive never walked – were dusty in the dry months
role in Baudelaire’s black comedy that it will play of summer, and muddy in the rain and snow.
in Chaplin’s and Keaton’s later on. Haussmann, who clashed with Napoleon over
O
“Loss of a Halo” is set on the same new boule macadam (one of the few things they ever fought N
vard as “Eyes of the Poor.” But although the two about), and who administratively sabotaged E
poems are separated physically by only a few feet, imperial plans to cover the whole city with it, said
spiritually they spring from different worlds. The that this surface required Parisians “either to keep
gulf that separates them is the step from the side a carriage or to walk on stilts.”7 Thus the life of
walk into the gutter. On the sidewalk, people of all the boulevards, more radiant and exciting than
kinds and all classes know themselves by compar urban life had ever been, was also more risky and
ing themselves to each other as they sit or walk. frightening for the multitudes of men and women
In the gutter, people are forced to forget what they who moved on foot.
are as they run for their lives. The new force that This, then, is the setting for Baudelaire’s primal
the boulevards have brought into being, the force modern scene: “I was crossing the boulevard, in
that sweeps the hero’s halo away and drives him a great hurry, in the midst of a moving chaos,
into a new state of mind, is modern traffic. with death galloping at me from every side.” The
When Haussmann’s work on the boulevards archetypal modern man, as we see him here, is a
began, no one understood why he wanted them so pedestrian thrown into the maelstrom of modern
wide: from a hundred feet to a hundred yards city traffic, a man alone contending against an agglo
across. It was only when the job was done that meration of mass and energy that is heavy, fast
people began to see that these roads, immensely and lethal. The burgeoning street and boulevard
wide, straight as arrows, running on for miles, would traffic knows no spatial or temporal bounds, spills
be ideal speedways for heavy traffic. Macadam, the over into every urban space, imposes its tempo on
surface with which the boulevards were paved, was everybody’s time, transforms the whole modern
remarkably smooth, and provided perfect traction environment into a “moving chaos.” The chaos here
for horses’ hooves. For the first time, riders and lies not in the movers themselves – the individual
drivers in the heart of the city could whip their walkers or drivers, each of whom may be pursuing
horses up to full speed. Improved road conditions the most efficient route for himself – but in their
not only speeded up previously existing traffic interaction, in the totality of their movements in a
but – as twentieth-century highways would do on common space. This makes the boulevard a perfect
a larger scale – helped to generate a volume of symbol of capitalism’s inner contradictions: ratio
new traffic far greater than anyone, apart from nality in each individual capitalist unit, leading to
Haussmann and his engineers, had anticipated. anarchic irrationality in the social system that
Between 1850 and 1870, while the central city brings all these units together.8
population (excluding newly incorporated suburbs) The man in the modern street, thrown into this
grew by about 25 percent, from about 1.3 million maelstrom, is driven back on his own resources –
to 1.65 million, inner-city traffic seems to have often on resources he never knew he had – and
tripled or quadrupled. This growth exposed a forced to stretch them desperately in order to sur
contradiction at the heart of Napoleon’s and vive. In order to cross the moving chaos, he must
Haussmann’s urbanism. As David Pinkney says attune and adapt himself to its moves, must learn
in his authoritative study, Napoleon III and the to not merely keep up with it but to stay at least
Rebuilding of Paris, the arterial boulevards “were a step ahead. He must become adept at soubresauts
from the start burdened with a dual function: to and mouvements brusques, at sudden, abrupt, jagged
carry the main stream of traffic across the city and twists and shifts – and not only with his legs and
to serve as major shopping and business streets; his body, but with his mind and his sensibility
and as the volume of traffic increased, the two as well.
proved to be ill-compatible.” The situation was Baudelaire shows how modern city life forces
especially trying and terrifying to the vast majority these new moves on everyone; but he shows, too,
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 31 10-26-2012 3:17:04 PM

how in doing this it also paradoxically enforces values not only aesthetic but metaphysical, ethical,
new modes of freedom. A man who knows how to political. La fange might be the nadir of the moral
move in and around and through the traffic can go universe whose summit is signified by l’auréole.
anywhere, down any of the endless urban corridors The irony here is that, so long as the poet’s halo
where traffic itself is free to go. This mobility opens falls into “La fange,” it can never be wholly lost,
up a great wealth of new experiences and activities because, so long as such an image still has mean
for the urban masses. ing and power – as it clearly has for Baudelaire – the
Moralists and people of culture will condemn old hierarchical cosmos is still present on some
these popular urban pursuits as low, vulgar, plane of the modern world. But it is present pre
sordid, empty of social or spiritual value. But when cariously. The meaning of macadam is as radically
Baudelaire’s poet lets his halo go and keeps moving, destructive to La fange as to l’auréole: it paves over
he makes a great discovery. He finds to his amaze high and low alike.
ment that the aura of artistic purity and sanctity is We can go deeper into the macadam: we will
only incidental, not essential, to art, and that poetry notice that the word isn’t French. In fact, the word
can thrive just as well, and maybe even better, is derived from John McAdam of Glasgow, the
on the other side of the boulevard, in those low, eighteenth-century inventor of the modern paving
“unpoetic” places like un mauvais lieu where this surface. It may be the first word in that language
poem itself is born. One of the paradoxes of moder that twentieth-century Frenchmen have satirically
nity, as Baudelaire sees it here, is that its poets named Franglais: it paves the way for le parking, le
will become more deeply and authentically poetic shopping, le weekend, le drugstore, le mobile-home,
by becoming more like ordinary men. If he throws and far more. This language is so vital and com
himself into the moving chaos of everyday life in pelling because it is the international language of
the modern world – a life of which the new traffic modernization. Its new words are powerful vehicles
is a primary symbol – he can appropriate this life of new modes of life and motion. The words may
for art. The “bad poet” in this world is the poet sound dissonant and jarring, but it is as futile to
who hopes to keep his purity intact by keeping off resist them as to resist the momentum of modern
the streets, free from the risks of traffic. Baudelaire ization itself. It is true that many nations and ruling
wants works of art that will be born in the midst classes feel – and have reason to feel – threatened
of the traffic, that will spring from its anarchic by the flow of new words and things from other
energy, from the incessant danger and terror of shores.10 There is a wonderful paranoid Soviet
being there, from the precarious pride and exhilara word that expresses this fear: infiltrazya. We should
tion of the man who has survived so far. Thus “Loss notice, however, that what nations have normally
of a Halo” turns out to be a declaration of some done, from Baudelaire’s time to our own, is, after
thing gained, a rededication of the poet’s powers a wave (or at least a show) of resistance, not only
to a new kind of art. His mouvements brusques, those to accept the new thing but to create their own
sudden leaps and swerves so crucial for everyday word for it, in the hope of blotting out embarrass
survival in the city streets, turn out to be sources ing memories of underdevelopment. (Thus the
of creative power as well. In the century to come, Académie Française, after refusing all through
these moves will become paradigmatic gestures of the 1960s to admit le parking meter to the French
modernist art and thought.9 language, coined and quickly canonized le parcmetre
Ironies proliferate from this primal modern scene. in the 1970s.)
They unfold in Baudelaire’s nuances of language. Baudelaire knew how to write in the purest and
Consider a phrase like La fange du macadam, “the most elegant classical French. Here, however, with
mire of the macadam.” La fange in French is not the “Loss of a Halo,” he projects himself into the
only a literal word for mud; it is also a figurative new, emerging language, to make art out of the
word for mire, filth, vileness, corruption, degrada dissonances and incongruities that pervade – and,
tion, all that is foul and loathsome. In classical paradoxically, unite – the whole modern world.
oratorical and poetic diction, it is a “high” way of “In place of the old national seclusion and self-
describing something “low.” As such, it entails a sufficiency,” the Manifesto says, modern bourgeois
whole cosmic hierarchy, a structure of norms and society brings us “intercourse in every direction,
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 32 10-26-2012 3:17:04 PM

universal interdependence of nations. And, as in macadam, from the viewpoint of the endlessly
material, so in intellectual production. The spiritual moving traffic, the two are one.
creations of nations become” – note this image, Ironies beget more ironies. Baudelaire’s poet
paradoxical in a bourgeois world – “common prop hurls himself into a confrontation with the “moving
erty.” Marx goes on: “National one-sidedness and chaos” of the traffic, and strives not only to sur
O
narrow-mindedness become more and more impos vive but to assert his dignity in its midst. But his N
sible, and from the numerous local and national mode of action seems self-defeating, because it E
literatures, there arises a world literature.” The mire adds yet another unpredictable variable to an al
of the macadam will turn out to be one of the ready unstable totality. The horses and their riders,
foundations from which this new world literature the vehicles and their drivers, are trying at once to
of the twentieth century will arise.11 outpace each other and to avoid crashing into each
There are further ironies that arise from this other. If, in the midst of all this, they are also forced
primal scene. The halo that falls into the mire of to dodge pedestrians who may at any instant dart
the macadam is endangered but not destroyed; out into the road, their movements will become even
instead, it is carried along and incorporated into more uncertain, and hence more dangerous than
the general flow of traffic. One salient feature of ever. Thus, by contending against the moving chaos,
the commodity economy, as Marx explains, is the the individual only aggravates the chaos.
endless metamorphosis of its market values. In this But this very formulation suggests a way that
economy, anything goes if it pays, and no human might lead beyond Baudelaire’s irony and out of
possibility is ever wiped off the books; culture be the moving chaos itself. What if the multitudes
comes an enormous warehouse in which everything of men and women who are terrorized by modern
is kept in stock on the chance that someday, some traffic could learn to confront it together? This will
where, it might sell. Thus the halo that the modern happen just six years after “Loss of a Halo” (and
poet lets go (or throws off) as obsolete may, by three years after Baudelaire’s death), in the days
virtue of its very obsolescence, metamorphose of the Commune in Paris in 1871, and again in
into an icon, an object of nostalgic veneration for Petersburg in 1905 and 1917, in Berlin in 1918,
those who, like the “bad poets” X and Z, are trying in Barcelona in 1936, in Budapest in 1956, in Paris
to escape from modernity. But alas, the anti-modern again in 1968, and in dozens of cities all over the
artist – or thinker or politician – finds himself on world, from Baudelaire’s time to our own – the boule
the same streets, in the same mire, as the modern vard will be abruptly transformed into the stage for
ist one. This modern environment serves as both a new primal modern scene. This will not be the
a physical and a spiritual lifeline – a primary source sort of scene that Napoleon or Haussmann would
of material and energy – for both. like to see, but nonetheless one that their mode of
The difference between the modernist and urbanism will have helped to make.
the anti-modernist, so far as they are concerned, As we reread the old histories, memoirs and
is that the modernist makes himself at home here, novels, or regard the old photos or newsreels, or
while the anti-modern searches the streets for a stir our own fugitive memories of 1968, we will
way out. So far as the traffic is concerned, however, see whole classes and masses move into the street
there is no difference between them at all: both together. We will be able to discern two phases in
alike are hindrances and hazards to the horses and their activity. At first the people stop and overturn
vehicles whose paths they cross, whose free move the vehicles in their path, and set the horses free:
ment they impede. Then, too, no matter how closely here they are avenging themselves on the traffic
the anti-modernist may cling to his aura of spiritual by decomposing it into its inert original elements.
purity, he is bound to lose it, more likely sooner Next they incorporate the wreckage they have
than later, for the same reason that the modernist created into their rising barricades: they are recom
lost it: he will be forced to discard balance and bining the isolated, inanimate elements into vital
measure and decorum and to learn the grace of new artistic and political forms. For one luminous
brusque moves in order to survive. Once again, moment, the multitude of solitudes that make up
however opposed the modernist and the anti- the modern city come together in a new kind of
modernist may think they are, in the mire of the encounter, to make a people. “The streets belong
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 33 10-26-2012 3:17:04 PM

to the people”: they seize control of the city’s Photographs of Paris, 1852–1878, contains a fine
elemental matter and make it their own. For a little essay by Maria Morris Hamburg.
while the chaotic modernism of solitary brusque 2 In Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes, cited
moves gives way to an ordered modernism of mass in note 1, Louis Chevalier, the venerable his
movement. The “heroism of modern life” that torian of Paris, gives a horrific, excruciatingly
Baudelaire longed to see will be born from his primal detailed account of the ravages to which the old
scene in the street. Baudelaire does not expect this central neighborhoods in the pre-Haussmann
(or any other) new life to last. But it will be born decades were subjected: demographic bombard
again and again out of the street’s inner contradic ment, which doubled the population while the
tions. It may burst into life at any moment, often erection of luxury housing and government
when it is least expected. This possibility is a vital buildings sharply reduced the overall housing
flash of hope in the mind of the man in the mire stock; recurrent mass unemployment, which
of the macadam, in the moving chaos, on the run. in a pre-welfare era led directly to starvation;
dreadful epidemics of typhus and cholera, which
took their greatest toll in the old quartiers. All
NOTES this suggests why the Parisian poor, who fought
so bravely on so many fronts in the nineteenth
1 My picture of the Napoleon III–Haussmann century, put up no resistance to the destruction
transformation of Paris has been put together of their neighborhoods: they may well have been
from several sources: Siegfried Giedion, Space, willing to go, as Baudelaire said in another con
Time and Architecture (1941; 5th edition, Harvard, text, anywhere out of their world.
1966), 744–75; Robert Moses, “Haussmann,” The little-known essay by Robert Moses, also
in Architectural Forum, July 1942, 57–66; David cited in note 1, is a special treat for all those
Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris who savor the ironies of urban history. In
(1958; Princeton, 1972); Leonardo Benevolo, the course of giving a lucid and balanced over
A History of Modern Architecture (1960, 1966; view of Haussmann’s accomplishments, Moses
translated from the Italian by H.J. Landry, crowns himself as his successor, and implicitly
2 volumes, MIT, 1971), I, 61–65; Françoise bids for still more Haussmann-type authority
Choay, The Modern City: Planning in the Nine to carry out even more gigantic projects after
teenth Century (George Braziller, 1969), espe the war. The piece ends with an admirably
cially 15–26; Howard Saalman, Haussmann: incisive and trenchant critique that anticipates,
Paris Transformed (Braziller, 1971); and Louis with amazing precision and deadly accuracy,
Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous the criticism that would be directed a gener
Classes: Paris in the First Half of the Nineteenth ation later against Moses himself, and that would
Century, 1970, translated by Frank Jellinek finally help to drive Haussmann’s greatest dis
(Howard Fertig, 1973). Haussmann’s projects ciple from public life.
are skillfully placed in the context of long-term 3 Haussmann’s engineers invented a tree-lifting
European political and social change by machine that enabled them to transplant thirty-
Anthony Vidler, “The Scenes of the Street: year-old trees in full leaf, and thus to create
Transformations in Ideal and Reality, 1750– shady avenues overnight, seemingly ex nihilo.
1871,” in On Streets, edited by Stanford Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 757–59.
Anderson (MIT, 1978), 28–111. Haussmann 4 See Engels, in his pamphlet The Housing Ques
commissioned a photographer, Charles Marville, tion (1872), on
to photograph dozens of sites slated for demo
lition and so preserve their memory for poster the method called “Haussmann” . . . I mean
ity. These photographs are preserved in the the practice, which has now become gen
Musée Carnavalet, Paris. A marvelous selection eral, of making breaches in working-class
was exhibited in New York and other American quarters of our big cities, especially in those
locations in 1981. The catalogue, French that are centrally situated . . . The result is
Institute/Alliance Française, Charles Marville: everywhere the same: the most scandalous
9780415668071_P1_03.indd 34 10-26-2012 3:17:05 PM

alleys and lanes disappear, to the accom an innovation developed in America around
paniment of lavish self-glorification by the 1905 and a wonderful symbol of early state
bourgeoisie on account of this tremendous attempts to regulate and rationalize the chaos
success – but they appear at once some of capitalism.
where else, and often in the immediate 9 Forty years later, with the coming (or rather
O
neighborhood. the naming) of the Brooklyn Dodgers, popular N
Marx-Engels Selected Works, 2 volumes culture will produce its own ironic version of E
(Moscow, 1955), 1, 559, 606– 9 this modernist faith. The name expresses the
way in which urban survival skills – specifically,
5 Art in Paris, 1945–62, (translated and edited by skill at dodging traffic (they were at first called
Jonathan Mayne, Phaidon, 1965), 127. the Trolley Dodgers) – can transcend utility and
6 This connection is explicated in very different take on new modes of meaning and value,
terms from the ones here, by Irving Wohlfarth, in sport as in art. Baudelaire would have loved
“Perte d’Auréole: the Emergence of the Dandy,” this symbolism, as many of his twentieth
Modern Language Notes, 85 (1970), 530–71. century successors (e.e. cummings, Marianne
7 Pinkney, Napoleon III, on census figures, 151– Moore) did.
54; on traffic counts and estimates, and 10 In the nineteenth century the main transmitter
conflict between Napoleon and Haussmann of modernization was England, in the twentieth
over macadam, 70–72; on dual function of century it has been the U.S.A. Power maps
boulevards, 214–15. have changed, but the primacy of the English
8 Street traffic was not, of course, the only mode language – the least pure, the most elastic and
of organized motion known to the nineteenth adaptable of modern languages – is greater
century. The railroad had been around on a than ever. It might well survive the decline of
large scale since the 1830s, and a vital presence the American empire.
in European literature since Dickens’ Dombey 11 On the distinctively international quality of
and Son (1846–48). But the railroad ran on a twentieth-century modernist language and
fixed schedule along a prescribed route, and literature, see Delmore Schwartz, “T.S. Eliot as
so, for all its demonic potentialities, became a International Hero,” in Howe, Literary Modernism,
nineteenth-century paradigm of order. 277–85. This is also one of Edmund Wilson’s
We should note that Baudelaire’s experience central themes in Axel’s Castle and To the
of “moving chaos” antedates the traffic light, Finland Station.
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“Public Parks and the
Enlargement of Towns”
American Social Science Association (1870)
Frederick Law Olmsted
Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, at the same time that Georges Eugène Haussmann was re-
constructing Paris in his role as Prefect of the Seine during the reign of Napoleon III (p. 25), the works and
writings of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) were spurring the American Parks
Movement. In 1858, he and his partner Calvert Vaux entered and won the competition to design New York
City’s Central Park, an 843-acre open space carved out of the city’s relentless gridiron. The heralded success
of Central Park vaulted Olmsted, who was responsible for overseeing the park’s construction and also wrote
annual reports which both articulated his design ideas and documented the park’s progress, into being the
leading landscape architect of the day. Indeed, he is often considered the founder of the American landscape
architecture profession. He went on to design Prospect Park (with Vaux) and a related series of parkways in
Brooklyn as well as park systems in Boston, Buffalo, and elsewhere.
While Vaux was a trained architect who had apprenticed in Andrew Jackson Downing’s highly respected
landscape architecture firm, Olmsted had no formal design education or any design experience prior to de-
signing Central Park, but he was a skilled empirical observer. In 1850, he undertook a six-month walking tour
of England, visiting the recently built planned suburb of Birkenhead to study its large park, and roaming the
countryside sketching scenery and measuring roadways and paths. In 1859, he spent three months in Europe,
visiting the new public parks being built there. In England, he revisited Birkenhead Park and toured the gardens
at Trentham and Blenheim Palace designed by Capability Brown. On the continent, he visited parks in a
number of cities, including Brussels and Lille. He spent considerable time in Paris, looking at the new parks
and boulevards being built by Haussmann, particularly studying the new boulevards around the Etoile, built
to encourage and structure new residential development in the largely rural western part of the city, and took
eight trips to the nearby Bois de Bologne, a former royal hunting ground at the city’s western edge that was
being turned into a public park. What he saw in Paris opened his eyes to the prospect of designing not only
parks, but also networked park systems, and he brought this vision back to his work in America.
As well as being a designer, Olmsted was also a theorist and prolific writer. “Public Parks and the Enlarge-
ment of Towns” was originally given as an address before the American Social Science Association at the
Lowell Institute in Boston in 1870. In it, Olmsted articulates the rationale for the naturalistic design approach
he advocated for parks and links aesthetic design to social concerns. Olmsted believed that naturalistically
designed parks could play a central role in counteracting what he saw as the debilitating aspects of living in
dense cities and serve as an antidote to urban life. In them, people could find relief from the stresses they
encountered in the city’s chaotic and crowded streets and so regain their mental and physical health. In the
simplest terms, parks would improve city people’s physical health by providing open spaces filled with trees,
sunlight, and fresh air. In parks, city air would be “disinfected by sunlight and foliage.” But Olmsted advocated
that a “properly designed” naturalistic park – one with gentle landscapes – would do more. Secluded pastoral
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“ P U blic P a R K s and the E nla R gement of T owns ” 37
landscapes, offering views of meadows, pastures, and still waters, would be conducive to calm contemplation
and so give mental recuperation to park visitors – as opposed to rugged landscapes that would bring effort
to mind. Mental recuperation would give people the ability “to maintain a temperate, good-natured, and healthy
state of mind” and strengthen them for productive labor in America’s fast-paced, rapidly growing, and con-
stantly transforming cities. A gently designed natural park would also educate people of the lower classes,
O
bringing them more refined tastes and a higher moral standard, and have “a distinctly harmonizing and refin-
N
ing influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city – an influence favorable to E
courtesy, self-control, and temperance.” The transformative power of environmental experience was central to
Olmsted’s philosophy and so was the idea of societal inclusion. He envisioned public parks as places where
the many disparate groups in American society – newly arrived immigrants, descendants of early colonists,
working people, wealthy people – could come together and, through shared aesthetic experience, develop a
basis for creating community.
Aesthetic leisure is an apt description of the activities Olmsted envisioned taking place in large, naturalistically
designed urban parks. He distinguished two types of recreation: exertive and receptive. Exertive recreational
activities required physical or mental exertion, such as sports games or chess. Receptive recreational activities
were those people engaged in without conscious effort, such as music or art. The latter was the only type of
recreation Olmsted deemed appropriate for large city parks. Along with prohibiting sports from parks, he also
advocated forbidding vernacular entertainments or commercial amusements of any type, which would disrupt
the unified aesthetic vision Olmsted sought to achieve. The emerging popular European practice of public
promenades in and near parks, in carriages and on foot, was at odds with Olmsted’s park philosophy. Public
pressure would push Olmsted to recognize promenading as a special type of “gregarious” receptive activity, which
had a limited place in a naturalistic park but a central place in a city’s park system, namely along parkways.
Olmsted worked at a time when American cities were growing very rapidly, and he advocated establishing
connected park systems in advance of development as a means of structuring growth and ensuring distributed
park amenities. With this advance planning way of thinking, he was the forefather of the American city planning
profession. Looking to Haussmann’s boulevards, but adapting them to a suburban vision of city development,
Olmsted designed broad tree-lined parkways to connect urban parks.
As well as parks and parkways, Olmsted created plans for picturesquely designed suburbs. The idea was
that just as parks would be an antidote to urban life, leafy suburbs would have a beneficial effect on family
and community life. His 1868 plan for the Chicago suburb of Riverside, which consisted of looping and
curvilinear tree-lined residential streets weaving around each other and focused on a riverside park, served
as a model for later American suburban development.
After Olmsted and Vaux dissolved their partnership in 1872, they continued to collaborate on some projects,
but mostly did separate work. In 1884, Olmsted created a partnership with his nephew and stepson John C.
Olmsted (one and the same person; Olmsted, Sr., had married his brother’s widow), Charles Eliot, and Henry
Codman, both nephews of architects with whom Olmsted had worked. Later, his younger son Frederick Law
Olmsted, Jr., joined the partnership. Olmsted led the firm until he retired in 1895. Codman and Eliot both
died in the 1890s, but the Olmsted brothers continued the firm – known as the Olmsted Brothers – until
1950. With his associates, Olmsted, Sr., designed a number of parks and parkway systems. Perhaps most
notable are the famous “emerald necklace” plan for Boston and the parkway plan for Louisville, Kentucky.
The American Parks Movement that was spawned by Olmsted’s ideas and the popular success of his
parks and park systems flourished in the United States throughout the late nineteenth century and many cities
built parks, notably Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Around the end of the century, following the success
of the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, the Parks Movement melded with the City Beautiful
Movement, as chronicled by William H. Wilson (p. 62). Sponsored by local civic groups and led by activist
women, the movement advocated improving the public realm of cities through street lighting, fountains, benches,
ornamental plantings, shade trees, public art, and classically designed civic centers.
Olmsted’s legacy of urban parks and park systems stands out as a positive affirmation of the benefits that can
be had from long-range planning and the quality of life benefits – not to mention economic benefits – associated
with urban public open spaces. Those cities with large parks and parkway systems prize them as civic jewels.
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38 F R ede R ic K L aw O lmsted
Nowadays, Olmsted’s picturesque park design approach is sometimes dismissed by landscape architects
because the “natural” landscape effects were artificially constructed. As well, his picturesquely designed
suburbs are faulted for being the precursors to the ubiquitous modern American suburb with its disconnected
street patterns. Nonetheless, Olmsted remains a major figure in the fields of city planning and landscape
architecture, and his well-loved designs have stood the test of time. His vision of connected parks and park-
way systems, best exemplified by Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” and Chicago’s linear park system, is now
being rejuvenated with the Smart Growth Movement’s proposals for urban greenbelts.
As a theorist and practitioner, Olmsted was concerned with issues that remain central to the present-day
professions of urban planning and landscape architecture. His ideas influenced key theorists of the late 1800s
and early 1900s including Ebenezer Howard (p. 53), Clarence Perry (p. 78), and Lewis Mumford. Even an
idea of urbanism as fundamentally different as Le Corbusier’s “tower-in-the-park” concept (p. 90) owes a debt
to Olmsted in that it addresses relationships between built and natural environments.
Olmsted’s address to the American Social Science Association was originally printed by the association
in 1870. In 1871 it was published as “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns” in the Journal of Social
Science, Volume 3: 1–36. It is reprinted with extensive editorial notes in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted
(seven volumes and supplementary series), ed. Charles E. Beveridge and Carolyn F. Hoffman, Supplementary
Series, Volume 1, Writings on Public Parks, Parkways, and Park Systems (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), pp. 171–205. The multi-volume Collected Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted provides
reprints of many of Olmsted’s writings through 1882, including his personal and professional correspondence,
reports prepared for professional projects, and texts of lectures. The editor’s introductions to each volume
together provide a detailed biography of Olmsted’s life and give contextual background for his writings.
A selection of Olmsted’s major writings related to city planning and landscape architecture are found in
S.B. Sutton (ed.), Civilizing American Cities: Writings on City Landscapes by Frederick Law Olmsted (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1971). Biographies of Olmsted and commentary on his work include Susan L. Klaus, Modern
Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hill Gardens (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002);
Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth
Century (New York: Scribner, 1999); Charles E. Beveridge, Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American
Landscape (New York: Rizzoli, 1995); Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park
System (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1992); Irving D. Fisher, Frederick Law Olmsted and the City Planning
Movement in the United States (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986); Jeffrey Simpson, Art of the
Olmsted Landscape: His Works in New York City (New York: Landmarks Preservation Commission, Arts
Publisher, 1981); Elizabeth Stevenson Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted (New York: Macmillan,
1977); Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973); Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York (New York: Praeger,
1972); Albert Fein (ed.), Landscape into Cityscape: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater New York
City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967); Theodora Kimball and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (eds),
Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape Architect, 1822–1903 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922). Pictures
of Olmsted parks by noted photographer Lee Friedlander are collected in Photographs: Frederick Law Olm-
sted Landscapes (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2008).
Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1992) provide an excellent in-depth social history of Central Park that spans
from before the park was built through the latter half of the twentieth century. Galen Cranz, The Politics of
Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982) gives an overview of
Olmsted’s design work, placing it in the context of larger concurrent social reform movements. David M.
Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 2002) identifies Olmsted as a key member of the “city-building gentry” that along with reform-
minded business leaders and real-estate developers helped forge the era of metropolitan scale urbanism that
arose in New York City during the second half of the nineteenth century.
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We have reason to believe, then, that towns which flowing toward them, but rather a drawing from
of late have been increasing rapidly on account of them. Much of the intercourse between men when
their commercial advantages, are likely to be still engaged in the pursuits of commerce has the same
more attractive to population in the future; that tendency – a tendency to regard others in a hard
there will in consequence soon be larger towns if not always hardening way. Each detail of obser
O
than any the world has yet known, and that the vation and of the process of thought required in N
further progress of civilization is to depend mainly this kind of intercourse or contact of minds is so E
upon the influences by which men’s minds and slight and so common in the experience of towns-
characters will be affected while living in large people that they are seldom conscious of it. It
towns. certainly involves some expenditure nevertheless.
Now, knowing that the average length of the life People from the country are even conscious of the
of mankind in towns has been much less than in effect on their nerves and minds of the street con
the country, and that the average amount of disease tact – often complaining that they feel confused by
and misery and of vice and crime has been much it; and if we had no relief from it at all during our
greater in towns, this would be a very dark prospect waking hours, we should all be conscious of suf
for civilization, if it were not that modern Science fering from it. It is upon our opportunities of relief
has beyond all question determined many of the from it, therefore, that not only our comfort in town
causes of the special evils by which men are life, but our ability to maintain a temperate, good-
afflicted in towns, and placed means in our hands natured, and healthy state of mind, depends. This
for guarding against them. It has shown, for ex is one of many ways in which it happens that men
ample, that under ordinary circumstances, in the who have been brought up, as the saying is, in the
interior parts of large and closely built towns, a streets, who have been most directly and completely
given quantity of air contains considerably less of affected by town influences, so generally show, along
the elements which we require to receive through with a remarkable quickness of apprehension, a
the lungs than the air of the country or even of peculiarly hard sort of selfishness. Every day of
the outer and more open parts of a town, and that their lives they have seen thousands of their fellow-
instead of them it carries into the lungs highly men, have met them face to face, have brushed
corrupt and irritating matters, the action of which against them, and yet have had no experience of
tends strongly to vitiate all our sources of vigor – anything in common with them.
how strongly may perhaps be indicated in the short [ . . . ]
est way by the statement that even metallic plates It is practically certain that the Boston of today
and statues corrode and wear away under the atmo is the mere nucleus of the Boston that is to be. It
sphere influences which prevail in the midst of is practically certain that it is to extend over many
large towns, more rapidly than in the country. miles of country now thoroughly rural in character,
The irritation and waste of the physical powers in parts of which farmers are now laying out roads
which result from the same cause, doubtless indi with a view to shortening the teaming distance
rectly affect and very seriously affect the mind and between their wood-lots and a railway station, being
the moral strength; but there is a general impression governed in their courses by old property lines,
that a class of men are bred in towns whose pecul which were first run simply with reference to the
iarities are not perhaps adequately accounted for equitable division of heritages, and in other parts
in this way. We may understand these better if we of which, perhaps, some wild speculators are hav
consider that whenever we walk through the denser ing streets staked off from plans which they have
part of a town, to merely avoid collision with those formed with a rule and pencil in a broker’s office,
we meet and pass upon the sidewalks, we have with a view, chiefly, to the impressions they would
constantly to watch, to foresee and to guard against make when seen by other speculators on a litho
their movements. This involves a consideration of graphed map. And by this manner of planning,
their intentions, a calculation of their strength and unless views of duty or of interest prevail that are
weakness, which is not so much for their benefit not yet common, if Boston continues to grow at its
as our own. Our minds are thus brought into close present rate even for but a few generations longer,
dealings with other minds without any friendly and then simply holds its own until it shall be as
9780415668071_P1_04.indd 39 10-26-2012 3:17:11 PM

old as the Boston in Lincolnshire now is, more men, and inducement to escape from conditions requir
women, and children are to be seriously affected ing vigilance, wariness, and activity toward other
in health and morals than are now living on this men – if these could be supplied economically, our
Continent. problem would be solved.
Is this a small matter – a mere matter of taste; In the old days of walled towns all tradesmen
a sentimental speculation? lived under the roof of their shops, and their chil
It must be within the observation of most of dren and apprentices and servants sat together with
us that where, in the city, wheel-ways originally them in the evening about the kitchen fire. But
twenty-feet wide were with great difficulty and cost now that the dwelling is built by itself and there is
enlarged to thirty, the present width is already less greater room, the inmates have a parlor to spend
nearly adequate to the present business than the their evening in; they spread carpets on the floor
former was to the former business; obstructions to gain in quiet, and hang drapery in their windows
are more frequent, movements are slower and and papers on their walls to gain in seclusion and
oftener arrested, and the liability to collision is beauty. Now that our towns are built without walls,
greater. The same is true of sidewalks. Trees thus and we can have all the room that we like, is there
have been cut down, porches, bow-windows, and any good reason why we should not make some
other encroachments removed, but every year the similar difference between parts which are likely
walk is less sufficient for the comfortable passing to be dwelt in, and those which will be required
of those who wish to use it. exclusively for commerce?
It is certain that as the distance from the interior Would trees, for seclusion and shade and beauty,
to the circumference of towns shall increase with be out of place, for instance, by the side of certain
the enlargement of their population, the less suf of our streets? It will, perhaps, appear to you that
ficient relatively to the service to be performed will it is hardly necessary to ask such a question, as
be any given space between buildings. throughout the United States trees are commonly
In like manner every evil to which men are planted at the sides of streets. Unfortunately they
specially liable when living in towns, is likely to be are seldom planted as to have fairly settled the
aggravated in the future, unless means are devised question of the desirableness of systematically
and adapted in advance to prevent it. maintaining trees under these circumstances. In the
Let us proceed, then, to the question of means, first place, the streets are planned, wherever they
and with a seriousness in some degree befitting a are, essentially alike. Trees are planted in the space
question upon our dealing with which we know the assigned for sidewalks, where at first, while they
misery or happiness of many millions of our fellow- are saplings and the vicinity is rural or suburban,
beings will depend. they are not much in the way, but where, as they
We will for the present set before our minds the grow larger, and the vicinity becomes urban, they
two sources of wear and corruption which we have take up more and more space, while space is more
seen to be remediable and therefore preventable. and more required for passage. That is not all.
We may admit that commerce requires that in some Thousands and tens of thousands are planted every
parts of a town there shall be an arrangement of year in a manner and under conditions as nearly
buildings, and a character of streets and of traffic certain as possible either to kill them outright, or
in them which will establish conditions of corrup to so lessen their vitality as to prevent their natural
tion and of irritation, physical and mental. But and beautiful development, and to cause premature
commerce does not require the same conditions decrepitude. Often, too, as their lower limbs are
to be maintained in all parts of a town. found inconvenient, no space having been provided
Air is disinfected by sunlight and foliage. Foliage for trees in laying out the street, they are deformed
also acts mechanically to purify the air by screening by butcherly amputations. If by rare good fortune
it. Opportunity and inducement to escape at frequent they are suffered to become beautiful, they still
intervals from the confined and vitiated air of the stand subject to be condemned to death at any
commercial quarter, and to supply the lungs with time, as obstructions in the highway.
air screened and purified by trees, and recently What I would ask is, whether we might not with
acted upon by sunlight, together with opportunity economy make special provision in some of our
9780415668071_P1_04.indd 40 10-26-2012 3:17:11 PM

streets – in a twentieth or a fiftieth part, if you please, under two general heads. One will include all of
of all – for trees to remain as a permanent furniture which the predominating influence is to stimulate
of the city? I mean, to make a place for them in exertion of any part or parts needing it; the other,
which they would have room to grow naturally and all which cause us to receive pleasure without con
gracefully. Even if the distance between the houses scious exertion. Games chiefly of mental skill, as
O
should have to be made half as much again as it chess, or athletic sports, as baseball, are examples N
is required to be in our commercial streets, could of means of recreation of the first class, which may E
not the space be afforded? Out of town space is be termed that of exertive recreation; music and
not costly when measures to secure it are taken the fine arts generally of the second or receptive
early. The assessments for benefit where such division.
streets were provided for, would, in nearly all cases, Considering the first by itself, much consider
defray the cost of the land required. The strips of ation will be needed in determining what classes
ground required for the trees, six, twelve, twenty of exercises may be advantageously provided for.
feet wide, would cost nothing for paving or flagging. In the Bois de Boulogne there is a race-course; in
The change both of scene and of air which the Bois de Vincennes a ground for artillery target-
would be obtained by people engaged for the most practice. Military parades are held in Hyde Park.
part in the necessarily confined interior commercial A few cricket clubs are accommodated in most
parts of the town, on passing into a street of this of the London parks, and swimming is permitted
character after the trees have become stately and in the lakes at certain hours. In the New York Park,
graceful, would be worth a good deal. If such on the other hand, none of these exercises are
streets were made still broader in some parts, with provided for or permitted, except that the boys
spacious malls, the advantage would be increased. of the public schools are given the use on holidays
If each of them were given the proper capacity, of certain large spaces for ball playing. It is con
and laid out with laterals and connections in suit sidered that the advantage to individuals which
able directions to serve as a convenient trunk line would be gained in providing for them would not
of communication between two large districts of compensate for the general inconvenience and
the town or the business centre and the suburbs, expense they would cause.
a very great number of people might thus be placed I do not propose to discuss this part of the
every day under influences counteracting those subject at present, as it is only necessary to my
with which we desire to contend. immediate purpose to point out that if recreations
These, however, would be merely very simple requiring large spaces to be given up to the use of
improvements upon arrangements which are in a comparatively small number, are not considered
common use in every considerable town. Their essential, numerous small grounds so distributed
advantages would be incidental to the general uses through a large town that some one of them could
of streets as they are. But people are willing very be easily reached by a short walk from every house,
often to seek recreations as well as receive it by would be more desirable than a single area of great
the way. Provisions may indeed be made expressly extent, however rich in landscape attractions it
for public recreations, with certainty that if con might be. Especially would this be the case if the
venient they will be resorted to. numerous local grounds were connected and sup
We come then to the question: what accom plemented by a series of trunk-roads or boulevards
modations for recreation can we provide which such as has already been suggested.
shall be so agreeable and so accessible as to be Proceeding to the consideration of receptive
efficiently attractive to the great body of citizens, recreations, it is necessary to ask you to adopt
and which, while giving decided gratification, shall and bear in mind a further subdivision, under two
also cause those who resort to them for pleasure to heads, according to the degree in which the average
subject themselves, for the time being, to conditions enjoyment is greater when a large congregation
strongly counteractive to the special, enervating assembles for a purpose of receptive recreation,
conditions of the town? or when the number coming together is small and
In the study of this question all forms of recreation the circumstances are favorable to the exercise of
may, in the first place, be conveniently arranged personal friendliness.
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The first I shall term gregarious; the second, Is it doubtful that it does men good to come
neighborly. Remembering that the immediate matter together in this way in pure air and under the
in hand is a study of fitting accommodations, light of heaven, or that it must have an influence
you will, I trust, see the practical necessity of this directly counteractive to that of the ordinary hard,
classification. hustling working hours of town life?
Purely gregarious recreation seems to be gen You will agree with me, I am sure, that it is
erally looked upon in New England society as not, and that opportunity, convenient, attractive
childish and savage, because, I suppose, there is so opportunity, for such congregation, is a very good
little of what we call intellectual gratification in it. thing to provide for, in planning the extension of
We are inclined to engage in it indirectly, furtively, a town.
and with complication. Yet there are certain forms [ . . . ]
of recreation, a large share of the attraction of Think that the ordinary state of things to many
which must, I think, lie in the gratification of the is at this beginning of the town. The public is read
gregarious inclination, and which, with those who ing just now a little book in which some of your
can afford to indulge in them, are so popular as to streets of which you are not proud are described.
establish the importance of the requirement. Go into one of those red cross streets any fine
If I ask myself where I have experienced the evening next summer, and ask how it is with their
most complete gratification of this instinct in pub residents. Oftentimes you will see half a dozen sit
lic and out of doors, among trees, I find that it has ting together on the door-steps or, all in a row, on
been in the promenade of the Champs-Élysées. As the curb-stones, with their feet in the gutter; driven
closely following it I should name other promenades out of doors by the closeness within; mothers
of Europe, and our own upon the New York parks. among them anxiously regarding their children who
I have studiously watched the latter for several are dodging about at their play, among the noisy
years. I have several times seen fifty thousand wheels on the pavement.
people participating in them; and the more I have Again, consider how often you see young men
seen of them, the more highly have I been led to in knots of perhaps half a dozen in lounging atti
estimate their value as means of counteracting the tudes rudely obstructing the sidewalks, chiefly led
evils of town life. in their little conversation by the suggestions given
Consider that the New York Park and the to their minds by what or whom they may see
Brooklyn Park are the only places in those associ passing in the street, men, women, or children,
ated cities where, in this eighteen hundred and whom they do not know and for whom they have
seventieth year after Christ, you will find a body no respect or sympathy. There is nothing among
of Christians coming together, and with an evident them or about them which is adapted to bring into
glee in the prospect of coming together, all classes play a spark of admiration, of delicacy, manliness,
largely represented, with a common purpose, not or tenderness. You see them presently descend in
at all intellectual, competitive with none, disposing search of physical comfort to a brilliantly lighted
to jealousy and spiritual or intellectual pride toward basement, where they find others of their sort, see,
none, each individual adding by his mere presence hear, smell, drink, and eat all manner of vile things.
to the pleasure of all others, all helping to the Whether on the curb-stones or in the dram-
greater happiness of each. You may thus often see shops, these young men are all under the influence
vast numbers of persons brought closely together, of the same impulse which some satisfy about the
poor and rich, young and old, Jew and Gentile. tea-table with neighbors and wives and mothers
I have seen a hundred thousand thus congregated, and children, and all things clean and wholesome,
and I assure you that though there have been not softening, and refining.
a few that seemed a little dazed, as if they did not If the great city to arise here is to be laid out
quite understand it, and were, perhaps, a little little by little, and chiefly to suit the views of land-
ashamed of it, I have looked studiously but vainly owners, acting only individually, and thinking only
among them for a single face completely unsym of how what they do is to affect the value in the
pathetic with the prevailing expression of good next week or the next year of the few lots that
nature and light-heartedness. each may hold at the time, the opportunities of so
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obeying this inclination as at the same time to give ice-cream at moderate fixed charges. In all my life
the lungs a bath of pure sunny air, to give the mind I have never seen such joyous collections of people.
a suggestion of rest from the devouring eagerness I have, in fact, more than once observed tears of
and intellectual strife of town life, will always be gratitude in the eyes of poor women, as they
few to any, to many will amount to nothing. watched their children thus enjoying themselves.
O
But is it possible to make public provision for The whole cost of such neighborly festivals, N
recreation of this class, essentially domestic and even when they include excursions by rail from E
secluded as it is? the distant parts of the town, does not exceed for
It is a question which can, of course, be con each person, on an average, a quarter of a dollar;
clusively answered only from experience. And from and when the arrangements are complete, I see no
experience in some slight degree I shall answer it. reason why thousands should not come every
There is one large American town, in which it may day where hundreds come now to use them; and
happen that a man of any class shall say to his if so, who can measure the value, generation after
wife, when he is going out in the morning: generation, of such provisions for recreation to the
over-wrought, much-confined people of the great
“My dear, when the children come home from town that is to be?
school, put some bread and butter and salad in For this purpose neither of the forms of ground
a basket, and go to the spring under the chestnut- we have heretofore considered are at all suitable.
tree where we found the Johnsons last week. I We want a ground to which people may easily go
will join you there as soon as I can get away from after their day’s work is done, and where they may
the office. We will walk to the dairy-man’s cottage stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling noth
and get some tea, and some fresh milk for the ing of the bustle and jar of the streets, where they
children, and take our supper by the brook-side” shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them.
We want the greatest possible contrast with the
and this shall be no joke, but the most refreshing streets and the shops and the rooms of the town
earnest. which will be consistent with convenience and the
There will be room enough in the Brooklyn Park, preservation of good order and neatness. We want,
when it is finished, for several thousand little family especially, the greatest possible contrast with the
and neighborly parties to bivouac at frequent inter restraining and confining conditions of the town,
vals through the summer, without discommoding those conditions which compel us to walk circum
one another, or interfering with any other purpose, spectly, watchfully, jealously, which compel us to
to say nothing of those who can be drawn out to look closely upon others without sympathy. Practic
make a day of it, as many thousand were last year. ally, what we most want is a simple, broad, open
And although the arrangements for the purpose space of clean greensward, with sufficient play of
were yet very incomplete, and but little ground was surface and a sufficient number of trees about it
at all prepared for such use, besides these small to supply a variety of light and shade. This we want
parties, consisting of one or two families, there as a central feature. We want depth of wood enough
came also, in companies of from thirty to a hundred about it not only for comfort in hot weather, but
and fifty, somewhere near twenty thousand children to completely shut out the city from our landscapes.
with their parents, Sunday-school teachers, or other The word park, in town nomenclature, should,
guides and friends, who spent the best part of a I think, be reserved for grounds of the character
day under the trees and on the turf, in recreations and purpose thus described.
of which the predominating element was of this [ . . . ]
neighborly receptive class. Often they would bring A park fairly well managed near a large town,
a fiddle, flute, and harp, or other music. Tables, seats, will surely become a new center of that town. With
shade, turf, swings, cool spring-water, and a pleasing the determination of location, size, and boundaries
rural prospect, stretching off half a mile or more each should therefore be associated the duty of arrang
way, unbroken by a carriage road or the slightest ing new trunk routes of communication between
evidence of the vicinity of the town, were supplied it and the distant parts of the town existing and
them without charge and bread and milk and forecasted.
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These may be either narrow informal elonga necessarily passing through them, whether in going
tions of the park, varying say from two to five to or from the park, or to and from business, some
hundred feet in width, and radiating irregularly from substantial recreative advantage may be inciden
it, or if, unfortunately, the town is already laid out tally gained. It is a common error to regard a park
in the unhappy way that New York and Brooklyn, as something to be produced complete in itself, as
San Francisco and Chicago, are, and, I am glad to a picture to be painted on canvas. It should rather
say, Boston is not, on a plan made long years ago be planned as one to be done in fresco, with con
by a man who never saw a spring-carriage, and stant consideration of exterior objects, some of
who had a conscientious dread of the Graces, then them quite at a distance and even existing as yet
we must probably adopt formal Park-ways. They only in the imagination of the painter.
should be so planned and constructed as never to I have thus barely indicated a few of the points
be noisy and seldom crowded, and so also that the from which we may perceive our duty to apply the
straightforward movement of pleasure-car carriages means in our hands to ends far distant, with refer
need never be obstructed, unless at absolutely nec ence to this problem of public recreations. Large
essary crossings, by slow-going heavy vehicles used operations of construction may not soon be desir
for commercial purposes. If possible, also, they able, but I hope you will agree with me that there
should be branched or reticulated with other ways is little room for question, that reserves of ground
of a similar class, so that no part of the town should for the purposes I have referred to should be fixed
finally be many minutes’ walk from some one of upon as soon as possible, before the difficulty of
them; and they should be made interesting by a arranging them, which arises from private building,
process of planting and decoration, so that in shall be greatly more formidable than now.
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“The Meager and Unimaginative
Character of Modern City Plans”
and “Artistic Limitations of
Modern City Planning”
from City Planning According to Artistic
Principles (1898)
Camillo Sitte
By the late nineteenth century, processes of modernization had speeded up and industrial mechanization of the
building trades and bureaucratization of planning were taking hold. Rapid urban growth continued and people
were witnessing immense changes to their cities as old areas were “modernized” and new ones were built to
the modern aesthetic of straight lines and rectilinear, unornamented buildings. Within the emerging profession
of city planning, an engineering approach was dominant. Public spaces were increasingly designed around
the main goal of efficiently moving ever increasing amounts of carriage traffic. A faster, larger, less detailed,
and less finely nuanced way of life was coming into being and was widely embraced.
Within this context, when to be modern meant looking completely to the future and ignoring the past,
Viennese architect and city planner Camillo Sitte (1843–1903) argued that the past had much to offer. Com-
ing from an arts and crafts tradition, he emerged as a strong voice for human scale in architecture, lamenting
its lack in modern architecture along with the pervasive functional approach to urban design. Over a hundred
years later, his laments sound familiar to our ears: the loss of public life from public spaces, bland environ-
ments, lack of detail, standardization, and excessively wide streets.
In his 1898 treatise City Planning According to Artistic Principles, from which these readings are taken,
Sitte called for an “artistic renaissance” of city-building, arguing that a balance could be found between art
and function. While giving full due to modern city planning for improving the sanitary conditions of cities, he
severely criticized the profession’s lack of ability to create new urban public spaces that were as good or as
inviting to people as the old. He admired the picturesque qualities and human scale of pre-industrial European
cities and argued for an approach to modernism that built on these traditions rather than discarded them. He
advocated looking at the good public spaces of the past, determining their essential physical qualities, and
applying those qualities to modern conditions. His ideas were grounded in extensive empirical observations,
and he presented them using figure ground plans that analyzed and compared the spatial qualities of old and
new plazas.
Sitte’s ideas briefly found an audience and influenced numerous town planning ordinances throughout
Europe. In the 1920s, however, modernist architects soundly renounced Sitte’s theory – the architect Le
Corbusier referring to Sitte’s ideal of crooked streets as the pack-donkey’s way. In 1965, Sitte’s treatise
was republished (Random House) and rediscovered by a new generation of humanistic architects and city
9780415668071_P1_05.indd 45 10-26-2012 3:17:19 PM

46 C a M illo S i T T e
planners. His ideas influenced the current New Urbanism movement, whose adherents look to Sitte as a
seminal historic reference. His treatise was recently republished in translation under the title of Camillo Sitte:
The Birth of Modern City Planning (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2006) by Christiane Crasemann Collins and
George R. Collins.
Other writings on Sitte’s ideas include Charles Bohl and Jean-François Lejeune, Sitte, Hegemann and the
Metropolis: Modern Civic Art and International Exchanges (New York: Routledge, 2009). Two books in the
same spirit as Sitte’s City Planning According to Artistic Principles are Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets,
American Vitruvius (New York: B. Blom, 1972); and, much more recently, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-
Zyberk, and Robert Alminana, The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning (New York: Rizzoli, 2003).
tHe meaGeR aND uNimaGiNatiVe penny for the installation of colonnades, porticoes,
cHaRacteR OF mODeRN citY plaNS triumphal arches, or any other motifs that are es-
sential to his art; not even the voids between the
How in recent times the history of the art of city building blocks are put at his disposal for artistic
building has failed to synchronize with the history use, because even the open air already belongs to
of architecture and with that of the other creative someone else: the highway or sanitation engineer.
arts is indeed astonishing. City planning stubbornly So it has come to pass that all the good features
goes its own way, unconcerned with what transpires of artistic city-building were dropped by the way-
around it. This difference was already striking in side one after the other, until nothing is left of
the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but it has them, not even a memory. Although we can see
become even more pronounced in modern times clearly the tremendous difference that exists be-
as old styles have been revived once again. This tween the old plazas, still charming as they are,
time, of course, exactitude in imitation was taken and the monotonous modern ones, yet, despite
much more seriously, the example of the Ancients this, we unfortunately consider it self-evident that
being faithfully adhered to in every way possible. churches and monuments must stand in the center
Actual copies of old structures were erected in of their plazas, that all streets must intersect at
monumental and costly fashion without answering right angles and open wide all around a plaza, that
any real need or practical purpose – merely out of the buildings need not close up about a square, and
enthusiasm for the splendor of ancient art. The that monumental structures need not form part of
Walhalla at Regensburg was created in the exact such a closure. We are well aware of the effect of
image of a Greek temple, the Loggia dei Lanzi an old plaza, but how to produce it under modern
found its imitation (the Feldherrn-Halle) at Munich, conditions is not understood because we are no
Early Christian basilicas were erected again, Greek longer cognizant of the relation between cause and
propylaea and Gothic cathedrals were built, but effect in these matters.
what became of the plazas that belonged with The theorist of modern city planning, R.
them? Agora, forum, market place, acropolis – no- Baumeister, says in his book about city expansion,
body remembered them. ‘. . . the various elements which produce a pleasing
The modern city-builder has been deprived in architectural impression (as regards plazas) are
alarming fashion of the resources of his art. The hardly reducible to universal rules.’ Does not this
precisely straight house-line and the cubic building- statement confirm what we have just said? Do
block are all that he can offer to compete with the not the results of what has been presented so far
wealth of the past. The architect is allowed millions add up to precisely such general rules? – Enough
to construct balconies, towers, gables, caryatids or rules, in fact, to compose a whole textbook on city
anything else that his sketchbook might contain, planning, as well as a history of this art, if they
and his sketchbook contains everything the past are worked out in detail? A thorough study of the
has ever created in any corner of the world. The variations that the Baroque masters alone carried
town planner, on the other hand, is not given a out would suffice to fill volumes. If, however, our
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“ T h e M e a g e r a n d U n i m a g i n a t i v e C h a r a ct e r o f M o d e r n C i t y P l a n s ” 47
first and thus far our only theorist in this field can observe in the year 1870 how the completely
express the above opinion, does this not demon- regularly designed towns could be captured by
strate that we are now no longer aware of the three lancers, while really old and twisted towns
relationship between cause and effect? were ready to defend themselves to the utmost.
Today nobody is concerned with city planning
O
as an art – only as a technical problem. When, as Straight lines and right angles are certainly N
a result, the artistic effect in no way lives up to our characteristic of insensitive planning, but are appar E
expectations, we are left bewildered and helpless; ently not decisive in this matter, because Baroque
nevertheless, in dealing with the next project it is planning also used straight lines and right angles,
again treated wholly from the technical point of achieving powerful and truly artistic effects in spite
view, as if it were the layout of a railroad in which of them. In the layout of streets it is true that
artistic questions are not involved. rectilinearity is a weakness. An undeviating boule-
Even in modern histories of art, which discuss vard, miles long, seems boring even in the most
every insignificant thing, city planning has not been beautiful surroundings. It is unnatural, it does not
granted the humblest little spot, whereas bookbind- adapt itself to irregular terrain, and it remains un-
ing, pewter work, and costume design are readily interesting in effect, so that, mentally fatigued, one
allowed space next to Phidias and Michelangelo. can hardly await its termination. An ordinary street,
From this it might be understood that we have lost if excessively long, has the same effect. But as the
the thread of artistic tradition in city planning, more frequent shorter streets of modern planning
although it is not clear why. But now back to our also produce an unfortunate effect, there must
analysis of the matter at hand. be some other cause for it. It is the same as in
There exist an infinite variety of derogatory the plazas, namely faulty closure of the sides of
opinions about modern planning. In the daily press the street. The continual breaching by wide cross
and in professional publications they are repeated streets, so that on both sides nothing is left but a
again and again. However, the most they do is row of separated blocks of buildings, is the main
to attribute the cause of bad effects to an overly reason why no unified impression can be attained.
pedantic straightness of line in our house fronts. This may be demonstrated most clearly by com
Even Baumeister says, ‘one rightly laments the paring old arcades with their modern imitations.
boredom of modern streets,’ and he then criticizes Ancient arcades, nothing short of magnificent in
the ‘unwieldy massive effect’ of modern blocks of their architectural detail, run uninterruptedly along
buildings. With regard to the siting of monuments the whole curve of a street as far as the eye can
it is only reported that several major ‘monumental’ see; or they encircle a plaza enclosing it completely;
catastrophes can be listed; yet no reason for the or at least they run unbroken along one side of it.
bad effects is ever given, since it is as irrevocable Their whole effect is based on continuity, for only
as natural law that every monument can only be by it can the succession of arches become a large
placed in the middle of its plaza, in order that enough unity to create an impact. The situation is
one also may have a good look at the celebrity completely different in modern planning. Although
from the rear. One of the most discerning opinions, occasional outstanding architects have, in their en-
which Baumeister mentioned, can be quoted here. thusiasm for this magnificent old motif, succeeded
It is from the Paris Figaro of August 23, 1874, and in providing us with such covered walks – as, for
it says in a report about the trip of Marshal instance, in Vienna around the Votive Church and
MacMahon: at the new Rathaus – these hardly remind us of
the ancient models, because their effect is totally
Rennes does not actually feel an antipathy toward different. The separate sections are larger and much
the Marshal, but the town is totally incapable more sumptuously carried out than almost any
of any enthusiasm. I have noticed that this is ancient predecessors. Yet the intended effect is
the case with all towns that are laid out along absent. Why? Because each separate loggia is at-
straight lines and in which the streets intersect tached to its own building-block, and the cuts made
at right angles. The straight line prevents any by the numerous broad cross streets prevent the
excitement from arising. Thus one could also slightest effect of continuity. Only if the openings
9780415668071_P1_05.indd 47 10-26-2012 3:17:19 PM

of these intersecting streets were spanned by a well designed, that all halls, chambers, and other
continuation of the arcade could any coherence principal rooms are of excellent proportion. Here
result that might then create a grandiose impres- again, irregularities are concealed in the thickness
sion. Lacking this, the dismembered motif is like a of the walls or in the shape of the service rooms
hoe without a handle. described above. Nobody likes a triangular room,
For the same reason a coherent effect does because the sight of it is unbearable and because
not come about in our streets. A modern street is furniture can never be well placed in it. Yet the
made up primarily of corner buildings. A row of iso circle or the ellipse of a spiral staircase can be
lated blocks of buildings is going to look bad under accommodated nicely in it by varying the thick
any circumstances, even if placed in a curved line. ness of the wall. It is quite similar to what we find
These considerations bring us close to the crux in ancient city plans. The hall-like forums were of
of the matter. In modern city planning the ratio regular shape, their voids calculated for their visible
between the built-up and the open spaces is exactly effect, while all their irregularities were absorbed
reversed. Formerly the empty spaces (streets and in the mass of surrounding structures. This was
plazas) were a unified entity of shapes calculated carried out down to the smallest detail, and in the
for their impact; today building lots are laid out end every irregularity of the site seems to dissolve
as regularly-shaped closed forms, and what is left away and be hidden in the thickness of the walls;
over between them become streets or plazas. it is simple and very clever. Today the exact oppo
Formerly all that was crooked and ugly lay hidden site of this takes place. As illustrations, we take
in the built-up areas; today in the process of laying three plazas from the same city, Trieste: the Piazza
out the various building lots all irregular wedges della Caserma, the Piazza della Legna, and the
that are left over become plazas, since the prime Piazza della Borsa. Artistically speaking, these are
rule is that ‘architecturally speaking, a street pat not really plazas at all, but only triangularly-shaped
tern should first of all provide convenient house remnants of empty space, left over in the cutting
plans. Therefore street crossings at right angles out of right-angled city blocks. When one then
are an advantage. And it is certainly wrong to notices the frequency of broad, unfavorable street
adopt irregular angles as a principle of parcelling’ openings, it becomes immediately clear that it is
(Baumeister). Well, but what architect is afraid of just as impossible to position a monument on such
an irregularly-shaped building lot? Indeed, that plazas as to show a building off to advantage. Such
would be a man who has not advanced beyond the a plaza is as unbearable as a triangular room.
most elementary principles of planning. Irregular Regarding this, one thing needs further discus-
building lots are just the ones that allow, without sion. A special chapter has already been devoted
exception, the most interesting solutions and usu- to proving the appropriateness of the irregularity
ally the better ones; not only because they demand of old plazas. One might expect it also to be
a more careful study of the plan and prevent applicable here. But such is not the case, for be-
mechanical, run-of-the-mill design, but because, in tween the two kinds of irregularity there is a crucial
the interior of such a building, wedge-shaped pieces difference: the irregularity present in (the above
are repeatedly left over and are splendidly suited mentioned plazas) is obvious and immediately
for all sorts of little extra rooms (elevators, spiral- observable to the eye, and it becomes the more
staircases, storage rooms, toilets, etc.), a feature awkward, the more regular the adjoining building
which we miss in regular plans. To recommend façades and nearby town sections are shaped; on
rectangular building lots for their presumed archi- the contrary, the other irregularities were of a kind
tectural advantage is completely wrong. This could that deceived the eye, being noticeable on the draw-
only be done by those who do not understand ing board, of course, but not in actuality.
how to lay out ground plans. Is it possible that all Something similar occurs in ancient structures.
the attractiveness of streets and plazas could fall In the ground plans of Romanesque and Gothic
victim to such a trivial misconception? It would churches one rarely finds the various axes at right
almost seem so. angles to each other, since the old masters were
Studying the ground plan of a complicated build- unable to gauge this accurately enough. It does
ing on an irregular building lot, one finds, if it is not matter in this case, because it goes unnoticed.
9780415668071_P1_05.indd 48 10-26-2012 3:17:19 PM

“ A r t i s t i c L i m i t a t i o n s o f M o d e r n C i t y P la n n i n g ” 49
Similarly, there are great irregularities in the ground ers and town criers in the baths and porticoes and
plans of ancient temple structures as regards the on the open square. We cannot alter the fact that
intercolumniation, etc. All this one only detects marketing has withdrawn more and more from the
with precise measurement, not by the naked eye; plazas, partly into inartistic commercial structures,
it mattered little, since they were building for visual partly to disappear completely because of direct
O
effect and not for the sake of the plan on paper. delivery to the home. We cannot prevent the N
On the other hand, one has discovered almost in- public fountains from being reduced to a merely E
credible refinements in the curvatures of entabla- ornamental role; the colorful, lively crowd stays
ture, etc., refinements which, although they almost away from them because modern plumbing carries
elude measurement, were carried out because their the water much more conveniently directly into
absence would have been noticed by the eye, and house and kitchen. Works of art are straying increas
it was the eye that counted. The more comparisons ingly from streets and plazas into the ‘art-cages’
we make between the old and the new methods, of the museums; likewise, the colorful bustle of
the more the contrast builds up, and every time the folk festivals, of carnivals and other parades, of
comparison turns out to the artistic disadvantage religious processions, of theatrical performances in
of the modern. We should keep in mind our sense- the open market place, etc., disappears. The life of
less avoidance at any cost of projections and reces- the common people has for centuries been steadily
sions in frontage lines, as well as our dread of withdrawing from public squares, and especially so
curved streets, and the fact that, as regards height, in recent times. Owing to this, a substantial part of
all our houses tend to have a uniform horizontal the erstwhile significance of squares has been lost,
termination. They almost always take advantage and it becomes quite understandable why the ap-
of the maximum allowable height, emphasizing the preciation of beautiful plaza design has decreased
harshness of that line with a real sample-chart of so markedly among the broad mass of citizenry.
ostentatious cornices. Finally we should not forget Life in former times was, after all, decidedly more
the endless rows of windows of identical size and favorable to an artistic development of city build-
shape, the overabundance of small pilasters and ing than is our mathematically-precise modern life.
continuously repeated curlicues (mostly of ineffec- Man himself has become almost a machine, and
tually small dimension and poor industrial execu- our frame of reference has shifted, not only on
tion, in poured concrete, etc.), and the absence of the whole but also in detail, since the changed
large quiet wall surfaces, avoided even where they conditions of our time imperiously demand many
might result naturally since they are punctuated modifications.
with blind windows. It is above all the enormous size to which our
larger cities are growing that has shattered the
framework of traditional artistic forms at every
ARTISTIC LIMITATIONS OF MODERN point. The larger the city, the bigger and wider
CITY PLANNING the plazas and streets become, and the higher and
bulkier are all structures, until their dimensions,
Modern city planning is obliged to forgo a significant what with their numerous floors and interminable
number of artistic motifs. Regardless of how pain- rows of windows, can hardly be organized any more
ful this may be to sensitive souls, the practical artist in an artistically effective manner. Everything tends
should not let himself be guided by sentimental toward the immense, and the constant repetition
impulses, because no artistic (malerisch) planning of identical motifs is enough to dull our senses to
could be a thorough or lasting success unless it such an extent that only the most powerful effects
complied with modern living conditions. In our can still make any impression. As this cannot be
public life much has irrevocably changed, depriving altered, the city planner must, like the architect,
certain old building forms of their original purpose, invent a scale appropriate for the modern city of
and about this nothing can be done. We cannot millions. With such an extraordinary concentration
change the fact that today public events are dis- of people at one location, real estate values also
cussed in the daily papers, instead of, as in ancient increase exorbitantly, and it is not possible for
Greece or Rome, being talked over by public read- an individual person or the local administration to
9780415668071_P1_05.indd 49 10-26-2012 3:17:19 PM

escape the inevitable effects of this increase in class of architectural elements has retreated from
value. Everywhere, as if spontaneously, lots are street and plaza into the interior of buildings, yield-
divided up and streets are broken through so that ing to the universal trend of the time – the fear of
even in the old parts of town more and more open spaces. Yet when all the devices for achieving
side streets result, and something of the obnoxious an effect have been discontinued how can the effect
building-block system surreptitiously takes over. itself still be preserved? Just imagine the old city
This is a phenomenon which is naturally connected halls of Leiden or Bolsward without their splendid
with the current value of real estate and the value staircases, or the beautiful hill of the Rathaus at
of street-frontage lines; hence it cannot be elimin Heilbronn without its two corner monuments and
ated by decree, least of all by aesthetic consider- ornamental stairway – what would still remain
ations. All these elements must be reckoned with of their uniqueness? The artistic impact of these
as stated factors that the city planner has to take contrivances, so impractical according to modern
into account just as an architect must consider the standards, contributes to the adornment and embel-
strength of materials and the laws of statics – even lishment of the whole town. In view of the banal-
if they impose the most disagreeable and petty ity now so prevalent, it would be futile to try to
limitations. suggest anything similar for a new structure. Today
The regular parcelling of lots based on purely what architect would dare to include in his design
economic considerations has become such a factor such a charming group of forms as the flight of
in new plans that its effects can hardly be avoided. steps, terrace, pulpit, and statue of Justice that are
In spite of this one should not surrender quite so all combined on one street corner at the Rathaus
blindly to the consequences of this universal method, in Görlitz? The handsome stairs, arcades, and bal-
because it is precisely this that has led to mass conies of the old city halls at Lübeck and Lemgo,
slaughter of the beauties of city planning. These of the smaller city halls at Haag (1564–1565), and
are the very beauties which are designated by at Ochsenfurth, and of so many others are, then,
the word ‘pictorial’ (malerisch). In a rigidly uniform treasures of a past that was imbued with an enjoy-
arrangement where do all the picturesque street ment of life that has ceased for us.
corners end up? These are a delight in old Nurem As we reflect on this we become aware of the
berg and anywhere else where they have still been special significance of what is called ‘Zeitgeist.’
preserved, because of the originality of their appear The whole world admires the Doge’s Palace in
ance: the street panoramas at the Fembohaus Venice and the Capitol at Rome, yet nobody would
in Nuremberg, at the Rathaus in Heilbronn or dare propose that something comparable be con-
the Brauerei of Görlitz, at the Petersenhaus in structed today. Also famous are the loggia, stairway,
Nuremberg, and elsewhere. However, they are un- balconies, and gables of the Rathaus at Halberstadt,
fortunately diminishing in number from year to year the similar combinations with staircases on the
because of constant demolition. town halls of Brussels, of Deventer (1643), of
The high price of building lots leads to their Hoogstraeten, of The Hague, and the impressive
utmost utilization, as a result of which a number portico and staircase of the Rathaus at Rothenburg
of effective motifs have been abandoned in recent o.d. Tauber. However, modern sensibilities reject
years. Completely building up each lot always tends such stairways, and the mere thought of slippery
to produce the characteristic cubic mass of modern ice or a snow drift in the winter is enough to dispel
times. Projections, porches, ornamental staircases, any romantic illusions about the past. Still more
arcades, corner turrets, etc., have become for us an besides: for us modern stay-at-homes stairs are
unthinkable luxury, even on public buildings; only exclusively an interior motif, and we have become
high up – in the form of balconies and bay windows so sensitive in this connection and so unaccus-
or on the roof – is the architect allowed to give his tomed to the hubbub of streets and plazas that
imagination free rein, but never below at street we cannot work when someone is watching us, we
level where the ‘building-frontage line’ alone dom- do not like to dine by an open window because some
inates. This has already become so customary that body could look in, and the balconies of our houses
many splendid motifs, such as the monumental usually remain empty. It is precisely the external use
open staircase, no longer please us. And this whole of interior architectural elements (staircases, galleries,
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“ A r t i s t i c L i m i t a t i o n s o f M o d e r n C i t y P la n n i n g ” 51
etc.) that is a most essential ingredient in the charm everlasting service to mankind. It is largely due to
of ancient and medieval designs. The striking pic- their work that the sanitary conditions of European
turesqueness of Amalfi, for example, is due mainly cities have improved so remarkably – as is apparent
to its really grotesque confusion between interior from mortality figures which have in many cases
and exterior motifs, so that one finds oneself at the been halved. How many individual improvements
O
same time inside a house and on the street, and at must have transpired, to the benefit of all city N
one spot simultaneously on the ground level and dwellers, for such results to emerge! This we gladly E
on an upper floor, depending on the interpretation grant, but there still remains the question as to
one wishes to give the peculiar structural combina- whether it is really necessary to purchase these
tions. It is this which leaves the collector of vistas advantages at the tremendous price of abandoning
in a transport of delight and is what we are pre- all artistic beauty in the layout of cities.
sented with in the stage scenery of theaters. Yet a The innate conflict between the picturesque
modern section of town is never chosen for stage and the practical cannot be eliminated merely by
scenery because it would really be much too dull. talking about it; it will always be present as some-
This contrasting of imaginative stage-sets and thing intrinsic to the very nature of things. This
prosaic reality makes the idiosyncrasies of the inner struggle between the two opposing demands
picturesque, on the one hand, compare most vividly is not, however, characteristic of town planning
with the practical on the other. Our modern build- alone; it is present in all the arts, even in those
ing block does not suit the theater, where artistic apparently the freest, if only as a conflict between
effectiveness is the only criterion; nevertheless, it their ideal goals and the limiting conditions of the
is dubious whether in most cases we would want material in which the work of art is supposed to
to translate the richly pictorial stage set into reality. take shape. A work of art that is not subject to these
Its wealth of effective motifs would certainly be limitations can perhaps be imagined abstractly,
desirable, and, if it were feasible, stronger archi- but never realized materially. The practical artist is
tectural projections, more frequent interruptions always faced with the necessity of embodying his
of the building line, zig-zag and winding streets, ideas within the range of technical possibilities.
uneven street widths, different heights of houses, These restraints are narrow or broad according to
flights of stairs, loggias, balconies, gables, and what- his technical means or depending on the various
ever else make up the picturesque trappings of ideal aspirations and the practical, demands of a
stage architecture would in the end be no misfor- given period in time; nobody would deny this who
tune for a modern city. Yet, looking at this not just has carefully studied the history of art.
aesthetically, but as a practical builder, one knows In the field of city planning the limitations on
very well that there are more obstacles to it than artistry of arrangement have, to be sure, narrowed
might be thought likely at first glance. It is utterly greatly in our day. Today such a masterpiece of
impossible to transpose from the ideal into reality city planning as the Acropolis of Athens is simply
that large class of picturesque details whose charm unthinkable. That sort of thing is for us, at the
derives from their unfinished or ruined character. moment, an impossibility. Even if the millions were
Although that which is falling apart or even dirty provided that such a project would entail, we would
and which has gay touches of color or varied stone still be unable to create something of the kind,
textures may look effective in a painting, in reality because we lack both the artistic basis for it and
it appears totally different. Old castle grounds are any universally valid philosophy of life that has
well liked for a short visit during the warm summer sufficient vigor in the soul of the people to find
months, but for permanent residence a new modern physical expression in the work. Yet even if the
structure with its many comforts is still preferred. commission be devoid of content and merely
It would, moreover, be quite short-sighted not decorative – as is the case with art today – it would
to recognize the extraordinary achievements of be frightfully difficult for our realistic man of the
modern city planning in contrast to that of old in nineteenth century. Today’s city builder must, before
the field of hygiene. In this our modern engineers, all, acquire the noble virtue of an utmost humility,
so much maligned because of their artistic blunders, and, what is remarkable in this case, less for eco-
have literally performed miracles and have rendered nomic considerations than for really basic reasons.
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Assuming that in any new development the without falling prey to barren fantasies. The exem-
cityscape (Stadtbild) must be made as splendid plary creations of the old masters must remain
and pictorial as possible, if only decoratively in alive with us in some other way than through slav-
order to glorify the locality – such a purpose can- ish copying; only if we can determine in what the
not be accomplished with the ruler or with our essentials of these creations consist, and if we can
geometrically-straight street lines. In order to pro- apply these meaningfully to modern conditions, will
duce the effects of the old masters, their colors as it be possible to harvest a new and flourishing crop
well must form part of our palette. Sundry curves, from the apparently sterile soil.
twisted streets and irregularities would have to An attempt should be made regardless of ob-
be included artificially in the plan; an affected stacles. Even if numerous pictorial beauties must
artlessness, a purposeful unintentionalness. But can be renounced and extensive consideration be given
the accidents of history over the course of centuries to the requirements of modern construction, hygiene,
be invented and constructed ex novo in the plan? and transportation, this should not discourage
Could one, then, truly and sincerely enjoy such a us to the extent that we simply abandon artistic
fabricated ingenuousness, such a studied natural- solutions and settle for purely technical ones, as in
ness? Certainly not. The satisfaction of a spontane- the building of a highway or the construction of
ous gaiety is denied to any cultural level in which a machine. The forever edifying impress of artistic
building does not proceed at apparent random perfection cannot be dispensed with in our busy
from day to day, but instead constructs its plans everyday life. One must keep in mind that city
intellectually on the drawing board. This whole planning in particular must allow full and com
course of events, moreover, cannot be reversed, plete participation to art, because it is this type of
and consequently a large portion of the picturesque artistic endeavor, above all, that affects formatively
beauties we have mentioned will probably be every day and every hour the great mass of the
irretrievably lost to use in contemporary planning. population, whereas the theater and concerts are
Modern living as well as modern building tech- available only to the wealthier classes. Administrators
niques no longer permit the faithful imitation of of public works in cities should turn their attention
old townscapes, a fact which we cannot overlook to this matter.
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“Author’s Introduction” and
“The Town–Country Magnet”
from Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898/1902)
Ebenezer Howard
Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City vision was one of the most captivating planning and design ideas of the late
nineteenth century. It spurred considerable thought about remedies for the perceived ills of industrial cities,
strains of which continue to this day, and it inspired and continues to inspire the creation of new towns and
“garden” suburbs in England and America and elsewhere.
A stenographer by trade, Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) was a modest man with no formal planning or
design training who became interested in cities through his own experience of difficult urban conditions. Born
in London, England, into a family of shopkeepers, he emigrated to America at the age of 21 and settled in
Nebraska with the intention of farming. Finding himself unsuited to farming life, he moved to Chicago where
he worked as a journalist and witnessed the rebuilding of the city following the great fire. Back in England
by 1876 he found work as a Parliamentary reporter and worked in this profession for the rest of his life. He
became involved with political movements and was introduced to the writings of radical theorists and vision-
aries including social reformer Robert Owen and utopian novelist Edward Bellamy. Inspired, he began devel-
oping his own ideas for cities of the future. In 1898, he published To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform
(now better known under its 1902 title, Garden Cities of To-morrow) and set about advocating the beauty
and utility of his “the Garden City idea.”
Howard’s idea is articulated through a series of diagrams buttressed by theoretical arguments. He begins
by identifying overcrowding as the source of urban ills, and then analyzes why people are attracted to cities
because of higher wages and greater social opportunities in spite of the hardships that come with city life,
and why rural life is less compelling for many in spite of the beauty and fresh air available in the countryside.
In his famous “Three Magnets” diagram, he juxtaposes the pros and cons of urban life under a town magnet,
the pros and cons of rural life under a country magnet, and combines the pros of both under a town–country
magnet. The thinking is that “town and country must be married” and “out of this joyous union will spring new
hope, a new life, a new civilization.” Effectively, Howard proposes that the downsides of urban and rural life
can be eliminated by a joining of the two in a new urban form, the garden city.
Other diagrams, which Howard stresses are conceptual ideas rather than actual plans, show the layout of
an ideal garden city for 32,000 people. A central city of 1,000 acres is surrounded by a 5,000-acre greenbelt
of agricultural land. The city itself comprises several concentric rings – a central garden surrounded by a
park containing important public buildings, a “Crystal Palace” ring of retail shops, a broad ring of single family
homes punctuated by a “Grand Avenue” containing a generous park strip in which public schools and churches
are situated, and an outer ring of “factories, warehouses, dairies, markets, coal yards, timber yards” fronting
on a railway line that circles the whole town. A regional scale diagram entitled “Group of Slumless Smokeless
Cities” shows how a population of 250,000 people could be accommodated on 66,000 acres within six
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54 E bene Z er H o W ar D
garden cities arrayed around a somewhat larger central city, connected by concentric rings and lateral spurs
of canals and railways. Along with these utopian physical arrangements comes a radical social idea: each
garden city is to be largely independent, financed and managed by local citizens.
Unlike many utopian visionaries, Howard saw his ideas put into practice, although in somewhat com
promised form. In England, Letchworth Garden City was built in the early 1900s and Welwyn Garden City was
built after World War I. The Garden City idea quickly spread to continental Europe, America, and beyond.
In the United States it inspired the creation of several New Deal Greenbelt towns and numerous garden sub
urbs, such as Sunnyside in Queens, and influenced Clarence Stein and Henry Wright’s design for the town
of Radburn, New Jersey. More recently, New Urbanism theorist and practitioner Peter Calthorpe has re-
conceptualized the Garden City idea in the form of suburban transit-oriented developments (TODs) linked
to cities and each other with light-rail transit networks.
Garden Cities of To-morrow remains an engaging and thought provoking text and is available in a variety
of formats and editions. The original edition appeared under the title To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real
Reform (Sonnenschein, 1898), and an elegant new edition is now available, under the original title, edited by
Peter Hall and Colin Ward (New York: Routledge, 2003). A recent reprint is available under the title Garden
Cities of To-morrow (New York: Classic Books International, 2010.) In addition, the book was also reprinted
as the second volume of Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout (eds), Early Urban Planning (nine volumes,
London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1998) and in earlier editions by Attic Books (1985), Eastbourne (1985), MIT
Press (1965), and Faber and Faber (1960, 1951, and 1946).
Biographies of Ebenezer Howard include Robert Beevers, The Garden City Utopia: A Critical Biography
of Ebenezer Howard (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988) and Dugald Macfadyen, Sir Ebenezer Howard and the
Town Planning Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1933; reprinted MIT Press, 1970).
Thorough accounts of Howard and the Garden City movement may be found in Robert Fishman’s Urban
Utopias in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1977) and Peter Hall’s Cities of Tomorrow
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). Analysis of Howard’s ideas and the Garden City Movement from an urban
form perspective may be found in Spiro Kostof’s The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through
History (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1991) and The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form
Through History, 1992).
Additional books about Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City movement include Kermit Parsons and
David Schuyler (eds), From the Garden City to Green Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Standish Meacham, Regaining Paradise: Englishness and the
Early Garden City Movement (Princeton, NJ: Yale University Press, 1999); Peter Geoffrey Hall and Colin
Ward, Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998); Stephen V.
Ward (ed.), The Garden City: Past, Present and Future (London and New York: E & FN Spon, 1992); and
Stanley Buder, Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990).
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION There is, however, a question in regard to which

one can scarcely find any difference of opinion . . .
In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly It is wellnigh universally agreed by men of all par-
contested social and religious issues, it might perties, not only in England, but all over Europe and
haps be thought difficult to find a single question America and our colonies, that it is deeply to be
having a vital bearing upon national life and well- deplored that the people should continue to stream
being on which all persons, no matter of what polit into the already over-crowded cities, and should
ical party, or of what shade of sociological opinion, thus further deplete the country districts.
would be found to be fully and entirely agreed . . . All . . . are agreed on the pressing nature of this
[ . . . ] problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it
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“AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION” 55
would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a the population in a spontaneous and healthy
similar agreement as to the value of any remedy manner.
that may be proposed, it is at least of immense So presented, the problem may appear at first
importance that, on a subject thus universally sight to be difficult, if not impossible, of solution.
regarded as of supreme importance, we have such “What”, some may be disposed to ask, “can pos-
O
a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be sibly be done to make the country more attractive N
the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign to a workaday people than the town – to make E
when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively wages, or at least the standard of physical comfort,
shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of higher in the country than in the town; to secure
the most pressing questions of the day, makes of in the country equal possibilities of social inter-
comparatively easy solution many other problems course, and to make the prospects of advancement
which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the for the average man or woman equal, not to say
greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, superior, to those enjoyed in our large cities?” The
the key to the problem how to restore the people issue one constantly finds presented in a form very
to the land – that beautiful land of ours, with its similar to that. The subject is treated continually
canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun in the public press, and in all forms of discussion,
that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it – the as though men, or at least working men, had not
very embodiment of Divine love for man – is indeed now, and never could have, any choice or alterna-
a Master Key, for it is the key to a portal through tive, but either, on the one hand, to stifle their love
which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour for human society – at least in wider relations than
a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, can be found in a straggling village – or, on the
of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding other hand, to forgo almost entirely all the keen
poverty – the true limits of Governmental interfer- and pure delights of the country. The question is
ence, ay, and even the relations of man to the universally considered as though it were now, and
Supreme Power. for ever must remain, quite impossible for working
It may perhaps be thought that the first step to people to live in the country and yet be engaged
be taken towards the solution of this question – how in pursuits other than agricultural; as though
to restore the people to the land – would involve crowded, unhealthy cities were the last word of
a careful consideration of the very numerous economic science; and as if our present form of
causes which have hitherto led to their aggre industry, in which sharp lines divide agricultural
gation in large cities. Were this the case, a very from industrial pursuits, were necessarily an endur-
prolonged enquiry would be necessary at the outing one. This fallacy is the very common one of
set. Fortunately, alike for writer and for reader, such ignoring altogether the possibility of alternatives
an analysis is not, however, here requisite, and for other than those presented to the mind. There are
a very simple reason, which may be stated thus: in reality not only, as is so constantly assumed, two
Whatever may have been the causes which have alternatives – town life and country life – but a third
operated in the past, and are operating now, to alternative, in which all the advantages of the most
draw the people into the cities, those causes may energetic and active town life, with all the beauty
all be summed up as “attractions”; and it is obvious, and delight of the country, may be secured in per-
therefore, that no remedy can possibly be effective fect combination; and the certainty of being able
which will not present to the people, or at least to to live this life will be the magnet which will pro-
considerable portions of them, greater “attractions” duce the effect for which we are all striving – the
than our cities now possess, so that the force of spontaneous movement of the people from our
the old “attractions” shall be overcome by the force crowded cities to the bosom of our kindly mother
of new “attractions” which are to be created. Each earth, at once the source of life, of happiness, of
city may be regarded as a magnet, each person as wealth, and of power. The town and the country
a needle; and, so viewed, it is at once seen that may, therefore, be regarded as two magnets, each
nothing short of the discovery of a method for striving to draw the people to itself – a rivalry which
constructing magnets of yet greater power than a new form of life, partaking of the nature of both,
our cities possess can be effective for redistributing comes to take part in. This may be illustrated by
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56 E bene Z er H o W ar D
sounds of rippling water; but too often one sees

those threatening words, “Trespassers will be pros-
ecuted”. Rents, if estimated by the acre, are cer-
tainly low, but such low rents are the natural fruit
of low wages rather than a cause of substantial
comfort; while long hours and lack of amusements
forbid the bright sunshine and the pure air to glad-
den the hearts of the people. The one industry,
agriculture, suffers frequently from excessive rain-
falls; but this wondrous harvest of the clouds is
seldom properly in-gathered, so that, in times of
drought, there is frequently, even for drinking pur-
poses, a most insufficient supply. Even the natural
healthfulness of the country is largely lost for lack
of proper drainage and other sanitary conditions,
while, in parts almost deserted by the people, the
few who remain are yet frequently huddled together
as if in rivalry with the slums of our cities.
But neither the Town magnet nor the Country
magnet represents the full plan and purpose of
Figure 1 The Three Magnets. nature. Human society and the beauty of nature
are meant to be enjoyed together. The two magnets
must be made one. As man and woman by their
a diagram (Figure 1) of “The Three Magnets”, in varied gifts and faculties supplement each other,
which the chief advantages of the Town and of the so should town and country. The town is the
Country are set forth with their corresponding draw symbol of society – of mutual help and friendly
backs, while the advantages of the Town–Country co-operation, of fatherhood, motherhood, brother
are seen to be free from the disadvantages of either. hood, sisterhood, of wide relations between man and
The Town magnet, it will be seen, offers, as man – of broad, expanding sympathies – of science,
compared with the Country magnet, the advant art, culture, religion. And the country! The country
ages of high wages, opportunities for employment, is the symbol of God’s love and care for man. All
tempting prospects of advancement, but these are that we are and all that we have comes from it.
largely counterbalanced by high rents and prices. Our bodies are formed of it; to it they return. We
Its social opportunities and its places of amusement are fed by it, clothed by it, and by it are we warmed
are very alluring, but excessive hours of toil, dis- and sheltered. On its bosom we rest. Its beauty is
tance from work, and the “isolation of crowds” tend the inspiration of art, of music, of poetry. Its forces
greatly to reduce the value of these good things. propel all the wheels of industry. It is the source
The well-lit streets are a great attraction, especially of all health, all wealth, all knowledge. But its
in winter, but the sunlight is being more and more fullness of joy and wisdom has not revealed itself
shut out, while the air is so vitiated that the fine to man. Nor can it ever, so long as this unholy,
public buildings, like the sparrows, rapidly become unnatural separation of society and nature endures.
covered with soot, and the very statues are in Town and country must be married, and out of this
despair. Palatial edifices and fearful slums are the joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a
strange, complementary features of modern cities. new civilization. It is the purpose of this work to
The Country magnet declares herself to be the show how a first step can be taken in this direction
source of all beauty and wealth; but the Town mag- by the construction of a Town–Country magnet; and
net mockingly reminds her that she is very dull for I hope to convince the reader that this is practic
lack of society, and very sparing of her gifts for able, here and now, and that on principles which
lack of capital. There are in the country beautiful are the very soundest, whether viewed from the
vistas, lordly parks, violet-scented woods, fresh air, ethical or the economic standpoint.
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“THE TOWN–COUNTRY MAGNET” 57
I will undertake, then, to show how in “Town– some of the chief objects are these: To find for our
Country” equal, nay better, opportunities of social industrial population work at wages of higher pur-
intercourse may be enjoyed than are enjoyed in chasing power, and to secure healthier surround
any crowded city, while yet the beauties of nature ings and more regular employment. To enterprising
may encompass and enfold each dweller therein; manufacturers, co-operative societies, architects,
O
how higher wages are compatible with reduced engineers, builders, and mechanicians of all kinds, N
rents and rates; how abundant opportunities for as well as to many engaged in various professions, E
employment and bright prospects of advancement it is intended to offer a means of securing new and
may be secured for all; how capital may be attracted better employment for their capital and talents,
and wealth created; how the most admirable sani- while to the agriculturists at present on the estate
tary conditions may be ensured; how beautiful as well as to those who may migrate thither, it is
homes and gardens may be seen on every hand; designed to open a new market for their produce
how the bounds of freedom may be widened, and close to their doors. Its object is, in short, to raise
yet all the best results of concert and co-operation the standard of health and comfort of all true work-
gathered in by a happy people. ers of whatever grade – the means by which these
The construction of such a magnet, could it be objects are to be achieved being a healthy, natural,
effected, followed, as it would be, by the construc- and economic combination of town and country
tion of many more, would certainly afford a solution life, and this on land owned by the municipality.
of the burning question set before us by Sir John Garden City, which is to be built near the centre
Gorst, “how to back the tide of migration of the of the 6,000 acres, covers an area of 1,000 acres,
people into the towns, and to get them back upon or a sixth part of the 6,000 acres, and might be of
the land”. circular form, 1,240 yards (or nearly three-quarters
[ . . . ] of a mile) from centre to circumference. (Figure 2
is a ground plan of the whole municipal area, show-
ing the town in the centre; and Figure 3, which
THE TOWN–COUNTRY MAGNET represents one section or ward of the town, will
be useful in following the description of the town
The reader is asked to imagine an estate embracing itself – a description which is, however, merely
an area of 6,000 acres, which is at present purely suggestive, and will probably be much departed
agricultural, and has been obtained by purchase in from. . . .)
the open market at a cost of £40 an acre, or Six magnificent boulevards – each 120 feet wide
£240,000. The purchase money is supposed to have – traverse the city from centre to circumference,
been raised on mortgage debentures, bearing inter- dividing it into six equal parts or wards. In the
est at an average rate not exceeding 4 per cent. centre is a circular space containing about five and
The estate is legally vested in the names of four a half acres, laid out as a beautiful and well-watered
gentlemen of responsible position and of un- garden; and, surrounding this garden, each standing
doubted probity and honour, who hold it in trust, in its own ample grounds, are the larger public
first, as a security for the debenture-holders, and, buildings – town hall, principal concert and lecture
secondly, in trust for the people of Garden City, hall, theatre, library, museum, picture-gallery, and
the Town–Country magnet, which it is intended to hospital.
build thereon. One essential feature of the plan is The rest of the large space encircled by the
that all ground rents, which are to be based upon “Crystal Palace” is a public park, containing 145
the annual value of the land, shall be paid to the acres, which includes ample recreation grounds
trustees, who, after providing for interest and sinking within very easy access of all the people.
fund, will hand the balance to the Central Council Running all round the Central Park (except
of the new municipality, to be employed by such where it is intersected by the boulevards) is a wide
Council in the creation and maintenance of all glass arcade called the “Crystal Palace”, opening
necessary public works – roads, schools, parks, etc. on to the park. This building is in wet weather one
The objects of this land purchase may be stated in of the favourite resorts of the people, whilst the
various ways, but it is sufficient here to say that knowledge that its bright shelter is ever close at
9780415668071_P1_06.indd 57 10-26-2012 3:17:27 PM

m EBEN EZER HOWARD
N .B.
D iagram only.
PlAH CANNOT B E DRAWN
UNTIL SITE SELECTED
GARDEN CITY AND RURAL BELT
Figure 2 Garden City and Rural Belt.
hand tempts people into Central Park, even in for the most part built either in concentric rings,
the most doubtful of weathers. Here manufactured facing the various avenues (as the circular roads
goods are exposed for sale, and here most of that are termed), or fronting the boulevards and roads
class of shopping which requires the joy of delib which all converge to the centre of the town. Asking
eration and selection is done. The space enclosed the friend who accompanies us on our journey what
by the Crystal Palace is, however, a good deal larger the population of this little city may be, we are told
than is required for these purposes, and a con about 30,000 in the city itself, and about 2,000 in
siderable part of it is used as a Winter Garden - the the agricultural estate, and that there are in the
whole forming a permanent exhibition of a most town 5,000 building lots of an average size of 20
attractive character, whilst its circular form brings feet X 130 feet - the minimum space allotted for
it near to every dweller in the town - the furthest the purpose being 20 X 100. Noticing the very
removed inhabitant being within 600 yards. varied architecture and design which the houses
Passing out of the Crystal Palace on our way to and groups of houses display - some having com
the outer ring of the town, we cross Fifth Avenue mon gardens and co-operative kitchens - we learn
- lined, as are all the roads of the town, with trees - that general observance of street line or harmon
fronting which, and looking on to the Crystal Palace, ious departure from it are the chief points as to
we find a ring of very excellently built houses, each house building, over which the municipal author
standing in its own ample grounds; and, as we ities exercise control, for, though proper sanitary
continue our walk, we observe that the houses are arrangements are strictly enforced, the fullest
"THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET" 59
N?3.
0
N
E
N.B.
A DIAGRAM ONLY
PLAN MUST DEPEND UPON
SITE SELECTED,
lA*«(
FAIMI
WARD AND CENTRE OF GARDEN CITY

Figure 3 Ward and Centre of Garden City.
measure of individual taste and preference is - that of which Figure 3 is a representation) - from
encouraged. the general plan of concentric rings, and, in order
Walking still toward the outskirts of the town, to ensure a longer line of frontage on Grand
we come upon "Grand Avenue". This avenue is Avenue, are arranged in crescents - thus also to
fully entitled to the name it bears, for it is 420 feet the eye yet further enlarging the already splendid
wide, and, forming a belt of green upwards of three width of Grand Avenue.
miles long, divides that part of the town which lies On the outer ring of the town are factories,
outside Central Park into two belts. It really con- ware-houses, dairies, markets, coal yards, timber
stitutes an additional park of 115 acres - a park yards, etc., all fronting on the circle railway, which
which is within 240 yards of the furthest removed encompasses the whole town, and which has sid-
inhabitant. In this splendid avenue six sites, each ings connecting it with a main line of railway which
of four acres, are occupied by public schools and passes through the estate. This arrangement en-
their surrounding playgrounds and gardens, while ables goods to be loaded direct into trucks from
other sites are reserved for churches, of such de- the warehouses and work shops, and so sent by
nominations as the religious beliefs of the people railway to distant markets, or to be taken direct
may determine, to be erected and maintained out from the trucks into the warehouses or factories;
of the funds of the worshippers and their friends. thus not only effecting a very great saving in regard
We observe that the houses fronting on Grand to packing and cartage, and reducing to a minimum
Avenue have departed (at least in one of the wards loss from breakage, but also, by reducing the traffic
gfil EBEN EZER HOWARD
on the roads of the town, lessening to a very themselves in the town. These manage their affairs
marked extent the cost of their maintenance. The in their own way, subject, of course, to the general
smoke fiend is kept well within bounds in Garden law of the land, and subject to the provision of
City; for all machinery is driven by electric energy, sufficient space for workmen and reasonable sani
with the result that the cost of electricity for light tary conditions. Even in regard to such matters as
ing and other purposes is greatly reduced. water, lighting, and telephonic communication -
The refuse of the town is utilized on the agri which a municipality, if efficient and honest, is
cultural portions of the estate, which are held by certainly the best and most natural body to supply
various individuals in large farms, small holdings, - no rigid or absolute monopoly is sought; and
allotments, cow pastures, etc.; the natural competi if any private corporation or any body of indivi
tion of these various methods of agriculture, tested duals proved itself capable of supplying on more
by the willingness of occupiers to offer the highest advantageous terms, either the whole town or a
rent to the municipality, tending to bring about the section of it, with these or any commodities the
best system of husbandry, or, what is more prob supply of which was taken up by the corporation,
able, the best systems adapted for various purposes. this would be allowed. No really sound system of
Thus it is easily conceivable that it may prove action is in more need of artificial support than is
advantageous to grow wheat in very large fields, any sound system of thought. The area of muni
involving united action under a capitalist farmer, cipal and corporate action is probably destined
or by a body of co-operators; while the cultivation to become greatly enlarged; but, if it is to be so, it
of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, which requires will be because the people possess faith in such
closer and more personal care, and more of the
artistic and inventive faculty, may possibly be best
dealt with by individuals, or by small groups of N?5.
individuals having a common belief in the efficacy
and value of certain dressings, methods of culture,
P iA C R A M
or artificial and natural surroundings. IL LU STR A TIN G CORRECT PRINCIPLE
This plan, or, if the reader be pleased to so term OF A CITY'S GROWTH-OPEN COUNTRY
it, this absence of plan, avoids the dangers of stag EVER HEAR AT HAND. AND RAPID
nation or dead level, and, though encouraging indi COMMUNICATION BETWEEN OFF-SHOOTS.
vidual initiative, permits of the fullest co-operation, Co u n t r y
while the increased rents which follow from this
form of competition are common or municipal
property, and by far the larger part of them are
expended in permanent improvements.
While the town proper, with its population en
gaged in various trades, callings, and professions,
and with a store or depot in each ward, offers the
Co u n t r y
most natural market to the people engaged on the Co un try
agricultural estate, inasmuch as to the extent to C o untry
which the towns-people demand their produce they
escape altogether any railway rates and charges;
yet the farmers and others are not by any means
limited to the town as their only market, but have
Cou n tr y H ig h R o a d
the fullest right to dispose of their produce to
whomsoever they please. Here, as in every feature
of the experiment, it will be seen that it is not the
area of rights which is contracted, but the area of
choice which is enlarged.
C o u n try
This principle of freedom holds good with regard
to manufacturers and others who have established Figure 4 Correct Principle of a City’s Growth.
“THE TOWN–COUNTRY MAGNET” 61
action, and that faith can be best shown by a wide rent, it occurring to the authorities that they can
extension of the area of freedom. the better afford to be thus generous, as the spend-
Dotted about the estate are seen various charit ing power of these institutions greatly benefits the
able and philanthropic institutions. These are not whole community. Besides, as if those persons who
under the control of the municipality, but are sup- migrate to the town are among its most energetic
O
ported and managed by various public-spirited and resourceful members, it is but just and right N
people who have been invited by the municipality that their more helpless brethren should be able to E
to establish these institutions in an open healthy enjoy the benefits of an experiment which is de-
district, and on land let to them at a pepper-corn signed for humanity at large.
9780415668071_P1_06.indd 61 10-26-2012 3:17:29 PM

“Ideology and Aesthetics”
from The City Beautiful Movement (1989)
William H. Wilson
Along with Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City idea, the turn of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of a
short-lived but influential American social and design movement called the City Beautiful Movement. Spurred
like Howard by concerns over urban ills, advocates sought to make cities better by improving their physical
public realms. A joint undertaking of citizen activists and professional urban planners, the City Beautiful Move-
ment had its heyday in America between 1900 and 1910.
The 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition is generally considered to have been the birthplace of
the City Beautiful Movement. A formal assemblage of white neo-classical buildings axially arranged around
landscaped open spaces, it awed a vast visiting public. People came from all over the country to see the fair
and were impressed. Many community leaders, architects, downtown business promoters, and just plain
people went away with ideas of having something like what they had seen in their own cities.
The City Beautiful Movement was largely concerned with civic beauty, famously, but not only, with the
creation of monumental civic centers designed in neo-classical architectural style. Other City Beautiful projects
included grandiose schemes for citywide park, parkway, and boulevard systems, but many also focused on
much smaller things including undergrounding utility wires, restricting billboards, and providing benches and
water fountains in public spaces.
By the 1920s, the City Beautiful Movement started being scornfully derided by many urban planners as
being merely concerned with surface aesthetics and grand effects. A new design ideology of modernism was
being ushered in and along with it came a focus on city efficiency and a disdain for what was termed “orna-
mentation.” By the 1950s and 1960s, the City Beautiful Movement was dismissed, as well, because it was
deemed a design approach that focused only on the needs and desires of the well-to-do, neglecting the
needs of the poor.
In The City Beautiful Movement, William H. Wilson offers a revisionist planning history that rehabilitates
City Beautiful ideology, identifies its antecedents and lasting influences, sets the movement within its political
context, and analyzes its successes as well as its limitations. He convincingly argues that the City Beautiful
Movement had its antecedents in the ideas of Frederick Law Olmsted, namely Olmsted’s legacy of park and
parkway systems, belief in the restorative nature of natural landscapes, optimistic view that class reconciliation
would take place within conducively designed public spaces, and conviction that massive urban growth was
inevitable. Wilson traces the survival of City Beautiful ideals throughout the twentieth century, highlighting
their continued popularity with laypeople and the re-focus on urban beauty that began in the 1970s with the
preservation movement that arose partly in response to the demolition of City Beautiful buildings, such as
New York’s Pennsylvania Station. In addition, Wilson analyzes how the City Beautiful Movement was supported
and promoted by myriad national and local civic organizations that were formed around 1900 with a focus
on civic improvement, including the American Park and Outdoor Art Association (APOAA), the American
League for Civic Improvement (ALCI), and the American Civic Association (ACA).
9780415668071_P1_07.indd 62 10-26-2012 3:17:36 PM

“ I D eology an D A esthetics ” 63
In the chapter entitled “Ideology and Aesthetics” Wilson lays out a sweeping interpretation of City Beautiful
ideology, enumerating its ten key components, and analyzes how City Beautiful aesthetics linked natural beauty,
naturalistic constructivism, and classicism.
William Henry Wilson was for many years Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas.
He earned his PhD (1962) in urban history at the University of Missouri. His seminal book The City Beautiful
O
Movement was reprinted under the title The City Beautiful Movement: Creating the North American Land-
N
scape (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), and was awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize of E
the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. Wilson’s other books include The City Beautiful
Movement in Kansas City (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1964); Coming of Age: Urban America
1915–1945 (New York: Wiley, 1974); Hamilton Park: A Planned Black Community in Dallas (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); and Shaper of Seattle: Reginald Heber Thomson’s Pacific
Northwest (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2009).
The best analysis of Frederick Law Olmsted’s contributions to the City Beautiful Movement is the chapter
in Wilson’s book entitled “Frederick Law Olmsted and the City Beautiful Movement.” A classic work on Frederick
Law Olmsted that emphasizes how his work differed from the City Beautiful Movement is David Schuyler’s
The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Two figures most associated with the City Beautiful are architect Daniel H. Burnham and planner-publicist
Charles Mulford Robinson. Robinson was a chief spokesman of the City Beautiful Movement who wrote three
influential books espousing its ideas: The Improvement of Towns and Cities: Or, The Practical Basis of Civic
Aesthetics (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901); Modern Civic Art: Or, The City Made Beautiful
(New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903); and City Planning, With Special Reference to the
Planning of Streets and Lots (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916). Burnham directed
the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and, with his co-author Edward Bennett, created both the
1905 Plan for San Francisco and the 1909 Plan of Chicago, which symbolized the maturation of the City
Beautiful. Writings on Daniel H. Burnham and his works include Carl S. Smith’s The Plan of Chicago: Daniel
Burnham and the remaking of the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Kristen
Schaffer’s Daniel H. Burnham: Visionary Architect and Planner (New York: Rizzoli, 2003); and Charles Moore’s
Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968).
An early work that discusses City Beautiful ideology is Joaquin Miller’s The Building of the City Beautiful
(Trenton, NJ: A. Brandt, 1905), recently reprinted by Nabu Press (2010). More recently, a work that furthers
Wilson’s reappraisal of City Beautiful contributions is Robert Freestone’s journal article “Reconciling Beauty
and Utility in Early City Planning: The Contribution of John Nolen” (Journal of Urban History, March 2011,
vol. 37, no. 2, 256–277), which analyses how the aesthetic aspirations of the City Beautiful Movement per-
sisted into the subsequent City Practical Movement as beauty became wedded to utility in comprehensive
planning.
In terms of naysayers, in his influential books Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich,
1938) and The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1961) architecture and urban planning
critic William Mumford denounced the formalism of the American City Beautiful Movement, in particular its
neo-classic buildings, as inappropriate for a democratic society. In Death and Life of Great American Cities
(New York: Random House, 1961) Jane Jacobs strongly criticizes the City Beautiful Movement, which Wilson
suggests is because she misunderstood the movement’s purposes. More recently, Peter Hall’s Cities of
Tomorrow (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002) contains a lengthy chapter entitled “The City of Monuments,
The City Beautiful Movement: Chicago, New Delhi, Berlin, Moscow, 1900–1945” that largely critiques, and
ridicules, the City Beautiful Movement.
9780415668071_P1_07.indd 63 10-26-2012 3:17:37 PM

64 W illiam H . W ilson
The City Beautiful movement worked through over the (to them) dangerous urban masses. Other
politics to achieve a congeries of socioenviron goals included the development of a city bureau
mental reforms related to urban design. By 1903–4 cracy dedicated to municipal cleanliness, order,
an ideology in support of the movement emerged. and the pursuit of legitimate business goals, and
It was compounded from several sources, including the recruitment of the experts to deal with large-
nineteenth-century sociology, psychology, and bio scale problems of public health, transportation, and
logy, plus several planning reports. What follows is the like. Some arrangements had to be sacrificed
an examination of that ideology, beginning with a to achieve these ends, including the relatively
look at its advocates. City Beautiful advocates were intimate politics of the ward based system of repre
mostly male and members of the urban middle sentation, neighborhood influence over schooling
class or upper middle class. They were often the and recreation, and community-based intervention
owners or managers of businesses large by com in urban politics.
munity standards, for example, newspaper editors, There are problems with this interpretation. For
managers of manufacturing plants, or owners of one thing, the normative attitudes tossed out the
sizable retail establishments. There was some rep front door have a way of sneaking around back.
resentation from smaller businesses and, rarely, Implicit in the deterministic view is that centraliza
skilled labor. Other prominent City Beautiful sup tion that does not allow for considerable local auto
porters included professional people: attorneys, nomy is wrong, that bureaucracy and expertise are
bankers, physicians, and real estate specialists and antithetical to democracy, that social control is
investors. These elites worked to achieve citywide, of little or no merit, and that class control is bad
unifying planning schemes. They articulated the unless it is the working class that is asserting its
purposes of planning in intensive publicity cam privileges over those of the others. Also involved
paigns conducted through boards of trade, cham is a conviction that small-scale democracy and
bers of commerce, or various ad hoc groups. neighborhood control are creatable or preservable
The women involved were usually from the same values in the era of the metropolis. The issue is
middle and upper classes and were often the wives not the validity of the ethical positions described,
of business leaders. The women were active in but their latent presence in the interpretation.
organizations of the municipal improvement type. The determinist approach assumes that the re
They allied with the men in the same or parallel formers involved in a citywide activity opposed
campaigns, though they tended to form separate any significant concession to democracy, neighbor
organizations and promote more specialized causes, hoods, or ideas of community. Roy Rosenzweig and
such as street sanitation. Stephen Hardy have attacked determinism, arguing
Finally, there were the experts themselves, that working- and middle-class people were not
who belonged to the same class background as the passive but battled urban elites over questions of
City Beautiful activists, who worked well with local park design, equipment, and recreational programs,
elites, and who sometimes participated in planning and won often enough to make the struggle worth
publicity. while. Their observations are insightful. Most City
All this is scarcely news. City Beautiful activists Beautiful programs necessitated an initial demo
were similar in class, education, and general back cratic ratification, such as a bond issue, for imple
ground to other reformers of the Progressive Era. mentation. Therefore, the proponents could not
The problem is, how should the motives of such afford to ignore the democratic process or neigh
people be interpreted? The usual reply is based on borhood or community concerns. Too many other
a sort of sociopolitical determinism. Its burden is people had to be persuaded. After a program suc
that, as soon as we know who the reformers and cessfully ran the democratic gauntlet, it could be
their groups were, then an analysis free of old- removed to the realms of expertise and bureaucracy,
fashioned normative categories will reveal what it but the experts and the bureaucrats had to produce
was they really wanted. What they wanted turns publicly acceptable work. This need for popularly
out to be the centralization of urban functions and approved results remained because a park and boule
politics, the protection of property and property vard system, a street beautification-improvement
values, and the exercise of class and social control program, or a civic center was practically never
9780415668071_P1_07.indd 64 10-26-2012 3:17:37 PM

complete with one bond issue. Popular approval of cause both the proponents and opponents of City
the next phase of land acquisition or construction Beautiful reforms really wanted the same things
depended upon citizen acceptance of what was from the city. That is, both factions desired central
created before. So the relationship between public ization, the dominance of expertise, and a power
and expert or citizen board was not authoritarian ful bureaucracy. No doubt this was true at some
O
or undemocratic but reciprocal. Therefore, the level of abstraction, but the City Beautiful battles N
interclass arguments over park facilities should be were too earnest and intense for them to have been E
viewed partly as elite capitulations to the necessity over minor or incidental matters. The struggles
of continued popular support. They might also be were between people who desired a rich, full life
seen to be the neighborhood or community strug for the residents of a beautiful city and those who
gle against central control that is familiar to observ saw the city in strictly utilitarian terms, who desired
ers of the urban scene. On the other hand, when economical government, and who wished to leave
workers won and elites lost, the battle was decided beauty or the acquisition of it to private quests.
within the durable framework created by the losers. What may be said with certainty is that the ac
A third problem with the deterministic interpre tive leadership for and against urban beautification
tation is that many vocal opponents of reform were came from roughly the same group. Both sides had
strikingly similar to the proponents of change. They access to a citywide audience, both expressed city
were middle- and upper-middle-class people who wide concerns, and both used the press, the courts,
resembled their adversaries in occupation, age, and other devices such as pamphlets and public
education, social backgrounds, and group affiliation. meetings to express their views. The fact that City
This means that not all newspaper editors, profes Beautiful proponents came from a certain social
sionals, or owners of large businesses condoned stratum is a generalization, nothing more. Never
City Beautiful projects. Some belonged to the organ theless it will serve as a basis for examining the
izations that endorsed beautification programs frankly class-and-culture-oriented concerns of the
in spite of their dissent. Endorsement of anything City Beautiful advocates.
by a chamber of commerce meant endorsement
by a majority of the group, however slender the
majority. Usually a small committee of enthusiasts CITY BEAUTIFUL IDEOLOGY
within the chamber carried on any campaigning or
other activity resulting from the endorsement. It is First, the City Beautiful solution to urban prob
possible though hardly demonstrable that those lems – transforming the city into a beautiful,
who secured group endorsements and group activ rationalized entity – was to occur within the exist
ism were a committed minority who swept along ing social, political, and economic arrangements.
the indifferent majority in a burst of carefully City Beautiful advocates were committed to a
orchestrated enthusiasm. liberal-capitalist, commercial-industrial society and
A determinist might make two responses to this to the concept of private property. They recognized
argument. The first is that differences between pro society’s abuses, but they posited a smooth transi
reform and antireform groups are discernible if one tion to a better urban world. City Beautiful propon
probes effectively. Thus one finds “newcomers” and ents were, therefore, reformist and meliorative,
“old notables” clashing at times, or entrenched down not radical or revolutionary. They accepted the
town property interests battling rising young busi city optimistically, rejecting a return to a rural or
nessmen. The problem with this response is that arcadian past.
the situations may be true for selected issues in The city was susceptible to reform because it
one city, but not for other cities or issues. Even if was akin to a living organism. Thoughtful citizens
a firm interpretation may be drawn along the line could control and direct its growth somewhat as
of group disagreements within a single city, trans they could manipulate other organisms genetically
ferring the framework to larger, smaller, or different and environmentally. McFarland wrote of an “en
types of cities may produce negative results. deavor to give us . . . in our urban habitations con
The determinists’ second reply might be that ditions . . . approximating those of the beautiful wild
none of this makes much difference anyhow, be into which our forefathers came a few generations
9780415668071_P1_07.indd 65 10-26-2012 3:17:37 PM

ago.” Such a sweeping change could occur only if or well-improved parks. In gross acreage or in the
the city could be studied entire for the purpose of improvement of one or two large landscape parks,
arranging its components in perfect symbiosis. The some older American cities could compare favor
city had to be, as Liberty Hyde Bailey put it in ably with their English or German counterparts.
1903, “an organism.” George A. Parker asserted More often parks were poorly located, undevel
that the city developed according to discoverable oped, or uncoordinated into park and boulevard
principles. “The starting point in the study of a systems. In 1890 Boston and Minneapolis could be
city,” he declared, “is to realize the fact that it is proud of their parks, but Chicago displayed just
a living organism, whose life is not a series of over 2,000 acres of parkland and a pitiful 799
accidents but conforms to the laws of growth, while improved acres for its more than 1 million citizens.
undergoing constant modification in response to Rochester served 133,896 inhabitants with 76
changing influences.” If the city conformed “to improved park acres.
biological laws,” then its transformation could be Street paving of all types was often conspicuous
understood and, possibly, directed. Guy Kirkham, by its absence. Boston boasted that 100 percent of
a Springfield, Massachusetts, architect, suggested its streets were paved, though 163 of its 408 street
such a possibility when he added a Darwinian fillip. miles were only gravel covered. Boston was an
Solving architectural problems and creating a “safe” exception, even for the eastern seaboard, and in
and “convenient” city would lead to a situation in cities farther west, paving conditions were much
which “finally the beautiful city will be evolved.” worse. In Kansas City 50 of its 267 street miles
The locale for all this evolutionary progress, it were surfaced; Dallas had paved only 5 percent of
should be remembered, was the city. There was its streets. In 1903 a resident of Omaha bragged
little interest among the devotees of the City about his city’s advances in street paving. Omaha,
Beautiful in the agricultural village, the Country he said, embraced 350 miles of streets and alleys.
Life movement, industrial utopias such as Pullman, Eighty-five miles were paved, and ten of those were
Illinois, or the Garden City concepts of Ebenezer “the remnants of what was once wooden block
Howard. The beautification work of John H. paving.” The speaker, remember, was not criticizing.
Patterson of the National Cash Register Company He was boasting of progress. Dirt streets – swirling
and its transforming effect on Dayton, Ohio, was dust in summer and gluey, sucking mud in spring,
of vastly greater interest than any non-urban sys redolent with horse droppings – were the norm in
tem or scheme. The city was the arena of the future, many American cities.
and there the City Beautiful enthusiasts focused The beauty sought by City Beautiful advocates
their aspirations. was scarcely ever specifically defined, except by
Second, City Beautiful reformers recognized such supplementary nouns as proportion, harmony,
the aesthetic and functional shortcomings of cities. symmetry, and scale. Beauty was, however, often
They sought beautiful buildings and scenes to illustrated. Well-tended flower gardens, well-done
help preserve what attractiveness remained in landscape parks, street furniture of straightforward
nineteenth-century urban settings. More, they but gracious design, and single or grouped monu
wished to supplant the pervading ugly and unkempt mental public buildings, all in harmonious relation
atmosphere of the American city. McFarland called ships, were the basis of civic beauty. City Beautiful
it “the crusade against ugliness” for good reason. leaders perforce did not usually go beyond a sort
Turn-of-the-century cities were ugly, and dirty too. of generalized Ruskinism. They knew – by intelli
Retail-commercial downtowns expressed their vital gence, breeding, and training – what was beautiful
ity by moving as they expanded, leaving behind and what was not, be it natural or man-made. They
aging buildings given over to secondhand shops, wanted enough influence to exclude “costly blun
third-rate stores, light industry, or musty vacancy. ders” and “amateurish experiment” from the urban
Factories and business blocks vomited black, sooty landscape. The municipal art commissions estab
smoke that lowered over Pittsburgh, Chicago, and lished in many cities after 1900 gave them at least
St. Louis. The urban sections of rivers were treated advisory powers over the design of public struc
as sewers, not waterscapes. Junk and rubbish littered tures. While they thus asserted a cultural dominion
their banks. Few cities could boast well-distributed over the city, they were hesitant to apply it without
9780415668071_P1_07.indd 66 10-26-2012 3:17:37 PM

regard for neighborhood sensibilities, the existing us about the City Beautiful style of social control.
urban environment, or the wishes of donors and The first is, as Dominick Cavallo has written, that
experts. Embarrassing contretemps among arbiters social control is an ahistorical concept. The forms
of public beauty, such as the furor over the statue and methods of social control are situational de
Bacchante in the courtyard of the Boston Public spite generalizations about their types. Consider
O
Library, occurred rarely. ations of social control must be specific to the N
Third, those who endorsed the City Beautiful intellectual and ecological setting. Paul Boyer’s tour E
were environmentalists. When they trumpeted the de force in urban and intellectual history (Urban
meliorative power of beauty, they were stating their Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920
belief in its capacity to shape human thought and [1992]) reveals how reformers focused on the prob
behavior. Some environmentalist statements, espe lem of “moral control” of the masses from the
cially from the municipal improvement wing of the Jacksonian era, when the city first emerged as a
City Beautiful, seemed to echo Olmsted. E. L. Shuey focus for reform effort. Boyer deftly illuminates the
of the APOAA contended that “beauty and health broad, general similarities in nonlegal, nonreligious
fulness” were as important as they were insepar social control, as well as some profound differences
able. McFarland declared that “beauty came even of strategy and goals.
before food in Eden. And while we cannot re The danger of following Boyer’s comparisons
store man to the garden, we can . . . make the city and contrasts to their conclusions is in losing
gardenlike.” Civic design advocate Robinson urged sight of Cavallo’s point. Both the City Beautiful’s
preserving landscape parks, which “present the rhetorical flights and its varied attack on urban
sharpest contrast to the artificiality of the city.” problems occurred within a particular context –
City Beautiful environmentalism was not, how namely, Darwinian views of humanity and the city.
ever, a linear extension of Olmsted’s. The impact They developed amid the proliferation of large,
of Darwinism separated it from the analysis of rapidly growing cities and of rapid advances in the
Olmsted, a man whose fundamental ideas were institutionalization and municipal socialization of
formed in the first half of the nineteenth cen such staple reform concerns as the juvenile prob
tury. Endorsers of the City Beautiful were late- lem, poverty, crime control, utilities, and housing
nineteenth- or twentieth-century people. They regulation. Therefore, the connections among the
believed less in the Olmstedian view of beauty’s Jacksonian reformers, Olmstedians, and City
restorative power and more in the shaping influ Beautiful advocates are limited and specific, not
ence of beauty. Darwinism had compromised the continuous.
old belief in man as a natural creature made in the The second point about the City Beautiful’s exer
image of God, who shared some of God’s attributes cise in social control was that it was normative
and who required a beautified, naturalistic reprieve and behavioral. It was not coercive, the mechanism
from his imprisonment in the artificial city. Man of the concentration camp, or utilitarian, the ac
became remote from his Creator, more manipulable commodation between the car corporation and the
and malleable, a being conditioned by his environ wage worker on the assembly line. The goal of
ment. Therefore, the whole urban environment and the City Beautiful system was what Edward A. Ross,
the entire human experience within it were critical in Social Control (1901), termed the inculcation of
to the City Beautiful movement. City Beautiful ad “social religion,” the idealized, transcendental bond
vocates found secular salvation for humans in their among members of a community and among mem
belief in a flexible, organic city, in contrast to the bers of a nation or society. Ross claimed a deep
intractable city of Olmsted’s vision. The convictions emotional and instinctual basis for this civic reli
about malleable humans and flexible cities under gion, which was superior because it was an “in-
lay the City Beautiful insistence on a comprehensive ward,” or internalized, control system. The problem
plan, one that pervaded and unified the city and with imputing overreaching or potentially fascistic
that addressed a significant number of its problems. sentiments to the City Beautiful reformers is that
City Beautiful environmentalism involved social their system was severely self-limiting. Their rhet
control, a subject over which a great deal of ink oric might soar, as McFarland’s and Robinson’s
has been spilled. Two matters only need concern surely did, and they might occasionally overlook
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the individuals composing a community, but their psychic restoration was, to some play enthusiasts,
claims for control rested upon the presumed effects mere fallow ground waiting to be converted into
of the urban environment. Effective socialization playgrounds. Also, an active recreation movement
through the civic ideal was an unprovable pro would compete for public funds that could other
position at best, tenuous or nebulous at worst. wise go to City Beautiful projects. The conflicts
Environmental conditioning could be demonstrated were muted during the earlier years, when the
in laboratory or quasi-laboratory conditions. The playground movement had developed an ideology
impact of the public environment upon such a but had not yet jelled organizationally. Active con
complex organism as a human being – one subject flict would come in 1906 with the founding of the
to a succession of environments and playing a Playground Association of America.
variety of social roles – was another matter entirely. The playground movement was a feature of
The socialization of the urban dweller involved an the child-saving impulse of the progressive years,
elaborate network of circumstances and ideas, but its thrust was universal. Playground advocates
many of them beyond the reach of so exalted and believed in reaching out to all children, irrespective
transcendent a concept as the civic ideal. It would of age and ethnic group. Team sports for the older
be fairer to the ideals of the City Beautiful advo children and adolescents taught them that what
cates to say that they sought cultural hegemony by divided them was less important than what united
asserting control over the definition of beauty and them. Team play required the sacrifice or the
the manipulation of civic symbol. tempering of individuality to a common goal. This
There are other difficulties with setting too much training socialized the child, making the child recep
store by the rhetoric of the City Beautiful. If its tive to the discipline of the work environment, to
language was fervent, its actions often were prosaic: an efficiently organized polity, to national patrio
a cleanup campaign, a struggle for councilmanic tism, and to civic idealism. A Darwinian ontogeny
hearts and minds concerning a local billboard ordin lay behind the inculcation of moral values, from
ance, a suit over land condemnation for a park or the sandpile to team sports. Morality, in this view,
civic center. Perhaps the City Beautiful’s very fervor was not independent and divine but environmen
was its attempt to bridge the gap between desire tally conditioned. The playground movement saw
and actuality. City Beautiful advocates dared not itself as providing an alternative to the depraved,
ignore or override individuals or categories of indi socially centrifugal city. The playground supplied
vidual predispositions. Ross’s doubts about the the corrective for bad forms of recreation, includ
permanence of specific control systems extended ing illicit drinking establishments, dance halls, and
to civic idealism: “Civic pride and public spirit are theaters of the vaudeville and burlesque types. The
often hot-house plants.” All this suggests how mis street gang’s primitive civicism could be nurtured
taken it would be to view social control as a sinister and its destructive appetites discouraged if only an
side of the City Beautiful: first, because social innovative play director would inveigle it to the
control was only one of several objectives; second, playground and seize its leadership.
because it was normative only; and, third, because Despite the conflicts between the City Beautiful
its rhetorical excesses, typical of the Progressive and playground movements, what united them was
Era, were not translatable into a political program. more significant than their divisions. Their points
The playground movement was more explicitly of unity included social control, provided that con
controlling and manipulative, for its goal was the cept is generalized to accommodate the differences,
socialization of youth. From early childhood to late and agreement about the power of environmental
adolescence, young people were to come under influences on human nature, a nature less teleo
the sway of the organized playground and its direc logical than conditioned. Both subscribed to recre
tor. The play movement was, like the City Beautiful, ation and organized play. Urban beautifiers desired
of middle-class origins, but it was focused on a to reestablish community, a value that the play
particular reform, was more activist, and more ground movement sought to instill almost from
militantly environmentalist. There were potential the young citizen’s cradle. Beautifiers and play
conflicts between the two movements. Park space grounders believed in the expert and upheld effici
designed for Olmsted’s passive recreation and ency. The City Beautiful advocated neighborhood
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playfields and was willing to concede a few acres McFarland, clouds of factory smoke and soot were
of larger parks to playgrounds, provided the sur not only ugly or distasteful. They were visible evi
render did not involve the destruction of landscape dence of the “waste” of fuel, a waste compounded
values. when fly ash “spread upon houses, clothes, goods
Fourth, the City Beautiful leadership insisted and food.” McFarland loved trees, but he believed
O
upon synthesizing beauty and utility. Olmsted and that the proper tree was an “efficient” one. The idea N
other landscape architects had long argued for the of the civic center was promoted in part because E
role of beauty in creating a contented workforce, clustered civic buildings would ensure the efficient,
attracting a superior population, and raising prop economical conduct of the city’s business.
erty values. Burnham and others advanced the Sixth, City Beautiful advocates sought expertise
venerable argument partly for Olmsted’s “pocket in the solution of urban problems. They responded
book” reasons, for, whatever its intellectual permu to growing middle- and upper-class disgust with
tations, American society remained materialistic. inept, piecemeal, patchwork efforts to stay abreast
The champions of the City Beautiful realized that of urban needs. At the same time, experts in the
their vocal opponents, solid middle- and upper- youthful professional fields of architecture, land
middle-class citizens like themselves, were content scape architecture, and engineering were available
with a smoky, noisy, unkempt city so long as it got in sufficient numbers, training, experience, and
the job done: distributed goods, provided housing, eagerness to undertake municipal work.
and brought together employer and employee. The Several desirable aspects of planning clustered
trick, then, was to combine the beautiful, which around the expert. From Olmsted’s time, experts
was beyond value, with the functional, which paid had predicted headlong urban expansion, called for
off in discernible ways. the acquisition of public property before continuing
But by the turn of the century the assertion that urbanization drove up land prices, laid out func
beauty and utility were inseparable meant some tional designs of broad scope, subordinated and
thing more palpable and design-related. No struc integrated details, and allowed for gradual improve
ture or scene could be truly beautiful without being ment within the context of a grand scheme. Without
functional as well. Jessie Good of the municipal a general plan, in the words of the 1893 plan for
improvement movement pinpointed the issue with Kansas City, “the value of selections for public pur
an organic metaphor. “The old saying that beauty poses, their most satisfactory distribution, and the
is only skin deep is deeply false,” she wrote. “Beauty dependence of one improvement upon another,
is as deep as the bones, the blood, the rosy flesh.” cannot be appreciated.” In 1901 the Harrisburg
The Harrisburg plan of 1901 united a report on League for Municipal Improvements conceded that
parks and boulevards with two on mundane but “the financial condition of the city will not at pres
essential street and sewer improvements. The city ent permit the carrying out of Mr. Manning’s sys
plans of Burnham and his associates concerned tem in all its details,” but urged a “substantial
traffic circulation, railroad reorganization, cultural beginning.” Two years later the Local Improvement
and civic centers, recreational improvements, and Committee of the APOAA listed “securing the
other functional matters. Arnold Brunner, a sensi services of an expert” as of first importance to a
tive architect and planner in the classical mode, successful improvement campaign. An expert, the
was so taken with the inextricable natures of beauty committee insisted, “must be employed if the com
and utility that he coined the word “beautility” to munity hopes to have a beautiful entity.” In Modern
express them. Fortunately, Brunner’s neologism Civic Art [1904], Robinson called for a commission
never gained much circulation, but it did epitomize of experts to plan comprehensively and ensure that
City Beautiful functional and aesthetic aspirations. each year’s construction fitted into the total plan.
Beauty and utility were closely related to a fifth Burnham’s aphorism “Make no little plans” distilled
City Beautiful ideal, efficiency. Efficiency was a the experience of City Beautiful experts.
Progressive Era grail, talisman, and buzzword. The Lay devotees of the City Beautiful upheld
presumed efficiency of some private-enterprise expertise for two other reasons. They were com
factories and offices could be transferred to non fortable with the experts who matured before the
pecuniary concerns including the aesthetic. To second decade of the twentieth century, partly
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because they shared their solid middle- and upper- ter of the country, the reformers’ strong sense of
class backgrounds and achievements. Expert George community, all quieted fears of uprising. It does
Kessler could work intimately with layman August not follow, however, that the City Beautiful move
Meyer, expert Warren Manning with layman J. ment advanced without a sense of crisis. Environ
Horace McFarland, and expert Daniel H. Burnham mentalism spurred the City Beautiful to forestall a
with layman Charles D. Norton. This relationship demoralized and debased urban population.
was an important feature of the City Beautiful The movement’s fervent optimism, its eighth
movement, but it faded as younger experts, more ideological component, also blanketed the fears of
absorbed with professionalism, strove for some class conflict. Its evangelical confidence bubbled
distance between themselves and the laity. Further, up from a compound containing the convictions
laymen liked an expert’s cachet upon their plans behind the social, cultural, and ethical outlook of
for promotional reasons. City Beautiful bond issue the middle and upper classes. Other elements in
campaigns stressed the practicality of expertly drawn the compound included the grand, if partial, beau
plans. Expert certitude could deflect doubters and tification achievement of preexposition Chicago
detractors. An expert who spoke well or who wrote and a few other American cities, the adaptable
in sprightly prose could provide an excellent prop grandeur of Paris ascribed to Napoleon III and
for bond issue mass meetings and rallies. Haussmann, and the importable architectonic
Seventh, City Beautiful ideologues were class triumphs of Venice and Rome. The urban trans
conscious in a non-Marxian sense. They believed formation would depend upon the dynamics of
in individual mobility and in some class fluidity, charismatic leaders who were taming scandalous
but they accepted the reality of classes in urban politicians, immigrants, and public service corpor
America. For practical purposes they distinguished ations. Robinson’s rhapsodic opening of Modern
two classes split along functional lines. The upper Civic Art was more florid than most City Beautiful
group, composed of the owners and managers of declarations but it captured the spirit of them all.
substantial enterprises, would benefit from public “The darkness rolls away, and the buildings that
improvements through a general increase in mon had been in shadow stand forth distinctly,” Robinson
etary values and ease of living. Through improve exulted. “The tall facades glow as the sun rises;
ments the upper class would assume the obligations their windows shine as topaz; . . . Whatever was
of class leadership. The lower group, composed of dingy, coarse, and ugly, is either transformed or
manual and nonmanual workers and their families, hidden in shadow . . . There seems to be a new city
was oppressively citybound. Unlike the upper group, for the work of a new day.”
working-class people could not afford vacations, Ninth, the City Beautiful shared in what has
suburban residences, and surcease from the urban been called the American discovery of Europe.
environment. These convictions reached back to To thoughtful Americans of the late nineteenth
Olmsted. New awareness of community needs, century, Europe was more than a nicely arranged
on the other hand, brought a rising emphasis on warehouse filled with classical models. European
recreational facilities for the working class. These cities seemed to be as dynamic as any in America,
included playground parks and playgrounds within yet they were, by American standards, clean,
large landscape parks, public baths, baseball dia well-administered, attractive, even beautiful entities
monds, picnic areas, tennis courts, and golf courses. whose growth and development were well con
In preparing these palliatives City Beautiful ideo trolled. Political scientist Albert Shaw in 1895
logues were not impelled by fears of working-class praised the pre-Haussmannic and Haussmannic
revolt. True, Robinson warned of “the city slum,” ruthless destruction of medieval Paris (there were
where “smoulders the fire which breaks forth in plenty of medieval structures elsewhere in France,
revolution,” but he was practically alone in raising he wrote) but was less enthusiastic about Parisian
the issue, nor did he pursue it beyond a sentence administrative and sanitary arrangements. German
in Modern Civic Art. The ability of local, state, and cities, Shaw found, were masterpieces of adminis
federal governments to contain restiveness during tration. He praised the Viennese government for
the depression of the nineties, returning prosperity forging a beautiful and practical city. Chicago, he
late in the decade, the relatively dispersed charac noted, muffed a vastly greater opportunity after the
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devastating 1871 fire. If the municipality had pur concern for improvement, the City Beautiful par
chased the burned-out district and planned a civic took of a revived civic spirit.
area with public buildings, parks, and boulevards,
it could have sold the leftover land for more than
enough to pay for the improvements. Since the CITY BEAUTIFUL AESTHETICS
O
World’s Columbian Exposition, “Chicago has had N
a clear comprehension of the magnificent effects City Beautiful aesthetics, considered separately E
that may be produced as the result of a large initial from City Beautiful ideology, linked natural beauty,
plan,” but, alas, too late. As Shaw dourly concluded, naturalistic constructivism, and classicism. Rever
“It is evident that Chicago would have been the ence for natural beauty and for naturalistic con
gainer if it could have borrowed some of Vienna’s structivism, its urban counterpart, stands first in
genius for municipal administration.” the order of City Beautiful aesthetics. The priority
In the twilight years of the City Beautiful, may seem misplaced, given the traditional linking
Frederick C. Howe deplored the rampant individu of the City Beautiful with neoclassical forms. When
alism in American cities while he praised German we examine what City Beautiful adherents really
municipal ownership, taxes on the unearned incre were thinking and doing, however, we find a reality
ment from urban land sales, and zoning. German richer than the neoclassic. It was no accident, as
cities’ smooth, powerful administration, he ex Henry Hope Reed, Jr., remarked, that the scenic
plained, stemmed not from their great age as large preservation and urban beautification movements
cities, for they were in that respect younger than burst upon the country at the same time. There
American and British metropolises. German suc were precedents, including the rural cemetery
cess depended upon home rule and the psychology movement and Downing’s call for ruralized homes.
of responsibility that home rule engendered. Howe’s Olmsted personified the joining of rural preserva
paean to the German expert was an extreme tion and managed conservation with the drive for
example of American infatuation with European urban beauty.
urbanism. Infatuations are impermanent. In 1913 As urbanization, mechanization, and commer
McFarland revolted against an uncritical accep cialization roared into the twentieth century, their
tance of all things German at the expense of a levy on beauty was too great to ignore. The pre
realistic awareness of heavy-handed Teutonic bur servation and accentuation of natural beauty were
eaucracy. Just as some municipal reformers stood major motives for the Boston metropolitan park
in awe of European civic administration, so others system, Robinson’s plan for Raleigh, North Carolina,
imbibed European civic design. They were elements Kessler’s for Dallas, and many others. City Beautiful
of the same awakening to those European advances crusader McFarland was a landscape zealot who
adaptable to American conditions. The parallel is com fought to save Niagara Falls from continuing com
plete even to the later reaction against classicism. mercial threats, struggled unsuccessfully to pre
The tenth and culminating constituent of the serve California’s Hetch Hetchy Valley, campaigned
City Beautiful ideology was its enthusiastic welcome for a National Park Service, and became one of the
of the city. The architects, landscape architects, country’s leading rosarians. The Olmsted brothers,
and planners of the era worked in cities and often Burnham, and McKim were among those architects
lived in them or their suburbs. Some rhetorical and planners who traveled between intensely urban
attacks on the unnatural city persisted, but they environments for living or work and suburban,
became rarer and more ritualistic as the twentieth exurban, or rural retreats. Sculptor Augustus Saint-
century advanced. If cities could be made beauti Gaudens ultimately betook himself to New Hampshire.
ful and functional, then they would no longer be That appealing mixture of ebullience and exacti
running sores on the landscape. If the city became tude Stanford White may once have paid a Long
the locus of harmony, mutual responsibility, and Island farmer fifty dollars per tree to leave standing
interdependence between classes, mediated by a grove of potential firewood. Apocryphal or not,
experts, then it would be a peaceful, productive place, the story illustrates White’s love of natural beauty.
not a stark contrast to rural scenery. In its com The landscape design and municipal improvement
prehensive view of the city and in its nonpartisan branches of the City Beautiful praised flowers,
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shrubs, and trees for their enhancing, softening no clear guides in proportion and arrangement.
qualities in city settings. Advocates from the land The genius of Richardson could impose discipline
scape design–municipal improvement background and order upon the Romanesque, as in the Allegheny
espoused corporate beautification, too. They urged County Courthouse and Jail. In weaker hands
grass plots, ground covers, flowers, and plant group Romanesque buildings sometimes appeared ill-
ings for the grounds of small railroad stations. They proportioned and fussily detailed. Their fenestration
praised railroad executives and factory owners who and the arrangement of horizontal and vertical
adopted systematic beautification ideas for their elements were contradictory and confused. Even
properties. Such activities, they noted, often spread some great Romanesque buildings display features
beyond the station or the factory gate to home more compelling than their facades: the grace and
improvement and heightened civic concerns. massing of the rear of Trinity Church, the stylish
Civic designers embraced natural beauty and severity of the Rookery’s court, the powerful arch
naturalistic constructivism in their urban improve at the servant’s entrance of the Glessner House,
ment schemes. Burnham’s plans suggested boule and the functional arrangement of the backs of
vards linking civic centers with waterscapes and park Austin Hall and the old Kansas City Stock Exchange.
landscapes. They proposed new parks and park Neoclassic architecture, in contrast, offered basic
ways to unify and extend the existing landscape- conceptions of proportion and arrangement. Because
recreational facilities. Robinson’s plans for Denver of its range in time and space from classic Greek to
(1906) and Honolulu (1906) offered similar recom the Beaux-Arts, it was adaptable. “It was a flexible
mendations; so did John Nolen’s designs for San style,” Christopher Tunnard wrote, “which could
Diego (1909) and Reading, Pennsylvania (1910). make a unity of a building by combining boldness
City Beautiful planners typically treated naturalistic of plan with refinement of detail. It made possible
parks and parkways as precious assets, not as relics the handling of entirely new building types, fre
to be tolerated or disfigured by the imposition of quently of great scale, that a growing democracy
their own designs, The charge that City Beautiful required. These were the new state capitols, the
plans scorned or devalued natural beauty fits nicely railroad stations, and the public libraries, which are
with models of conflict or dichotomy in city plan part of America’s contributions to world architec
ning, but the charge is simply untrue. ture.” Neoclassic architecture enjoyed other virtues
Granting their interest in naturalistic themes, besides precedent and flexibility. It was ideally
City Beautiful designers were drawn to neoclassic suited to any building requiring easy public access
architecture. To them it represented the ultimate to a few floors, controlled vertical movement, and
step in the late-nineteenth-century search for an a high degree of functional utility. It was, in other
effective, expressive building style. As Carroll L.V. words, a superb envelope for buildings low in pro
Meeks and others have written, nineteenth-century portion to their length and breadth, however much
architects faced a new order of problems repre their monumental domes or interior spaces sug
sented by the office building, the railroad station, gested height. Tunnard’s list of candidates for classic
and by the need to house expanding, differentiating treatment could be extended to include court
governments. Architects increasingly concentrated houses, city halls, museums, art galleries, theaters,
on functional solutions at the expense of bizarre banks, post offices, and newspaper offices. Gothic
eclecticism. Gothic and gaudy Mediterranean styles and Romanesque details became distended and
gave way to a severe commercial vernacular trivial on their low, broad surfaces, but classic
and to the Romanesque. Over time, within the colonnades and arches throve.
Romanesque, turrets softened and shortened, roofs The neoclassical mode encouraged talented
pitched more gently, dormers retreated and lost architects to pursue their experiments in arrange
some excrescences, and ornament flattened into ment and detail within the confines of a discipline.
walls. For all its vogue, however, the Romanesque McKim, an architect whom the advocates of picture
suffered from fatal defects. It was ecclesiastical sque successionism dismiss as a talented copycat,
architecture originally, difficult to adapt to the did not “copy” or “derive” his buildings in any
public and semipublic buildings of a secular culture meaningful sense of those words. The Boston
without severe modifications, for which there were Public Library’s multiple origins may be found in
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Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève Neil Harris, and George Heard Hamilton have writ
in Paris, Leon Alberti’s San Francesco in Rimini, ten, it expressed a romantic attachment to Greece
Richardson’s Trinity Church and his Marshall Field and Rome and, by extension, to the Renaissance
wholesale store, and the Roman Coliseum. Charles city-state. The attachment had less to do with gov
B. Atwood, answering the charges of plagiarism ernmental forms and more with assumed similar
O
leveled at his beautiful Art Building at the Chicago ities of political thought and social achievement. At N
fair, snapped: “The difference between me and the dawn of the twentieth century it was still pos E
some other architects is that I know what to take sible to believe the United States to be a republic
and what to leave, and I know how to combine governed in all important respects by European-
things that come from different sources, while they descended, male-dominated elites. Despite growing
do not.” The designs of these and other neoclassic suffragism women enjoyed relatively little political
buildings admittedly “come from different sources,” participation. Blacks were losing the right to sig
but it is a legitimate question to ask how such nificant involvement in Southern politics, and with
selection should be distinguished from the obvious some exceptions all racial minorities were confined
borrowings and adoptions among the members of to voting for whites. State houses of representatives
the commercial Chicago and residential Prairie as yet elected United States senators. State senators
schools. were chosen on a geographic, not a demographic,
The neoclassic approach encouraged skilled basis. By later standards, the federal government’s
architects, but just as important, its discipline res role was circumscribed and remote from the citizen.
cued a great many mediocre talents. So long as an It was reasonable to emphasize the greatness and
architect followed precedent it was reasonably dif the republican legacy of the United States by adapt
ficult for him to design a bad neoclassic building. ing the architecture of past republics.
Weak ones there were: those built without an ad Several critics have treated neoclassic architec
equate base above grade on city streets, or backed ture and naturalistic constructivism as incongruities
into hillsides, or covered with frivolous detail. Such or curious appositions. Their explanation for the
errors are atypical. Devotees of the neoclassical reality – that in many cities the naturalistic, and
realized that independent genius in facade design often approved, lamb lies down with the neoclas
is a scarce commodity among architects. Any large sical, and frequently disapproved, lion – is twofold.
city is infested with hideous buildings, failed efforts First, neoclassicism characterized the City Beautiful,
at originality, beside which a poised neoclassic not naturalistic constructivism. The juxtaposition
structure is sweet respite for the eyes. Such con of classic and naturalistic represents a sequential
temporary failures do not settle the argument development: all landscape work is of pre-City
against modernism, but they do suggest that merely Beautiful origin or inspiration, while only neo
hurling words of dismissal such as “professional classical buildings are in the City Beautiful mode.
hocus-pocus” at neoclassical buildings does not end Second, the origins of landscape design are
the “battle of styles.” definitely English, while those of the classic are
Lastly, neoclassic architecture evoked American distinctly French and Italian. Eclectic Americans
history and spoke to the late-nineteenth-century mixed the two styles uncritically.
urban elite. Classic construction evoked the American These explanations have an appealing simplicity
past because it was firmly in the architectural but they do not bear up under examination. Combin
tradition from colonial times. It flowered through ing the classic and the naturalistic was not new
the late 1840s before giving way to eclecticism. to the City Beautiful but was a favorite device of
Although the Greek orders were popular, Roman the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European
modes also found favor. The differences between landscape gardening as imported to the United
the classicism of the early nineteenth century and States was not merely Reptonian or simply picture
the neoclassic buildings of the American Renaissance sque but a complex heritage incorporating French
are differences of degree, not of kind. Classic archi and Italian survivals. Classic designs appeared
tecture symbolized the historical heritage of the in “romantic” landscapes and in “natural” English
United States in a way that the Gothic, Romanesque, garden scenes. Olmsted, it will be recalled, learned
or commercial styles never could. As James Early, from the English but also from Jean Alphand and
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Baron Haussmann. Charles Eliot and George Kessler the severely instructive type” of exposition to “play
absorbed important Continental influences. The places, places to which we go in a holiday mood,
Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 combined axial to see instructive things of course, but especially
ity, formality, and naturalistic constructivism, as to see beautiful spectacles.” The Buffalo fair was
did its American derivative, the World’s Columbian deliberately planned to include the crowd in the
Exposition. The inspired combination of neoclassic ensemble. People came “in family groups, . . . every
architecture and naturalistic constructivism dis type from all grades of life,” Page wrote. He caught
turbed few contemporaries. Nor did most of them the interplay of individual and mass, of the fair
object to the later civic blendings of the two styles. goers simultaneously or successively assuming the
The romantic appeal of neoclassical architecture role of participant and observer. “There was never
and the romantic yearnings expressed in natural such a sight under heaven as the people themselves.
istic constructivism reconciled those modes of City They gaze at the crowds . . . And they are them
Beautiful design. selves the crowning glory of the spectacle.” The
Indeed, the astonishment surrounding the Chicago same year Robinson, in his Improvement of Towns
fair’s success focused as much on the celebratory and Cities, urged the “grouping of public buildings,”
aspect of the crowds in the Court of Honor as based on the discussions and plans in Cleveland
on anything else. Here was the Olmstedian ideal preceding the 1903 civic center scheme by Burnham
realized in a neoclassic setting, the friendly mingl and his associates. The Senate Park Commission’s
ing of all classes and types of people. More than stunning designs of 1901–2 gave visual expression
that, the crowd itself became an integral part to the yearnings for urban pageantry, community,
of the spectacle, its spontaneous activity serving and beautiful civic buildings.
as counterpoint to the court’s conscious artistry. In the March 1902 issue of Municipal Affairs
The unprecedented success of the Court of Honor John DeWitt Warner drew together the historical
increased the reawakening interest in the square or and contemporary instances of “Civic Centers” to
city center as the focus of civic life. Urban celebra demonstrate how a traditional, useful, respectable
tions such as New York’s commemoration of Admiral idea was enjoying a renascence. Ostensibly, Warner’s
Dewey fueled a taste for pageantry. Albert Kelsey’s article was a criticism of the New York Fine Arts
perceptive address to the Baltimore municipal art Federation. The federation had proposed to con
conference in 1899 related grouped public buildings struct a single exhibition building to house its
to urban crowds. The buildings, he claimed, were constituent organizations but had failed to plan a
“a perpetual exposition, drawing visitors to the city,” complete civic center for all the city’s major public
while attracting “a desirable class of residents.” and semipublic buildings. But Warner’s complaint
The Pan-American Exposition, a financial failure was incidental to a historical review of the town
remembered chiefly as the site of President McKinley’s center – the focus of civic life from the Acropolis
assassination, unified these conceptions of civic and the Roman Forum, through modern European
aspiration. The architecture of the Buffalo fair was cities, to developments in Boston, Albany, and
a relatively restrained Spanish Renaissance, but the “current projects” in San Francisco, Chicago, and
Court of Fountains was a carefully wrought, three- Cleveland. The Senate Park Commission plan for
dimensional space of 1,400,000 square feet versus Washington came in for special attention. Through
the Court of Honor’s 563,000 square feet. Varied 1902, however, neither Warner nor anyone else had
colors and colored-lighting effects heightened the developed a theory of the civic center. Nothing
sense of spectacle and pageantry, as did the careful existed beyond scattered mentions of European
design of the primary entrance at Buffalo. “The precedent, economy, civic efficiency, civic pride,
ensemble is full of suggestion of what may be done and celebration. The concept of grouped public
with open spaces in our cities,” wrote Charles H. Caffin, buildings was not yet fitted into the developing City
“nor is any argument needed to prove how desir Beautiful ideology.
able it would be, if our great cities presented some All that changed with five publications in 1903–
such focal points of grandeur and human interest.” 4: Burnham, Carrere, and Brunner’s study of the
Walter Hines Page saw in the Buffalo fair the group plan of Cleveland; Robinson’s Modern Civic
latest indications of the “gradual evolution from Art; Albert Kelsey’s “The City Possible”; Charles
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Zueblin’s “The ‘White City’ and After”; and the system and reserve” given to other building oper
Municipal Art Society of Hartford’s The Grouping ations in the city. Robinson wrote of the “stateliness,”
of Public Buildings. These works, together with pre “dignity,” and “scale – the adoption of a certain
vious studies, brought the rationale for the civic module to which all the buildings must strictly
center to maturity. adhere, as they can do with no loss of individuality.”
O
According to these publications, the civic center Compatible buildings could achieve “beauty and N
would supplement, not supplant, the city’s retail- harmony of repose.” E
commercial core. The center thereby deferred to Important as beauty was for itself, its role in
the existing social, political, and economic arrange environmental conditioning was never far from
ments. The civic center would respect the fact that the minds of civic center advocates. The civic
most land near retail-commercial centers was too center’s beauty would reflect in the souls of the
dear for much of it to be given over to parks. In city’s inhabitants, inducing order, calm, and pro
other words, there was no way to bring the middle priety therein. Second, the citizen’s presence in the
landscape to the urban core except in connection center, together with other citizens, would strengthen
with public buildings. An administrative and cultural pride in the city and awaken a sense of community
center would focus citizen attention and traffic near with fellow urban dwellers. Burnham pleaded for
downtown, but major public buildings already were “uniform architecture” to replace the “jumble” of
located scattershot around most downtowns. The buildings, which “sadly disturbs our peacefulness
locational problem involved finding a site compat and destroys that repose within us which is the true
ible with commerce, yet convenient for the public. basis of all contentment.” Zueblin’s retrospective on
Robinson suggested a waterfront location but con the relationship of world’s fairs to city planning re
ceded the inconvenience in some cases and, in called the day when the “full majesty” of the Chicago
others, the municipality’s need to use “its waterfront fair’s “Court of Honor and its greatest revelation
space for other purposes.” His alternative location to the makers of cities” arrived – the twenty-fifth
was on “an eminence.” The elevation, if not too anniversary of the Chicago fire. “Then the human
steep, invited buildings. Robinson, however, did not mass” of fairgoers “gave life to the beautiful court
consider the convenience of collocating the civic with its background of majestic architecture, and
center and the central business area. It was up to man’s latest civic triumph had been achieved.” The
George A. Parker, writing in Grouping of Public mass participation and the interplay of people and
Buildings, to put practicality over picturesqueness. buildings were the great accomplishments of the
The civic center, Parker declared, had to leave main White City: “There was no loss of individuality, no
thoroughfares free and should not “intrude upon place for individualism. The individual was great
the business center, but it should be in juxtaposi but the collectivity was greater.” Similarly, the
tion to it.” The civic center, however grand, “must varied color and lighting effects of the Buffalo
not interfere with” but “be subordinate” to what exposition “demonstrated that there need be no
“our modern cities represent, commercialism and loss of individuality in collective activity.”
industrialism.” This collective activity needed some purpose
The civic center was intended to be a beautiful beyond mere contentment. Robinson supplied the
ensemble, an architectonic triumph far more breath purpose – civic idealism and patriotism – wrapped
taking than a single building, no matter how comely, in rhapsodic prose. Moving from the urban skyline,
could be. Grouping public buildings around a park, “a work of art which speaks not to the eye alone,
square, or intersection of radial streets allowed nor to the head alone, nor to the heart alone; but
the visual delights of perspectives, open spaces, unitedly, to senses, brain, and sentiment,” he turned
and the contrasts between the buildings and their to the buildings of the civic center on their emin
umbrageous settings. Robinson noted that public ence. “There they would visibly dominate the
open space would push encroaching private struc town. To them the community would look up, see
tures farther away. Parker suggested that the influ ing them lording over it at every turn, as, in fact,
ence of the civic center would spread outward as the government ought to do.” Wherever located,
the city developed. Burnham invoked the need for however, a civic center would appear to be “a more
“uniformity of style” and the “example of order, majestic thing and one better worth the devotion
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and service of its citizens.” J.G. Phelps Stokes was as the common artistic property of all citizens, the
at least as hopeful of beauty’s transforming, com task of creating it fell on the cultural and political
munal power when he wrote of the advantages leadership, to whom Zueblin, Burnham, Robinson,
of civic center groupings. “The wider the public and the others addressed their remarks.
enjoyment of the beautiful features of a city, and Finally, the civic center took its inspiration from
the larger the numbers of people who enjoy those Europe, ancient and modern. Warner’s sweeping
beauties together, the wider the mutual thoughts review of the history of the civic center was per
and feelings and interests . . . and this tends to the haps the most inclusive defense of precedent.
development of a wider social morality. When we Milo R. Maltbie argued that Berlin and Paris were
enjoy things together we for the time being feel beautiful principally because of the arrangement,
and think together, and the more often we share location, and surroundings of their buildings. And
the same thoughts and emotions the more unified it was their beauty, especially Parisian beauty, that
in thought and feeling we become.” drew so many Americans away from their own
Utility, efficiency, and expertise joined beauty cities to spend “millions” in Europe. Burnham had
in civic center theory. Stokes argued that “co- similar entrepreneurial and aesthetic reasons for
operation between the departments of a city is his forceful statement in favor of the neoclassic.
essential if the most efficient public service is to He reminded Clevelanders of “the lesson taught
be had; and close co-operation is more easy . . . by the Court of Honor of the World’s Fair of 1893,”
where distances are eliminated.” The “ordinary that “the highest type of beauty can only be assured
citizen” benefited from the “concentration . . . for by the use of one sort of architecture.” Burnham
the same reason that the department store is of and his associates recommended “that the designs
great convenience to the average purchaser . . . It of all the buildings of this group plan should be
costs no more to group buildings,” Stokes went on, derived from the historic motives of the classic
“than to scatter them indiscriminately. Great econ architecture of Rome.” They urged uniformity of
omy is often involved in such grouping, particularly materials, scale, mass, and cornice line.
if all the land required for the proposed improve The neoclassical triumph should not be confused
ment can be purchased at once.” Stokes’s argu with the more fundamental reassertion of traditional
ments echoed similar statements from Warner, Western aesthetics and cultural values. Robinson,
Kelsey, and Robinson. Ford brought forth additional in his earlier Improvement of Towns and Cities, had
utilitarian reasons for a civic center. Proper spacing called for a public building to be “large, substantial,
in a parklike setting would help to protect each white, and pure . . . with detached columns and per
building from fire, and their occupants from urban haps sculptured figures standing clear against the
dust and noise. Their relatively close relationships sky. So rose the Acropolis over Athens, and the
would at the same time encourage the economy opposing temples of Jupiter and Juno on the . . .
of a central heating plant. Only architects and de Capitoline hill.” By 1903 he was having second
signers could create such a complex urban artifact thoughts. In Modern Civic Art he labeled the classic
as a civic center. The manifold aesthetic and engineer “a bourgeois type” of architecture and wrote favor
ing details required it. The report on the Cleveland ably of “the beautiful Gothic constructions of . . .
group plan by Burnham and his associates clinched Flanders.” In any case, Robinson cautioned, “it
the point in prose and graphics. would not be wise to limit the choice of architecture
The value of a civic center extended beyond to a style that is alien in period and clime.” Arthur
its psychic and practical benefits. Burnham urged A. Shurtleff ’s article on Harvard’s college yard
Cleveland’s civic leaders to extend the “order, emphasized scale, mass, materials, and placement
system and reserve” of the center outward to a in relation to other buildings and to the sun’s path,
uniform style for each type of public building, to all part of a European tradition once acknowledged,
the development of the city’s parks and boulevard then lost, in America. Irene Sargent’s 1904 article
system, and to a new “really imposing” railroad in the Craftsman warned against adopting the exter
station, “a beautiful vestibule to the town” to pro nals of European municipal art. Sargent instead
vide “the visitor” with a “favorable” “first impres urged Americans to embrace its fundamentals: class
sion” of Cleveland. While the city would emerge harmony, patriotism, beauty, and civic-mindedness.
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Americans did not in fact confuse the externals the following decade. It blended earlier planning
and the fundamentals. City Beautiful aesthetics convictions, such as the psychic importance of
and sociology were, like the ideal civic building, a natural beauty, with newer notions of evolution and
harmonious whole. environmentalism. It reinforced the experts’ profes
sional convictions and the leadership aspirations
O
of the urban middle and upper-middle classes. N
CONCLUSION Though incomplete and flawed, the City Beautiful E
ideology met one test of success. It effectively sup
By 1904 the advocates of the City Beautiful had ported planning movements in cities across the
forged an ideology that would serve them through United States.
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“The Neighborhood Unit”
from Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs (1929)
Clarence Perry
Reactions to the excesses of the nineteenth-century industrial city had long since occurred by the late 1920s,
and new “scientific” and rationalized approaches to city building were well under way, most particularly public
health and housing reforms. Garden suburbs, or something approximating them, were being built throughout
Europe and North American cities and quickly occupied as emerging middle-class families sought escape
from the congestion and perceived ills of central cities. The outlying suburbs were made possible by the rise
of widespread automobile ownership, but ever increasing automobile traffic was beginning to cause urban
and suburban woes. Traffic dominated the public space of streets, forced pedestrians onto sidewalks, and
was perceived as dangerous for children.
Within this context, members of the New York Regional Planning Association of American (RPAA)
looked to how to rationalize the burgeoning New York region and prepared a comprehensive regional plan,
funded by the non-profit Russell Sage Foundation. The plan dealt with such matters as transportation,
open space, housing, and commerce. Within the plan, Clarence Perry (1872–1944) articulated a distinctly
American version of a garden suburb based on the concept of the self-contained neighborhood unit (Raymond
Unwin and Barry Parker conceived their garden suburbs as larger wholes). The neighborhood unit was
centered on an elementary school and community center, and bounded by arterial streets where apartment
buildings, retail, and services were located. Ideal neighborhood size was 5,000 to 6,000 people, determined
by the population necessary to yield 800 to 1,200 elementary school age children, deemed the most advan-
tageous school size. Within the neighborhood district, through traffic was discouraged by an internally oriented
curvilinear pattern of narrow streets. Parks and playgrounds were distributed throughout, connected by
pedestrian paths.
Principles of the neighborhood unit concept were refined by fellow RPAA members Clarence Stein and
Henry Wright in their 1928 plan for Radburn, New Jersey, which introduced superblocks, culs-de-sac, separ
ated pedestrian and vehicle roadways, and houses oriented toward rear walkways and with garages facing
the street. After World War II, planners and real estate developers seized on the neighborhood unit as a
module for large-scale planned unit developments. In 1936, a much reduced version of the concept was
codified by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) into subdivision standards. These standards had and
continue to have an enormous influence on the form of American suburbs. The firm of Harland Bartholomew
and Associates incorporated the neighborhood unit concept as a central planning principle in many of the
comprehensive plans it prepared for over 550 American cities between 1919 and 1984.
The idea of planning the city around neighborhood units remains strong today, as evidenced by both the
Smart Growth Movement’s and the New Urbanism Movement’s focus on neighborhood design, and by the
many recent city sponsored urban design plans that focus on developing urban villages, most notably those
for St. Paul (Minnesota), San Diego (California), and Seattle (Washington). Although research has shown that
neighborhoods are fluid rather than physically bounded, and that people’s social networks and daily routines
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“ T he N eighb O rh O O d U nit ” 79
extend far beyond the immediate areas in which they live, people nonetheless identify strongly with their local
neighborhood. Offering a counterpoint, Tridib Banerjee and Willam C. Baer’s book Beyond the Neighborhood
Unit: Residential Environments and Public Policy (New York: Plenum Press, 1984) challenges the applicability
of the neighborhood unit concept in contemporary cities.
Perry’s other writings include Housing for the Machine Age (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1939).
O
Other writings on neighborhood theory include Kevin Lynch, “City Size and the Idea of Neighborhood,” in
N
Theory of Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981); and Suzanne Keller’s The Urban Neighborhood: E
A Sociological Perspective (New York: Random House, 1968). See the Editors’ Introduction to Ebenezer
Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, a previous reading in this volume (p. 53), for writings on garden cities
and garden suburbs.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION THE NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT
What is known as a neighborhood, and what is The above title is the name which, to facilitate
now commonly defined as a region, have at least discussion, has been given to the scheme of ar-
one characteristic in common – they possess a rangement for a family-life community that has
certain unity which is quite independent of political evolved as the main conclusion of this study. Our
boundaries. The area with which the Regional investigations showed that residential communities,
Plan of New York is concerned, for instance, has when they meet the universal needs of family life,
no political unity, although it is possessed of other have similar parts performing similar functions. In
unifying characteristics of a social, economic and the neighborhood unit system those parts have been
physical nature. Within this area there are definite put together as an organic whole. The scheme is
political entities, such as villages, counties and put forward as the frame-work of a model com-
cities, forming suitable divisions for sub-regional munity and not as a detailed plan. Its actual rea
planning, and within those units there are definite lization in an individual real-estate development
local or neighborhood communities which are requires the embodiment and garniture which can
entirely without governmental limits and some be given to it only by the planner, the architect, and
times overlap into two or more municipal areas. the builder.
Thus, in the planning of any large metropolitan The underlying principle of the scheme is that
area, we find that three kinds of communities are an urban neighborhood should be regarded both
involved: as a unit of a larger whole and as a distinct entity
in itself. For government, fire and police protection,
1 The regional community, which embraces many and many other services, it depends upon the
municipal communities and is, therefore, a municipality. Its residents, for the most part, find
family of communities; their occupations outside of the neighborhood.
2 The village, county or city community; To invest in bonds, attend the opera or visit the
3 The neighborhood community. museum, perhaps even to buy a piano, they have
to resort to the “downtown” district. But there are
Only the second of these groups has any political certain other facilities, functions or aspects which
framework, although all three have an influence are strictly local and peculiar to a well-arranged
upon political life and development. While the residential community. They may be classified
neighborhood community has no political structure, under four heads: (1) the elementary school, (2)
it frequently has greater unity and coherence than small parks and playgrounds, (3) local shops, and
are found in the village or city and is, therefore, of (4) residential environment. Other neighborhood
fundamental importance to society. institutions and services are sometimes found, but
[ . . . ] these are practically universal.
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80 C larence P erry
Parents have a general interest in the public 3 Open Spaces. – A system of small parks and recre
school system of the city, but they feel a particular ation spaces, planned to meet the needs of the
concern regarding the school attended by their particular neighborhood, should be provided.
children. Similarly, they have a special interest in the 4 Institution Sites. – Sites for the school and other
playgrounds where their own and their neighbors’ institutions having service spheres coinciding
children spend so many formative hours. In regard with the limits of the unit should be suitably
to small stores, the main concern of householders grouped about a central point or common area.
is that they be accessible but not next to their 5 Local Shops. – One or more shopping districts,
own doors. They should also be concentrated and adequate for the population to be served, should
provide for varied requirements. be laid out in the circumference of the unit,
Under the term “residential environment” is preferably at traffic junctions and adjacent to
included the quality of architecture, the layout of similar districts of adjoining neighborhoods.
streets, the planting along curbs and in yards, the 6 Internal Street System. – The unit should be pro-
arrangement and set-back of buildings, and the vided with a special street system, each highway
relation of shops, filling stations and other com- being proportioned to its probable traffic load,
mercial institutions to dwelling places – all the and the street net as a whole being designed to
elements which go into the environment of a home facilitate circulation within the unit and to dis-
and constitute its external atmosphere. The “char- courage its use by through traffic.
acter” of the district in which a person lives tells
something about him. Since he chose it, ordinarily, [For] each of these principles [ . . . ], it is desirable
it is an extension of his personality. One individual [ . . . ] to obtain a clearer picture of them, and
can do but little to create it. It is strictly a com- for that purpose a number of plans and diagrams
munity product. in which they have been applied will now be
It is with the neighborhood itself, and not its presented.
relation to the city at large, that this study is con-
cerned. If it is to be treated as an organic entity,
then it logically follows that the first step in the Low-cost suburban development
conversion of unimproved acreage for residential
purposes will be its division into unit areas, each Character of district
one of which is suitable for a single neighborhood
community. The next step consists in the planning [The plan shown in Figure 1] is based upon an
of each unit so that adequate provision is made actual tract of land in the outskirts of the Borough
for the efficient operation of the four main neigh- of Queens. The section is as yet entirely open and
borhood functions. The attainment of this major exhibits a gently rolling terrain, partly wooded. So
objective – as well as the securing of safety to far, the only roads are of the country type, but they
pedestrians and the laying of the structural founda- are destined some day to be main thoroughfares.
tion for quality in environment – depends, accord- There are no business or industrial establishments
ing to our investigations, upon the observance of in the vicinity.
the following requirements:
Population and housing

Neighborhood-unit principles
The lot subdivision provides 822 single-family
1 Size. – A residential unit development should houses, 236 double houses, 36 row houses and 147
provide housing for that population for which apartment suites, accommodations for a total of
one elementary school is ordinarily required, its 1,241 families. At the rate of 4.93 persons per
actual area depending upon population density. family, this would mean a population of 6,125 and
2 Boundaries. – The unit should be bounded on a school enrollment of 1,021 pupils. For the whole
all sides by arterial streets, sufficiently wide to tract the average density would be 7.75 families
facilitate its by-passing by all through traffic. per gross acre [Table 1].
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 80 10-26-2012 3:17:45 PM

O
N
E
Figure 1 A subdivision for modest dwellings planned as a neighborhood unit.
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 81 10-26-2012 3:17:46 PM

82 C larence P erry
Table 1 Low-cost suburban development: area relations In both design and landscape treatment the common
of the plan depicted in Figure 1 and the central buildings constitute an interesting
and significant neighborhood community center.
Complete unit 160 acres 100 percent
Dwelling house lots 86.5 54.0

Shopping districts
Apartment house lots 3.4 2.1
Business blocks 6.5 4.1
Small shopping districts are located at each of
Market squares 1.2 0.8
the four corners of the development. The streets
School and church sites 1.6 1.0
furnishing access to the stores are widened to pro-
Parks and playgrounds 13.8 8.6
vide for parking, and at the two more important
Greens and circles 3.2 2.0
points there are small market squares, which afford
Streets 43.8 27.4
additional parking space and more opportunity
for unloading space in the rear of the stores. The
total area devoted to business blocks and market
Open spaces plazas amounts to 7.7 acres. The average business
frontage per family provided by the plan is about
The parks, playgrounds, small greens and circles 2.3 feet.
in the tract total 17 acres, or 10.6 percent of the
total area. If there is included also the 1.2 acres of
market squares, the total acreage of open space is Street system
18.2 acres. The largest of these spaces is the com-
mon of 3.3 acres. In carrying out the unit principle, the boundary
This serves both as a park and as a setting or streets have been made sufficiently wide to serve
approach to the school building. Back of the school as main traffic arteries. One of the bounding streets
is the main playground for the small children, of is 160 feet wide, and the other three have widths
2.54 acres, and near it is the girls’ playfield of 1.74 of 120 feet. Each of these arterial highways is pro-
acres. On the opposite side of the schoolyard, a vided with a central roadway for through traffic and
little farther away, is the boys’ playground of 2.7 two service roadways for local traffic separated by
acres. Space for tennis courts is located conven planting strips. One-half of the area of the bound-
iently in another section of the district. At various ary streets is contributed by the development. This
other points are to be found parked ovals or small amounts to 15.3 acres, or 9.5 percent of the total
greens which give attractiveness to vistas and afford area, which is a much larger contribution to general
pleasing bits of landscaping for the surrounding traffic facilities than is ordinarily made by the com-
homes. mercial subdivision, but not greater than that which
is required by present-day traffic needs. The interior
streets are generally 40 or 50 feet in width and are
Community center adequate for the amount of traffic, which will be
developed in a neighborhood of this single-family
The pivotal feature of the layout is the common, density. By the careful design of blocks, the area
with the group of buildings, which face upon it. devoted to streets is rather lower than is usually
These consist of the schoolhouse and two lateral found in a standard gridiron subdivision. If the
structures facing a small central plaza. One of these bounding streets were not over 50 feet wide, the
buildings might be devoted to a public library and percent of the total street area would be reduced
the other to any suitable neighborhood purpose. from the 27.4 percent to about 22 percent. It will
Sites are provided for two churches, one adjoining be observed that most of the streets opening on
the school playground and the other at a prominent the boundary thoroughfares are not opposite sim-
street intersection. The school and its supporting ilar openings in the adjacent developments. There
buildings constitute a terminal vista for a parked are no streets which run clear through the develop-
main highway coming up from the market square. ment without being interrupted.
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A neighborhood unit for an industrial The functional dispositions

section
The above features dictated the employment of
[Figure 2] is presented as a sketch of the kind of a tree-like design for the street system. Its trunk
layout which might be devised for a district in the rests upon the elevated station, passes through the
O
vicinity of factories and railways [see Table 2]. main business district, and terminates at the com- N
Many cities possess somewhat central areas of this munity center. Branches, covering all sections of E
character, which have not been pre-empted by the unit, facilitate easy access to the school, to the
business or industry but which are unsuitable for main street stem, and to the business district.
high-cost housing and too valuable for a low-cost Along the northern border, structures suitable
development entirely of single-family dwellings. for light industry, garages, or warehouses have been
Economically, the only alternative use for such designated. These are to serve as a buffer both for
a section is industrial. If it were built up with the noises and the sights of the railway yards. Next
factories, however, the non-residential area there- to them, separated only by a narrow service street,
abouts would be increased and the daily travel dis is a row of apartments, whose main outlooks will
tance of many workers would be lengthened. One all be directed toward the interior of the unit and
of the main objectives of good city planning is there its parked open spaces.
fore attained when it is made available for homes. The apartments are assigned to sites at the sides
Along the northern boundary of the tract illus of the unit that they may serve as conspicuous
trated lie extensive railroad yards, while its south- visible boundaries and enable the widest possible
ern side borders one of the city’s main arteries, utilization of the attractive vistas which should be
affording both an elevated railway and wide road- provided by the interior features – the ecclesiastical
beds for surface traffic. An elevated station is architecture around the civic center and the park-
located at a point opposite the center of the south- like open spaces.
ern limit, making that spot the main portal of the
development.
Housing density
Table 2 A neighborhood unit for an industrial section –
distribution of area in Figure 2 The above diagram is intended to suggest mainly
an arrangement of the various elements of a neigh-
Complete unit 101.4 acres 100 percent borhood and is not offered as a finished plan. The
street layout is based upon a housing scheme pro-
Residences: houses 37.8 37.3 viding for 2,000 families, of which 68 percent are
Residences: apartments 8.4 8.3 allotted to houses, some semi-detached and some
Parks and play spaces* 10.8 10.6 in rows; and 32 percent to apartments averaging
Business 5.2 5.1
800 square feet of ground area per suite. On the
Warehouses 3.2 3.2
Streets 36.0 35.5 basis of 4.5 persons in houses and 4.2 in suites,
the total population would be around 8,800 people
* This aggregate of open spaces includes the sites for and there would be some 1,400 children of elemen-
school and churches. When these are deducted there tary school age, a fine enrolment for a regulation
will still be something more than one acre per 1,000 city school. The average net ground area per family
residents. Of course, in this and the three other
amounts to 1,003.7 square feet. If the parks and
illustrative schemes, the provisions for open space are
intended to suggest only what should be sought for play areas are included, this figure becomes 1,216
in neighborhood subdivisions or developments. It is square feet.
assumed in each case that elsewhere there will be
provided additional land for large parks and athletic
fields, bringing the combined park and recreation area
Recreation spaces
of the city, as a whole, up to three acres per thousand
population, or one acre for about every 300 persons.
This is in conformity with the standard set forth in These consist of a large schoolyard and two play-
“Public Recreation,” Regional Survey, Vol. V, page 132. grounds suitable for the younger children, grounds
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H I CLARENCE PERRY
A N eighborhood U nit
f o il
A n I n p u s t c ia l S e c t io n -
PARKS AND APARTMENTS WAREHOUSE AND

PLAYGROUNDS LIGHT INDUSTRY
RESIDENTIAL BUSINESS
Figure 2 Diagram illustrating the kind of layout that might be used for a neighborhood in an industrial area.
accommodating nine tennis courts, and a playfield without the usual loss of a comfortable and
adapted either for baseball or soccer football. In attractive living environment. The back and side
distributing these spaces regard was had both to yards may be smaller, but pleasing outlooks
convenience and to their usefulness as open spaces and play spaces are still provided. They belong to
and vistas for the adjacent homes. All should have all the families in common and the unit scheme
O
planting around the edges, and most of them could preserves them for the exclusive use of the N
be seeded, thus avoiding the barren aspect so com- residents. E
mon to city playgrounds.
While this is primarily a housing scheme, it saves
and utilizes for its own purposes that large unearned
Community center increment, in business and industrial values, which
rises naturally out of the mere aggregation of so
The educational, religious and civic life of the com- many people. The community creates that value
munity is provided for by a group of structures, and while it may apparently be absorbed by the
centrally located and disposed so as to furnish an management, nevertheless, some of it goes to the
attractive vista for the trunk street and a pivotal individual householder through the improved home
point for the whole layout. A capacious school is and environment which a corporation, having that
flanked by two churches, and all face upon a small value in prospect, is able to offer.
square which might be embellished with a monu- The percentage of area devoted to streets (35.5)
ment, fountain, or other ornamental feature. The is higher than is usually required in a neighborhood
auditorium, gymnasium, and library of the school, unit scheme. In this case the proportion is boosted
as well as certain other rooms, could be used for by the generous parking space provided in the
civic, cultural and recreational activities of the market square and by the adjoining 200-foot
neighborhood. With such an equipment and an boulevard, one-half of whose area is included in
environment possessing so much of interest and this calculation. Ordinarily the unit scheme makes
service to all the residents, a vigorous local con- possible a saving in street area that is almost,
sciousness would be bound to arise and find expres- if not quite, equal to the land devoted to open
sion in all sorts of agreeable and useful face-to-face spaces. The school and church sites need not
associations. be dedicated. They may simply be reserved and
so marked in the advertising matter with full
confidence that local community needs and senti-
Shopping districts ment will bring about their ultimate purchase by
the proper bodies. If either or both of the church
The most important business area is, of course, sites should not be taken, their very location will
around the main portal and along the southern ensure their eventual appropriation for some pub-
arterial highway. For greater convenience and in- lic, or semi-public, use.
creased exposures a small market square has been
introduced. Here would be the natural place for a
motion-picture theatre, a hotel, and such services Apartment house unit
as a branch post office and a fire-engine house.
Another and smaller shopping district has been Population
placed at the northeast corner to serve the needs
of the homes in that section. On the basis of five-story and basement buildings
and allowing 1,320 square feet per suite, this plan
would accommodate 2,381 families. Counting 4.2
Economic aspects persons per family, the total population would num-
ber 10,000 individuals, of whom about 1,600 would
While this development is adapted to families of probably be of elementary school age, a number
moderate means, comprehensive planning makes which could be nicely accommodated in a modern
possible an intensive and profitable use of the land elementary school.
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 85 10-26-2012 3:17:47 PM

Wtm CLARENCE PERRY
A n Apa rtm en t House U n it
Figure 3 Diagram illustrating the kind of layout that might be used for an apartment house neighborhood.
Table 3 Apartment house unit - distribution of the area Street system

depicted in Figure 3
The unit is bounded by wide streets, while its inter

Complete unit 75.7 acres 100 percent ior system is broken up into shorter highways that
give easy circulation within the unit but do not run
Apartment buildings 12.0 15.9
uninterruptedly through it. In general they converge
Apartment yards 21.3 28.0
upon the community center. Their widths are varied
Parks and playgrounds 10.4 13.8
to fit probable traffic loads and parking needs.
Streets 25.3 33.4
Local business 4.9 6.5
General business 1.8 2.4
Open spaces
The land devoted to parks and playgrounds aver

Environment ages over one acre per 1,000 persons. If the space
in apartment yards is also counted, this average
The general locality is that section where downtown amounts to 3.17 acres per 1,000 persons. The dis
business establishments and residences begin to tribution is [shown in Table 4].
merge. One side of the unit faces on the principal For 1,600 children the space in the school yard
street of the city and this would be devoted to provides an average of 89 square feet per pupil,
general business concerns. A theatre and a business which is a fair allowance considering that all the
block, penetrated by an arcade, would serve both pupils will seldom be in the yard at the same time.
the residents of the unit and the general public. The athletic field is large enough for baseball in the
Table 4 Apartment house unit – area of open spaces Apartment pattern

depicted in Figure 3
The layout of the apartment structures follows quite
Kind Acres closely an actual design employed by Mr. Andrew
J. Thomas for a group of “garden apartments” now
School grounds 3.27 O
being constructed for Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., N
Athletic field 1.85
in New York City. The suites are of four, five, six E
Common 0.81
and seven rooms and, in the case of the larger
Park 0.61
ones, two bath-rooms. Light comes in three sides
Playground 1.03
of a room as a rule and, in some cases, from four
Playground 0.81
sides. All rooms enjoy cross-ventilation.
Circle 0.18
In the Rockefeller plan every apartment looks
Small greens 1.86
out upon a central garden, which is ornamented with
a Japanese rookery and a foot-bridge over running
Total 10.42
water. The walks are to be lined with shrubbery and
the general effect will be park-like and refreshing.
Similar treatments could be given to the various
spring and summer, and football in the fall. By interior spaces of the unit layout. Here, however,
flooding it with a hose in the winter time it can be due to the short and irregular streets and the odd
made available for skating. positions of the buildings, the charm of a given
On the smaller playground it will be possible, if court would be greatly extended because, in many
desired, to mark off six tennis courts. The bottle-neck cases, it would constitute a part of the view of not
park is partly enclosed by a group of apartments, merely one, but several, apartments.
but it is also accessible to the residents in general.
The recreation spaces should be seeded and have
planting around the edges, thus adding attractive- Five-block apartment house unit
ness to the vistas from the surrounding apartments.
Locality
Community center The plan shown in [Figure 4] is put forward as a

suggestion of the type of treatment which might
Around a small common are grouped a school, two be given to central residential areas of high land
churches, and a public building. The last might be values destined for rebuilding because of deteriora-
a branch public library, a museum, a “little theatre,” tion or the sweep of a real estate movement [see
or a fraternal building. In any case it should be Table 5]. The blocks chosen for the ground site are
devoted to a local community use. 200 feet wide and 670 feet long, a length which is
The common may exhibit some kind of formal found in several sections on Manhattan. In this
treatment in which a monument and perhaps a
band-stand may be elements of the design. The
Table 5 Five-block apartment house unit: area relations
situation is one that calls for embellishment, by depicted in Figure 4
means of both architecture and landscaping, and
such a treatment would contribute greatly to local
Five blocks and four cross streets 19.07 acres
pride and the attractiveness of the development.
Two cross streets taken 8,000 sq. ft.
The ground plan of the school indicates a type
Given to boundary streets 50,800 sq. ft.
in which the auditorium, the gymnasium and the
Area of set-backs 39,000 sq. ft.
classrooms are in separate buildings, connected by
Land developed 16.4 acres
corridors. This arrangement greatly facilitates the
Covered by buildings 6.5 acres
use of the school plant by the public in general and
Coverage 40.0 percent
permits, at the same time, an efficient utilization
Three central courts 5.3 acres
of the buildings for instruction purposes.
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 87 10-26-2012 3:17:48 PM

88 C larence P erry
Figure 4 Diagram illustrating a five-block apartment unit that might be used to rebuild residential areas in central
areas that have suffered deterioration.
plan, which borders a river, two streets are closed set-back amounts to 89,800 square feet, or 11,800
and two are carried through the development as square feet more than the area of the two streets
covered roadways under terraced central courts. which were appropriated.
It will be observed that the plan of buildings
encloses 53 percent of the total area devoted to
Ground plan open space in the form of central courts. The main
central court is about the size of Gramercy Park,
The dimensions of the plot between the boundary Manhattan, with its surrounding streets. Since this
streets are 650 feet by 1,200 feet, and the total area area would receive an unusual amount of sunlight,
is approximately 16 acres. The building lines are it would be susceptible to the finest sort of land-
set back from the streets 30 feet on the northern scape and formal garden treatment.
and southern boundaries. Both of the end streets, Both of the end courts are on a level 20 feet
which were originally 60 feet, have been widened higher than the central space and cover the two
to 80 feet, the two 20-foot extra strips being taken streets which are carried through the development.
out of the area of the development. The western Underneath these courts are the service areas
boundary has been enlarged from 80 to 100 feet. for the buildings. At one end of the central space
The area given to street widening and to building there is room for tennis courts and, at the other, a
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 88 10-26-2012 3:17:49 PM

children’s playground of nearly one acre. By reason sides of the unit could be devoted to shops. The
of the large open spaces and the arrangement of auditorium could be suitable for motion pictures,
the buildings, the plan achieves an unusual standard lectures, little-theatre performances, public meet-
as to light in that there is no habitable room that ings, and possibly for public worship. Dances could
has an exposure to sunlight of less than 45 degrees. be easily held in the gymnasium. In the basement
O
The width of all the structures is 50 feet, so that there might be squash courts. N
apartments of two-room depth are possible through E
out the building, while the western central rib, being
130 feet from a 100-foot street, will never have its Height
light unduly shut off by buildings on the adjacent
blocks. The buildings range in height from two and three
stories on the boundary streets to ten stories in the
abutting ribs, fifteen stories in the main central ribs,
Accommodations and thirty-three stories in the two towers. Many of
the roofs could be given a garden-like treatment
The capacity of the buildings is about 1,000 fam and thus contribute to the array of delightful pros-
ilies, with suites ranging from three to fourteen pects which are offered by the scheme.
rooms in size, the majority of them suitable for This plan, though much more compact than the
family occupancy. In addition there would be room three others, nevertheless observes all of the unit
for a hotel for transients, an elementary school, an principles. Neither the community center nor the
auditorium, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, hand- shopping districts are conspicuous, but they are
ball courts, locker rooms and other athletic facilities. present. Children can play, attend school, and visit
The first floors of certain buildings on one or more stores without crossing traffic ways.
9780415668071_P1_08.indd 89 10-26-2012 3:17:49 PM

“The Pack-Donkey’s Way
and Man’s Way” and
“A Contemporary City”
from The City of To-morrow and Its Planning (1929)
Le Corbusier
Swiss architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965) was a founding father of the modernism movement and an early
advocate of what came to be known as the International Style in architecture. Bold, rational, concerned with
efficiency, and enamored of technology, he gave voice to a new Machine Age spirit that suffused a generation
of urban planners and architects and still influences designers today.
Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in a small Swiss town near the French border, Le Corbusier reinvented
himself with his famous pseudonym after moving to Paris in his late twenties to work on theoretical architec-
tural studies. In the 1920s, these studies advanced into designs for modernist single-family houses, which
led to commissions for private homes, most notably the groundbreaking Villa Savoye. This white stucco house
with ribbon windows and tubular industrial railings, which he dubbed “a house for the machine age,” was
lifted off the ground on pilotis (reinforced concrete stilts) that gave structural support to the building, allowing
a free-floating (non-load-bearing) façade and an open floor plan on the upper floor. Many people were shocked
by the spare minimalism of the design, which was completely different than traditional images of residential
architecture. Le Corbusier also worked on studies for multi-family housing blocks and then moved on to stud-
ies for city districts and whole cities.
In 1922, Le Corbusier unveiled his plan for “A Contemporary City of Three Million People,” which created
an incredible stir. The plan consisted of a cluster of cruciform skyscrapers set in a rigid symmetrical grid
pattern. The skyscrapers were to house both offices and apartments for the well-to-do. At the center was a
transportation hub with buses, cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes accommodated at different levels. Smaller,
zigzag apartment blocks surrounding the central skyscrapers were to house proletarian workers. Le Corbusier
insisted that this utopian city was not a vision for the city of the future but rather what a city could be today.
In 1925, he exhibited his Plan Voisin, which shockingly proposed wiping away several hundred acres of
Paris’s Right Bank and building sixty-story towers from the Contemporary City, set in a right-angle grid and
surrounded by open park space. At the time, the scheme was criticized and scorned, but the combined ideas
of clean slate urban renewal, skyscrapers in a park, and rationalized grade-separated transportation systems
took hold in the minds of planners and architects alike as an appropriate solution for the perceived ills and
inefficiencies of existing cities. This vision would transform the face of cities throughout the world during the
twentieth century, in the form of government-sponsored public housing projects, high-end residential towers,
and sprawling single-use apartment complexes.
Reprinted here are two pieces from Le Corbusier’s influential book The City of To-morrow and Its Planning,
in which he spells out his rationale and vision for a streamlined and efficient modern approach to architecture
and city planning. The first piece, “The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way,” is a harsh criticism of traditional
9780415668071_P1_09.indd 90 10-26-2012 3:17:56 PM

E dit O rs ’ I N tr O d U cti O N 91
city structure, and a direct disparagement of Camillo Sitte’s late-nineteenth-century appreciation of the pictur
esque qualities of medieval urban forms (p. 45). The second piece, “A Contemporary City,” re-presents his
utopian vision for a modern city of high rises and highways, this time shown on a vacant “tabula rasa” site.
Le Corbusier’s ideas caught people’s attention but did not win him many urban planning commissions.
The real impact of his ideas can be seen in urban districts and cities built by others that incorporated the
O
planning approaches and architectural designs he advocated. To Le Corbusier we owe the powerful images
N
of high-rise residential “towers in the park” and elevated highways serving segregated traffic flows swooping E
through cities. In America, these ideas spurred countless central city urban renewal and urban freeway pro
jects in the 1950s and 1960s, and similar projects at the edges of many European cities. They continue to
influence city design projects throughout Asia and the developing world. The one city district Le Corbusier
did have a major role in creating was the center of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian state of Punjab,
which was started in the 1950s and was India’s first planned city. The plan follows his transportation and
circulation principles and is an assemblage of buildings with considerable space between them, particularly
in the governmental center and the main business commercial area.
Le Corbusier was a founding member of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), whose
modernist philosophy was proclaimed in its 1933 Manifesto, The Charter of Athens. Allan B. Jacobs and
Donald Appleyard’s “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto,” Journal of the American Planning Association
(1987), reprinted in Part Two of this volume (p. 218), takes on The Charter of Athens, rejecting its Utopian
program and calling instead for an urbanism based upon social objectives for urban development and upon
how people actually live and experience cities and space. Earlier, Jane Jacobs soundly refuted Le Corbusier’s
ideas and the modernist movement in architecture and city planning in the introduction to her book The Life
and Death of Great American Cities, a chapter of which is also reprinted in Part Two (p. 139).
Many of Le Corbusier’s most provocative writings are included in The City of To-morrow and Its Planning
(New York: Dover, 1987) (translated by Frederich Etchells from Urbanisme [1929]). His other books include
Towards a New Architecture (New York: Payson & Clarke, 1927), which has been republished numerous
times including by Dover (1986); Concerning Town Planning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948)
(translated by Oliver Entwistle from Propos d’Urbanisme [1946]); Talks with Students (New York: Orion
Press, 1961), republished under the title Le Corbusier Talks with Students from the Schools of Architecture
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999); and L’Urbanisme des trois etablissements humaines (Paris:
Editions de Minuit, 1959). An edited anthology of Le Corbusier’s writings is The Ideas of Le Corbusier (New
York: G. Braziller, 1981) edited by Jacques Guiton.
Discussions and criticisms of Le Corbusier’s ideas and their influences can be found in M. Christine Boyer,
Le Corbusier: Homme de Lettres (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011); Nicholas Fox Weber, Le
Corbusier: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2008); Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier: World of Art (London: Thames
& Hudson, 2001); Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); Geoffrey H. Baker, Le Corbusier,
and Analysis of Form (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984); Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the
Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Henry Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1967); and Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architec-
ture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).
For a closer look at Le Corbusier’s work in Chandigarh, see Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le
Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press,
2002); and Klaus-Peter Gast and Arthur Ruegg, Le Corbusier: Paris–Chandigarh (Boston, MA: Birkhaüser,
2000). For background on the modernism movement, see Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy (New
York: Norton, 2007); Christopher Wilk, Modernism: Designing a New World (London: Victoria & Albert
Museum, 2006); and Richard Weston, Modernism (London: Phaidon, 2001).
9780415668071_P1_09.indd 91 10-26-2012 3:17:56 PM

92 L e C O rb U sier
THE PACK-DONKEY’S WAY AND The Romans were great legislators, great colon
MAN’S WAY izers, great administrators. When they arrived at
a place, at a cross roads or at a river bank, they
MAN walks in a straight line because he has a goal took a square and set out the plan of a rectilinear
and knows where he is going; he has made up his town, so that it should be clear and well-arranged,
mind to reach some particular place and he goes easy to police and to clean, a place in which you
straight to it. could find your way about and stroll with comfort
The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a – the working town or the pleasure town (Pompeii).
little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, The square plan was in conformity with the dignity
he zigzags in order to avoid the larger stones, or of the Roman citizen.
to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes But at home, in Rome itself, with their eyes
the line of least resistance. turned towards the Empire, they allowed them-
But man governs his feelings by his reason; he selves to be stifled by the Pack-Donkey’s Way.
keeps his feelings and his instincts in check, sub- What an ironical situation! The wealthy, however,
ordinating them to the aim he has in view. He rules went far from the chaos of the town and built their
the brute creation by his intelligence. His intel great and well-planned villas, such as Hadrian’s
ligence formulates laws which are the product of villa.
experience. His experience is born of work; man They were, with Louis XIV, the only great town-
works in order that he may not perish. In order planners of the West.
that production may be possible, a line of conduct In the Middle Ages, overcome by the year 1000,
is essential, the laws of experience must be obeyed. men accepted the leading of the pack-donkey, and
Man must consider the result in advance. long generations endured it after. Louis XIV, after
But the pack-donkey thinks of nothing at all, trying to tidy up the Louvre (i.e. the Colonnade),
except what will save himself trouble. became disgusted and took bold measures: he
The Pack-Donkey’s Way is responsible for built Versailles, where both town and chateau were
the plan of every continental city; including Paris, created in every detail in a rectilinear and well-
unfortunately. planned fashion; the Observatoire, the Invalides
In the areas into which little by little invading and the Esplanade, the Tuileries and the Champs
populations filtered, the covered wagon lumbered Elysées, rose far from the chaos, outside the town
along at the mercy of bumps and hollows, of rocks – all these were ordered and rectilinear.
or mire; a stream was an intimidating obstacle. In The overcrowding had been exorcised. Every
this way were born roads and tracks. At cross roads thing else followed, in a masterly way: the Champs de
or along river banks the first huts were erected, the Mars, l’Etoile, the avenues de Neuilly, de Vincennes,
first houses and the first villages; the houses were de Fontainebleau, etc., for succeeding generations
planted along the tracks, along the Pack-Donkey’s to exploit.
Way. The inhabitants built a fortified wall round and But imperceptibly, as a result of carelessness,
a town hall inside it. They legislated, they toiled, they weakness and anarchy, and by the system of
lived, and always they respected the Pack-Donkey’s “democratic” responsibilities, the old business of
Way. Five centuries later another and larger enclo- overcrowding began again.
sure was built, and five centuries later still a third And as if that were not enough, people began
yet greater. The places where the Pack-Donkey’s to desire it; they have even created it in invoking
Way entered the town became the City Gates and the laws of beauty! The Pack-Donkey’s Way has
the Customs officers were installed there. The vil- been made into a religion.
lage has become a great capital; Paris, Rome, and The movement arose in Germany as a result of
Stamboul are based upon the Pack-Donkey’s Way. a book by Camillo Sitte on town-planning, a most
The great capitals have no arteries; they have wilful piece of work; a glorification of the curved
only capillaries: further growth, therefore, implies line and a specious demonstration of its unrivalled
sickness or death. In order to survive, their exis- beauties. Proof of this was advanced by the ex-
tence has for a long time been in the hands of ample of all the beautiful towns of the Middle Ages;
surgeons who operate constantly. the author confounded the picturesque with the
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“ A C ON T E M P O R A R Y C I T Y ” 93
conditions vital to the existence of a city. Quite and completely uncompromising. There were no
recently whole quarters have been constructed in notes to accompany the plans, and, alas! not every-
Germany based on this aesthetic. (For it was purely body can read a plan. I should have had to be
a question of aesthetics.) constantly on the spot in order to reply to the
This was an appalling and paradoxical mis fundamental questions which spring from the very
O
conception in an age of motor-cars. “So much the depths of human feelings. Such questions are of N
better,” said a great authority to me, one of those profound interest and cannot remain unanswered. E
who direct and elaborate the plans for the extension When at a later date it became necessary that this
of Paris; “motors will be completely held up!” book should be written, a book in which I could
But a modern city lives by the straight line, formulate the new principles of Town Planning, I
inevitably; for the construction of buildings, sewers resolutely decided first of all to find answers to
and tunnels, highways, pavements. The circulation these fundamental questions. I have used two kinds
of traffic demands the straight line; it is the proper of argument: first, those essentially human ones
thing for the heart of a city. The curve is ruinous, which start from the mind or the heart or the physi
difficult and dangerous; it is a paralyzing thing. ology of our sensations as a basis; secondly, his-
The straight line enters into all human history, torical and statistical arguments. Thus I could keep
into all human aim, into every human act. in touch with what is fundamental and at the same
We must have the courage to view the rectilinear time be master of the environment in which all this
cities of America with admiration. If the aesthete takes place.
has not so far done so, the moralist, on the contrary, In this way I hope I shall have been able to help
may well find more food for reflection than at first my reader to take a number of steps by means of
appears. which he can reach a sure and certain position. So
The winding road is the Pack-Donkey’s Way, the that when I unroll my plans I can have the happy
straight road is man’s way. assurance that his astonishment will no longer be
The winding road is the result of happy-go-lucky stupefaction nor his fears mere panic.
heedlessness, of looseness, lack of concentration
and animality.
The straight road is a reaction, an action, a A CONTEMPORARY CITY OF
positive deed, the result of self-mastery. It is sane THREE MILLION INHABITANTS
and noble.
A city is a centre of intense life and effort. Proceeding in the manner of the investigator in his
A heedless people, or society, or town, in which laboratory, I have avoided all special cases, and all
effort is relaxed and is not concentrated, quickly that may be accidental, and I have assumed an
becomes dissipated, overcome and absorbed by a ideal site to begin with. My object was not to over-
nation or a society that goes to work in a positive come the existing state of things, but by construct-
way and controls itself. ing a theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the
It is in this way that cities sink to nothing and fundamental principles of modern town planning. Such
that ruling classes are overthrown. fundamental principles, if they are genuine, can
serve as the skeleton of any system of modern
town planning; being as it were the rules according
A CONTEMPORARY CITY to which development will take place. We shall then
be in a position to take a special case, no matter
The use of technical analysis and architectural syn- what: whether it be Paris, London, Berlin, New York
thesis enabled me to draw up my scheme for or some small town. Then, as a result of what we
a contemporary city of three million inhabitants. have learnt, we can take control and decide in what
The result of my work was shown in November direction the forthcoming battle is to be waged. For
1922 at the Salon d’ Automne in Paris. It was the desire to rebuild any great city in a modern
greeted with a sort of stupor; the shock of surprise way is to engage in a formidable battle. Can you
caused rage in some quarters and enthusiasm in imagine people engaging in a battle without know-
others. The solution I put forward was a rough one ing their objectives? Yet that is exactly what is
9780415668071_P1_09.indd 93 10-26-2012 3:17:56 PM

happening. The authorities are compelled to do ning, for such a classification would define the areas
something, so they give the police white sleeves or to be allotted to these three sections and the de-
set them on horseback, they invent sound signals limitation of their boundaries. This would enable
and light signals, they propose to put bridges over us to formulate and resolve the following problems:
streets or moving pavements under the streets;
more garden cities are suggested, or it is decided 1 The City as a business and residential centre.
to suppress the tramways, and so on. And these 2 The Industrial City in relation to the Garden Cities
decisions are reached in a sort of frantic haste in (i.e. the question of transport).
order, as it were, to hold a wild beast at bay. That 3 The Garden Cities and the daily transport of the
BEAST is the great city. It is infinitely more power- workers. Our first requirement will be an organ
ful than all these devices. And it is just beginning that is compact, rapid, lively and concentrated:
to wake. What will to-morrow bring forth to cope this is the City with its well-organized centre.
with it? Our second requirement will be another organ,
We must have some rule of conduct.1 supple, extensive and elastic; this is the Garden
We must have fundamental principles for City on the periphery.
modern town planning.
Lying between these two organs, we must require
the legal establishment of that absolute necessity,
Site a protective zone which allows of extension, a re-
served zone of woods and fields, a fresh-air reserve.
A level site is the ideal site. In all those places
where traffic becomes over-intensified the level site
gives a chance of a normal solution to the problem. Density of population
Where there is less traffic, differences in level
matter less. The more dense the population of a city is the less
The river flows far away from the city. The river are the distances that have to be covered. The
is a kind of liquid railway, a goods station and a moral, therefore, is that we must increase the density
sorting house. In a decent house the servants’ stairs of the centres of our cities, where business affairs are
do not go through the drawing room – even if the carried on.
maid is charming (or if the little boats delight the
loiterer leaning on a bridge).
Lungs
Population Work in our modern world becomes more intensified

day by day, and its demands affect our nervous
This consists of the citizens proper; of suburban system in a way that grows more and more danger-
dwellers; and of those of a mixed kind. ous. Modern toil demands quiet and fresh air, not
stale air.
(a) Citizens are of the city: those who work and The towns of to-day can only increase in density
live in it. at the expense of the open spaces which are the
(b) Suburban dwellers are those who work in the lungs of a city.
outer industrial zone and who do not come into We must increase the open spaces and diminish
the city: they live in garden cities. the distances to be covered. Therefore the centre of
(c) The mixed sort are those who work in the busi- the city must be constructed vertically.
ness parts of the city but bring up their The city’s residential quarters must no longer
families in garden cities. be built along “corridor-streets,” full of noise and
dust and deprived of light.
To classify these divisions (and so make possible It is a simple matter to build urban dwellings
the transmutation of these recognized types) is to away from the streets, without small internal court-
attack the most important problem in town plan- yards and with the windows looking on to large
9780415668071_P1_09.indd 94 10-26-2012 3:17:56 PM

parks; and this whether our housing schemes are (a) Below-ground there would be the street for
of the type with “set-backs” or built on the “cel- heavy traffic.2 This storey of the houses would
lular” principle. consist merely of concrete piles, and between
them large open spaces which would form a
sort of clearing-house where heavy goods traffic
O
The street could load and unload. N
(b) At the ground floor level of the buildings there E
The street of to-day is still the old bare ground would be the complicated and delicate network
which has been paved over, and under which a few of the ordinary streets taking traffic in every
tube railways have been run. desired direction.
The modern street in the true sense of the word (c) Running north and south, and east and west,
is a new type of organism, a sort of stretched-out and forming the two great axes of the city, there
workshop, a home for many complicated and delic would be great arterial roads for fast one-way
ate organs, such as gas, water and electric mains. traffic built on immense reinforced concrete
It is contrary to all economy, to all security, and to bridges 120 to 180 yards in width and ap-
all sense to bury these important service mains. proached every half-mile or so by subsidiary
They ought to be accessible throughout their length. roads from ground level. These arterial roads
The various storeys of this stretched-out workshop could therefore be joined at any given point,
will each have their own particular functions. If this so that even at the highest speeds the town can
type of street, which I have called a “workshop,” be traversed and the suburbs reached without
is to be realized, it becomes as much a matter of having to negotiate any cross-roads.
construction as are the houses with which it is cus-
tomary to flank it, and the bridges which carry it The number of existing streets should be diminished
over valleys and across rivers. by two-thirds. The number of crossings depends
The modern street should be a masterpiece of directly on the number of streets; and cross-roads
civil engineering and no longer a job for navvies. are an enemy to traffic. The number of existing streets
The “corridor-street” should be tolerated no was fixed at a remote epoch in history. The per-
longer, for it poisons the houses that border it and petuation of the boundaries of properties has, almost
leads to the construction of small internal courts without exception, preserved even the faintest
or “wells.” tracks and footpaths of the old village and made
streets of them, and sometimes even an avenue
(see “The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way”).
Traffic The result is that we have cross-roads every fifty
yards, even every twenty yards or ten yards. And
Traffic can be classified more easily than other this leads to the ridiculous traffic congestion we all
things. know so well.
To-day traffic is not classified – it is like dynamite The distance between two bus stops or two tube
flung at hazard into the street, killing pedestrians. stations gives us the necessary unit for the distance
Even so, traffic does not fulfill its function. This sacrifice between streets, though this unit is conditional on
of the pedestrian leads nowhere. the speed of vehicles and the walking capacity of
If we classify traffic we get: pedestrians. So an average measure of about 400
yards would give the normal separation between
(a) Heavy goods traffic. streets, and make a standard for urban distances. My
(b) Lighter goods traffic, i.e. vans, etc., which make city is conceived on the gridiron system with streets
short journeys in all directions. every 400 yards, though occasionally these distances
(c) Fast traffic, which covers a large section of the are subdivided to give streets every 200 yards.
town. This triple system of superimposed levels
answers every need of motor traffic (lorries, private
Three kinds of roads are needed, and in super cars, taxis, buses) because it provides for rapid and
imposed storeys: mobile transit.
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Traffic running on fixed rails is only justified if 1 We must de-congest the centres of our cities.
it is in the form of a convoy carrying an immense 2 We must augment their density.
load; it then becomes a sort of extension of the 3 We must increase the means for getting about.
underground system or of trains dealing with sub- 4 We must increase parks and open spaces.
urban traffic. The tramway has no right to exist in the
heart of the modern city. At the very centre we have the STATION with its
If the city thus consists of plots about 400 yards landing stage for aero-taxis.
square, this will give us sections of about 40 acres Running north and south, and east and west, we
in area, and the density of population will vary have the MAIN ARTERIES for fast traffic, forming
from 50,000 down to 6,000, according as the “lots” elevated roadways 120 feet wide.
are developed for business or for residential pur- At the base of the sky-scrapers and all round
poses. The natural thing, therefore, would be to them we have a great open space 2,400 yards by
continue to apply our unit of distance as it exists 1,500 yards, giving an area of 3,600,000 square
in the Paris tubes to-day (namely, 400 yards) and yards, and occupied by gardens, parks and avenues.
to put a station in the middle of each plot. In these parks, at the foot of and round the sky-
Following the two great axes of the city, two scrapers, would be the restaurants and cafes, the
“storeys” below the arterial roads for fast traffic, luxury shops, housed in buildings with receding
would run the tubes leading to the four furthest terraces: here too would be the theatres, halls
points of the garden city suburbs, and linking up and so on; and here the parking places or garage
with the metropolitan network [ . . . ]. At a still lower shelters.
level, and again following these two main axes, The sky-scrapers are designed purely for busi-
would run the one-way loop systems for suburban ness purposes.
traffic, and below these again the four great main On the left we have the great public buildings,
lines serving the provinces and running north, the museums, the municipal and administrative
south, east and west. These main lines would end offices. Still further on the left we have the “Park”
at the Central Station, or better still might be con- (which is available for further logical development
nected up by a loop system. of the heart of the city).
On the right, and traversed by one of the arms
of the main arterial roads, we have the warehouses,
The station and the industrial quarters with their goods stations.
All round the city is the protected zone of woods
There is only one station. The only place for the and green fields.
station is in the centre of the city. It is the natural Further beyond are the garden cities, forming a
place for it, and there is no reason for putting it wide encircling band.
anywhere else. The railway station is the hub of the Then, right in the midst of all these, we have the
wheel. Central Station, made up of the following elements:
The station would be an essentially subterranean
building. Its roof, which would be two storeys above (a) The landing-platform; forming an aerodrome
the natural ground level of the city, would form the of 200,000 square yards in area.
aerodrome for aero-taxis. This aerodrome (linked (b) The entresol or mezzanine; at this level are the
up with the main aerodrome in the protected zone) raised tracks for fast motor traffic: the only
must be in close contact with the tubes, the sub- crossing being gyratory.
urban lines, the main lines, the main arteries and (c) The ground floor where are the entrance halls
the administrative services connected with all these. and booking offices for the tubes, suburban,
main line and air traffic.
(d) The “basement”: here are the tubes which serve
THE PLAN OF THE CITY the city and the main arteries.
(e) The “sub-basement”: here are the suburban
The basic principles we must follow are these: lines running on a one-way loop.
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(f ) The “sub-sub-basement”: here are the main Educational and civic centres,
lines (going north, south, east and west). universities, museums of art and
industry, public services, county hall
The city The “Jardin anglais.” (The city can extend here, if
O
necessary.) N
Here we have twenty-four sky-scrapers capable Sports grounds: Motor racing track, Racecourse, E
each of housing 10,000 to 50,000 employees; this Stadium, Swimming baths, etc.
is the business and hotel section, etc., and accounts The Protected Zone (which will be the property
for 400,000 to 600,000 inhabitants. of the city), with its Aerodome, a zone in which
The residential blocks, of the two main types all building would be prohibited; reserved for the
already mentioned, account for a further 600,000 growth of the city as laid down by the municipality:
inhabitants. it would consist of woods, fields and sports grounds.
The garden cities give us a further 2,000,000 The forming of a “protected zone” by continual
inhabitants, or more. purchase of small properties in the immediate
In the great central open space are the cafes, vicinity of the city is one of the most essential and
restaurants, luxury shops, halls of various kinds, urgent tasks which a municipality can pursue. It
a magnificent forum descending by stages down would eventually represent a tenfold return on the
to the immense parks surrounding it, the whole capital invested.
arrangement providing a spectacle of order and
vitality.
Industrial quarters3
Types of buildings to be employed
Density of population
For business: sky-scrapers sixty storeys high with
(a) The sky-scraper: 1,200 inhabitants to the acre. no internal wells or courtyards.
(b) The residential blocks with set-backs: 120 Residential buildings with “set-backs,” of six
inhabitants to the acre. These are the luxury double storeys; again with no internal wells: the
dwellings. flats looking on either side on to immense parks.
(c) The residential blocks on the “cellular” system, Residential buildings on the “cellular” principle,
with a similar number of inhabitants. with “hanging gardens,” looking on to immense
parks; again no internal wells. These are “service-
This great density gives us our necessary shortening flats” of the most modern kind.
of distances and ensures rapid intercommunication.
Note – The average density to the acre of Paris in GARDEN CITIES

the heart of the town is 146, and of London 63;
and of the over-crowded quarters of Paris 213, and Their aesthetic, economy, perfection and
of London 169. modern outlook
A simple phrase suffices to express the necessities

Open spaces of tomorrow: WE MUST BUILD IN THE OPEN.
The lay-out must be of a purely geometrical kind,
Of the area (a), 95 percent of the ground is open with all its many and delicate implications.
(squares, restaurants, theatres). The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is
Of the area (b), 85 percent of the ground is open not geometrical. To build in the open would be
(gardens, sports grounds). to replace our present haphazard arrangements,
Of the area (c), 48 percent of the ground is open which are all we have to-day, by a uniform lay-out.
(gardens, sports grounds). Unless we do this there is no salvation.
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The result of a true geometrical lay-out is a specialist’s solution which can only please other
repetition. specialists.
The result of repetition is a standard, the perfect We must build in the open: both within the city
form (i.e. the creation of standard types). A geo- and around it. Then having worked through every
metrical lay-out means that mathematics play their necessary technical stage and using absolute
part. There is no first-rate human production but ECONOMY, we shall be in a position to experience
has geometry at its base. It is of the very essence the intense joys of a creative art which is based on
of Architecture. To introduce uniformity into the geometry.
building of the city we must industrialize building.
Building is the one economic activity which has so
far resisted industrialization. THE CITY AND ITS AESTHETIC
It has thus escaped the march of progress, with
the result that the cost of building is still abnormally The plan of a city which is here presented is a direct
high. consequence of purely geometric considerations.
The architect, from a professional point of view, A new unit on a large scale (400 yards) inspires
has become a twisted sort of creature. He has everything. Though the gridiron arrangement of
grown to love irregular sites, claiming that they the streets every 400 yards (sometimes only 200)
inspire him with original ideas for getting round is uniform (with a consequent ease in finding one’s
them. Of course he is wrong. For nowadays the way about), no two streets are in any way alike.
only building that can be undertaken must be either This is where, in a magnificent contrapuntal sym-
for the rich or built at a loss (as, for instance, in phony, the forces of geometry come into play.
the case of municipal housing schemes), or else by Suppose we are entering the city by way of the
jerry-building and so robbing the inhabitant of all Great Park. Our fast car takes the special elevated
amenities. A motor-car which is achieved by mass motor track between the majestic sky-scrapers: as
production is a masterpiece of comfort, precision, we approach nearer there is seen the repetition
balance and good taste. A house built to order (on against the sky of the twenty-four sky-scrapers;
an “interesting” site) is a masterpiece of incon to our left and right on the outskirts of each par-
gruity – a monstrous thing. ticular area are the municipal and administrative
If the builder’s yard were reorganized on the buildings; and enclosing the space are the museums
lines of standardization and mass production we and university buildings.
might have gangs of workmen as keen and intel- Then suddenly we find ourselves at the feet of
ligent as mechanics. the first sky-scrapers. But here we have, not the
The mechanic dates back only twenty years, yet meagre shaft of sunlight which so faintly illumines
already he forms the highest caste of the working the dismal streets of New York, but an immensity
world. of space. The whole city is a Park. The terraces
The mason dates . . . from time immemorial! He stretch out over lawns and into groves. Low build-
bangs away with feet and hammer. He smashes ings of a horizontal kind lead the eye on to the
up everything round him, and the plant entrusted foliage of the trees. Where are now the trivial
to him falls to pieces in a few months. The spirit Procuracies? Here is the CITY with its crowds living
of the mason must be disciplined by making him in peace and pure air, where noise is smothered
part of the severe and exact machinery of the under the foliage of green trees. The chaos of New
industrialized builder’s yard. York is overcome. Here, bathed in light, stands the
The cost of building would fall in the proportion modern city.
of 10 to 2. Our car has left the elevated track and has
The wages of the labourers would fall into dropped its speed of sixty miles an hour to run
definite categories; to each according to his merits gently through the residential quarters. The “set-
and service rendered. backs” permit of vast architectural perspectives.4
The “interesting” or erratic site absorbs every There are gardens, games and sports grounds. And
creative faculty of the architect and wears him out. sky everywhere, as far as the eye can see. The
What results is equally erratic: lopsided abortions; square silhouettes of the terraced roofs stand clear
9780415668071_P1_09.indd 98 10-26-2012 3:17:57 PM

against the sky, bordered with the verdure of the papers accept everything with enthusiasm. One
hanging gardens. The uniformity of the units that of them said, “The cities of to-morrow must be
compose the picture throw into relief the firm lines built on new virgin soil.” But no, this is not true!
on which the far-flung masses are constructed. We must go to the old cities, all our inquiries
Their outlines softened by distance, the sky-scrapers confirm it. One of our leading papers supports
O
raise immense geometrical façades all of glass, the suggestion made by one of our greatest and N
and in them is reflected the blue glory of the sky. most reasonable architects, who for once gives E
An overwhelming sensation. Immense but radiant us bad counsel in proposing to erect round about
prisms. Paris a ring of sky-scrapers. The idea is roman-
And in every direction we have a varying spec- tic enough, but it cannot be defended. The sky-
tacle: our “gridiron” is based on a unit of 400 yards, scrapers must be built in the centre and not on
but it is strangely modified by architectural devices! the periphery.
(The “set-backs” are in counterpoint, on a unit of 2 I say “below-ground,” but it would be more exact
600 × 400.) to say at what we call basement level, for if my
The traveler in his airplane, arriving from town, built on concrete piles, were realized, this
Constantinople, or Peking it may be, suddenly sees “basement” would no longer be buried under the
appearing through the wavering lines of rivers and earth.
patches of forests that clear imprint which marks 3 In this section I make new suggestions in regard
a city which has grown in accordance with the spirit to the industrial quarters: they have been content
of man: the mark of the human brain at work. to exist too long in disorder, dirt and in a hand-
As twilight falls the glass sky-scrapers seem to-mouth way. And this is absurd, for Industry,
to flame. This is no dangerous futurism, a sort of when it is on a properly ordered basis, should
literary dynamite flung violently at the spectator. develop in an orderly fashion. A portion of the
It is a spectacle organized by an Architecture which industrial district could be constructed of ready-
uses plastic resources for the modulation of forms made sections by using standard units for the
seen in light. various kinds of buildings needed. Fifty percent
of the site would be reserved for this purpose.
In the event of considerable growth, provision
NOTES would thus be made for moving them into a
different district where there was more space.
1 New suggestions shower on us. Their inventors Bring about “standardization” in the building of
and those who believe in them have their little a works and you would have mobility instead
thrill. It is so easy for them to believe in them. of the crowding which results when factories
But what if they are based on grave errors? How become impossibly congested.
are we to distinguish between what is reasonable 4 As before, this refers to set-backs on plan; build-
and an over-poetical dream? The leading news- ings “à redents,” i.e. with projecting salients.
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9780415668071_P1_09.indd 100 10-26-2012 3:17:57 PM
Part two
Foundations of
the Field
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Plate 3 T he Sculpture Garden at New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibits several urban design principles
that William Whyte researched in the late 1960s and 1970s as part of New York’s Street Life Project, which
was later published in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. This environmental observation study showed
how people prefer flexible seating to maximize personal comfort, the importance of food and people-
watching for activating spaces, the desire for sun or shade in different climate conditions, and how gender
might impact public realm choices. The Street Life Project contributed several new methods to urban design
observation and analysis – but also debunked prevailing knowledge about pedestrian preferences, jaywalking,
transport mode separation, and plaza design. (Photo: M. Larice)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO
Part One illustrates some of the key precedents in the history of city-making: Renaissance idealism that
elevates the role of the designer, the continuing importance of culture in traditional settlement patterns,
and the value of design leadership in transforming the industrial city. It ends with seminal writing that
introduces modernist planning and architecture to the emerging field of “urban design” practice. Both
Ebenezer Howard’s and Clarence Perry’s planning-oriented diagrams provide prescriptive and quantitative
models for designing greenfield residential developments. Incorporating large-scale real estate develop-
ment and Fordist housing production, the subsequent translation of neighborhood unit and garden city
principles often resulted in far less inspiring settlements than their authors had hoped (e.g., placeless
suburbs and stultifying new towns). Likewise with the work of CIAM and Le Corbusier, modernist pre-
scriptions for remaking cities rarely resulted in socially uplifting and well-managed gardens punctuated
with towers and linear apartments. From the ill-managed public housing schemes of the USA to the
ego-centric masterplans for new capital cities, modern design experienced widespread criticism. Aside
from a few masterworks, mid-century architecture and policy-driven planning schemes failed to build
the desired city of the future.
Part Two: Foundations of the Field addresses these criticisms and how they coalesced to establish
“urban design” as both a field of hopeful collaboration and an academic offering of many design and
planning schools. These selections chart the first difficult years of the field – how it was shaped by the
voices of critics and designers into a body of normative theory and grounded research. Part Two contains
some of the most classic writing by the field’s luminaries: Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch, Christopher
Alexander and Colin Rowe, Allan Jacobs and William Whyte. As bookends to these writings, we start
this part of the Reader with a history of the field’s founding, and end it with a statement of the field’s
many current areas of intellectual pursuit.
The birth of “urban design” was a conscious effort by a host of international architects, planners,
landscape architects, academics, and civic leaders who came together in a series of Ivy League Uni-
versity conferences to discuss and organize the newly emergent field. Seeking to identify a collaborative
project between the various built environment professions, these conferences illustrate the difficulty of
organizing a hybrid field of practitioners operating under different value systems. In the first selection,
Richard Marshall chronicles the birth of urban design at the 1956 Harvard conference as both a col-
laborative field of practice and an academic pursuit of various disciplines. In this excerpt from Josep
Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, Marshall provides us with a picture of a field grappling with
definitional existence and how its substantive concerns might be advanced. This selection helps estab-
lish the arc of the second edition of the Urban Design Reader – from initial failures at inter-disciplinary
collaboration, to its continued aspirations toward greater system and professional integration (as observ-
able in later selections in Part Six by Sorkin and Greenberg).
Early foundational research and theory in the urban design field focused on how people understood
the visual qualities and image of cities. Both of the next two selections are concerned with methods of
perceiving and recognizing elements within existing places that might form the basis for future design
action. Gordon Cullen’s work in Europe focused on picturesque and emotional qualities of city design,
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104 INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO
bodily experience, and memory. In The Concise Townscape, Cullen relies on the pictorial aspects of
cities that people recognize as they move through space, which are then subject to later recall and
memory. His contributions in this writing include concepts of “serial vision” and “townscape analysis.”
Contemporaneous and paralleling Cullen’s work in many ways, Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City is also
concerned with the visual qualities of cities, and how their image can be reinforced or made manifest.
Lynch begins this writing by highlighting the importance of visual imagery in making cities legible and
memorable. The methods used in Lynch’s Image of the City were early examples of environmental psy
chology research that sought to understand how people’s perceptions were formed by the physical
structure of cities (e.g., cognitive mapping, use of survey methods, and focused interviews). The work
is indicative of the growing influence that social science methods had in shaping urban design research,
as well as the growing importance of public participation in urban design practice. This selection is one
of the best known from the early urban design canon, and describes Lynch’s famous five elements of
city imageability: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Both of these readings focus on per-
ceptual approaches to place and those physical qualities that are likely to influence orientation, memory,
and the public image of cities (topics important to a later generation of place-making theorists).
The next four readings provide a shared and direct criticism of modern design and planning practice.
Each author’s dissatisfaction with modernism highlights a set of issues where rational thought fails to
produce what the authors assume is good urbanism. For Jane Jacobs, her attack on modern planning
is founded on the belief that contemporary attempts at city building, public housing, and highway plan-
ning created less successful places in the city than those that were produced incrementally over time.
The readings taken from Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities outline her
argument for valuing and protecting the “messy” life of neighborhood streets. Sidewalks for Jane Jacobs
represent an opportunity for chance meeting, casual gathering, and social cohesion – in contrast to the
sterility of modern urbanism. Christopher Alexander’s article, “A City is Not a Tree,” reiterates Jane Jacobs’
sentiments; however, not by means of anecdotal experience, but rather through the use of mathematical
set theory. Alexander argues for a city of overlapping uses, patterns, and districts (a semi-lattice) where
people can find surprising juxtapositions – rather than a city of segregated uses that is designed in a
more tree-like pattern that disavows integration. Alexander calls for a return to traditional city design that
values things such as harmony, beauty, and soul, which he perceives as missing from modern architec-
ture and city design.
The next two critiques are direct attacks against the establishment architecture community, arguing
for more locally relevant, authentic, and communicative urban design. The selection by Robert Venturi
and Denise Scott Brown ponders the design reality of the Las Vegas strip, and how it might be a more
authentic representation of American culture than top-down, modern urban design thinking. With a good
degree of humor, Venturi and Scott Brown suggest the everyday commercial highway might provide a
better guide for designers than abstract metaphors and vocabularies (often used in modern architecture)
that have little to do with place. They use the Las Vegas strip, its casinos, and parking lots as examples
of American urban form that provide direct communication though their decoration, signage, and lighting.
They suggest that what exists in Las Vegas merely needs to be enhanced, rather than replaced with a
more elite urbanism favored by the design establishment. In writing this early essay (which was later
incorporated into a larger book with co-author Steven Izenour), they acknowledge that Las Vegas is
merely a vehicle to illustrate a point about communication, rather than a recommendation for urban and
architectural design itself. The final critique against modern design practice comes from Colin Rowe
and Fred Koetter’s Collage City, in which they argue for an urbanism of fragmented set pieces that
come together in the city as a patchwork of patterns, often colliding with each other. Rowe and Koetter
analyze the city by use of figure-ground maps that enable them to see urban patterns and their inter
action in space very directly. Their critique is against modernism’s desire to build idealized utopias – based
in large-scale diagrams within which no person can find their place. Instead they call for a city of recog
nizable places at the human scale that breaks cities down to a series of district experiences. These four
readings provide direct critique against status quo practices in city planning and architecture. Each of
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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO 105
them allowed urban designers to begin re-appreciating existing urban spaces in contrast to less satisfy-
ing designs foisted on the public by the design establishment.
While the previous four readings provide normative arguments for re-appreciating existing cities, the
next two selections show how urban design researchers began studying the public realm of cities empiric
ally and objectively. Both William Whyte and Allan Jacobs researched different physical elements of the
city (plazas and streets respectively) to show how people use them and how they might be designed
better. In the first of these readings – selections from The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces – William H.
Whyte shows how people use and adapt New York City’s downtown urban plazas for themselves: where
they like to sit, how they adjust their chairs to grab the sun, the importance of food and drink, and the
desire for human comfort. The findings from this research provided new understandings about the gendered
T
use of space, how the amount of comfortable sitting space is the best predictor of plaza use, and im- W
portantly that people like being where other people are. Whyte’s research methods are important in O
expanding our ways of observing use of the city: time lapse photography, environmental behavior
methods, observation methods. The second research selection is from Allan B. Jacobs’ classic book Great
Streets, in which the most important designable qualities of streets are highlighted. Using a variety of
mixed research methods (including: interviews, mapping, pedestrian counting, design drawing, and scaled
comparisons), Jacobs is able to offer a list of required and suggested elements for making great streets.
Both of these works have become required reading for urban designers, not just because of their topical
content, but also because of the way their grounded research has resulted in new theories of the public
realm – which has become the subject matter most naturally associated with urban design practice.
Normative theories have tended to dominate urban design practice, largely because there is little
agreement on what cities should become and how they should be designed. One of the things that
makes urban design such an exciting field, is that every user of the city has an opinion on what makes
a “good city” – in this way, urban design can be very inclusive. At the same time, urban design becomes
dominated then by unending debates over what constitutes that “good city.” In the next selections we
look at two of the most well-read normative statements on good urbanism. Allan B. Jacobs’ and Donald
Appleyard’s “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto” from the Journal of the American Planning Associ
ation presents a ringing indictment against Garden City and modernist overreactions to the ills of the
industrial city (e.g., placelessness, injustice, urban fragmentation, giantism, etc.). The article posits goals
that are essential for good urban environments: livability, identity, access to joy, community life, and so
on. Ideas are presented, as well, on how the fabric of a city might be structured to best achieve those
goals. Kevin Lynch’s book A Theory of Good City Form stands as the most comprehensive normative
theory of good city form yet produced by the urban design field. The selection reprinted here presents
Lynch’s seven performance dimensions – vitality, sense, fit, access, control, efficiency, and justice – by
which communities can evaluate the attributes of their own city.
The urban design field has witnessed unimaginable growth in academia from its foundation in the
mid-1950s. From a small set of elite-level Ivy League conferences, urban design is now represented in
academia by hundreds of programs in the USA and around the world. The spread of the field across the
globe has been remarkable. We see urban design programs across the large research universities of
Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. In terms of printed volume, researchers in the
United Kingdom seem much more prolific than their American counterparts. The professional practice
of urban design can be found in most design firms, and is growing in public sector planning agencies.
In particular, urban design practice is flourishing in those places where centrally organized governments
have both the budgets and the unencumbered freedoms to support public realm improvements (e.g.,
China, the UAE, many places in Europe). Over the past four decades, this growth of the field has led
to many subfields within urban design. Anne Vernez Moudon’s article “A Catholic Approach to Organiz-
ing What Urban Designers Should Know,” from the Journal of Planning Literature, reviews these and
sets out a broad epistemology for the field (i.e. the nature and grounds of knowledge necessary to
practice urban design). Focusing largely on substantive research and theory, her framework illuminates
the many complex dimensions of the urban design field and its necessarily interdisciplinary nature.
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“Josep Lluís Sert’s Urban
Design Legacy”
from Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of
Urban Design (2008)
Richard Marshall
While the design of cities has existed from the earliest urbanisms, the urban design field in academia saw
its birth at a series of conferences at Harvard University in the late 1950s. In this chapter from Josep Lluís
Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, Richard Marshall charts the historical development of the urban design
field and its difficult birth.
Sert was Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design from 1953 to 1969. In his tenure as
Dean he organized a series of conferences to discuss the formulation of the urban design field, bringing in a
host of design luminaries to engage in discussions, including Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Ed Bacon, Hideo
Sasaki, Charles Abrams, Victor Gruen, and the architects Richard Neutra and Garret Eckbo, among others.
In organizing the conferences Sert understood urban design to be carried out by town planners who had a
“complete knowledge of the means of procedure, widened by a constantly evolving world of technics.” These
town planners would act as coordinating facilitators of a collaborative design. Rather than urban design by a
super-architect with all-knowing powers, this initial conceptualization of urban design practice was a collab-
orative, inter-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder undertaking. The town planner Sert has in mind would be
trained in a variety of built environment professions, including both architecture and city planning.
As the first 1956 conference progressed it became clear that Sert’s idealized understanding of the urban
design field would not coalesce so easily. Disciplinary biases inhibited the collaboration that Sert had in mind.
He suggested the design professions needed to be “re-tooled” and find “common ground” among themselves,
with an expanded role for landscape architecture. However in his closing comments, Sert lamented that the
planning field might not have the design skills to contribute actively to the urban design undertaking; and con
sequently the two fields have had difficulty coming together ever since. The field of city planning at mid-century
had become much more abstract, scientifically and quantitatively oriented, and focused on policy at the expense
of its physical planning origins. A series of follow-up conferences were held over the next decade to continue
delineating the urban design field; with each furthering the discussion of the previous one and delving into
sub-topics. Over time, little resolution was reached in broaching the planning–architecture antipathy, with
planning finally leaving the GSD for the university’s policy school just a few years later. By the time of the
last Harvard Urban Design Conference in 1970, urban design had morphed into large-scale architecture, with
a statement to this effect in 1966 by Professors Soltan and Chermayeff that “architecture and urban design
are but a single profession.” This definition of the field was embedded in the specific politics of Harvard, and
unfortunately has contributed to lasting bias against the planning role in urban design since this time.
Harvard was not the only university engaged in academic discussions over the urban design field. A 1958
conference co-hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania also took up the
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“ J osep L lu í s S ert ’ s U rban D esign L egacy ” 107
challenge of shaping the field. Targeted at improving the quality of human life in cities, the UPenn Conference
on Urban Design Criticism was much more focused on the mid-century challenges of urban design as a
multi-disciplinary undertaking. Attended by similar figures (Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Grady Clay, J.B. Jackson,
Ian McHarg, and David Crane), this conference approached cities as human ecology, rather than as a mere
outcome of design. Pre-dating Harvard’s creation of an urban design degree program, UPenn created a joint
architecture and city planning degree program in civic design under the leadership of David Crane (later re-
named urban design). This program lasted until the late 1980s, when faculty departures and a loss of focus
ended the program – with urban design subsequently finding a home in the city planning program (itself strug-
gling at the time). Rather than seeing urban design as a collaborative joint pursuit in the UPenn model, Harvard
established an urban design degree program in 1960–61, with courses distributed to each of the professional
T
degree programs (including a new Department of Urban Planning and Design). The GSD model thereby W
treated urban design as a freely floating sub-discipline with no real home. O
The programs at these schools provide two very different models for urban design education: a studio-
based model where urban design is offered within various professional disciplines; and a model where urban
design became associated with city planning programs primarily (where more than half of urban design pro-
grams are now hosted). Each of these models has shortcomings: the studio design model’s continuing anti
pathy with planners inhibits collaboration; the planning model produces indirect designers with less-developed
graphic and design skills (who shape the design of others through policy, regulation, and guidelines). A more
hopeful third model has emerged within the past two decades, where urban design is offered as a post-professional
degree program within multi-departmental Schools of Design (drawing students from a variety of academic
and professional backgrounds). This model is effectively becoming a nascent fourth branch of the design
professions, and begins to address the collaborative concerns that Sert voiced a half century ago.
This text is a chapter in the compilation volume Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008) edited by Eric Mumford and Hashim Sarkis. Mumford is an urban
design and architecture historian teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. He has become the pre-
eminent author on the development of the urban design field from CIAM to the Harvard Conference years.
His other books include: The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002);
Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University and Postwar American Architecture 1948–1973
(Washington University/University of Chicago Press, 2004); and Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects
and the Formation of a Discipline 1937–1969 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). Hashim
Sarkis is a Lebanese architect and a faculty member in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim
Societies at Harvard’s GSD, where he is also the Director of the Aga Khan Program.
Richard Marshall is Director of Urban Design for Woods Bagot, a global design and planning firm. He also
serves as Adjunct Professor of Architecture at University of Technology in Sydney. Prior to this he worked
for EDAW/AECOM and was an Associate Professor of Urban Design and Director of the Urban Design
Program at Harvard’s GSD. He is a design specialist in waterfront redevelopment and has worked on projects
across the globe. He has authored numerous articles and three books: Emerging Urbanity: Global Urban
Projects in the Asia-Pacific Rim (London: Spon Press, 2003); Waterfronts in Post-Industrial Cities (London:
Spon Press, 2001); and Designing the American City (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2003).
The Conference laid a sound foundation for the further de the Conference that a further meeting would be held in the
velopment of a Program in Urban Design at the Harvard autumn.
Graduate School of Design. It dealt effectively with the forces Report of Faculty Committee on
that are shaping our cities today and with means of effectu the Urban Design Conference
ating designs rather than with the problem of how to design
a city. Of course, in the two days the breadth of the field Josep Lluís Sert became dean of the Graduate School
could not be adequately explored nor could any one aspect of Design in the fall of 1953. Almost immediately
be examined in depth. Dean Sert announced at the close of he set about developing a “common ground” within
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108 R ichard M arshall
the school, focusing on the problems of design in the than the Old World; with improving on the Old
contemporary city. For Sert this common ground World, that is to say, merely quantitatively . . . far
was a space of mediation in which architecture, from creating a new kind of world it has merely
landscape architecture, and planning would operate raised to the power of “n” the potential of the old,
in the realm of urbanism. This initiative started as lending to the virtues and vices of materialism a
a series of courses taught by Sert and a selection kind of giantism in which there is nothing new except
of visiting professors, developed through a series of the giantism, so that the new world is merely the
Urban Design Conferences, and led ultimately to old one drawn in caricature.2
the establishment of the urban design program at
the GSD. The Urban Design Conferences brought In search of an emerging urban-mindedness, the
together a collection of mid-century urban thinkers editors of the Architectural Review asked: Where
and established the emerging discourse to support does the United States stand in this matter?
new lines of academic and professional endeavor.1
Although there is debate as to how successfully Does it wish (as other communities in the world
Sert’s vision was executed, his urban design legacy today have shown they do) to be directly instrumen
is evident. Not only has the program he started tal in molding its own environment, in such a way
continued uninterrupted to this day, but urban de- as to reflect a visual ideal – a concept of what con
sign programs at universities around the world have stitutes order and propriety in the environment – or
direct and indirect connections to Sert and the has the American community rejected a visual ideal,
Harvard program. A review of professional practice in favor of a laissez-faire environment – a universe
uncovers a tremendous scope of urban design of uncontrollable chaos sparsely inhabited by happy
services and specialists, many of whom are gradu- accidents? 3
ates of the Harvard urban design program. Yet the
definition of what urban design is, or is not, has The editors at Architectural Review were not alone
always been somewhat ambiguous. Sert’s attempts in their call for action in the urban realm. The
to define the terms on which urban design might American Institute of Architects considered inau-
be founded, through an extraordinary series of con gurating a national program to “consider the prob-
ferences held at the GSD, are worthy of exploration. lem of relationship between buildings.”4 The time
Throughout his professional life Sert was preoc- was ripe for thinking at a larger scale, and it was
cupied with the development of ideas and themes in this context that Sert began developing his vision
related to the improvement of the human environ- for urban design at Harvard.
ment at a variety of scales. He believed that archi-
tecture was not a hermetic pursuit but one that
should engage with a wide array of issues and SERT’S EARLY THOUGHTS ON URBAN
creative practices. His vision for the potential of DESIGN
urban design was instrumental to how this field
of activity evolved. Evidence of an increasing concern for the plight
of the city can be found in the early writings of
Sert. Can Our Cities Survive? (1942) represents the
THE UNITED STATES IN THE 1950s bridge between Sert’s old life in Europe and his
new life in the United States. In 250 pages Sert
The intellectual underpinnings of urban design can lays out the ClAM conception of the problem with
be traced to an era of tremendous change in urban cities, breaking the city into a series of discrete
situations in and around US cities. In a special edi- categories – dwelling, recreation, work, transporta-
tion of Architectural Review from December 1950 tion, and large scale planning – and concludes with
entitled “Man-Made America,” one critique of the a call for a holistic view of the city.
urban scene is captured well: It is here that we find evidence of Sert’s early
conception of urban design. Unlike other intellec-
The American way of life is concerned fundamen tual movements that dealt with the civic aspects
tally with thinking bigger, going faster, rising higher, of urban form, notably the City Beautiful Movement,
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Sert was concerned with the ordinary elements of architect able to deal with all of the complexities
the urban situation. He wrote that “without a re of the city. Rather, he was advocating for a new
organization of our everyday life, which depends on attitude where the town planner would become
the proper functioning of dwellings, recreation cen- a coordinator, a kind of urban facilitator. This
ters, work places, and the streets and highways that remained a consistent aspect of Sert’s conception
are the connecting links, life in the city cannot of urban design and one that others would rally
produce benefits for the individual or for the com- around. Sert’s town planner would require a new
munity as a whole.”5 This interest in everyday life and different set of skills and knowledge but should
would set Sert’s idea for urban design on a different not be empowered to be the ultimate urban author-
trajectory from some of his contemporaries. Sert ity: “It should not be left to the town planner
T
dissociates his intentions from the tradition of “civic alone to determine what human needs consist of W
design,” which he regarded as being concerned and what conditions will satisfy those needs. The O
only with the creation of monumental civic centers, complexity of the human organism and of its
ignoring the living conditions of people in the material and spiritual aspirations requires the assist
neighborhoods around those centers.6 ance of . . . [others] . . . to rehabilitate existing cities
Can Our Cities Survive? does not use the term or shape new ones . . . the town planner should
“urban design.” But it is clear that in his argument therefore join with these specialists in a labor of
for a better articulation of a “frame” that would collaboration.”9
allow for a greater possibility of social interaction, In later writings Sert would elaborate upon this
Sert is describing his early notion of the role that notion of facilitator and collaborator.10 He thought
urban design should play. The professional respon- that it had become increasingly apparent, especially
sible for solving these urban problems, according after the ClAM Frankfurt Congress of 1979, that
to Sert, was the town planner, whose task was to the study of modern architectural problems led to
coordinate with other specialists, sociologists, econ- those of city planning and that no clear line of
omists, hygienists, teachers, agriculturalists, and separation could be drawn between the two. In
others – in the preparation of regional plans and many respects the primary concerns expressed in
to lead the team of specialists in the preparation Can Our Cities Survive? shifted from singular archi-
of master plans. The town planner would be re- tectural concerns to those of the entire city, and
sponsible for “determining the location of those in so doing expanded the field of architectural
‘organs’ which are the basic elements of urban life enquiry such that “architecture and city planning
and of establishing their layouts.”7 The term “town were tied closer together than ever before, as many
planner” as Sert uses it, however, refers more to a architects were faced with the problems of recon-
state of mind than to a professional distinction, struction and the development of new regions
because those that referred to themselves as town demanding the creation of new communities.”11
planners were for the most part trained as archi- Put simply, architecture’s purview was necessarily
tects. And indeed many of the attributes associated expanded by the demands of the postwar context
with the town planner in Can Our Cities Survive? to an understanding of the need for integration and
bear an uncanny resemblance to those deemed coordination of all city planning activities to deal
necessary for the urban designer, as they were arti with the chaotic growth in cities all over the world.
culated a decade later in the urban design program Sert employs a hybrid term in an essay entitled
curriculum. “Centres of Community Life” that embodies much
Sert stressed that his conception of a town plan- of what he aimed to accomplish in urban design.
ner required a “complete knowledge of the means He uses “architect-planner” to describe a new kind
of procedure, widened by a constantly evolving of professional attitude that encompasses a broader
world of technics.”8 This certainly suggests that the kind of knowledge. The coupling of these terms is
role required a broader and different kind of know relevant in light of emerging separations between
ledge than that of the architect. Sert was clear that the interests of architects and those of planners,
he was not asserting an increased professional which would have tremendous consequences some
role for the architect. He was not arguing for the decades later within the GSD. He clearly articulated
creation of a super professional, a kind of genius what for him was the task for the architect-planner:
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“The architect-planner can only help to build the functions of the city on the design of residential
frame or container within which this community sectors; parks; industrial, commercial, and business
life could take place. We are aware of the need for sectors; the (civic) heart of the city; and transpor-
such a life, for the expression of a real civic culture tation networks. Giedion’s history class grew to
which we believe is greatly hampered today by become Space, Structure, and Urban Design and later
the chaotic conditions of life in our cities. Naturally, split into two distinct courses, one for the urban
the character and conditions of such awakened design program and the other, Space and Structure,
civic life do not depend entirely on the existence for the department of architecture. The Urban
of a favorable frame, but are tied to the political, Design course was integrated with a class called
social, and economic structure of every commu- The Human Scale in 1960 and served as the core
nity.”12 These are the limitations of the architect- of the new urban design program.
planner as Sert understood them. This issue recurs After several years of developing an emerging
in much of Sert’s writing and speaks to the unurban design curriculum at Harvard, Sert and the
heroic posture that Sert saw as the domain of the GSD faculty initiated a remarkable event. The post-
urban designer, in opposition to the idea of the war situation in American architecture had rallied
creative genius. many people to the problem of the city. Aware of
this growing momentum, Sert organized a faculty
committee consisting of Professors Wells Coates,
SERT AT HARVARD Charles Eliot, William Goodman, Huson Jackson,
and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt to prepare for an urban
In 1953 Sert was appointed professor of architec- design symposium. Harvard had a legacy of such
ture and dean of the Graduate School of Design events. Hudnut and Gropius had previously organ
at Harvard University and chair of the department ized the Conference on Urbanism in March 1942 to
of architecture. The GSD’S first dean, Joseph grapple with the task of rebuilding cities. Hudnut
Hudnut, and the GSD’s first chairman of architec- had organized a symposium in May 1949 entitled
ture, Walter Gropius, had both retired, leaving Sert Debunk: A Critical Review of Accepted Planning
tremendous scope in which to define a new agenda Principles, which Sert, as president of ClAM, at-
within the school. Sert embraced this opportunity. tended. The other gathering of note was a sympo-
In 1954 Sert hired Sigfried Giedion to teach and sium in March 1951 entitled Debunk II – Metropolitan
started a series of initiatives that would culminate Planning, which addressed planning in Boston.
in the formation of the urban design program in These conferences addressed, at length, planning’s
1960. The first time the term “urban design” ap- ability to deal with the problems of the city and
peared in the GSD curriculum was in 1954–55, involved a broad range of political, social, and
introduced through Giedion’s History of Urban Design economic issues. Taking this same format, the first
class and a course simply called Urban Design taught Urban Design Conference was held at the GSD on
by Sert, Hideo Sasaki, and Jean-Paul Carlhian. April 9 and 10, 1956.
Giedion’s course dealt with the culture of cities and
the development of urban design as a “natural
expression” of the needs, knowledge, means, and HARVARD URBAN DESIGN
social conditions of each period, including the CONFERENCES
structure of the community: streets, squares, open
spaces, the civic core (heart of the city), pedestri- The aim of the first conference, as articulated by
ans, and traffic. the faculty committee, was to define the essence
Urban Design was a course of lectures and semi of urban design. The intention was to gauge the
nars that dealt with the physical expression of city broad acceptance of the emerging discourse and
planning. The course was linked to a series of col- determine whether there was a set of readily agree-
laborative problems in the urban design studio able principles around which it might cluster. The
and dealt most directly with issues of measure and conference announcement invited participants to
scale-groups of buildings, open areas, roads, and explore the “role of the planner, architect and land-
their relationships – and the effect of the different scape architect in the design and development of
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cities.”13 Among those in attendance were Robert Several key themes emerged from the confer-
Geddes, Pittsburgh Mayor David Lawrence, Ed- ence. Based on the conference proceedings, there
mund Bacon, Eduard Sekler, Josep Lluís Sert, appears to have been equal concern for the idea
Robert Little, William Muschenheim, Garrett of urban design from a variety of disciplinary back-
Eckbo, Richard Neutra, Charles Eliot, Hideo Sasaki, grounds. Further, there seems to have been general
Ladislas Segoe, Charles Abrams, Gyorgy Kepes, agreement with the diagnosis that the city required
Lloyd Rodwin, Frederick Adams, Charles Haar, a radical change and that the “professions” needed
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Victor Gruen, Lewis Mumford, to be retooled to address these problems. Richard
and Jane Jacobs (then an associate editor with Neutra led a discussion panel, “Attitudes Towards
Architectural Forum). Urban Design,” in which he called for a renewed
T
In the condensed report of the conference, role for landscape architecture in the making of W
edited by Tyrwhitt and published in Progressive cities. In a similar way Sert addressed the idea that O
Architecture, Sert spoke to the challenge that the best cities are “living organisms” that require
American cities were likely to face in the coming a holistic approach. Reinforcing Sert’s call for the
decades. “I should like to make a case for the city. development of common ground, the landscape
We cannot deny that there is an American culture architect Garrett Eckbo described what for him was
which is both civic and urban. . . . The younger the greatest issue to be addressed by the profes-
generation in this country . . . has become aware sions. He noted that the professions are “condi-
that the uncontrolled sprawl of our communities tioned by our jobs to work within isolated fragments”
only aggravates their problems, and that the solu- and stressed the need to “work in terms of contin
tion lies in re-shaping the city as a whole.”14 uity of design, which does not have boundaries.”17
These remarks highlight a critique of contem- The participants agreed that urban design was less
porary planning, which in Sert’s view had lost its a discipline in its own right than a way of thinking
capacity to deal with the challenges the city pre- and working that applied to all disciplines.
sented. Sert’s ambition can be seen as both expand- Another preoccupation of the conference was
ing architecture’s purview to engage more with the a discussion of “forces that are shaping cities today,”
city and rescuing the city from the social-science which focused on the relative inability of the design
positivism endemic to planning at the time. Urban professions to influence outcomes in the making
design was Sert’s attempt to re-engage architects of the city. Lloyd Rodwin (founder of the MIT–
in the making of city-scale propositions. After de- Harvard Joint Center for Urban Studies with Martin
scribing city planning as a “new science” concerned Meyerson and others in 1959) described the essen
with careful research and analysis, he went on to tial problem that “architects, planners and land-
say, “In late years the scientific phase has been scape architects rank among the least important
more emphasized than the artistic one. . . . Urban of the forces.” He asked who the “tastemakers in
Design is the part of city planning that deals with urban design” should be and “what evidence is
the physical form of the city. It is by nature three- there that these professions really do have much
or four-dimensional. This is the most creative phase to contribute today to urban design? What are they
of city planning and that in which imagination and doing now to justify the role they would like to
artistic capacities can play a more important part.”15 have?”18 Charles Abrams and Gyorgy Kepes, re-
His opening remarks articulate another of his sponding to Rodwin, affirmed the idea that profes-
primary concerns – the development of a “common sionals’ knowledge about legal, political, and technical
ground” within the professions: “Each of them [archi issues was essential to the making of cities.
tecture, landscape architecture, road engineering, Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs argued against
and city planning] [is] trying to establish a new set the “folly of creating a physical structure at the
of principles and a new language of forms, but it price of destroying the intimate social structure of
also seems logical now that synthesis or reunion a community’s life.”19 Here we see evidence of a
of progress in the different professions be brought degree of discord between an emerging “commu-
together into urban design to get a total picture of nity” perspective and that advocating for “profes-
our physical environment by integration of those sional” agency in the design of cities. Hideo Sasaki,
efforts.”16 responding to Mumford and Jacobs, maintained
9780415668071_P2_01.indd 111 10-26-2012 3:18:05 PM

that “since the visual aspect of a city is only that Gruen, Hosburgh, Reginald Isaacs, Huson Jackson,
which is created, it is obvious that to a large degree Kepes, Lopez, Lynch, Neutra, Mario Romañach,
the individuals mentioned [architects, planners, Sasaki, Sekler, Sert, and Tyrwhitt. The purpose of
landscape architects] are the most responsible for the meeting was to continue the momentum that
the ultimate expression of the urban environment” the previous spring’s conference had generated. In
and that there existed significant opportunities to minutes of that meeting, Sert stated, “I think there
improve the urban environment through design.20 are three main points that stand out. First of all
Sasaki was explicit about what he viewed as the can we establish a common ground for the parti
chief faults in design and by implication what cipation of architect and planner in urban design,
should be the foundation for new ways of thinking or physical planning if you want to call it that, as
about design’s agency in the city. He identified three well as a series of other professions. If this possibil-
issues that urban design should redress: eclecticism ity does not exist, there is no hope. But if this
without meaning; monumentality without meaning, common ground does exist then can we establish
or lack of scale; lack of relationship with surround- a basic program of what we want along broad lines
ings, or emphasis on the spectacular.21 which represent the general ideas of a whole past
The remainder of the conference involved a generation of people. . . . If we can frame this
series of lectures followed by debate and a formal clearly we shall then have a program for action.”
dinner discussion. Mayor Lawrence presented Sert’s program of action was multifaceted. As
Pittsburgh as a case study; Edmund Bacon pre- the Report of the Faculty Committee on the Urban
sented Philadelphia; Victor Gruen presented Fort Design Conference states, the conference “laid a
Worth. Frederick Adams, the head of the Department sound foundation for the further development of a
of City and Regional Planning at MIT, opened the Program in Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate
discussion of “Problems of Implementation of School of Design.”22 In addition, it established the
Urban Designs,” which considered how large scale basis for twelve more Urban Design Conferences dur-
projects should be implemented. The conference ing the rest of the 1950s and through the 1960s.
was wrapped up by a general discussion titled “Is The second Urban Design Conference (April 12
Urban Design Possible Today?” and 13, 1957) aimed to further refine the idea of
In his closing comments Sert described an issue urban design. The concepts agreed upon in the first
at the heart of his vision for urban design that conference were not discussed. In addition, the
would later prove to be of tremendous consequence scope of the conference was reduced. It appears
for the urban design program and for the develop- that Sert was concerned with the breadth of discus-
ment of the intellectual foundation of urban design. sions at the first conference and sought greater
He said that the conference indicated clear agree- focus and clarity in the second meeting. This reduc-
ment between architects and landscape architects tion reflects again the growing discord between
on the need for a new design role in the city. But architectural and planning interests. Although eco-
in referring to the relationship between designers nomics, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines
and planners, he stated, “When we come to the were recognized as having an impact on the con-
city planners and architects there may be a little temporary form of the city, the field of urban design
conflict. There is a certain misgiving among archi- was intentionally reduced to the physical components
tects, as someone has said here, that city planners only. Before the conference, the following statement
do not know anything about the three-dimensional was issued: “This conference is confined to a dis-
world we want to help shape. And the city planners cussion of the design section of the planning process.
think that architects know nothing about city plan- This does not mean this is considered more import
ning. The result is when we come to the field of ant than other essential sections – such as the
urban design, where both should meet and shake establishment of relevant data or the means of
hands, there are many who are not prepared.” implementation – which may fall more directly in
On November 26, 1956, Sert convened an Urban the fields of sociology, economics or government.”23
Design Round Table as a follow-up to the conference. Six statements formed the basis for discussion.
In attendance were Bacon, Walter Bogner, Serge The first was an affirmation for the need for re
Chermayeff, Creighton, Eliot, Fry, Walter Gropius, urbanization, in opposition to suburbanization. The
9780415668071_P2_01.indd 112 10-26-2012 3:18:05 PM

second was a call for the reestablishment of con- for which no curriculum has yet been established.”26
nections between people and nature, as well as He wrote that urban design was the common meet-
among people. This call concerned a larger thread ing ground for the three design professions, and as
present in much of the conference discussions, a a collaborative effort it was the “most productive
desire to reinforce a humanistic approach to city problem at Harvard today.” Yet in his reflections,
making in opposition to the abstraction wrought Dober freely admits the limitations of the collab-
by modern planning “science.” The third statement orative idea at the GSD, describing “departmental
reinforced the growing dislocation between the introversion that too often encourages intellectual
preoccupations of planning and those of design, isolation.” In Dober’s opinion, the urban design
and further articulated the nature of the “conflict” problem was productive not in terms of its success
T
to which Sert’s closing comments at the first confer- but rather for introducing to the student a “macro- W
ence referred: “Even the best two-dimensional land- scopic view of the totality to which he (she) will O
use or zoning plans cannot ensure a three-dimensional create and contribute a part.” Dober’s words high-
implementation that will achieve livability and light a struggle that was to emerge within the GSD
beauty: therefore visual standards are as important in the 1960s – a problem that must have been
a tool of planning.”24 Here we begin to see the recognized by Sert – of an increasing separation
emergence of a territorial claim that would separate between the three departments.
planning from design in even more radical ways Dober’s words capture what may have been
and ultimately define urban design at the GSD, Sert’s ultimate agenda with the introduction of
based on the idea that “the essence of urban design urban design as a program within the school: “It is
is the inter-relation of a number of forces – visual, Harvard’s recognition that if the pedagogical pro-
physical, social, economic, governmental, etc. – cess itself cannot be changed, then the professional
which all appear as causes and effects of design designer can be introduced to an overall view in
decisions.”25 Furthering this claim, the fourth issue anticipation that such an introduction, no matter
was the idea that a design framework capable of how frustrating, will stimulate his imagination to
coordinating between scales should be agreed on ameliorating the physical paradoxes with which he
by architects, landscape architects, and city plan- must work.”27 Tyrwhitt’s essay, “Definitions of Urban
ners. Here the notion of common ground is posited, Design,” described how shortly before Christmas
but there is also a positioning of the design profes- 1956 the editors of Synthesis had written to thirty-
sions in relation to territory controlled by planning. two distinguished architects, landscape architects,
The fifth statement dealt with a desired separation planners, sociologists, economists, lawyers, and
between automobiles and pedestrians, and the sixth prominent citizens asking their definition of urban
concerned the promotion of open space in the design; her essay summarized the responses. Ten
making of the city, reinforcing the need for thinking of those replying refused to commit themselves to
in terms of exterior spatial design. a definition. Four “no’s” were on account of being too
busy (Paul Rudolph was in this class). Three “no’s”
were on grounds of impossibility. Robert Moses’s
DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN THINKING response was short (“I am unable to comply with
AT HARVARD your request”) as was Frank Lloyd Wright’s (“I am
not interested”). Le Corbusier’s reply attempted to
In April 1957 appeared the first issue of Synthesis, define the actual form that urban design should take:
a journal published by GSD students to provide a
platform for student views and work. This issue Urbanism is the most vital expression of a society.
was devoted to urban design and included ten The task of urbanism is to organize the use of the
essays by students and faculty. Writers included land to suit the works of man, which fall into three
Eckbo, Sasaki, Tyrwhitt, and Goodman. Richard categories: 1. the unit of agricultural production; 2.
Dober, working on a master’s of city planning, the linear industrial city; and 3. the radio-concentric
described the current state of urban design as “the city of exchange (ideas, government, commerce).
problem of the conscious, artistic design of the Urbanism is a science with three dimensions. Height
urban environment requiring a specialized training is as important to it as the horizontal expanse.
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Neutra wrote: “Giving shape to a community and of the defining aspects of urban design: “This is
molding its activities is urban design. It deals with a conference upon Urban Design and upon a spe-
the dynamic features in space, but in time as well.” cial aspect of Urban Design – the residential sector.
Gropius offered: “Good urban design represents I think I have already said enough to show that it
that consistent effort to create imaginatively the is not a general conference upon city planning.”30
living spaces of our urban surroundings. In order These projects were examples of how Sert ima
to supersede today’s soul-destroying robotization, gined urban design in practice; despite the idea of
the modern urban designer’s exciting task is to urban design as “common ground,” urban design
satisfy all emotional and practical human needs by was starting to carve out a territorial claim that
coordinating the dictates of nature, technique and would have consequences for the position of the
economy into beautiful habitat.” Giedion wrote program within the school. The developing rift
poetically that for him, “Urban Design has to give between planning and architecture was to even
visual form to the relationship between You and Me.” tually mean that planning would leave the GSD for
a new home at the Kennedy School of Government
– interested more in the abstract notions of the
SUBSEQUENT URBAN DESIGN “forces” shaping cities than in the physical design
CONFERENCES of urban situations.
At the third conference, six projects were
There was no conference in 1958; however, a series presented: Washington Square, Philadelphia, by
of panels met in April to prepare for the next Urban I. M. Pei; Mill Creek, St. Louis, by I. M. Pei; Gratiot
Design Conference. It was agreed that the goal of Redevelopment (Lafayette Park), Detroit, by Mies
the third gathering should be to “arrive at certain van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer; Lake
principles which can guide the design of large scale Meadows, Chicago, by Skidmore, Owings and
residential developments of an urban character . . . Merrill; Don Mills, Toronto, by Macklin Hancock;
both with the city complex and on the fringes of and Vallingby, Stockholm, by the Stockholm Town
the metropolitan area.”28 Planning Office. Material on each project had been
By the third conference, in April 1959, the prin- assembled in advance by a GSD alumnus, who then
ciples of urban design seem to have been suffi- moderated a respective panel, assisted by current
ciently developed so that the first case study of students. In most cases the architect of the project,
projects was attempted. The architectural com the responsible developer, and the city planning
ponent of the conference reinforced the separation director not only provided information but also took
from planning, but the diminution of landscape part in discussions. It is unclear why these projects
architecture’s influence is also evident. This marks were chosen above others; one can only surmise
a fundamental shift from the previous two con that in some way the projects represented physical
ferences and would set the tone for subsequent manifestations of the “principles” outlined in the
meetings. There was a definite attempt to deal with previous conferences. After a day of discussion,
tangible design issues at this conference, and unlike each of the six panels reported to a meeting of
the first two conferences, abstract notions of the alumni and students, and an afternoon was spent
“forces” shaping cities – economic, social, and in open discussion under the chairmanship of
political – were left off the agenda. Indeed, in his Robert Geddes, president of the Harvard GSD
opening comments Sert spoke explicitly to this, alumni association.
stating that “after the second [conference] many of The six selected projects, as Geddes remarked,
us realized that, though these conferences proved divided themselves fairly neatly into pairs. Vallingby
interesting and stimulating, it would be useless to and Don Mills were new towns. Lake Meadows and
continue discussions on general topics as we were Gratiot were similar in terms of programs and sites.
tending to become repetitious.” The Washington Square – Society Hill development
Sert spoke of his frustration with the emerging and the Mill Creek development have similar links
urban design discourse, describing the previous to their surroundings and share problems and pro-
conference results as a “fog of amiable general grams. The format of the third conference proved
ities.”29 In his opening comments, Sert offered one successful and was repeated at several conferences,
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including the fifth one. The sixth conference changed up the broad implications of mass-industrialized
scale and dealt with the issues of inter-city growth. housing. This conference was strongly affected by
The eighth conference refocused its attention on significant changes in the GSD, as well as in
the core of the city, but by 1964 the social, political, American society at large. Maurice Kilbridge, a
and economic concerns outweighed any emphasis Harvard Business School professor, had replaced
on form or aesthetics. Sert as dean in 1969. The school was experiencing
Overall, there was a tendency for the later con- financial difficulties, and there was significant social
ferences to become more abstract and general. turbulence within both the faculty and student body.
The ninth and tenth conferences (1965 and 1966) An active student movement politicized the atmo-
addressed design education. The tenth conference sphere of the conference. Discussions of the nature
T
again raised the issue of urban design’s definition. of urban design had given way to critiques of state W
On a panel entitled “Changing Educational Require and federal housing programs. O
ments in Architecture and Urban Design,” there
was still significant debate about exactly what urban
design was. Benjamin Thomson, chair of the Depart URBAN DESIGN PROGRAM AT HARVARD
ment of Architecture at the GSD, described urban
design as “large-scale architecture.” Roger Montgomery, Beginning in the academic year 1960–61, the GSD
professor of architecture at Washington University, offered an advanced interdepartmental program in
called it “project-scale design.” GSD Professors urban design, open only to selected candidates from
Chermayeff and Soltan stated in a joint declaration: among those who already held one of the school’s
“Architecture and Urban Design are but a single first professional degrees (B. Arch., MLA, or MCP)
profession. DESIGN is at the heart of these efforts.” or an equivalent qualification from another institu-
Chermayeff and Soltan precisely articulated the tion. The program, as it was initially developed,
emerging trajectory of urban design’s development. required a minimum of one year’s study in resi-
Wilhelm von Moltke, chairman of the department dence and led to the degrees Master of Architecture
of urban design, in a move away from architectural in Urban Design, Master of Landscape Architecture
definitions, stated: “Urban Design is not architec- in Urban Design, or Master of City Planning in
ture. The function of urban design, its purpose and Urban Design. The fact that there were three urban
objective, is to give form and order to the future. design degrees is in itself significant and speaks to
As with the master plan, urban design provides a how urban design was imagined as a floating pro-
master program and master form for urban growth. gram in which students from the three disciplines
It is primarily a collaborative effort involving other would come together in the consideration of a
professions.”31 holistic approach to the city. Urban design was
In line with growing social and political develop- conceived as an extension of one’s own disciplinary
ments in the United States, there arose a growing education and not as its own discipline. These
critique that the conferences had little to do with separate roles were reinforced within the course of
the reality of city life. The twelfth conference, con- study, with each discipline engaging in different
ducted in an atmosphere of grief surrounding the activities.32
assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, dealt Although the three departments jointly offered
with a report of the New Communities Project, courses within the urban design program, con
a year-long research study supported by a grant tinuing Sert’s assertion that it be the common
from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban ground within the school, the role of landscape
Development to investigate plans for a compact architects within the program was small. The Urban
city for more than two hundred thousand people. Design Studio of 1960 was an intensive course with
Principal investigators for the project were Sert, problems conducted conjunctively rather than
William Nash, Chair of City and Regional Planning, collaboratively, to give all members of the class a
Walter Isard, and George Pillorge. shared experience in the three professional aspects
The last of the Urban Design Conferences took of the work. The fall part of the course, led by Sert,
place in 1970. The event was cosponsored by the dealt with new developments or new towns. The
GSD and the National Urban Coalition and took spring session, led by von Moltke, concerned the
9780415668071_P2_01.indd 115 10-26-2012 3:18:05 PM

rebuilding of large scale parts of the city. The studio through a tremendous crisis. Symptomatic of larger
used Boston as a laboratory, and the students’ work trends affecting the planning profession’s view of
addressed different parts of the city for new and itself, the Department increasingly moved away
redevelopment projects, with the Charles River, the from a “physical” view of the city, alienating itself
Fenway, the North Shore, and Fort Point Channel from the Departments of Architecture and Landscape
among the sites of investigation. In addition, the Architecture. The divide became so wide that in
studio included theoretical projects at the scale of 1984 the Master of City Planning degree program
some of Sert’s pilot plans. departed the GSD and moved to the Kennedy
The 1962 GSD Register lists faculty who taught School of Government, although several key plan-
in the urban design program: Sert, Martin Meyerson, ning faculty members, including Vigier and William
Sasaki, Soltan, Sekler, Tyrwhitt, Fumihiko Maki, Doebele, continued to teach planning within the
François Vigier, and Shadrach Woods. These first urban design program.
faculty members shaped the origins of what urban With the Master of City Planning gone from
design became at Harvard, and their influence the GSD and the Department of City and Regional
informed what urban design was to become in Planning decimated, the School established the
universities throughout the United States and the Department of Urban Planning and Design and
rest of the world. moved the urban design program under this new
In its fifth year of existence at the GSD, the department. Urban design, the “fourth discipline,”
urban design program once again became the focus filled the void left by planning. The Department of
of a student publication. In an April 1965 issue of Urban Planning and Design offered the degrees
Connection were critical appraisals of the program Master of Architecture in Urban Design and Master
by Perry Neubauer and Roy Mann. Neubauer is of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design.34
candid, writing: “The Urban Design Program has
made considerable progress in the formulation of
educational objectives and a curriculum of study; URBAN DESIGN AS A COMMON
but it has not fully realized one of the concepts on UNDERTAKING
which it was based: The integration of the three
design disciplines of architecture, landscape archi- The Urban Design Conferences (particularly the
tecture, and city planning. At the present time, in first two) were remarkable unions of interested par-
fact, the program seems to be setting up a fourth ties engaged in the making of cities. They created
discipline with a definite architectural bias.”33 the momentum that Sert and his faculty needed to
establish the urban design program at Harvard.
They promoted recognition of a different field of
ON COMMON GROUND design endeavor, one that required a particular set
of perspectives and skills. Sert’s conferences created
Although urban design was established as a field a place for likeminded thinkers to gather and argue
of activity rather than as a professional discipline, about what urban design was, who would carry it
it quickly began to develop its own territory, both out, and what role it would have within the world
within the GSD and professionally. Neubauer’s com- at large. Although an accepted understanding of the
ments reflect the emergence of urban design as a territory of urban design was never fully reached,
“fourth discipline” at the design school. Although the conferences nevertheless established a founda-
it was initially imagined as an extension of the core tion for the emergence of urban design and for agree
disciplines within the school, it became something ment on the need to design the future of the city.
quite separate. The Urban Design Conferences
began as an undertaking to explore the common
ground of the city. They bear testament, however, NOTES
to the fragmentation of the professions and the
emergence of troubled social times in the 1960s. 1 Report of Faculty Committee on the Urban
Once urban design arrived at Harvard, the Design Conference, April 24, 1956. Harvard Uni
Department of City and Regional Planning went versity Archives, UAV 433.7.4, sub. lIB, Box 19.
9780415668071_P2_01.indd 116 10-26-2012 3:18:05 PM

2 “Man-Made America,” Architectural Review 108, 16 Ibid.

no. 648 (December 1950): 341. 17 Sert, Report of Faculty Committee, 99.
3 Ibid., 343. 18 Ibid.
4 Edmund Bacon, “A Talk Presented to the Second 19 Ibid., 103. Also see Lewis Mumford, Letter to
Invitation Harvard Conference on Urban Design, Sert, December 28, 1940. Special Collections.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 12, 1957,” Second 20 Ibid., 101.
Urban Design Conference Announcement and 21 Ibid., 102.
Program (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Graduate 22 Ibid.
School of Design, 1957). Special Collections, 23 Second Urban Design Conference. Announcement
Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University and Program.
T
Graduate School of Design (hereafter Special 24 Ibid. W
Collections), Rare NAC 46 Harv 1957. 25 Ibid. O
5 Josep Lluís Sert, Can Our Cities Survive? An ABC 26 Richard Dober, “The Collaborative Process and
of Urban Problems, Their Analysis, Their Solutions Urban Design at Harvard,” in Synthesis, April
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957, p. 3.
1942), 229. 27 Ibid.
6 See Josep Lluís Sert, Opening Remarks to the 28 Third Urban Design Conference Program (Cambridge,
Urban Design Conference, April 9, 1956. Special Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of
Collections, Rare NAC 46 Harv 1956. Design, [April 25, 1959]). Special Collections,
7 Ibid. Rare HT107·U712X 1959.
8 Sert, Can Our Cities Survive? 224. 29 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 234. 30 Ibid.
10 In a later essay titled “Centers of Community 31 Tenth Urban Design Conference Proceedings
Life,” written as the introduction to ClAM 8: The (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate
Heart of the City (1952), a book Sert wrote with School of Design, 1966), 14. Special Collections,
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Ernesto Rogers, he re- Rare NAC 46 Harv 1966.
inforced and expanded on many of the issues 32 An interview with Emeritus Professor Charles
developed in Can Our Cities Survive? See ClAM Harris at GSD, March 25, 2003. Hired by Hideo
8: The Heart of the City (New York: Pellegrini Sasaki to teach in the department of landscape
and Cudahy, 1952). architecture in 1958, Professor Harris was chair
11 ClAM 8: The Heart of the City, 3. of the department of landscape architecture
12 Ibid., 11. from 1968 to 1978.
13 Sert, Opening Remarks to the Urban Design 33 Perry Neubauer, “Educating the Urban Designer,”
Conference. Connection, April 1965, p. 62.
14 Sert, Report of the Faculty Committee, 98. 34 The urban planning degree program was
15 Sert, Opening Remarks to the Urban Design eventually reintroduced at the GSD in the
Conference. mid-1990s.
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“Introduction to The Concise
Townscape”
from The Concise Townscape (1961)
Gordon Cullen
Like Kevin Lynch (p. 125), Gordon Cullen (1914–1994) was interested in how people perceive urban en-
vironments through their sense of sight, but his emphasis was on emotional impacts rather than legibility.
In his seminal book Townscape, later republished as The Concise Townscape, he defined urban design as
The Art of Relationship. The goal was to manipulate groups of buildings and physical town elements so as
to achieve visual impact and drama.
Cullen understood that people apprehend urban environments through kinesthetic experience as they move
through them in everyday life, and felt that this fundamental body–environment relationship was a basis for
design: cities should be designed from the point of view of the moving person. From this, he developed the
concept of Serial Vision, which theorizes that urban scenes are experienced as a series of revelations, as
current views juxtapose with emerging views. Tensions related to an observer’s position in the environment
– here versus there, enclosure versus exposure, constraint versus relief, etc. – could be purposefully and
artfully designed for.
Cullen was also concerned with sense of place, which he theorized through the concept of This and That.
He argued that to achieve a unique sense of place, individual townscape elements should be designed as
part of a whole. Taking a cue from the qualities of pre-modern towns, he advocated that a sense of wholeness
would be best achieved by allowing diversity within an agreed-upon common visual framework, rather than
through complete visual conformity and regularity.
Within The Concise Townscape, Cullen illustrated his theoretical ideas with freehand ink drawings as well
as photographs. Some of the most memorable drawings include a set that shows the plan of a medieval hill
town with the path of a walk through it indicated, and related sketches of the sequential views seen along
the path. Like Camillo Sitte before him, Cullen focused on picturesque visual effects, but he analyzed and
illustrated these effects largely through perspective views rather than projected plans as Sitte had done, mak-
ing his ideas perhaps more accessible.
As well as theory, Cullen laid out practical ideas for how to accomplish desired design objectives. After
Townscape, Cullen developed a method for applying townscape ideas to urban places. The conceptual under
pinning of the method involved the idea of two interlinked chains: an integrated chain of human activity,
and a spatial chain of physical elements. He developed matrices of human factors and physical factors that
designers could use to map a design problem. Cullen’s principles for creating a unique sense of place can
be derived from his proposal for the new (never built) town of Maryculter, in Scotland: fit development to the
site, provide a center, provide distinctive housing areas, create distinct edges and boundaries, provide a
network of recognizable landmarks, use topography and planting to create drama, and provide a series of
sequential enclosures and climaxes to create a memorable unfolding sense of drama.
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“ I N tr O D U cti O N t O T h E C O N cis E T O w N sca P E ” 119
Cullen’s ideas had an enormous influence on a generation of British urban designers, although his work
has been criticized as backward-looking because of its focus on picturesque aesthetic qualities. Other re-
sources on the kinesthetic experience of urban space are Peter Bosselmann, Representation of Places:
Reality and Realism in City Design (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); and Donald Appleyard,
Kevin Lynch, and John R. Myer, The View from the Road (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965).
INTRODUCTION TO THE 1959 EDITION houses. Suppose that we are just looking at the
T
temple by itself, it would stand in front of us and W
There are advantages to be gained from the gather- all its qualities, size, colour and intricacy, would be O
ing together of people to form a town. A single evident. But put the temple back amongst the small
family living in the country can scarcely hope to houses and immediately its size is made more real
drop into a theatre, have a meal out or browse in and more obvious by the comparison between the
a library, whereas the same family living in a town two scales. Instead of being a big temple it TOWERS.
can enjoy these amenities. The little money that The difference in meaning between bigness and
one family can afford is multiplied by thousands towering is the measure of the relationship.
and so a collective amenity is made possible. A In fact there is an art of relationship just as there
city is more than the sum of its inhabitants. It has is an art of architecture. Its purpose is to take all
the power to generate a surplus of amenity, which the elements that go to create the environment:
is one reason why people like to live in communi- buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertise-
ties rather than in isolation. ments and so on, and to weave them together
Now turn to the visual impact which a city has in such a way that drama is released. For a city
on those who live in it or visit it. I wish to show that is a dramatic event in the environment. Look at
an argument parallel to the one put forward above the research that is put into making a city work:
holds good for buildings: bring people together and demographers, sociologists, engineers, traffic ex-
they create a collective surplus of enjoyment; bring perts; all co-operating to form the myriad factors
buildings together and collectively they can give into a workable, viable and healthy organization.
visual pleasure which none can give separately. It is a tremendous human undertaking.
One building standing alone in the countryside And yet . . . if at the end of it all the city appears
is experienced as a work of architecture, but bring dull, uninteresting and soulless, then it is not fulfil
half a dozen buildings together and an art other ling itself. It has failed. The fire has been laid but
than architecture is made possible. Several things nobody has put a match to it.
begin to happen in the group which would be im- Firstly we have to rid ourselves of the thought
possible for the isolated building. We may walk that the excitement and drama that we seek can
through and past the buildings, and as a corner be born automatically out of the scientific research
is turned an unsuspected building is suddenly and solutions arrived at by the technical man
revealed. We may be surprised, even astonished (a (or the technical half of the brain). We naturally
reaction generated by the composition of the group accept these solutions, but are not entirely bound
and not by the individual building). Again, suppose by them. In fact we cannot be entirely bound by
that the buildings have been put together in a group them because the scientific solution is based on
so that one can get inside the group, then the space the best that can be made of the average: of aver-
created between the buildings is seen to have a life ages of human behaviour, averages of weather,
of its own over and above the buildings which factors of safety and so on. And these averages do
create it and one’s reaction is to say ‘I am inside not give an inevitable result for any particular prob-
IT’ or ‘I am entering IT’. Note also that in this group lem. They are, so to speak, wandering facts which
of half a dozen buildings there may be one which may synchronize or, just as likely, may conflict with
through reason of function does not conform. It each other. The upshot is that a town could take one
may be a bank, a temple or a church amongst of several patterns and still operate with success,
9780415668071_P2_02.indd 119 10-26-2012 3:19:20 PM

120 G O r D O N C U ll E N
equal success. Here then we discover a pliability an impact on the emotions is achieved. A long
in the scientific solution and it is precisely in the straight road has little impact because the initial
manipulation of this pliability that the art of relation- view is soon digested and becomes monotonous.
ship is made possible. As will be seen, the aim is The human mind reacts to a contrast, to the dif-
not to dictate the shape of the town or environ- ference between things, and when two pictures
ment, but is a modest one: simply to manipulate (the street and the courtyard) are in the mind at
within the tolerances. the same time, a vivid contrast is felt and the town
This means that we can get no further help from becomes visible in a deeper sense. It comes alive
the scientific attitude and that we must therefore through the drama of juxtaposition. Unless this
turn to other values and other standards. happens the town will slip past us featureless and
We turn to the faculty of sight, for it is almost inert.
entirely through vision that the environment is ap- There is a further observation to be made con-
prehended. If someone knocks at your door and cerning Serial Vision. Although from a scientific or
you open it to let him in, it sometimes happens commercial point of view the town may be a unity,
that a gust of wind comes in too, sweeping round from our optical viewpoint we have split it into two
the room, blowing the curtains and making a great elements: the existing view and the emerging view.
fuss. Vision is somewhat the same; we often get In the normal way this is an accidental chain of
more than we bargained for. Glance at the clock to events and whatever significance may arise out of
see the time and you see the wallpaper, the clock’s the linking of views will be fortuitous. Suppose,
carved brown mahogany frame, the fly crawling however, that we take over this linking as a branch
over the glass and the delicate rapier-like pointers. of the art of relationship; then we are finding a
Cézanne might have made a painting of it. In fact, tool with which human imagination can begin to
of course, vision is not only useful but it evokes our mould the city into a coherent drama. The process
memories and experiences, those responsive emo- of manipulation has begun to turn the blind facts
tions inside us which have the power to disturb the into a taut emotional situation.
mind when aroused. It is this unlooked-for surplus 2. Concerning PLACE. This second point is con-
that we are dealing with, for clearly if the environ- cerned with our reactions to the position of our
ment is going to produce an emotional reaction, body in its environment. This is as simple as it
with or without our volition, it is up to us to try to appears to be. It means, for instance, that when
understand the three ways in which this happens. you go into a room you utter to yourself the un-
1. Concerning OPTICS. Let us suppose that we spoken words ‘I am outside IT, I am entering IT, I
are walking through a town: here is a straight road am in the middle of IT’. At this level of conscious-
off which is a courtyard, at the far side of which ness we are dealing with a range of experience
another street leads out and bends slightly before stemming from the major impacts of exposure and
reaching a monument. Not very unusual. We take enclosure (which if taken to their morbid extremes
this path and our first view is that of the street. result in the symptoms of agoraphobia and claus-
Upon turning into the courtyard the new view is trophobia). Place a man on the edge of a 500-ft.
revealed instantaneously at the point of turning, cliff and he will have a very lively sense of position,
and this view remains with us whilst we walk put him at the end of a deep cave and he will react
across the courtyard. Leaving the courtyard we to the fact of enclosure.
enter the further street. Again a new view is suddenly Since it is an instinctive and continuous habit
revealed although we are travelling at a uniform of the body to relate itself to the environment, this
speed. Finally as the road bends the monument sense of position cannot be ignored; it becomes
swings into view. The significance of all this is that a factor in the design of the environment ( just as
although the pedestrian walks through the town at an additional source of light must be reckoned with
a uniform speed, the scenery of towns is often by a photographer, however annoying it may be). I
revealed in a series of jerks or revelations. This we would go further and say that it should be exploited.
call SERIAL VISION [Figure 1]. Here is an example. Suppose you are visiting
Examine what this means. Our original aim is one of the hill towns in the south of France. You climb
to manipulate the elements of the town so that laboriously up the winding road and eventually find
9780415668071_P2_02.indd 120 10-26-2012 3:19:20 PM

T
W
O
Figure 1 Serial Vision: to walk from one end of the plan to another, at a uniform pace, will provide a sequence of
revelations which are suggested in the serial drawings, reading from left to right. Each arrow on the plan represents
a drawing. The even progress of travel is illuminated by a series of sudden contrasts and so an impact is made on
the eye, bringing the plan to life.
yourself in a tiny village street at the summit. You In a town we do not normally have such a dra-
feel thirsty and go to a nearby restaurant, your matic situation to manipulate but the principle still
drink is served to you on a veranda and as you go holds good. There is, for instance, a typical emo-
out to it you find to your exhilaration or horror that tional reaction to being below the general ground
the veranda is cantilevered out over a thousand-foot level and there is another resulting from being
drop. By this device of the containment (street) and above it. There is a reaction to being hemmed in
the revelation (cantilever) the fact of height is dramat as in a tunnel and another to the wideness of the
ized and made real. square. If, therefore, we design our towns from the
9780415668071_P2_02.indd 121 10-26-2012 3:19:22 PM

point of view of the moving person (pedestrian in height and style. Given a free hand that is what
or car-borne) it is easy to see how the whole city we might do . . . create symmetry, balance, perfec-
becomes a plastic experience, a journey through tion and conformity. After all, that is the popular
pressures and vacuums, a sequence of exposures conception of the purpose of town planning.
and enclosures, of constraint and relief. But what is this conformity? Let us approach it
Arising out of this sense of identity or sympathy by a simile. Let us suppose a party in a private
with the environment, this feeling of a person in house, where are gathered together half a dozen
street or square that he is in IT or entering IT or people who are strangers to each other. The early
leaving IT, we discover that no sooner do we pos- part of the evening is passed in polite conversation
tulate a HERE than automatically we must create on general subjects such as the weather and the
a THERE, for you cannot have one without the current news. Cigarettes are passed and lights
other. Some of the greatest townscape effects are offered punctiliously. In fact it is all an exhibition
created by a skilful relationship between the two, of manners, of how one ought to behave. It is also
and I will name an example in India, where this very boring. This is conformity. However, later on
introduction is being written: the approach from the ice begins to break and out of the straightjacket
the Central Vista to the Rashtrapathi Bhawan,1 in of orthodox manners and conformity real human
New Delhi. There is an open-ended courtyard com- beings begin to emerge. It is found that Miss X’s
posed of the two Secretariat buildings and, at the sharp but good-natured wit is just the right foil to
end, the Rashtrapathi Bhawan. All this is raised Major Y’s somewhat simple exuberance. And so
above normal ground level and the approach is by on. It begins to be fun. Conformity gives way to
a ramp. At the top of the ramp and in front of the the agreement to differ within a recognized toler-
axis building is a tall screen of railings. This is ance of behaviour.
the setting. Travelling through it from the Central Conformity, from the point of view of the planner,
Vista we see the two Secretariats in full, but the is difficult to avoid but to avoid it deliberately,
Rashtrapathi Bhawan is partially hidden by the by creating artificial diversions, is surely worse
ramp; only its upper part is visible. This effect of than the original boredom. Here, for instance, is a
truncation serves to isolate and make remote. The programme to rehouse 5,000 people. They are all
building is withheld. We are Here and it is There. treated the same, they get the same kind of house.
As we climb the ramp the Rashtrapathi Bhawan How can one differentiate? Yet if we start from a
is gradually revealed, the mystery culminates in much wider point of view we will see that tropical
fulfilment as it becomes immediate to us, standing housing differs from temperate zone housing, that
on the same floor. But at this point the railing, buildings in a brick country differ from buildings
the wrought iron screen, is inserted; which again in a stone country, that religion and social manners
creates a form of Here and There by means of the vary the buildings. And as the field of observation
screened vista. A brilliant, if painfully conceived, narrows, so our sensitivity to the local gods must
sequence.2 grow sharper. There is too much insensitivity in
3. Concerning CONTENT. In this last category the building of towns, too much reliance on the
we turn to an examination of the fabric of towns: tank and the armoured car where the telescopic
colour, texture, scale, style, character, personality rifle is wanted.
and uniqueness. Accepting the fact that most towns Within a commonly accepted framework – one
are of old foundation, their fabric will show evid that produces lucidity and not anarchy – we can
ence of differing periods in its architectural styles manipulate the nuances of scale and style, of
and also in the various accidents of layout. Many texture and colour and of character and individual-
towns do so display this mixture of styles, materials ity, juxtaposing them in order to create collective
and scales. benefits. In fact the environment thus resolves itself
Yet there exists at the back of our minds a feel- into not conformity but the interplay of This and
ing that could we only start again we would get rid That.
of this hotchpotch and make all new and fine and It is a matter of observation that in a successful
perfect. We would create an orderly scene with contrast of colours not only do we experience the
straight roads and with buildings that conformed harmony released but, equally, the colours become
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more truly themselves. In a large landscape by First the task of finding the sharp little needles
Corot, I forget its name, a landscape of sombre in the vast haystack of post-war building would
greens, almost a monochrome, there is a small be quite uneconomical. This leads to the second
figure in red. It is probably the reddest thing I have point, why should it be so difficult? Because, in my
ever seen. view, the original message of Townscape has not
Statistics are abstracts: when they are plucked been delivered effectively.
out of the completeness of life and converted into We have witnessed a superficial civic style of
plans and the plans into buildings they will be life- decoration using bollards and cobbles, we have
less. The result will be a three-dimensional diagram seen traffic-free pedestrian precincts and we have
in which people are asked to live. In trying to noted the rise of conservation.
T
colonize such a wasteland, to translate it from an But none of these is germane to townscape. W
environment for walking stomachs into a home The sadness of the situation is that the superficials O
for human beings, the difficulty lay in finding the have become the currency but the spirit, the
point of application, in finding the gateway into Environment Game itself, is still locked away in
the castle. We discovered three gateways, that of its little red and gilt box.
motion, that of position and that of content. By The position may indeed have deteriorated over
the exercise of vision it became apparent that the last ten years for reasons which are set out below.
motion was not one simple, measurable progres Man meets environment: unfamiliarity, shock,
sion useful in planning, it was in fact two things, the ugliness and boredom according to what kind of
Existing and the Revealed view. We discovered that man you are. The problem is not new but is this
the human being is constantly aware of his position generation getting more than its fair share? Yes.
in the environment, that he feels the need for a Reason? The reason in my view is the speed of
sense of place and that this sense of identity is change which has disrupted the normal commu
coupled with an awareness of elsewhere. Conformity nication between planner and planee. The list is
killed, whereas the agreement to differ gave life. In familiar enough: more people, more houses, more
this way the void of statistics, of the diagram city, amenities, faster communications and unfamiliar
has been split into two parts, whether they be those building methods.
of Serial Vision, Here and There or This and That. The speed of change prevents the environment
All that remains is to join them together into a new organisers from settling down and learning by ex-
pattern created by the warmth and power and vital- perience how to humanise the raw material thrown
ity of human imagination so that we build the home at them. In consequence the environment is ill-
of man. digested. London is suffering from indigestion. The
That is the theory of the game, the background. gastric juices, as represented by planners, have not
In fact the most difficult part lies ahead, the Art of been able to break down all the vast chunks of
Playing. As in any other game there are recognized hastily swallowed stodge into emotional nutriment.
gambits and moves built up from experience and We may be able to do many things our grand
precedent. In the pages that follow an attempt is parents could not do but we cannot digest any faster.
made to chart these moves under the three main The process, be it in stomach or brain, is part of our
heads as a series of cases. human bondage. And so we have to make organ-
isational changes in order that human scale can be
brought into effective contact with the forces of
INTRODUCTION TO THE 1971 EDITION development.
The first change is to popularise the art of en-
In writing an introduction to this edition of Town- vironment on the principle that the game improves
scape I find little to alter in the attitude expressed with the amount of popular emotion invested and
in the original introduction written ten years ago. this is the crux of the situation. The stumbling block
It has been said that a new edition of Townscape here is that in the popular mind administrative plan-
should rely on modern work for its examples in- ning is dull, technical and forbidding whilst good
stead of these being culled from the past. This has planning is conceived as a wide, straight street with
not been done for two reasons. bushy-topped trees on either side, full stop. On the
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contrary! The way the environment is put together Until such happy day arrives when people in the
is potentially one of our most exciting and wide- street throw their caps in the air at the sight of a
spread pleasure sources. It is no use complaining planner (the volume of sardonic laughter is the
of ugliness without realising that the shoes that measure of your deprivation) as they now do for
pinch are really a pair of ten-league boots. footballers and pop singers, a holding operation in
How to explain? Example: the nearest to hand two parts will be necessary.
at the time of writing is Sées cathedral near Alençon. First, streaming the environment. It is difficult
The Gothic builders were fascinated by the problem to fight for a general principle, easier to protect the
of weight, how to support the culmination of their particular. By breaking down the environment into
structures, the vault, and guide its weight safely its constituent parts the ecologist can fight for his
down to earth. In this building weight has been national parks, local authority for its green belts,
divided into two parts. The walls are supported antiquarians for conservation areas and so on. This
by sturdy cylindrical columns: the vault itself, the is already happening.
pride of the endeavour, appears to be supported Second, the time scaling of these streams.
on fantastically attenuated applied columns which Change, of itself, is often resented even if it can
act almost as lightning conductors of gravity between be seen to be a change for the better. Continuity
heaven and the solid earth. The walls are held up is a desirable characteristic of cities. Consequently
by man, the vault is clearly held up by angels. ‘I while planning consent in a development stream
understand weight, I am strong’, ‘I have overcome might be automatic one may have to expect a built-
weight, I am ethereal’. ‘We both spring from the in delay of ten or even twenty years in an important
same earth together, we need each other’. Through conservation area. This is not necessarily to im-
the centuries they commune together in serenity. prove the design but simply to slow down the
As soon as the game or dialogue is understood process. This also is happening, if grudgingly, in
the whole place begins to shake hands with you. the case of Piccadilly Circus.
It bursts all through the dull business of who did But the main endeavour is for the environment
what and when and who did it first. We know who makers to reach their public, not democratically
did it, it was a chap with a twinkle in his eye. but emotionally. As the great Max Miller once re-
This is the Environment Game and it is going marked across the footlights on a dull evening, “I
on all round us. You will see that I am not discuss- know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing.”
ing absolute values such as beauty, perfection, art
with a big A, or morals. I am trying to describe an
environment that chats away happily, plain folk NOTES
talking together. Apart from a handful of noble
exceptions our world is being filled with system- 1 The President’s Residence, lately Viceregal
built dumb blondes and a scatter of Irish confetti. Lodge.
Only when the dialogue commences will people 2 It was the cause of bitterness between Lutyens
stop to listen. and Baker.
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“The Image of the Environment”
and “The City Image and Its
Elements”
from The Image of the City (1960)
Kevin Lynch
These two chapters by Kevin Lynch (1918–1984) from The Image of the City highlight his early interest and
research on the legibility and visual perception of cities. The Image of the City is by far the best known of
his writings and has had a profound influence on how designers perceive cities and urban form. His underly-
ing idea in “The Image of the Environment” is that people understand and mentally process the form of cities
through the recognition of key physical elements. By utilizing visual elements, Lynch argues that urban design-
ers have a toolkit for making more legible and psychologically satisfying places. Not only do these elements
provide organizational clues and way-finding devices for people to orient themselves in space, but also they
can help in engendering emotional security and a sense of place-based ownership that comes from one’s
ability to recognize familiar territory. Lynch defines “imageability” as:
that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given
observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully
structured, highly useful mental images of the environment.
Imageability to Lynch combines both the ability of the physical object to project a strong distinctive image,
as well as the ability of the observer to mentally select, process, store, organize, and endow the image with
meaning. In the selection from “The City Image and Its Elements,” the author identifies five key elements that
provide urban imageability: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. In the conclusion to the book, he
suggests ways in which designers can process this information to provide visual plans for reinforcing the
form, physical controls, and public image of cities.
The book is important not only for its findings on the visual form of cities, but also in highlighting Lynch’s
research methods in environmental psychology. These methods allowed researchers to “get into the heads”
of research subjects to better understand how they perceived their everyday environments. His methods in-
cluded cognitive mapping, in-depth oral interviews, travel maps, direct observation, field reconnaissance walks,
random pedestrian interviews, aerial and ground-level photography and synthesis maps. Data from extensive
use of cognitive maps (mental maps of their city that people were asked to draw from memory) was easily
compiled to provide synthetic illustrations of those elements that were most recognized or remembered. The
same was done with data culled from oral interviews, which was then correlated across the data pulled from
the cognitive mapping. From these different methods, Lynch’s research team was able to triangulate similar
findings from a relatively small sample of interviewees, although he later notes the biases in these small
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126 K e V in L Y nch
sample sets. Although this work has not been particularly fruitful in effecting public policy on a broad scale,
it has been important to urban plan-making in some specific places, such as San Francisco (California), Ciudad
Guyana (Venezuela), and Brookline (Massachusetts), as well as with research on childhood experience for
UNESCO. Lynch’s techniques have proven particularly valuable in environmental design research, in many
types of urban design plan-making, within strategic SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
and Threats), in understanding public images of the city for marketing purposes, and for knowledge in place
memorability.
With its publication in 1960, Lynch’s contribution belongs to the first generation of works in environmen-
tal psychology and environmental behavior. This literature has burgeoned since then, including major influences
on a generation of researchers such as Amos Rapoport, Clare Cooper Marcus, Oscar Newman, William H.
Whyte, Kenneth Craik, and Donald Appleyard – as well as planning and design departments at several uni-
versities, MIT and UC Berkeley in particular. With regard to its lasting impacts, The Image of the City helped
to highlight the importance of urban form-making at a time when city planners were looking to social science
methods to replace what was perceived to be an underperforming physical planning tradition. And with respect
to current planning interest in public participation, it was influential in consulting the substantive users and
residents of the city, and bringing them back into the planning conversation at a time when decision-making
and design relied primarily on expert elite knowledge. Following its publication, other authors tried to identify
design methods to reinforce the “image of the city.” Notable among these is work by Jack Nasar, The Evaluative
Image of the City (New York: Sage, 1997), where the author provides methods for designing and assessing
city image in practice.
Even after his death, Kevin Lynch continued to be recognized as the United States’ leading urban design
educator and researcher. He began his design education at Yale prior to a fellowship at Taliesin under the
tutelage of Frank Lloyd Wright. He taught for many years at MIT, in addition to professional consulting work
in design and planning. He wrote exhaustively, including seven books and dozens of published articles and
essays. His book The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960) is considered to be the most
widely read book in the history of urban design. His other books include: The View from the Road, co-written
with Donald Appleyard and John Myer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964); What Time is This Place? (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1972); Managing the Sense of a Region (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976); Growing Up
in Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977); Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), a textbook
on site-specific design, Site Planning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962); and a later version co-authored
with Gary Hack shortly before his death, Site Planning, 3rd edn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); plus a
book published posthumously with Michael Southworth (ed.), Wasting Away (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club
Books, 1990).
In Tridib Banerjee and Michael Southworth’s edited book of Lynch’s shorter essays and articles, City
Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), one can
find supplemental material by Lynch on environmental perception and the visual form of cities: “Environmental
Perception: Research and Public Policy” (MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives and Special Collections);
“Reconsidering the Image of the City,” in Lloyd Rodwin and Robert Hollister (eds), Cities in Mind (New York:
Plenum, 1984); “A Process of Community Visual Survey” (MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives and Special Col-
lections); and “The Visual Shape of the Shapeless Metropolis” (MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives and Special
Collections).
Additional material on research and practice in environmental psychology can be found in the following:
Paul A. Bell, Thomas Greene, Jeffrey Fisher, and Andrew S. Baum, Environmental Psychology (London: Taylor
& Francis/Psychology Press, 2005); Harold M. Proshansky, William Ittleson, and Leanne Rivlin (eds), Environ
mental Psychology: Man and his Physical Setting (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970); Roger M.
Downs and David Stea (eds), Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior (Chicago,
IL: Aldine, 1973); S. Kaplan and R. Kaplan, Cognition and Environment: Functioning in an Uncertain World
(New York: Praeger, 1982); and Robert B. Bechtel and Arza Churchman (eds), Handbook of Environmental
Psychology (New York: John Wiley, 2002).
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“The Image of the Environment” 127
For literature on the relationship between environmental psychology and design, or the emerging “psychol-
ogy of design” field, see the following: David Alan Kopec, Environmental Psychology for Design, 2nd edn
(New York: Fairchild Publications, 2012); Toby Israel, Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to
Create Ideal Places (New York: Wiley Academy, 2003); Gyorgy Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago, IL:
P. Theobald, 1944) and Sign, Image, Symbol (New York: George Braziller, 1966); D. De Jonge, “Images of
Urban Areas: Their Structure and Psychological Foundations,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners
(vol. 28, 1962, 266–276); and M. Gottdiener and A. Lagopoulos, The City and the Sign: An Introduction to
Urban Semiotics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
T
W
tHe iMAGe OF tHe eNViRONMeNt it may be stable in general outlines for some time, O
it is ever changing in detail. Only partial control
Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, how can be exercised over its growth and form. There
ever commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece is no final result, only a continuous succession of
of architecture, the city is a construction in space, phases. No wonder, then, that the art of shaping
but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the cities for sensuous enjoyment is an art quite separ
course of long spans of time. City design is there ate from architecture or music or literature. It may
fore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the con learn a great deal from these other arts, but it can
trolled and limited sequences of other temporal not imitate them.
arts like music. On different occasions and for dif A beautiful and delightful city environment is
ferent people, the sequences are reversed, inter an oddity, some would say an impossibility. Not
rupted, abandoned, cut across. It is seen in all lights one American city larger than a village is of con
and all weathers. sistently fine quality, although a few towns have
At every instant, there is more than the eye can some pleasant fragments. It is hardly surprising,
see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view then, that most Americans have little idea of what
waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by it can mean to live in such an environment. They
itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the are clear enough about the ugliness of the world
sequences of events leading up to it, the memory they live in, and they are quite vocal about the dirt,
of past experiences. Washington Street set in a the smoke, the heat, and the congestion, the chaos
farmer’s field might look like the shopping street in and yet the monotony of it. But they are hardly
the heart of Boston, and yet it would seem utterly aware of the potential value of harmonious sur
different. Every citizen has had long associations roundings, a world which they may have briefly
with some part of his city, and his image is soaked glimpsed only as tourists or as escaped vacationers.
in memories and meanings. They can have little sense of what a setting can
Moving elements in a city, and in particular mean in terms of daily delight, or as a continuous
the people and their activities, are as important as anchor for their lives, or as an extension of the
the stationary physical parts. We are not simply meaningfulness and richness of the world.
observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part
of it, on the stage with the other participants. Most
often, our perception of the city is not sustained, LEGIBILITY
but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other
concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and This book will consider the visual quality of the
the image is the composite of them all. American city by studying the mental image of that
Not only is the city an object which is perceived city which is held by its citizens. It will concentrate
(and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of especially on one particular visual quality: the appar
widely diverse class and character, but it is the ent clarity or “legibility” of the cityscape. By this we
product of many builders who are constantly mod mean the ease with which its parts can be recog
ifying the structure for reasons of their own. While nized and can be organized into a coherent pattern.
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Just as this printed page, if it is legible, can be We are supported by the presence of others and
visually grasped as a related pattern of recognizable by special way-finding devices: maps, street num
symbols, so a legible city would be one whose dis bers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap
tricts or landmarks or pathways are easily identifi of disorientation once occur, and the sense of
able and are easily grouped into an over-all pattern. anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals
This book will assert that legibility is crucial in to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance
the city setting, will analyze it in some detail, and and well-being. The very word “lost” in our lan
will try to show how this concept might be used guage means much more than simple geographical
today in rebuilding our cities. As will quickly be uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster.
come apparent to the reader, this study is a pre In the process of way-finding, the strategic
liminary exploration, a first word not a last word, link is the environmental image, the generalized
an attempt to capture ideas and to suggest how mental picture of the exterior physical world that
they might be developed and tested. Its tone will is held by an individual. This image is the product
be speculative and perhaps a little irresponsible: at both of immediate sensation and of the memory
once tentative and presumptuous. This first chapter of past experience, and it is used to interpret in
will develop some of the basic ideas; later chapters formation and to guide action. The need to recog
will apply them to several American cities and dis nize and pattern our surroundings is so crucial, and
cuss their consequences for urban design. has such long roots in the past, that this image has
Although clarity or legibility is by no means the wide practical and emotional importance to the
only important property of a beautiful city, it is of individual.
special importance when considering environments Obviously a clear image enables one to move
at the urban scale of size, time, and complexity. To about easily and quickly: to find a friend’s house
understand this, we must consider not just the city or a policeman or a button store. But an ordered
as a thing in itself, but the city being perceived by environment can do more than this; it may serve
its inhabitants. as a broad frame of reference, an organizer of
Structuring and identifying the environment is activity or belief or knowledge. On the basis of
a vital ability among all mobile animals. Many kinds a structural understanding of Manhattan, for ex
of cues are used: the visual sensations of color, shape, ample, one can order a substantial quantity of facts
motion, or polarization of light, as well as other and fancies about the nature of the world we live
senses such as smell, sound, touch, kinesthesia, sense in. Like any good framework, such a structure gives
of gravity, and perhaps of electric or magnetic the individual a possibility of choice and a starting-
fields. These techniques of orientation, from the point for the acquisition of further information. A
polar flight of a tern to the path-finding of a limpet clear image of the surroundings is thus a useful
over the micro-topography of a rock, are described basis for individual growth.
and their importance underscored in an extensive A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable
literature (Casamajor 1927; Fischer 1931; Griffin of producing a sharp image, plays a social role as
1953; Rabaud 1927). Psychologists have also stud well. It can furnish the raw material for the symbols
ied this ability in man, although rather sketchily or and collective memories of group communication.
under limited laboratory conditions (Angyal 1930; A striking landscape is the skeleton upon which
Binet 1894; Brown 1932; Claparède 1943; Jaccard many primitive races erect their socially important
1932; Ryan 1940; Sandström 1951; Trowbridge myths. Common memories of the “home town”
1913; Witkin 1949). Despite a few remaining puzzles, were often the first and easiest point of contact
it now seems unlikely that there is any mystic between lonely soldiers during the war.
“instinct” of way-finding. Rather there is a consistent A good environmental image gives its possessor
use and organization of definite sensory cues from an important sense of emotional security. He can
the external environment. This organization is fun establish a harmonious relationship between him
damental to the efficiency and to the very survival self and the outside world. This is the obverse of
of free-moving life. the fear that comes with disorientation; it means
To become completely lost is perhaps a rather that the sweet sense of home is strongest when
rare experience for most people in the modern city. home is not only familiar but distinctive as well.
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Indeed, a distinctive and legible environment But these second thoughts point to an important
not only offers security but also heightens the qualification. The observer himself should play
potential depth and intensity of human experience. an active role in perceiving the world and have a
Although life is far from impossible in the visual creative part in developing his image. He should
chaos of the modern city, the same daily action have the power to change that image to fit chang
could take on new meaning if carried out in a more ing needs. An environment which is ordered in
vivid setting. Potentially, the city is in itself the precise and final detail may inhibit new patterns
powerful symbol of a complex society. If visually of activity. A landscape whose every rock tells a
well set forth, it can also have strong expressive story may make difficult the creation of fresh stories.
meaning. Although this may not seem to be a critical issue
T
It may be argued against the importance of in our present urban chaos, yet it indicates that W
physical legibility that the human brain is marvel what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, O
ously adaptable, that with some experience one capable of continuous further development.
can learn to pick one’s way through the most dis
ordered or featureless surroundings. There are
abundant examples of precise navigation over the BUILDING THE IMAGE
“trackless” wastes of sea, sand, or ice, or through
a tangled maze of jungle. Environmental images are the result of a two-way
Yet even the sea has the sun and stars, the winds, process between the observer and his environment.
currents, birds, and sea-colors without which un The environment suggests distinctions and rela
aided navigation would be impossible. The fact that tions, and the observer – with great adaptability
only skilled professionals could navigate among and in the light of his own purposes – selects,
the Polynesian Islands, and this only after extensive organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees.
training, indicates the difficulties imposed by this The image so developed now limits and emphasizes
particular environment. Strain and anxiety accom what is seen, while the image itself is being tested
panied even the best-prepared expeditions. against the filtered perceptual input in a constant
In our own world, we might say that almost interacting process. Thus the image of a given
everyone can, if attentive, learn to navigate in reality may vary significantly between different
Jersey City, but only at the cost of some effort observers.
and uncertainty. Moreover, the positive values of The coherence of the image may arise in several
legible surroundings are missing: the emotional ways. There may be little in the real object that is
satisfaction, the framework for communication or ordered or remarkable, and yet its mental picture
conceptual organization, the new depths that it may has gained identity and organization through long
bring to everyday experience. These are pleasures familiarity. One man may find objects easily on
we lack, even if our present city environment is what seems to anyone else to be a totally dis
not so disordered as to impose an intolerable strain ordered work table. Alternatively, an object seen
on those who are familiar with it. for the first time may be identified and related not
It must be granted that there is some value in because it is individually familiar but because it
mystification, labyrinth, or surprise in the environ conforms to a stereotype already constructed by
ment. Many of us enjoy the House of Mirrors, and the observer. An American can always spot the
there is a certain charm in the crooked streets of corner drugstore, however indistinguishable it might
Boston. This is so, however, only under two con be to a Bushman. Again, a new object may seem
ditions. First, there must be no danger of losing to have strong structure or identity because of strik
basic form or orientation, of never coming out. The ing physical features which suggest or impose their
surprise must occur in an over-all framework; the own pattern. Thus the sea or a great mountain can
confusions must be small regions in a visible whole. rivet the attention of one coming from the flat plains
Furthermore, the labyrinth or mystery must in itself of the interior, even if he is so young or so parochial
have some form that can be explored and in time as to have no name for these great phenomena.
be apprehended. Complete chaos without hint of As manipulators of the physical environment, city
connection is never pleasurable. planners are primarily interested in the external
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 129 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

agent in the interaction which produces the envir things, its recognition as a separable entity. This is
onmental image. Different environments resist or called identity, not in the sense of equality with
facilitate the process of image-making. Any given something else, but with the meaning of individu
form, a fine vase or a lump of clay, will have a high ality or oneness. Second, the image must include
or a low probability of evoking a strong image the spatial or pattern relation of the object to the
among various observers. Presumably this probabil observer and to other objects. Finally, this object
ity can be stated with greater and greater precision must have some meaning for the observer, whether
as the observers are grouped in more and more practical or emotional. Meaning is also a relation,
homogeneous classes of age, sex, culture, occupa but quite a different one from spatial or pattern
tion, temperament, or familiarity. Each individual relation.
creates and bears his own image, but there seems Thus an image useful for making an exit requires
to be substantial agreement among members of the recognition of a door as a distinct entity, of its
the same group. It is these group images, exhibiting spatial relation to the observer, and its meaning
consensus among significant numbers, that interest as a hole for getting out. These are not truly separ
city planners who aspire to model an environment able. The visual recognition of a door is matted
that will be used by many people. together with its meaning as a door. It is possible,
Therefore this study will tend to pass over indi however, to analyze the door in terms of its iden
vidual differences, interesting as they might be to tity of form and clarity of position, considered as
a psychologist. The first order of business will if they were prior to its meaning.
be what might be called the “public images,” the Such an analytic feat might be pointless in the
common mental pictures carried by large numbers study of a door, but not in the study of the urban
of a city’s inhabitants: areas of agreement which environment. To begin with, the question of mean
might be expected to appear in the interaction of ing in the city is a complicated one. Group images
a single physical reality, a common culture, and a of meaning are less likely to be consistent at this
basic physiological nature. level than are the perceptions of entity and rela
The systems of orientation which have been tionship. Meaning, moreover, is not so easily influ
used vary widely throughout the world, changing enced by physical manipulation as are these other
from culture to culture, and from landscape to land two components. If it is our purpose to build cities
scape. [ . . . ] The world may be organized around for the enjoyment of vast numbers of people of
a set of focal points, or be broken into named re widely diverse background – and cities which will
gions, or be linked by remembered routes. Varied also be adaptable to future purposes – we may
as these methods are, and inexhaustible as seem even be wise to concentrate on the physical clarity
to be the potential clues which a man may pick of the image and to allow meaning to develop
out to differentiate his world, they cast interesting without our direct guidance. The image of the
side-lights on the means that we use today to locate Manhattan skyline may stand for vitality, power,
ourselves in our own city world. For the most part decadence, mystery, congestion, greatness, or what
these examples seem to echo, curiously enough, you will, but in each case that sharp picture crystal
the formal types of image elements into which we lizes and reinforces the meaning. So various are
can conveniently divide the city image: path, land the individual meanings of a city, even while its
mark, edge, node, and district. form may be easily communicable, that it appears
possible to separate meaning from form, at least
in the early stages of analysis. This study will there
STRUCTURE AND IDENTITY fore concentrate on the identity and structure of
city images.
An environmental image may be analyzed into three If an image is to have value for orientation in
components: identity, structure, and meaning. It is the living space, it must have several qualities.
useful to abstract these for analysis, if it is remem It must be sufficient, true in a pragmatic sense,
bered that in reality they always appear together. allowing the individual to operate within his envir
A workable image requires first the identification onment to the extent desired. The map, whether
of an object, which implies its distinction from other exact or not, must be good enough to get one home.
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 130 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

It must be sufficiently clear and well integrated to deepened. Such a city would be one that could
be economical of mental effort: the map must be be apprehended over time as a pattern of high
readable. It should be safe, with a surplus of clues continuity with many distinctive parts clearly inter
so that alternative actions are possible and the connected. The perceptive and familiar observer
risk of failure is not too high. If a blinking light is could absorb new sensuous impacts without disrup
the only sign for a critical turn, a power failure may tion of his basic image, and each new impact would
cause disaster. The image should preferably be touch upon many previous elements. He would be
open-ended, adaptable to change, allowing the in well oriented, and he could move easily. He would
dividual to continue to investigate and organize be highly aware of his environment. The city of
reality: there should be blank spaces where he can Venice might be an example of such a highly
T
extend the drawing for himself. Finally, it should in imageable environment. In the United States, one is W
some measure be communicable to other indivi tempted to cite parts of Manhattan, San Francisco, O
duals. The relative importance of these criteria for Boston, or perhaps the lake front of Chicago.
a “good” image will vary with different persons in These are characterizations that flow from our
different situations; one will prize an economical definitions. The concept of imageability does not
and sufficient system, another an open-ended and necessarily connote something fixed, limited, pre
communicable one. cise, unified, or regularly ordered, although it may
sometimes have these qualities. Nor does it mean
apparent at a glance, obvious, patent, or plain. The
IMAGEABILITY total environment to be patterned is highly com
plex, while the obvious image is soon boring, and
Since the emphasis here will be on the physical can point to only a few features of the living world.
environment as the independent variable, this study The imageability of city form will be the center
will look for physical qualities which relate to the of the study to follow. There are other basic prop
attributes of identity and structure in the mental erties in a beautiful environment: meaning or ex
image. This leads to the definition of what might pressiveness, sensuous delight, rhythm, stimulus,
be called imageability: that quality in a physical choice. Our concentration on imageability does not
object which gives it a high probability of evoking deny their importance. Our purpose is simply to
a strong image in any given observer. It is that consider the need for identity and structure in our
shape, color, or arrangement which facilitates the perceptual world, and to illustrate the special rele
making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, vance of this quality to the particular case of the
highly useful mental images of the environment. It complex, shifting urban environment.
might also be called legibility, or perhaps visibility Since image development is a two-way process
in a heightened sense, where objects are not only between observer and observed, it is possible to
able to be seen, but are presented sharply and in strengthen the image either by symbolic devices,
tensely to the senses. by the retraining of the perceiver, or by reshaping
Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute one’s surroundings. You can provide the viewer
of an artistic object and called it apparency (Stern with a symbolic diagram of how the world fits
1914 –1915). While art is not limited to this single together: a map or a set of written instructions. As
end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was long as he can fit reality to the diagram, he has a
“to create images which by clarity and harmony clue to the relatedness of things. You can even
of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible install a machine for giving directions, as has re
appearance.” In his mind, this was an essential first cently been done in New York (New York Times
step toward the expression of inner meaning. 1957). While such devices are extremely useful for
A highly imageable (apparent, legible, or visible) providing condensed data on interconnections, they
city in this peculiar sense would seem well formed, are also precarious, since orientation fails if the
distinct, remarkable; it would invite the eye and device is lost, and the device itself must constantly
the ear to greater attention and participation. The be referred and fitted to reality. [ . . . ] Moreover,
sensuous grasp upon such surroundings would the complete experience of interconnection, the
not merely be simplified, but also extended and full depth of a vivid image, is lacking.
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You may also train the observer. Brown remarks Curt Sachs gives an example of a failure to make
that a maze through which subjects were asked to connections beyond a certain level (Sachs 1953).
move blindfolded seemed to them at first to be one The voice and drumbeat of the North American
unbroken problem. On repetition, parts of the pattern, Indian follow entirely different tempos, the two
particularly the beginning and end, became familiar being perceived independently. Searching for a
and assumed the character of localities. Finally, musical analogy of our own, he mentions our church
when they could tread the maze without error, the services, where we do not think of coordinating
whole system seemed to have become one locality the choir inside with the bells above.
(Brown 1932). DeSilva describes the case of a boy In our vast metropolitan areas we do not connect
who seemed to have “automatic” directional orient the choir and the bells; like the Sherpa, we see only
ation, but proved to have been trained from infancy the sides of Everest and not the mountain. To extend
(by a mother who could not distinguish right from and deepen our perception of the environment would
left) to respond to “the east side of the porch” or be to continue a long biological and cultural devel
“the south end of the dresser” (deSilva 1931). opment which has gone from the contact senses to
Shipton’s account of the reconnaissance for the the distant senses and from the distant senses to
ascent of Everest offers a dramatic case of such symbolic communications. Our thesis is that we are
learning. Approaching Everest from a new direction, now able to develop our image of the environment
Shipton immediately recognized the main peaks by operation on the external physical shape as well
and saddles that he knew from the north side. But as by an internal learning process. Indeed, the com
the Sherpa guide accompanying him, to whom both plexity of our environment now compels us to do so.
sides were long familiar, had never realized that Primitive man was forced to improve his environ
these were the same features, and he greeted the mental image by adapting his perception to the
revelation with surprise and delight (Shipton 1952). given landscape. He could effect minor changes in
Kilpatrick describes the process of perceptual his environment with cairns, beacons, or tree blazes,
learning forced on an observer by new stimuli that but substantial modifications for visual clarity or
no longer fit into previous images (Kilpatrick 1954). visual interconnection were confined to house sites
It begins with hypothetical forms that explain the or religious enclosures. Only powerful civilizations
new stimuli conceptually, while the illusion of can begin to act on their total environment at a
the old forms persists. The personal experience of significant scale. The conscious remolding of the
most of us will testify to this persistence of an large-scale physical environment has been possible
illusory image long after its inadequacy is con only recently, and so the problem of environmental
ceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see imageability is a new one. Technically, we can now
only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warn make completely new landscapes in a brief time,
ing noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. as in the Dutch polders. Here the designers are
The observer then learns to interpret the scene by already at grips with the question of how to form
singling out “give-away” clues and by reweighting the total scene so that it is easy for the human
previous signals. The camouflaged animal may now observer to identify its parts and to structure the
be picked up by the reflection of his eyes. Finally whole (Granpré-Molière 1955).
by repeated experience the entire pattern of percep We are rapidly building a new functional unit,
tion is changed, and the observer need no longer the metropolitan region, but we have yet to grasp
consciously search for give-aways, or add new data that this unit, too, should have its corresponding
to an old framework. He has achieved an image image. Suzanne Langer sets the problem in her
which will operate successfully in the new situation, capsule definition of architecture: “It is the total
seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden environment made visible” (Langer 1953).
animal appears among the leaves, “as plain as day.”
In the same way, we must learn to see the
hidden forms in the vast sprawl of our cities. We THE CITY IMAGE AND ITS ELEMENTS
are not accustomed to organizing and imaging
an artificial environment on such a large scale; There seems to be a public image of any given
yet our activities are pushing us toward that end. city which is the overlap of many individual images.
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“The City Image and its Elements” 133
Or perhaps there is a series of public images, ing together generalized areas, as in the outline of
each held by some significant number of citizens. a city by water or wall.
Such group images are necessary if an individual
is to operate successfully within his environment
and to cooperate with his fellows. Each indi
vidual picture is unique, with some content that
is rarely or never communicated, yet it approxi
mates the public image, which, in different environ
ments, is more or less compelling, more or less
embracing. 3. Districts. Districts are the medium-to-large
T
This analysis limits itself to the effects of phys sections of the city, conceived of as having two- W
ical, perceptible objects. There are other influences dimensional extent, which the observer mentally O
on imageability, such as the social meaning of an enters “inside of,” and which are recognizable
area, its function, its history, or even its name. as having some common, identifying character.
These will be glossed over, since the objective here Always identifiable from the inside, they are also
is to uncover the role of form itself. It is taken for used for exterior reference if visible from the
granted that in actual design form should be used outside. Most people structure their city to some
to reinforce meaning, and not to negate it. extent in this way, with individual differences as
The contents of the city images so far studied, to whether paths or districts are the dominant
which are referable to physical forms, can con elements. It seems to depend not only upon the
veniently be classified into five types of elements: individual but also upon the given city.
paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Indeed,
these elements may be of more general application,
since they seem to reappear in many types of
environmental images. These elements may be
defined as follows:
1. Paths. Paths are the channels along which the
observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially
moves. They may be streets, walkways, transit lines,
canals, railroads. For many people, these are the 4. Nodes. Nodes are points, the strategic spots
predominant elements in their image. People ob in a city into which an observer can enter, and
serve the city while moving through it, and along which are the intensive foci to and from which
these paths the other environmental elements are he is traveling. They may be primarily junctions,
arranged and related. places of a break in transportation, a crossing or
convergence of paths, moments of shift from one
structure to another. Or the nodes may be simply
concentrations, which gain their importance from
being the condensation of some use or physical
2. Edges. Edges are the linear elements not used character, as a street-corner hangout or an enclosed
or considered as paths by the observer. They are square. Some of these concentration nodes are
the boundaries between two phases, linear breaks the focus and epitome of a district, over which their
in continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of devel influence radiates and of which they stand as a
opment, walls. They are lateral references rather symbol. They may be called cores. Many nodes,
than coordinate axes. Such edges may be barriers, of course, partake of the nature of both junctions
more or less penetrable, which close one region and concentrations. The concept of node is related
off from another; or they may be seams, lines along to the concept of path, since junctions are typically
which two regions are related and joined together. the convergence of paths, events on the journey.
These edge elements, although probably not as It is similarly related to the concept of district,
dominant as paths, are for many people important since cores are typically the intensive foci of dis
organizing features, particularly in the role of hold tricts, their polarizing center. In any event, some
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 133 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

nodal points are to be found in almost every image, politan area is considered. But the categories seem
and in certain cases they may be the dominant to have stability for a given observer when he is
feature. operating at a given level.
None of the element types isolated above exist
in isolation in the real case. Districts are structured
with nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths,
and sprinkled with landmarks. Elements regularly
overlap and pierce one another. If this analysis
begins with the differentiation of the data into cat
egories, it must end with their reintegration into
5. Landmarks. Landmarks are another type of the whole image. Our studies have furnished much
point-reference, but in this case the observer does information about the visual character of the ele
not enter within them, they are external. They ment types. This will be discussed below. Only to
are usually a rather simply defined physical object: a lesser extent, unfortunately, did the work make
building, sign, store, or mountain. Their use involves revelations about the interrelations between ele
the singling out of one element from a host of pos ments, or about image levels, image qualities, or
sibilities. Some landmarks are distant ones, typically the development of the image. These latter topics
seen from many angles and distances, over the tops will be treated at the end of this chapter.
of smaller elements, and used as radial references. [ . . . ]
They may be within the city or at such a distance
that for all practical purposes they symbolize a
constant direction. Such are isolated towers, golden ELEMENT INTERRELATIONS
domes, great hills. Even a mobile point, like the
sun, whose motion is sufficiently slow and regular, These elements are simply the raw material of the
may be employed. Other landmarks are primarily environmental image at the city scale. They must
local, being visible only in restricted localities and be patterned together to provide a satisfying form.
from certain approaches. These are the innumer The preceding discussions have gone as far as
able signs, store fronts, trees, doorknobs, and other groups of similar elements (nets of paths, clusters
urban detail, which fill in the image of most observ of landmarks, mosaics of regions). The next logical
ers. They are frequently used clues of identity and step is to consider the interaction of pairs of unlike
even of structure, and seem to be increasingly relied elements.
upon as a journey becomes more and more familiar. Such pairs may reinforce one another, resonate
so that they enhance each other’s power; or they
may conflict and destroy themselves. A great land
mark may dwarf and throw out of scale a small
region at its base. Properly located, another land
mark may fix and strengthen a core; placed off
center, it may only mislead, as does the John
Hancock Building in relation to Boston’s Copley
Square. A large street, with its ambiguous char
acter of both edge and path, may penetrate and
thus expose a region to view, while at the same
time disrupting it. A landmark feature may be so
alien to the character of a district as to dissolve
The image of a given physical reality may oc the regional continuity, or it may, on the other hand,
casionally shift its type with different circumstances stand in just the contrast that intensifies that
of viewing. Thus an expressway may be a path for continuity.
the driver, and edge for the pedestrian. Or a central Districts in particular, which tend to be of larger
area may be a district when a city is organized on a size than the other elements, contain within them
medium scale, and a node when the entire metro selves, and are thus related to, various paths, nodes,
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 134 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

and landmarks. These other elements not only only a vague link between Boston’s office and
structure the region internally, they also intensify financial district and the central shopping district
the identity of the whole by enriching and deepen on Washington Street. This peculiar remoteness
ing its character. Beacon Hill in Boston is one was also exemplified in the puzzling gap between
example of this effect. In fact, the components Scollay Square and Dock Square which are only a
of structure and identity (which are the parts of block apart. The psychological distance between
the image in which we are interested) seem to two localities may be much greater, or more difficult
leapfrog as the observer moves up from level to to surmount, than mere physical separation seems
level. The identity of a window may be structured to warrant.
into a pattern of windows, which is the cue for the Our preoccupation here with parts rather than
T
identification of a building. The buildings them wholes is a necessary feature of an investigation W
selves are interrelated so as to form an identifiable in a primitive stage. After successful differentiation O
space, and so on. and understanding of parts, a study can move on
Paths, which are dominant in many individual to consideration of a total system. There were indi
images, and which may be a principal resource in cations that the image may be a continuous field,
organization at the metropolitan scale, have intimate the disturbance of one element in some way affect
interrelations with other element types. Junction ing all others. Even the recognition of an object is
nodes occur automatically at major intersections as much dependent on context as on the form of
and termini, and by their form should reinforce the object itself. One major distortion, such as a
those critical moments in a journey. These nodes, twisting of the shape of the Common, seemed to
in turn, are not only strengthened by the presence be reflected throughout the image of Boston. The
of landmarks (as is Copley Square) but provide a disturbance of large-scale construction affected more
setting which almost guarantees attention for any than its immediate environs. But such field effects
such mark. The paths, again, are given identity and have hardly been studied here.
tempo not only by their own form, or by their nodal
junctions, but by the regions they pass through, the
edges they move along, and the landmarks dis THE SHIFTING IMAGE
tributed along their length.
All these elements operate together, in a context. Rather than a single comprehensive image for the
It would be interesting to study the characteristics entire environment, there seemed to be sets of
of various pairings: landmark-region, node-path, images, which more or less overlapped and inter
etc. Eventually, one should try to go beyond such related. They were typically arranged in a series
pairings to consider total patterns. of levels, roughly by the scale of area involved, so
Most observers seem to group their elements that the observer moved as necessary from an
into intermediate organizations, which might be image at street level to levels of a neighborhood,
called complexes. The observer senses the complex a city, or a metropolitan region.
as a whole whose parts are interdependent and are This arrangement by levels is a necessity in a
relatively fixed in relation to each other. Thus many large and complex environment. Yet it imposes
Bostonians would be able to fit most of the major an extra burden of organization on the observer,
elements of the Back Bay, the Common, Beacon especially if there is little relation between levels.
Hill, and the central shopping, into a single complex. If a tall building is unmistakable in the city-wide
This whole area, in the terms used by Brown (1932) panorama yet unrecognizable from its base, then
in his experiments referred to earlier, has become a chance has been lost to pin together the images
one locality. For others, the size of their locality at two different levels of organization. The State
may be much smaller: the central shopping and the House on Beacon Hill, on the other hand, seems
near edge of the Common alone, for example. to pierce through several image levels. It holds a
Outside of this complex there are gaps of identity; strategic place in the organization of the center.
the observer must run blind to the next whole, even Images may differ not only by the scale of area
if only momentarily. Although they are close to involved, but by viewpoint, time of day, or season.
gether in physical reality, most people seem to feel The image of Faneuil Hall as seen from the markets
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 135 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

should be related to its image from a car on the made by reducing, eliminating, or even adding
Artery. Washington-Street-by-night should have elements to reality, by fusion and distortion, by
some continuity, some element of invariance, with relating and structuring the parts. It was sufficient,
Washington-Street-by-day. In order to accomplish perhaps better, for its purpose if rearranged, dis
this continuity in the face of sensuous confusion, torted, “illogical.” It resembled that famous cartoon
many observers drained their images of visual of the New Yorker’s view of the United States.
content, using abstractions such as “restaurant” or However distorted, there was a strong element
“second street.” These will operate both day and of topological invariance with respect to reality.
night, driving or walking, rain or shine, albeit with It was as if the map were drawn on an infinitely
some effort and loss. flexible rubber sheet; directions were twisted, dis
The observer must also adjust his image to tances stretched or compressed, large forms so
secular shifts in the physical reality around him. changed from their accurate scale projection as
Los Angeles illustrated the practical and emotional to be at first unrecognizable. But the sequence was
strains induced as the image is confronted with usually correct, the map was rarely torn and sewn
constant physical changes. It would be important back together in another order. This continuity is
to know how to maintain continuity through these necessary if the image is to be of any value.
changes. Just as ties are needed between level and
level of organization, so are continuities required
which persist through a major change. This might IMAGE QUALITY
be facilitated by the retention of an old tree, a path
trace, or some regional character. Study of various individual images among the Bos
The sequence in which sketch maps were drawn tonians revealed certain other distinctions between
seemed to indicate that the image develops, or them. For example, images of an element differed
grows, in different ways. This may perhaps have between observers in terms of their relative density,
some relation to the way in which it first develops i.e., the extent to which they were packed with
as an individual becomes familiar with his environ detail. They might be relatively dense, as a picture
ment. Several types were apparent: of Newbury Street which identifies each building
along its length, or relatively thin, when Newbury
a. Quite frequently, images were developed along, Street is characterized simply as a street bordered
and then outward from, familiar lines of move by old houses of mixed use.
ment. Thus a map might be drawn as branching Another distinction could be made between con
out from a point of entrance, or beginning from crete, sensuously vivid images, and those which were
some base line such as Massachusetts Avenue. highly abstract, generalized, and void of sensuous
b. Other maps were begun by the construction content. Thus the mental picture of a building might
of an enclosing outline, such as the Boston be vivid, involving its shape, color, texture, and
peninsula, which was then filled in toward the detail, or be relatively abstract, the structure being
center. identified as “a restaurant” or the “third building
c. Still others, particularly in Los Angeles, began from the corner.”
by laying down a basic repeating pattern (the Vivid does not necessarily equate with dense,
path gridiron) and then adding detail. nor thin with abstract. An image might be both
d. Somewhat fewer maps started as a set of adja dense and abstract, as in the case of the taxicab
cent regions, which were then detailed as to dispatcher’s knowledge of a city street, which
connections and interiors. related house numbers to uses along block after
e. A few Boston examples developed from a famil block, yet could not describe those buildings in any
iar kernel, a dense familiar element on which concrete sense.
everything was ultimately hung. Images could be further distinguished according
to their structural quality: the manner in which their
The image itself was not a precise, miniaturized parts were arranged and interrelated. There were
model of reality, reduced in scale and consistently four stages along a continuum of increasing struc
abstracted. As a purposive simplification, it was tural precision:
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 136 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

a. The various elements were free; there was no simply flexible. This effect seemed to occur for
structure or interrelation between parts. We many Bostonians at Scollay Square, for example.
found no pure cases of this type, but several Total structure may also be distinguished in a still
images were definitely disjointed, with vast gaps different way. For some, their images were organized
and many unrelated elements. Here rational rather instantaneously, as a series of wholes and
movement was impossible without outside help, parts descending from the general to the particular.
unless a systematic coverage of the entire area This organization had the quality of a static map.
were to be resorted to (which meant the build Connection was made by moving up to the necessary
ing up of a new structure on the spot). bridging generality, and back down to the desired
b. In others, the structure became positional; the particular. To go from City Hospital to the Old
T
parts were roughly related in terms of their gen North Church, for example, one might first consider W
eral direction and perhaps even relative distance that the hospital was in the South End and that the O
from each other, while still remaining discon South End was in central Boston, then locate the
nected. One subject in particular always related North End in Boston and the church within the North
herself to a few elements, without knowing End. This type of image might be called hierarchical.
definite connections between them. Movement For others, the image was put together in a more
was accomplished by searching, by moving out dynamic way, parts being interconnected by a sequ
in the correct general direction, while weaving ence over time (even if the time was quite brief ),
back and forth to cover a band and having an and pictured as though seen by a motion picture
estimate of distance to correct overshooting. camera. It was more closely related to the actual
c. Most often, perhaps, the structure was flexible; experience of moving through the city. This might
parts were connected one to the other, but in a be called a continuous organization, employing unroll
loose and flexible manner, as if by limp or elastic ing interconnections instead of static hierarchies.
ties. The sequence of events was known, but the One might infer from this that the images of
mental map might be quite distorted, and its greatest value are those which most closely approach
distortion might shift at different moments. To a strong total field: dense, rigid, and vivid; which
quote one subject: “I like to think of a few focal make use of all element types and form character
points and how to get from one to another, and istics without narrow concentration; and which can
the rest I don’t bother to learn.” With a flexible be put together either hierarchically or continuously,
structure, movement was easier, since it pro as occasion demands. We may find, of course, that
ceeded along known paths, through known sequ such an image is rare or impossible, that there are
ences. Motion between pairs of elements not strong individual or cultural types which cannot tran
habitually connected, or along other than habitual scend their basic abilities. In this case, an environ
paths, might still be very confusing, however. ment should be geared to the appropriate cultural
d. As connections multiplied, the structure tended type, or shaped in many ways so as to satisfy the
to become rigid; parts were firmly intercon varying demands of the individuals who inhabit it.
nected in all dimensions; and any distortions We are continuously engaged in the attempt to
became built in. The possessor of such a map organize our surroundings, to structure and identify
can move much more freely, and can intercon them. Various environments are more or less amen
nect new points at will. As the density of the able to such treatment. When reshaping cities
image builds up, it begins to take on the char it should be possible to give them a form which
acteristics of a total field, in which interaction facilitates these organizing efforts rather than
is possible in any direction and at any distance. frustrates them.
These characteristics of structure might apply

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lointaine chez l’homme, Paris, Payot, 1932. Orientation and Imaginary Maps,” Science, Vol. 38,
Kilpatrick, Franklin P., “Recent Experiments in Percep No. 990, Dec. 9, 1913, pp. 888–897.
tion,” New York Academy of Science, Transaction, Witkin, H.A., “Orientation in Space,” Research Reviews,
No. 8, Vol. 16, June 1954, pp. 420–425. Office of Naval Research, December 1949.
9780415668071_P2_03.indd 138 10-26-2012 3:19:16 PM

“Author’s Introduction” and
“The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact”
from The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Jane Jacobs
By the 1950s, the well-intentioned but misguided efforts of American city planners to create more healthful
and efficient living environments was manifesting itself in large-scale urban renewal schemes and central city
freeway construction projects. In 1961, Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was
published and immediately shocked the world of city planning. Jacobs (1916–2006) lived in Greenwich Village,
where she was raising three children and engaging in neighborhood protests against local renewal projects
and freeways. She wrote for the magazine Architectural Forum, where to her surprise and with no training she
had been quickly elevated to the status of planning and urban development “expert.” This experience gave
her a lifelong skepticism of credentialed expertise. The book railed against abstract “drawing board” planning,
and celebrated the dynamic qualities of cities and urban life.
Jacobs was fascinated by cities, how they worked and supported daily life. She learned about cities through
close looking, and developed her theories through inductive analysis, generalizing from the particulars that
she directly experienced. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she describes the four necessary
physical conditions for dynamic urban life: multifunctional neighborhoods, short blocks and connected street
systems, varied age residential areas, and a high concentration of people. These conditions help sustain a
diversity of people and provide the critical mass to support urban amenities and services. To Jacobs, cities
are living organisms in which streets are the “lifeblood.” She describes the wealth of everyday life happening
there as a “sidewalk ballet.” Dense, street-oriented residential buildings mixed with small-scale local com-
mercial shops provide “eyes on the street” that keep the city safe.
The two readings from The Death and Life of Great American Cities reprinted here summarize Jane Jacobs’
attack on the planning establishment and present some of Jacobs’ most important ideas regarding the social
life of streets. In “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact” Jacobs describes how casual interaction with others on
everyday urban streets leads to social cohesion and a sense of belonging. The exquisitely articulated argu-
ments she presents, along with the arguments presented in several other chapters on streets, began the
rehabilitation of city streets as public spaces.
When The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published, Jacobs was disparaged by some of
the most established planning professionals and academics, most particularly Lewis Mumford, on the grounds
that since she had no professional training, she had no right to theorize about planning. Her methods were
deemed unscientific, anecdotal, and arbitrary. But to those dismayed by the destruction of inner city neighbor-
hoods and disaffected by the sterility of modern developments, Jacobs’ celebration of the “messy” street life
of vibrant cities struck home. She has inspired and continues to inspire generations of urban planners and
architects, many of whom hold The Death and Life of Great American Cities to be the seminal book of the
urban design field. Her revaluing of city streets as important public social spaces was a major influence on
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140 J a N E J ac O bs
the later work of Allan B. Jacobs, Donald Appleyard, Peter Bosselmann, and a host of other urban design
researchers and practitioners. Her ideas about the important qualities of urban streets and neighborhoods
have been implemented in cities across North America and elsewhere, in the form of design guidelines that
attempt to shape urban forms so as to achieve “eyes on the street,” small blocks, and connected street pat-
terns. The design guidelines prepared during the 1990s for Vancouver’s False Creek North neighborhood are
notable examples of this practice.
In the 1960s, Jane Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto, where she led the successful fight against
the Spadina Expressway. She was a strong activist voice within Toronto and Canada until her death in 2006.
Jane Jacobs’ other writings include The Economy of Cities (New York: Random House, 1969); Cities and
the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1984); Systems of Survival (New York: Random House,
1992); The Nature of Economies (New York: Random House, 1998); and Dark Age Ahead (New York:
Random House, 2004). These books place the city in larger historical and economic contexts and explore
fundamental human values. A biography of her life and ideas by Max Allen is Ideas that Matter: The Worlds
of Jane Jacobs (Owen Sound, Ont.: Ginger Press, 1997).
Works that offer perspectives on Jane Jacobs’ early activism in New York City include Roberta Brandes
Gratz, The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (New York:
Nation Books, 2010) and Anthony Flint, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master
Builder and Transformed the American City (New York: Random House, 2009). Other books that offer insights
into her life and work are Glenna Lang, Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death
and Life of Great American Cities (Boston, MA: David R. Godine, 2009) and Alice Sparberg Alexiou, Jane
Jacobs: Urban Visionary (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006).
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION principles of planning and what practices in rebuild

ing can promote social and economic vitality in
This book is an attack on current city planning cities, and what practices and principles will deaden
and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to these attributes.
introduce new principles of city planning and re There is a wistful myth that if only we had
building, different and even opposite from those enough money to spend – the figure is usually put
now taught in everything from schools of architec at a hundred billion dollars – we could wipe out all
ture and planning to the Sunday supplements and our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the great,
women’s magazines. My attack is not based on dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-
quibbles about rebuilding methods or hairsplitting before-yesterday’s suburbs, anchor the wandering
about fashions in design. It is an attack, rather, on middle class and its wandering tax money, and
the principles and aims that have shaped modern, perhaps even solve the traffic problem.
orthodox city planning and rebuilding. But look what we have built with the first
In setting forth different principles, I shall mainly several billions. Low-income projects that become
be writing about common, ordinary things: for in worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and gen
stance, what kinds of city streets are safe and what eral social hopelessness than the slums they were
kinds are not; why some city parks are marvelous supposed to replace. Middle-income housing pro
and others are vice traps and death traps; why jects which are truly marvels of dullness and regi
some slums stay slums and other slums regenerate mentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality
themselves even against financial and official oppo of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate
sition; what makes downtowns shift their centers; their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity.
what, if anything, is a city neighborhood, and what Cultural centers that are unable to support a good
jobs, if any, neighborhoods in great cities do. In bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by every
short, I shall be writing about how cities work in one but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering
real life, because this is the only way to learn what place than others. Commercial centers that are
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“Author’s Introduction” 141
lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain- investment of public tax subsidies, as urban renewal
store shopping. Promenades that go from no place theory proclaims, but also on vast, involuntary sub
to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways sidies wrung out of helpless site victims. And the
that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuild increased tax returns from such sites, accruing
ing of cities. This is the sacking of cities. to the cities as a result of this “investment,” are a
Under the surface, these accomplishments prove mirage, a pitiful gesture against the ever increasing
even poorer than their poor pretenses. They seldom sums of public money needed to combat disinte
aid the city areas around them, as in theory they gration and instability that flow from the cruelly
are supposed to. These amputated areas typically shaken-up city. The means to planned city rebuild
develop galloping gangrene. To house people in ing are as deplorable as the ends.
T
this planned fashion, price tags are fastened on the Meantime, all the art and science of city planning W
population, and each sorted-out chunk of price- are helpless to stem decay – and the spiritlessness O
tagged populace lives in growing suspicion and that precedes decay – in ever more massive
tension against the surrounding city. When two or swatches of cities. Nor can this decay be laid, reas
more such hostile islands are juxtaposed the result suringly, to lack of opportunity to apply the arts of
is called “a balanced neighborhood”. Monopolistic planning. It seems to matter little whether they are
shopping centers and monumental cultural centers applied or not. Consider the Morningside Heights
cloak, under the public relations hoohaw, the sub area in New York City. According to planning theory
traction of commerce, and of culture too, from the it should not be in trouble at all, for it enjoys a
intimate and casual life of cities. great abundance of parkland, campus, playground
That such wonders may be accomplished, people and other open spaces. It has plenty of grass. It
who get marked with the planners’ hex signs are occupies high and pleasant ground with magnificent
pushed about, expropriated, and uprooted much as river views. It is a famous educational center with
if they were the subjects of a conquering power. splendid institutions – Columbia University, Union
Thousands upon thousands of small businesses are Theological Seminary, the Juilliard School of Music,
destroyed, and their proprietors ruined, with hardly and half a dozen others of eminent respectability.
a gesture at compensation. Whole communities are It is the beneficiary of good hospitals and churches.
torn apart and sown to the winds, with a reaping It has no industries. Its streets are zoned in the
of cynicism, resentment and despair that must be main against “incompatible uses” intruding into the
heard and seen to be believed. A group of clergy preserves for solidly constructed, roomy, middle-
men in Chicago, appalled at the fruits of planned and upper-class apartments. Yet by the early 1950’s
city rebuilding there, asked, Morningside Heights was becoming a slum so
swiftly, the surly kind of slum in which people fear
Could Job have been thinking of Chicago when to walk the streets, that the situation posed a crisis
he wrote: for the institutions. They and the planning arms of
the city government got together, applied more
Here are men that alter their neighbor’s land planning theory, wiped out the most run-down part
mark . . . shoulder the poor aside, conspire to of the area and built in its stead a middle-income
oppress the friendless. cooperative project complete with shopping center,
Reap they the field that is none of theirs, strip and a public housing project, all interspersed with
they the vineyard wrongfully seized from its air, light, sunshine and landscaping. This was hailed
owner . . . as a great demonstration in city saving.
A cry goes up from the city streets, where After that, Morningside Heights went downhill
wounded men lie groaning . . . even faster.
Nor is this an unfair or irrelevant example.
If so, he was also thinking of New York, Philadelphia, In city after city, precisely the wrong areas, in the
Boston, Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco and light of planning theory, are decaying. Less noticed,
a number of other places. The economic rationale but equally significant, in city after city the wrong
of current city rebuilding is a hoax. The economics areas, in the light of planning theory, are refusing
of city rebuilding do not rest soundly on reasoned to decay.
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Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and The simple needs of automobiles are more easily
error, failure and success, in city building and city understood and satisfied than the complex needs
design. This is the laboratory in which city planning of cities, and a growing number of planners and
should have been learning and forming and testing designers have come to believe that if they can
its theories. Instead the practitioners and teachers only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby
of this discipline (if such it can be called) have have solved the major problem of cities. Cities have
ignored the study of success and failure in real life, much more intricate economic and social concerns
have been incurious about the reasons for unex than automobile traffic. How can you know what
pected success, and are guided instead by principles to try with traffic until you know how the city itself
derived from the behavior and appearance of towns, works, and what else it needs to do with its streets?
suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs, and imaginary You can’t.
dream cities – from anything but cities themselves. [ . . . ]
If it appears that the rebuilt portions of cities
and the endless new developments spreading
beyond the cities are reducing city and countryside THE USES OF SIDEWALKS: CONTACT
alike to a monotonous, unnourishing gruel, this is
not strange. It all comes, first-, second-, third- or Reformers have long observed city people loitering
fourth-hand, out of the same intellectual dish of on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores
mush, a mush in which the qualities, necessities, and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and
advantages and behavior of great cities have been have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: “This
utterly confused with the qualities, necessities, ad is deplorable! If these people had decent homes
vantages and behavior of other and more inert and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they
types of settlements. wouldn’t be on the street!”
There is nothing economically or socially in This judgment represents a profound misunder
evitable about either the decay of old cities or standing of cities. It makes no more sense than
the fresh-minted decadence of the new unurban to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and
urbanization. On the contrary, no other aspect of conclude that if these people had wives who could
our economy and society has been more purpose cook, they would give their parties at home.
fully manipulated for a full quarter of a century The point of both the testimonial banquet and
to achieve precisely what we are getting. Extra the social life of city sidewalks is precisely that
ordinary governmental financial incentives have they are public. They bring together people who
been required to achieve this degree of monotony, do not know each other in an intimate, private
sterility and vulgarity. Decades of preaching, writ social fashion and in most cases do not care to
ing and exhorting by experts have gone into con know each other in that fashion.
vincing us and our legislators that mush like this Nobody can keep open house in a great city.
must be good for us, as long as it comes bedded Nobody wants to. And yet if interesting, useful and
with grass. significant contacts among the people of cities are
Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as confined to acquaintanceships suitable for private
the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the life, the city becomes stultified. Cities are full of
disappointments and futilities of city planning. But people with whom, from your viewpoint, or mine,
the destructive effects of automobiles are much or any other individual’s, a certain degree of contact
less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence is useful or enjoyable; but you do not want them
at city building. Of course planners, including the in your hair. And they do not want you in theirs
highwaymen with fabulous sums of money and either.
enormous powers at their disposal, are at a loss to In speaking about city sidewalk safety, I
make automobiles and cities compatible with one mentioned how necessary it is that there should
another. They do not know what to do with auto be, in the brains behind the eyes on the street, an
mobiles in cities because they do not know how to almost unconscious assumption of general street
plan for workable and vital cities anyhow – with or support when the chips are down – when a citizen
without automobiles. has to choose, for instance, whether he will take
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“ T h e U s e s o f S i d e w a l k s : C o n t a ct ” 143
responsibility, or abdicate it, in combating bar a mystical emotional effect in architectural scale.
barism or protecting strangers. There is a short It is a matter of what kinds of tangible enterprises
word for this assumption of support: trust. The sidewalks have, and therefore of how people use
trust of a city street is formed over time from many, the sidewalks in practical, everyday life.
many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out The casual public sidewalk life of cities ties
of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting directly into other types of public life, of which I
advice from the grocer and giving advice to the shall mention one as illustrative, although there is
newsstand man, comparing opinions with other no end to their variety.
customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the Formal types of local city organizations are
two boys drinking pop on the stoop, eying the girls frequently assumed by planners and even by some
T
while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing social workers to grow in direct, common-sense W
the children, hearing about a job from the hardware fashion out of announcements of meetings, the O
man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist, presence of meeting rooms, and the existence of
admiring the new babies and sympathizing over problems of obvious public concern. Perhaps they
the way a coat faded. Customs vary: in some neigh grow so in suburbs and towns. They do not grow
borhoods people compare notes on their dogs; in so in cities.
others they compare notes on their landlords. Formal public organizations in cities require
Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the an informal public life underlying them, mediating
sum is not trivial at all. The sum of such casual, between them and the privacy of the people of the
public contact at a local level – most of it fortuitous, city. We catch a hint of what happens by contrast
most of it associated with errands, all of it metered ing, again, a city area possessing a public sidewalk
by the person concerned and not thrust upon him life with a city area lacking it, as told about in the
by anyone – is a feeling for the public identity of report of a settlement-house social researcher who
people, a web of public respect and trust, and a was studying problems relating to public schools
resource in time of personal or neighborhood need. in a section of New York City:
The absence of this trust is a disaster to a city
street. Its cultivation cannot be institutionalized. Mr. W— (principal of an elementary school) was
And above all, it implies no private commitments. questioned on the effect of J— Houses on the
I have seen a striking difference between pres school, and the uprooting of the community
ence and absence of casual public trust on two around the school. He felt that there had been
sides of the same wide street in East Harlem, com many effects and of these most were negative.
posed of residents of roughly the same incomes He mentioned that the project had torn out
and same races. On the old-city side, which was numerous institutions for socializing. The present
full of public places and the sidewalk loitering atmosphere of the project was in no way similar
so deplored by Utopian minders of other people’s to the gaiety of the streets before the project
leisure, the children were being kept well in hand. was built. He noted that in general there seemed
On the project side of the street across the way, fewer people on the streets because there were
the children, who had a fire hydrant open beside fewer places for people to gather. He also con
their play area, were behaving destructively, drench tended that before the projects were built the
ing the open windows of houses with water, squirt Parents Association had been very strong, and
ing it on adults who ignorantly walked on the now there were only very few active members.
project side of the street, throwing it into the
windows of cars as they went by. Nobody dared Mr. W— was wrong in one respect. There were
to stop them. These were anonymous children, and not fewer places (or at any rate there was not
the identities behind them were an unknown. What less space) for people to gather in the project,
if you scolded or stopped them? Who would back if we count places deliberately planned for con
you up over there in the blind-eyed Turf ? Would structive socializing. Of course there were no bars,
you get, instead, revenge? Better to keep out of it. no candy stores, no hole-in-the-wall bodegas, no
Impersonal city streets make anonymous people, restaurants in the project. But the project under
and this is not a matter of esthetic quality nor of discussion was equipped with a model complement
9780415668071_P2_04.indd 143 10-26-2012 3:19:11 PM

of meeting rooms, craft, art and game rooms, out informed and who is inept and ignorant – and how
door benches, malls, etc., enough to gladden the these things are known from the public life of the
heart of even the Garden City advocates. sidewalk and its associated enterprises. These are
Why are such places dead and useless without matters of public character. But she also tells how
the most determined efforts and expense to inveigle select are those permitted to drop into the kitchen
users – and then to maintain control over the users? for a cup of coffee, how strong are the ties, and
What services do the public sidewalk and its enter how limited the number of a person’s genuine
prises fulfill that these planned gathering places confidants, those who share in a person’s private
do not? And why? How does an informal public life and private affairs. She tells how it is not con
sidewalk life bolster a more formal, organizational sidered dignified for everyone to know one’s affairs.
public life? Nor is it considered dignified to snoop on others
To understand such problems – to understand beyond the face presented in public. It does vio
why drinking pop on the stoop differs from drink lence to a person’s privacy and rights. In this, the
ing pop in the game room, and why getting advice people she describes are essentially the same as
from the grocer or the bartender differs from getting the people of the mixed, Americanized city street
advice from either your next-door neighbor or from on which I live, and essentially the same as the
an institutional lady who may be hand-in-glove with people who live in high-income apartments or fine
an institutional landlord – we must look into the town houses, too.
matter of city privacy. A good city street neighborhood achieves a
Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. marvel of balance between its people’s determina
Perhaps it is precious and indispensable every tion to have essential privacy and their simultaneous
where, but most places you cannot get it. In small wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment
settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the or help from the people around. This balance
city everyone does not. Only those you choose to is largely made up of small, sensitively managed
tell will know much about you. This is one of the details, practiced and accepted so casually that they
attributes of cities that is precious to most city are normally taken for granted.
people, whether their incomes are high or their Perhaps I can best explain this subtle but all-
incomes are low, whether they are white or colored, important balance in terms of the stores where
whether they are old inhabitants or new, and it is people leave keys for their friends, a common
a gift of great-city life deeply cherished and jeal custom in New York. In our family, for example,
ously guarded. when a friend wants to use our place while we are
Architectural and planning literature deals with away for a weekend or everyone happens to be out
privacy in terms of windows, overlooks, sight lines. during the day, or a visitor for whom we do not
The idea is that if no one from outside can peek wish to wait up is spending the night, we tell such
into where you live – behold, privacy. This is simple- a friend that he can pick up the key at the delica
minded. Window privacy is the easiest commodity tessen across the street. Joe Cornacchia, who keeps
in the world to get. You just pull down the shades the delicatessen, usually has a dozen or so keys at
or adjust the blinds. The privacy of keeping one’s a time for handing out like this. He has a special
personal affairs to those selected to know them, drawer for them.
and the privacy of having reasonable control over Now why do I, and many others, select Joe as
who shall make inroads on your time and when, a logical custodian for keys? Because we trust him,
are rare commodities in most of this world, how first, to be a responsible custodian, but equally
ever, and they have nothing to do with the orienta important because we know that he combines a
tion of windows. feeling of good will with a feeling of no personal
Anthropologist Elena Padilla, author of Up from responsibility about our private affairs. Joe consid
Puerto Rico, describing Puerto Rican life in a poor ers it no concern of his whom we choose to permit
and squalid district of New York, tells how much in our places and why.
people know about each other – who is to be Around on the other side of our block, people
trusted and who not, who is defiant of the law leave their keys at a Spanish grocery. On the other
and who upholds it, who is competent and well side of Joe’s block, people leave them at the candy
9780415668071_P2_04.indd 144 10-26-2012 3:19:11 PM

store. Down a block they leave them at the coffee another child going to the same birthday party was
shop, and a few hundred feet around the corner giving that; and got a back copy (this was for me)
from that, in a barber shop. Around one corner from of the previous day’s newspaper out of the deliverer’s
two fashionable blocks of town houses and apart surplus returns when he came by.
ments in the Upper East Side, people leave their After considering this multiplicity of extramer
keys in a butcher shop and a bookshop; around chandising services I asked Bernie, “Do you ever
another corner they leave them in a cleaner’s and introduce your customers to each other?”
a drug store. In unfashionable East Harlem keys He looked startled at the idea, even dismayed.
are left with at least one florist, in bakeries, in “No,” he said thoughtfully.
luncheonettes, in Spanish and Italian groceries.
T
The point, wherever they are left, is not the kind “That would just not be advisable. Sometimes, W
of ostensible service that the enterprise offers, but if I know two customers who are in at the same O
the kind of proprietor it has. time have an interest in common, I bring up the
A service like this cannot be formalized. Identi subject in conversation and let them carry it on
fications . . . questions . . . insurance against mishaps. from there if they want to. But oh no, I wouldn’t
The all-essential line between public service and introduce them.”
privacy would be transgressed by institutionaliza
tion. Nobody in his right mind would leave his key When I told this to an acquaintance in a suburb,
in such a place. The service must be given as a she promptly assumed that Mr. Jaffe felt that to
favor by someone with an unshakable understand make an introduction would be to step above his
ing of the difference between a person’s key and social class. Not at all. In our neighborhood, store
a person’s private life, or it cannot be given at all. keepers like the Jaffes enjoy an excellent social
Or consider the line drawn by Mr. Jaffe at the status, that of businessmen. In income they are apt
candy store around our corner – a line so well to be the peers of the general run of customers
understood by his customers and by other store and in independence they are the superiors. Their
keepers too that they can spend their whole lives advice, as men or women of common sense and
in its presence and never think about it consciously. experience, is sought and respected. They are well
One ordinary morning last winter, Mr. Jaffe, whose known as individuals, rather than unknown as class
formal business name is Bernie, and his wife, whose symbols. No; this is that almost unconsciously en
formal business name is Ann, supervised the small forced, well-balanced line showing, the line between
children crossing at the corner on the way to P.S. the city public world and the world of privacy.
41, as Bernie always does because he sees the need; This line can be maintained, without awkward
lent an umbrella to one customer and a dollar to ness to anyone, because of the great plenty of
another; took custody of two keys; took in some opportunities for public contact in the enterprises
packages for people in the next building who were along the sidewalks, or on the sidewalks themselves
away; lectured two youngsters who asked for ciga as people move to and fro or deliberately loiter
rettes; gave street directions; took custody of a when they feel like it, and also because of the
watch to give the repair man across the street when presence of many public hosts, so to speak, pro
he opened later; gave out information on the range prietors of meeting-places like Bernie’s where one
of rents in the neighborhood to an apartment is free either to hang around or dash in and out,
seeker; listened to a tale of domestic difficulty and no strings attached.
offered reassurance; told some rowdies they could Under this system, it is possible in a city street
not come in unless they behaved and then defined neighborhood to know all kinds of people with
(and got) good behavior; provided an incidental out unwelcome entanglements, without boredom,
forum for half a dozen conversations among necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving
customers who dropped in for oddments; set aside offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or
certain newly arrived papers and magazines for commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obliga
regular customers who would depend on getting tions which can accompany less limited relation
them; advised a mother who came for a birthday ships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk
present not to get the ship-model kit because terms with people who are very different from
9780415668071_P2_04.indd 145 10-26-2012 3:19:11 PM

oneself, and even, as time passes, on familiar pub in the city,” she says, “without getting the advan
lic terms with them. Such relationships can, and tages of living in the suburbs.” Still more distress
do, endure for many years, for decades; they could ing, when mothers of different income or color or
never have formed without that line, much less educational background bring their children to the
endured. They form precisely because they are by- street park, they and their children are rudely and
the-way to people’s normal public sorties. pointedly ostracized. They fit awkwardly into the
“Togetherness” is a fittingly nauseating name for suburbanlike sharing of private lives that has grown
an old ideal in planning theory. This ideal is that in default of city sidewalk life. The park lacks
if anything is shared among people, much should benches purposely; the “togetherness” people ruled
be shared. “Togetherness,” apparently a spiritual them out because they might be interpreted as an
resource of the new suburbs, works destructively invitation to people who cannot fit in.
in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared “If only we had a couple of stores on the street,”
drives city people apart. Mrs. Kostritsky laments.
When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the
people of the place must enlarge their private lives “If only there were a grocery store or a drug
if they are to have anything approaching equivalent store or a snack joint. Then the telephone calls
contact with their neighbors. They must settle for and the warming up and the gathering could be
some form of “togetherness,” in which more is done naturally in public, and then people would
shared with one another than in the life of the act more decent to each other because every
sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of con body would have a right to be here.”
tact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it
has to be; and either has distressing results. Much the same thing that happens in this sidewalk
In the case of the first outcome, where people park without a city public life happens some
do share much, they become exceedingly choosy times in middle-class projects and colonies, such
as to who their neighbors are, or with whom they as Chatham Village in Pittsburgh for example, a
associate at all. They have to become so. A friend famous model of Garden City planning.
of mine, Penny Kostritsky, is unwittingly and unwill The houses here are grouped in colonies around
ingly in this fix on a street in Baltimore. Her street shared interior lawns and play yards, and the whole
of nothing but residences, embedded in an area of development is equipped with other devices for
almost nothing but residences, has been experi close sharing, such as a residents’ club which holds
mentally equipped with a charming sidewalk park. parties, dances, reunions, has ladies’ activities like
The sidewalk has been widened and attractively bridge and sewing parties, and holds dances and
paved, wheeled traffic discouraged from the narrow parties for the children. There is no public life here,
street roadbed, trees and flowers planted, and a in any city sense. There are differing degrees of
piece of play sculpture is to go in. All these are extended private life.
splendid ideas so far as they go. Chatham Village’s success as a “model” neigh
However, there are no stores. The mothers from borhood where much is shared has required that
nearby blocks who bring small children here, and the residents be similar to one another in their
come here to find some contact with others them standards, interests and backgrounds. In the main
selves, perforce go into the houses of acquaintances they are middle-class professionals and their fami
along the street to warm up in winter, to make lies.1 It has also required that residents set them
telephone calls, to take their children in emergen selves distinctly apart from the different people in
cies to the bathroom. Their hostesses offer them the surrounding city; these are in the main also
coffee, for there is no other place to get coffee, and middle class, but lower middle class, and this is too
naturally considerable social life of this kind has different for the degree of chumminess that neigh
arisen around the park. Much is shared. borliness in Chatham Village entails.
Mrs. Kostritsky, who lives in one of the con The inevitable insularity (and homogeneity) of
veniently located houses, and who has two small Chatham Village has practical consequences. As
children, is in the thick of this narrow and acciden one illustration, the junior high school serving the
tal social life. “I have lost the advantage of living area has problems, as all schools do. Chatham
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Village is large enough to dominate the elementary go undone. The abysses this opens up can be
school to which its children go, and therefore to almost unbelievable.
work at helping solve this school’s problems. For example, in one New York City project which
To deal with the junior high, however, Chatham is designed – like all orthodox residential city plan
Village’s people must cooperate with entirely ning – for sharing much or nothing, a remarkably
different neighborhoods. But there is no public ac outgoing woman prided herself that she had
quaintanceship, no foundation of casual public trust, become acquainted, by making a deliberate effort,
no cross-connections with the necessary people – and with the mothers of everyone of the ninety
no practice or ease in applying the most ordinary families in her building. She called on them. She
techniques of city public life at lowly levels. Feeling buttonholed them at the door or in the hall. She
T
helpless, as indeed they are, some Chatham Village struck up conversations if she sat beside them on W
families move away when their children reach junior a bench. O
high age; others contrive to send them to private It so happened that her eight-year-old son, one
high schools. Ironically, just such neighborhood day, got stuck in the elevator and was left there
islands as Chatham Village are encouraged in or without help for more than two hours, although
thodox planning on the specific grounds that cities he screamed, cried and pounded. The next day the
need the talents and stabilizing influence of the mother expressed her dismay to one of her ninety
middle class. Presumably these qualities are to seep acquaintances. “Oh, was that your son?” said the
out by osmosis. other woman. “I didn’t know whose boy he was.
People who do not fit happily into such colonies If I had realized he was your son I would have
eventually get out, and in time managements helped him.”
become sophisticated in knowing who among This woman, who had not behaved in any such
applicants will fit in. Along with basic similarities insanely calloused fashion on her old public street
of standards, values and backgrounds, the arrange – to which she constantly returned, by the way, for
ment seems to demand a formidable amount of public life – was afraid of a possible entanglement
forbearance and tact. that might not be kept easily on a public plane.
City residential planning that depends, for con Dozens of illustrations of this defense can be
tact among neighbors, on personal sharing of this found wherever the choice is sharing much or noth
sort, and that cultivates it, often does work well soci ing. A thorough and detailed report by Ellen Lurie,
ally, if rather narrowly, for self-selected upper-middle- a social worker in East Harlem, on life in a low-
class people. It solves easy problems for an easy income project there, has this to say:
kind of population. So far as I have been able to
discover, it fails to work, however, even on its own It is . . . extremely important to recognize that
terms, with any other kind of population. for considerably complicated reasons, many
The more common outcome in cities, where adults either don’t want to become involved in
people are faced with the choice of sharing much any friendship-relationships at all with their
or nothing, is nothing. In city areas that lack a neighbors, or, if they do succumb to the need
natural and casual public life, it is common for for some form of society, they strictly limit them
residents to isolate themselves from each other to selves to one or two friends, and no more. Over
a fantastic degree. If mere contact with your neigh and over again, wives repeated their husband’s
bors threatens to entangle you in their private lives, warning:
or entangle them in yours, and if you cannot be so “I’m not to get too friendly with anyone. My
careful who your neighbors are as self-selected husband doesn’t believe in it.”
upper-middle-class people can be, the logical solu “People are too gossipy and they could get us
tion is absolutely to avoid friendliness or casual in a lot of trouble.”
offers of help. Better to stay thoroughly distant. As “It’s best to mind your own business.”
a practical result, the ordinary public jobs – like One woman, Mrs. Abraham, always goes out
keeping children in hand – for which people must the back door of the building because she doesn’t
take a little personal initiative, or those for which they want to interfere with the people standing around
must band together in limited common purposes, in the front. Another man, Mr. Colan . . . won’t
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let his wife make any friends in the project, one of these two already has a friend or two in
because he doesn’t trust the people here. They her own building, the other is likely to be drawn
have four children, ranging from 8 years to into that circle and begins to make her friend
14, but they are not allowed downstairs alone, ships, not with women on her floor, but rather
because the parents are afraid someone will on her friend’s floor.
hurt them.2 What happens then is that all sorts These friendships do not go into an ever-
of barriers to insure self-protection are being widening circle. There are certain definite well-
constructed by many families. To protect their traveled paths in the project, and after a while
children from a neighborhood they aren’t sure no new people are met.
of, they keep them upstairs in the apartment.
To protect themselves, they make few, if any, Mrs. Lurie, who works at community organiza
friends. Some are afraid that friends will become tion in East Harlem, with remarkable success, has
angry or envious and make up a story to report looked into the history of many past attempts at
to management, causing them great trouble. If project tenant organization. She has told me that
the husband gets a bonus (which he decides not “togetherness,” itself, is one of the factors that make
to report) and the wife buys new curtains, the this kind of organization so difficult. “These projects
visiting friends will see and might tell the man are not lacking in natural leaders,” she says.
agement, who, in turn, investigates and issues a
rent increase. Suspicion and fear of trouble often
outweigh any need for neighborly advice and They contain people with real ability, wonderful
help. For these families the sense of privacy has people many of them, but the typical sequence
already been extensively violated. The deepest is that in the course of organization leaders have
secrets, all the family skeletons, are well known found each other, gotten all involved in each
not only to management but often to other pub others’ social lives, and have ended up talking
lic agencies, such as the Welfare Department. to nobody but each other. They have not found
To preserve any last remnants of privacy, they their followers. Everything tends to degenerate
choose to avoid close relationships with others. into ineffective cliques, as a natural course.
This same phenomenon may be found to a much There is no normal public life. Just the mechan
lesser degree in non-planned slum housing, for ics of people learning what is going on is so
there too it is often necessary for other reasons difficult. It all makes the simplest social gain
to build up these forms of self-protection. But, extra hard for these people.
it is surely true that this withdrawing from the
society of others is much more extensive in Residents of unplanned city residential areas
planned housing. Even in England, this suspicion that lack neighborhood commerce and sidewalk
of the neighbors and the ensuing aloofness was life seem sometimes to follow the same course as
found in studies of planned towns. Perhaps this residents of public projects when faced with the
pattern is nothing more than an elaborate group choice of sharing much or nothing. Thus researchers
mechanism to protect and preserve inner dignity hunting the secrets of the social structure in a dull
in the face of so many outside pressures to gray-area district of Detroit came to the unexpected
conform. conclusion there was no social structure.
The social structure of sidewalk life hangs partly
Along with nothingness, considerable “together on what can be called self-appointed public charac
ness” can be found in such places, however. Mrs. ters. A public character is anyone who is in fre
Lurie reports on this type of relationship: quent contact with a wide circle of people and who
is sufficiently interested to make himself a public
Often two women from two different buildings character. A public character need have no special
will meet in the laundry room, recognize each talents or wisdom to fulfill his function – although
other; although they may never have spoken a he often does. He just needs to be present, and
single word to each other back on 99th Street, there need to be enough of his counterparts. His
suddenly here they become “best friends.” If main qualification is that he is public, that he talks
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to lots of different people. In this way, news travels of Meloni that because of his intensity, his dramatic
that is of sidewalk interest. manner and his lifelong interest in music, he trans
Most public sidewalk characters are steadily mits a feeling of vicarious importance to his many
stationed in public places. They are storekeepers friends.” Precisely.
or barkeepers or the like. These are the basic One need not have either the artistry or the
public characters. All other public characters of personality of such a man to become a specialized
city sidewalks depend on them – if only indirectly sidewalk character – but only a pertinent specialty
because of the presence of sidewalk routes to such of some sort. It is easy. I am a specialized public
enterprises and their proprietors. character of sorts along our street, owing of course
Settlement-house workers and pastors, two more to the fundamental presence of the basic, anchored
T
formalized kinds of public characters, typically public characters. The way I became one started W
depend on the street grapevine news systems that with the fact that Greenwich Village, where I live, O
have their ganglia in the stores. The director of was waging an interminable and horrendous battle
a settlement on New York’s Lower East Side, as an to save its main park from being bisected by a
example, makes a regular round of stores. He learns highway. During the course of battle I undertook,
from the cleaner who does his suits about the at the behest of a committee organizer away over
presence of dope pushers in the neighborhood. He on the other side of Greenwich Village, to deposit
learns from the grocer that the Dragons are work in stores on a few blocks of our street supplies of
ing up to something and need attention. He learns petition cards protesting the proposed roadway.
from the candy store that two girls are agitating Customers would sign the cards while in the stores,
the Sportsmen toward a rumble. One of his most and from time to time I would make my pickups.3
important information spots is an unused breadbox As a result of engaging in this messenger work,
on Rivington Street. That is, it is not used for bread. I have since become automatically the sidewalk
It stands outside a grocery and is used for sitting public character on petition strategy. Before long,
on and lounging beside, between the settlement for instance, Mr. Fox at the liquor store was consult
house, a candy store and a pool parlor. A message ing me, as he wrapped up my bottle, on how we
spoken there for any teen-ager within many blocks could get the city to remove a long abandoned and
will reach his ears unerringly and surprisingly dangerous eyesore, a closed-up comfort station near
quickly, and the opposite flow along the grapevine his corner. If I would undertake to compose the
similarly brings news quickly in to the breadbox. petitions and find the effective way of presenting
Blake Hobbs, the head of the Union Settlement them to City Hall, he proposed, he and his partners
music school in East Harlem, notes that when he would undertake to have them printed, circulated
gets a first student from one block of the old busy and picked up. Soon the stores round about had
street neighborhoods, he rapidly gets at least three comfort station removal petitions. Our street by
or four more and sometimes almost every child now has many public experts on petition tactics,
on the block. But when he gets a child from the including the children.
nearby projects – perhaps through the public school Not only do public characters spread the news
or a playground conversation he has initiated – he and learn the news at retail, so to speak. They
almost never gets another as a direct sequence. connect with each other and thus spread word
Word does not move around where public charac wholesale, in effect.
ters and sidewalk life are lacking. A sidewalk life, so far as I can observe, arises
Besides the anchored public characters of the out of no mysterious qualities or talents for it in
sidewalk, and the well-recognized roving public this or that type of population. It arises only when
characters, there are apt to be various more special the concrete, tangible facilities it requires are pre
ized public characters on a city sidewalk. In a curious sent. These happen to be the same facilities, in
way, some of these help establish an identity not the same abundance and ubiquity, that are required
only for themselves but for others. Describing the for cultivating sidewalk safety. If they are absent,
everyday life of a retired tenor at such sidewalk public sidewalk contacts are absent too.
establishments as the restaurant and the bocce The well-off have many ways of assuaging needs
court, a San Francisco news story notes, “It is said for which poorer people may depend much on
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sidewalk life – from hearing of jobs to being most serious social problem – segregation and
recognized by the headwaiter. But nevertheless, racial discrimination.
many of the rich or near-rich in cities appear to I do not mean to imply that a city’s planning
appreciate sidewalk life as much as anybody. At and design, or its types of streets and street life,
any rate, they pay enormous rents to move into can automatically overcome segregation and dis
areas with an exuberant and varied sidewalk life. crimination. Too many other kinds of effort are
They actually crowd out the middle class and the also required to right these injustices.
poor in lively areas like Yorkville or Greenwich But I do mean to say that to build and to rebuild
Village in New York, or Telegraph Hill just off the big cities whose sidewalks are unsafe and whose
North Beach streets of San Francisco. They capri people must settle for sharing much or nothing, can
ciously desert, after only a few decades of fashion make it much harder for American cities to over
at most, the monotonous streets of “quiet residen come discrimination no matter how much effort is
tial areas” and leave them to the less fortunate. expended.
Talk to residents of Georgetown in the District of Considering the amount of prejudice and fear
Columbia and by the second or third sentence at that accompany discrimination and bolster it,
least you will begin to hear rhapsodies about the overcoming residential discrimination is just that
charming restaurants, “more good restaurants than much harder if people feel unsafe on their side
in all the rest of the city put together,” the unique walks anyway. Overcoming residential discrimin
ness and friendliness of the stores, the pleasures ation comes hard where people have no means of
of running into people when doing errands at the keeping a civilized public life on a basically dignified
next corner – and nothing but pride over the fact public footing, and their private lives on a private
that Georgetown has become a specialty shopping footing.
district for its whole metropolitan area. The city To be sure, token model housing integration
area, rich or poor or in between, harmed by an schemes here and there can be achieved in city
interesting sidewalk life and plentiful sidewalk areas handicapped by danger and by lack of public
contacts has yet to be found. life – achieved by applying great effort and settling
Efficiency of public sidewalk characters declines for abnormal (abnormal for cities) choosiness among
drastically if too much burden is put upon them. new neighbors. This is an evasion of the size of
A store, for example, can reach a turnover in its the task and its urgency.
contacts, or potential contacts, which is so large The tolerance, the room for great differences
and so superficial that it is socially useless. An among neighbors – differences that often go far
example of this can be seen at the candy and news deeper than differences in color – which are pos
paper store owned by the housing cooperative of sible and normal in intensely urban life, but which
Corlears Hook on New York’s Lower East Side. are so foreign to suburbs and pseudosuburbs, are
This planned project store replaces perhaps forty possible and normal only when streets of great
superficially similar stores which were wiped out cities have built-in equipment allowing strangers to
(without compensation to their proprietors) on that dwell in peace together on civilized but essentially
project site and the adjoining sites. The place is dignified and reserved terms.
a mill. Its clerks are so busy making change and Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may
screaming ineffectual imprecations at rowdies that appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from
they never hear anything except “I want that.” This, which a city’s wealth of public life may grow.
or utter disinterest, is the usual atmosphere where Los Angeles is an extreme example of a metro
shopping center planning or repressive zoning polis with little public life, depending mainly instead
artificially contrives commercial monopolies for city on contacts of a more private social nature.
neighborhoods. A store like this would fail eco On one plane, for instance, an acquaintance
nomically if it had competition. Meantime, although there comments that although she has lived in the
monopoly insures the financial success planned for city for ten years and knows it contains Mexicans,
it, it fails the city socially. she has never laid eyes on a Mexican or an item
Sidewalk public contact and sidewalk public of Mexican culture, much less ever exchanged any
safety, taken together, bear directly on our country’s words with a Mexican.
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On another plane, Orson Welles has written that In its upper economic, political and cultural ech
Hollywood is the only theatrical center in the world elons, Los Angeles operates according to the same
that has failed to develop a theatrical bistro. provincial premises of social insularity as the street
And on still another plane, one of Los Angeles’ with the sidewalk park in Baltimore or as Chatham
most powerful businessmen comes upon a blank Village in Pittsburgh. Such a metropolis lacks means
in public relationships which would be inconceiv for bringing together necessary ideas, necessary
able in other cities of this size. This businessman, enthusiasms, necessary money. Los Angeles is
volunteering that the city is “culturally behind,” as embarked on a strange experiment: trying to run
he put it, told me that he for one was at work not just projects, not just gray areas, but a whole
to remedy this. He was heading a committee to metropolis, by dint of “togetherness” or nothing. I
T
raise funds for a first-rate art museum. Later in think this is an inevitable outcome for great cities W
our conversation, after he had told me about the whose people lack city public life in ordinary living O
businessmen’s club life of Los Angeles, a life with and working.
which he is involved as one of its leaders, I asked
him how or where Hollywood people gathered in
corresponding fashion. He was unable to answer NOTES
this. He then added that he knew no one at all
connected with the film industry, nor did he know 1 One representative court, for example, contains
anyone who did have such acquaintanceship. “I as this is written four lawyers, two doctors, two
know that must sound strange,” he reflected. “We engineers, a dentist, a salesman, a banker, a
are glad to have the film industry here, but those railroad executive, a planning executive.
connected with it are just not people one would 2 This is very common in public projects in New
know socially.” York.
Here again is “togetherness” or nothing. Consider 3 This, by the way, is an efficient device, accom
this man’s handicap in his attempts to get a metro plishing with a fraction of the effort what would
politan art museum established. He has no way of be a mountainous task door to door. It also
reaching with any ease, practice or trust some of his makes more public conversation and opinion
committee’s potentially best prospects. than door-to-door visits.
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“A City is Not a Tree”
from Architectural Forum (1965)
Christopher Alexander
Echoing the sentiments of other critics who were discontented with the bankrupt results of twentieth-century
city-making, Christopher Alexander provides both a critique of practice and a corrective way of thinking about
cities. Throughout his early work (including this selection) Christopher Alexander combined his background in
architecture, mathematics, and physics to suggest new ways of thinking about design and cities. In his practice
and writing, he rejects conventional design processes of the mainstream built environment professions – which
are perceived to be overly reductionist and lacking the complexity that allows life, beauty, and place-based
harmonies to emerge. He is highly critical of the profit-driven construction and development industries, which
are understood to be responsible for the tragedy of late-twentieth-century urban form and aesthetics. Like
other urban critics of the time, he is interested in human desires for comfort, the spirituality of place, and
other subjective values (often disregarded in the professional design studio).
In this article, Alexander suggests that a city’s inherent complexity should be viewed as a multilayered lattice
work, rather than a branched and tree-like diagram that separates and fragments functions and activities. Instead
of thinking about cities as reductionist formulae, he suggests we should understand cities as overlaid sets,
subsets, and infinite possibilities of interaction. In many ways this writing reflects the contemporaneous critiques
being offered by Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, Ian McHarg, and other urbanists. He provides critiques of several
designers within the text, including Garnier, Le Corbusier, Soleri, and Kahn. He condemns design theories that
seek to separate rather than integrate uses within the city, including the transportation and residential segrega-
tion so loved by modernist architects, and recommended in CIAM’s Charter of Athens. His insights into
complex human needs suggest that overlap and messy place-based choices are more important than rationally
designed, efficient, and unencumbered mono-cultures of placeless urbanism. This writing also presages later
work on systems and complexity theory that would rise anew at the end of the twentieth century.
His subsequent writings develop the theme of this article more fully through prescriptions about how
contemporary cities can revalidate historic traditions and fulfill human psychological and spiritual needs. His
theses call for a return to self-built places without the help of design professionals. These are the vernacular
processes that produced simpler, more meaningful places that people have loved for eons, and consequently
provided cultural differentiation across the globe. He also calls for a more participatory design that is directed
by the intuitive needs and desires of everyday life, rather than the abstract and over-intellectualized design
practices influenced by scientific process, regulations, professional standards or academic theories. Just as
important is Alexander’s revalorization of the concept of beauty, which had long been discarded from intel-
lectual design discourse. His built works are thoroughly participatory and vernacular in design, including
well-published projects in Mexicali-Mexico, near Tokyo-Japan, San Jose-California, and West Sussex-England.
For participants in Alexander’s design process, the buildings provide a sense of belonging and a connection
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 152 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

“ A C it Y is N O t a T R ee ” 153
to place. For those within the establishment architecture profession, Alexander’s position is disconcerting in
its lack of respect for linear thinking and design-by-formula.
In the mid-1970s, Alexander and a number of writing partners began a six-volume series of texts through
the Center for Environmental Structure. The most important of these is his masterwork, A Pattern Language,
where he provides a scalar hierarchy of recommended “patterns” for designing regions, cities, districts, build-
ings, and interiors. It examines several dozen historical urbanisms and architectures to draw design lessons
(or patterns) that can be used in contemporary design practice. Upon its publication it was embraced by lay
people, city-lovers, and ecologically minded designers who shared the author’s values. In like manner, it was
rejected by many within the built environment professions as pedantic, overly prescriptive, anachronistic, and
iconoclastic. The success of A Pattern Language, however, has spawned a movement of dedicated followers
T
and numerous websites dedicated to Alexander’s work. W
Many of Alexander’s later works are infused with religious, mystical, and spiritual allusions. His book The O
Timeless Way of Building (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) begins to summarize a theoret
ical stance developed across the arc of his career. It reads similarly to the Tao Te Ching. The esoteric state-
ments of the text seem to require meditation in their vagueness. Alexander calls for a return to a timeless way
of building towns, structures, and places where people can feel alive again: “There is one timeless way of
building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been.” The Timeless Way of Build-
ing serves as a synopsis of his theories and the use of living patterns drawn from nature, everyday life, and
traditional environments.
In the sixth volume, A New Theory of Urban Design (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1987),
Alexander extends his critique of architectural practice to similar concerns in urban design, specifically the
deadening nature (and often unrealizable goals) of master planned urbanism. Like modernist architecture that
streamlines design to overt simplicity, so too does master planning, which often lacks the organic and incre-
mental nature of more loved cities, such as Florence, London, or Prague.
Not surprising, these works were written at a time that also saw the rise of authors interested in vernacular
traditions, everyday landscapes, and material culture studies. A few of these, such as J.B. Jackson and Paul
Groth, were located at the University of California, Berkeley alongside Alexander. They were interested in
describing the role and importance of working landscapes, utilitarian buildings, self-built domestic structures,
and everyday places often overlooked within courses on architectural history, which typically valorize high-
pedigree buildings and places. For more information on vernacular design see the following work by John
Brinckerhoff Jackson: Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984)
and A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). With an eye to re-
educating Americans about hand-built traditions, Bernard Rudofsky made a career in the study of the ver-
nacular in such works as Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture
(Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1964, 1987) and Streets for People: A Primer for
Americans (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969). See also: Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi (eds), Under
standing Ordinary Landscapes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997) and Thomas Carter and Elizabeth
Collins Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Land
scapes (University of Tennessee Press, 2005).
Christopher Alexander is an architect, builder and theorist, now living in the UK after a teaching career at
Harvard, MIT, the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture, and the University of California, Berkeley, where
he spent the bulk of his academic career. He gained early notoriety with his PhD dissertation, published as
Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), which influenced a gener
ation of computer scientists. He continues to work through a variety of design and research centers that
champion his theories. Alexander and his followers have conducted design experiments, advised city leaders,
and built hundreds of buildings in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Their design work is highly participatory and
interactive, resulting in innovative building technologies and work that emerges from the ideas of their clients.
His writings have been highly influential in reviving the craft of building, illuminating the value of vernacular
environments, and transforming the status quo practices of architecture and town planning. Among a lifetime
of awards, in 2009 he was awarded the Vincent Scully Award by the US National Building Museum.
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 153 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

154 C h R ist O phe R A le X ande R
Books in the Center for Environmental Structure Series (all published in New York by Oxford University
Press) are: The Oregon Experiment (1975), A Pattern Language, written with Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein
et al. (1977), The Timeless Way of Building (1979), The Linz Cafe (1981), The Production of Houses, writ-
ten with Howard Davis, Julio Martinez, and Donald Cormer (1985) and A New Theory of Urban Design,
written with Hajo Neis, Artemis Anninou, and Ingrid King (1985).
Other important texts by Alexander include the ambitious four-volume text The Nature of Order: An Essay
on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure,
2003): Volume 1, The Phenomenon of Life; Volume 2, The Process of Creating Life; Volume 3, A Vision of
a Living World; and Volume 4, The Luminous Ground. Additional material on Alexander’s life and work can
be found in his biography by Stephen Grabow, Christopher Alexander The Evolution of a New Paradigm in
Architecture (Boston, MA: Oriel Press, 1983); and an overview of his design work by Ingrid F. King and Toshio
Nakamura, “Christopher Alexander and Contemporary Architecture” in Architecture + Urbanism (August, 1993).
Two documentaries have been produced on Alexander’s work: Places for the Soul: The Architecture of
Christopher Alexander (1990) and Christopher Alexander and Contemporary Architecture (1993). The influ-
ence of Christopher Alexander’s work is wide and impressive: computer science and programming, mathemat-
ics, design theory, architecture, urban design, participatory practice, vernacular design, and even computer
gaming with impacts on SimCity and other Sims programs.
The tree of my title is not a green tree with leaves. ings and modern cities everywhere as an inevitable,
It is the name of an abstract structure. I shall con- rather sad piece of the larger fact that the world is
trast it with another, more complex abstract struc- going to the dogs.
ture called a semi-lattice. The city is a semi-lattice, It is much too easy to say that these opinions
but it is not a tree. In order to relate these abstract represent only people’s unwillingness to forget the
structures to the nature of the city, I must first past, and their determination to be traditional. For
make a simple distinction. myself, I trust this conservatism. People are usually
willing to move with the times. Their growing
reluctance to accept the modern city evidently ex-
NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CITIES presses a longing for some real thing, something
which for the moment escapes our grasp.
I want to call those cities which have arisen more The prospect that we may be turning the world
or less spontaneously over many, many years natural into a place peopled only by little glass and con-
cities. And I shall call those cities and parts of cities, crete boxes has alarmed many architects, too. To
which have been deliberately created by designers combat the glass box future, many valiant protests
and planners artificial cities. Siena, Liverpool, Kyoto, and designs have been put forward, all hoping to
Manhattan are examples of natural cities. Levittown, recreate in modern form the various characteristics
Chandigarh, and the British New Towns are ex- of the natural city which seem to give it life. But
amples of artificial cities. so far these designs have only remade the old. They
It is more and more widely recognized today have not been able to create the new.
that there is some essential ingredient missing from “Outrage,” the Architectural Review’s campaign
artificial cities. When compared with ancient cities against the way in which new construction and
that have acquired the patina of life, our modern telegraph poles are wrecking the English town,
attempts to create cities artificially are, from a based its remedies, essentially, on the idea that the
human point of view, entirely unsuccessful. spatial sequence of buildings and open spaces must
Architects themselves admit more and more be controlled if scale is to be preserved – an idea
freely that they really like living in old buildings that really derives from Camillo Sitte’s book about
more than new ones. The non-art loving public at ancient squares and piazzas.
large, instead of being grateful to architects for Another kind of remedy, in protest against
what they do, regards the onset of modern build- the monotony of Levittown, tries to recapture the
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 154 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

richness of shape found in the houses of a natural systems goes to make up a large and complex
old town. Llewelyn Davies’ village at Rushbrooke system. More generally, they are both names for
in England is an example – each cottage is slightly structures of sets.
different from its neighbor, the roofs jut in and out In order to define such structures, let me first
at picturesque angles, the shapes are “interesting” define the concept of a set. A set is a collection of
and cute. elements which for some reason we think of as
A third suggested remedy is to get high density belonging together. Since, as designers, we are con-
back into the city. The idea seems to be that if the cerned with the physical living city and its physical
whole metropolis could only be like Grand Central backbone, we most naturally restrict ourselves to
Station, with lots and lots of layers and tunnels all considering sets which are collections of material
T
over the place, and enough people milling around elements like people, blades of grass, cars, bricks, W
in them, maybe it would be human again. The molecules, houses, gardens, water pipes, the water O
artificial urbanity of Victor Gruen’s schemes and molecules that run in them, etc.
of the LCC’s scheme for Hook New Town, both When the elements of a set belong together,
betray this thought at work. because they co-operate or work together some-
Another very brilliant critic of the deadness how, we call the set of elements a system.
which is everywhere is Jane Jacobs. Her criticisms Here is an example. In Berkeley [California], at
are excellent. But when you read her concrete pro- the corner of Hearst and Euclid, there is a drug
posals for what we should do instead, you get the store, and outside the drug store is a traffic light.
idea that she wants the great modern city to be a In the entrance to the drug store there is a news-
sort of mixture between Greenwich Village and rack where the day’s papers are displayed. When
some Italian hill town, full of short blocks and the light is red, people who are waiting to cross the
people sitting in the street. street stand idly by the light; and since they have
The problem these designers have tried to face nothing to do, they look at the papers displayed on
is real. It is vital that we discover the property of the newsrack which they can see from where they
old towns which gave them life, and get it back stand. Some of them just read the headlines; others
into our own artificial cities. But we cannot do this actually buy a paper while they wait.
merely by remaking English villages, Italian piazzas This effect makes the newsrack and the traffic
and Grand Central Stations. Too many designers light interdependent; the newsrack, the newspapers
today seem to be yearning for the physical and on it, the money going from people’s pockets to
plastic characteristics of the past instead of search- the dime slot, the people who stop at the light and
ing for the abstract ordering principle which the read the papers, traffic light, the electric impulses
towns of the past happened to have, and which which make the lights change, the sidewalk which
our modern conceptions of the city have not yet they stand on form a system – they all work together.
found. These designers fail to put new life into the From the designer’s point of view, the physically
city, because they merely imitate the appearance unchanging part of this system is of special inter-
of the old, its concrete substance: they fail to un- est. The newsrack, the traffic light, and the side
earth its inner nature. walk between them, related as they are, form the
What is the inner nature, the ordering principle, fixed part of the system. It is the unchanging re-
which distinguishes the artificial city from the natural ceptacle in which the changing parts of the system
city? You will have guessed from the first paragraph – people, newspapers, money, and electrical im-
what I believe this ordering principle to be. I believe pulses – can work together. I define this fixed part
that a natural city has the organization of a semi- as a unit of the city. It derives its coherence as a
lattice; but that when we organize a city artificially, unit both from the forces which hold its own ele-
we organize it as a tree. ments together, and from the dynamic coherence
of the larger living system, which includes it as a
fixed, invariant part.
TREES AND SEMI-LATTICES Other examples of systems in the city are: the
set of particles which go to make up a building;
Both the tree and the semi-lattice are ways of think- the set of particles which go to make up the human
ing about how a large collection of many small body; the cars on the freeway, plus the people in
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 155 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

them, plus the freeway they are driving on; two as (34) is part of (345) and (3456). Some of the
friends on the phone, plus the telephones they hold, sets will overlap, like (123) and (234). Some of the
plus the telephone line connecting them; Telegraph sets will be disjoint – that is, contain no elements
Hill [San Francisco] with all its buildings, services in common, like (123) and (45).
and inhabitants; the chain of Rexall drug stores; We can see these relationships displayed in two
the physical elements of San Francisco that fall ways (see Figure 1). In Diagram A, each set chosen
under the administrative authority of City Hall; to be a unit has a line drawn round it. In Diagram
everything within the physical boundary of San B, the chosen sets are arranged in order of ascend-
Francisco, plus all the people who visit the city ing magnitude, so that whenever one set contains
regularly and contribute to its development (like another, as (345) contains (34), there is a vertical
Bob Hope or the president of Arthur D. Little), plus path leading from one to the other. For the sake of
all the major sources of economic welfare which clarity and visual economy, it is usual to draw lines
supply the city with its wealth; the dog next door, only between sets which have no further sets and
plus my garbage can, plus the garbage out of my lines between them; thus the line between (34)
garbage can which he lives on; the San Francisco and (345), and the line between (345) and (3456),
chapter of the John Birch Society. make it unnecessary to draw a line between (34)
Each one of these is a set of elements made and (3456).
coherent and co-operative by some sort of inner As we see from these two representations, the
binding forces. And each one, just like the traffic choice of subsets alone endows the subsets as
light–newsrack system, has a physically fixed part a whole with an overall structure. This is the struc-
which we think of as a unit of the city. ture which we are concerned with here. When
Of the many, many fixed concrete subsets of the structure meets certain conditions, it is called
the city which are the receptacles for its systems, a semi-lattice. When it meets other more restrictive
and can therefore be thought of as significant phys conditions, it is called a tree.
ical units, we usually single out a few for special The semi-lattice axiom goes like this: A collection
consideration. In fact, I claim that whatever picture of sets forms a semi-lattice if and only if, when two over
of the city someone has is defined precisely by the lapping sets belong to the collection, then the set of
subsets he sees as units. elements common to both also belongs to the collection.
Now, a collection of subsets which goes to make The structure illustrated in Diagrams A and B
up such a picture is not merely an amorphous col- is a semi-lattice. It satisfies the axiom since, for
lection. Automatically, merely because relationships instance, (234) and (345) both belong to the col-
are established among the subsets once the subsets lection and their common part, (34), also belongs
are chosen, the collection has a definite structure. to it. (As far as the city is concerned, this axiom
To understand this structure, let us think ab- states merely that wherever two units overlap, the
stractly for a moment, using numbers as symbols. area of overlap is itself a recognizable entity and
Instead of talking about the real sets of millions hence a unit also. In the case of the drug store
of real particles which occur in the city, let us example, one unit consists of the news rack, side-
consider a simpler structure made of just half a walk, and traffic light. Another unit consists of the
dozen elements. Label these elements 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, drug store itself, with its entry and the news rack.
6. Not including the full set (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), the The two units overlap in the newsrack. Clearly
empty set (-), and the one element sets (1), (2), (3), this area of overlap is itself a recognizable unit,
(4), (5), (6), there are 56 different subsets we can and so satisfies the axiom above which defines the
pick from these six elements. characteristics of a semi-lattice.)
Suppose we now pick out certain of these 56 The tree axiom states: A collection of sets forms
sets ( just as we pick out certain sets and call them a tree if and only if, for any two sets that belong to the
units when we form our picture of the city). Let us collection, either one is wholly contained in the other,
say, for example, that we pick the following subsets: or else they are wholly disjoint.
(123), (34), (45), (234), (345), (12345), (3456). The structure illustrated in Diagrams C and D
What are the possible relationships among these is a tree. Since this axiom excludes the possibility
sets? Some sets will be entirely part of larger sets, of overlapping sets, there is no way in which the
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 156 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

“A C I T Y IS N O T A T R E E ” gHJ
A C
5
6
3
6
3 4
4 1
1
2
2
I
B 123456 123456
D
12345 3456
3456
234
123 345
345
12
34 45
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Figure 1 These four diagrams represent the idea of the semi-lattice and the tree. Diagrams A and B depict the idea
of the semi-lattice, rich in overlap and union. Diagrams C and D depict the idea of a tree, with its segregated elements,
no overlap and less richness.
semi-lattice axiom can be violated, so that every This enormously greater variety is an index of
tree is a trivially simple semi-lattice. the great structural complexity a semi-lattice can
However, in this paper we are not so much con have when compared with the structural simplicity
cerned with the fact that a tree happens to be a of a tree. It is this lack of structural complexity,
semi-lattice, but with the difference between trees characteristic of trees, which is crippling our con
and those more general semi-lattices which are not ceptions of the city.
trees, because they do contain overlapping units.
We are concerned with the difference between
structures in which no overlap occurs, and those ARTIFICIAL CITIES WHICH ARE TREES
structures in which overlap does occur.
It is not merely the overlap which makes the To demonstrate, let us look at some modern con
distinction between the two important. Still more ceptions of the city, each of which I shall show to
important is the fact that the semi-lattice is poten be essentially a tree. It will perhaps be useful, while
tially a much more complex and subtle structure we look at these plans, to have a little ditty in our
than a tree. We may see just how much more com minds:
plex a semi-lattice can be than a tree in the follow
ing fact: a tree based on 20 elements can contain Big fleas have little fleas
at most 19 further subsets of the 20, while a semi Upon their back to bite’ em;
lattice based on the same 20 elements can contain Little fleas have lesser fleas,
more than one million different subsets. And so a d infinitum.
This rhyme expresses perfectly and succinctly the that the candlesticks on a mantelpiece be perfectly
structural principle of the tree. straight and perfectly symmetrical about the centre.
[In the original publication, Alexander provides The semi-lattice, by comparison, is the structure
examples of several artificial cities and city plans of a complex fabric; it is the structure of living
designed by famous architects and planners, includ- things – of great paintings and symphonies.
ing: Columbia, Maryland (Community Research and It must be emphasized, lest the orderly mind
Development, Inc.), Greenbelt, Maryland (Clarence shrink in horror from anything that is not clearly
Stein), the Greater London Plan (Abercrombie and articulated and categorized in tree form, that the
Forshaw), the Tokyo Plan (Kenzo Tange), Mesa City ideas of overlap, ambiguity, multiplicity of aspect,
(Paolo Soleri), Chandigarh (Le Corbusier), Brasilia and the semi-lattice, are not less orderly than the
(Lucio Costa), and Communitas (Paul and Percival rigid tree, but more so. They represent a thicker,
Goodman). Alexander suggests that each of these tougher, more subtle and more complex view of
designs represents the idea of a “tree” and that structure.
each of them is too reductionist and over-simplified Let us now look at the ways in which the
in diagram and design to offer the type of vitality, natural city, when unconstrained by artificial con-
overlap and sense of possibility offered by the ceptions, shows itself to be a semi-lattice.
“semi-lattice.”]
[ . . . ]
The most beautiful example of all, I have kept until A LIVING CITY IS AND NEEDS TO BE
last, because it symbolizes the problem perfectly. A SEMI-LATTICE
It appears in Hilberseimer’s book called The Nature
of Cities. He describes the fact that certain Roman Each unit in each tree that I have described is the
towns had their origin as military camps, and then fixed, unchanging residue of some system in the
shows a picture of a modern military encampment living city. A house, for instance, is the physical
as a kind of archetypal form for the city. It is not residue of the interactions between the members
possible to have a structure which is a clearer tree. of a family, their emotions and their belongings.
The symbol is apt for, of course, the organization A freeway is the residue of movement and com-
of the army, which was created precisely in order mercial exchange. But a tree contains only very
to create discipline and rigidity. When a city is few such limits so that in a tree-like city only a few
endowed with a tree structure, this is what happens of its systems can have a physical counterpart.
to the city and its people. Hilberseimer’s own Thousands of important systems have no physical
scheme for the commercial area of a city is based counterpart.
on the army camp archetype. In the worst trees, the units which do appear
Each of these structures is a tree. fail to correspond to any living reality; and those
The units of which an artificial city is made up real systems, whose existence actually makes the
are always organized to form a tree. So that we get city live, have been provided with no physical
a really clear understanding of what this means, receptacle.
let us define a tree again: Neither the Columbia plan nor the Stein plan,
for example, corresponds to social realities. The
Whenever we have a tree structure; it means that physical layout of the plans, and the way they func-
within this structure no piece of any unit is ever tion, suggests a hierarchy of stronger and stronger
connected to other units, except through the medium closed social groups, ranging from the whole city
of that unit as a whole. down to the family, each formed by associational
ties of different strength. Yet this is entirely unreal.
The enormity of this restriction is difficult to grasp. In a traditional society, if we ask a man to name
It is a little as though the members of a family were his best friends and then ask each of these in turn
not free to make friends outside the family, except to name their best friends, they will all name each
when the family as a whole made a friendship. other so that they form a closed group. A village
The structural simplicity of trees is like the com- is made of a number of separate closed groups of
pulsive desire for neatness and order that insists this kind.
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 158 10-26-2012 3:19:05 PM

“A C I T Y IS N O T A T R E E ” gEE|
open society
traditional society
r in s e d 2ro uD overlapping groups of friends

of friends
I
individuals
individuals
Figure 2 T hese two diagrams represent different versions of social structure as seen through the diagram of the tree,
at left (which represents a traditional society); and the semi-lattice diagram, at right (which describes a modern, open
society).
But today’s social structure is utterly different. picking her 29 neighborhoods by determining where
If we ask a man to name his friends and then ask the sharpest discontinuities of building type, in
them in turn to name their friends, they will all come, and job type occur, she asks herself the
name different people, very likely unknown to the question: “If we examine some of the social sys
first person; these people would again name others, tems which actually exist for the people in such a
and so on outwards. There are virtually no closed neighborhood, do the physical units defined by
groups of people in modern society. The reality of these various social systems all define the same
today’s social structure is thick with overlap - the spatial neighborhood?” Her own answer to this
systems of friends and acquaintances form a semi question is “No, they do not.”
lattice, not a tree; see Figure 2. Each of the social systems she examines is a
In the natural city, even the house on a long nodal system. It is made of some sort of central
street (not in some little cluster) is a more accurate node, plus the people who use this center. Specific
acknowledgment of the fact that your friends live ally she takes elementary schools, secondary schools,
not next door, but far away, and can only be reached youth clubs, adult clubs, post offices, greengrocers,
by bus or automobile. In this respect Manhattan and grocers selling sugar. Each of these centers
has more overlap in it than Greenbelt. And though draws its users from a certain spatial area or spatial
one can argue that in Greenbelt, too, friends are unit. This spatial unit is the physical residue of the
only minutes away by car, one must then ask: since social system as a whole, and is therefore a unit in
certain groups have been emphasized by the phys the terms of this paper. The units corresponding
ical limits of the physical structure, why are they to different kinds of centers for a single neighbor
socially irrelevant ones? hood, Waterloo Road, are shown in Figure 3.
Another aspect of the city’s social structure The hard outline is the boundary of the so-called
which a tree can never mirror properly is illustrated neighborhood itself. The white circle stands for the
by Ruth Glass’s redevelopment plan for Middle- youth club, and the small solid rings stand for areas
sborough, a city of 200,000, which she recommends where its members live. The ringed spot is the adult
be broken into 29 separate neighborhoods. After club, and the homes of its members form the unit
F E T il CHRISTO PHER ALEXANDER
marked by dashed boundaries. The white square is

the post office, and the dotted line marks the unit
which contains its users. The secondary school
is marked by the spot with a black triangle in it.
Together with its pupils, it forms the system marked
by the dot-dashed line.
As you can see at once, the different units
do not coincide. Yet neither are they disjoint. They
overlap.
We cannot get an adequate picture of what
Middlesborough is, or of what it ought to be, in
terms of 29 large and conveniently integral chunks
called neighborhoods. When we describe the city
in terms of neighborhoods, we implicitly assume
that the smaller elements within any one of these
neighborhoods belong together so tightly that they
only interact with elements in other neighborhoods
through the medium of the neighborhood to which
they themselves belong. Ruth Glass herself shows
clearly that this is not the case.
The following diagrams, see Figure 4, are two
pictures of the Waterloo neighborhood. For the
sake of argument, I have broken it into a number
of small areas. The first diagram shows how these
pieces stick together in fact, and the second dia
gram shows how the redevelopment plan pretends
they stick together.
There is nothing in the nature of the various
centers, which says that their catchment areas
Figure 3 Mapping the system of overlapping places and should be the same. Their natures are different.
boundaries of the Waterloo Road neighborhood. Therefore the units they define are different. The
Waterloo Road
neighborhood Waterloo Road
boundary neighborhood
post adjacent adjacent

youth
office school adult neighborhood neighborhood
club
Figure 4 Two versions of the Waterloo Road neighborhood: in the diagram at the left, the neighborhood is depicted
as a set of overlapping uses and boundaries (similar to the illustrated neighborhood in the map); in the diagram at the
right, the neighborhood is presented as an entity that is identifiable and separated from adjacent neighborhoods.
natural city of Middlesborough was faithful to the units, the physical places recognized as play places,
semi-lattice structure they have. Only in the artificial must do the same.
tree conception of the city are their natural, proper In a natural city this is what happens. Play takes
and necessary overlaps destroyed. place in a thousand places – it fills the interstices
The same thing happens on a smaller scale. Take of adult life. As they play, children become full of
the separation of pedestrians from moving vehicles, their surroundings. How can a child become filled
a tree concept proposed by Le Corbusier, Louis with his surroundings in a fenced enclosure? He
Kahn, and many others. At a very crude level of can’t. In a semi-lattice, he can; in a tree, he can’t.
thought, this is obviously a good idea. It is danger- A similar kind of mistake occurs in trees like
ous to have 60 mph cars in contact with little chil- those of the Goodmans’ Communitas, or Soleri’s Mesa
T
dren toddling. But it is not always a good idea. City, which separate the university from the rest of W
There are times when the ecology of a situation the city. Again, this has actually been realized in the O
actually demands the opposite. Imagine yourself common American form of the isolated campus.
coming out of a Fifth Avenue store: you have been What is the reason for drawing a line in the
shopping all afternoon; your arms are full of par- city so that everything within the boundary is uni-
cels; you need a drink; your wife is limping. Thank versity, and everything outside is non-university?
God for taxis! It is conceptually clear. But does it correspond
Yet the urban taxi can function only because to the realities of university life? Certainly it is not
pedestrians and vehicles are not strictly separated. the structure which occurs in non-artificial univer-
The prowling taxi needs a fast stream of traffic so sity cities.
that it can cover a large area to be sure of finding Take Cambridge University, for instance. At
a passenger. The pedestrian needs to be able to certain points, Trinity Street is physically almost
hail the taxi from any point in the pedestrian world, indistinguishable from Trinity College. One pedes-
and to be able to get out to any part of the pedestrian crossover in the street is literally part of
trian world to which he wants to go. The system the college. The buildings on the street, though
which contains the taxicabs needs to overlap both they contain stores and coffee shops and banks at
the fast vehicular traffic system and the system of ground level, contain undergraduates’ rooms in
pedestrian circulation. In Manhattan, pedestrians their upper stories. In many cases the actual fabric
and vehicles do share certain parts of the city, and of the street buildings melts into the fabric of the
the necessary overlap is guaranteed. old college buildings so that one cannot be altered
Another favorite concept of the CIAM theorists without the other.
and others is the separation of recreation from There will always be many systems of activity
everything else. This has crystallized in our real where university life and city life overlap: pub-
cities in the form of playgrounds. The playground, crawling, coffee drinking, the movies, walking from
asphalted and fenced in, is nothing but a pictorial place to place. In some cases whole departments
acknowledgment of the fact that “play” exists as may be actively involved in the life of the city’s
an isolated concept in our minds. It has nothing to inhabitants (the hospital-cum-medical school is an
do with the life of play itself. Few self-respecting example). In Cambridge, a natural city where uni-
children will even play in a playground. versity and city have grown together gradually, the
Play itself, the play that children practice, goes physical units overlap because they are the phys
on somewhere different everyday. One day it may ical residues of city systems and university systems
be indoors, another day in a friendly gas station, which overlap, see Figure 5.
another day in a derelict building, another day down Let us look next at the hierarchy of urban cores
by the river, another day on a construction site realized in Brazilia, Chandigarh, the MARS plan for
which has been abandoned for the weekend. Each London and, most recently, in Manhattan’s Lincoln
of these play activities, and the objects it requires, Center, where various performing arts serving the
forms a system. It is not true that these systems population of greater New York have been gathered
exist in isolation, cut off from the other systems in together to form just one core.
the city. The different systems overlap one another, Does a concert hall ask to be next to an opera
and they overlap many other systems besides. The house? Can the two feed on one another? Will
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 161 10-26-2012 3:19:06 PM

ET51 CHRISTO PHER ALEXANDER
Cambridge likely to have in his own backyard. He also needs

to establish connections with larger going enter
prises and with their customers. This means that
university city the system of backyard industry needs to belong
both to the residential zone and to the industrial
zone - these zones need to overlap. In Brooklyn
they do. In a city which is a tree, they can’t.
Finally, let us examine the subdivision of the city
into isolated communities. As we have seen in the
Abercrombie plan for London, this is itself a tree
structure. Yet the individual communities have no
reality as functioning units. In London, as in any great
city, almost no one manages to find work which
college boarding medical bus coffee street
suits him near his home. People from one community
houses school shops
work in factories, which are in other communities.
Figure 5 Semi-lattice diagram of Cambridge. There are, therefore, many hundreds of thou
sands of worker-workplace systems, each con
anybody ever visit them both, gluttonously, in a sisting of a man plus the factory he works in, which
single evening, or even buy tickets from one after cut across the boundaries defined by Abercrombie’s
going to a concert in the other? In Vienna, London, tree. The existence of these units, and their over
Paris, each of the performing arts has found its own lapping nature, indicates that the living systems of
place. Each has created its own familiar section of London form a semi-lattice. Only in the planner’s
the city. In Manhattan itself, Carnegie Hall and the mind have they become a tree.
Metropolitan Opera House were not built side by The fact that we have so far failed to give this
side. Each found its own place, and now creates its any physical expression has a vital consequence.
own atmosphere. The influence of each overlaps As things are, whenever the worker and his workplace
the parts of the city which have been made unique belong to separately administered municipalities, the
by it. community which contains the workplace collects
The only reason that these functions have all been huge taxes and has relatively little to spend it on,
brought together in the Lincoln Center is that the while the community where the worker lives, if it
concept of performing art links them to one another. is mainly residential, collects only little in the way
But this tree and the idea of a single hierarchy of taxes, and yet has great additional burdens on its
of urban cores, which is its parent, do not illuminate purse in the shape of schools, hospitals, etc. Clearly,
the relations between art and city life. They are to resolve this inequity, the worker-workplace sys
merely born of the mania every simple-minded tems must be anchored in physically recognizable
person has for putting things with the same name units of the city, which can then be taxed.
into the same basket. It might be argued that, even though the indi
The total separation of work from housing, vidual communities of a great city have no func
started by Tony Garnier in his industrial city, then tional significance in the lives of their inhabitants,
incorporated in the 1929 Athens Charter, is now they are still the most convenient administrative
found in every artificial city and accepted every units, and should, therefore, be left in their present
where where zoning is enforced. Is this a sound tree organization.
principle? It is easy to see how bad conditions at However, in the political complexity of a modern
the beginning of the century prompted planners to city, even this is suspect.
try to get the dirty factories out of residential areas. Edward Banfield, in a recent book called Political
But the separation misses a variety of systems which Influence, gives a detailed account of the patterns
require, for their sustenance, little parts of both. of influence and control that have actually led to
Jane Jacobs describes the growth of backyard decisions in Chicago. He shows that although the
industries in Brooklyn. A man who wants to start lines of administrative and executive control have
a small business needs space, which he is very a formal structure which is a tree, these formal
chains of influence and authority are entirely over- two fruits together; the orange and the watermelon,
shadowed by the ad hoc lines of control which arise and the two sports balls together, the football and
naturally as each new city problem presents itself. the tennis ball. Those of you who tend to think in
These ad hoc lines depend on who is interested in terms of physical shape may group them differently,
the matter, who has what at stake, and who has taking the two small spheres together – the orange
what favors to trade with whom. and the tennis ball, and the two larger and more
This second structure, which is informal, work- egg-shaped objects – the watermelon and the foot-
ing within the framework of the first, is what really ball. Some of you will be aware of both groupings.
controls public action. It varies from week to week, Either grouping taken by itself is a tree structure.
even from hour to hour, as one problem replaces The two together are a semi-lattice, see Figure 6. Now,
T
another. Nobody’s sphere of influence is entirely let us try and visualize these groupings in the mind’s W
under the control of any one superior; each person eye. I think you will find that you cannot visualize O
is under different influences as problems change. all four sets simultaneously because they overlap.
Although the organization chart in the mayor’s You can visualize one pair of sets and then the other;
office is a tree, the actual control and exercise of and you can alternate between the two pairs ex-
authority is semi-lattice-like. tremely fast, so fast that you may deceive yourself
into thinking you can visualize them all together.
But in truth, you cannot conceive all four sets at
THE ORIGIN OF TREE-LIKE THOUGHT once in a single mental act.
You cannot bring the semi-lattice structure into
The tree – though so neat and beautiful as a mental a visualizable form for a single mental act. In a
device, and though it offers such a simple and clear single mental act you can only visualize a tree.
way of dividing a complex entity into units – does This is the problem we face as designers. While
not describe correctly the actual structure of natu- we are not, perhaps, necessarily occupied with the
rally occurring cities, and does not describe the problem of total visualization in a single mental
structure of the cities that we need. act, the principle is still the same. The tree is ac-
Now, why is it that so many designers have cessible mentally, and easy to deal with. The semi-
conceived cities as trees when the natural structure lattice is hard to keep before the mind’s eye, and
is in every case a semi-lattice? Have they done so therefore hard to deal with.
deliberately, in the belief that a tree structure will It is known today that grouping and categoriza-
serve the people of the city better? Or have they tion are among the most primitive psychological
done it because they cannot help it, because they processes. Modern psychology treats thought as a
are trapped by a mental habit, perhaps even trapped process of fitting new situations into existing slots
by the way the mind works; because they cannot and pigeon holes in the mind. Just as you cannot
encompass the complexity of a semi-lattice in any put a physical thing into more than one physical
convenient mental form; because the mind has an pigeon hole at once, so, by analogy, the processes
overwhelming predisposition to see trees wherever of thought prevent you from putting a mental con-
it looks and cannot escape the tree conception? struct into more than one mental category at once.
I shall try to convince you that it is for this second Study of the origin of these processes suggests
reason that trees are being proposed and built as that they stem essentially from the organism’s need
cities – that it is because designers, limited as they to reduce the complexity of its environment by
must be by the capacity of the mind to form intui- establishing barriers between the different events
tively accessible structures, cannot achieve the com which it encounters.
plexity of the semi-lattice in a single mental act. It is for this reason – because the mind’s first
Let me begin with an example. function is to reduce the ambiguity and overlap in
Suppose I ask you to remember the following a confusing situation, and because, to this end, it
four objects: an orange, a watermelon, a football is endowed with a basic intolerance for ambiguity
and a tennis ball. How will you keep them in your – that structures like the city, which do require
mind, in your mind’s eye? However you do it, you will overlapping sets within them, are nevertheless
do it by grouping them. Some of you will take the persistently conceived as trees.
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 163 10-26-2012 3:19:06 PM

FE E1 CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER
orange watermelon
tennis ball football
small larger
fruit ball sphere egg shaped
orange tennis ball orange tennis ba I orange tennis ball

watermelon football watermelon football watermelon football
Figure 6 Visualization diagrams of four objects: an orange and a watermelon (both fruits); a tennis ball and a football
(both balls). Different groupings can be seen as both tree and semi-lattice structures.
The same rigidity dogs even the perception of You are no doubt wondering, by now, what a
physical patterns. In experiments by Huggins and city looks like which is a semi-lattice, but not a tree.
myself at Harvard, we showed people patterns I must confess that I cannot yet show you plans or
whose internal units overlapped, and found that sketches. It is not enough merely to make a dem
they almost always invented a way of seeing the onstration of overlap - the overlap must be the
pattern as a tree - even when the semi-lattice view right overlap. This is doubly important, because it
of the patterns would have helped them perform is so tempting to make plans in which overlap oc
the experimental task. curs for its own sake. That is essentially what
The most startling proof that people tend to happens in the high density “life-filled” city plans
conceive even physical patterns as trees is found of recent years. But overlap alone does not give
in some experiments by Sir Frederick Bartlett. He structure. It can also give chaos. A garbage can
showed people a pattern for about a quarter second, is full of overlap. To have structure, you must
and then asked them to draw what they had seen. have the right overlap, and this is for us almost
Many people, unable to draw what they had seen, certainly different from the old overlap which we
simplified the patterns by cutting out the overlap observe in historic cities. As the relationships
in them . . . between functions change, so the systems which
These experiments suggest strongly that people need to overlap in order to receive these relation
have an underlying tendency, when faced by a com ships must also change. The recreation of old kinds
plex organization, to reorganize it mentally in terms of overlap will be inappropriate, and chaotic instead
of non-overlapping units. The complexity of the of structured.
semi-lattice is replaced by the simpler and more The work of trying to understand just what
easily grasped tree form. overlap the modern city requires, and trying to put
"A CITY IS NOT A TREE" 165
6 7
5
2
4
3
1
T
W
Figure 7 Simplified structure of Simon Nicholson's Figure 8 Diagrammatic structure of Simon Nicholson's
0
painting. painting.
this required overlap into physical and plastic terms, triangular elements, these elements unite in many
is still going on. Until the work is complete, there different ways to form the larger units of the paint-
is no point in presenting facile sketches of ill ing. If we make a complete inventory of the per-
thought out structure. ceived units in the painting, see Figure 8, we find
However, I can perhaps make the physical con- that each triangle enters into four or five completely
sequences of overlap more comprehensible by different kinds of unit, none contained in the others,
means of an image. The painting illustrated is a yet all overlapping in that triangle. If we number
recent work by Simon Nicholson, see Figure 7. The the triangles and pick out the sets of triangles which
fascination of this painting lies in the fact that appear as strong visual units, we get the semi-lattice
although it is constructed of rather few simple shown, see Figure 9.
1234567
123456 134567 234567
12345 13456 23456 34567
1235 2345 3456 "\ 1347 \ \ 2567
123 134 \ 235^ 1 5 6 \ 3 4 5 256 456 347
12 13 15 23 24V34 25 35 36 45 46 56 7 47 67
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Figure 9 Semi-lattice structure of the Nicholson painting, showing possible groupings of triangles and other implied
visual units.
[Triangles] 3 and 5 form a unit because they When we think in terms of trees we are trad
work together as a rectangle; 2 and 4 because they ing the humanity and richness of the living city
form a parallelogram; 5 and 6 because they are for a conceptual simplicity which benefits only
both dark and pointing the same way; 6 and 7 designers, planners, administrators and developers.
because one is the ghost of the other shifted side- Every time a piece of a city is torn out, and a
ways; 4 and 7 because they are symmetrical with tree made to replace the semi-lattice that was
one another; 4 and 6 because they form another there before, the city takes a further step toward
rectangle; 4 and 5 because they form a sort of Z; dissociation.
2 and 3 because they form a rather thinner kind In any organized object, extreme compartmen-
of Z; 1 and 7 because they are at opposite corners; talization and the dissociation of internal elements
1 and 2 because they are a rectangle; 3 and 4 are the first signs of coming destruction. In a so-
because they point the same way, like 5 and 6, and ciety, dissociation is anarchy. In a person, disso-
form a sort of off-centre reflection of 5 and 6; 3 ciation is the mark of schizophrenia and impending
and 6 because they enclose 4 and 5; 1 and 5 be- suicide. An ominous example of city-wide disso-
cause they enclose 2, 3, and 4. I have only listed ciation is the separation of retired people from the
the units of two triangles. The larger units are even rest of urban life, caused by the growth of desert
more complex. The white is more complex still, cities for the old, like Sun City, Arizona. This
and is not even included in the diagram, because separation is only possible under the influence of
it is harder to be sure of its elementary pieces. tree-like thought.
The painting is significant, not so much because It not only takes from the young the company
it has overlap in it (many paintings have overlap of those who have lived long, but worse, it causes
in them), but rather because this painting has noth- the same rift inside each individual life. As you
ing else in it except overlap. It is only the fact of yourself pass into Sun City, and into old age, your
the overlap, and the resulting multiplicity of aspects, ties with your own past will be unacknowledged,
which the forms present, that makes the painting lost, and therefore broken. Your youth will no
fascinating. It seems almost as though the painter longer be alive in your old age – the two will be
had made an explicit attempt to single out overlap dissociated; your own life will be cut in two.
as a vital generator of structure. For the human mind, the tree is the easiest
All the artificial cities I have described have the vehicle for complex thoughts. But the city is not,
structure of a tree rather than the semi-lattice struc- cannot, and must not be a tree. The city is a re-
ture of the Nicholson painting. Yet it is the painting, ceptacle for life. If the receptacle severs the over-
and other images like it, which must be our vehicles lap of the strands of life within it, because it is a
for thought. And when we wish to be precise, the tree, it will be like a bowl full of razor blades on
semi-lattice, being part of a large branch of mod- edge, ready to cut up whatever is entrusted to it.
ern mathematics, is a powerful way of exploring In such a receptacle life will be cut to pieces. If we
the structure of these images. It is the semi-lattice make cities which are trees, they will cut our life
we must look for, not the tree. within to pieces.
9780415668071_P2_05.indd 166 10-26-2012 3:19:07 PM

“The Significance of A&P Parking
Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas”
from Learning from Las Vegas (1972)
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
This early version of Learning from Las Vegas has become a classic of postmodern design theory. The essay
inflamed the design cognoscenti of the time with their assertions that the urbanism of the Vegas Strip should
be valued for its richness of communication, its representation of everyday consumer values, and its example
as a truly representative American urbanism (more so than the top-down minimalist urbanism and architecture
that was under critical fire at that time). Written in the early 1970s, and later revised as a larger book with
colleague Steven Izenour, Venturi and Scott Brown assert that the semiotic truthfulness of Las Vegas is
implicitly American – its signage, decorated casinos, and entertainment-oriented design. The American urban
arterial, as illustrated through the example of Las Vegas, is as notable for its lack of pedigree as it is for its
consumer/vehicle functionalism. With a good degree of dry humor in considering this street phenomenon on
par with traditional urbanism, Venturi and Scott Brown forced the design community to address their discon-
nect with the way in which the American city was being built. As part of their strategy, they suggest that
the spaces of Las Vegas are comparable to both a Roman piazza (with respect to the enclosure qualities of
the Strip itself), and the landscape of Versailles (with respect to the ubiquitous A&P parking lot). While their
assertions often sound both ridiculous and grandiose, particularly for those who value the usual suspects of
urban design worship (the well-enclosed plaza, the boulevard, the pedestrian qualities of compact villages),
Learning from Las Vegas has become more pertinent as time has passed.
Learning from Las Vegas received both supportive and highly critical reviews. Progressives enjoyed the
indictment of elite designers. High profile design was perceived to have lost its ability to communicate and
find value with the general public. Modern architecture and urban design were seen as dull and monotonous,
life-sucking of their cities, and far less successful as large scale sculpture. The design establishment, how
ever, saw this as a direct attack on their very beings (which was intended); similar in spirit to Jane Jacobs’
attack on the planning establishment in the introduction to Death and Life of Great American Cities. Diatribes
against Learning from Las Vegas soon followed. Of note is a particularly rancorous 1971 debate with the
architectural historian and theorist Kenneth Frampton, in which Denise Scott Brown defends both popular
tastes as expressed in everyday places, “consumer folk culture,” and the text of her article Learning from Pop
(which predates Learning from Las Vegas). Frampton speaks on behalf of a more elite design sensibility,
with architects (who at this time were also functioning as urban designers), having the intellectual capacity
and societal role of producing projects that could both uplift the masses and restore the built environment in
the face of consumer kitsch. Interestingly, Frampton is also critical of other picturesque “townscape” theorists,
such as Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch (both in this volume). Frampton’s aspirations for the design profes-
sions seem noble but overly idealized given the great amount of placelessness forming in cities around
the world.
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168 R ob E rt V E N t U ri a N d D E N is E S cott B row N
The effect of Venturi and Scott Brown’s polemic on willing adherents was design that often failed to meet
the tests of criticism or lasting value (many have made similar assertions with regard to New Urbanist projects).
Early postmodern designers sought an architecture and urbanism that would communicate to the general
public through its visual referents – which Venturi and Scott Brown describe as Ducks (buildings that are
shaped as direct representations of their function) and Decorated Sheds (buildings that communicate directly
through applied text and signage). And so we see in the first years of postmodern urbanism and architecture
an overt desire to connect meaning to design; often with results that haven’t aged well; for example, Charles
Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans, the Portland, Oregon municipal building by Michael Graves, Phillip
Johnson’s Chippendale highboy atop the AT&T tower in New York City. These attempts at re-communicating
the meaning of architecture and urbanism were later derided for their shallowness, camp and irony, disconnect
from context, and lack of gravitas – which light-heartedness often evokes. A second phase of postmodern urbanism
arose in response, valuing context, place-based design, critical regionalism, and more locally authentic meanings.
In their thesis, Venturi and Scott Brown acknowledge that their text shouldn’t be understood as a prescrip-
tion for making cities; they even imply that the architecture of the Strip might be the worst outcomes of the
design professions at that time; and interestingly, the problematic of the urban arterial continues to this day
as one of the great unsolved aspirations of contemporary redevelopment. Their analogies to European urban-
ism don’t address qualitative differences between the commercial highway or parking lot and these traditional
places, subsequently leaving some designers to ponder how to translate the lessons they learned in Las
Vegas. Making this even more difficult, especially to those uninitiated to archi-speak, the text is filled with
jargon and insider terminology. Yet despite the criticism and lack of direction, over time the text has evolved
in meaning and become a clarion call to designers to get real in approaching development process, reducing
idealistic expectations, and coming to terms with the culture of the American urban landscape – despite its
low-brow character. The widespread re-appreciation of the writing reminds us of these place and context
lessons. In addition to its re-appreciation, it is also recognized as having seeded many new theories that would
emanate later in the century, including Rem Koolhaas’ recognition of the “Generic City” as a type of Post-
Urbanism, Crawford and Kaliski’s “Everyday Urbanism,” and much of the place-based design strategies valued
by planners, designers, and the public today.
Robert Venturi and his wife/professional partner Denise Scott Brown are architects, theorists, urbanists,
and educators living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their writings and theories were developed from courses,
lectures, and professional work. They’ve had significant impact on the way designers consider everyday
environments and how design intentions are communicated. Their interests in design expression deal with the
semiotic nature of design communication and how both buildings and urban design projects speak to viewers
both directly through text, but also symbolically through design referents. Venturi is widely known for the
phrase “less is a bore,” a postmodern play on Mies van der Rohe’s maxim “less is more.” He was awarded
the Pritzker Prize in 1991 for his life contributions to the field of architecture; and together they won the
Vincent J. Scully Prize in 2003 from the US National Building Museum.
Both of them taught intermittently at a number of east coast Ivy League universities, which often helped
spur their written work. Venturi’s text for Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum
of Modern Art, 1966) emanated from a series of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania and has now been
translated into dozens of languages. Other works by Venturi include: Iconography and Electronics upon a
Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); Mother’s House
(New York: Rizzoli, 1992); and The Architecture of Robert Venturi (Albuquerque, NM: University of New
Mexico Press, 1989). Denise Scott Brown is the author of the following: “Learning from Pop,” Casabella
(December 1971, 359–360); and Having Words (Architecture Words 4), a compilation of essays on archi-
tectural writing (London: Architectural Association, 2009). Together they wrote: A View from the Campidoglio:
Selected Essays 1953–1984, edited with Peter Arnell, Ted Bickford, and Catherine Bergart (New York:
Harper & Row, 1984); and Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
Steven Izenour (1940–2001) was also an architect, urbanist, and theorist; and became a co-author on
Learning from Las Vegas. He worked as a Principal at Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates for many years,
9780415668071_P2_06.indd 168 10-26-2012 3:19:00 PM

“ T h E S ig N ifica N c E of A & P P arki N g L ots , or L E ar N i N g from L as V E gas ” 169
collaborating on many writing and design projects. He taught at UPenn, Yale, and Drexel Universities. His
collaboration with Venturi and Scott Brown on Learning from Las Vegas began in a studio at the University
of Pennsylvania as a teaching assistant.
The theories, writing, and professional work of Venturi and Scott Brown are the subject of plentiful analysis,
criticism, and monographs. Other supportive and critical writing on the work of Venturi, Scott Brown and
Associates includes: Kester Rattenbury and Samantha Hardingham, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown:
Learning from Las Vegas: SuperCrit #2 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008); Stanislaus von Moos, Venturi, Scott
Brown and Associates: Buildings and Projects 1986–1989 (New York: Monacelli Press, 2000); David B.
Brownlee, David G. Delon, and Katherine B. Hiesinger (eds), Out of the Ordinary: Robert Venturi, Denise
Scott Brown and Associates Architecture, Urbanism, Design (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001); and
T
Aron Vinegar and Michael J. Golec (eds), Relearning from Las Vegas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota W
Press, 2008). O
Substance for a writer consists not merely of those realities Mies [van der Rohe] refined the details of American
he thinks he discovers; it consists even more of those realities steel factories for concrete buildings. Modern archi
which have been made available to him by the literature tects work through analogy, symbol, and image –
and idioms of his own day and by the images that still have although they have gone to lengths to disclaim
vitality in the literature of the past.
almost all determinants of their forms except struc-
Stylistically, a writer can express his feeling about this
tural necessity and the program – and they derive
substance either by imitation, if it sits well with him, or by
parody, if it doesn’t. insights, analogies, and stimulation from unex-
Richard Poirier1 pected images. There is a perversity in the learning
process: we look backward at history and tradition
Learning from the existing landscape is a way to go forward; we can also look downward to go
of being revolutionary for an architect. Not the upward.
obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin Architects who can accept the lessons of prim-
again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but itive vernacular architecture, so easy to take in
another way which is more tolerant: that is to ques- an exhibit like “Architecture Without Architects,”
tion how we look at things. and of industrial, vernacular architecture, so easy
The Commercial Strip, the Las Vegas Strip to adapt to an electronic and space vernacular as
in particular – it is the example par excellence – elaborate neo-Brutalist or neo-Constructivist mega-
challenges the architect to take a positive, non- structures, do not easily acknowledge the validity
chip-on-the-shoulder view. Architects are out of of the commercial vernacular. Creating the new for
the habit of looking non-judgmentally at the envir the artist may mean choosing the old or the existing.
onment because orthodox Modern architecture Pop artists have relearned this. Our acknowledging
is progressive, if not revolutionary, utopian and existing, commercial architecture at the scale of
puristic; it is dissatisfied with existing conditions. the highway is within this tradition.
Modern architecture has been anything but permis- Modern architecture has not so much excluded
sive: architects have preferred to change the exist- the commercial vernacular as it has tried to take
ing environment rather than enhance what is there. it over by inventing and enforcing a vernacular of
But to gain insight from the commonplace is its own, improved and universal. It has rejected the
nothing new: fine art often follows folk art. Romantic combination of fine art and crude art. The Italian
architects of the eighteenth century discovered an landscape has always harmonized the vulgar and
existing and conventional rustic architecture. Early the Vitruvian: the contorni around the duomo, the
Modern architects appropriated an existing and potiere’s laundry across the padrone’s portone,
conventional industrial vocabulary without much Supercortemaggiore against the Romanesque apse.
adaptation. Le Corbusier loved grain elevators and Naked children have never played in our fountains
steam ships; the Bauhaus looked like a factory; and I.M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66.
9780415668071_P2_06.indd 169 10-26-2012 3:19:00 PM

ARCHITECTURE AS SPACE modern buildings contained only the most necessary

messages, like “Ladies,” minor accents begrudgingly
Architects have been bewitched by a single element applied.
of the Italian landscape: the piazza. Its traditional,
pedestrian-scaled, and intricately enclosed space
is easier to take than the spatial sprawl of Route ARCHITECTURE AS SYMBOL
66 and Los Angeles. Architects have been brought
up on Space, and enclosed space is the easiest to Critics and historians who documented the “decline
handle. During the last forty years, theorists of of popular symbols” in art, supported orthodox
Modern architecture ([Frank Lloyd] Wright and Le Modern architects who shunned symbolism of
Corbusier sometimes excepted) have focused on form as an expression or reinforcement of content:
space as the essential ingredient which separates meaning was to be communicated through the in-
architecture from painting, sculpture, and literature. herent, physiognomic characteristics of form. The
Their definitions glory in the uniqueness of the creation of architectural form was to be a logical
medium, and although sculpture and painting may process, free from images of past experience,
sometimes be allowed spatial characteristics, sculp- determined solely by program and structure, with
tural or pictorial architecture is unacceptable. That an occasional assist, as Alan Colquhoun has sug-
is because space is sacred. gested,2 from intuition.
Purist architecture was partly a reaction against But some recent critics have questioned the pos-
nineteenth-century eclecticism. Gothic churches, sible level of content to be derived from abstract
Renaissance banks, and Jacobean manors were forms. And others have demonstrated that the func-
frankly picturesque. The mixing of styles meant tionalists despite their protestations, derived a
the mixing of media. Dressed in historical styles, formal vocabulary of their own, mainly from current
buildings evoked explicit associations and Romantic art movements and the industrial vernacular; latter-
allusions to the past to convey literary, ecclesiast day followers like the Archigram group have turned,
ical, national, or programmatic symbolism. Definitions while similarly protesting, to Pop Art and the space
of architecture as space and form at the service of industry. Indeed, not only are we
program and structure were not enough. The over-
lapping of disciplines may have diluted the archi- not free from the forms of the past, and from
tecture, but it enriched the meaning. the availability of these forms as typological
Modern architects abandoned a tradition of models, but . . . if we assume we are free, we
iconology in which painting, sculpture, and graph- have lost control over a very active sector of
ics were combined with architecture. The delicate our imagination, and of our power to commu-
hieroglyphics on a bold pylon, the archetypal in- nicate with others.3
scriptions on a Roman architrave, the mosaic pro-
cessions in Sant’ Apollinare, the ubiquitous tattoos However, most critics have slighted a continuing
over a Giotto chapel, the enshrined hierarchies iconology in popular commercial art: the persuasive
around a Gothic portal, even the illusionistic fres- heraldry which pervades our environment from
coes in a Venetian villa all contain messages beyond the advertising pages of the New Yorker to the
their ornamental contribution to architectural space. super-billboards of Houston. And their theory
The integration of the arts in Modern architecture of the “debasement” of symbolic architecture in
has always been called a good thing. But one didn’t nineteenth-century eclecticism has blinded them
paint on Mies. Painted panels were floated inde- to the value of the representational architecture along
pendently of the structure by means of shadow highways. Those who acknowledge this roadside
joints; sculpture was in or near but seldom on the eclecticism denigrate it because it flaunts the cliché
building. Objects of art were used to reinforce of a decade ago as well as the style of a century
architectural space at the expense of their own ago. But why not? Time travels fast today.
content. The Kolbe in the Barcelona Pavilion was The Miami-Beach Modern motel on a bleak
a foil to the directed spaces: the message was stretch of highway in southern Delaware reminds the
mainly architectural. The diminutive signs in most jaded driver of the welcome luxury of a tropical
9780415668071_P2_06.indd 170 10-26-2012 3:19:00 PM

resort, persuading him, perhaps, to forgo the gra- complex combinations of media beyond the purer
cious plantation across the Virginia border called architectural triad of structure, form, and light at
Motel Monticello. The real hotel in Miami alludes the service of space. They suggest an architecture
to the international stylishness of a Brazilian resort, of bold communication rather than one of subtle
which, in turn, derives from the International Style expression.
of middle Corbu. This evolution from the high
source through the middle source to the low source
took only thirty years. Today, the middle source, THE ARCHITECTURE OF PERSUASION
the neo-Eclectic architecture of the 1940s and
1950s is less interesting than its commercial adap- The cloverleaf and airport communicate with mov-
T
tations. Roadside copies of Ed Stone [Edward ing crowds in cars or on foot, for efficiency and W
Durrell Stone] are more interesting than the real safety. But words and symbols may be used in space O
Ed Stone. for commercial persuasion. The Middle Eastern
The sign for the Motel Monticello, a silhouette bazaar contains no signs, the strip is virtually all
of an enormous Chippendale highboy, is visible on signs. In the bazaar, communication works through
the highway before the motel itself. This archi proximity. Along its narrow aisles buyers feel and
tecture of styles and signs is antispatial; it is an smell the merchandise, and explicit oral persuasion
architecture of communication over space; com- is applied by the merchant. In the narrow streets
munication dominates space as an element in the of the medieval town, although signs occur, persua-
architecture and in the landscape. But it is for a sion is mainly through the sight and smell of the
new scale of landscape. The philosophical asso- real cakes through the doors and windows of the
ciations of the old eclecticism evoked subtle and bakery. On Main Street, shop-window displays for
complex meanings to be savored in the docile pedestrians along the sidewalks, and exterior signs,
spaces of a traditional landscape. The commercial perpendicular to the street for motorists, dominate
persuasion of roadside eclecticism provokes bold the scene almost equally.
impact in the vast and complex setting of a new On the commercial strip the supermarket win-
landscape of big spaces, high speeds, and complex dows contain no merchandise. There may be signs
programs. Styles and signs make connections announcing the day’s bargains, but they are to be
among many elements, far apart and seen fast. The read by the pedestrians approaching from the park-
message is basely commercial, the context is basi- ing lot. The building itself is set back from the
cally new. highway and half hidden, as is most of the urban
A driver thirty years ago could maintain a sense environment, by parked cars. The vast parking
of orientation in space. At the simple crossroad lot is in front, not at the rear, since it is a symbol
a little sign with an arrow confirmed what he as well as a convenience. The building is low be-
already knew. He knew where he was. Today the cause air conditioning demands low spaces, and
crossroad is a cloverleaf. To turn left he must merchandising techniques discourage second floors;
turn right, a contradiction poignantly evoked in its architecture is neutral because it can hardly
the print by Allan D’Arcangelo. But the driver has be seen from the road. Both merchandise and
no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a architecture are disconnected from the road. The
dangerous, sinuous maze. He relies on signs to big sign leaps to connect the driver to the store,
guide him – enormous signs in vast spaces at high and down the road the cake mixes and detergents
speeds. are advertised by their national manufacturers
The dominance of signs over space at a pedes- on enormous billboards inflected toward the high-
trian scale occurs in big airports. Circulation in a way. The graphic sign in space has become the
big railroad station required little more than a architecture of this landscape. Inside, the A&P has
simple axial system from taxi to train, by ticket reverted to the bazaar except that graphic packag-
window, stores, waiting room, and platform, virtu- ing has replaced the oral persuasion of the mer-
ally without signs. Architects object to signs in chant. At another scale, the shopping center off
buildings: “if the plan is clear you can see where the highway returns in its pedestrian mall to the
to go.” But complex programs and settings require medieval street.
9780415668071_P2_06.indd 171 10-26-2012 3:19:00 PM

HISTORICAL TRADITION AND THE A&P West of today we can learn new and vivid lessons
about an impure architecture of communication.
The A&P parking lot is a current phase in the The little low buildings, grey brown like the desert,
evolution of vast space since Versailles. The space separate and recede from the street which is
which divides high-speed highway and low, sparse now the highway, their false fronts disengaged and
buildings produces no enclosure and little direction. turned perpendicular to the highway as big high
To move through a piazza is to move between high signs. If you take the signs away there is no place.
enclosing forms. To move through this landscape The desert town is intensified communication along
is to move over vast expansive texture: the mega- the highway.
texture of the commercial landscape. The parking Las Vegas is the apotheosis of the desert town.
lot is the parterre of the asphalt landscape. The Visiting Las Vegas in the mid-1960s was like visit-
patterns of parking lines give direction much as ing Rome in the late 1940s. For young Americans
the paving patterns, curbs, borders, and tapis verts in the 1940s, familiar only with the auto-scaled,
give direction in Versailles; grids of lamp posts gridiron city, and the antiurban theories of the pre-
substitute for obelisks and rows of urns and statues, vious architectural generation, the traditional urban
as points of identity and continuity in the vast spaces, the pedestrian scale, and the mixtures yet
space. But it is the highway signs through their continuities of styles of the Italian piazzas were a
sculptural forms or pictorial silhouettes, their par- significant revelation. They rediscovered the piazza.
ticular positions in space, their inflected shapes, Two decades later architects are perhaps ready for
and their graphic meanings which identify and unify similar lessons about large open space, big scale,
the megatexture. They make verbal and symbolic and high speed. Las Vegas is to the Strip what
connections through space, communicating a Rome is to the Piazza.
complexity of meanings through hundreds of as- There are other parallels between Rome and Las
sociations in few seconds from far away. Symbol Vegas: their expansive settings in the Campagna
dominates space. Architecture is not enough. Be- and in the Mojave Desert, for instance, which tend
cause the spatial relationships are made by symbols to focus and clarify their images. Each city vividly
more than by forms, architecture in this landscape superimposes elements of a supranational scale on
becomes symbol in space rather than form in space. the local fabric: churches in the religious capital,
Architecture defines very little: the big sign and the casinos and their signs in the entertainment capital.
little building is the rule of Route 66. These cause violent juxtapositions of use and scale
The sign is more important than the architecture. in both cities. Rome’s churches, off streets and
This is reflected in the proprietor’s budget: the sign piazzas, are open to the public; the pilgrim, religious
at the front is a vulgar extravaganza, the building or architectural, can walk from church to church.
at the back, a modest necessity. The architecture The gambler or architect in Las Vegas can similarly
is what’s cheap. Sometimes the building is the sign: take in a variety of casinos along the Strip. The
the restaurant in the shape of a hamburger is sculp- casinos and lobbies of Las Vegas which are orna-
tural symbol and architectural shelter. Contradiction mental and monumental and open to the pro
between outside and inside was common in archi- menading public are, a few old banks and railroad
tecture before the Modern Movement, particularly stations excepted, unique in American cities. Nolli’s
in urban and monumental architecture. Baroque map of the mid-eighteenth century, reveals the
domes were symbols as well as spatial construc- sensitive and complex connections between public
tions, and they were bigger in scale and higher and private space in Rome. Private building is
outside than inside in order to dominate their urban shown in gray hatching which is carved into by the
setting and communicate their symbolic message. public spaces, exterior and interior. These spaces,
The false fronts of western stores did the same open or roofed, are shown in minute detail through
thing. They were bigger and taller than the interiors darker poché. Interiors of churches read like piaz-
they fronted to communicate the store’s importance zas and courtyards of palaces, yet a variety of
and to enhance the quality and unity of the street. qualities and scales is articulated. Such a map for
But false fronts are of the order and scale of Main Las Vegas would reveal and clarify the public and
Street. From the desert town on the highway in the the private at another scale, although the iconology
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of the signs in space would require other graphic visual order of street elements and the difficult
methods. visual order of buildings and signs. The zone of the
A conventional map of Las Vegas reveals two highway is a shared order. The zone off the highway
scales of movement within the gridiron plan: that is an individual order. The elements of the highway
of Main Street and that of the Strip. The main street are civic. The buildings and signs are private. In
of Las Vegas is Fremont Street, and the earlier of combination they embrace continuity and discon-
two concentrations of casinos is located along three tinuity, going and stopping, clarity and ambiguity,
or four blocks of this street. The casinos here are cooperation and competition, the community and
bazaar-like in the immediacy of their clicking and rugged individualism. The system of the highway
tinkling gambling machines to the sidewalk. The gives order to the sensitive functions of exit and
T
Fremont Street casinos and hotels focus on the entrance, as well as to the image of the Strip as W
railroad depot at the head of the street; here a sequential whole. It also generates places for O
the railroad and main street scales of movement individual enterprises to grow, and controls the
connect. The bus depot is now the busier en general direction of that growth. It allows variety
trance to town, but the axial focus on the rail depot and change along its sides, and accommodates the
from Fremont Street is visual, and possibly sym- contrapuntal, competitive order of the individual
bolic. This contrasts with the Strip, where a enterprises.
second and later development of casinos extends There is an order along the sides of the highway.
southward to the airport, the jet-scale entrance Varieties of activities are juxtaposed on the Strip:
to town. service stations, minor motels, and multimillion
One’s first introduction to Las Vegas architecture dollar casinos. Marriage chapels (“credit cards ac-
is a replica of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, which cepted”) converted from bungalows with added
is the local airport building. Beyond this piece of neon-lined steeples are apt to appear anywhere
architectural image, impressions are scaled to the toward the downtown end. Immediate proximity
car rented at the airport. Here is the unraveling of of related uses, as on Main Street where you walk
the famous Strip itself, which, as Route 91, connects from one store to another, is not required along
the airport with the downtown. the Strip since interaction is by car and highway.
You drive from one casino to another even when
they are adjacent because of the distance between
SYSTEM AND ORDER ON THE STRIP them, and an intervening service station is not
disagreeable.
The image of the commercial strip is chaos. The
order in this landscape is not obvious. The con-
tinuous highway itself and its systems for turning THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE STRIP
are absolutely consistent. The median strip accom-
modates the U-turns necessary to a vehicular pro A typical casino complex contains a building which
menade for casino-crawlers, as well as left turns onto is near enough to the highway to be seen from the
the local street pattern which the Strip intersects. road across the parked cars, yet far enough back
The curbing allows frequent right turns for casinos to accommodate driveways, turnarounds, and park-
and other commercial enterprises and eases the ing. The parking in front is a token: it reassures the
difficult transitions from highway to parking. The customer but does not obscure the building. It is
street lights function superfluously along many prestige parking: the customer pays. The bulk of
parts of the Strip which are incidentally but abun- the parking, along the sides of the complex, allows
dantly lit by signs; but their consistency of form direct access to the hotel, yet stays visible from the
and position and their arching shapes begin to highway. Parking is never at the back. The scales
identify by day a continuous space of the highway, of movement and space of the highway determine
and the constant rhythm contrasts effectively with distances between buildings: they must be far apart
the uneven rhythms of the signs behind. to be comprehended at high speeds. Front footage
This counterpoint reinforces the contrast be- on the Strip has not yet reached the value it once had
tween two types of order on the Strip: the obvious on main street and parking is still an appropriate
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filler. Big space between buildings is characteristic sculpture – to persuade and inform. The same sign
of the Strip. It is significant that Fremont Street is works as polychrome sculpture in the sun and as
more photogenic than the Strip. A single post card black silhouette against the sun; at night it is a
can carry a view of the Golden Horseshoe, the Mint source of light. It revolves by day and moves by
Hotel, the Golden Nugget, and the Lucky Casino. the play of light at night. It contains scales for close
A shot of the Strip is less spectacular; its enormous up and for distance. Las Vegas has the longest sign
spaces must be seen as moving sequences. in the world, the Thunderbird, and the highest, the
The side elevation of the complex is import Dunes. Some signs are hardly distinguishable at a
ant because it is seen by approaching traffic from distance from the occasional highrise hotels along
a greater distance and for a longer time than the Strip. The sign of the Pioneer Club on Fremont
the facade. The rhythmic gables on the long, low, Street talks. Its cowboy, sixty feet high, says “Howdy
English medieval style, half-timbered motel sides Pardner” every thirty seconds. The big sign at the
of the Aladdin Casino read emphatically across the Aladdin has spawned a little sign with similar pro-
parking space and through the signs and the giant portions to mark the entrance to the parking. “But
statue of the neighboring Texaco station, and con- such signs!” says Tom Wolfe. They
trast with the modern Near-Eastern flavor of the
casino front. Casino fronts on the Strip often inflect soar in shapes before which the existing vocabulary
in shape and ornament toward the right, to wel- of art history is helpless. I can only attempt to sup-
come right-lane traffic. Modern styles use a porte- ply names – Boomerang Modern, Palette Curvilinear,
cochére which is diagonal in plan. Brazilianoid Flash Gordon Ming-Alert Spiral, McDonald’s
International styles use free forms. Service stations, Hamburger Parabola, Mint Casino Elliptical, Miami
motels, and other simpler types of buildings con- Beach Kidney.4
form in general to this system of inflection toward
the highway through the position and form of their Buildings are also signs. At night on Fremont Street
elements. Regardless of the front, the back of the whole buildings are illuminated, but not through
building is styleless because the whole is turned reflection from spotlights; they are made into
toward the front and no one sees the back. sources of light by closely spaced neon tubes.
Beyond the town, the only transition between
the Strip and the Mojave Desert is a zone of rust-
ing beer cans. Within the town the transition is as LAS VEGAS STYLES
ruthlessly sudden. Casinos whose fronts relate so
sensitively to the highway, turn their ill-kept back- The Las Vegas casino is a combination form. The
sides toward the local environment, exposing the complex program of Caesar’s Palace – it is the
residual forms and spaces of mechanical equipment newest – includes gambling, dining, and banqueting
and service areas. rooms, night clubs and auditoria, stores, and a com-
Signs inflect toward the highway even more than plete hotel. It is also a combination of styles. The
buildings. The big sign – independent of the build- front colonnade is San Pietro Bernini in plan, but
ing and more or less sculptural or pictorial – inflects Yamasaki in vocabulary and scale; the blue and
by its position, perpendicular to and at the edge of gold mosaic work is Early Christian, tomb of Galla
the highway, by its scale and sometimes by its Placidia. (Naturally the Baroque symmetry of its
shape. The sign of the Aladdin Casino seems to prototype precludes an inflection toward the right
bow toward the highway through the inflection in in this facade.) Beyond and above is a slab in Gio
its shape. It also is three-dimensional and parts of Ponti, Pirelli-Baroque, and beyond that, in turn, a
it revolve. The sign at the Dunes is more chaste: lowrise in neo-Classical Motel Moderne. Each of
it is only two-dimensional and its back echoes its these styles is integrated by a ubiquity of Ed Stone
front, but it is an erection twenty-two stories high screens. The landscaping is also eclectic. Within
which pulsates at night. The sign for the Mint the Piazza San Pietro is the token parking lot.
Casino on Route 91 at Fremont Street inflects to- Among the parked cars rise five fountains rather
wards the Casino several blocks away. Signs in Las than the two of Carlo Maderno. Villa d’Este cy-
Vegas use mixed media – then words, pictures, and presses further punctuate the parking environment;
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Gian da Bologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, and former has no windows, the latter is open only to
various statues of Venus and David, with slight the sky. The combination of darkness and enclosure
anatomical exaggerations, grace the area around of the gambling room and its subspaces makes for
the porte-cochére. Almost bisecting a Venus is an privacy, protection, concentration, and control. The
Avis: a sign identifying No. 2’s office on the premises. intricate maze under the low ceiling never connects
The agglomeration of Caesar’s Palace and of with outside light or outside space. This disorients
the Strip as a whole approach the spirit if not the the occupant in space and time. He loses track of
style of the late Roman Forum with its eclectic where he is and when it is. Time is limitless because
accumulations. But the sign of Caesar’s Palace with the light of noon and midnight are exactly the same.
its Classical, plastic columns is more Etruscan in Space is limitless because the artificial light ob-
T
feeling than Roman. Although not so high as the scures rather than defines its boundaries. Light is W
Dunes sign next door or the Shell sign on the other not used to define space. Walls and ceilings do not O
side, its base is enriched by Roman Centurions, serve as reflective surfaces for light, but are made
lacquered like Oldenburg hamburgers, who peer absorbent and dark. Space is enclosed but limit
over the acres of cars and across their desert less because its edges are dark. Light sources,
empire to the mountains beyond. Their statuesque chandeliers, and the glowing, juke-box-like gambling
escorts, carrying trays of fruit, suggest the festiv machines themselves, are independent of walls and
ities within, and are a background for the family ceilings. The lighting is anti-architectural. Illumin
snapshots of Middle Westerners. A massive Miesian ated baldachini, more than in all Rome, hover over
light-box announces square, expensive entertainers tables in the limitless shadowy restaurant at the
like Jack Benny in 1930s-style marquis lettering Sahara Hotel.
appropriate for Benny, if not for the Roman archi- The artificially lit, air conditioned interiors com-
trave it almost ornaments. The light-box is not plement the glare and heat of the agoraphobic
in the architrave; it is located off-center on the auto-scaled desert. But the interior of the motel
columns in order to inflect toward the highway. patio behind the casino is literally the oasis in a
hostile environment. Whether Organic Modern or
neo-Classical Baroque, it contains the fundamental
THE INTERIOR OASIS elements of the classic oasis: courts, water, green-
ery, intimate scale, and enclosed space. Here they
If the back of the casino is different from the front are a swimming pool, palms, grass, and other
for the sake of visual impact in the autoscape, the horticultural importations set in a paved court
inside contrasts with the outside for other reasons. surrounded by hotel suites balconied or terraced
The interior sequence from the front door back, on the court side for privacy. What gives poignancy
progresses from gambling areas to dining, enter to the beach umbrellas and chaises lounges is the
tainment, and shopping areas to hotel. Those who vivid, recent memory of the hostile cars poised in
park at the side and enter there can interrupt the the asphalt desert beyond. The pedestrian oasis
sequence, but the circulation of the whole focuses in the Las Vegas desert is the princely enclosure
on the gambling rooms. In a Las Vegas Hotel the of the Alhambra, and it is the apotheosis of all the
registration desk is invariably behind you when you motel courts with swimming pools more symbolic
enter the lobby; before you are the gambling tables than useful, the plain, low restaurants with exotic
and machines. The lobby is the gambling room. interiors, and the shopping malls of the American
The interior space and the patio, in their exagger- strip.
ated separation from the environment, have the
quality of an oasis.
THE BIG, LOW SPACE
LAS VEGAS LIGHTING The casino in Las Vegas is big, low space. It is the
archetype for all public interior spaces whose heights
The gambling room is always very dark; the patio, are diminished for reasons of budget and air con-
always very bright. But both are enclosed: the ditioning. (The low, one-way mirrored ceilings also
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permit outside observation of the gambling rooms.) for a commercial strip within the urban sprawl is,
In the past, volume was governed by structural of course, Broadacre City with a difference. Broad-
spans: height was relatively easy to achieve. For acre City’s easy, motival order identified and unified
us, span is easy to achieve, and volume is governed its vast spaces and separate buildings at the scale
by mechanical and economic limitations on height. of the omnipotent automobile. Each building, with-
But railroad stations, restaurants, and shopping out doubt, was to be designed by the Master or by
arcades only ten feet high reflect as well a changing his Taliesin Fellowship, with no room for honky-
attitude to monumentality in our environment. In tonk improvisations. An easy control would be exer
the past, big spans with their concomitant heights cised over similar elements within the universal,
were an ingredient of architectural monumentality. Usonian vocabulary to the exclusion, certainly, of
But our monuments are not the occasional tour de commercial vulgarities. But the order of the Strip
force of an Astrodome, a Lincoln Center, or a sub- includes: it includes at all levels, from the mixture
sidized airport. These merely prove that big, high of seemingly incongruous advertising media plus
spaces do not automatically make architectural a system of neo-Organic or neo-Wrightian restaurant
monumentality. We have replaced the monumental motifs in Walnut Formica. It is not an order domin
space of Pennsylvania Station by a subway above- ated by the expert and made easy for the eye. The
ground, and that of Grand Central Terminal remains moving eye in the moving body must work to pick
mainly through its magnificent conversion to an out and interpret a variety of changing, juxtaposed
advertising vehicle. Thus, we rarely achieve archi- orders, like the shifting configurations of a Victor
tectural monumentality when we try; our money Vasarely painting. It is the unity which “maintains,
and skill do not go into the traditional monumental- but only just maintains, a control over the clashing
ity which expressed cohesion of the community elements which compose it. Chaos is very near; its
through big scale, united, symbolic, architectural nearness, but its avoidance, gives . . . force.”5
elements. Perhaps we should admit that our cathe- Las Vegas is analyzed here only as a pheno
drals are the chapels without the nave; that apart menon of architectural communication; its values are
from theaters and ball parks the occasional com- not questioned. Commercial advertising, gambling
munal space which is big is a space for crowds of interests, and competitive instincts are another mat-
anonymous individuals without explicit connection ter. The analysis of a drive-in church in this context
with each other. The big, low mazes of the dark would match that of a drive-in restaurant because
restaurant with alcoves combine being together and this is a study of method not content. There is no
yet separate as does the Las Vegas casino. The reason, however, why the methods of commercial
lighting in the casino achieves a new monumental- persuasion and the skyline of signs should not serve
ity for the low space. The controlled sources of the purpose of civic and cultural enhancement. But
artificial and colored light within the dark enclosure, this is not entirely up to the architect.
by obscuring its physical limits, expand and unify
the space. You are no longer in the bounded piazza
but in the twinkling lights of the city at night. ART AND THE OLD CLICHÉ
Pop Art has shown the value of the old cliché used
INCLUSION AND THE DIFFICULT ORDER in a new context to achieve new meaning: to make
the common uncommon. Richard Poirier has re-
Henri Bergson called disorder all order we cannot ferred to the “de-creative impulse” in literature:
see. The emerging order of the Strip is a complex
order. It is not the easy, rigid order of the Urban Eliot and Joyce display an extraordinary vulnerabil-
Renewal project or the fashionable megastructure – ity . . . to the idioms, rhythms, artifacts associated
the medieval hilltown with technological trappings. with certain urban environments or situations. The
It is, on the contrary, a manifestation of an opposite multitudinous styles of Ulysses are so dominated by
direction in architectural theory: Broadacre City – them that there are only intermittent sounds of Joyce
a travesty of Broadacre City perhaps, but a kind in the novel and no extended passage certifiably is
of vindication of Frank Lloyd Wright’s predictions his as distinguished from a mimicked style.6
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Eliot himself speaks of Joyce’s doing the best he NOTES

can “with the material at hand.”7 A fitting requiem
for the irrelevant works of Art which are today’s 1 Richard Poirier, “T.S. Eliot and the Literature of
descendants of a once meaningful Modern archi- Waste,” The New Republic (20 May 1967): 21.
tecture are Eliot’s lines in East Coker. 2 Alan Colquhoun, “Typology and Design Method,”
Arena, Architectural Association Journal (June 1967).
That was a way of putting it – 3 Ibid., 14.
not very satisfactory: 4 Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake
A periphrastic study in a worn- Streamline Baby (New York: Farrar, Straus and
out poetical fashion, Giroux, 1965), 8.
T
Leaving one still with the 5 August Heckscher, The Public Happiness (New W
intolerable wrestle York: Atheneum Publishers, 1962). O
With words and meanings. 6 Poirier, “T.S. Eliot and the Literature of Waste,”
The poetry does not matter.8 op. cit., 20.
7 Ibid., 21.
8 T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co., 1943), 13.
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“Collage City”
Architectural Review (1975)
Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter
Modernist urban design and architecture – from the work of CIAM in the early twentieth century to the prolifer-
ation of a watered-down and incoherent urbanism of the mid-century – experienced a barrage of criticism from
both the high critics of design taste and the discontented general public. Infamous critiques of modern design
and planning processes (see the work of Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and Edward Relph in this edi-
tion) focused on the failed utopian and heroic aspirations of designers with “messiah” delusions who utilized
totalizing design strategies in attempting to control outcomes. In Collage City, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter
launch a direct attack on the profession of which they are a part. They disdain the “retarded nature of archi-
tectural debate,” the weak science used to support project justification, and the poor state of design poetics.
While the previous selection, from Learning from Las Vegas, provides critique of modern urban design
through the filter of everyday landscapes, Collage City uses the historical city as a launching point of criticism.
This essay, which spawned a larger later revision, has become a classic of early postmodern critique, influenc-
ing designers and urbanists, and re-injecting the morphological lessons of the traditional city into a design
era that had lost its way. The text of Collage City is both inspiring in message and dense in delivery. The
writing is often opaque, circular and difficult to digest. In this selection we have edited the text to highlight
key messages and provide easier access to its key meanings.
Rowe and his students at Cornell in the 1970s began an evolution in urban form analysis through the
rediscovery of figure-ground drawings (black plans). This methodological drawing convention contrasts the
architectural solids and private spaces of the city (inked black as figures) against the public realm of the city
(left white as the ground of the drawing). The white spaces include most of the public realm of the city: piaz-
zas, streets, interior courtyards, open-sky space, and landscape areas. Studying the method of Giambattista
Nolli’s figure-ground drawings of late-Baroque Rome (Pianta Grande di Roma, etched in 1748), these Cornell
studios revived an analytical method that had nearly disappeared in design education and could begin to
show the tissues, fabrics, and “coarseness or fineness of grain” of urban form elements. Patterns of historic
form emerged from these drawings – exposing the relative size of blocks and buildings, the shaping of space,
and the relationship between discrete and identifiable parts of the city. This became a favored method of
design educators and urban morphologists throughout the late twentieth century, and culminated in the com-
parably scaled figure-ground street maps of Allan Jacobs in his book Great Streets (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1993), which have become a widespread convention in their own right.
The title of the article, later a book, refers to how historical cities were constructed over time through a
process of accretion, fragmentation, and overlay – different patterns and building sets introduced incrementally
by generations of city builders. In studying the fragments of imperial, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Rome,
the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, and other valued historic urbanisms, Rowe and Koetter begin to construct
Collage City as a critique of the totalizing urban design, aesthetic purity, and reductionist abstraction of
9780415668071_P2_07.indd 178 10-26-2012 3:18:50 PM

“ C O L L age C it Y ” 179
modernist designers they seek to overturn. Colin Rowe was a great admirer of nineteenth-century eclecticism
and competing styles. It is not surprising then that he advocates the compartmentalization of the city into a
series of overlaid “collage” elements, where each has its own internal rationale, organization, and experiential
validity. Rather than a single heroic gesture (illustrated, for example in Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin to bulldoze
parts of Paris in the 1920s) they turn to methods of bricolage, collision, erasure, and addition. The city of
Rowe and Koetter then, becomes a series of episodes, inviting the participation of designers and developers
at a variety of smaller scales who can insert projects into the larger patchwork.
The structure of Collage City is presented as an unfolding argument that leads to a final prescription for
how urban designers should begin approaching the city. Throughout the book, Rowe and Koetter utilize a
series of philosophical references that help them to support and shape their findings, including Isaiah Berlin,
T
Karl Popper, Levi-Strauss, and Richard Rorty. The book is organized in five chapters and begins with a critique W
of utopian and modernist thinking, before utilizing a series of science fiction-versus-picturesque comparisons O
to ask the question: “why should we be obliged to prefer a nostalgia for the future to that for the past?” Their
chapter entitled “Crisis of the Object: Predicament of Texture” provides the argument that cities can be viewed
as a series of contrasting objects and textures, very similar in conception to the methodological figure-ground
drawings the authors use for analysis. Their final chapters propose that urban designers and architects use
both collage (creation of compositions constructed with varied elements) and bricolage (creation using mater-
ial found at hand) techniques for the construction of cities. Collage City sees the act of city-building as a
series of strategic and incremental juxtapositions of smaller projects layered onto a larger whole, rather than
a utopian or totalitarian project. And importantly it allows designers to reference the lessons of historical and
valued urbanism rather than hopping on a non-stop treadmill of ceaseless innovation re-making the wheel.
From 1962 until his death in 1999, Colin Rowe was a Cornell professor of architecture, urbanism and
urban design. He had a profound impact on the theory and history of American architecture through the
latter half of the twentieth century. His first notable contribution was the speculative essay “The Mathematics
of the Ideal Villa” (1947), in which he compared the mathematical rules of Palladio’s villas to similar systems
used by Le Corbusier in several housing projects. Rowe’s rhetorical strategies and cross historical methods
(influenced by the work of Camillo Sitte from nearly a century earlier) provided him with a mechanism for
using tradition to assess contemporary urbanism (a model that would be used successfully in Collage City
and reconnects urban design practice with historical origins that modernism seemed to disavow). Over the
course of his career, his criticism of modern urban design and architecture provided a lasting contribution to
the development of postmodern critique and the emerging urban design field. With the publication of Collage
City (first as a journal article in 1975, and later as a book by MIT Press in 1978), Rowe influenced a gen-
eration of late-twentieth-century theorist/practitioners, including Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi, James Stirling,
Peter Eisenman, and Dan Solomon. Although not a prodigious writer, his other significant works include: The
Architecture of Good Intentions (1994); As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, three
volumes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1999); “The Present Urban Predicament,” The Cornell Journal of Architec
ture (No. 1, 1981); “Roma Interrotta,” Architectural Design Profile (Vol. 49, No. 3–4, 1979); and a revised
publication of The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976).
Fred Koetter is the co-author with Colin Rowe of Collage City. He was an architecture professor at Cor-
nell, Harvard and Yale Universities; at this last school serving as dean from 1993 to 1998. He is a founding
partner of Koetter, Kim and Associates – Architecture and Urban Design in Boston, Massachusetts with his
partner Susie Kim. Their office focuses on urban design, corporate, educational, and civic projects. Their work
is widely published and has won numerous urban design and architecture awards. He is the author of numer-
ous essays, including “The Corporate Villa,” Design Quarterly (No. 135, 1978) and “Notes on the In-Between,”
Harvard Architecture Review (Vol. 1, Spring 1980). Collage City has been cited reverentially in reviews,
anthologies, and texts of design theory more times than can be counted.
Figure-ground perception has been explained in greater depth through gestalt psychology and visual
analysis. For more on this consult: Barry Smith (ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Psychology (Munich/Vienna:
Philosophia Verlag, 1988); D. Brett King and Michael Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers/Rutgers, 2007); Steven Yantis (ed.), Visual Perception (London: Taylor
9780415668071_P2_07.indd 179 10-26-2012 3:18:50 PM

180 C O L in R O we and F red K O etter
& Francis/Psychology Press, 2001); and Charles Wallschlaeger and Cynthia Busic-Snyder, Basic Visual
Concepts and Principles for Artists, Architects and Designers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992).
A large body of material exists on the impacts of Collage City and the use of figure-ground drawings. Of
particular note is architect and CNU member Dan Solomon’s chapter on Black Plans and Colin Rowe’s
contributions in: Global City Blues (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003). Others include: Wayne William
Cooper, The Figure Grounds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967); and Roger Trancik, Finding Lost
Space: Theories of Urban Design (New York: Wiley, 1986). For examples of figure-ground analysis in urban
design see the journal Urban Morphology published by the International Seminar on Urban Form (University
of Birmingham, UK / Wiley); as well as these books: Eric Jenkins, To Scale: One Hundred Urban Plans
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2008); Robert F. Gatje, Great Public Squares: An Architect’s Selection (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2010); and Nathan Cherry, Grid/Street/Place: Essential Elements of Sustainable Urban Dis
tricts (Chicago, IL: American Planning Association, 2009).
It was not so many years ago that the Graduate Now the notice of how the techniques of the
School of Design at Harvard issued a brochure crudest revivalism have been so much ingested by
entitled Crisis. It was an opulent production, blood- what used to be called the Modern Movement
red letters on a white ground, and its message was is neither to deplore crude revivalism (the ecstasy
not at all oblique. There exists an environmental and the guilt of the latest Appalachian convert),
crisis but the Graduate School of Design possesses nor is it, altogether, to deprecate modern architec-
most of the know-how to be able to propound the ture; and, certainly, it should not be understood as
solution; and, therefore, in order that it may realize condemning a missionary enthusiasm or intimating
its mission, give, give to the Graduate School of that convictions of crisis are in any way illusory. It
Design. may be presumed that a crisis exists; but it must
The strategy [of architectural crisis] of course, also be insisted that the peddling of crisis by the
begins to be ancient, but it continues, apparently architect begins to become an objectionable plati-
to be irresistible and the notion of impending and tude, that it is now one of those retarded gambits
monstrous cataclysm would now seem to be in- of criticism which any sense of obligation should
grained in the psychology of modern architecture. feel obliged to avoid.
Apocalyptic catastrophe, instant millennium. The In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon
threat of damnation, the hope of salvation. Irresist speaks of the ancient and popular doctrine of the
ible change which still requires human cooperation. Millennium:
The new architecture and urbanism as emblems
of the New Jerusalem. The corruptions of high So pleasing was this hope to the mind of believers
culture. The bonfire of vanities. Self-transcendence that the New Jerusalem, the seat of this blissful
towards a form of collectivized freedom. The ar- kingdom, was quickly adorned with all the gayest
chitect, divested of his cultural wardrobe and forti- colors of the imagination. A felicity consisting only
fied by the equivalent of religious experience, may of pure and spiritual pleasure would have appeared
now revert to the virtues of his primal condition. too refined for its inhabitants, who were still sup
This is to caricature, though not seriously to posed to possess their human nature and senses. A
distort, a complex of sentiments which might be Garden of Eden, with the amusements of the pas
designated the Savonarola syndrome, sentiments toral life was no longer suited to the advanced state
often lying just beneath the threshold of conscious- of society which prevailed under the Roman Empire.
ness; and, therefore, it should be without surprise A city was therefore erected of gold and precious
that one observes a recent RIBA Journal – yet again stones, and a supernatural plenty of corn and wine
Crisis (this time red letters on a black ground), and was bestowed on the adjacent territory; in the free
this time not an appeal for money but rather an enjoyment of whose spontaneous productions, the
incitement to public self-flagellation. happy and benevolent people was never to be
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restrained by any jealous laws of exclusive property. crudeness, it is probably true to say that Auguste
The assurances of such a Millennium was carefully Comte might represent the climax of the mechanist
inculcated by a succession of fathers . . . (and) . . . world view and George Friedrich Hegel of its
Though it might not be universally received, it organicist corollary.
appears to have been the reigning sentiment of the The world and society as mechanism, the world
orthodox believers; and it seems so well adapted to and society as organism: it is obvious that with
the desires and apprehensions of mankind, that it Charles Darwin one gets something of a put-together;
must have contributed to a very considerable degree and, if there is no reason to suppose that Darwin
to the progress of the Christian faith. would ever have been interested in the productions
of either Comte or Hegel, if he might still seem to
T
That a somewhat similar constellation of hopes have been above all else the culturally unsophisti- W
and beliefs, not universally received did contribute cated English empiricist, he is still one of those O
to a very considerable degree to the progress of mod- persons who inadvertently fused the French and
ern architecture we now know very well. There German points of view. For Origin of Species is,
was the vision of a city, half Garden of Eden, half after all, a version of science as a version of his-
New Jerusalem, a city, admittedly, which was not tory. Its inference is that geology and biology have
to be erected of gold and precious stones, but still come to collaborate with history to present an
a city which was to be shining, scintillating and evolutionary view of things which is doubly valid –
brilliant, a city of glass and concrete, a city which both scientific and historical.
would – as a triumph over the injuries of time – The Darwinian performance was crucial; but far
arise entire and pure, a city in which plenty and more crucial, and far more deliberate, was the
benevolence were for ever to prevail. equivalent performance of Karl Marx. For, whatever
[ . . . ] it was supposed to be, Marx’s undertaking was
The rise of the natural sciences in the seven- no mere scientific enterprise. It was surely, above
teenth century, with the ensuing prestige of Newtonian all else, a cultural construction. One takes French
physics, was to lead in the Enlightenment to the Positivism (the idea of scientific and rational politics
widespread insistence that society could and should in a more or less static world) and one confronts
be reconstructed on analogous scientific principles. it with German historicism (the idea of motion,
It was to lead slightly later to such a person as change, flux and flow proceeding in more or less
Henri de Saint-Simon conceiving of himself as ineluctable pattern); and then, out of this dialectic,
the Newton of the political order; but, if it was one achieves something which seems to combine
thus that a more literal Utopianism now began to both the precise and the dynamic, in which the
emerge, this was a development which now repre- Hegelian view of an ever-expanding World Spirit
sented only one half of the situation. For, alongside becomes optimistically conflated with a professedly
the rise of science, there is also to be placed the hardnosed fantasy – a fantasy of the World Spirit
less spectacular ebullition of the historical con- as having become matter of fact, as having be
sciousness. It should be unnecessary to insist too come an ascertainable, measurable principle which,
much that, in the later Enlightenment, alongside by enlightened preference, now operates from a
science – still thought of as largely static and in recognition of real values.
terms of mechanism – there began to emerge an For present purposes Darwin and Marx have
historical view of things which speculated about been dragged on stage and subjected to rather per-
growth and change and which, consequently, was functory handling in order to illustrate the devolu-
prone to think about society not so much as mech tion of classical Utopia. Circular and finite Utopia
anism but as organism. For most histories of ideas was long a-dying. It remained beloved of the French
and criticism will tell us something to this effect; disciples of Saint-Simon, Comte and Fourier; and
and, probably, most of them will go on to imply that it remained equally beloved of the American and
the protagonists of mechanism were largely French English descendants of Robert Owen; but, if Marx
and the protagonists of organism largely German. had stigmatized all such proposals as pocket edi-
These are, of course, big and deplorably crude tions of Utopia, then, well before the end of the
generalizations to throw around; but, allowing for nineteenth century, there was a very different smell
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in the breeze; and, if Utopia had not ceased to replied: we like it that way, and to the clamour: the
be poetry, it had certainly become politics. The lay drains smell, they were apt to answer: but we just
monasteries, the drop-out communes, the pha- love stink? In any case, and if this may be part of
lansteries of Owenite and Fourierist imagination the style of argument à rebours which characterized
had suddenly been swept away. Utopia had long aspects of late nineteenth-century decadence, there
long ceased to be a metaphorical city and it now still remains the spectacle of the futurist Utopia
ceased to be a fortified one. It became instead open, which is far less respectable than the Marxian one
expansive and forward looking; and, with its form and which can only elicit the notice that Marinetti,
no longer showing any relationship to the imaginary the apostle of Futurism became Mussolini’s es-
music of the sphere, Utopia now came to present teemed (or tolerated) Minister of Culture.
itself as an impulse or an axis of development. The But something like this, which is surely part of
surrender of circular, finite and Platonic Utopia to the degringolade of Futurism, ought to be noticed.
Utopia as extrusion one might suppose to be the The movement was abundantly prophetic and, per-
meaning of Soria y Mata’s proposal for a linear city haps, nowhere so much as in its decay. Futurism
of 1882; one might also suppose the same glad dealt with “inevitabilities” to which the emanci-
surrender to extrusion (this time vertical) to be also pated, the bold and the free must, automatically,
involved in the idealized Milan of Sant’ Elia’s fan- attach themselves; and it was something which, in
tasy; and, though it is never entirely satisfactory to its cult of violent action, rendered itself supremely
attempt to make visual images speak for explicit available to authoritarian take-over. The rule of
ideas, what – with these particular images – might energy rather than the rule of law, the Futurist–
be suggested is their ultimate derivation from a Fascist sequence may also compel a comparison
body of thought which includes both Comte and with the manner in which the Weimar Republic,
Hegel, both Darwin and Marx. abundantly a rule of love, transformed itself (by
Which is not to say that there is here anything Spenglerian euthanasia?) into the Third Reich; and
explicitly Darwinian or Marxian: but which is to imply then this comparison may also permit the suspicion
that, without the Darwinian and Marxian syntheses, to be entertained that when active benevolence
such proposals as these would, probably, have been becomes the social goal it is probably time to look
impossible. One notices the forward looking excelsior out. For, if the ideal society must and should be a
which both of them obtrude. They propound energy feast of love, the suspicion might still be entertained
and extension. Fifty years earlier each would have that any existing society will be just as much struc-
been quite impossible. For both of these images tured by animosity and doubt.
advertise a situation without limits, a situation which And at this stage, when we are unavoidably pre-
was previously either unrecognized or unknown; sented with the issues of the res publica and the res
and, particularly, the second, the later, the Futurist privata, with our public socialist persona and our
image, which can seem to celebrate the inexorable private capitalist drive, that one might revert yet
exigencies of power, may easily lend itself to inter again to the prophetic imagination of the 1920s
pretation as an emblem of the machine, or of the and to its contemporary bureaucratic rendition, the
piston, now become the index of history. cut-price ville radieuse, and, confronted with this
And, at this stage, a turning point in argument squalid evolution, one might then proceed to ask
is reached. For what to say about the generosity, whether this was indeed the necessary denouement,
the magnanimity, the largeness involved in the whether the prophetic imagination of 50 years ago
Futurist “protest”? Do we say that, inspired by really did conceive of itself as literal prescription?
Nietzsche and Sorel, it was a well publicized aspect But the answer is, almost certainly, yes: Le Corbusier
of Italian aspirations towards bella figura? Or do and others might have been constructing an ideal
we say with Igor Stravinsky that the Futurists were world, but they were also constructing a world
not the great big aeroplanes that they thought they which they believed to be imminent: and, in the
were but, in spite of that, were a crowd of nice, process of constructing this world, whatever might
noisy little Vespas. Or, following Kenneth Burke, have been its ideality has been reduced to platitude
do we observe that the Futurists made of abuse a and, whatever might have been its poetry has been
virtue, that to the cry: the streets are noisy, they rendered as the most brutal prose.
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So we are thus left with the metaphorical Utopia of this writing, it has undergone redevelopment.]
of the Renaissance which lent itself to no sudden The first image is ostensibly forward looking, the
and rapid degradation and the literal Utopia of the second deliberately nostalgic; and, if both are highly
early twentieth century – post Marx, post Darwin, random, the randomness of the one is intended to
post Hegel, post Comte and Saint-Simon – which, imply all the vitality of an unprejudiced imaginary
almost invariably, has turned itself into its opposite. future, while the randomness of the other is in-
In St Louis, Pruitt-Igoe is built as the bureaucratic tended to suggest all the casual differentiations
rendition of this Utopia; and then (and with pos- which might have been brought about by the
sibly undue melodrama) Pruitt-Igoe is blown up, accidents of time. The implication of the second
which is the obvious and matter-of-fact commen- image is of an English market place (imaginably it
T
tary upon the model bequeathed to us by the 1920s. could also be Scandinavian) which, though it is W
There is the model, for all its merits heavily absolutely of the moment (the moment being O
equipped with political and societal ambiguity: and c1950) is also a product of all the accumulations
then there is its derivative which both inspires and and vicissitudes of history.
deserves destruction. [ . . . ]
However, an important issue, the important
issue, remains the exclusiveness of both these im-
AFTER THE MILLENNIUM ages, the presumption of prophecy by the one, the
assumption of nostalgia by the other. Like the two
The city of modern architecture which, now that English images previously observed, the one is
it seems to have become an almost irresistible nearly all anticipation, the other almost all recol-
reality, has begun to invite so much criticism, has, lection; and, at this stage, it surely becomes relevant
of course, prompted two quite distinct styles of to propose the deep absurdity of this particular
reaction which are neither of recent formulation. split which seems to be more a matter of heroic
Perhaps in its origins, this city was a gesture to posture than of anything else.
social and psychological dislocations brought Certainly it is a type of schism all the more gross
about by the First World War and the Russian because, on each side, there is an entirely false
Revolution. One style of reaction has been to assert psychology assumed – a type of schism which
the inadequacy of the initial gesture. Modern archi scarcely helps. For, given that the fantasy of the
tecture did not go far enough. Perhaps dislocation comprehensive city of deliverance has lead to a
is a value in itself: perhaps we should have more situation which is abominable, the problem remains
of it: perhaps, hopefully embracing technology, we what to do. Reductionist Utopian models will cer-
should now prepare ourselves for some kind of tainly founder in the cultural relativism which, for
computerized surf ride, over and through the tides better or worse, immerses us and it would seem
of Hegelian time, to some possibly ultimate haven only reasonable to approach such models with the
of emancipation. greatest circumspection; the inherent debilitations
Such might seem to be the approximate infer- of any institutionalized status quo . . . would also
ence of the Archigram image [an architecture that seem to indicate that neither simple “give them
seeks to break the bonds of permanent stasis, mov- what they want” nor unmodified townscape are
ing across the landscape, adjusting to its temporal equipped with sufficient conviction to provide more
needs – a type of architectural and dynamic science than partial answers; and, such being the case with
fiction]; but we wish to parallel it with an image reference to all of the prominent models, it be-
of which the inference is completely the reverse. comes necessary to envisage a strategy which
As an exhibition of townscape, the Harlow town might, hopefully and without disaster, accommo-
square involves a conscious attempt to placate and date the ideal and which, plausibly and without
console. [Harlow was a mid-century British New devaluation, might respond to what the real might
Town, whose architecture was modern in form, but be supposed to be.
which based its urban pattern on traditional pedes- In a recent book, The Art of Memory, Francis
trian experiences to evoke a familiar image of Yates speaks of Gothic cathedrals as mnemonic
European, if not British, urbanism. Since the time devices. The bibles and the encyclopaedias of both
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the illiterate and the literate, these buildings were but the degree of this potency must be strictly
intended to articulate thought by assisting recol- related to the known, the perhaps mundane and
lection; and, to the degree that they acted as the necessarily memory-laden context from which
Scholastic classroom aids, it becomes possible to it emerges.
refer to them as having been theaters of memory. The dichotomy of memory–prophecy, so import
And the designation is a useful one, because, if ant for modern architecture, might therefore be
today we are only apt to think of buildings as nec- regarded as entirely illusory, as useful up to a point
essarily prophetic, such an alternative mode of but academically absurd if pressed; and, if such
thinking may serve to correct our unduly prejudiced may be allowed and, if it seems plausible that the
naiveté. The building as theater of prophecy, the ideal city which we carry in our minds should ac-
building as theater of memory – if we are able to commodate our known psychological constitution,
conceive of the building as the one, we must, also it would seem to follow that the ideal city which
inherently be able to conceive of it as the other; might now be postulated should, at one and the
and, while recognizing that without benefit of aca- same time, behave as both theater of prophecy and
demic theory, these are both of them the ways theater of memory.
in which we habitually interpret buildings, this
memory–prophecy theater distinction might then
be carried over into the urbanistic field. CRISIS OF THE OBJECT: PREDICAMENT
Having said just so much and no more, it goes OF TEXTURE
almost without saying that exponents of the city
as prophecy theater will likely be thought of as We have so far attempted to specify two versions
radicals, while exponents of the city as memory of the Utopian idea: Utopia as an, implicit, object
theater will, almost certainly, be described as con- of contemplation and Utopia as an, explicit, instru-
servatives; but, if there might be some degree of ment of social change; we have then deliberately
truth in such assumption, it must also be established muddied this distinction by the introduction of
that block notions of this kind are not really very fantasies of architecture as anticipation and archi-
useful. The mass of mankind is likely to be, at any tecture as retrospection; but briefly to forget these
one time, both conservative and radical, to be pre- secondary issues: it would be facetious further to
occupied with the familiar and diverted by the indulge speculation in the area of Utopian concern
unexpected; and, if we all of us both live in the past without first directing some attention to the evalu-
and hope for the future (the present being no more ations of Karl Popper. For present purposes these
than an episode in time), it would seem reasonable are two essays of the late 1940s, Utopia and Violence
that we should accept this condition. For, if without and Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition; and it
prophecy there can be no hope, then, without must be a matter of surprise that neither of these
memory – there can be no communication. seems, so far, to have been cited for its possible
Obvious, trite and sententious though this may commentary upon the architectural and urbanistic
be, it was – happily or unhappily – an aspect of the problems of today.
human mind which the early proponents of modern Popper, as might be expected, is hard on Utopia
architecture were able to overlook – happily for and, correspondingly, soft on tradition; but these
them, unhappily for us. But, if without such dis- essays should also be placed in the context of that
tinctly perfunctory psychology “the new way of massive criticism of simple inductivist visions of
building” could never have come into being, there science, of all doctrines of historical determinism
cannot any longer be excuse for the failure to rec- and of all theorems of the closed society which he
ognize the complementary relationship which is has continuously conducted and which increasingly
fundamental to the processes of anticipation and begins to appear as one of the more important
retrospection. Interdependent activities we cannot twentieth century constructs. The Viennese liberal,
perform without exercising them both; and no at- long domiciled in England and using what appears
tempt to suppress either in the interest of the other to be a Whiggish theory of the state as the cutting
can ever be protractedly successful. We may receive edge of an attack upon Plato, Hegel and, not so
strength from the novelty of prophetic declamation; incidentally, the Third Reich, it is in terms of this
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background that Popper must be understood as religions. . . . The Utopianist must win over or else
the critic of Utopia and the exponent of tradition’s crush his competitors.
usefulness.
For Popper tradition is indispensable – com In other words, if Utopia proposes the achievement
munication rests upon tradition; tradition is related of abstract goods rather than the eradication of
to a felt need for a structured social environment: concrete evils, it is apt to be coercive since there
tradition is the critical vehicle for the betterment can far more easily be a consensus about concrete
of society; the “atmosphere” of any given society evils than there can be about abstract goods; and,
is related to tradition; and tradition is somewhat if Utopia introduces itself as a blueprint for the
akin to myth – or, to say it in other words, specific future, then it is doubly coercive since the future
T
traditions are somehow incipient theories which cannot be known to us. But, in addition to this, W
have the value, however imperfectly, of helping to Utopia is particularly dangerous since the invention O
explain society. of Utopias is likely to occur in periods of rapid
But such statements also require to be placed social change; and, when Utopian blueprints are
alongside the conception of science from which liable to be rendered obsolete before they can
they derive; the conception of science as not so be put into practice, then it is only too probable
much the accumulation of facts but as the rigorous that the Utopian engineers will proceed to inhibit
criticism of hypotheses. It is hypotheses which dis- change – by propaganda, by suppression of dissi-
cover facts and not vice versa; and, seen in this dent opinion, and if necessary, by physical force.
way – so the argument runs – the role of traditions It is perhaps unfortunate in all this that Popper
in society is roughly equivalent to that of hypoth- makes no distinction between Utopia as metaphor
eses in science. That is: just as the formulation of and Utopia as prescription; but, this being said,
hypotheses or theories results from the criticism what we are here presented with (though the treat-
of myth: ment of tradition is, perhaps, unduly sophisticated
and the handling of Utopia certainly a little bitter
Similarly traditions have the important double func and abrupt) is, by inference, one of the most
tion of not only creating a certain order or some completely devastating critiques of the twentieth-
thing like a social structure, but also of giving us century architect and planner.
something on which we can operate; something that [ . . . ]
we can criticize and change. (And) just as the inven The maintained endorsements of Utopia are one
tion of myth or theories in the field of natural science thing, its criticism is another; but for the architect,
has a function – that of helping us to bring order of course, the ethical content of the good society
into the events of nature – so has the creation of has always been something which building was
traditions in the field of society. to make evident. Indeed it has, probably, always
been his primary reference; for, whatever other
And it is presumably for such reasons that a rational controlling fantasies may have merged to assist him
approach to tradition becomes contrasted by Popper – antiquity, tradition, technology – these have in-
with the rationalist attempt to transform society by variably been conceived of as aiding and abetting,
the agency of abstract and Utopian propositions. in some way, a benign or decorous social order.
These are dangerous and pernicious. Utopia proposes [ . . . ]
a consensus about objectives; and It is impossible to In his famous essay Isaiah Berlin discriminates
determine ends scientifically. There is no scientific way two personalities: the hedgehog and the fox. The
of choosing between two ends. This being so: fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows
one big thing. This is the text which is chosen for
the problem of constructing a Utopian blue print elaboration and made to serve as a pretext for the
cannot possibly be solved by science alone; since we following:
cannot determine the ultimate ends of political ac
tions scientifically . . . they will at least partly have there exists a great chasm between those, on one
the character of religious differences. And there can side, who relate everything to a single central vision,
be no tolerance between these different Utopian one system less or more coherent or articulate, in
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terms of which they understand think and feel – a trifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scat
single, universal, organizing principle in terms of tered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing
which all that they are and say has significance – upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences
and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, and objects for what they are in themselves, without,
often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, consciously or unconsciously seeking to fit them into
if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psy or exclude them from anyone unchanging . . . at
chological or physiological cause; related by no times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind
moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the
perform acts, and entertain ideas which are cen hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.
Figure 1 Figure ground drawing of Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris, 1925. The drawing clearly depicts Le Corbusier’s
modern insertions into the tight traditional urban fabric of Paris; (cruciform towers and linear garden apartments set in
open space vs. blocks fully infilled with buildings that frame narrow streets as open space).
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And the great ones of the earth divide fairly equally: entirely predictable. Palladio is a hedgehog, Giulio
Plato, Dante, Dostoevsky, Proust are, needless to say, Romano, a fox; Hawksmoor, Soane, Philip Webb are
hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Joyce probably hedgehogs, Wren, Nash, Norman Shaw
are foxes. This is the rough discrimination; but, if it almost certainly foxes; and, closer to the present day,
is the representatives of literature and philosophy while Wright is unequivocally a hedgehog, Lutyens
who are the critical concern, the game may be played is just as obviously a fox. But, to elaborate the results
in other areas also. Picasso, a fox, Mondrian, a of, temporarily, thinking in such categories, it is as
hedgehog, the figures begin to leap into place; and, we approach the area of modern architecture that
as we turn to architecture, the answers are almost we begin to recognize the impossibility of arriving
T
W
O
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at any so symmetrical a balance. For, if Gropius, Mies, and his urbanism one might propose that he was,
Hannes Meyer, Buckminster Fuller are clearly emin yet again, a fox assuming hedgehog disguise for
ent hedgehogs, then where are the foxes whom we the purposes of public appearance, this is to build
can enter into the same league? The preference is a digression into a digression. We have noticed a
obviously one way. The single, central vision prevails. relative absence of foxes at the present day; but,
One notices a predominance of hedgehogs; but, if though this second digression may later be put to
one might sometimes feel that fox-like propensities use, the whole fox–hedgehog diversion was initiated
are surrounded with dubiety and, therefore, not to for ostensibly other purposes. It was initiated to
be disclosed, of course there still remains the job establish Hadrian and Louis XIV as, more or less,
of assigning to Le Corbusier his own particular slot, free-acting representatives of these two psychological
whether he is a monist or a pluralist, whether his vision types who were autocratically equipped to indulge
is of one or of many, whether he is of a single substance their inherent propensities; and then to ask of their
or compounded of heterogeneous elements. products: which of these two might be felt the more
These are questions which Berlin asks with ref- exemplary for today – the accumulation of set pieces
erence to Tolstoy – questions which (he says) may in collision or the total coordinated display? [Rowe
not be wholly relevant; and then, very tentatively, and Koetter illustrate these two design types with
he produces his hypothesis: the example of Hadrian’s Villa (Villa Adriana) on the
one hand, where its plan is comprised of a series
that Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but believed in
of colliding classical architecture and landscape set
being a hedgehog; that his gifts and achievement
pieces – which seem to have been randomly scattered
are one thing, and his beliefs, and consequently his
within the landscape to provide surprise and un-
interpretation of his own achievement, another; and
expected relationship; versus the plan of Versailles,
that consequently his ideals have led him, and those
which exhibits a controlled axial regularity that domin
whom his genius for persuasion has taken in, into
ates the overall layout – and is perceived here as
a systematic misinterpretation of what he and others
less exciting, less adaptive, and less participatory
were doing or should be doing.
over time from an evolutionary standpoint.]
Like so much other literary criticism shifted into a Given the anti-Utopian polemic of Karl Popper,
context of architectural focus, the formula seems given the – fundamentally – anti-hedgehog innuendo
to fit; and, if it should not be pushed too far, it can of Isaiah Berlin, the bias of this argument should
still offer partial explanation. There is Le Corbusier, now be clear: it is better to think of an aggregation
the architect, with what William Jordy has called of small, and even contradictory, set pieces (almost
his witty and collusive intelligence. This is the person like the products of different régimes) than to enter
who sets up elaborately pretended Platonic struc- tain fantasies about total and “faultless” solutions
tures only to riddle them with an equally elaborate which the condition of politics can only abort. Its
pretence of empirical detail, the Le Corbusier of implication is an installation of the Villa Adriana
multiple asides, cerebral references and compli- as some sort of model presenting the demands of
cated scherzi; and then there is Le Corbusier, the the ideal and the needs of the ad hoc; and its further
urbanist, the deadpan protagonist of completely implication is that some such installation begins,
different strategies who, at a large and public scale, politically, to be necessary.
has the minimum of use for all the dialectical tricks [ . . . ]
and spatial involutions which, invariably, he con- But, of course, the Villa Adriana is not simply
sidered the appropriate adornment of a more a physical collision of set pieces. It is not merely
private situation. The public world is simple, the a reproduction of Rome. For it also presents an
private world is elaborate; and, if the private world inconography as complex as its plan. Here the ref-
affects a concern for contingency, the would-be erence is supposed to be Egypt, there we are sup-
public personality long maintained an almost too posed to be in Syria, and, elsewhere we might be
heroic disdain for any taint of the specific. in Athens; and thus, while physically the villa pres-
But, if the situation of complex house–simple city ents itself as a version of the Imperial metropolis,
seems strange (when one might have thought that it further operates as an ecumenical illustration of
the reverse was applicable) and, if to explain the the mix provided by the Empire and, almost as a
discrepancy between Le Corbusier’s architecture series of momentos of Hadrian’s travels . . . in Villa
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T
W
O
Figure 2 Plan of Hadrian’s Villa, after Luigi Canina.
Adriana, we are in the presence of something like fantastic a psycho-political milieu; but, if this is to
what, today, it is customary to speak of as collage. parenthesize, it was for such reasons – Pascal and
reasons of the heart – that the city became hypo
thesized as no more than the result of “scientific”
COLLISION CITY AND THE POLITICS OF
findings and a completely glad “human” collabora-
BRICOLAGE
tion. Such became the activist Utopian total design.
The cult of crisis in the inter-war period: the before- Perhaps an impossible vision; and for those who,
it-is-too-late society must rid itself of outmoded during the past 50 or 60 years (many of them must
sentiment, thought and technique; and if, in order be dead) have been awaiting the establishment of
to prepare for its impending deliverance, it must this city, it must have become increasingly clear
be ready to make tabula rasa, the architect as key that the promise – such as it is – cannot be kept.
figure in this transformation, must be ready to Or so one might have thought; but, although the
assume the historical lead. For the built world of total design message has had a somewhat spotted
human habitation and venture is the very cradle career and has often elicited skepticism, it has re-
of the new order and, if he is properly to rock it, mained, and possibly to this day, as the psycho-
the architect must be ready to come forward as a logical substratum of urban theory and its practical
front-line combatant in the battle for humanity. application. Indeed it has been so little repressible
Perhaps, while claiming to be scientific, the architect that, in the last few years, a newly inspired and
had never previously operated within quite so wholly literal version of this message has been
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Figure 3 Plan of the Palace of Versailles and its surrounding landscape.
9780415668071_P2_07.indd 190 10-26-2012 3:18:55 PM

enabled to appear as renditions of the “systems” information is finally indigestible, and if any literal
approach and other “methodological” finds. usage of a “neutral” grid labors under approximate
We have largely introduced Karl Popper to sup- problems, the myth of the architect as eighteenth
port an anti-Utopian argument with which we do century natural philosopher, with all his little mea-
not wholly agree; but in our interpretation of the suring rods, balances and retorts, as both messiah
activist Utopia our indebtedness to Popper’s posi- and scientist, Moses and Newton (a myth which
tion should surely be evident. It is a position which, became all the more ludicrous after its annexation
particularly when stated at length as in The Logic by the architect’s less well-pedigreed cousin, the
of Scientific Discovery (1934) and The Poverty of planner), must now be brought into proximity with
Historicism (1957), is hard to evade; and one might The Savage Mind and with everything which brico
T
have thought that the idea of modern architecture lage represents. W
as science, as potentially part of a unified compre- There still exists among ourselves, says Claude O
hensive science, ideally like physics (the best of all Levi-Strauss, an activity which on the technical plane
possible sciences) could scarcely have protracted gives us quite a good understanding of what a science
itself to survive into a world which also included we prefer to call “prior” rather than “primitive” could
the Popperian critique of just such fantasies. But have been on the plane of speculation. This is what is
this is to misunderstand the hermetic and retarded commonly called “bricolage” in French; and he then
nature of architectural debate: and, in those areas proceeds to an extended analysis of the different
where Popperian criticism appears to be unknown objectives of bricolage and science, of the respec-
and where the “science” of early modern architec- tive roles of the “bricoleur” and the engineer:
ture is also presumed to be painfully deficient, it
goes without saying that the problem-solving methods In its old sense, the verb “ bricoler” applied to ball
proposed are laborious and often extended. games and billiards, to hunting, shooting and
One has only to contemplate the scrupulous riding. It was however always used with reference
ness of the operation in a text such as [Christopher to some extraneous movement: a ball rebounding,
Alexander’s] Notes on the Synthesis of Form to get a dog straying or a horse swerving from its direct
the picture. Obviously a “clean” process dealing with course to avoid an obstacle. And in our time the
“clean” information, atomized, cleaned and then “bricoleur” is still someone who works with his hands
cleaned again, everything is ostensibly wholesome and used devious means compared to those of the
and hygienic; but, resulting from the inhibiting craftsman.
characteristics of commitment, especially physical
commitment, the product seems never to be quite Now there is no intention to place the entire weight
so prominent as the process. And something com of the argument which follows upon Levi-Strauss’
parable might be said about the related production observations. Rather the intention is to promote
of stems, webs, grids and honeycombs which, in an identification which may, up to a point, prove
the later 1960s, became so conspicuous an indus- useful; and, so much so, that, if one may be inclined
try. Both are attempts to avoid any imputation of to recognize Le Corbusier as a fox in hedgehog
prejudice; and if, in the first case, empirical facts disguise, one may also be willing to envisage a
are presumed to be value-free and finally ascertain- parallel attempt at camouflage: the “bricoleur” dis-
able, in the second, the coordinates of a grid are guised as engineer.
awarded an equal impartiality. For, like the lines
of longitude and latitude, it seems to be hoped Engineers fabricate the tools of their time . . . Our
that these will, in some way, eliminate any bias, or engineers are healthy and virile, active and useful,
even responsibility, in a specification of the infilling balanced and happy in their work . . . our engineers
detail. produce architecture for they employ a mathemat
But, if the ideally neutral observer is surely a ical calculation which derives from natural law.
critical fiction, if among the multiplicity of phe-
nomena with which we are surrounded we observe Such is an almost entirely representative statement
what we wish to observe, if our judgments are of early modern architecture’s most conspicuous
inherently selective because the quantity of factual prejudice. But then compare Levi-Strauss:
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The bricoleur is adept at performing a large num (a speedboat which architecture and urbanism are
ber of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does to follow like highly inexpert water skiers); and,
not subordinate each of them to the availability of instead, we have not only a confrontation of the
raw materials and tools conceived and procured for bricoleur’s “savage mind” with the “domesticated”
the purpose of the project. His universe of instru mind of the engineer, but also a useful indication
ments is closed and the rules of his game are always that these two modes of thought are not represen-
to make do with “whatever is at hand”, that is to tatives of a progressive serial (the engineer illus
say with a set of tools and materials which is always trating a perfection of the bricoleur, etc) but are, in
finite and is also heterogeneous because what it fact, necessarily co-existent and complementary
contains bears no relation to the current project, or conditions of the mind. In other words, we might
indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent be about to arrive at some approximation of Levi-
result of all the occasions there have been to renew Strauss “pensee logique au niveau du sensible”.
or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains For, if we can divest ourselves of the deceptions
of previous constructions or destructions. The set of of professional amour propre and accepted aca-
the bricoleur’s means cannot therefore be defined demic theory, the description of the bricoleur is far
in terms of a project (which would pre-suppose be more a “real-life” specification of what the architect-
sides, that, as in the case of the engineer, there were, urbanist is and does than any fantasy deriving
at least in theory, as many sets of tools and materials, from “methodology” and “systemics.” Indeed the
or “instrumental sets”, as there are different kinds of predicament of architecture which, because it is
projects). It is to be defined only by its potential use . . . always, in some way or another, concerned with
because the elements are collected or retained on amelioration, with by some standard, however
the principle that “they may always come in handy”. dimly perceived, making things better, with how
Such elements are specialized up to a point, sufficiently things ought to be, is always hopelessly involved
for the bricoleur not to need the equipment and with value judgments and can never be scientifically
knowledge of all trades and professions, but not resolved – least of all in terms of any simple em-
enough for each of them to have only one definite pirical theory of “facts.” And, if this is the case
and determinate use. They represent a set of actual with reference to architecture, then, in relation to
and possible relations; they are “operators”, but they urbanism (which is not even concerned in making
can be used for any operations of the same type. things stand up) the question of any scientific
resolution of its problems can only become more
For our purposes it is unfortunate that Levi-Strauss acute. For, if the notion of a “final” solution through
does not lend himself to reasonable laconic quota- a definitive accumulation of all data is, evidently,
tion. For the bricoleur, who certainly finds a repre- an epistemological chimera, if certain aspects of
sentative in “the odd job man,” is also very much information will invariably remain undiscriminated
more than this. It is common knowledge that the or undisclosed, and if the inventory of “facts” can
artist is both something of a scientist and of a “brico never be complete because of the rates of change
leur”; but, if artistic creation lies mid-way between and obsolescence, then, here and now, it surely
science and bricolage, this is not to imply that might be possible to assert that the prospects of
the bricoleur is “backward”. It might be said that the scientific city planning should, in reality, be regarded
engineer questions the universe while the “bricoleur” as equivalent to the prospects of scientific politics.
addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over For, if planning can barely be more scientific
from human endeavors; but it must also be insisted than the political society of which it forms an
that there is no question of primacy here. Simply, agency, in the case of neither politics nor planning
the scientist and the bricoleur are to be distinguished can there be sufficient information acquired before
by the inverse functions which they assign to events and action becomes necessary. In neither case can per-
structures as means and ends, the scientist creating formance await an ideal future formulation of the
events . . . by means of structures and the “bricoleur” problem as it may, at last, be resolved; and, if this
creating structures by means of events. is because the very possibility of that future where
But we are here, now, very far from the notion such formulation might be made depends on im-
of an exponential, increasingly precise “science” perfect action now, then this is only once more to
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intimate the role of bricolage which politics so much both of them, modes of address to problems, if
resembles and city planning surely should. we are willing (and it may be hard) to concede
But are the alternatives of “progressivist” total equality between the “civilized” mind (with its pre-
design (propelled by hedgehogs?) and “culturalist” sumptions of logical seriality) and the “savage”
bricolage (propelled by foxes?) genuinely, at the even be possible to suppose that the way for a truly
last analysis, all that we have available? We believe useful future dialectic could be prepared.
that they are; and we suppose that the political A truly useful dialectic? The idea is simply the
implications of total design are nothing short of conflict of contending powers, the almost funda-
devastating. No ongoing condition of compromise mental conflict of interest sharply stipulated, the
and expediency, of willfulness and arbitrariness, but legitimate suspicion about others’ interests, from
T
a supremely irresistible combination of “science” which the democratic process – such as it is – pro- W
and “destiny,” such is the unacknowledged myth ceeds: and then the corollary to this idea is no more O
of the activist or historicist Utopia; and, in this than banal: if such is the case, that is if democracy
complete sense, total design was, and is, make be- is compounded of libertarian enthusiasm and le-
lieve. For, on a mundane level, total design can galistic doubt, if it is inherently a collision of points
only mean total control, and control not by abstrac- of view and acceptable as such, then why not allow
tions relating to the absolute value of science or a theory of contending powers (all of them visible)
history but by governments of man; and, if the as likely to establish a more ideally comprehensive
point scarcely requires emphasis, it can, still, not city of the mind than any which has, as yet, been
be too strongly asserted that total design (however invented?
much it may be loved) assumes for its implementa- With the Villa Adriana already in mind, the
tion a level of centralized political and economic proposition leads us (like Pavlov’s dogs) automatic
control which, given the presumption of political ally to the condition of seventeenth century Rome,
power as it now exists anywhere in the world, can to that inextricable fusion of imposition and ac-
only be considered thoroughly unacceptable. commodation, that highly successful and resilient
The most tyrannical government of all, the govern traffic jam of intentions, an anthology of closed
ment of nobody, the totalitarianism of technique. compositions and ad hoc: stuff in between which
Hannah Ahrendt’s image of a horror may also now is simultaneously a dialectic of ideal types, plus a
come to mind; and, in this context, what devious- dialectic of ideal types with empirical context; and
ness of history and change, of the certainty of the consideration of seventeenth century Rome
future sharp temporal caesuras, of the full tonality (the complete city with the assertive identity of its
of societal gesture, a conception of the city as sub-divisions: Trastevere, Sant’ Eustachio, Borgo,
intrinsically, and even ideally, a work of bricolage Campo Marzo, Campitelli . . . ) leads to the equiva-
begins to deserve serious attention. For, if total lent interpretation of its predecessor where forum
design may represent the surrender of logical em- and thermae pieces lie around in a condition of
piricism to a most unempirical myth and if it may inter-dependence, independence and multiple inter
seem to envisage the future (when all will be pretability. And Imperial Rome is, of course, far
known) as a sort of dialectic of non-debate, it is the more dramatic statement. For, with its more
because the bricoleur (like the fox) can entertain no abrupt collisions, more acute disjunctions, its more
such prospects of conclusive synthesis, because, expansive set pieces, its more radically discrimin
rather than with one world – infinitely extended ated matrix and general lack of “sensitive” inhibi-
though subjected to the same generalizations – his tion, Imperial Rome, far more than the city, of the
very activity implies a willingness and an ability to High Baroque, illustrates something of the bricolage
deal with a plurality of closed finite systems (the mentality at its most lavish – an obelisk from here,
collection of oddments left over from human endeavor) a column from there, a range of statues from some-
that, for the time being at least, his behavior may where else, even at the level of detail the mental-
offer an important model. ity is fully exposed: and, in this connection, it is
Indeed, if we are willing to recognize the methods amusing to recollect how the influence of a whole
of science and bricolage as concomitant propen school of historians was, at one time, strenuously
sities, if we are willing to recognize that they are, dedicated to presenting the ancient Romans as
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Figure 4 Plan of the Imperial Fora in Rome.
inherently nineteenth century engineers, precursors lisive fields and interstitial debris, there are calmer
of Gustave Eiffel, who had somehow, and unfortu- versions.
nately, lost their way. Rome, for instance, is – if you wish to see it
So Rome, whether Imperial or Papal, hard or so – an imploded version of London: and the
soft, is here offered as some sort of model which Rome–London model may, of course, perfectly
might be envisaged as alternative to the disastrous well be expanded to provide a comparable inter-
urbanism of social engineering and total design. pretation of a Houston or a Los Angeles. But to
For, while it is recognized that what we have here introduce detail would be, unduly, to protract the
are the products of a specific topography and two argument: and simply to terminate: rather than any
particular, though not wholly separable cultures, it Hegelian indestructible bond of the beautiful and the
is also supposed that we are in the presence of a style true, rather than ideas of a permanent and future
of argument which is not lacking in universality. unity, we would prefer to consider the complemen-
That is: while the physique and the politics of Rome tary possibilities of consciousness and sublimated
provide perhaps the most graphic example of col conflict: and, if there is here urgent need for both
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the fox and the bricoleur, it is just possible that, in formed. One is no less in the twentieth century;
the face of prevailing scientism and conspicuous but the blinding self-righteousness of unitary con-
laissez aller, their activities could provide the true viction is at last placed alongside a more tragic
and constant Survival Through Design. cognition of the dazzling and the scarcely to be
resolved multiformity of experience.
The two formulations of modernity which
COLLAGE CITY AND THE RECONQUEST elaborate themselves may thus be more or less
OF TIME characterized; and, allowing for two contrasted
modes of “seriousness”, one may now think of
The tradition of modern architecture, always pro- Picasso’s Bicycle Seat (Bull’s Head) of 1944:
T
fessing a distaste for art, has characteristically con- W
ceived of society and the city in highly conventional You remember that bull’s head I exhibited recently? O
artistic terms – unity, continuity, system; but there Out of the handlebars and the bicycle seat I made
is an alternative and apparently far more “art” prone a bull’s head which everybody recognized as a bull’s
method of procedure which, so far as one can see, head. Thus a metamorphosis was completed; and
has never felt any need for such literal alignment now I would like to see another metamorphosis take
with “basic” principles. This alternative and predo place in the opposite direction. Suppose my bull’s
minant tradition of modernity – one thinks of such head is thrown on the scrap heap. Perhaps some
names as Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Joyce – exists day a fellow will come along and say: why there’s
at a considerable remove from the ethos of modern something that would come in very handy for
architecture: and, because it makes of obliquity and the handlebars of my bicycle . . . and so a double
irony a virtue, it by no means conceives itself to metamorphosis would have been achieved.
be equipped with a private pipe line to either the
truths of science or to the patterns of history. Remembrance of former function and value (bicycles
and minotaurs); shifting context; an attitude which
I have never made trials nor experiments, I can encourages the composite; an exploitation and re-
hardly understand the importance given the word cycling of meaning (has there ever been enough
research. Art is a lie which makes us realize the to go around?); desuetude of function with corre-
truth, at least the truth it is given us to understand. sponding agglomeration of reference; memory; anti
The artist must know the manner of convincing cipation; the connectedness of memory and wit: this
others of the truthfulness of his lies. is a laundry list of reactions to Picasso’s proposition;
and, since it is a proposition evidently addressed
With such statements as these of Picasso’s one to “people,” it is in terms such as these, in terms of
might be reminded of Coleridge’s definition of a pleasures remembered and values desired, of a
successful work of art (it might also be the defini- dialectic between past and future, of an impacting
tion of a successful political achievement) as that of iconographic content, of a temporal as well as
which encourages a willing suspension of disbelief. a spatial collision, that, resuming an earlier argu-
The Coleridgean mood may be more English, more ment, one might proceed to specify an ideal city
optimistic, less drenched with Spanish irony: but of the mind.
the drift of thought – the product of an apprehen- With Picasso’s image one asks: what is “false”
sion of reality as far from tractable – is much the and what is “true,” what is “antique” and what is “of
same; and, of course, as soon as one begins to today”; and it is because of inability to make half-
think of things in this way, all but the most en- way adequate reply to this pleasing difficulty that
trenched pragmatist gradually becomes very far one is obliged, finally, to identify the problem of
removed from the advertised state of mind and the composite presence (already prefigured at the Villa
happy certainties of what is sometimes described Adriana) in terms of collage. Collage and the archi-
as modern architecture’s “mainstream.” For one tect’s conscience, collage as technique and collage
now enters a territory from which the architect and as state of mind: Levi-Strauss tells us that the inter
the urbanist have, for the most part, excluded them- mittent fashion for “collages”, originating when crafts
selves. The vital mood is now completely trans- manship was dying, could not . . . be anything but the
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transposition of “bricolage” into the realms of contem With very slight modifications (for oilcloth facsi
plation; and, if the twentieth century architect has mile substitute fake industrial glazing, for painted
been the reverse of willing to think of himself as surface substitute wall, etc) Alfred Barr’s observa-
a bricoleur, it is in this context that one must also tions could be directly carried over into interpreta-
place his frigidity in relation to a major twentieth tion of the Ozenfant studio. And further illustrations
century discovery. Collage has seemed to be lack- of Le Corbusier as collagiste cannot be hard to
ing in sincerity, to represent a corruption of moral find: the too obvious De Beistégui penthouse; the
principles, an adulteration. One thinks of Picasso’s roofscapes – ships and mountains – of Poissy and
Still Life with Chair Caning of 1911–1912, his first Marseilles, random rubble at the Porte Molitor
collage, and begins to understand why. and the Pavilion Suisse; an interior from Bordeaux-
In analyzing this production, Alfred Barr speaks Pessac; and, particularly, the Nestlé exhibition
of: pavilion of 1928.
[ . . . ]
the section of chair caning which is neither real nor It is suggested that a collage approach, an
painted but is actually a piece of oilcloth facsimile approach in which objects (and attitudes) are con-
pasted on to the canvas and then partly painted scripted or seduced from out of their context, is
over. Here in one picture Picasso juggles reality and – at the present day – the only way of dealing with
abstraction in two media and at four different levels the ultimate problems of either or both, Utopia and
or ratios. (And) if we stop to think which is the most tradition; and the provenance of the architectural
“real” we find ourselves moving from aesthetic to objects introduced into the social collage need not
metaphysical contemplation. For what seems most be of great consequence. It relates to taste and
real is most false and what seems most remote from conviction. The objects can be aristocratic or they
everyday reality is perhaps the most real since it is can be “folkish,” academic or popular. Whether
at least an imitation. they originate in Pergamum or Dahomey, in Detroit
or Dubrovnik, whether their implications are of the
And the oilcloth facsimile of chair caning, an objet twentieth or the fifteenth century, need be no great
trouvé snatched from the underworld of “low” cul- matter. Societies and persons assemble themselves
ture and catapulted into the superworld of “high” according to their own interpretations of absolute
art, might illustrate the architect’s dilemma. For reference and traditional value; and, up to a point,
collage is simultaneously innocent and devious. collage accommodates both hybrid display and the
Indeed, among architects, only that great strad- requirements of self-determination.
dler Le Corbusier, sometimes hedgehog, sometimes But up to a point: for if the city of collage may
fox, has displayed any sympathy towards this kind be more hospitable than the city of modern archi-
of thing. His buildings, though not his city plans, tecture, if it might be a means of accommodating
are loaded with the results of a process which might emancipation and allowing all parts of a pluralist
be considered more or less equivalent to that of situation their own legitimate expression, it cannot
collage. Objects and episodes are obtrusively im- any more than any other human institution be com-
ported and, while they retain the overtones of their pletely hospitable. For the ideally open city, like the
source and origin, they gain also a wholly new ideally open society, is just as much a figment of
impact from their changed context. In, for instance, the imagination as its opposite. The open and the
the Ozenfant studio one is confronted with a mass closed society, either envisaged as practical pos-
of allusions and references which it would seem sibilities, are both of them the caricatures of con-
are all basically brought together by collage means. trary ideals; and it is to the realm of caricature that
Disparate objects held together by various one should choose to relegate all extreme fantasies
means, physical, optical, psychological: of either emancipation or control. Thus, the bulk
of Popper’s arguments in favor of the emancipatory
the oilcloth with its sharp focused facsimile detail and interest and the open society must surely be con-
its surface apparently so rough yet actually so smooth . . . ceded; but, while the need for the reconstruction
partly absorbed into both the painted surface and of an operative critical theory after its long negation
the painted forms by letting both overlap it by scientism, historicism, psychologism, should be
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evident, if we are concerned with the production accommodating a whole range of axis mundi (all
of an open city for an open society, we may still of them vest pocket Utopias – Swiss canton, New
be concerned with an imbalance in Popper’s general England village, Dome of the Rock, Place Vendome,
position comparable to that in his critique of tradi- Campidoglio, etc) might be a means of permitting
tion and Utopia. This can seem to be a too exclu- us the enjoyment of Utopian poetics without our
sive focus on what, after all, are highly idealized being obliged to suffer the embarrassment of Utopian
empirical procedures; and a corresponding unwill- politics. Which is to say that, because collage is a
ingness to attempt any construction of positive method deriving its virtue from its irony, because
ideal types. it seems to be a technique for using things and
[ . . . ] simultaneously disbelieving in them, it is also a
T
Habitually Utopia, whether Platonic or Marxian, strategy which can allow Utopia to be dealt with W
has been conceived of as axis mundi or as axis as image, to be dealt with in fragments without our O
istoriae; but, if in this way it has operated like all having to accept it in toto, which is further to sug-
totemic, traditionalist and uncriticized aggregations gest that collage could even be a strategy which,
of ideas, if its existence has been poetically neces- by supporting the Utopian illusion of changeless-
sary and politically deplorable, then this is only ness and finality, might even fuel a reality of change,
to assert the idea that a collage technique, by motion, action and history.
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“Introduction,” “The Life of
Plazas,” “Sitting Space,” and,
“Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water”
from The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980)
William H. Whyte
In working on an update of New York City’s comprehensive plan in the late 1960s, William H. Whyte began
pondering the design effectiveness of the city’s plazas, playgrounds, and parks. Because of developers’
growing desire for taller skyscrapers, the city had begun to grant density and height bonuses in exchange
for public space amenities at the base of new buildings. Whyte applied for a grant to study plaza use, plaza
form, general street life, playgrounds, and parks in New York and other cities. Along with a group of young,
energetic research assistants, Whyte’s Street Life Project researched the effectiveness and use of these
public spaces over a multiyear period. The team developed innovative methods of observing and mapping
physical activity in the public realm, including the use of time-lapse photography, film, unobtrusive observation,
behavior mapping, questionnaires, personal interviews, and pedestrian path analysis.
In analyzing the data, many of the team’s early hypotheses were either validated or refuted. Some of their
key findings suggested the importance of seating supply and the adaptability of space for personal needs.
Other findings about gender preferences, plaza size, sun exposure, and food vending were more surprising.
Whyte’s work was some of the first to recognize the impacts of the built environment on the behavioral dif-
ferences of men and women; concluding that women were more careful in selecting preferred seat locations.
Some of the broader conclusions from this work suggest that “what attracts people most, it would appear,
is other people,” and the necessity of well-used public spaces in facilitating greater civic engagement and
community interaction – a function both of democracy and quality of life.
William Hollingsworth (Holly) Whyte (1917–1999) graduated from Princeton University, served in the
Marine Corps and, in 1946, began his career at Fortune Magazine where he coincidentally came in contact
with Jane Jacobs. Selling more than two million copies, his first literary triumph was The Organization Man
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), which chronicled the rise of corporate influence and the conformity of
the middle class to corporate ideals in the mid-twentieth century. His books on urban form, public space, and
design include an edited book, The Exploding Metropolis (New York: Doubleday, 1957); The Last Landscape
(New York: Doubleday, 1968); and City: Rediscovering the Center (New York: Doubleday, 1988). A collection
of Whyte’s writings can be found in Albert LaFarge (ed.), The Essential William H. Whyte (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2000).
The impacts of this book and the larger Street Life Project were numerous. In addition to the book, a short
film of the same name was produced to help disseminate the results of the research to a wider audience.
The Street Life Project helped the New York City Planning Commission implement new regulations and
guidelines for subsequent development and design review. The observational and mapping methods of William
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“Introduction” 199
Whyte have been adopted by a number of built-environment researchers and his ideas were influential in the
establishment of the Project for Public Spaces in New York City.
For additional reading on environmental behavior research and associated methods see: Edward T. Hall,
The Hidden Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966); Robert Sommers, Personal Space: The Behavioral
Basis of Design (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969); William H. Michelson, Behavioural Research
Methods in Environmental Design (New York: John Wiley, 1975); Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban
Form: Towards a Man–Environment Approach to Form and Design (Oxford: Pergamon, 1977); Marguerite
and Michael Brill, Environmental Design Research: Concepts, Methods and Values (Washington, DC: National
Endowment for the Arts, 1981); John Zeisel, Inquiry by Design: Tools for Environment-Behavior Research
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Inquiry by Design: Environment / Behavior / Neuro-
T
science in Architecture, Interiors, Landscape, and Planning, updated and revised edn (New York: W.W. W
Norton, 2006); Allan B. Jacobs, Looking at Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); and Jon Lang, Creat- O
ing Architectural Theory: The Role of the Behavioral Sciences in Environmental Design (New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1987). The Environmental Design Research Association also has several series of publica
tions on this type of material.
INTRODUCTION a block on 101st Street in East Harlem. It had its

problems, but it worked. The street itself was the
This book is about city spaces, why some work for play area. Adjoining stoops and fire escapes pro-
people, and some do not, and what the practical vided prime viewing across the street and were
lessons may be. It is a by-product of first-hand highly functional for mothers and older people.
observation. There were other factors at work, too, and, had we
In 1970, I formed a small research group, The been more prescient, we could have saved our-
Street Life Project, and began looking at city spaces. selves a lot of time spent later looking at plazas.
At that time, direct observation had long been used Though we did not know it then, this block had
for the study of people in far-off lands. It had not within it all the basic elements of a successful urban
been used to any great extent in the U.S. city. There place.
was much concern over urban crowding, but most As our studies took us nearer the center of New
of the research on the issue was done somewhere York, the imbalance in space use was even more
other than where it supposedly occurred. The most apparent. Most of the crowding could be traced
notable studies were of crowded animals, or of to a series of choke points – subway stations, in
students and members of institutions responding particular. In total, these spaces are only a fraction
to experimental situations – often valuable research, of downtown, but the number of people using them
to be sure, but somewhat vicarious. is so high, the experience so abysmal, that it colors
The Street Life Project began its study by look- our perception of the city around, out of all propor-
ing at New York City parks and playgrounds and tion to the space involved. The fact that there
such informal recreation areas as city blocks. One may be lots of empty space somewhere else little
of the first things that struck us was the lack mitigates the discomfort. And there is a strong
of crowding in many of these areas. A few were carry-over effect.
jammed, but more were nearer empty than full, This affects researchers, too. We see what we
often in neighborhoods that ranked very high in expect to see, and have been so conditioned to
density of people. Sheer space, obviously, was not see crowded spaces in center city that it is often
of itself attracting children. Many streets were. difficult to see empty ones. But when we looked,
It is often assumed that children play in the there they were.
street because they lack playground space. But The amount of space, furthermore, was increas-
many children play in the streets because they like ing. Since 1961, New York City has been giving
to. One of the best play areas we came across was incentive bonuses to builders who provided plazas.
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200 W illiam H . W hyte
For each square foot of plaza, builders could add the research was nowhere as tidy and sequential
10 square feet of commercial floor space over and as it can seem in the telling. Let me also note that
above the amount normally permitted by zoning. the findings should have been staggeringly obvious
So they did – without exception. Every new office to us had we thought of them in the first place. But
building provided a plaza or comparable space: in we didn’t. Opposite propositions were often what
total, by 1972, some 20 acres of the world’s most seemed obvious. We arrived at our eventual findings
expensive open space. by a succession of busted hypotheses.
We discovered that some plazas, especially at The research continued for some three years. I
lunchtime, attracted a lot of people. One, the plaza like to cite the figure because it sounds impressive.
of the Seagram Building, was the place that helped But it is calendar time. For all practical purposes,
give the city the idea for the plaza bonus. Built in at the end of six months we had completed our
1958, this austerely elegant area had not been basic research and arrived at our recommendations.
planned as a people’s plaza, but that is what it The City, alas, had other concerns on its mind, and
became. On a good day, there would be a hundred we found that communicating the findings was to
and fifty people sitting, sunbathing, picnicking, and take more time than arriving at them. We logged
schmoozing – idly gossiping, talking “nothing talk.” many hours in church basements and meeting
People also liked 77 Water Street, known as “swing- rooms giving film and slide presentations to com-
ers’ plaza” because of the young crowd that popu- munity groups, architects, planners, businessmen,
lated it. developers, and real-estate people. We continued
But on most plazas, we didn’t see many our research; we had to keep our findings up-to-
people. The plazas weren’t used for much except date, for now we were disciplined by adversaries.
walking across. In the middle of the lunch hour on But at length the City Planning Commission incor-
a beautiful, sunny day the number of people sit porated our recommendations in a proposed new
ting on plazas averaged four per 1,000 square feet open-space zoning code, and in May 1975 it was
of space – an extraordinarily low figure for so adopted by the city’s Board of Estimate. As a con-
dense a center. The tightest-knit CBD (central sequence, there has been a salutary improvement
business district) anywhere contained a surprising in the design of new spaces and the rejuvenation
amount of open space that was relatively empty of old ones.
and unused. But zoning is certainly not the ideal way to
If places like Seagram’s and 77 Water Street achieve the better design of spaces. It ought to be
could work so well, why not the others? The city done for its own sake. For economics alone, it
was being had. For the millions of dollars of extra makes sense. An enormous expenditure of design
space it was handing out to builders, it had every expertise, and of travertine and steel, went into the
right to demand much better plazas in return. creation of the many really bum office building
I put the question to the chairman of the City plazas around the country. To what end? As this
Planning Commission, Donald Elliott. As a matter manual will detail, it is far easier, simpler to create
of fact, I entrapped him into spending a weekend spaces that work for people than those that do not
looking at time-lapse films of plaza use and nonuse. – and a tremendous difference it can make to the
He felt that tougher zoning was in order. If we life of a city.
could find out why the good plazas worked and the
bad ones didn’t, and come up with hard guidelines,
we could have the basis of a new code. Since we THE LIFE OF PLAZAS
could expect the proposals to be strongly contested,
it would be important to document the case to a We started by studying how people use plazas. We
fare-thee-well. mounted time-lapse cameras overlooking the plazas
We set to work. We began studying a crosssec- and recorded daily patterns. We talked to people
tion of spaces – in all, 16 plazas, 3 small parks, and to find where they came from, where they worked,
a number of odds and ends. I will pass over the how frequently they used the place and what they
false starts, the dead ends, and the floundering thought of it. But, mostly, we watched people to
arounds, save to note that there were a lot and that see what they did [Figure 1].
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“The Life of Plazas” 201
T
W
O
Figure 1 This is a typical sighting map. We found that one could map the location of every sitter, whether male (X),
female (O), alone, or with others (XO), in about five minutes, little more time than a simple head count would take.
Most of the people who use plazas, we found, constituency. It stimulates people into new habits
are young office workers from nearby buildings. – al fresco lunches – and provides new paths to
There may be relatively few patrons from the and from work, new places to pause. It does all
plaza’s own building; as some secretaries confide, this very quickly. In Chicago’s Loop, there were no
they’d just as soon put a little distance between such amenities not so long ago. Now, the plaza of
themselves and the boss. But commuter distances the First National Bank has thoroughly changed
are usually short; for most plazas, the effective the midday way of life for thousands of people. A
market radius is about three blocks. Small parks, success like this in no way surfeits demand for
like Paley and Greenacre in New York, tend to spaces; it indicates how great the unrealized po-
have more assorted patrons throughout the day – tential is.
upper-income older people, people coming from a The best-used plazas are sociable places, with
distance. But office workers still predominate, the a higher proportion of couples than you find in less-
bulk from nearby. used places, more people in groups, more people
This uncomplicated demography underscores an meeting people, or exchanging goodbyes. At five
elemental point about good urban spaces: supply of the most-used plazas in New York, the propor-
creates demand. A good new space builds a new tion of people in groups runs about 45 percent; in
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five of the least used, 32 percent. A high proportion in only one sector, then multiply by a given factor,
of people in groups is an index of selectivity. When and come within a percent or so of the total num-
people go to a place in twos or threes or rendezvous ber of people at the plaza.
there, it is most often because they have decided Off-peak use often gives the best clues to
to. Nor are these sociable places less congenial to people’s preferences. When a place is jammed, a
the individual. In absolute numbers, they attract person sits where he can. This may or may not
more individuals than do less-used spaces. If you be where he most wants to. After the main crowd
are alone, a lively place can be the best place to be. has left, the choices can be significant. Some parts
The most-used places also tend to have a higher of the plaza become quite empty; others continue
than average proportion of women. The male- to be used. At Seagram’s, a rear ledge under the
female ratio of a plaza basically reflects the com- trees is moderately, but steadily, occupied when
position of the work force, which varies from area other ledges are empty; it seems the most un-
to area – in midtown New York it runs about 60 crowded of places, but on a cumulative basis it is
percent male, 40 percent female. Women are more the best-used part of Seagram’s.
discriminating than men as to where they will sit, Men show a tendency to take the front-row
more sensitive to annoyances, and women spend seats, and, if there is a kind of gate, men will be
more time casting the various possibilities. If a the guardians of it. Women tend to favor places
plaza has a markedly lower than average propor slightly secluded. If there are double-sided benches
tion of women, something is wrong. Where there parallel to a street, the inner side will usually have
is a higher than average proportion of women, the a high proportion of women; the outer, of men.
plaza is probably a good one and has been chosen Of the men up front, the most conspicuous are
as such. girl watchers. They work at it, and so demonstra-
The rhythms of plaza life are much alike from tively as to suggest that their chief interest may
place to place. In the morning hours, patronage not really be the girls so much as the show of
will be sporadic. A hot-dog vendor setting up his watching them. Generally, the watchers line up quite
cart at the corner, elderly pedestrians pausing for close together, in groups of three to five. If they
a rest, a delivery messenger or two, a shoeshine are construction workers, they will be very demon-
man, some tourists, perhaps an odd type, like a strative, much given to whistling, laughing, direct
scavenger woman with shopping bags. If there is salutations. This is also true of most girl watchers
any construction work in the vicinity, hard hats will in New York’s financial area. In midtown, they are
appear shortly after 11:00 A.M. with beer cans and more inhibited, playing it coolly, with a good bit of
sandwiches. Things will start to liven up. Around sniggering and smirking, as if the girls were not
noon, the main clientele begins to arrive. Soon, measuring up. It is all machismo, however, whether
activity will be near peak and will stay there until uptown or downtown. Not once have we ever seen
a little before 2:00 P.M. Some 80 percent of the a girl watcher pick up a girl, or attempt to.
total hours of use will be concentrated in these Few others will either. Plazas are not ideal places
two hours. In mid and late afternoon, use is again for striking up acquaintances, and even on the most
sporadic. If there’s a special event, such as a jazz sociable of them, there is not much mingling. When
concert, the flow going home will be tapped, with strangers are in proximity, the nearest thing to an
people staying as late as 6:00 or 6:30 P.M. Ordinarily, exchange is what Erving Goffman has called civil
however, plazas go dead by 6:00 and stay that way inattention. If there are, say, two smashing blondes
until the next morning. on a ledge, the men nearby will usually put on an
During peak hours the number of people on a elaborate show of disregard. Watch closely, how-
plaza will vary considerably according to seasons ever, and you will see them give themselves away
and weather. The way people distribute themselves with covert glances, involuntary primping of the
over the space, however, will be fairly consistent, hair, tugs at the earlobe.
with some sectors getting heavy use day in and Lovers are to be found on plazas. But not where
day out, others much less. In our sightings we find you would expect them. When we first started
it easy to map every person, but the patterns are interviewing, people told us we’d find lovers in the
regular enough that you could count the number rear places (pot smokers, too). But they weren’t
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“The Life of Plazas” 203
usually there. They would be out front. The most Just why people behave like this, we have never
fervent embracing we’ve recorded on film has usu- been able to determine. It is understandable that
ally taken place in the most visible of locations, conversations should originate within the main flow.
with the couple oblivious of the crowd. Conversations are incident to pedestrian journeys;
Certain locations become rendezvous points where there are the most people, the likelihood of
for coteries of various kinds. For a while, the south a meeting or a leave-taking is highest. What is less
wall of Chase plaza was a gathering point for camera explainable is people’s inclination to remain in the
bugs, the kind who like to buy new lenses and talk main flow, blocking traffic, being jostled by it. This
about them. Patterns of this sort may last no more does not seem to be a matter of inertia but of
than a season – or persist for years. Some time ago, choice – instinctive, perhaps, but by no means
T
one particular spot became a gathering place for illogical. In the center of the crowd you have the W
raffish younger people; since then, there have been maximum choice – to break off, to continue – much O
many changeovers in personnel, but it is still a as you have in the center of a cocktail party, itself
gathering place for raffish younger people. a moving conversation growing ever denser and
denser.
People also sit in the mainstream. At the Seagram
Self-congestion plaza, the main pedestrian paths are on diagonals
from the building entrance to the corners of the
What attracts people most, it would appear, is other steps. These are natural junction and transfer points
people. If I belabor the point, it is because many and there is usually a lot of activity at them. They
urban spaces are being designed as though the are also a favored place for sitting and picnicking.
opposite were true, and that what people liked best Sometimes there will be so many people that
were the places they stay away from. People often pedestrians have to step carefully to negotiate the
do talk along such lines; this is why their responses steps. The pedestrians rarely complain. While some
to questionnaires can be so misleading. How many will detour around the blockage, most will thread
people would say they like to sit in the middle of their way through it.
a crowd? Instead, they speak of getting away from Standing patterns are similar. When people stop
it all, and use terms like “escape,” “oasis,” “retreat.” to talk on a plaza, they usually do so in the middle
What people do, however, reveals a different priority. of the traffic stream. They also show an inclina
This was first brought home to us in a study of tion to station themselves near objects, such as a
street conversations. When people stop to have a flagpole or a statue. They like well-defined places,
conversation, we wondered, how far away do they such as steps, or the border of a pool. What they
move from the main pedestrian flow? We were rarely choose is the middle of a large space.
especially interested in finding out how much of There are a number of explanations. The prefer-
the normally unused buffer space next to buildings ence for pillars might be ascribed to some primeval
would be used. So we set up time-lapse cameras instinct: you have a full view of all comers but your
overlooking several key street corners and began rear is covered. But this doesn’t explain the inclina-
plotting the location of all conversations lasting a tion men have for lining up at the curb. Typically,
minute or longer. they face inwards, toward the sidewalk, with their
People didn’t move out of the main pedestrian backs exposed to the dangers of the street.
flow. They stayed in it or moved into it, and the Foot movements are consistent, too. They seem
great bulk of the conversations were smack in to be a sort of silent language. Often, in a shmooz-
the center of the flow – the 100 percent location, ing group no one will be saying anything. Men
to use the real-estate term. The same gravitation stand bound in amiable silence, surveying the
characterized “traveling conversations” – the kind passing scene. Then, slowly, rhythmically, one of
in which two men move about, alternating the roles the men rocks up and down: first on the ball of the
of straight man and principal talker. There is a lot foot, then back on the heel. He stops. Another man
of apparent motion. But if you plot the orbits, starts the same movement. Sometimes there are
you will find they are usually centered around the reciprocal gestures. One man makes a half turn to
100 percent spot. the right. Then, after a rhythmic interval, another
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responds with a half turn to the left. Some kind of found the proclivity to stop and talk in the middle
communication seems to be taking place here, but of department-store doorways, busy corners, and
I’ve never broken the code. the like, is just as strong in that city as in New York.
Whatever they may mean, people’s movements For all the cultural differences, sitting patterns in
are one of the great spectacles of a plaza. You do parks and plazas are much the same, too. Similarly,
not see this in architectural photographs, which shmoozing patterns in Milan’s Galleria are remark-
typically are empty of life and are taken from a ably like those in New York’s garment center.
perspective few people share. It is a quite mislead- Modest conclusion: given the basic elements of a
ing one. At eye level the scene comes alive with center city – such as high pedestrian volumes, and
movement and color – people walking quickly, walk- concentration and mixture of activities – people in
ing slowly, skipping up steps, weaving in and out one place tend to act much like people in another.
on crossing patterns, accelerating and retarding to
match the moves of the others. There is a beauty
that is beguiling to watch, and one senses that the SITTING SPACE
players are quite aware of it themselves. You see
this, too, in the way they arrange themselves on In their use of plazas, New Yorkers were very con-
steps and ledges. They often do so with a grace sistent. Day in, day out, many of them would sit
that they, too, must sense. With its brown-gray at certain plazas, few at others. On the face of it,
monochrome, Seagram’s is the best of settings – there should not have been this variance. Most of
especially in the rain, when an umbrella or two the plazas we were studying were fairly comparable.
spots color in the right places, like Corot’s red dots. With few exceptions, they were on major avenues
How peculiar are such patterns to New York? and usually occupied a block front. They were close
Our working assumption was that behavior in other to bus stops and subway stations and had strong
cities would probably differ little, and subsequent pedestrian flows on the sidewalks beside them. Yet
comparisons have proved our assumption correct. when we rated plazas according to the number of
The important variable is city size. As I will discuss people sitting on them at peak time, there was a
in more detail, in smaller cities, densities tend to very wide range – from 160 people at 77 Water
be lower, pedestrians move at a slower pace, and Street to 17 at 280 Park Avenue.
there is less of the social activity characteristic of How come? The first factor we studied was the
high-traffic areas. In most other respects, pedestrian sun. We thought it might well be the critical one,
patterns are similar. and our initial time-lapse studies seemed to bear
Observers in other countries have also noted this out. Subsequent studies did not. As I will note
the tendency to self-congestion. In his study of later, they showed that the sun was important, but
pedestrians in Copenhagen, architect Jan Gehl did not explain the difference in the popularity of
mapped bunching patterns almost identical to those plazas.
observable here. Matthew Ciolek studied an Nor did aesthetics. We never thought our
Australian shopping center, with similar results. selves capable of measuring such factors, but did
“Contrary to ‘common sense’ expectations,” Ciolek expect our research to show the most successful
notes, “the great majority of people were found to plazas would tend to be the most pleasing visually.
select their sites for social interaction right on or Seagram’s seemed very much a case in point.
very close to the traffic lines intersecting the plaza. Here again, the evidence proved conflicting. Not
Relatively few people formed their gatherings away only was clean, elegant Seagram’s successful; so
from the spaces used for navigation.” was the fun plaza at 77 Water Street, which some
The strongest similarities are found among the architects look on as kitsch. We also noticed that
world’s largest cities. People in them tend to behave the elegance and purity of a building’s design seems
more like their counterparts in other world cities to have little relationship to the use of the spaces
than like fellow nationals in smaller cities. Big-city around it.
people walk faster, for one thing, and they selfcon- The designer sees the whole building – the clean
gest. After we had completed our New York study, verticals, the horizontals, the way Mies turned his
we made a brief comparison study of Tokyo and corners, and so on. The person sitting on the plaza
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“Sitting Space” 205
may be quite unaware of such matters. He is more tend to have considerably more sitting space than
apt to be looking in the other direction: not up at the less well-used ones. The relationship is rough.
other buildings, but at what is going on at eye level. For one reason, the amount of sitting space does
To say this is not to slight the designer’s eye or his not include any qualitative factors: a foot of con-
handling of space. The area around Seagram’s is a crete ledge counts for as much as a foot of com-
great urban place and its relationship to McKim, fortable bench space. We considered weighting the
Mead & White’s Racquet Club across the street is figures on a point basis – so many points for a foot
integral to it. My personal feeling is that a sense of bench with backrest, with armrests, and so on.
of enclosure contributes to the enjoyment of using This would have produced a nicer conformance. We
the Seagram plaza. But I certainly can’t prove this gave up the idea, however, as too manipulative.
T
with figures. Once you start working backwards this way, there’s W
Another factor we considered was shape. Urban no end to it. O
designers believed this was extremely important and There was no necessity. No matter how many
hoped our findings might support tight criteria for variables we checked, one point kept coming
proportions and placement. They were particularly through. We at last saw that it was the major one:
anxious to rule out “strip plazas” – long narrow spaces
that were little more than enlarged sidewalks, and People tend to sit most where there are places to sit.
empty more often than not. Designers felt a devel-
oper shouldn’t get bonuses for these strips, and to This may not strike you as an intellectual bomb-
this end they wanted to rule out spaces the length shell, and, now that I look back on our study, I
of which was more than three times the width. wonder why it was not more apparent to us from
Our data did not support such criteria. We found the beginning. Sitting space, to be sure, is only one
that most strip plazas were, indeed, empty of people of the many variables, and, without a control situ-
most of the time. But was the shape the cause? ation as a measure, one cannot be sure of cause
Some square plazas were empty, too, and several and effect. But sitting space is most certainly pre-
of the most heavily used places were, in fact, long requisite. The most attractive fountains, the most
narrow strips. One of the five most popular sitting striking designs, cannot induce people to come and
places in New York is essentially an indentation in sit if there is no place to sit.
a building – and long and narrow. Our research did
not prove shape unimportant or designers’ instincts
misguided; as with the sun, however, it did prove Integral sitting
that other factors were more critical.
If not shape, could the amount of space be the Ideally, sitting should be physically comfortable –
key factor? Some conservationists were sure this benches with backrests, well-contoured chairs. It’s
would be it. In their view, people seek open spaces more important, however, that it be socially com-
as a relief from the overcrowding they are normally fortable. This means choice: sitting up front, in back,
subjected to, and it would follow that places afford- to the side, in the sun, in the shade, in groups, off
ing the greatest feeling of light and space would alone.
draw the most. If we ranked plazas by the amount Choice should be built into the basic design.
of space, there surely would be a positive correla- Even though benches and chairs can be added, the
tion between the size of the plazas and the number best course is to maximize the sittability of inher-
of persons using them. ent features. This means making ledges so they are
Once again, we found no clear relationship. sittable, or making other flat surfaces do double
Several of the smaller spaces had lots of people, duty as table tops or seats. There are almost always
several of the larger had lots of people, and several such opportunities. Because the elevation changes
of the larger had very few people. Sheer space, it somewhat on most building sites, there are bound
appears, does not draw people. In some circum- to be several levels of flat space. It’s no more
stances, it can have the opposite effect. trouble to make them sittable than not to.
What about the amount of sittable space? Here It takes real work to create a lousy place. Ledges
we begin to get close. The most popular plazas have to be made high and bulky; railings put in;
9780415668071_P2_08.indd 205 10-26-2012 3:18:46 PM

surfaces canted. Money can be saved by not doing preventing builders from providing better plazas.
such things, and the open space is more likely to There weren’t any guidelines either. And most build-
be an amenable one. ers do not do anything far out of the ordinary. A
This is one of the lessons of Seagram’s. Philip few had sought special permits for amenities
Johnson recounts that when Mies van der Rohe not countenanced by existing regulations. But the
saw people sitting on the ledges, he was quite sur- time-consuming route to obtain special permits
prised. He had never dreamt they would. But the makes the builder and architect run a gauntlet of
architects had valued simplicity. So there were no city agencies, with innovation as likely to be pun-
fussy railings, no shrubbery, no gratuitous changes ished as rewarded.
in elevation, no ornamentation to clutter spaces.
The steps were made easy and inviting. The place
was eminently sittable, without a bench on it. The Sitting heights
periphery includes some 600 feet of ledge and step
space, which is just right for sitting, eating, and One guideline we expected to establish easily was
sunbathing. People use all of it. the matter of sitting heights. It seemed obvious
So ledges ought to be sittable. But how should enough that somewhere around 17 inches would
this be defined? If we wanted sittable ledges in the probably be near the optimum. But how much
New York City zoning amendments we thought higher or lower could a surface be and still be
we would have to indicate how high or low ledges sittable? Thanks to the slope of sites, several of
should be, how deep, and, since there were adver- the most sat-upon ledges provided a range of con-
sary proceedings ahead, be able to back up the tinuously variable heights. The front ledge of
specifications with facts. Seagram’s, for example, started at 7 inches at one
The proceedings turned out to be adversary in corner, rising to 44 at the other. Here was a dandy
a way we hadn’t expected. The attack came on the chance, we thought, to do a definitive study. By
grounds that the zoning was too specific. And it repeated observation, we could record how many
came not from builders, but from members of a people sat at which point over the range of heights;
local planning board. Rather than spell out the reas cumulative tallies built, preferences would be-
quirements in specific detail, the board argued, the come clear.
zoning should deal only with broad directives – for They didn’t. At a given time there might be
example, make the place sittable – leaving details clusters of people on one part of the ledge, con-
to be settled on a case-by-case basis. siderably fewer on another. But correlations didn’t
Let me pause to deal with this argument. It is last. When we cumulated several months of obser-
a persuasive one, especially for laymen, and, at the vation, we found that people distributed themselves
inevitable moment in zoning meetings when some- with remarkable evenness over the whole range of
one gets up and says, “Let’s cut through all this heights. We had to conclude that people will sit
crap and get down to basics,” everyone applauds. almost anywhere between a height of one foot and
Be done with bureaucratic nitpicking and legal three, and this is the range specified in the new
gobbledygook. zoning. People will sit on places higher or lower, to
But ambiguity is a worse problem. Most incen- be sure, but there are apt to be special conditions.
tive zoning ordinances are very, very specific as to Another dimension is more important: the human
what the developer gets. The trouble is that they backside. It is a dimension architects seem to have
are mushy as to what he is to give, and mushier forgotten. Rarely will you find a ledge or bench
yet as to what will happen if later he doesn’t. Vague deep enough to be sittable on both sides; some
stipulations, as many cities have learned, are aren’t deep enough to be sittable on one. Most
unenforceable. What you do not prescribe quite frustrating are the ledges just deep enough to tempt
explicitly, you do not get. people to sit on both sides, but too shallow to let
Lack of guidelines does not give builders and them do so comfortably. Observe such places and
architects more freedom. It reinforces convention. you will see people making awkward adjustments.
That is why so few good plazas were built under The benches at General Motors plaza are a case
the 1961 zoning resolution. There was no law in point. They are 24 inches deep and normally
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used on only one side. On Sundays, however, a don’t seem to mind either, and will carefully nego-
heavy influx of tourists and other people will sit tiate through the blockages rather than detour
on both sides of the benches. Not in comfort: they around them.
have to sit on the forward edge, erectly, and their We find similar patterns at other places. All
stiff demeanor suggests a tacit truce. things being equal, you can calculate that where
Thus to another of our startling findings: ledges pedestrian flows bisect a sittable place, that is
and spaces two backsides deep seat more people where people will most likely sit. And it is not so
comfortably than those that are not as deep. While perverse of them. It is by choice that they do. If
30 inches will do it, 36 is better yet. The new zon- there is some congestion, it is an amiable one, and
ing provides a good incentive. If a ledge or bench a testimonial to the place.
T
is 30 inches deep and accessible on both sides, Circulation and sitting, in sum, are not antithetical W
the builder gets credit for the linear feet on each but complementary. It is to encourage both that the O
side. (The 30-inch figure is thoroughly empirical; zoning stipulates the plaza not be more than three
it is derived from a ledge at 277 Park Avenue, the feet above or below street level. The easier the flow
minimum-depth ledge we came across that was between street and plaza, the more likely people
consistently used on both sides.) are to move between the two – and to tarry and sit.
For a few additional inches of depth, then, build- This is true of the handicapped, too. If circula-
ers can double the amount of sitting space. This tion and amenities are planned with them in mind,
does not mean that double the number of people the place is apt to function more easily for every-
will use the space. They probably won’t. But that one. Drinking fountains that are low enough for
is not the point. The benefit of the extra space is wheelchair users are low enough for children.
social comfort – more room for groups and indi- Pedestrian paths that are made easier for the hand-
viduals to sort themselves out, more choices and icapped by ramps, handrails, and steps of gentle
more perception of choices. pitch are easier for all. The new zoning makes such
Steps work for the same reason. The range of amenities mandatory, specifying, among other
space provides an infinity of possible groupings, things, that all steps along the main access paths
and the excellent sight-lines make virtually all the have treads at least 11 inches deep, closed risers
seats great for watching the theater of the street. no higher than 7.5 inches, and that ramps be
The new zoning ordinance does not credit steps as provided alongside them. For the benefit of the
sitting space. It was felt that this would give build- handicapped, the zoning also requires that at least
ers too easy an out and that some plazas would be 5 percent of the seating spaces have backrests.
all steps and little else. But the step principle can These are not segregated for the handicapped, it
be applied with good effect to ledges. should be noted. No facilities are segregated. The
Corners are functional. You will notice that idea is to make all of a place usable for everyone.
people often bunch at the far end of steps, espe-
cially when an abutting ledge provides a right angle.
These areas are good for face-to-face sitting. People Benches
in groups gravitate to them.
One might, as a result, expect a conflict, for Benches are artifacts the purpose of which is to
corners are also the places where pedestrian traffic punctuate architectural photographs. They’re not
is heaviest. Most people take short cuts, and ped so good for sitting. There are too few of them; they
estrian flows in plazas are usually on the diagonals are too small; they are often isolated from other
between the building entrance and the corners of benches or from whatever action there is on the
the steps. We see this at Seagram’s. As mentioned plaza. Worse yet, architects tend to repeat the same
previously, the main flow to and from the building module in plaza after plaza, unaware that it didn’t
cuts directly across the step corners, and it is work very well in the first place. For example,
precisely there that you will find the heaviest Harrison and Abramowitz’s plazas at Rockefeller
concentration of people sitting, sunbathing, and Center are excellent in many respects, but the basic
picnicking. But, for all the bustle, or because of it, bench module they’ve stuck to is exquisitely wrong
the sitters seem to feel comfortable. The walkers in its dimensions – 7.5 feet by 19 inches. A larger
9780415668071_P2_08.indd 207 10-26-2012 3:18:46 PM

rectangle would be proportionately as good but an armrest as well. But the big asset is movability.
work vastly better, as some utilitarian benches in Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun, out
the same area demonstrate. of it, to make room for groups, move away from
The technological barriers to better bench design them. The possibility of choice is as important as
are not insuperable. The prime specification, that the exercise of it. If you know you can move if
benches be generously sized, is the easiest to meet. you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put.
Backrests and armrests are proved devices. The This is why, perhaps, people so often move a chair
old-fashioned park bench is still one of the best a few inches this way and that before sitting in it,
liked because it provides them; of the newer de- with the chair ending up about where it was in the
signs that also do, some of the stock ones of the first place. The moves are functional, however. They
play- and park-equipment manufacturers are best. are a declaration of autonomy, to oneself, and
Architects have had a way with chairs; for some rather satisfying.
reason they seem to come a cropper with benches. Small moves say things to other people. If
They do worst when they freeze their bench a newcomer chooses a chair next to a couple or a
designs in concrete permanence. If some of their larger group, he may make some intricate moves.
assumptions prove wrong – that, say, people want Again, he may not take the chair very far, but he
to sit away from the action – it will be too late to conveys a message. Sorry about the closeness, but
do much about it. This has been a problem with a there’s no room elsewhere, and I am going to re-
number of pedestrian malls, where all design bets spect your privacy, as you will mine. A reciprocal
were made before the mall was opened. If some move by one of the others may follow. Watching
of the sitting areas go unused, there’s no easy way these exercises in civility is itself one of the pleas
of heeding the lesson, or, indeed, of recognizing ures of a good place.
that there is one. Fixed individual seats are not good. They are
Why not experiment? Some features, like ledges a design conceit. Brightly painted and artfully
and steps, will be fixed, but benches and chairs grouped, they can make fine decorative elements:
don’t have to be. With sturdy wooden benches or metal loveseats, revolving stools, squares of stone,
the like, some simple market research can be done sitting stumps. But they are set pieces. That is
to find out where and in what kind of groupings the trouble with them. Social distance is a subtle
they work best. People will be very quick to let you measure, ever changing, and the distances of fixed
know. We have found that by the second day the seats do not change, which is why they are rarely
basic use patterns will be established, and these won’t quite right for anybody. Loveseats may be all right
change very much unless the set-up is changed. for lovers, but they’re too close for acquaintances,
And it will be clear in what direction the changes and much too close for strangers. Loners tend to
should be made. take them over, placing their feet squarely on the
If one looks. This is the gap. Rarely will you ever other seat lest someone else sit on it.
see a plan for a public space that even counte- Fixed seats are awkward in open spaces because
nances the possibility that parts of it might not there’s so much space around them. In theaters,
work very well: that calls for experiment and test- strangers sit next to each other without qualm; the
ing, and for post-construction evaluation to see closeness is a necessity, and convention makes it
what does work well and what doesn’t. Existing quite tolerable. On plazas, the closeness is gratu-
spaces suffer a similar fate. There are few that could itous. With so much space around, fixed-seat group-
not be vastly improved, but rarely is an evaluation ings have a manipulative cuteness to them. The
undertaken. The people responsible for the place designer is saying, now you sit right here and you
are the least likely of all to consider it. sit there. People balk. In some instances, they
wrench the seats from their moorings. Where there
is a choice between fixed seats and other kinds of
Chairs sitting, it is the other that people choose.
To encourage the use of movable chairs, we
Now, a wonderful invention – the movable chair. recommended that in the zoning amendment they
Having a back, it is comfortable; more so, if it has be credited as 30 inches of sitting space, though
9780415668071_P2_08.indd 208 10-26-2012 3:18:46 PM

most are only about 19 inches wide. The Building space on the best-used plazas ran between 6
Department objected. It objected to the idea of and 10 percent of the total open space. As a ball-
movable chairs at all. The department had the park figure, it looked like somewhere around 10
responsibility of seeing that builders lived up to percent would be a reasonable minimum to require
requirements. Suppose the chairs were stolen of builders.
or broken and the builder didn’t replace them? For other comparisons we turned to linear feet.
Whether the department would ever check up in This is a more precise measure of sitting space
any event was a moot point, but it was true that than square feet, and a more revealing one. As long
the fewer such amenities to monitor, the easier the as there’s some clearance for one’s back, the
monitoring would be. additional square inches behind one don’t matter
T
Happily, there was a successful record at Paley very much. It is the edges of sitting surface that W
and Greenacre parks to point to, and it was deci- do the work, and it is the edges that should be O
sively persuasive. The chairs stayed in. They have made the most of.
become a standard amenity at new places, and For a basis of comparison, we took the number
the maintenance experience has been excellent. of linear feet around the total site. Since the peri
Managements have also been putting in chairs to meter includes the building, the distance is a
liven up existing spaces, and, even without incen- measure of the bulk of the project and its impact
tives, they have been adding more chairs. The most on the surrounding environment. Amenities should
generous provider is the Metropolitan Museum of therefore be in some proportion to it. On the most
Art. Alongside its front steps, it puts out up to 200 popular plazas, there were almost as many feet
movable chairs and it leaves them out, 24 hours a of sitting space as there were perimeter feet. This
day, seven days a week. The Met figured that it suggested that, as a minimum, builders could be
might be less expensive to trust people and to buy asked to provide that amount of sitting space.
replacements periodically rather than have guards Even on the best plazas, the architects could
gather the chairs in every night. That is the way it have done better. To get an idea of how much
has worked out. There is little vandalism. better, we calculated the additional space that could
have been provided on various plazas rather easily,
while the original plans were being made. We did
How much sitting space? not posit any changes in basic layout, nor did we
take the easy way of adding a lot of benches. We
A key question we had to confront was how much concentrated on spaces that would be integral to
sitting space should be required. We spent a lot of the basic design.
time on this – much too much, I now realize – and In most cases, it was possible to add as much
I’m tempted to recount our various calculations as 50 percent more sitting space, and very good
to demonstrate how conscientious we were. The space at that. The Exxon plaza, for example, has a
truth is that almost any reasonable yardstick would fine pool bordered by two side ledges that you can’t
work as well as ours. It’s the fact of one that is sit on. You can sit on the front and back ledges,
important. but only on the sides facing away from the pool.
This said, let me tell how conscientious we were. With a few simple changes, such as broadening the
We measured and remeasured the sitting space on ledges, sitting capacity could have been doubled,
most of the plazas and small parks in midtown and providing some of the best poolside space anywhere.
downtown New York. As sitting space, we included All in all, these examples indicated, builders could
all the spaces meant for people to sit on, such as easily furnish as many feet of sitting space as there
benches, and the spaces they sat on whether meant are feet around the perimeter of the project.
to or not, such as ledges. Although architects’ plans The requirement finally settled on was a com-
were helpful, we did most of the measuring with a promise: one linear foot of sitting space for every
tape, on the ground, in the process stirring inordin thirty square feet of plaza. This is reasonable, and
ate curiosity from passersby and guards. builders have been meeting the requirement with
Next, we related the amount of sitting space no trouble. They could meet a stiffer one. The exact
to the size of the plaza. The square feet of sitting ratio is not as important, however, as the necessity
9780415668071_P2_08.indd 209 10-26-2012 3:18:46 PM

of considering the matter. Once an architect has to sit beneath a tree is when there is sunlight to be
to start thinking of ways to make a place sittable, shaded from. The more access to sun, the better,
it is virtually impossible not to surpass any min and, if there is a southern exposure, it should be
imum. And other things follow. More thought must made the most of. New York’s zoning now requires
be given to probable pedestrian flows, placement that new plazas and open spaces be so oriented.
of steps, trees, wind baffles, sun traps, and even Access to the sun should be protected. One way
wastebaskets. One felicity leads to another. Good of doing so is by acquiring air rights to low build-
places tend to be all of a piece – and the reason ings across the way, so they will stay low. This can
can almost always be traced to a human being. be expensive, very much so if the speculative pres-
sures in the area are rising. For the same reason,
however, purchase can prove a good investment.
SUN, WIND, TREES, AND WATER The rights can have a high leverage over sub
sequent development, and there would be the
Sun possibility of selling part of the rights for construc-
tion designed to cast minimum shadow on the open
The most satisfying film I’ve ever seen is our first space. At present, most air-rights transactions in-
time-lapse record of the sun passing across the volve purchase of unused rights over one build
Seagram plaza. In late morning, the plaza was in ing so that another one can be built higher than
shadow. Then, shortly before noon, a narrow wedge normally permissible. It would not be a bad idea
of sunlight began moving across the plaza and, as to apply the principle the other way around to keep
it did, so did the sitters. Where there was sun, they bulk lower than permissible.
sat; where there was none, they didn’t. It was a On the other hand, there is a good side to our
perfectly splendid correlation, and I cherished it. seemingly negative findings about the importance
Like the urban designers, I believed a southern of the sun: places that have little or no sun because
exposure of critical importance. Here was abundant of a northern exposure or intervening buildings are
proof. not a lost cause. With adroit design, they can be
Then something went wrong. The correlations made to seem as if they had sun.
vanished – not only at Seagram’s but at other places Why not borrow sun? The same new buildings
we were studying. The sun still moved; the people that cast shadows also reflect light in considerable
didn’t. The obvious at length dawned on us: May amounts. Along with mirror walls, glass and stain-
had been followed by June. While midday tem- less steel, architects have been laying on travertine
peratures hadn’t risen a great deal, the extra warmth with a heavy hand, and their new buildings have
was enough to make the sun no longer the critical sent the glare index of cities soaring. But light has
factor. also been bouncing into many places that didn’t
It was about this time that much of Paley Park’s receive it before. In eight years of filming, I have
sunlight began to be cut off by an office building found that several streets have become photograph-
going up across the street. From its scaffolding ically a half-stop faster. A number of open spaces
we focused time-lapse cameras on the park and that otherwise would be dark much of the time are
recorded the effect of the new building. It was bathed in reflected light, sometimes on the second
surprisingly little. Although the sunlight was cur- or third bounce. Grace Plaza, for example, gets no
tailed, people used Paley as much as they had direct sun at all but benefits most of the afternoon
before. Perhaps they would have used it more had from light reflected by the southern exposure of
the sun remained; without an identical place as the building to the north. Give travertine its due.
control, one can never be sure. The more important It bounces light admirably, especially in the late
point is that, unfortunate as the loss may have been, afternoon, when it can give a benign glow to the
the park was able to sustain it. streetscape.
What simple figures don’t measure, however, is So far such effects are wholly inadvertent. Sun
the quality of the experience, which can be much studies made for big new buildings tend to be
greater when there is sun. For then you have choice defensive in nature, so that planning boards can be
– of sun, or shade, or in-between. The best time shown the building won’t cast an awful lot more
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“Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water” 211
shadow than is cast already by other buildings. capacity is so high. New York’s Greenacre Park
Few studies try to determine the light a new build- has infrared heaters, but they are used only in
ing will cast, what benefits there might be from it, extremely cold weather. With sun and protection
to whom and when. from wind, the park is quite habitable even on
Yet benefits of great potential value can be nippy days.
planned and negotiated in advance. There could Spaces around new buildings are quite another
be, for example, sun easements, through which, in matter. In winter, many are cold and drafty, and
effect, the developer of a building sells reflected even in moderate weather few people will tarry
light to neighbors. On an incentive basis, the pro- in such places. The errors are of omission. Wind-
gram could be administered by the city’s planning tunnel tests on models of new buildings are now
T
commission, with the developer given bonus points customary, but they are not made with people much W
for the benefits reflected. The complexities, of in mind. The tests for the World Trade Center O
course, might be awesome, but they are the kind largely determined stresses in the towers, and the
of complexities that lawyers and planners involved structural steel necessary. What the towers them-
in urban design find stimulating. selves might generate in the way of wind, and the
Warmth is just as important as sunlight. The effects on people below, apparently were not a
days that bring out the peak crowds on plazas are matter of much concern.
not the sparkling sunny days with temperatures in The effects are, however, quite measurable. It is
the seventies, good as this weather might be for now well established that very tall, free-standing
walking. It is the hot, muggy days, sunny or over- towers can generate tremendous drafts down their
cast, the kind that could be expected to make sides. This has in no way inhibited the construction
people want to stay inside and be air conditioned, of such towers, with the result, predictably, that
when you will find the peak numbers outside. some spaces are frequently uninhabitable. At one
People do like warmth. In summer, they will gener- bank plaza in Seattle the gusts are sometimes so
ally sit in the sun as well as in shade; only in very fierce that safety lines must be strung across the
hot weather – 90 degrees or more – will the sunny plaza to give people something to hang on to.
spots be vacant. Relative warmth is important, too. Chicago has the windiest places, not because of
One of the peak sitting days is the first warm day the local wind (which isn’t really so very much
in spring, even though the same temperature later stronger than in other cities), but because the drafts
would be felt too cool for sitting. Similarly, the first down the sides of the giant John Hancock and
warm day after a stretch of cool or rainy days will Sears towers are macro in force – often so strong
be a peak day. as to prevent people from using the plazas, even
Cool weather can be good for sitting, too. It is if they had reason to.
then that a space open to the radiant heat of the James Marston Fitch, who has done more than
sun’s rays can make the difference between sitting any other architect to badger the profession to con-
comfortably and not sitting at all. People will ac- sider environmental effects, points out that the
tively seek the sun and, given the right spots, problem is conceptual, not technical.
they will sit in surprising numbers in quite cold
weather. The more northern the latitude, the more Adverse effects are simply ignored, and the out-
ardently will they do so. door space designed as if for some ideal climate,
ever sunny and pleasantly warm. Thus [the
spaces] fail in their central pretension – that of
Wind eliminating gross differences between architec-
tural and urbanistic spaces, of extending in time
What people seek are suntraps. And the absence the areas in which urban life could freely flow
of winds and drafts are as critical for these as back and forth between the two.
sun. In this respect, small parks, especially those
enclosed on three sides, function well. Physically Technically, as Fitch points out, we can greatly
and psychologically, they feel comfortable, and this lengthen the effective season of outdoor spaces. By
is one of the reasons why their relative carrying asking the right questions in sun and wind studies,
9780415668071_P2_08.indd 211 10-26-2012 3:18:46 PM

by experimentation, we can find better ways to Water

hoard the sun, to double its light, or to obscure it,
or to cut down breezes in winter and induce them Water is another fine element, and designers are
in summer. We can learn lessons in the semi-open doing rather well with it. New plazas and parks
niches and crannies that people often seek. Most provide water in all sorts of forms: waterfalls, water-
new urban spaces are either all outdoors or all walls, rapids, sluiceways, tranquil pools, water tunnels,
indoors; more could be done to encourage in- meandering brooks, fountains of all kinds. In only
betweens. With the use of glass canopies or small one major respect is something lacking: access.
pavilions, semi-outdoor spaces could be created One of the best things about water is the look
that would be usable in all but the worst weather. and feel of it. I have always thought that the water
They would be particularly appropriate in rainy at Seagram’s looked unusually liquid, and I think
cities, like Seattle and Portland. it’s because you know you can splash your hand in
it if you are of a mind to. People do it all the time:
they stick their hands in it, their toes, and feet, and,
Trees if they splash about, some security guard does not
come rushing up to say them nay.
There are all sorts of good reasons for trees, but But in many places water is only for looking at.
for climatic reasons alone we should press for many Let a foot touch it and a guard will be there in
more of them, big ones too, along the sidewalks an instant. Not allowed. Chemicals in the water.
and open spaces of the city. New York’s new open Danger of contamination. If you let people start
space zoning has sharply stepped-up require touching water, you are told, the next thing they’ll
ments: developers must provide a tree for every start swimming in it. Sometimes they do. The
25 feet of sidewalk. It must be at least 3.5 inches new reflecting pool at the Christian Science
in diameter and planted flush with the ground. In Headquarters in Boston is only a few feet deep, but
plazas, trees must be provided in proportion to when it first opened many people started using it
the space (for a plaza of 5,000 feet, a minimum of for wading and even swimming. It was with some
six trees). difficulty that the pool was put off limits to such
Trees ought to be related much more closely to activity and reclaimed for its ornamental function.
sitting spaces than they usually are. Of the spaces It’s not right to put water before people and then
we have studied, by far the best liked are those keep them away from it. But this is what has been
affording a good look at the passing scene and the happening across the country. Pools and fountains
pleasure of being comfortably under a tree while are installed, then immediately posted with signs
doing so. This provides a satisfying enclosure; admonishing people not to touch. Equally egregious
people feel cuddled, protected – very much as they is the excessive zeal with which many pools are
do under the awning of a street cafe. As always, continually emptied, refilled, vacuumed, and cleaned,
they’ll be cooler, too. as though the primary function of them was their
Unfortunately, guy wires and planting beds often maintenance. Grand Old Buckingham Fountain in
serve to rule out any sitting; even if they don’t, Chicago’s Grant Park has been put off limits with
the fussiness of design details works to the same an electrified fence.
effect. Everything is so wired and fenced you can Safety is the usual reason given for keeping
neither get to the tree or sit on what surrounds it. people away. But there are better ways than elec-
Where large planters are used, they are generally trocution to handle this problem. At the Auditorium
too high and their rims too narrow for comfort. Forecourt Fountain in Portland, Oregon, people
Developers should be encouraged to combine have been climbing up and down a complex of
trees and sitting spaces. They should also encour- sluiceways and falls for some six years. It looks
age planting trees in groves. As Paley Park has dangerous – designer Lawrence Halprin designed
demonstrated, if trees are planted closely together, it to look dangerous – and, since the day it opened,
the overlapping foliage provides a combination of there have been no serious mishaps. This splendid
shade and sunlight that is very pleasing. Arbors fountain is an affirmation of trust in people, and it
can do the same. says much about the good city of Portland.
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“Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water” 213
Another great thing about water is the sound of or something just as bad. In the park, however, the
it. When people explain why they find Paley Park sound is perceived as quite pleasant. It is white
so quiet and restful, one thing they always mention sound and masks the intermittent honks and bangs
is the waterwall. In fact, the waterwall is quite loud: that are the most annoying aspects of street noise.
the noise level is about 75 decibels close by, mea- It also masks conversations. Even though there are
surably higher than the level out on the street. many others nearby, you can talk quite loudly to a
Taken by itself, furthermore, the sound is not es- companion – sometimes you almost have to – and
pecially pleasant. I have played tapes to people and enjoy a feeling of privacy. On the occasions when
asked them what they thought it was. Usually they the waterwall is turned off, a spell is broken, and the
grimace and say a subway train, trucks on a freeway, place seems nowhere as congenial. Or as quiet.
T
W
O
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“Conclusion: Great Streets and
City Planning”
from Great Streets (1993)
Allan B. Jacobs
In urban areas, streets occupy more land than any other public use and make up between 25 and 35 percent
of all developed land. As an example, if one measures all of the public space in San Francisco including
Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Ocean Beach, and McClaren Park, and add to it all the public buildings, they
don’t equal land in the public rights-of-way. Streets are the public realm. They are used for necessary services,
transportation, fire and police protection, access to property, and all kinds of social and economic uses. They
are not stagnant but rather constantly in change, even though the changes may seem minute, such as repav-
ing. They are owned by the public, which is responsible for them. By locating and designing streets well, one
has largely designed the city. In most modern North American cities, and indeed most cities elsewhere in
the world, most of the space of city streets is devoted to traffic movement. The functional aspects of streets
have received much more attention than their social or community building aspects.
Taking these realities as a point of departure, Allan B. Jacobs undertook research to determine the qualities
and characteristics of the world’s best streets. He conducted surveys of people on the street and professionals
to get their perspectives on good streets, and then observed and measured suggested streets as well as
those he knew from his own experience. His book Great Streets documents his findings with chapters that
classify types of streets, not by traffic but by design characteristics, and presents scaled plans, cross-sections,
and perspective sketches of the very best as well as less good streets. Great Streets has quickly become a
classic urban design text. It is found in the offices of professionals as well as on the desks of students. Many
cities have adopted or are in process of adopting Great Streets programs and plans. Here, in the conclusion
to Great Streets, Jacobs speaks eloquently of the importance of design and “magic” in creating good streets.
Other writings by Allan B. Jacobs include Making City Planning Work (Chicago, IL: American Society of Plan
ning Officials, 1978), which recounts his experience as San Francisco’s Planning Director in the late 1960s and
early 1970s; Looking at Cities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), which argues that much know
ledge about cities can be gained by looking closely at them and reading the clues; The Boulevard Book: History,
Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards, co-authored with Elizabeth Macdonald and Yodan Rofé (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2002), which documents an extensive research study on one of the street types discussed in Great
Streets, the multiway boulevard; and The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).
Other seminal readings on streets and street design include Bernard Rudofsky, Streets for People: A
Primer for Americans (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American
Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); Donald Appleyard, M. Sue Gerson, and Mark Lintell, Livable Streets
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981); and Anne Vernez Moudon, Public Streets for Public Use
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). More recent works include Michael Southworth and Eran Ben-
Joseph, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997); and Stephen Marshall,
Streets and Patterns (London: Spon, 2005).
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“ C onclusion : G reat S treets and C ity P lanning ” 215
The twentieth century has seen the development separation and introspection – buildings and people
and widespread acceptance of two major city de- alone, with space on all sides – than with encounter
sign manifestos; that of the new town or garden ing and dealing with people regularly. They have
city movement, and the Charter of Athens.1 Both been more consistent with vehicle movement than
were in large measure responses to the building with people movement. Fewer things that people
excesses and resultant foul living conditions of the need or want are close at hand within walking dis-
nineteenth-century industrial city. Change was in tance. They seem to have forgotten that commu
order and dramatic changes were proposed. Both nities are not made in automobiles, nor are people
manifestos, reflections perhaps of not so different directly encountered.
utopian ideals, concentrated on new building, and Better models than these two were in order:
T
both ultimately eschewed streets as they had been ones not so dependent on central power and own- W
known as central and positive to urban living. ership and design, ones that saw incremental phys- O
Ultimately the new town-and-garden-city-inspired ical change and conservation as more desirable
communities became the models for the moderate- than massive clearance of what existed, ones that
and low-density suburban development that em- were based on not only an acceptance but also a
phasized central green areas rather than streets as desire for and love of urban life, of encountering
the means of achieving face-to-face communica- people in healthy environments. They were forth-
tion, and buildings well set back and, if possible, coming, not least in Jane Jacobs’s book of the
divorced from streets. The superblock idea, not 1960s, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,
inherently anti-street, became that way as it became that challenged the city-building practices of the
part and parcel of both design movements.2 Both, times.4 Other notable critiques and alternatives have
too, called for a separation of land uses, rather than followed.5 Kevin Lynch’s Theory of Good City Form
a healthy integration, and both were to achieve set out values that a good city should strive to
their ends via massive public initiatives and central- achieve as well as Lynch’s own utopian model, with
ized ownership and design of land. remarkably comprehensive appendixes that cata-
The Charter of Athens could find realization on logue other theories and models.6 In 1987, the late
either new sites, like Chandigarh or Brasilia, or in Donald Appleyard and I put our thoughts into writ-
the older central cities. In the latter, there would ing, spurred and aided by students, in what we
have to be clearance of large unhealthy urban en- called “Toward a New Urban Design Manifesto.”7
vironments in order to rebuild at a scale necessary Responding to social values and objectives of urban
to have an impact. Here, the rejection of streets as life such as comfort, identity and control, access
places for people and for the making and expression to opportunity, imagination and joy, authenticity
of community was even stronger, in favor of effici and meaning, community and public life, and urban
ency, technology, and speed, and, to give credit, of self-reliance, we called, in rather general terms, for
health as well, as the prime determinants of street six physical qualities: livability; a minimum density;
design.3 Building orientation to streets was seen as an integration of uses; buildings that defined space
a fundamental wrong. The most memorable images rather than being set in space; many rather than
of what those developments might look like are fewer buildings; and public streets. The present
perspectives taken from a viewpoint high in the air inquiry has been directed toward spelling out in
with the uniform height of tall, tall buildings as the greater detail what is required to achieve one of
horizon line, or drawings of two people sitting at the fundamental parts of good cities; good, no,
a table somehow overlooking a large, presumably great streets.
public space with no one in it. This could not be There remains considerable tenuousness, iffiness,
said of the early garden cities, notably in commu in the determination of what makes great streets,
nities like Welwyn Garden City, where houses did and that will continue. Places to walk, physical
indeed face narrow streets. [ . . . ] comfort, definition, qualities that engage the eyes,
As well-intentioned and socially responsive as complementarity, and good maintenance are phys-
those manifestos were, their results, abundantly ical characteristics of all great streets, but far from
visible by the 1960s, rarely encourage or celebrate all streets that have them are great. More is re-
public life. They seem to be more consistent with quired: what I have been calling magic. In some
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216 A llan B . J acobs
respects, the problem, if it can be called that, starts buildings are so tall as to be oppressive. In the realm
with the multiple social purposes of streets. It is of street design, it may not be all that critical to know
useful to review them. the answers to some of these questions with preci-
Beyond functional purposes of permitting sion. Understanding what the most critical factors
people to get from one place to another and to gain are, and knowing what has been tried and has worked
access to property, streets – most assuredly the or failed in a variety of situations, may be enough.
best streets – can and should help to do other things: Street design, like any other creative act, always
bring people together, help build community, cause involves leapmanship, a point where it is necessary
people to act and interact, to achieve together what to jump from the known to something else that is
they might not alone. As such, streets should en- desired, without knowing for sure where one will land.
courage socialization and participation of people There is magic on great streets, and presumably
in the community. They serve as locations of pub- in their making. It is more than putting all of the
lic expression. They should be physically comfort- required qualities on a street, and it is more than
able and safe. The best streets create and leave having a few or many of the physical, desirable
strong, lasting, positive impressions; they catch the things that contribute to them. Sorcery and charm,
eyes and the imagination. They are joyful places imagination and inspiration are involved, and may
to be, and given a chance one wants to return to be the most crucial ingredients. But not without
them. Streets are places for activity, including re- social purpose. The making of great streets is not
laxation. The best streets continue, are long-lived. an exercise in design for design’s sake, to satisfy
It may be that the purposes of streets relating alone someone’s concept of beauty. The magic may
to movement and access are afforded greater not be all that exciting or dramatic at the time of
attention in industrial societies because they seem design. To use a nonstreet example, it seems that
reasonably clear, easily objectified, measurable. Thomas Jefferson was clear in his social and edu-
Comfort is increasingly measurable, the other objec- cational objectives for the University of Virginia:
tives much less so. Participation and socialization community, teachers and students living together
often mean different things to different people. while respecting each other’s privacy, the centrality
Imagination and joy cover many concrete possi- of knowledge as expressed in the library, the im-
bilities. Community may be realized by directly portance of land and gardens and of views as parts
working with others or by each person doing his of a full life. He put them together in a straightfor-
or her part separately. It is not always clear why ward, seemingly simple way, not without knowledge
people go to one street and not to another – the of physical models gained from study and experi-
reasons may change, and they may have nothing ence. The result is, in the end, magic. One can
to do with physical qualities. Physical qualities of imagine that the best streets were done that way,
streets, it has been observed, may not be the most and will continue to be. Models, a knowledge of
important contributor to making community. They what has been done in the past, can help bring
can help, but their direct contributions are likely the magic into being. Jefferson used and adapted
to remain murky. Nonetheless, they are important; models for his university. Too often, however, models
people spend time and money on making them aren’t referenced or used. Finding them – what they
fine settings for their activities, and it is the phys look like, their dimensions, their contexts, their
ical qualities that designers design. relationships to each other – has been difficult. That
Considerable progress has been made in estab- is a major purpose of this book: to offer knowledge
lishing operative definitions of some of the qualities about the best streets so that the creativeness, the
that make great streets. More is measurable and magic, may come to be for new streets.
definable than we once thought. We continue to Design counts! Great streets do not just happen.
know more about definition, transparency, spacing Overwhelmingly, the best streets derive from a con-
(of trees, for example), human scale, and what scious act of conception and creation of the street
makes new buildings fit in with others in specific as a whole. The hands of decision makers, some-
environments. Much, however, remains uncertain, times of specific designers, are visible. In cases
and so it is not easy to know when a quality has been where the initial layout and properties of the street
achieved in the best way, or when, for example, evolved, such as at Strøget or the Ramblas, there
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“ C onclusion : G reat S treets and C ity P lanning ” 217
is likely to have been a major concerted design what make the public realm. They are the property
effort at some point in time to make the street what of the public or are under direct public control.
it has become. By contrast, some fine streets have The opportunity to design them in ways that meet
evolved to what they are without planning, the public objectives, including the making of com-
Via dei Giubbonari most notably, and there seems munity itself, is as exciting as it is challenging. If
little in the way of program or special policy to we do right by our streets we can in large measure
maintain it. Similarly, compelling streets in medieval do right by the city as a whole – and, therefore and
cities are plentiful, and they are all of one type. most importantly, by its inhabitants.
The objective of design may well have been not a The best new streets need not be the same as
great street, but rather a street that simply does its the old, but as models the old have much to teach.
T
job. And there are as many or more bad streets Delightful, purposeful streets and cities will surely W
that have been designed. But the best streets, by follow. O
and large, get designed and then are cared for,
continuously.
Technology, some say, makes cities as we have NOTES
known them unnecessary. Advances in communica-
tion and new methods of production make it 1 Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow
less necessary for people to live in close proximity (London: Faber and Faber, 1946; first published
to each other. Today’s cities are leftovers from 1898); Le Corbusier, The Athens Charter, trans.
methods of production and achieving security that Anthony Eardley (New York: Grossman, 1973;
are no longer necessary and can disappear. There first published 1943, from a conference of 1933).
is evidence as well that many people, particularly 2 Clarence Stein, Toward New Towns for America
in North America, given a choice, would not prefer (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1951).
cities – but rather what has become known as See particularly Sunnyside Gardens as compared
a suburban lifestyle or a low-density, nonurban to later designs, such as for Radburn, New Jersey,
lifestyle. Nonetheless, even assuming that they and Greenbelt, Maryland.
were unnecessary, cities would still be desirable 3 See, for example, the chapter on “Traffic” in The
for many people. We can build and live in cities Athens Charter.
because we want to, not because we have to but 4 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American
because they offer the prospect of a fulfilling gre- Cities (New York: Random House, 1961).
garious life. Urban streets have been and can be 5 For example, see Richard Sennett, The Fall of
major contributors to that kind of life. Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).
Continually I return to an awareness of the large 6 Kevin Lynch, A Theory of Good City Form
proportion of urban developed land that is devoted (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981).
to streets and to the understanding that the purpose 7 Appleyard and Jacobs, “Toward a New Urban
of streets is much more than to get from one place Design Manifesto,” Journal of the American
to another. Streets more than anything else are Planning Association, 1987.
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“Toward an Urban Design
Manifesto”
from Journal of the American Planning Association (1987)
Allan B. Jacobs and Donald Appleyard
In the early 1980s, Allan B. Jacobs and Donald Appleyard (1928–1982), following a seminar on urban physical
form in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley that included
strong criticism of the Le Corbusier-led CIAM design manifesto, were urged by their students to write a
design manifesto that articulated a counter-position. They took the challenge and wrote “Toward an Urban
Design Manifesto.” Initially rejected for publication by the Journal of the American Planning Association on the
grounds that it was without scholarly merit because of its experiential methodology, Jacobs was later invited
to have it included in a special urban design oriented issue of the same journal.
The manifesto – informed by Jacobs’ extensive professional experience, Appleyard’s research on street livabil-
ity, and their shared feeling that CIAM and the Garden City Movement both represented overly strong design
reactions to the physical decay and social inequities of industrial cities – was a validation of cities and urban
life. At the same time, it was intended as a critique of the city planning profession for its growing lack of at-
tention to urban physical form in favor of social planning. The argument was that social, economic, and cultural
factors are necessarily influenced by physical form factors, not in a deterministic way but rather in terms of
possibilities and probabilities, and so to neglect the physical is to neglect an essential part of planning.
The Manifesto identifies problems for modern urban design – poor living environments, giantism and loss
of control, large-scale privatization and loss of public life, centrifugal fragmentation, destruction of valued places,
placelessness, injustice, and rootless professionalism – and then sets out central values for urban life. Goals
that serve individuals and small social groups include authenticity and meaning, livability, identity and control,
and access to opportunity, imagination, and joy. Those that serve larger social goals include community and
public life, urban self-reliance, and an environment for all. From these goals, Jacobs and Appleyard theorize
the essential qualities of city grain that must be present to achieve a good urban environment: livable streets
and neighborhoods, a minimum residential density and intensity of use, integration of activities, buildings that
define public space, and many different buildings and spaces with complex arrangements and relationships.
“Toward an Urban Design Manifesto” remains an important touchstone for present-day urban design prac-
titioners, not least because it cautions against dehumanization, retreat into formalism, and over-dependence
on standards that might or might not achieve desirable ends.
Allan B. Jacobs served as San Francisco’s Planning Director from 1967 to 1975, where he and a group
of talented young planners prepared a citywide urban design plan, which to this day is held to be an exemplary
model of such a plan. Donald Appleyard worked as a consultant to the plan, researching the quality of life
along neighborhood streets, which resulted in his well-known and highly influential street livability study. Jacobs
and Appleyard became colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, where they established an urban
design concentration and collaborated until Appleyard’s untimely death in 1982. Jacobs remains a professor
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“ T O W ard a N U rba N D E sig N M a N if E st O ” 219
and in the early 1990s started the Master of Urban Design program with colleagues from the architecture and
landscape architecture programs.
Other writings by Appleyard include The View from the Road, co-authored with Kevin Lynch and John
Myer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963) and Livable Streets, co-authored with M. Sue Gerson and Mark
Lintell (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981). Other writings by Jacobs include Making City
Planning Work (Chicago, IL American Society of Planning Officials, 1978), which recounts his professional
experience in San Francisco through a series of case studies; Looking at Cities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985), which argues that much knowledge about cities can be gained by looking closely at
them and reading the clues; Great Streets (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), which identifies the qualities
of the best streets and presents hand-drawn scaled plans and sections of representative examples worldwide;
T
The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards, co-authored with Elizabeth Macdonald W
and Yodan Rofe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), which reconsiders boulevards as a useful street type O
for modern cities; and The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).
Researchers and practitioners within the urban design field continue to develop normative theories of good
city form. Of particular note is the public effort recently undertaken by the New Zealand Ministry for the Environ
ment, documented in two reports, available for download from the ministry’s website (http://www.mfe.govt.nz/).
The Value of Urban Design surveys the urban design literature and research and identifies the economic,
social, and environmental benefits of urban design. The New Zealand Urban Design Protocol, similar to Jacob’s
and Appleyard’s Manifesto, identifies goals for urban life and essential design qualities.
We think it’s time for a new urban design manifesto. coverage that were associated so closely with
Almost 50 years have passed since Le Corbusier slums. Similarly, buildings that faced streets were
and the International Congress of Modern Archi- found to be detrimental to healthy living. These
tecture (CIAM) produced the Charter of Athens, seemingly limitless horizontal expansion of urban
and it is more than 20 years since the first Urban areas devoured the countryside, and suburbs were
Design Conference, still in the CIAM tradition, was viewed as symbols of terrible waste. Solutions could
held (at Harvard in 1957). Since then the precepts be found in the demolition of unsanitary housing,
of CIAM have been attacked by sociologists, plan- the provision of green areas in every residential
ners, Jane Jacobs, and more recently by architects district, and new high-rise, high-density buildings
themselves. But it is still a strong influence, and we set in open space. Housing was to be removed
will take it as our starting point. Make no mistake: from its traditional relationship facing streets, and
the charter was, simply, a manifesto – a public the whole circulation system was to be revised to
declaration that spelled out the ills of industrial meet the needs of emerging mechanization (the
cities as they existed in the 1930s and laid down automobile). Work areas should be close to but
physical requirements necessary to establish healthy, separate from residential areas. To achieve the
humane, and beautiful urban environments for new city, large land holdings, preferably owned by
people. It could not help but deal with social, eco- the public, should replace multiple small parcels
nomic, and political phenomena, but its basic (so that projects could be properly designed and
subject matter was the physical design of cities. developed).
Its authors were (mostly) socially concerned archi- Now thousands of housing estates and redevel-
tects, determined that their art and craft be respon- opment projects in socialist and capitalist countries
sive to social realities as well as to improving the world over, whether built on previously un
the lot of man. It would be a mistake to write developed land or developed as replacements for
them off as simply elitist designers and physical old urban areas, attest to the acceptance of the
determinists. charter’s dictums. The design notions it embraced
So the charter decried the medium-size (up to have become part of a world design language, not
six storys) high-density buildings with high land just the intellectual property of an enlightened few,
9780415668071_P2_10.indd 219 10-26-2012 3:18:38 PM

220 A lla N B . J ac O bs a N d D O N ald A ppl E yard
even though the principles have been devalued in suburbs than of cities. But they weren’t trying
many developments. to be cities. The emphasis has always been on
Of course, the Charter of Athens has not been “garden” as much as or more than on “city.”
the only major urban philosophy of this century Both movements represent overly strong design
to influence the development of urban areas. reactions to the physical decay and social inequities
Ebenezer Howard, too, was responding to the ills of industrial cities. In responding so strongly, albeit
of the nineteenth-century industrial city, and the understandably, to crowded, lightless, airless, “util-
Garden City movement has been at least as power- itiless,” congested buildings and cities that housed
ful as the Charter of Athens. New towns policies, so many people, the utopians did not inquire what
where they exist, are rooted in Howard’s thought. was good about those places, either socially or
But you don’t have to look to new towns to see physically. Did not those physical environments
the influence of Howard, Olmsted, Wright, and reflect (and maybe even foster) values that were
Stein. The superblock notion, if nothing else, per- likely to be meaningful to people individually and
vades large housing projects around the world, collectively, such as publicness and community?
in central cities as well as suburbs. The notion of Without knowing it, maybe these strong reactions
buildings in a park is as common to garden city to urban ills ended up by throwing the baby out
designs as it is to charter-inspired development. with the bathwater.
Indeed, the two movements have a great deal in In the meantime we have had a lot of experience
common: superblocks, separate paths for people with city building and rebuilding. New spokes
and cars, interior common spaces, housing divorced people with new urban visions have emerged. As
from streets, and central ownership of land. The more CIAM-style buildings were built people
garden city-inspired communities place greater became more disenchanted. Many began to look
emphasis on private outdoor space. The most through picturesque lenses back to the old pre
significant difference, at least as they have evolved, industrial cities. From a concentration on the city as
is in density and building type: the garden city a kind of sculpture garden, the townscape move-
people preferred to accommodate people in row ment, led by the Architectural Review, emphasized
houses, garden apartments, and maisonettes, while “urban experience.” This phenomenological view
Corbusier and the CIAM designers went for high- of the city was espoused by Rasmussen, Kepes,
rise buildings and, inevitably, people living in flats and ultimately Kevin Lynch and Jane Jacobs.
and at significantly higher densities. It identified a whole new vocabulary of urban
We are less than enthralled with what either the form – one that depended on the sights, sounds,
Charter of Athens or the Garden City movement feels, and smells of the city, its materials and tex-
has produced in the way of urban environments. tures, floor surfaces, facades, style, signs, lights,
The emphasis of CIAM was on buildings and what seating, trees, sun, and shade all potential amenities
goes on within buildings that happen to sit in space, for the attentive observer and user. This has per-
not on the public life that takes place constantly manently humanized the vocabulary of urban
in public spaces. The orientation is often inward. design, and we enthusiastically subscribe to most of
Buildings tend to be islands, big or small. They its tenets, though some in the townscape movement
could be placed anywhere. From the outside per- ignored the social meanings and implications of
spective, the building, like the work of art it was what they were doing.
intended to be, sits where it can be seen and ad- The 1960s saw the birth of community design
mired in full. And because it is large it is best seen and an active concern for the social groups affected,
from a distance (at a scale consistent with a mov- usually negatively, by urban design. Designers were
ing auto). Diversity, spontaneity, and surprise are the “soft cops,” and many professionals left the
absent, at least for the person on foot. On the other design field for social or planning vocations, finding
hand, we find little joy or magic or spirit in the the physical environment to have no redeeming
charter cities. They are not urban, to us, except social value. But at the beginning of the 1980s the
according to some definition one might find in a mood in the design professions is conservative.
census. Most garden cities, safe and healthy and There is a withdrawal from social engagement back
even gracious as they may be, remind us more of to formalism. Supported by semiology and other
9780415668071_P2_10.indd 220 10-26-2012 3:18:38 PM

abstract themes, much of architecture has become and complexes are created that make people feel
a dilettantish and narcissistic pursuit, a chic com- irrelevant.
ponent of the high art consumer culture, increas- People, therefore, have less sense of control over
ingly remote from most people’s everyday lives, their homes, neighborhoods, and cities than when
finding its ultimate manifestation in the art gallery they lived in slower-growing locally based com-
and the art book. City planning is too immersed munities. Such giantism can be found as readily in
in the administration and survival of housing, the housing projects of socialist cities as in the
environmental, and energy programs and in re- office buildings and commercial developments of
sponding to budget cuts and community demands capitalist cities.
to have any clear sense of direction with regard to
T
city form. W
While all these professional ideologies have been Large-scale privatization and the loss of O
working themselves out, massive economic, tech- public life
nological, and social changes have taken place in
our cities. The scale of capitalism has continued Cities, especially American cities, have become
to increase, as has the scale of bureaucracy, and privatized, partly because of the consumer society’s
the automobile has virtually destroyed cities as they emphasis on the individual and the private sector,
once were. creating Galbraith’s “private affluence and public
In formulating a new manifesto, we react against squalor,” but escalated greatly by the spread of the
other phenomena than did the leaders of CIAM 50 automobile. Crime in the streets is both a cause
years ago. The automobile cities of California and and a consequence of this trend, which has resulted
the Southwest present utterly different problems in a new form of city: one of closed, defended
from those of nineteenth-century European cities, islands with blank and windowless facades sur-
as do the CIAM-influenced housing developments rounded by wastelands of parking lots and fast-
around European, Latin American, and Russian moving traffic. As public transit systems have
cities and the rash of squatter settlements around declined, the number of places in American cities
the fast-growing cities of the Third World. What where people of different social groups actually
are these problems? meet each other has dwindled. The public environ-
ment of many American cities has become an
empty desert, leaving public life dependent for its
PROBLEMS FOR MODERN URBAN survival solely on planned formal occasions, mostly
DESIGN in protected internal locations.
Poor living environments

Centrifugal fragmentation
While housing conditions in most advanced coun-
tries have improved in terms of such fundamentals Advanced industrial societies took work out of the
as light, air, and space, the surroundings of homes home, and then out of the neighborhood, while the
are still frequently dangerous, polluted, noisy, anony automobile and the growing scale of commerce
mous wastelands. Travel around such cities has have taken shopping out of the local community.
become more and more fatiguing and stressful. Fear has led social groups to flee from each other
into homogeneous social enclaves. Communities
themselves have become lower in density and in-
Giantism and loss of control creasingly homogeneous. Thus the city has spread
out and separated to form extensive monocultures
The urban environment is increasingly in the and specialized destinations reachable often only
hands of the large-scale developers and public by long journeys – a fragile and extravagant urban
agencies. The elements of the city grow inexor system dependent on cheap, available gasoline, and
ably in size, massive transportation systems are an effective contributor to the isolation of social
segregated for single travel modes, and vast districts groups from each other.
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Destruction of valued places bring them out wherever we land. This floating
professional culture has only the most superficial
The quest for profit and prestige and the relentless conception of particular place. Rootless, it is more
exploitation of places that attract the public have susceptible to changes in professional fashion and
led to the destruction of much of our heritage, theory than to local events. There is too little in-
of historic places that no longer turn a profit, of quiry, too much proposing. Quick surveys are made,
natural amenities that become overused. In many instant solutions devised, and the rest of the time
cases, as in San Francisco, the very value of the is spent persuading the clients. Limits on time and
place threatens its destruction as hungry tourists budgets drive us on, but so do lack of understand-
and entrepreneurs flock to see and profit from it. ing and the placeless culture. Moreover, we design-
ers are often unconscious of our own roots, which
influence our preferences in hidden ways.
Placelessness At the same time, the planning profession’s
retreat into trendism, under the positivist influence
Cities are becoming meaningless places beyond of social science, has left it virtually unable to resist
their citizens’ grasp. We no longer know the origins the social pressures of capitalist economy and con-
of the world around us. We rarely know where the sumer sovereignty. Planners have lost their beliefs.
materials and products come from, who owns what, Although we believe citizen participation is essen-
who is behind what, what was intended. We live in tial to urban planning, the professionals also must
cities where things happen without warning and have a sense of what we believe is right, even
without our participation. It is an alien world for though we may be vetoed.
most people. It is little surprise that most withdraw
from community involvement to enjoy their own
private and limited worlds. GOALS FOR URBAN LIFE
We propose, therefore, a number of goals that we

Injustice deem essential for the future of a good urban envir
onment: livability; identity and control; access to
Cities are symbols of inequality. In most cities the opportunity, imagination, and joy; authenticity and
discrepancy between the environments of the rich meaning; open communities and public life; self-
and the environments of the poor is striking. In reliance; and justice.
many instances the environments of the rich, by
occupying and dominating the prevailing patterns
of transportation and access, make the environ- Livability
ments of the poor relatively worse. This discrep-
ancy may be less visible in the low-density modern A city should be a place where everyone can live
city, where the display of affluence is more hidden in relative comfort. Most people want a kind of
than in the old city; but the discrepancy remains. sanctuary for their living environment, a place
where they can bring up children, have privacy,
sleep, eat, relax, and restore themselves. This means
Rootless professionalism a well-managed environment relatively devoid of
nuisance, overcrowding, noise, danger, air pollution,
Finally, design professionals today are often part dirt, trash, and other unwelcome intrusions.
of the problem. In too many cases, we design for
places and people we do not know and grant them
very little power or acknowledgment. Too many Identity and control
professionals are more part of a universal profes-
sional culture than part of the local cultures for People should feel that some part of the environment
whom we produce our plans and products. We belongs to them, individually and collectively, some
carry our “bag of tricks” around the world and part for which they care and are ever responsible,
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whether they own it or not. The urban environ have, and that depends on a certain sensuous,
ment should be an environment that encourages hedonistic mood, on signs, on night lights, on fantasy,
people to express themselves, to become involved, color, and other imagery. There can be parts of the
to decide what they want and act on it. Like a city where belief can be suspended, just as in the
seminar where everybody has something to con- experience of fiction. It may be that such places
tribute to communal discussion, the urban environ- have to be framed so that people know how to act.
ment should encourage participation. Urbanites Until now such fantasy and experiment have been
may not always want this. Many like the anonym- attempted mostly by commercial facilities, at rather
ity of the city, but we are not convinced that free- low levels of quality and aspiration, seldom deeply
dom of anonymity is a desirable freedom. It would experimental. One should not have to travel as far
T
be much better if people were sure enough of as the Himalayas or the South Sea Islands to stretch W
themselves to stand up and be counted. Environ- one’s experience. Such challenges could be nearer O
ments should therefore be designed for those who home. There should be a place for community utopias;
use them or are affected by them, rather than for for historic, natural, and anthropological evocations
those who own them. This should reduce alienation of the modern city, for encounters with the truly
and anonymity (even if people want them); it should exotic.
increase people’s sense of identity and rootedness
and encourage more care and responsibility for the
physical environment of cities. Authenticity and meaning
Respect for the existing environment, both
nature and city, is one fundamental difference we People should be able to understand their city (or
have with the CIAM movement. Urban design has other people’s cities), its basic layout, public func-
too often assumed that new is better than old. But tions, and institutions; they should be aware of its
the new is justified only if it is better than what opportunities. An authentic city is one where the
exists. Conservation encourages identity and con- origins of things and places are clear. All this means
trol and, usually, a better sense of community, since an urban environment should reveal its significant
old environments are more usually part of a com- meanings; it should not be dominated only by one
mon heritage. type of group, the powerful; neither should publicly
important places be hidden. The city should sym-
bolize the moral issues of society and educate its
Access to opportunity, imagination, citizens to an awareness of them.
and joy That does not mean everything has to be laid
out as on a supermarket shelf. A city should present
People should find the city a place where they can itself as a readable story, in an engaging and, if neces
break from traditional molds, extend their experi- sary, provocative way, for people are indifferent to
ence, meet new people, learn other viewpoints, the obvious, overwhelmed by complexity. A city’s offer
have fun. At a functional level people should have ings should be revealed or they will be missed. This
access to alternative housing and job choices; at can affect the forms of the city, its signage, and
another level, they should find the city an enlight- other public information and education programs.
ening cultural experience. A city should have mag- Livability, identity, authenticity, and opportunity
ical places where fantasy is possible, a counter to are characteristics of the urban environment that
and an escape from the mundaneness of everyday should serve the individual and small social unit, but
work and living. Architects and planners take cities the city has to serve some higher social goals as well.
and themselves too seriously; the result too often It is these we especially wish to emphasize here.
is deadliness and boredom, no imagination, no
humor, alienating places. But people need an escape
from the seriousness and meaning of the everyday. Community and public life
The city has always been a place of excitement; it
is theater, a stage upon which citizens can display Cities should encourage participation of their citi-
themselves and see others. It has magic, or should zens in community and public life. In the face of
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giantism and fragmentation, public life, especially the individual, the less it seems to have a public
life in public places, has been seriously eroded. The life; the more the city is built for public entities, the
neighborhood movement, by bringing thousands, less the individual seems to count. The good urban
probably millions of people out of their closed environment is one that somehow balances these
private lives into active participation in their local goals, allowing individual and group identity while
communities, has begun to counter that trend, but maintaining a public concern, encouraging pleasure
this movement has had its limitations. It can be while maintaining responsibility, remaining open to
purely defensive, parochial, and self-serving. A city outsiders while sustaining a strong sense of localism.
should be more than a warring collection of inter-
est groups, classes, and neighborhoods; it should
breed a commitment to a larger whole, to tolerance, AN URBAN FABRIC FOR AN URBAN LIFE
justice, law, and democracy. The structure of the
city should invite and encourage public life, not We have some ideas, at least, for how the fabric or
only through its institutions, but directly and sym- texture of cities might be conserved or created to
bolically through its public spaces. The public en- encourage a livable urban environment. We em-
vironment, unlike the neighborhood, by definition phasize the structural qualities of the good urban
should be open to all members of the community. environment – qualities we hope will be successful
It is where people of different kinds meet. No one in creating urban experiences that are consonant
should be excluded unless they threaten the balance with our goals.
of life. Do not misread this. We are not describing all
the qualities of a city. We are not dealing with major
transportation systems, open space, the natural
Urban self-reliance environment, the structure of the large-scale city,
or even the structure of neighborhoods, but only
Increasingly cities will have to become more self- the grain of the good city.
sustaining in their uses of energy and other scarce There are five physical characteristics that must
resources. “Soft energy paths” in particular not only be present if there is to be a positive response to
will reduce dependence and exploitation across the goals and values we believe are central to urban
regions and countries but also will help re-establish life. They must be designed, they must exist, as
a stronger sense of local and regional identity, prerequisites of a sound urban environment. All
authenticity, and meaning. five must be present, not just one or two. There
are other physical characteristics that are important,
but these five are essential: livable streets and
An environment for all neighborhoods; some minimum density of residen-
tial development as well as intensity of land use;
Good environments should be accessible to all. an integration of activities – living, working, shop-
Every citizen is entitled to some minimal level ping – in some reasonable proximity to each other;
of environmental livability and minimal levels of a manmade environment, particularly buildings,
identity, control, and opportunity. Good urban de- that defines public space (as opposed to buildings
sign must be for the poor as well as the rich. Indeed, that, for the most part, sit in space); and many,
it is more needed by the poor. many separate, distinct buildings with complex
We look toward a society that is truly pluralistic, arrangements and relationships (as opposed to few,
one where power is more evenly distributed among large buildings).
social groups than it is today in virtually any coun- Let us explain, keeping in mind that all five
try, but where the different values and cultures of of the characteristics must be present. People, we
interest – and place-based groups are acknow have said, should be able to live in reasonable
ledged and negotiated in a just public arena. (though not excessive) safety, cleanliness, and
These goals for the urban environment are both security. That means livable streets and neighbor-
individual and collective, and as such they are fre- hoods: with adequate sunlight, clean air, trees,
quently in conflict. The more a city promises for vegetation, gardens, open space, pleasantly scaled
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and designed buildings; without offensive noise; greater or lesser density. Nevertheless, a narrow,
with cleanliness and physical safety. Many of these winding street, with a lot of signs and a small
characteristics can be designed into the physical enclosed open space at the end, with no people,
fabric of the city. does not make a city. Cities are more than stage
The reader will say, “Well of course, but what sets. Some minimum number of people living and
does that mean?” Usually it has meant specific using a given area of land is required if there is to
standards and requirements, such as sun angles, be human exchange, public life and action, diversity
decibel levels, lane widths, and distances between and community.
buildings. Many researchers have been trying to Density of people alone will account for the
define the qualities of a livable environment. It presence or absence of certain uses and services
T
depends on a wide array of attributes, some struc- we find important to urban life. We suspect, for W
tural, some quite small details. There is no single example, that the number and diversity of small O
right answer. We applaud these efforts and have stores and services – for instance, groceries, bars,
participated in them ourselves. Nevertheless, de- bakeries, laundries and cleaners, coffee shops, sec-
sires for livability and individual comfort by them- ondhand stores, and the like – to be found in a city
selves have led to fragmentation of the city. or area is in part a function of density. That is, that
Livability standards, whether for urban or for sub- such businesses are more likely to exist, and in
urban developments, have often been excessive. greater variety, in an area where people live in
Our approach to the details of this inclusive greater proximity to each other (“higher” density).
physical characteristic would center on the words The viability of mass transit, we know, depends
“reasonable, though not excessive . . .” Too often, partly on the density of residential areas and partly
for example, the requirement of adequate sunlight on the size and intensity of activity at commercial
has resulted in buildings and people inordinately and service destinations. And more use of transit,
far from each other, beyond what demonstrable in turn, reduces parking demands and permits in-
need for light would dictate. Safety concerns have creases in density. There must be a critical mass
been the justifications for ever wider streets and of people, and they must spend a lot of their time
wide, sweeping curves rather than narrow ways in reasonably close proximity to each other, includ-
and sharp corners. Buildings are removed from ing when they are at home, if there is to be an
streets because of noise considerations when there urban life. The goal of local control and community
might be other ways to deal with this concern. So identity is associated with density as well. The
although livable streets and neighborhoods are a notion of an optimum density is elusive and is easily
primary requirement for any good urban fabric – confused with the health and livability of urban
whether for existing, denser cities or for new devel areas, with lifestyles, with housing types, with the size
opment – the quest for livable neighborhoods, if of area being considered (the building site or the
pursued obsessively, can destroy the urban qualities neighborhood or the city), and with the economics
we seek to achieve. of development. A density that might be best for
A minimum density is needed. By density we child rearing might be less than adequate to support
mean the number of people (sometimes expressed public transit. Most recently, energy efficiency has
in terms of housing units) living on an area of land, emerged as a concern associated with density, the
or the number of people using an area of land. notion being that conservation will demand more
Cities are not farms. A city is people living and compact living arrangements.
working and doing the things they do in relatively Our conclusion, based largely on our experience
close proximity to each other. and on the literature, is that a minimum net density
We are impressed with the importance of den- (people or living units divided by the size of the
sity as a perceived phenomenon and therefore building site, excluding public streets) of about 15
relative to the beholder and agree that, for many dwelling units (30–60 people) per acre of land is
purposes, perceived density is more important than necessary to support city life. By way of illustration,
an “objective” measurement of people per unit of that is the density produced with generous town
land. We agree, too, that physical phenomena can houses (or row houses). It would permit parcel sizes
be manipulated so as to render perceptions of up to 25 feet wide by about 115 feet deep. But
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other building types and lot sizes also would proof normal activities without having to get into an
duce that density. Some areas could be developed automobile.
with lower densities, but not very many. We don’t We are not saying that every area of the city
think you get cities at 6 dwellings to the acre, let should have a full mix of all uses. That would be
alone on half-acre lots. On the other hand, it is impossible. The ultimate in mixture would be for
possible to go as high as 48 dwelling units per acre each building to have a range of uses from living,
(96 to 192 people) for a very large part of the city to working, to shopping, to recreation. We are not
and still provide for a spacious and gracious urban calling for a return to the medieval city. There is a
life. Much of San Francisco, for example, is devel- lot to be said for the notion of “living sanctuaries,”
oped with three-story buildings (one unit per floor) which consist almost wholly of housing. But we
above a parking story, on parcels that measure 25 think these should be relatively small, of a few
feet by 100 or 125 feet. At those densities, with blocks, and they should be close and easily acces-
that kind of housing, there can be private or shared sible (by foot) to areas where people meet to shop
gardens for most people, no common hallways or work or recreate or do public business. And
are required, and people can have direct access to except for a few of the most intensely developed
the ground. Public streets and walks adequate to office blocks of a central business district or a heavy
handle pedestrian and vehicular traffic generated industrial area, the meeting areas should have hous-
by these densities can be accommodated in rights- ing within them. Stores should be mixed with
of-way that are 50 feet wide or less. Higher densi- offices. If we envision the urban landscape as a
ties, for parts of the city, to suit particular needs fabric, then it would be a salt-and-pepper fabric of
and lifestyles, would be both possible and desirable. many colors, each color for a separate use or a
We are not sure what the upper limits would be combination. Of course, some areas would be much
but suspect that as the numbers get much higher more heavily one color than another, and some
than 200 people per net residential acre, for larger would be an even mix of colors. Some areas, if
parts of the city, the concessions to less desirable you squinted your eyes, or if you got so close as
living environments mount rapidly. to see only a small part of the fabric, would read
Beyond residential density, there must be a as one color, a red or a brown or a green. But by
minimum intensity of people using an area for it and large there would be few if any distinct pat-
to be urban, as we are defining that word. We aren’t terns, where one color stopped and another started.
sure what the numbers are or even how best to It would not be patchwork quilt, or an even-colored
measure this kind of intensity. We are speaking fabric. The fabric would be mixed.
here, particularly, of the public or “meeting” areas In an urban environment, buildings (and other
of our city. We are confident that our lowest resi- objects that people place in the environment) should
dential densities will provide most meeting areas be arranged in such a way as to define and even enclose
with life and human exchange, but are not sure if public space, rather than sit in space. It is not enough
they will generate enough activity for the most to have high densities and an integration of activ
intense central districts. ities to have cities. A tall enough building with
There must be an integration of activities – living, enough people living (or even working) in it, sited
working, and shopping as well as public, spiritual, on a large parcel, can easily produce the densities
and recreational activities – reasonably near each we have talked about and can have internally mixed
other. uses, like most “mixed use” projects. But that build-
The best urban places have some mixtures of ing and its neighbors will be unrelated objects
uses. The mixture responds to the values of public- sitting in space if they are far enough apart, and
ness and diversity that encourage local community the mixed uses might be only privately available.
identity. Excitement, spirit, sense, stimulation, and In large measure that is what the Charter of Athens,
exchange are more likely when there is a mixture the garden cities, and standard suburban develop-
of activities than when there is not. There are many ment produce.
examples that we all know. It is the mix, not just Buildings close to each other along a street,
the density of people and uses, that brings life to regardless of whether the street is straight, or
an area, the life of people going about a full range curved, or angled, tend to define space if the street
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is not too wide in relation to the buildings. The public environment, if the automobile can be held
same is true of a plaza or a square. As the spaces back.
between buildings become larger (in relation to the There also must be symbolic, public meeting
size of the buildings, up to a point), the buildings places, accessible to all and publicly controlled.
tend more and more to sit in space. They become Further, in order to communicate, to get from place
focal points for few or many people, depending to place, to interact, to exchange ideas and goods,
on their size and activity. Except where they are there must be a healthy public circulation system.
monuments or centers for public activities (a sta- It cannot be privately controlled. Public circulation
dium or meeting hall), where they represent public systems should be seen as significant cultural set-
gathering spots, buildings in space tend to be pri- tings where the city’s finest products and artifacts
T
vate and inwardly oriented. People come to them can be displayed, as in the piazzas of medieval and W
and go from them in any direction. That is not so renaissance cities. O
for the defined outdoor environment. Avoiding the Finally, many different buildings and spaces with
temptation to ascribe all kinds of psychological complex arrangements and relationships are required.
values to defined spaces (such as intimacy, belong- The often elusive notion of human scale is associ-
ing, protection – values that are difficult to prove ated with this requirement – a notion that is not
and that may differ for different people), it is enough just an architect’s concept but one that other peo-
to observe that spaces surrounded by buildings are ple understand as well.
more likely to bring people together and thereby Diversity, the possibility of intimacy and con-
promote public interaction. The space can be linear frontation with the unexpected, stimulation, are
(like streets) or in the form of plazas of myriad all more likely with many buildings than with few
shapes. Moreover, interest and interplay among taking up the same ground areas.
uses is enhanced. To be sure, such arrangements For a long time we have been led to believe
direct people and limit their freedom – they cannot that large land holdings were necessary to design
move in just any direction from any point – but healthy, efficient, aesthetically pleasing urban envir
presumably there are enough choices (even avenues onments. The slums of the industrial city were
of escape) left open, and the gain is in greater associated, at least in part, with all those small,
potential for sense stimulation, excitement, surprise, overbuilt parcels. Socialist and capitalist ideologies
and focus. Over and over again we seek out and alike called for land assembly to permit integrated,
return to defined ways and spaces as symbolic of socially and economically useful developments.
urban life emphasizing the public space more than What the socialist countries would do via public
the private building. ownership the capitalists would achieve through
It is important for us to emphasize public places redevelopment and new fiscal mechanisms that
and a public way system. We have observed that rewarded large holdings. Architects of both ideo-
the central value of urban life is that of publicness, logical persuasions promulgated or were easily
of people from different groups meeting each other convinced of the wisdom of land assembly. It’s
and of people acting in concert, albeit with debate. not hard to figure out why. The results, whether by
The most important public places must be for big business or big government, are more often
pedestrians, for no public life can take place between than not inward-oriented, easily controlled or con-
people in automobiles. Most public space has been trollable, sterile, large-building projects, with fewer
taken over by the automobile, for travel or parking. entrances, fewer windows, less diversity, less in-
We must fight to restore more for the pedestrian. novation, and less individual expression than the
Pedestrian malls are not simply to benefit the urban fabric that existed previously or that can be
local merchants. They have an essential public achieved with many actors and many buildings.
value. People of different kinds meet each other Attempts to break up facades or otherwise to
directly. The level of communication may be articulate separate activities in large buildings are
only visual, but that itself is educational and can seldom as successful as when smaller properties
encourage tolerance. The revival of street activities, are developed singly.
street vending, and street theater in American Health, safety, and efficiency can be achieved
cities may be the precursor of a more flourishing with many smaller buildings, individually designed
9780415668071_P2_10.indd 227 10-26-2012 3:18:39 PM

and developed. Reasonable public controls can see places set aside for nurturing the spirit, and more.
to that. And, of course, smaller buildings are a lot We still have work to do.
more likely if parcel sizes are small than if they
are large. With smaller buildings and parcels, more
entrances must be located on the public spaces, MANY PARTICIPANTS
more windows and a finer scale of design diversity
emerge. A more public, lively city is produced. It While we have concentrated on defining physical
implies more, smaller groups getting pieces of the characteristics of a good city fabric, the process
public action, taking part, having a stake. Other of creating it is crucial. As important as many
stipulations may be necessary to keep public front- buildings and spaces are many participants in the
ages alive, free from the deadening effects of offices building process. It is through this involvement in
and banks, but small buildings will help this more the creation and management of their city that
than large ones. There need to be large buildings, citizens are most likely to identify with it and, con-
too, covering large areas of land, but they will be versely, to enhance their own sense of identity and
the exception, not the rule, and should not be in control.
the centers of public activity.
AN ESSENTIAL BEGINNING
ALL THESE QUALITIES . . . AND OTHERS
The five characteristics we have noted are essential
A good city must have all those qualities. Density to achieving the values central to urban life. They
without livability could return us to the slums of need much further definition and testing. We have
the nineteenth century. Public places without small- to know more about what configurations create
scale, fine-grain development would give us vast, public space: about maximum densities, about how
overscale cities. As an urban fabric, however, those small a community can be and still be urban (some
qualities stand a good chance of meeting many of very small Swiss villages fit the bill, and everyone
the goals we outlined. They directly attend to the knows some favorite examples), about what is
issue of livability though they are aimed especially perceived as big and what small under different
at encouraging public places and a public life. Their circumstances, about landscape material as a space
effects on personal and group identity are less clear, definer, and a lot more. When we know more we
though the small-scale city is more likely to support will be still further along toward a new urban design
identity than the large-scale city. Opportunity and manifesto.
imagination should be encouraged by a diverse and We know that any ideal community, including
densely settled urban structure. This structure also the kind that can come from this manifesto, will
should create a setting that is more meaningful to not always be comfortable for every person. Some
the individual inhabitant and small group than the people don’t like cities and aren’t about to. Those
giant environments now being produced. There who do will not be enthralled with all of what we
is no guarantee that this urban structure will be a propose.
more just one than those presently existing. In sup- Our urban vision is rooted partly in the realities
porting the small against the large, however, more of earlier, older urban places that many people, in
justice for the powerless may be encouraged. cluding many utopian designers, have rejected, often
Still, an urban fabric of this kind cannot by itself for good reasons. So our utopia will not satisfy
meet all these goals. Other physical characteristics all people. That’s all right. We like cities. Given a
are important to the design of urban environments. choice of the kind of community we would like
Open space, to provide access to nature as well as to live in – the sort of choice earlier city dwellers
relief from the built environment, is one. So are seldom had – we would choose to live in an urban,
definitions, boundaries if you will, that give location public community that embraces the goals and dis-
and identity to neighborhoods (or districts) and to plays the physical characteristics we have outlined.
the city itself. There are other characteristics as Moreover, we think it responds to what people want
well: public buildings, educational environments, and that it will promote the good urban life.
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“Dimensions of Performance”
from Good City Form (1981)
Kevin Lynch
Attempts to describe concepts of the “good city” through normative filters have a long history in the early
practice of civic design, as well as the later-emerging field of urban design. Many of these normative theories
(those theories that link human values to city form) tend toward highly prescriptive recommendations or the
subjective leanings of individual authors in specific contexts. In this reading from Good City Form, it is Kevin
Lynch’s intention to go beyond personal values and describe theoretical characteristics of city form which
are as general as possible and can be applied contextually to any culture. In the opening chapters of the
book, Lynch (1918–1984) categorizes popular theories of the city into three branches of thought: planning
or decision theory that focuses on how public decisions should be made, functional theory that describes
how cities operate, and normative theory that attempts to link human values with city form and the nature of
the “good city.” Reaching back through the history of cities, he recognizes three distinct types of normative
theory: cosmic, machine, and organic – each of which he finds either problematic or limited when applied to
contemporary society. He suggests that the values inscribed within current spatial policy and design practice
are either strong (and thus justifiable), or conversely wishful, weak, hidden, or neglected. Lynch relies instead
on the identification of measurable value-based performance dimensions upon which a normative theory of
good city form could be built. In this reading, he proposes and then applies an exhaustive list of general
criteria to identify these performance dimensions (vitality, sense, fit, access, and control) and two additional
meta-criteria that help contextualize the previous five (efficiency and justice). These performance dimensions
are not new ideas, and Lynch provides a list of the influences and previous theories that impacted his thinking
in one of the very readable appendices to the book. At the end of the text, he suggests that the appropri-
ate use of these dimensions lies in their ability to evaluate existing places and show where improvements in
urban form can be made.
Kevin Lynch’s biographical profile and primary works are included in his earlier selection in this volume
(see pp. 125–126). His other works on normative theory and urbanism include: “A Theory of Urban Form,” written
with Lloyd Rodwin, Journal of the American Institute of Planners (vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 201–214, 1958); “Quality
in City Design,” in Laurence Holland (ed.), Who Designs America? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University and
New York: Doubleday, 1966); “The Possible City,” in Environment and Policy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1968); and “Grounds for Utopia,” in Basil Honikman (ed.), Responding to Social Change
(Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, 1975).
Other writers who discuss normative theories of urban design and the built environment can roughly be
split into two groups: those who write about the concept of “theory” and those who advocate a specific
theory of urbanism and urban design. Those writing on the concept of theory, include: Kate Nesbitt (ed.),
“Introduction,” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965–1995
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); several chapters in Jon Lang, Urban Design: The American
9780415668071_P2_11.indd 229 10-26-2012 3:18:34 PM

230 K E V in L ynch
Experience (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994); Anne Vernez Moudon, “A Catholic Approach to
Organizing What Urban Designers Should Know,” Journal of Planning Literature (vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 331–349,
1992); and Alexander Cuthbert (ed.), “lntroduction,” Designing Cities: Critical Readings in Urban Design
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Those writing on specific normative theories of urban design are a very large group.
Some of the best include: D. Gosling and B. Maitland, Concepts of Urban Design (London: Academy
Editions, 1984); Geoffrey Broadbent, Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design (London: Van Nostrand
Reinhold International, 1990); David Sucher, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village (City Comforts
Inc., 2003); Nan Ellin, Integral Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2006) and Good Urbanism (London: Routledge,
2012); Mark L. Hinshaw, True Urbanism: Living In and Near the Center (Chicago: APA / Planner’s Press,
2007); Christopher B. Leinberger, The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream (Washing-
ton, DC: Island Press, 2009); and Jan Gehl, Cities for People (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010). In
addition to these, no shortage of normative theory exists on the key drivers of contemporary city planning and
urban design: sustainability, livability, smart growth, compact cities, landscape urbanism, and urban villages.
In contrast to those dealing in normative ideas, a number of researchers are attempting to identify more
objective metrics for quantifying the qualities that make places successful. In large part, this is a trend toward
objective-based science in city and regional planning, as well as the desire to avoid the subjectivities of
normative theory. A number of researcher-advocates offer methods that aggregate many different character-
istics into a single “score” or “rating” that can let consumers understand the comparative differences between
places. The place-rating material is well known throughout the world in its attempts to name the most livable
or best cities: Susan L. Cutter, Rating Places: A Geographer’s View on Quality of Life (Washington, DC:
Association of American Geographers, 1985); David Savageau, Places Rated Almanac, 25th edn. (Places
Rated Books LLC, 2007); and Bert Sperling and Peter Sander, Cities Ranked and Rated, 2nd edn. (New
York: Wiley, 2007). This material is particularly useful for those thinking of relocating their primary residence
or business; or conversely, those looking for a retirement location or vacation destination. Not surprisingly,
the place-rating material has been championed by city marketers and boosters who want to compete globally
for economic share, business relocations, tourism, and reputation. What becomes interesting in this material
is the fluidity of how cities change positions in place ranking from year to year, even though not much may
have changed within a city compared to the previous year. Simple methodological changes in how the rank-
ings are calculated might adjust the relative ranking of cities, and thus we see an alternating list of places
that claim they offer the highest quality of life or become the best places for retirement. For example, one
year it is Geneva, the next Melbourne, followed by Vancouver. Place-rating methods are examined critically
by John D. Landis and David S. Sawicki in “A Planner’s Guide to the ‘Places Rated Almanac’,” Journal of the
American Planning Association (vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 336–346, 1988), where the authors caution against the
method, priority of weighting, and usefulness of the Places Rated method in planning practice. Others using
metrics for the quantification of place quality include many focusing on walkability (http://www.walkscore.com
and http://www.activelivingresearch.org); the carbon or ecological footprint (http://www.footprintnetwork.org);
and the health-related quality of life (http://www.healthmeasurement.org). Academics are increasingly creating
urban design metrics to bolster their research agenda, gain respect from social science-oriented colleagues,
and better compete for research funding from scientific organizations. Key issues with these metrics include:
the attempt to numerically quantify that which might be normatively subjective, the reduction of place complex-
ity to a single number, the pseudo-science used in calculating the measurements, and, importantly, the lack
of capacity that many cities have for ongoing measurement, interpretation, and application. Irony exists here
in the lack of robustness of these more scientific methods, in comparison to the respect that Lynch’s more
normative approach has received.
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“ D im E nsions of P E rformanc E ” 231
Performance characteristics will be more general, others would like it to last forever. Furthermore,
and the easier to use, to the degree that perfor- we know how to measure the general durability
mance can be measured solely by reference to the of a settlement, or at least how to measure a few
spatial form of the city. But we know that the qual- significant aspects of durability. A tent camp can
ity of a place is due to the joint effect of the place be compared to a troglodyte settlement, and, given
and the society which occupies it. I can imagine the values of a particular set of inhabitants, we can
three tactics for avoiding the necessity of taking tell you which one of them is better, or people can
the entire universe into account in this attempt to make that evaluation for themselves. They can also
measure city performance. First, we can elaborate decide how much durability they are willing to give
those linkages between form and purpose which exist up in return for other values. Perhaps we can show
T
because of certain species-wide or human settlement- that very low or very high durabilities are bad for W
wide regularities: the climatic tolerances of human everyone, and so we identify an optimum range. O
beings, for example, or the importance of the small Although the linkage of durability to basic human
social group, or the very general function of any aims is only a chain of assumptions, we believe
city as a network of access. Second, we can add that the assumptions are reasonable. Correlations
to the description of the spatial form of a place of durability with preference exist, and people are
those particular social institutions and mental at- content to use this idea as a workable intermediate
titudes which are directly linked to that form and goal. Meanwhile, its connection to city form – to
repeatedly critical to its quality, as I have already such concrete physical characteristics as building
done. Both of these tactics will be employed below. material, density, and roof construction – can be
Third and last, however, we must realize that it explicitly demonstrated.
would be foolish to set performance standards for To be a useful guide to policy, a set of per
cities, if we mean to generalize. To assert that the formance dimensions should have the following
ideal density is twelve families to the acre, or the characteristics:
ideal daytime temperature is 68°F., or that all good
cities are organized into residential neighborhoods 1 They should be characteristics which refer primar-
of 3,000 persons each, are statements too easily ily to the spatial form of the city, as broadly
discredited. Situations and values differ. What we defined above, given certain very general state-
might hope to generalize about are performance ments about the nature of human beings and
dimensions, that is, certain identifiable characteris- their cultures. To the extent that the value set
tics of the performance of cities which are due on those characteristics varies with variations
primarily to their spatial qualities and which are in culture, that dependence should be explicit.
measurable scales, along which different groups The dimension itself and its method of analysis
will prefer to achieve different positions. It should should remain unchanged.
then be possible to analyze any city form or pro- 2 The characteristics should be as general as pos-
posal, and to indicate its location on the dimension, sible, while retaining their explicit connection to
whether by a number or just by “more or less.” To particular features of form.
be general, the dimensions should be important 3 It should be possible to connect these charac-
qualities for most, if not all, persons and cultures. teristics to the important goals and values of
Ideally, the dimensions should also include all the any culture, at least through a chain of reason-
qualities which any people value in a physical place. able assumptions.
(Of course, this last is an unbearably severe criterion.) 4 The set should cover all the features of settle-
For example, we might consider durability as a ment form which are relevant, in some important
performance dimension. (But we won’t. This is a way to those basic values.
red herring.) Durability is the degree to which the 5 These characteristics should be in the form of
physical elements of a city resist wear and decay dimensions of performance, along which various
and retain their ability to function over long periods. groups in various situations will be free to choose
In choosing this dimension, we assume that every- optimum points or “satisficing” thresholds. In
one has important preferences about the durability other words, the dimensions will be usable where
of his city, although some want it evanescent and values differ or are evolving.
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232 K E V in L ynch
6 Locations along these dimensions should be universe, the constants of human biology and
identifiable and measurable, at least in the sense culture, and some features which commonly appear
of “more or less,” using available data. They in contemporary large-scale settlements, including
may be complex dimensions, however, so that the processes by which they are maintained and
locations on them need not be single points. changed.
Moreover, the data, while conceivably available,
may for the present escape us. But some view of the nature of human settle-
7 The characteristics should be at the same level ments, however unclear or general is necessarily
of generality. assumed in making any list. Unfortunately, it is
8 If possible, they should be independent of one much easier to say what a city is not: not a crystal,
another. That is, setting a level of attainment not an organism, not a complex machine, not even
along one dimension should not imply a par- an intricate network of communications – like a
ticular setting on some other dimension. If we computer or a nervous system – which can learn
are unable to produce uncontaminated dimen- by reorganizing its own patterns of response, but
sions of this kind, we can settle for less, if the whose primitive elements are forever the same.
cross-connections are explicit. Testing for inde- True, somewhat like the latter, the city is intercon-
pendence will require detailed analysis. nected to an important degree by signals, rather
9 Ideally, measurements on these dimensions than by place-order or mechanical linkages or
should be able to deal with qualities which change organic cohesion. It is indeed something changing
over time, forming an extended pattern which and developing, rather than an eternal form, or a
can be valued in the present. More likely, how- mechanical repetition which in time wears out, or
ever, the measurements will deal with present even a permanent recurrent cycling which feeds
conditions, but may include the drift of events on the degradation of energy, which is the concept
toward the future. of ecology.
Yet the idea of ecology seems close to an ex-
There have been many previous attempts to planation, since an ecosystem is a set of organisms
outline a set of criteria for a “good city.” The in a habitat, where each organism is in some rela-
dimensions I propose below are not original invention to others of its own kind, as well as to other
tions. Previous sets have always broken at least species and the inorganic setting. This system of
some of the rules above. They have at times been relations can be considered as a whole, and has
so general as to go far beyond settlement form and certain characteristic features of fluctuation and
to require a complex (and usually impossible) cal- development, of species diversity, of intercommu-
culation which involves culture, political economy, nication, of the cycling of nutrients, and the pass-
and many other non-formal features. Or they refer through of energy. The concept deals with very
to some particular physical solution that is appro- complex systems, with change, with organic and
priate only in a particular situation. They may mix inorganic elements together, and with a profusion
spatial and nonspatial features, or mix levels of of actors and of forms.
generality, or mix the scale of application. Fre Moreover, an ecosystem seems to be close to
quently, they are bound to a single culture. They what a settlement is. Complicated things must in
do not include all the features of city form which the end be understood in their own terms. An image
are important to human values. They are often given will fail to stick if it is only a borrowing from some
as absolute standards, or they call for minimizing other area, although metaphorical borrowings are
or maximizing, instead of being dimensions. The essential first steps in understanding.
qualities are sometimes not measurable, or even Apt as it is, the concept of ecology has its draw-
identifiable, in any clear way. They frequently overlap backs, for our purpose. Ecological systems are
each other. made up of “unthinking” organisms, not conscious
The list that follows is an attempt to rework and of their fatal involvement in the system and its
reorder the material in a way that escapes those consequences, unable to modify it in any funda-
difficulties. The presumed generality of this list lies mental way. The ecosystem, if undisturbed, moves
in certain regularities: the physical nature of the to its stable climax of maturity, where the diversity
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“ D im E nsions of P E rformanc E ” 233
of species and the efficiency of the use of energy its continuity is founded on growth and develop-
passing through are both at the maximum, given ment (and its development on continuity: the state-
the fixed limits of the inorganic setting. Nutrients ment is circular). If development is a process of
recycle but may gradually be lost to sinks, while becoming more competent and more richly con-
energy inevitably escapes the system or becomes nected, then an increasing sense of connection to
unavailable. Nothing is learned; no progressive one’s environment in space and in time is one as-
developments ensue. The inner experiences of pect of growth. So that settlement is good which
the organisms – their purposes and images – are enhances the continuity of a culture and the sur-
irrelevant; only their outward behavior matters. vival of its people, increases a sense of connection
An evolving “learning ecology” might be a more in time and space, and permits or spurs individual
T
appropriate concept for the human settlement, growth: development, within continuity, via open- W
some of whose actors, at least, are conscious, and ness and connection. (The bias of the teacher is O
capable of modifying themselves and thus of chang- now unmasked.)
ing the rules of the game. The dominant animal These values could, of course, be applied to
consciously restructures materials and switches the judging a culture as well as a place. In either case,
paths of energy flow. To the familiar ecosystem there is an inherent tension as well as a circularity
characteristics of diversity, interdependence, con- between continuity and development – between
text, history, feedback, dynamic stability, and cyclic the stabilities and connections needed for coher-
processing, we must add such features as values, ence and the ability to change and grow. Those
culture, consciousness, progressive (or regressive) cultures whose organizing ideas and institutions
change, invention, the ability to learn, and the con- deal successfully with that tension and circularity
nection of inner experience and outer action. are presumably more desirable, in this view. Similarly,
Images, values, and the creation and flow of infor- a good settlement is also an open one: accessible,
mation play an important role. Leaps, revolutions, decentralized, diverse, adaptable, and tolerant to
and catastrophes can happen, new paths can be experiment. This emphasis on dynamic openness
taken. Human learning and culture have destab is distinct from the insistence of environmentalists
ilized the system, and perhaps, some day, other (and most utopians) on recurrence and stability.
species will join the uncertainty game. The system The blue ribbon goes to development, as long as
does not inevitably move toward some fixed climax it keeps within the constraints of continuity in time
state, nor toward maximum entropy. A settlement and space. Since an unstable ecology risks disaster
is a valued arrangement, consciously changed and as well as enrichment, flexibility is important, and
stabilized. Its elements are connected through an also the ability to learn and adapt rapidly. Conflict,
immense and intricate network, which can be under stress, and uncertainty are not excluded, nor
stood only as a series of overlapping local systems, are those very human emotions of hate and fear,
never rigidly or instantaneously linked, and yet part which accompany stress. But love and caring would
of a fabric without edges. Each part has a history certainly be there.
and a context, and that history and context shift Any new model of the city must integrate state-
as we move from part to part. In a peculiar way, ments of value with statements of objective rela-
each part contains information about its local con- tionships. The model I have sketched is neither
text, and thus, by extension, about the whole. a developed nor an explicit one, and I retreat to
Values are implicit in that viewpoint, of course. my more narrow concern with normative theory.
The good city is one in which the continuity of this But the surviving reader will see that these general
complex ecology is maintained while progressive preferences – for continuity, connection, and open-
change is permitted. The fundamental good is the ness – underlie all the succeeding pages, even while
continuous development of the individual or the the theory makes an effort to see that it is appli-
small group and their culture: a process of becom- cable to any context.
ing more complex, more richly connected, more
competent, acquiring and realizing new powers Given that general view and the task of con-
– intellectual, emotional, social, and physical. If structing a limited set of performance dimensions
human life is a continued state of becoming, then for the spatial form of cities, I suggest the following
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234 K E V in L ynch
ones. None of them are single dimensions; all refer 7 Justice: the way in which environmental benefits
to a cluster of qualities. Yet each cluster has a com- and costs are distributed among persons, accord-
mon basis and may be measured in some common ing to some particular principle such as equity,
way. I simply name the dimensions at this point. need, intrinsic worth, ability to pay, effort ex-
There are five basic dimensions: pended, potential contribution, or power. Justice
is the criterion which balances the gains among
1 Vitality: the degree to which the form of the persons, while efficiency balances the gains
settlement supports the vital functions, the bio- among different values.
logical requirements and capabilities of human
beings – above all, how it protects the survival These meta-criteria are distinct from the five
of the species. This is an anthropocentric crite- criteria that precede them. First, they are meaning-
rion, although we may some day consider the less until costs and benefits have been defined by
way in which the environment supports the life specifying the prior basic values. Second, the
of other species, even where that does not con- two meta-criteria are involved in each one of the
tribute to our own survival. basic dimensions, and thus they are by no means
2 Sense: the degree to which the settlement can independent of them. They are repetitive sub-
be clearly perceived and mentally differentiated dimensions of each of the five. In each case, one
and structured in time and space by its residents asks: (1) What is the cost (in terms of anything
and the degree to which that mental structure else we choose to value) of achieving this degree
connects with their values and concepts – the of vitality, sense, fit, access, or control? and (2)
match between environment, our sensory and Who is getting how much of it?
mental capabilities, and our cultural constructs. I propose that these five dimensions and two meta-
3 Fit: the degree to which the form and capacity criteria are the inclusive measures of settlement
of spaces, channels, and equipment in a settle- quality. Groups and persons will value different
ment match the pattern and quantity of actions aspects of them and assign different priorities to them.
that people customarily engage in, or want to But, having measured them, a particular group in
engage in – that is, the adequacy of the behav- a real situation would be able to judge the relative
ior settings, including their adaptability to future goodness of their place, and would have the clues
action. necessary to improve or maintain that goodness.
4 Access: the ability to reach other persons, activ All five can be defined, identified, and applied to
ities, resources, services, information, or places, some degree, and this application can be improved.
including the quantity and diversity of the ele- Now, is this really so? Do the dimensions really
ments which can be reached. meet all the criteria which were given at the begin-
5 Control: the degree to which the use and access ning of this section? Do they in fact illuminate
to spaces and activities, and their creation, re- the “goodness” of a city, or are they only a verbal
pair, modification, and management are con- checklist? Can locations on these dimensions be
trolled by those who use, work, or reside in them. identified and measured in a concrete way? Are
they useful guidelines for research? Do they apply
If these five dimensions comprise all the principal to varied cultures and in varied situations? Can
dimensions of settlement quality, I must of course general propositions be made about how optima
add two meta-criteria, which are always appended vary according to variations in resource, power,
to any list of good things: or values? Can degrees of achievement on these
dimensions be related to particular spatial patterns,
6 Efficiency: the cost, in terms of other valued so that the benefits of proposed solutions can be
things, of creating and maintaining the settle- predicted? Do our preferences about places indeed
ment, for any given level of attainment of the vary significantly as performance changes? All that
environmental dimensions listed above. remains to be seen.
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“A Catholic Approach to
Organizing What Urban
Designers Should Know”
from Journal of Planning Literature (1992)
Anne Vernez Moudon
Urban design is a holistic and integrative field whose practitioners must have a wide range of knowledge,
including how people behave in physical environments, how people perceive places, how places came to be,
dimensional natures of different urban forms, and how design proposals may relate to the natural, physical, and
cultural environments in which they are situated. Because relevant research findings come from many different
disciplines – urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, geography, sociology, the cognitive sciences,
and art, to name a few – even in an electronic age it can be difficult for designers to know where to find them.
Urban design professor Anne Vernez Moudon has been at the forefront of making sense of the knowledge
base necessary to practice urban design. Here, in “A Catholic Approach to Organizing What Urban Designers
Should Know,” which was published in the Journal of Planning Literature, she sets out a classification that
covers areas of substantive knowledge that can inform design practice and research, purposefully leaving out
normative design theories – that is, theories about what should be done – on the grounds that designers should
not rush to prescriptive solutions. The classification is “catholic” in the sense that it encompasses a broad
range of research subject matters and approaches. The categories are useful to students because they
let them know where in the broader framework their research interests lie, and useful to practitioners and
researchers because they encourage them to broaden their research approaches and not get caught in
repetitive patterns that are not as rich as they might be. Included with the reading is an extensive bibliography
that provides a rich resource of research and theory pertaining to urban design-related issues.
Anne Vernez Moudon is Professor of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design and Plan-
ning at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she runs the Urban Forms Lab. She also serves on the
National Advisory Committee for Active Living Research for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her book
Built for Change: Neighborhood Architecture in San Francisco (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), which
presents a thorough analysis of the evolution and development of physical form of the Alamo Square neigh-
borhood in San Francisco from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1980s, stands as an important ex-
ample of the use of the typomorphological method. Her other books include the edited volumes Public Streets
for Public Use (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), and Monitoring Land Supply with Geographic
Information Systems, co-authored with Michael Hubner (New York: John Wiley, 2000). She has also published
several edited monographs, including Urban Design—Reshaping our Cities (Seattle, WA: Urban Design Pro-
gram, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Washington, 1995) co-edited with Wayne
Attoe; and Master-Planned Communities: Shaping Exurbs in the 1990s (Seattle, WA: Urban Design Program,
College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Washington, 1990).
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236 A nn E V E rn E Z M oudon
Much of Anne Vernez Moudon’s recent work has focused in the areas of typomorphological studies and
relationships between built form and pedestrian behavior. Seeking to make typomorphology accessible to a
North American audience, her chapter “Getting to Know the Built Landscape: Typomorphology,” in Karen A.
Franck and Lynda H. Schneekloth (eds), Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design (New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1994) discusses the various European typomorphological schools of thought and their
contributions to knowledge about built urban form. Another article, which seeks to establish typomorpho-
logical studies as an interdisciplinary research endeavor, is “Urban Morphology as an Emerging Interdisciplinary
Field,” Urban Morphology (vol. 1, pp. 3–10, 1997). Her research on urban form and pedestrian behavior has
been published in numerous research reports.
Writings by others that focus on normative urban design theories and design responses, rather than sub-
stantive knowledge, include Geoffrey Broadbent, Emerging Concepts in Public Open Space Design (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990) and Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MT Press, 1980).
Urban design is familiar to both architects and urban complexities of practice (to mention only a few such
planners. Although some continue to associate theories: functionalism, modernism, participatory
urban design with tall downtowns and large-scale design, neo-rationalism, and pattern languages).
architecture, most recognize it as an interdisciplin- This article poses a different question: “what
ary approach to designing our built environment. should urban designers know?” It is based on the
Urban design seeks not to eliminate the planning premise that a mature, successful practice and its
and design professions but to integrate them and concomitant long-lasting theories rest on “know-
in so doing, to go beyond each one’s charter. It ing.” An attempt to pull together the significant
extends the architect’s focus on the built project. body of existing knowledge, this work starts to
It makes urban planning policies operational by define an epistemology for urban design – to study
taking into account their impact on the form and the nature and grounds of knowledge necessary to
meaning of the environments produced. Recently, practice urban design.
landscape architects have also added some of their The approach taken is emphatically catholic.
concerns to urban design. As a young enterprise In the laic, generic sense of the word, “catholic”
at the edge of established professions, urban design means broad in sympathies, tastes, and interests.
must endure many punches, pushes, and pulls. But Being catholic is not to be nonpartisan, but rather
its institutional survival is essential to guarantee nonsectarian, tolerant of and open to different ap-
even a glimpse of interdisciplinary activity in plan- proaches. Hence the body of knowledge surveyed
ning and design. herein comes from various fields and disciplines
Urban design emerged sometime in the 1960s – its allied to urban design that, together, lay the ground-
exact origins have yet to be determined, coveted work for an epistemology for urban design. Some
as they are by many different groups. The field was of the research is informative in nature, seeking to
born out of a search for quality in urban form. This describe or explain certain phenomena. Other re-
search continues to date, focused on urban environ- search goes one step further into theory building.
ments that have both functional and aesthetic appeal The differences between these two types of re-
to those who inhabit them. The thrust of the field search will not be discussed specifically, however,
has lain in practical rather than academic pursuits: because the nature and scope of theory in, of, or
urban designers worry about “what should be done” for urban design is too undefined to deal with within
and “what will work.” the confines of this article.
By and large also, the “theories” guiding practice The article is divided into two parts. One scans
have remained at a paradigmatic level, based on a conceptual framework delineating the basic ele-
different exemplary solutions. The history of the ments of a catholic approach to building an epis-
field is characterized by many such theories that temology for urban design, including a range of
have come and gone, the victims of the elusive areas of inquiry, research strategies, and research
9780415668071_P2_12.indd 236 10-26-2012 3:18:29 PM

“ A C atholic A pproach to O rgani Z ing W hat U rban D E sign E rs S hould K now ” 237
methods. The second part discusses specific areas and feel about their environment, Rapoport’s focus
of inquiry that add to such an epistemology. Refer on the use of and meanings in the built environ-
ences are drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from ment, Spirn’s concerns for the physical health of
literature available in English. the city, and so on. Only when considered together
do this research and these theories begin to
yield a more complete set of information to the
SCANNING FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE designer. They can indeed be complementary,
although sometimes they are also contradictory.
What are the basic sources of knowledge available To build up actual knowledge in urban design, one
to the urban designer? In this country, the work should not look for the correct approach or theory
T
of the late Kevin Lynch (1960, 1972, 1981) and but should instead compile and assess all the re- W
especially his studies of people’s images of cities search that adds to what the urban designer must O
perhaps come first to mind as a source of import be familiar with.
ant information. Lynch’s influence in putting urban Thus the task is to map out knowledge readily
design on the intellectual map of city planning is available, to identify the collection of works pertain-
undeniable and astonishingly broad: not only is his ing to the central concerns of urban design, and
work well known in Europe and Japan, but it is to devise a conceptual framework organizing this
readily used in different fields and disciplines such collection. To help gather this collection and map
as planning, architecture, and geography. Recently, its organization, several elements need to be con-
Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980, 1985) has grown sidered and are reviewed below.
influential as well. His classification of elements
and meanings in environments has impressed both
students and practitioners. William Whyte’s (1980) The normative-prescriptive versus
work on downtown plazas and Appleyard’s (1981) substantive-descriptive dilemma
studies of livable streets are often referred to in
urban design as well. But also, Grady Clay’s (1973) It is important to distinguish first between normative
explanations of the American city, J.B. Jackson’s or prescriptive information (emphasizing the “what
(1980, 1984) reconstructions of the American land- should be”) and substantive or critically descriptive
scape, and Amos Rapoport’s (1977, 1982, 1990) knowledge (emphasizing the “what is” and perhaps
elaborate explanations of people’s interactions with also the “why”) (Lang 1987; Moudon 1988). Stated
their environment, all come to mind as substantive more concretely, understanding a city or a part of a
studies for urban design. Further contributors include city and designing it are two different things. Logic
Lewis Mumford (1961), Edmund Bacon (1976), ally, one needs to understand what cities are made
Jonathan Barnett (1986) on the Elusive City, Jay of, how they come about and function, what they
Appleton (1975, 1980) on a prospect/refuge theory, mean to people, and so on, in order to design “good”
and more recently, Anne Whiston Spirn (1984) re- cities. So far, research most used in urban design
garding the ecology of the city. Some of these works not only looks for explanations of the city, but it
lean toward architectural design, others are more customarily moves into evaluation and recommen-
landscape architecture oriented, yet others are closer dations for future design.1 This is not surprising:
to urban planning concerns. urban design is a normative, prescriptive field, and
The list of works of importance in urban design urban designers are trained to imagine and execute
can, and does, go on. Influences are numerous and schemes for the future. While research is usually
scattered. Even if Lynch emerges as a powerful associated with substantive information and with
figure, his legacy is made less clear when coupled understanding specific phenomena, it is expected
with all the other bits and pieces of research avail- that research for urban design will yield information
able. In truth, all research and theories are partial: that has normative dimensions and that eventually
they address some but never all of the issues faced helps design. Hence while understanding (describ-
by the designer. They also stress a particular view ing) cities and designing (prescribing) them are
or philosophy of what is important in city design – opposite conceptual poles, they also represent a
for instance, Lynch’s emphasis on how people see continuum (see Table 1).
9780415668071_P2_12.indd 237 10-26-2012 3:18:29 PM

Table 1 Knowledge versus action and associated terms The attractiveness of the normative stand is
obvious: it provides unmitigated guidance for de-
Understanding cities Designing cities signers in their everyday endeavors. Yet its limita-
tions are serious: in the light of the wholesomeness
Past/present Present/future
and complexity inherent to design, all normative
What was, what is What should be
theories eventually run into difficulties and often
Descriptive Prescriptive
fail outright. Further, it is disturbing to find that
Substantive Normative
many normative theories use research to justify
Research, reflection, Action, projection
or substantiate a priori beliefs when, in fact, the
knowledge
reverse should take place, and research results
Urban science, urbanism Urban design
should be interpreted to develop theories.
In order to enter the next generation of urban
design theory, urban designers will need to pay
These distinctions, however, are usually not well more attention to the substantive side of research
articulated in the planning and design fields. For and to refrain from making quick prescriptive infer-
example, the Anglo-Saxon term “urban design” ences from such research. They will need to separ
is coveted by Latins who have to contend with ate conceptually the art of description from that
urbanisme or urbanismo, terms that are clearly more of prescription and to devise clean and honest ways
reflective, less action-oriented than “urban design.” of evaluating existing or past situations (for op
Only in Italy can one find “urban science” and posing views on this matter, see Jarvis 1980 and
“urbanism” used commonly to define the spectrum Oxman 1987). This is not to say that description
of description versus prescription, research versus or substantive work is “true”; that is, free of values
design. and interpretation. Description is just as subjective
Closer to home, Kevin Lynch’s work is a good – dependent on who is doing it – as prescription.
case in point illustrating the tensions between the As the art of seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and
two conceptual poles: Lynch researched people’s knowing, description can only reflect the capabilities
mental images and constructs of cities and ana- and sensitivities of the researcher (Relph 1984).
lyzed the history, evolution, and meaning of places But if descriptive activity is just as morally bounded
in order to seek better ways to design cities. How as prescription, and if it tells what is right or wrong
ever, while in The Image of the City (1960), substan- subjectively, it does nonetheless stop short of
tive information is separated from prescriptive or venturing into what should be done.
normative advice, in A Theory of Good City Form For the design and planning professions to
(1981), the two are closely interwoven. Similarly, mature properly, time must be taken to focus on
as Christopher Alexander and his team (Alexander substantive information. Some scholars have even
et al. 1977) rampage through existing cities they advocated the need to describe solely without seek-
deem “good,” they collect, sort out, and discard bits ing explanation because they see explanation (the
and pieces that they believe will constitute patterns “why” attached to the “what”) as yet another incen-
or elements for designing new cities. However, they tive not to grasp fully the object or phenomenon
are essentially not interested in describing critically being described (Relph 1984). Whatever the case
existing environments per se. On the architectural may be, substantive approaches will force designers
side of urban design, the brothers Krier (Rational and planners to engage personally in the informa-
Architecture 1978) have peaked [sic] into a proto- tion at hand, to interpret it, and to apply it to the
typical medieval town for identifying the antidote specific context of their activities.
to the ills of modern design theories. Their American The gap between knowledge and action is not
followers, architects and town planners Duany and an easy one to bridge. It requires careful synthesis.
Plater-Zyberk (Knack 1989), have found their norms As the perennial example of substantive informa-
in the late nineteenth-century American small town, tion, the use of historical studies provides a case
which, after some study, they have then modified in point: today work in history is fashionable and
and spiced up with garden city and city beautiful touched upon by many urban designers, yet the
theories to establish their own theory of design. dialectic between practice and historical knowledge
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remains elusive at best, and so far seemingly capri- approaches. Nine concentrations of inquiry have
cious and idiosyncratic. Careful assessment must been identified: urban history studies, picturesque
precede jumping to practical conclusions. studies, image studies, environment-behavior stud-
For these reasons, this article focuses on sub- ies, place studies, material culture studies, typology-
stantive research and theories. A companion part morphology studies, spacemorphology studies, and
to this article remains to be written which would nature-ecology studies. The definition and contents
map the scope and breadth of normative theory of these areas constitutes the second part of this
in urban design. Some of this work has been done article.
by French urbanist and philosopher Françoise
Choay. Choay has framed an epistemology of urban
T
design as a normative, prescriptive field in two Research strategies W
seminal books that, although they include Anglo- O
Saxon literature, are only available in French. One, The specific research strategies that can be used
Urbanisme, utopies et réalités (1965), is an anthology to develop knowledge are, again, several. One
of key texts on urban design since the nineteenth quickly discovers that the choice of a research
century. The second, La régle et le modèle (1980), strategy unveils the true philosophical basis of the
posits two fundamental texts defining an explicit, research itself. The first research strategy is termed
autonomous conceptual framework “to conceive the literary approach: it emanates from the human-
and produce new spaces”: Alberti’s De re aedificatoria istic fields – literature and history being the most
(1988), first published in 1452, which, according prominent ones – and it relies on literature searches,
to Choay, proposes rules for urban design, and references and reviews, and archival work of all
Thomas More’s Utopia (1989), first published in kinds, as well as personal accounts of given situ
1516 as a model for urban design. ations. The intent of the literary approach is to relate
Others have started to assemble normative a story of a given set of events.
theories of urban design, notably Gosling and Second is the phenomenological approach, which
Maitland (1984), Jarvis (1980), and recently, Geoffrey projects a holistic view of the world, everything
Broadbent (1990). Broadbent’s latest book paints a being related to everything, and whose practice
broad yet condensed chronological picture of “emerg depends entirely on the researcher’s total experi-
ing concepts in urban space design” (my emphases ence of an event. It is similar to the artist’s ap-
of Broadbent’s book title). It promises to encourage proach because it is both learned and intuitive,
future critical assessment of the significance and synthetic and wholesome, or eidetic (signifying that
effectiveness of normative theories of and para- it uses specific examples of behavior, experience,
digms in urban design. and meaning to render descriptive generalizations
about the world and human living [Seamon 1987,
16] ). Phenomenologists describe events with all
Concentrations of inquiry their feelings, senses, and knowledge. They usually
refuse to explain the “why” of their findings because
Substantive research and theories can first be they see explanation rooted in interpretation and
classified by their area of concentration, according misinterpretation – leading quickly to abuse of in-
to specific views and aspects of the city on which formation. Phenomenologists therefore oppose the
they are focusing. Establishing different concentra- third research strategy, positivism, which portrays the
tions of inquiry is to accept that there are several value of description in explanation.
different lenses through which the design and the Positivism maintains that knowledge is based
making of the city can be viewed and that, in con- on natural phenomena to be verified by empirical
sequence, no single approach to design may suffice. science. Positivism implies certainty of cause and
As pedestrian as this realization may appear to, for effect. It is the tool of the sciences, which are based
instance, engineers or physicians who are used to on the reduction of wholes and on systems of
studying their problems from many different angles, interconnected parts.
it is a challenging proposal to the urban designer While most attempts to describe built environ-
accustomed to thinking about singular, “correct” ments have used literary or positivistic approaches,
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phenomenological approaches have recently flour truisms (e.g., all grid plans are the result of a
ished, according to Seamon, because of a practical planned approach to making cities) or then to prob-
crisis in the design fields, where nonholistic ap- lems that have limited significance to the design
proaches have led to partially successful environ- of whole environments (e.g., economic theories
ments, and because of a philosophical crisis in related to real estate taxation, theories of land use
the sciences due to the limitations of positivist allocation, housing choices, and so on).
thinking. Recently also, however, there have been
attempts to reconcile positivism and phenomenol-
ogy and to see them as complementary (Hardie Research focus: object/subject
et al. 1989; Seamon 1987).
A third screen needs to be applied to areas of inquiry,
the research focus. Most research in this country
Modes of inquiry focuses on the study of people in the environment.
This subject orientation enlarged in the 1960s when
Specific modes of inquiry are identified to dis research became seen as a necessary addition to
tinguish further between the various research strat- the practice of planning and design. The primacy
egies used. Two modes seem to prevail. One is the of subject-oriented research can be explained as a
historical-descriptive mode, in which the research is reaction to “old guard” designers’ earlier focus on
based primarily on accounts of historical evidence the physical components of the environment. Theirs
– whether on site or via historical documents, plans, was an orientation toward the object – a second
drawings, painting, archives, or analyses of the possible research focus – which became increas-
topic. The historical-descriptive mode is generally ingly suspicious as theories of good health, safety,
not used for theory-building purposes, but focuses and welfare relying on the need for clean, airy
on highlighting specific events and things. Literary environments continued to bring unsatisfactory
and phenomenological research strategies usually results. The ultimate blow to the object orienta
use this mode of inquiry. tion of physical planners was the failure of urban
The other mode is empirical-inductive, where the renewal schemes, which proved that poverty, not
research is set to observe a given phenomenon environment, was the primary reason for epidemics,
or to collect information on it, which is then de- crime, and ethically questionable lifestyles. That
scribed via an analysis of the information gathered. good environments can do little to alleviate the
Through induction, the explanations of the pheno basic state of poverty was a hard lesson to learn
menon may be generalized upon to develop a after four decades of work. From then on, research
theory. (“Empirical” means relying on experience on the object qualities of the environment became
and observation alone, often without due regard for unpopular, and a single focus on people in the
system or theory, or capable of being verified by environment prevailed with, for instance, sociologist
observation or experiment. “Empiricism” is the theory Herbert Gans (1969) as its greatest advocate.
that all knowledge originates in experience or the Later, some researchers urged concentration on
practice of relying upon observation and experi- the interaction between people and environments
ment; it is especially used in the natural sciences.) as a specific phenomenon that could explain well
This mode prevails in positivistic research but can the nature of our environments (see Rapoport 1977;
be found in phenomenological work as well. G. Moore et al. 1985). Today, the field of person-
A third mode is theoretical-deductive, in which a environment relations, or environment-behavior re-
theory is developed on the basis of past knowledge, search, is at least present in planning and design.
which is then tested via research. Used primarily At the same time, it is under heavy inside and
in quantitative research (Carter 1976), this mode outside criticism largely for neglecting the “environ-
is rarely found in the design fields, because they ment” part of the person-environment couplet. A
encompass problems that are either too complex return to the study of the object has been advo
or, as Horst Rittel has termed them, too wicked to cated by many, especially architects influenced
be approached quantitatively (Rittel and Webber by theorists like Rossi (1964, 1982), who has gone
1972). In such cases, this mode seems to lead to so far as to argue the autonomy of architecture as a
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discipline that is separate from the sciences and straightforwardly emic. But observations of behav-
the arts. More modest postures favoring a return iors, although emic in their intent, are, in the true
to object-oriented research, with complementary sense of the term, etic because they are done by
rather than primacy over subject research, have professionals. Rapoport has called these research
been argued as well by, for instance, geographer approaches “derived” etic and has opposed them
M.P. Conzen (1978), environmental psychologists to “imposed” etic approaches, which he condemns
D. Canter (1977) and J. Sime (1986) and architect as mere fabrications of the researcher’s mind.
L. Groat (Moudon 1987). This trend corresponds The importance of getting emically significant
also to a rising interest in the study of vernacular information about the environment cannot be un-
environments as the physical evidence of people’s derstated. Lynch’s (1960) studies of people’s images
T
long-standing interactive relationship with their of cities popularized the need for an emic ethos in W
surroundings. Vernacular environments thus offer the information necessary to the planning and urban O
attractive prospects: many are unusual physical design professions. These studies complemented
objects, yet not the objects of a few planners and earlier works in parallel areas of anthropology and
designers, but those traditions and customs that sociology: the Lynds’ critical description of people’s
are an intrinsic part of culture. Indeed this “cultur- lives in Middletown (1929); W. Lloyd Warner’s
ally ground object” can uncover the deep relation- Yankee City (1963); Herbert Gans’s controversial
ship between people and environments. The Levittowners (1967); E.T. Hall’s compilation of
an environment both limited and enhanced by our
physiological beings, in The Silent Language ( [1959]
Research ethos: etic/emic 1980) and The Hidden Dimension (1966); and Robert
Sommer’s Personal Space (1969). All opened the door
Finally, research needs to be screened for its ethos to an enormous field of yet untapped information.
– this term is selected to depict the “heart” of the
research. Two categories of ethos come to mind:
the etic and emic ethos. Borrowed from anthrop AREAS OF CONCENTRATION
ology, these terms were first popularized in design
circles by Amos Rapoport (1977). They come from The concerns of urban designers and the nature
phonetic – related to the written language – and of the decisions they make are necessarily wide-
phonemic – related to the spoken language. The ranging. The interdisciplinary nature of urban
difference can be further grasped by comparing design is likely to remain, and it is doubtful that
the two French terms, la langue and la parole, the the field will ever become a discipline with its own
first being language as a structured system of sound teachings separate from the established architec-
or signs to be studied for its internal logic, and the ture, landscape, and planning professions. But if
second, a no less structured, yet only practiced primarily architectural research (in, for instance,
system of sounds. Applied to studies of people and building science, architectural styles, or program-
culture, etic and emic relate to the nature of the ming) and urban planning research (in employment,
source of the information gathered – etic in the case transportation, and housing demand) are only tan-
of the informant being the researcher, the person gentially relevant to urban design, general socio-
who will use the information, and emic in the case economic issues relating to the environment always
of the informant being the person observed. loom near the foreground of urban design concerns.
Environment and behavior studies were the first In this sense, all social science research pertaining
to seek to bring an emic orientation to the design to the environment is of interest. Similarly, all in-
professions: they unearthed information about the formation concerning urban space and form will
uses of environments directly from the users, with- be useful. Yet a search for breadth must nonetheless
out relying on the opinion of design and planning be constrained for the sake of practicality. The
professionals. However, the actual methods used in literature surveyed focuses on the products of
person-environment studies can be more or less urban design or the human relationship with the
emic. For instance, unstructured interviews, oral built environment and related open spaces. The city,
histories, and self-studied methods of all sorts are and more generally, the landscape as modified by
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people; its physical form and characteristics; the increasing number of scholarly works. Women,
forces that shape it; the ways in which it is designed, special needs groups, and the lower economic
produced, managed, used, and changed – all are echelons of our social class structure are now an
central to a search for work that informs urban integral part of urban historical research. The
design. This essentially humanistic view of urban history of the Anglo-Saxon suburb occupies an
design justifies, at least within the confines of this important place in historical studies today as sub-
article, further exclusions – to wit, literature on urbs constitute a substantial part of contemporary
development and real estate finance, marketing, cities. Further, while Western influences continue
economic theory, and urban political theory that, to prevail, the overreliance on the European experi
unfortunately, relate only marginally at this point ence is waning, especially with Asian, Islamic, and
to the powers of urban designers. other cultures embarking into internationally rec-
The literature assembled according to these ognized scholarly endeavors.
criteria has then been subjected to various classifi Classical work on the history of urban form
cation exercises in an effort to identify salient areas has come from design and planning historians, to
of relevant inquiry. Thus the classification proposed include S.E. Rasmussen (1967), A.E.J. Morris (1972),
emphasizes the types of questions posed by the and John Reps (1965), and from historical geogra-
different research, and groups the different works phers such as Gerald Burke (1971), Frederick Hiorns
on the basis of the similarity of their quests rather (1956), Robert Dickinson (1961), Marcel Poëte (1967),
than on the particularities of the methods used. and Henri Lavedan (1941). On the architectural
The classification also offers a conceptual frame- side, there are Norma Evenson (1973, 1979), Spiro
work that is simple enough for both students Kostof (1991), Norman Johnston (1983), Mark
and practitioners to remember and to work with Girouard (1985), and Leonardo Benevolo (1980).
over time. Lewis Mumford (1961) remains a powerful critic,
Nine areas of concentration are proposed to although his influence is diminishing with the emer-
encompass research useful to urban design. The gence of more detailed research on various aspects
list of areas should be seen as open-ended. Further, of his writings. But the classical understanding of
individual researchers can belong to one or more the history of the city is being enriched and also
areas of inquiry, depending on the scope of their challenged by the growing explorations of ordinary
particular works. Some of these concentrations will landscapes, as in the works of Sam Bass Warner
be readily accepted as mainstream urban design. (1962, 1968), J.B. Jackson (1984), David Lowenthal
But some will raise eyebrows and need further dis- and Marcus Binney (1981), Reyner Banham (1971),
cussion. The following pages review the nature and and recently, John Stilgoe (1982), Edward Relph
coverage of each area of concentration. Included (1987), and Michael Conzen (1980, 1990). James
is a tentative critique of each area’s current status Vance (1977, 1990) emerges as a wide-ranging
with respect to the level of its development and scholar of the processes shaping the physical con-
its current place in building an epistemology for struct of the urban environment. Considering the
urban design. social history of environments also adds reality
to historical forms that in the work of Bernard
Rudofsky (1969), Alan Artibise and Paul-André
Urban history studies Linteau (1984), Roy Lubove (1967), Anthony Sutcliffe
(1984), Dolores Hayden (1981), and Gwendolyn
The study of urban history has expanded remark- Wright (1981), for instance, come alive in the de-
ably over the past two decades to include now scriptions of people’s everyday struggles to shape
significant information for the practicing urban de- their surroundings. How cities have actually been
signer. This area’s early dependence on art history built is another subject of increasing interest – with
and its traditional emphasis on “pedigreed” environ- Joseph Konvitz (1985), David Friedman (1988),
ments (Kostof 1986), on their formal and stylistic and Mark Weiss (1987) standing out as promising
characteristics, is gone. Studies of places inhabited contributors.
by ordinary people, explanations of why and how Work in history continues to be primarily etic and
they inhabit them, have become the focus of an based on literary research (Dyoz 1968). However,
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derived etic research is beginning to dominate until the late 1960s. Today they keep a prominent
social history. Similarly, phenomenological ap- position in both education and practice, and they
proaches are increasingly taken – Relph’s and J.B. offer some of the widely read introductory texts in
Jackson’s work being some of the best received by urban design. These studies are running personal
urban designers. Historians in this category can be commentaries of the attributes of the physical
object- or subject-oriented, or they can deal with environment. Authors identify and describe both
the interaction between people and the physical verbally and graphically what they think are “good”
environment. environments. Such good environments are ana-
The many new publications on increasingly lyzed for their relevance to contemporary urban
varied subjects related to urban history exercise design problems.
T
a growing influence on design and planning profes- Object-oriented, these works emphasize the W
sionals. Correspondingly, a few historians are will- visual aspect of the environment, which is seen as O
ing to venture into discussing the implications of a stage set or a prop of human action. Gordon
historical experience for the present – for instance, Cullen’s Concise Townscape (1961) remains one of
Joseph Konvitz (1985), Robert Fishman (1977, the most memorable contributions to urban design
1987), Richard Sennett (1969), and Kenneth Jackson in the picturesque style. Cullen caught the fancy
(1985; Jackson and Schultz 1972). Conversely, of both architects and planners disturbed by the
design-oriented scholars are reaching out into technical, barren aspects of modernism. He helped
history in an attempt to develop theory – as for them to formulate the scope of urban design as an
instance, Dolores Hayden (1984), Peter Rowe (1991), interdisciplinary activity requiring both architectural
and Geoffrey Broadbent (1990). and planning skills.
The emerging richness of the field warrants Precursors of the picturesque genre include
further classification and analysis to help the urban Camillo Sitte ( [1889] 1980) and Raymond Unwin
designer to select the appropriate works and to (1909), both of whom have recently regained
uncover more than can be recognized in this article. popularity in urban design. While the postwar work
Work in historical geography and urban preserva- of Thomas Sharp (1946) on English villages has
tion is worth reviewing as it includes critical inven- yet to be rediscovered by urban designers, Paul
tories of urban environments. Similarly, historical Spreiregen’s Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns
guidebooks of cities, as well as contemporary and Cities (1965) remains a standard introductory
guides emphasizing a city’s history (Wurman 1971, urban design text today. Also prominent are the
1972; Lyndon 1982) yield material that adds to writings of Edmund Bacon (1976) and Lawrence
historical knowledge of particular cities. Finally, Halprin (1966, 1972).
journalistic criticism is an area that parallels history The term “picturesque” is not widely recognized
in its evaluative approach to existing environments to encompass the works of Sitte, Cullen, Bacon,
and needs to be explored. While such criticism used or Halprin. It has been used in this capacity by
to be limited to the isolated, yet powerful works of Panerai et al. (1980) in an effort to capture the
a few – for example, Jane Jacobs (1961), Hans emphasis on the pictorial component of the envir
Blumenfeld (1979), Ada Louise Huxtable (1970), onment that characterizes works in this category.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (Venturi Robert Oxman (1987) used Cullen’s own words and
et al. 1977), and recently, Joel Garreau (1991) – called the work “townscape analysis.”
several publications have emerged that begin to For all their popularity, however, picturesque
provide a vehicle for systematic and continued studies are unevenly “practiced,” and there have
critiques of implemented ideas (for instance, Places, not been publications following this research and
the Harvard Architectural Review, and others). thinking mode in several years. Developments in
the intellectual context of urban design have less-
ened the forcefulness of the original picturesque
Picturesque studies argument. First, if these studies are etic and pheno
menological in nature – stands that remain in good
Picturesque studies of the urban landscape were currency in contemporary planning and design
the foundations and the keystone of urban design discourse – they do not espouse these philosophical
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beliefs in a conscious manner. Rather, they appear environmental art – art in space and art as space,
to assume a naïve “good-professional-knows-it-all” so to speak.
posture that has been rightfully questioned since Image studies are witnesses to the growing
the early 1970s. Simply put, they lack the literary influence of the social sciences on design since the
references of more recent phenomenological writ- 1960s. They focus on the physiological, psycholog
ings such as Relph’s or J.B. Jackson’s. And they ical, and social dimensions of environments as they
lack the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings are used and experienced by people, and on how
of a Norberg-Schultz. It follows that picturesque those aspects do or should shape design and design
studies do not fare well either with social science solutions. The importance given in these studies to
approaches in planning and design research: their the lay person’s view of the surrounding environ-
unabashed etic stand is unacceptable on this score, ment has transformed urban design activity: not
and the idiosyncratic swinging between highly only are Lynch’s five elements used (and, according
personal descriptions and specific prescriptions to Lynch himself, abused [Lynch in Rodwin and
puts these works in an old-fashioned league. Hollister 1984] ), but questionnaires, surveys, and
Finally, whereas picturesque studies were inno- group meetings are now standard fare backing up
vative in their early consideration of vernacular the majority of complex design processes. Among
landscapes, they have been superseded recently by the many studies looking to verify and to expand
the several bona fide historical works of scholars on Lynch’s findings, the ones that brought system-
such as Thomas Schlereth (1985b), Dell Upton atic comparisons (and oppositions) between the
(Upton and Vlach 1986), John Stilgoe (1982), R.W. professional’s and the lay person’s views, were his
Brunskill (1981, 1982), Stefan Muthesius (1982), own student’s, Donald Appleyard (Appleyard et al.
and others. Thus picturesque studies maintain a 1964; Appleyard 1976). Working closely with psy-
high profile for the beginning student of urban de- chologist Kenneth H. Craig, Appleyard’s group at
sign but do not sustain well more rigorous and deep the University of California at Berkeley trained
investigation. many students to research people and environ-
ments as a sound basis for urban design. Robin
Moore (R. Moore 1986) and Mark Francis (Francis
Image studies et al. 1984; Francis and Hester 1990) are products
of Lynch’s and Appleyard’s programs and are now
Image studies include a significant amount of work themselves eminent contributors in this arena. The
on how people visualize, conceptualize, and even- scientific basis of their work has in effect closed
tually understand the city. This category would not the loop linking image studies and environment-
exist without Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City behavior studies, and these researchers are now
(1960), whose influence was paramount in launch- commonly associated with this latter area of
ing subsequent research. In fact, many planners concentration.
and designers see image studies as the main con-
tribution of urban design to the design fields. The
Lynchian approach is sometimes understood as Environment-behavior studies
continuing the picturesque tradition because of its
focus on how the urban environment is perceived The study of relations between people and their
visually. Yet the posture of image studies is reversed surroundings is an interdisciplinary field whose
from that of picturesque studies: it is the people’s history has yet to be documented fully. Stemming
image of the environment that is sought out, not from work done since the turn of the century in
the professional observer’s. Thus image studies are environmental psychology and sociology, these
intrinsically emic and subject oriented. Lynch had studies have grown rapidly since the 1960s, sup-
been influenced by the works of E.T. Hall ( [1959] ported by a variety of federally sponsored laws in
1980, 1966), Rudolph Arnheim (1954, 1966), and such areas as community mental health, energy con
Gyorgy Kepes (1944, 1965, 1966). As a student, he servation, environmental protection, and programs
was part of Kepes’s MIT group of environmental directed at special needs populations, children, the
thinkers who sought to create and understand elderly, the physically impaired, and others.
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In the 1960s, the design and planning profes- Howell (G. Moore et al. 1985), Jon Lang (1987),
sions turned to sociology and environmental psy- Karen Franck (Franck and Ahrentzen 1989), Clare
chology as sources of valuable information in this Cooper Marcus (1975; Marcus and Sarkissian 1986),
new emic realm of research on the environment. and Oscar Newman (1972, 1980) remain important
Since then, person–environment relations has be- figures in education and practice nationally. The
come a bona fide part of the architectural profes- Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA)
sion, covering research on how people use, like, or celebrated its twentieth year with many of its mem-
simply behave in given environments. The field also bers holding appointments in schools of design
rapidly spread to urban design as Amos Rapoport, around the country (Hardie et al. 1989). The term
Kevin Lynch, and Donald Appleyard began to in- “environmental design research” has been proposed
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vestigate the human dimension of neighborhoods, to cover those studies that relate specifically to design W
urban districts, and cities at large. and to eliminate the polarity and actual conflicts O
Environment-behavior research, as it is increas- that the couplet environment-behavior engenders
ingly called today, has until recently been almost (Villeco and Brill 1981).
totally positivistic. Actually, its original influence Influential figures contribute to the field: I.
on design was due to its science-based approach, Altman (1986; Altman and Wohlwill 1976–85), D.
which was deemed more serious, reliable, and Canter (1977), L. Festinger (1989), D. Stokols and
rational than the then-traditional intuitive, often I. Altman (1987), and J.F. Wohlwill (1981, 1985),
highly personal, design process. The introduction among others. Principal authors directly related to
of the social sciences to planning and design was issues of urban design include: Amos Rapoport
part of a broader trend of interest in multidisciplinary (1977, 1982, 1990) on residential environments, city,
activity, itself the product of system-thinking de- and settlement; Donald Appleyard (1976, 1981) on
veloped by the military during World War II. In city and streets; W.H. Whyte (1980) on urban open
England, the influences of both modernism and the spaces and city; Jack Nasar (1988) on environmen-
systems approach divided architectural schools tal aesthetics; Robin Moore (1986) on children and
of the postwar period into two groups: one at the environments; Mark Francis (Francis et al. 1984)
Bartlett, where Llewelyn Davis was to assume a on urban open space; William Michelson (1970,
multidisciplinary approach to design, and the other 1977) on neighborhoods; Clare Cooper Marcus
at Cambridge University, with Martin and March, (1975; Marcus and Sarkissian 1986) on residential
which was to focus on space, urban form, and land environments; both Jan Gehl (1987) and Roderick
use (Hillier 1986). Lawrence (1987) on streets and residential environ-
In the United States in the early 1960s, the ments; Oscar Newman (1972, 1980) on residential
University of California at Berkeley was first to environments; and S. and R. Kaplan (1978) on open
create a College of Environmental Design, thus spaces. Further, if most of the studies conducted
expanding the professions of architecture and plan- in this area relate to ordinary environments some
ning to the general design of environments, includ- deal with differences in values and preferences be-
ing industrial design. In the new curriculum at tween professional designers and lay people (Cant
Berkeley, “user studies” (meant to collect informa- 1977; Nasar 1988).
tion on people expected to use the facilities to be The broad, multidisciplinary nature of the field
designed) and “design methods” involving the co- makes information retrieval somewhat difficult.
ordination of different interests and expertise (from There are many organizations sponsoring and pub-
the user to the investor) ranked high on the list of lishing research (G. Moore et al. 1985), and many
important courses that students were to take. journals that have yet to provide comprehensive
Although environment-behavior studies have indexes. However the School of Architecture at the
recently suffered some setback at least in architec- University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, has pub-
ture (their development is perceived to have taken lished a handy bibliography for use by their doctoral
away from design – or is it Design?), they are in students (G. Moore et al. 1987). Useful surveys of
fact well entrenched in design thinking. People like the field are also being produced (Altman and
Amos Rapoport (1977, 1982, 1990), Robert Gutman Wohlwill 1976–85; G. Moore et al. 1985; Stokols
(1972), Michael Brill (Villeco and Brill 1981), Sandra and Altman 1987; Zube and Moore 1987). As an
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interesting aside, G. Moore et al. (1987) include J.B. tations. These studies thus appear as the black
Jackson and other geographers as part of environ- sheep of environment-behavior studies: abiding by
mental design research. But in our classification, the principles, but bending some of the basic rules.
these works appear to fit best under material culture Place studies include a great variety of research,
studies. If this overlap is of course proof of some which, because of its personal bent, is difficult to
of the issues related to the classification (and to categorize further. However, one group of scholars
classification in general), it is as evidence of rich consists of design and planning professionals; this
relationships among areas of research of which may explain in part some of the object and etic
only some are commonly associated with urban emphases in this category. Norberg-Schulz (1980,
design. 1985), Hester (1975, 1984), Allan Jacobs (1985),
The primarily positivistic stand of environment- Violich (1983), Lerup (1977), Hillier and Hanson
behavior studies has become an area of contention (1984), Thiel (1986), Greenbie (1981), Lynch (1972,
and cause for criticism less from designers and 1981; most of his work following The Image of the
planners as mentioned earlier, than from the field’s City), and recently, Charles Moore and his collabo-
own ranks. Questions are raised as to whether rators (C. Moore et al. 1988), Seamon and Mugerauer
people’s attitudes feelings, behaviors, and so on, (1989), and Francis and Hester (1990) are all rep-
should be pigeonholed in such categories as percep- resentatives of this group. They share a sophisti-
tion and cognition. What about the whole of people cated knowledge of the design process, the history
and environment relationships? What about the of urban form, and the value of the cultural land-
intangible, the spiritual? As noted earlier, these and scape. They show particular empathy for cross-
other issues have led some to use phenomeno- cultural research, and they prefer to turn their
logical methods to carry out research. Further, a attention to vernacular places. Although they also
perceived overemphasis on the subject at the ex- belong to this group, Higuchi (1983) and Ashihara
pense of the object qualities of the environment (1983) stand out because of their close ties with
has led to dissatisfaction. In reaction, a group of picturesque and image studies.
researchers, scholars, and theoreticians has emerged, A second group is made up of social scientists
who are offshoots of environment-behavior studies who have sought to relate closely to the object of
in their concerns yet do not care to be formally design, as, for instance, Tuan (1974, 1977), Perin
related to the field. It was decided to put them in (1970, 1977), Sime (1986), Relph (1976), Appleton
a category loosely called “place studies.” (1975), Jakle (1987), and Walter (1988). Grady Clay
(1973) and Tony Hiss (1990), both journalists, and
Mark Gottdiener (1985), a sociologist, also belong
Place studies to this category. The common trait of these works
is their highly individualistic character, combined
Place studies gather many thinkers who have yet with the primacy given to the sociopsychological
to crystallize as a bona fide group (identified but dimension of the built environment and the modified
not articulated as such in G. Moore et al. 1985, landscape. Place studies research is especially well
xviii, 59–73). Since the late 1970s, several studies received in urban design circles, presumably because
have set out to create knowledge and theories of it incorporates many of the complex relationships
place that are based on the importance of people’s that must be synthesized during the design process.
relations to their environment and yet do not fit The name “place studies” has been selected to
properly within the environment-behavior category. cover the range of these eclectic studies and to
First, they do not employ solely positivistic research reflect the emphasis on the physical environment
strategies. Second, while the concern for both and on its sensual and emotional contents. It should
object and subject is central, the emphasis is on be noted, however, that environment-behavior stud-
the object as an important preoccupation in design. ies also claim the concept of place as central to
Third, these studies look for the emotional as well their endeavors (as in Canter 1977; Rapoport 1982,
as for the perceptual aspects of people–environment 1990; Appleyard 1981; Lawrence 1987), thus making
relations. Further, and perhaps most important, they the line between the two areas sometimes difficult
bend toward derived etic and outright etic interpre- to draw.
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Material culture studies recent cultural artifacts. But my own limited inves-
tigations have not detected the emergence of
Material culture is a branch of anthropology that material culture studies per se there.
focuses on the study of objects as reflections and Schlereth includes J.B. Jackson, Grady Clay, and
tools of cultures and societies. While the objects Robert Venturi as contributors to the study of the
of study are wide-ranging, including stamps, kitchen material environment, but Henry Glassie, a folk
utensils, clothes, and so on, the field has flourished culture scholar, emerges as a giant of the field.
into a rich and popular scholarly endeavor since Little known to environmental designers, Glassie’s
utilitarian machines of all kinds have become every work includes detailed analyses of folk houses in
day staples. Elements of the cultural landscape Virginia (1968, 1975) and the thorough description
T
are increasingly part of the field. Geographers have of an Ulster community (1982). His meticulous W
contributed to material culture as well (see Lewis research and complex methodology – a mixture O
1975, for instance). And as architects, landscape of structuralism and phenomenology – serve as a
architects, and urban designers are becoming more model for good, significant research. Even closer
reflective and studying systematically the material to designers’ interests is Upton and Vlach’s (1986)
manifestations of our environment, they too are work on vernacular places and Groth’s (1990) on
adding, even if unknowingly so in many cases, to cultural landscapes. A close watch on this field will
material culture studies (Wolfe 1965). be necessary in the future.
Thomas Schlereth (1982, 1985a) has spent con-
siderable effort to explain the scope and evolution
of the material culture studies undertaken over Typology-morphology studies
the past eighty or ninety years. A skilled observer
and critic of the physical environment (Schlereth This area of concentration is not well known in
1985b), he has identified three stages in the devel- the United States. Sometimes associated with the
opment of material culture studies. He calls them Krier brothers’ (Rational Architecture 1978) and
the age of collecting, the age of description, and Aldo Rossi’s (1964, 1982) works, it is often reduced
the age of analysis (Schlereth 1982). Schlereth to an architectural design philosophy that borrows
shows how the field has increased in complexity from the premodern city (Vidler 1976; Moneo
from a simple collector’s activity to a critical schol- 1978). In fact, typology and morphology research
arly endeavor. Hence initial questions regarding the encompasses a long tradition of studying cities,
legitimacy of a field that includes match box col- their form, and especially the socioeconomic pro-
lectors and car buffs are no longer posed. Further, cesses that govern their production. The Kriers and
as the methods used to present and analyze cultural Rossi have relied on such studies. They have popu
artifacts grow increasingly sophisticated, material larized the notion that the study of architecture
culture studies provide knowledge that parallels and leads to an understanding of society that is as valid
indeed competes with art history: the study of as the understanding gained from such established
shopping centers, jewelry, or pigsties no longer has disciplines as economics or sociology. However,
to be justified as high or low art (or as any kind of neither the Kriers nor Rossi have explicitly intro-
art for that matter), thus enhancing the potential duced to the design fields the substantial data on
for gathering information about the material world. urban form and urban form-making that have been
The growth of the field is particularly important generated by research in typology and morphology
since postindustrial societies continue to encumber (Moudon in progress).
themselves with an increasingly large plethora of “Typomorphological studies” – a term coined
objects that may have little significance in and of by Italian architect Aymonino (Aymonino et al.
themselves, but surely do together and collectively. 1966) – use building types to describe and explain
For now, material culture studies are, for all in- urban form and the process of shaping the fabric
tents and purposes, part of the field of American of cities. Geographers working in this area have
studies. In Europe, ethnographers and ethnologists, preferred to talk about urban morphology only to
and to some extent, urban and ethno-archaeologists, stress their interest in documenting the form of the
are beginning to expand into the study of more city. Others, including architects, convinced that
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buildings and their related open spaces are the and my own of San Francisco (Moudon 1986) stand
essential elements of city form, have focused on as examples of typomorphological studies. Geographer
classifying them by type to explain the physical M.R.G. Conzen is an important figure who has used
characteristics of cities. They prefer to be called this approach for British medieval cities (Conzen
typologists. 1960; Whitehand 1981). His training dates from the
All typomorphologists approach the study of early part of this century in Berlin, where geogra-
building types in a special way: they are not so phers refined a morphological approach applicable
much interested in the form of buildings or in their to the study of urban settlements. Geographers
architectural style as they are in the relationship influenced by M.R.G. Conzen have organized an
between buildings and the open spaces surrounding Urban Morphology Research Group (1987 to the
them. Thus they see buildings and complementary present) at the University of Birmingham. Mem
open spaces as interconnecting units of space bership in the group is expanding rapidly in the
that are usually defined by the boundaries of land English-speaking world and in Europe. Accordingly,
ownership. These units of space are made and the group publications include work from many
manipulated by their owners or users. Together, parts of the world and from several disciplines
they constitute the urban fabric. Buildings and open (Slater 1990). In Italy, architects have debated the
spaces are classified by type: types represent dif- value and methodological issues of typomorpho-
ferent generations pertaining to successive building logical studies for more than three decades. There,
traditions, or within each generation, types reflect Gianfranco Caniggia (1983; Caniggia and Maffei
the different socioeconomic strata of the people 1979) stands out with the most expansive work.
for whom they were intended. He was an assistant of Saverio Muratori (1959;
Because typomorphologists claim to explain the Muratori et al. 1963), who carried out two seminal
structure and the evolution of the city, their analy- studies of Venice and Rome in the late 1950s.
ses include all building types, both monumental Lately, Paolo Maretto (1986) is emerging as an
and ordinary. But they necessarily expend most important historian in this area. In France, a multi
of their efforts in the study of common residential disciplinary group of architects, urban designers,
buildings that constitute the greater part of the geographers, and sociologists have done such studies
urban fabric. Hence typomorphological study differs for some twenty years (Castex et al. 1980; Panerai
from works emanating from art history, rejecting et al. 1980). They are now consolidated as a research
not only its focus on special building types (usually laboratory called LADRHAUS (Laboratoire de
highly designed and nonutilitarian ones), but espe- Recherche “Histoire Architecturale et Urbaine –
cially its typical isolation of individual buildings Sociétés”), which works closely with groups in Italy,
from the city as a whole and its treatment of build- Spain, and Latin America (Moudon in progress).
ings as timeless, unchangeable memories of a past.
Typomorphological studies are object oriented.
However, the built environment is treated not as a Space-morphology studies
stagnant object but as one constantly changing in
the hands of people living in and using it. Indeed This area of concentration was formalized after
the term “morphogenesis” – the study of processes World War II at Cambridge University with Leslie
leading to the formation and transformation of the Martin and Lionel March as the founders of the
built environment – is preferred over “morphology” Center for Urban Form and Land Use Studies.
– the study of form – to define the nature of re- The focus of this research group is to uncover the
search in this area. The approach is thus rooted in fundamental characteristics of urban geometries.
history, as traces of the past are strong and in The underlying assumptions behind these studies
escapably ingrained in the dynamics of all urban include the existence of spatial elements that
environments. This approach to history relates generate urban form – such as rooms, transporta-
direct and specifically to the design and planning tion channels, and so on – and the need for quan-
profession. tifying both elements and their relationships.
In North America, Barton Myers and George Christopher Alexander worked with the Cambridge
Baird’s studies of Toronto (Myers and Baird 1978) Group in the early 1960s when he was a student
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of mathematics just beginning to take an interest in the United States, the area of urban spatial struc-
in design and architecture. His Notes on the Synthesis tures now deals solely with transportation, land
of Form (1964) reflects the concerns and methods use, and locational variables, at a scale that pro-
used by the group. While Alexander was quick to hibits the consideration of objective material space
reject the value of this approach, others have con- (see, for instance, Bourne 1971).
tinued in this direction. Martin and March published Kevin Lynch and Lloyd Rodwin also tackled the
basic texts in this area (Martin and March 1972; analysis of spatial and morphological elements
March 1977). The work of Philip Steadman covers in their early research (Lynch and Rodwin 1958).
the area of architectural geometry (Steadman 1983). But this common interest quickly forked out into
William Mitchell, one of Martin and March’s col- Lynch’s focus on image studies and Rodwin’s inter-
T
laborators, continues to develop computerized ap- est in larger socioeconomic urban models. W
proaches to manipulating spatial elements (Mitchell Thus, in the 1960s, interest in space-morphology O
1990). Lionel March has in fact taken Mitchell’s old showed possible collaboration between architects
position as head of the Department of Architecture and planners on the issue of spatial structures. But
at UCLA. Clearly this group reflects architects’ long- the end of the decade brought this to an abrupt
standing interest in generating and manipulating halt with the now-obvious professional split over
form in a systematic way – with D’Arcy Thompson’s the relative importance of socioeconomic space
( [1917] 1961) work as a common philosophical and over the different scales at which issues of
basis, and F.L. Wright’s and Le Corbusier’s Usonian planning and design emerge. In the area of spatial
and Citroën houses as reflections of the fascination structures today, the legacy of Christaller (Berry
for interrelated spatial elements. and Red 1961) and the Chicago School of Sociology
Perhaps the most broad-ranging effort in this prevails in the planning fields, while spatial gram-
area is being made at the Bartlett by Bill Hillier mars and computers dominate in the architectural
and his group. Hillier is researching the underlying arena.
generative elements of space and looking for a There are independent researchers whose work
so-called spatial grammar as it relates to social sys- may also fit this category, because it rests on the
tems. He is thus linking concerns in both the social geometric characteristics of space. Passonneau and
and geometrical dimensions of space. Quite com- Wurman (1966; Wurman 1974) studied urban ge-
plex and difficult to understand entirely, Hillier’s ometries and densities. Stanford Anderson’s (1977)
approach is explained in The Social Logic of Space mapping of public and private uses of space and
(Hillier and Hanson 1984). This work is of special Philippe Boudon’s (1971, 1991) definition of archi-
interest, however, because it demonstrates the need tecturology also come to mind. Anderson’s interest
to stress linkages between environmental design in small-scale definition of territories is unfortu
research and research in urban morphology. In this nately not applied to enough different cases to
sense, it also belongs to place studies. permit the development of a theoretical framework
In the United States, the space-morphology area for design (Anderson 1986). Boudon’s claim that
had a brief hiatus in the 1960s with the publication architectural space is not geometrical space be-
of Explorations into Urban Structure (Webber 1964). cause spatial dimensions are what define architec-
A joint University of California at Berkeley and tural space – a 10-foot square room is essentially
University of Pennsylvania effort, the book sum- different from a 100-foot square room, even if their
marizes interests and search in categorizing the geometries are similar – is challenging but little
fundamental elements of environmental space. But known in the United States. Searching appropriate
while the British research is carried out primarily ways to describe built space, Boudon argues that
by architects, this American work is the result space can only be qualified as it stimulates sensory
of thinking by planners. Unfortunately, the U.S. work responses: objects cannot be described, but the
has seen little follow-up. Instead, following Webber’s sensations and feelings they generate can (Boudon
own contribution, which questioned the importance 1971, 1991). This recognition suggests that these
of physical and material space relative to its socio- works could also fit in place studies.
economic dimension, planners have gone on to It is worth mentioning at this point that work in
explore the functional aspects of urban space. Thus, spatial semiotics does not appear to fit well in any
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of the areas of concentrations devised here. The developed (Gordon 1990; Todd and Todd 1984; Van
work is laden with controversy (can architecture der Ryn and Calthorpe 1986; Yaro et al. 1988).
be considered to produce systems of signs or Landscape architects are making substantial
languages?) and difficult to understand. Undefined contributions to this field. Ian McHarg’s seminal
intent and complex method make it tenuous to Design with Nature (1971) has been followed by
classify (Gottdiener 1986). But semiotics could Anne Whiston Spirn’s The Granite Garden (1984).
belong to the area of space-morphology if it were John Lyle’s (1985) and Michael Hough’s (1984) re-
accepted that its intent is to uncover a spatial logic cent works also provide essential information for
in built form. integrating natural processes in city design. These
Finally, space-morphology and typology- publications demonstrate how the movement of
morphology overlap in the way they seek to identify water and air affects pollution and health, how air
the generative structure of space. But they differ fun pollution generated by cars can be alleviated by
damentally in that typology-morphology grounds proper design of streets and buildings, how vegeta-
analysis and explanation of space on the history tion affects air flows, and so on. They also include
and evolution of material space, while the area of elements of flora and fauna as integral inhabitants
space-morphology remains essentially a-historical. and hence determinants of cities. The effect of
trees in the urban context is treated in increasing
detail (Moll and Ebenreck 1989). Bridging these
Nature-ecology studies new concerns with traditional urban design inter-
ests, Anne Spirn is now working on the repercus-
Recent research and theories have shown urban sions of ecological design urban aesthetics.
ecology to be a necessary and essential component Although these works have yet to be brought
of urban design. Light, air, and open space have to the center of urban design, they begin to show
always been part of the discourse of urban design, the relationships that exist between the more
but planners and architects have tended to limit commonly considered social and psychological
the consideration of their impact to the health, components of the environment and its biological
comfort, and visual qualities of environments. The dimension. The city and its inevitable cultural and
role of greenery in the city has been a major con- ecological system is treated by Kenneth Schneider
cern since the latter part of the nineteenth century in On the Nature of Cities (1979). Links to urban
– as a romantic drive to bring nature into the ex- history are made by Hughes in Ecology in Ancient
ploding metropolis and as a necessary outlet for Civilizations (1975). Finally, much of the research
the recreation of growing masses of urbanites. The carried out in the natural sciences remains to be inter
second half of the twentieth century has brought preted for the detailed design of the environment.
serious concerns about excessive energy consump-
tion in urban environments, but most of the work
done to address these concerns has dealt primarily CONCLUSION
with transportation functions and the automobile
industry in particular. Some architects also responded This first attempt at building an epistemology for
at that time by focusing on energy-conscious build- urban design emanated from the practical need to
ings. Since then, however, the larger field of ecology introduce students to a large body of literature,
has grown considerably, affecting many disciplines to encourage them to focus their readings, and to
(Odum 1971). Urban ecology emerged across dis- help them relate these readings to actual issues and
ciplinarian boundaries, introducing systemic methods problems of the field. At this pedagogical level, the
of analyzing and planning the city (Detwyler and “catholic approach” has been a successful guide to
Marcus 1972; Douglas 1983; George and McKinley students as they meander through the complexities
1974; Goudie 1990; Havlick 1974). These methods of this literature. In return, students will probably
consider geology, topography, climate, air pollution, help keep the “catholic approach” up-to-date, as
water, soils, noise, vegetation, and wildlife. Inclusive new areas are likely to emerge from related fields
approaches to understanding the city and its environs and as influences on urban design are broadened
as a naturally balanced environment are now being or simply changed.
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The relevance of the “catholic approach” to the (1970). Procedural research is not included in
large context of research and practice still awaits this epistemological map.
acceptance. Future discussions of the validity and
usefulness of the nine concentrations of inquiry
will, if nothing else, broaden the repertoire of ref- REFERENCES
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Part three
Growth of a Place
Agenda
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Plate 4 T he Textile Souk in the Bur Dubai District of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates was recently
renovated using traditional place characteristics associated with Gulf coast and Middle Eastern urbanism.
Souks are covered market streets that allow retailers to engage pedestrians with goods sold from adjacent
shops. This renovated souk (in one of Dubai’s oldest districts) incorporates traditional, yet updated, urban
design elements that were historically developed in response to the need for shade, light, and comfort in
unbearably hot desert climates. The design of this Dubai souk helps contribute to the traditional image and
expectation of visitors and tourists, which stands side-by-side with the city’s larger global strategy of spectacle
and superlative. The souks of Dubai are some of the most desirable and walkable places within the city –
very different in inspiration than the Burj al Arab hotel or the Burj Khalifa skyscraper. The urban design
principles used in this project are associated with critical regionalism, postmodern urbanism, and everyday
urbanism (all of which are discussed in this part of the Reader). (Photo: M. Larice)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE
Dissatisfied with the increasing homogeneity and soullessness of mid-twentieth-century urban spaces,
a number of authors began investigating issues of space and place as a means of correction. In Part
Two we examined how theorists approached these issues through normatively based theories to better
guide design and physical outcomes. Some of the authors in Part Three approach the same manifest
problems by trying to understand the relationship of personal experience to places. Other authors at
the end of Part Three fall into existential description of the difficulties in doing so. While this volume’s
body of literature explores the relationship between physical settings and human subjects, the focus
in this part of the Reader is primarily on the physicality of the tangible world and our ability to design
places that evoke a sense of place.
Research in place studies tends to be both empirical and phenomenological in nature, largely incor-
porating observational and environmental behavior methods. Researchers in this tradition utilize an
eclectic array of theories in defining notions of place, but seemingly they all stem from a pervasive un-
happiness with non-place-based forms and difficulties in reading modern urbanism. In many ways it is
a highly reactive and critical literature, often looking backwards to traditional and everyday environments
where places were better differentiated and place-based meanings were more easily understood.
This part of the Reader begins with a chapter from Edward Relph’s book Place and Placelessness,
where he defines and differentiates the concept of place from the placeless geographies of “endless
similarity.” To Relph, places are “directly experienced phenomena of the lived-world and hence are filled
with meanings, real objects, and ongoing activities.” In this reading he warns about the power of placeless
ness and its potential consumption of our place-based world. In the next selection by Christian Norberg-
Schulz, “The Phenomenon of Place” introduces us to phenomenological understandings of place and
the Roman concept of genius loci, or the guardian spirit of place. Here, the concept of place is examined
through our conscious ability to connect with the physical character of geographic settings, thereby
bestowing the place with identity and meaning. For Norberg-Schulz, like Martin Heidegger, place is
inextricably connected to existential realities and helps us define our personal identities relative to those
places we inhabit. A third reading on place studies concerns the historical loss and contemporary need
for places within our communities. Ray Oldenburg’s chapter from The Great Good Place suggests we
need and utilize “third places” to supplement our home and work lives with meaningful places of leisure and
informal social relations. Here the concept of place is derived through the socio-spatial opportunities
allowed by cafés, bookstores, pubs, and other hangouts. It is a notion of place that turns on society’s ability
to provide places for people to come together freely and voluntarily to make contact and enjoy public life.
The readings presented here are theoretical in nature, rather than dealing directly with urban design
or design guidance. Other theoretical authors within the place studies tradition, who are not included
herein, deserve mention as well. Henri Lefebvre’s classic text The Production of Space, translated by
David Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), provides a critical unitary theory of space that inte-
grates the physical space of the everyday lifeworld, the mental space of abstractions, and the relational
realm of social space. In a similar critical manner to the writings above, he suggests that physical every
day places are disappearing in favor of the abstract spaces of capitalism, which are a social product
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262 INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE
subject to the mode of production. In like manner, David Harvey examines the capitalist production of
space and analyzes how command over the forces of production relates to power in urban space:
Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1985) and The Con-
dition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). Authors looking at society’s role in the provision of
urban space include Mark Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1985); Ali Madanipour, Design of Urban Space: An Inquiry into a Socio-Spatial Process
(Chichester, UK: John Wiley, 1996). A much loved and widely read perspective on domestic space,
spatial psychology, and daydreaming can be found in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston,
MA: Beacon Press, reprint edition, 1994).
The desire for more meaningful places has resulted in a wide variety of approaches to place rein-
forcement and place-making. Designers attempting to reinsert meaning into place utilize various elements
of physical character to highlight local distinctions, such as environmental imagery, natural history, craft
and cultural traditions, memory, history, formal aesthetics, and beauty. While the bulk of design practice
remains oriented to functional, pragmatic, and economic concerns, a number of theorists and practi
tioners have sought a deeper design discourse that employs local and contextually based imagery to
create distinctive place identities. To defeat this sense of growing globalized placelessness, urban de-
signers are assuming new roles to foster local sense of place; including emerging roles as storytellers,
midwives, public educators, local historians, urban repair specialists, and heretics (demanding change
within the field itself).
Reinforcing the importance of context, a number of authors suggest that designers should look to
materiality, history, nature, and craft traditions for motivating local place reinforcement. The term Critical
Regionalism was first coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre in describing contemporary Greek
architecture that utilized geographic context as the inspiration for modern architecture that might better
approximate local landscape and cultural traditions. The theory of Critical Regionalism was further defined
by the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton in his 1983 essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six
Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” In this essay Frampton suggests contemporary designers
should incorporate local place attributes in their work (topography, light, climate, materiality, tradition),
rather than disavowing any sense of modern form or technology. Critically regionalist design resists
universal globalism, yet continues to represent the modern zeitgeist – while also utilizing those qualities
that speak to place. In some ways, these authors are describing a design movement that had already
been coalescing in practice prior to the release of these essays; in the works of Alvar Aalto, Luis Bar-
ragán, Alvaro Siza, Raj Rewal, Tadao Ando, Charles Correa, and Glenn Murcutt. In his very accessible
writing, Douglas Kelbaugh advocates a Critical Regionalism that reinforces place qualities through the
operationalization of place character in design. He describes several physical aspects that can be used
for design inspiration without reducing design to cliché, camp, or inauthenticity.
A very different approach to place is the reinforcement of historical form patterns with the use of
urban design and building types that are appropriate to local contexts. While the terms morphology and
typology are different in many senses, they both approach the study of form through scientifically ratio-
nal goggles. Typology refers to the study of categorized form types in architecture, and increasingly in
urban design and landscape architecture as well. As opposed to building type, which refers to function-
ality, architectural typologies refer to the form characteristics of buildings. Morphology on the other hand
is the study of larger urban structures, patterns, and form issues. Some authors have taken to combin-
ing the terms into a new term, “typomorphology,” which focuses on larger-scale urban form patterns.
Others refer to this topical material as “tissue studies.” Opposed to the image studies, environmental
behavior research, and phenomenological approaches of previous authors in this Reader, morphologists
are interested primarily in the tangible physical world of objects and less interested in subject experience
or the social use of space. Many study urban form longitudinally, looking at change over time. Others
look at predominant form types to help guide present-day design efforts.
The use of figure-ground drawings, square mile maps, street sections, aerial photos, and computer-
generated drawings in the study and comparison of urban form patterns is so common nowadays that
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INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE 263
we often forget how new these tools actually are. The emergence of typological and morphological
practice in the late 1950s provided urban designers with a research arm that was particularly suited to
exploring issues of urban spatial form and the efficacy of modern urbanism. Morphology and typology
gained popularity rapidly in the late 1970s with rediscovered interest in the benefits of traditional urban-
ism. Researchers such as Aldo Rossi, Saverio Muratori, Gianfranco Caniggia, M.R.G. Conzen, Leon and
Robert Krier, and Anne Vernez Moudon created and drove the exploration of these new research inter-
ests. Researchers with the International Seminar on Urban Form and the University of Birmingham’s
Urban Morphology Research Group are central loci for interest in this field of inquiry.
Over the next 25 years, morphological practice would assume many forms, both as a primary research
tool and a device to inform design practice. Typological practice has been particularly influential in the
development of prescriptive design guidelines and urban design codes in use among the New Urbanists.
In the academies, morphological methods are woven into much urban design research nowadays. In
the selected chapters from Brenda Scheer’s recent book The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for
Planners and Architects, she shows how types used in architecture and urban design are the result of
the economic and cultural conditions at play in any given context, and will proliferate so long as those t
h
conditions exist. The prevalent types in use at any time drive the urban design outcomes that designers, r
developers, and officials grapple with on a daily basis. Within the selection, Scheer reviews various e
definitions of type, charts the history of typology, and explores how type is used in form-based codes e
for regulating urban design and development.
Readers interested in the topics of typology and morphology should refer to the following works
for supplemental reading: Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1978); Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, English translation 1982,
first Italian text 1966); Robert Krier, Urban Space (London: Academy Editions, 1979, first German text
1975); Anthony Vidler, “The Third Typology,” Oppositions 7 (Winter, 1976); Spiro Kostoff, The City
Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Bulfinch Press,
1991); Allan Jacobs, Great Streets (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Anne Vernez Moudon, “Getting
to Know the Built Landscape: Typomorphology,” in Karen A. Franck and Lynda H. Schneekloth (eds),
Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994); and
Michael Southworth and Eran Ben-Joseph, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1997).
The search for place in the final decades of the twentieth century grew into a wide variety of design
movements, platforms, theories, and practices. The growing importance of place is a significant charac
teristic of postmodern urbanism – that much debated period / concept that continues to engender either
passion, confusion, or disdain. The historical period is signified by a rejection of universal meta-narratives
(including any universal modernism in design) and a growing appreciation for relativism, pluralism, and
choice. Key attributes of postmodern urbanism include a desire for history, comfort, entertainment, and
importantly, readable meaning. These design interests are supported both by common public desires
for more meaningful places, as well as by key economic agents in contemporary society, such as real
estate developers, chambers of commerce, and city marketers. Not surprisingly, the growing tourism
industry benefits from places that are distinct and imageable, encouraging likely tourist destinations to
reinforce their historical and place-based identities. The results have been mixed, resulting both in places
that authentically incorporate a sense of place, as well as places that utilize inauthentic and shallow
forms of “theming” to evoke past histories and otherness.
One of the key design movements of the postmodern period is the New Urbanism. Succinct and
pointed in its declarations, the Charter of the New Urbanism is a manifesto that articulates an approach
to regional, urban, and neighborhood design that relies on the restoration of urban centers, towns, and
communities according to principles of neo-traditional urbanism. It grew from a meeting sponsored by
the California Local Government Commission at the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park in 1991,
attended by: Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Daniel Solomon, Peter Calthorpe, Michael
Corbett, Stefanos Polyzoides, and Elizabeth Moule – many of whom became founding members of the
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264 INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE
Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. The resulting document, the Ahwahnee Principles sought
to guide land use planning and new community design, as well as redirect the bland suburbanism
and sprawl that was becoming a focus of concern for many urbanists. Under the larger umbrella of the
Smart Growth Movement, it developed a number of ideas that are now associated with the movement,
including: transit-oriented development, the pedestrian pocket, traditional neighborhood design, and
transect planning.
In practice, New Urbanism has become a model for suburban small town development based largely
on the ideals of Main Street walkable urbanism. In a few short pages, the Charter provides recommen-
dations for a variety of geographic scales, from the human-scaled building to metropolitan regional form.
Early built examples of the New Urbanism took the form of upper-income, greenfield and small town
developments, such as Seaside, FL, the Kentlands in Gaithersburg, MD, and Celebration, FL. The move-
ment has been exceedingly popular with real estate developers, city planning departments, and its
growing consumer base. It was granted new legitimacy when its principles were adopted by the US
Department of Housing and Urban Development to guide its multi-billion dollar public housing replace-
ment program. The New Urbanism has spread around the world, as witnessed in new towns such
as Jakriborg – Sweden, Orchid Bay – Belize, and Poundbury – England. As the movement progressed
New Urbanism began to be applied to higher density urban settings in cities such as Vancouver, San
Francisco, and Boston.
New Urbanism has also come under criticism from a number of perspectives including a group that
developed a competing document called the Lone Mountain Compact. Its authors are libertarian aca-
demics who oppose the land use, design, and transportation controls recommended in New Urbanist
practice. These critics have become defenders of suburbanism, free market economics, and consumer
freedoms in allowing people to live where they want – even if this means lower density development,
traffic congestion, and unsustainable building practices. Other designers disdain the shallow and inau-
thentic nostalgia used in many New Urbanist community designs (see the Michael Sorkin selection later
in Part Six: pp. 618–634). Despite these criticisms, the movement has become one of the leading urban
design movements of the past few decades and continues to grow in popularity.
The last few readings in Part Three are critical descriptions of contemporary city-building and diffi
culties in place-making at the end of the twentieth century. The first of these selections summarizes the
larger content of postmodern urban design practices. The selection from Nan Ellin’s Postmodern Urban-
ism describes the practices of place-making and urban design in the period of the 1970s to the 1990s.
She is highly critical of several aspects of postmodern design (e.g. inauthentic fictionalizing, apolitical
designers, capitalist profit-seeking, design narcissism, and the growing culture of fear in society), but
also acknowledges the benefits that have accrued through the reintroduction of context, local history,
and urbanity, as well as the revalorization of the public realm. The book has become seminal reading
on the theories and design practices of the postmodern period for urban designers.
Another selection describing our current urban milieu, is the work of Margaret Crawford in describing
Everyday Urbanism. In opposition to the nostalgic and neo-traditional practices of the New Urbanism,
Everyday Urbanism is less ambitious, less interested in creating idealized communities, and less design-
oriented. It describes the ordinary places produced naturally by the way we live, move, shop, and play.
These are the spaces of outlet malls, freeways, vacant lots, food trucks, and un-pedigreed design. Like
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (see pp. 167–177), Crawford and her collaborators (John Kaliski
and John Chase) are describing the contemporary vernacular, and finding both possibility and vitality in
the places that higher-minded designers would just as soon replace. In this selection from Everyday
Urbanism, Crawford provides an introduction to the concept and elaboration on the public realm of the
everyday – a place where the expression of democracy might take new forms and importance.
And finally, in a very similar manner to the existential writing of Everyday Urbanism, Rem Koolhaas
describes a post-urban world where the centrality of traditional cities loses its magnetism, in favor of
the centrifugal and fragmented forces of contemporary development practices. Very much in opposition
to previous readings that reinforce place-making practices, Koolhaas discusses the virtues/cautions of
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INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE 265
modern design and heterogeneous urbanism in two selections from his book S, M, L, XL (“Whatever
Happened to Urbanism?” and “The Generic City”). Rem Koolhaas is an existential realist who suggests
that the placeless and generic city is both acceptable and reflective of contemporary society. The Generic
City is the fragmented place where developments crop up with little relation to a larger urban idea;
where heterogeneity of urban motivation is contradicted by the homogeneity of design; where the beige
and expected become the norm. What happened to urbanism for Koolhaas? We stopped being urban-
ists. We focused more on architectural moments rather than the totality of our cities. We became
nostalgic. We didn’t respond appropriately to the failures of modernism. And importantly, we failed to
grow our cities according to the needs of urbanization. Although recognizing its usefulness as “modern-
ism’s little helper,” Koolhaas abhors the postmodern reflex described by Ellin or advocated by the CNU.
In the readings by both Crawford and Koolhaas we hear very different critical voices willing to find virtue
in the places of the present, without the need to re-engineer society toward some mythical ideal outcome.
Both of these selections suggest perplexing issues for urban designers; to embrace the everyday and
post-urban as a reality – or to work once again toward corrective measures of a more livable and sus-
tainable urbanism. t
h
r
e
e
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“Prospects for Places”
from Place and Placelessness (1976)
Edward Relph
A leading early voice to identify and analyze the growing sense of placelessness that was occurring throughout
the world by the latter half of the twentieth century was geographer Edward Relph. In his now classic book
Place and Placelessness, Relph uses critical observation to make connections between the visible landscape,
everyday life experiences, and the abstract social and economic processes that contribute to their transforma-
tion. Written in straightforward language and grounded in experience of actual places, Relph’s ideas were
easily accessible to physical planners and urban designers, providing an intellectual base on which place-
making proposals could rest.
Within “Prospects for Places,” Relph describes the main features of place and placelessness. He identifies
meaningful experience, a sense of belonging, human scale, fit with local physical and cultural contexts, and
local significance as the important qualities of place. Placelessness, on the other hand, is associated with an
overriding concern for efficiency, mass culture, and anonymous, exchangeable environments. Going beyond
critical description to provide useful direction for planning and urban design professionals, he suggests how
authentic place-making could be achieved in modern times. Dismissing either unstructured laissez-faire chaos
or rigid bureaucratic prescription, he argues instead for a self-conscious planned diversity that allows people
to make their own places, rooted in local contexts and filled with local meaning.
Edward Relph teaches geography at the University of Toronto. His other writings that focus on landscape
and place include Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1981) and
The Modern Urban Landscape (London: Croom Helm, 1987; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1987). A more recent book The Toronto Guide (Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Univer-
sity of Toronoto, 1997) is a guide to the city for “deliberate tourists.”
Other writings that deal with placelessness include: James Kuntsler, The Geography of Nowhere: The
Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Joel Garreau,
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1991); Michael Sorkin, Variations on a Theme
Park: The American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992); and Sharon Zukin,
Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). A
work that deals with placelessness from the perspective of landscape architecture is Michael Hough, Out of
Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1990), a selec-
tion from which is reprinted in this Reader (pp. 523–533).
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“ P rospects for P laces ” 267
There are at least two experienced geographies: inside that sets places apart in space. Insideness
there is a geography of places, characterised by may relate to and be reflected in a physical form,
variety and meaning, and there is a placeless geo such as the walls of a medieval town, or it may be
graphy, a labyrinth of endless similarities. The current expressed in rituals and repeated activities that
scale of the destruction and replacement of the maintain the peculiar properties of a place. But
distinctive places of the world suggests that place above all it is related to the intensity of experience
less geography is increasingly the more forceful of of a place. Alan Gussow (1971?, p. 27) has written
these, even though a considerable diversity of places of this: “The catalyst that converts any physical
persists. It is not immediately apparent whether location – any environment if you will – into a
this persistence is the remnant of an old place- place, is the process of experiencing deeply. A place
making tradition and is shortly to disappear beneath is a piece of the whole environment that has been
a tide of uniformity, or whether there exist ongoing claimed by feelings.”
and developing sources of diversity that can be It is possible to distinguish several levels of
encouraged. In other words the prospects for geo experience of the insideness of places, and it is
graphy of places are uncertain, but one possibility perhaps these that tell us most about the nature of t
h
is the inevitable spread of placelessness, and an the phenomenon of place. At the deepest levels r
alternative possibility is the transcending of place there is an unselfconscious, perhaps even subcon e
lessness through the formulation and application scious, association with place. It is home, where e
of an approach for the design of a lived-world of your roots are, a centre of safety and security, a
significant places. [Here] . . . these possibilities are field of care and concern, a point of orientation.
considered in the context of summaries of the main Such insideness is individual but also intersubjec
features of place and placelessness. tive, a personal experience with which many people
can sympathise; it is the essence of a sense of
place. And it is perhaps presymbolic and universal
PLACE insofar as it is an aspect of profound place experi
ence anywhere, yet is not associated with the cul
Places are fusions of human and natural order and turally defined meanings of specific places. This is,
are the significant centres of our immediate experi in fact, existential insideness – the unselfconscious
ences of the world. They are defined less by unique and authentic experience of place as central to
locations, landscape, and communities than by the existence. The next level of experience is also au
focusing of experiences and intentions onto par thentic and unselfconscious, but it is cultural and
ticular settings. Places are not abstractions or con communal rather than individual: it involves a deep
cepts, but are directly experienced phenomena of and unreflective participation in the symbols of a
the lived-world and hence are full with meanings, place for what they are. It is associated particularly
with real objects, and with ongoing activities. They with the sacred experience of involvement in holy
are important sources of individual and communal places, and with the secular experience of being
identity, and are often profound centres of human known in and knowing the named and significant
existence to which people have deep emotional places of a home region. At a shallower level of
and psychological ties. Indeed our relationships insideness there is an authentic sense of place that
with places are just as necessary, varied, and some is selfconscious, and which involves a deliberate
times perhaps just as unpleasant, as our relation attempt to appreciate fully the significance of places
ships with other people. without the adoption of narrow intellectual or social
Experience of place can range in scale from part conventions and fashions. This is the experience
of a room to an entire continent, but at all scales of a sensitive and open-minded outsider seeking
places are whole entities, syntheses of natural and to grasp places for what they are to those who
man-made objects, activities and functions, and dwell in them and for what they mean to him. It is
meanings given by intentions. Out of these com an attitude of particular importance in terms of the
ponents the identity of a particular place is moulded, possibilities it offers to contemporary and authentic
but they do not define this identity – it is the special place-making. In contrast is the superficial level of
quality of insideness and the experience of being insideness, which involves simply being in a place
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268 E dward R elph
without attending in any sensitive way to its qual is becoming a world fate” (both cited in Pappen
ities or significances. Though each of us must experi heim, 1959, p. 33). At less deep levels placelessness
ence many of the places we visit like this, since is the adoption of the attitude described by Harvey
concern with our activities takes precedence and Cox (1968, p. 424) as an “abstract geometric view
it becomes impossible to concentrate on the place of place, denuded of its human meaning”, and it
itself, when this is the only form of experience is manifest in landscapes that can be aptly de
of place it denotes a real failure to ‘see’ or to be scribed by Stephen Kurtz’ specific account (1973,
involved in places. For those swayed by the easy p. 23) of Howard Johnson’s restaurants: “Nothing
charms of mass culture or the cool attractions of calls attention to itself; it is all remarkably unre
technique this does seem to be the primary, perhaps markable . . . You have seen it, heard it, experienced
the only, way of experiencing environments; and it all before, and yet . . . you have seen and experi
consequently they feel no care or commitment for enced nothing . . .”
places: they are geographically alienated. As a selfconsciously adopted posture place
The various levels of insideness are manifest lessness is particularly apparent in technique, the
in the creation of distinctive types of places. The overriding concern with efficiency as an end in
deep levels of existential insideness are apparent itself. In technique places can be treated as the
in the unselfconscious making of places which are interchangeable, replaceable locations of things, as
human in their scale and organisation, which fit indeed they are by multinational corporations, power
both their physical and cultural contexts and hence ful central governments, and uninvolved planners.
are as varied as those contexts, and which are As an unselfconscious attitude placelessness is
filled with significances for those who live in them. particularly associated with mass culture – the
Authentic and selfconscious insideness offers a adoption of fashions and ideas about landscapes
similar, though less completely involved, possibility and places that are coined by a few ‘experts’ and
for expressing man’s humanity in places. In both disseminated to the people through the mass media.
instances “the making of places is”, as Rapoport The products of these two attitudes are combined
(1972, p. 3-3-10) writes, “the ordering of the world”, in uniform, sterile, other-directed, and kitschy places
for it differentiates the world into qualitatively – places which have few significances and symbols,
distinct centres and gives a structure that both only more or less gaudy signs and things perform
reflects and guides experiences. This is not so with ing functions with greater or lesser efficiency. The
incidental insideness, for such non-commitment overall result is the undermining of the importance
opens the way for the development of environ of place for both individuals and cultures, and the
ments ordered by conceptual principles or mass casual replacement of the diverse and significant
fashions rather than by patterns of direct experi places of the world with anonymous spaces and
ence. In short, uncommitted insideness is the basis exchangeable environments.
for placelessness.
THE INEVITABILITY OF
PLACELESSNESS PLACELESSNESS?
Placelessness describes both an environment with The places that we have known belong now only
out significant places and the underlying attitude, to the little world of space on which we map them
which does not acknowledge significance in places. for our own convenience. None of them was ever
It reaches back into the deepest levels of place, more than a thin slice held between the con
cutting roots, eroding symbols, replacing diversity tiguous impressions that composed our life at
with uniformity and experiential order with con that time; remembrance for a particular form is
ceptual order. At its most profound it consists of a but regret for a particular moment, and houses,
pervasive and perhaps irreversible alienation from roads, avenues, are as fugitive, alas, as the years.
places as the homes of men: “He who has no home
now will not build one anymore”, Rilke declared, Thus Marcel Proust (1970, p. 288) expressed with
and this was echoed by Heidegger – “Homelessness nostalgia the insignificance of places for modern
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man. No more is there the “sense of continuity technique and to central authorities – two of the
with place” which Harvey Cox (1968, p. 423) be primary sources of placelessness – seems either
lieves is so necessary for people’s sense of reality futile or impossible. We may protest it, deplore it,
and so essential for their identity; the meanings of propose alternatives to it, but the fundamental basis
places have become as ephemeral as their physical for our experience of the landscapes we live in is
forms. Cox judges this as “one of the most deplor increasingly becoming the attitude of placelessness.
able characteristics of our time”, but deplore it,
condemn it, criticise it as we might, there often
appears to be little that can be done to prevent the DESIGNING A LIVED-WORLD
diminishing of significant relations with places. OF PLACES
The prospect of inevitable placelessness is sup
ported by Jacques Ellul’s view of technique, one of But such pessimism and fatalism are not yet
the main forces behind the developing placeless justified. There may indeed come a time when
geography. He writes (1964, p. 436): “The attitude placelessness is inevitable because it is the only
of scientists, at any rate, is clear. Technique exists geography we know, but so long as there are what t
h
because it is technique. The golden age will be Grant (1969, p. 139) calls “intimations of authentic r
because it will be. Any other answer is superfluous.” deprival”, then the possibility of some different way e
In other words technique has a drive of its own that of thinking and acting must remain. David Brower e
is universal, we can no longer think in terms other (in Gussow, 1971?, p. 15) is in fact quite specific
than those of technique because it is the only lan about what must be done: “The best weapon
guage we know, and the only possibility is that against the unending deprivation that would be the
placelessness will come to dominate. If we regret consequence of . . . unending demand is a revival
the disappearance of significant places this is only of man’s sense of place.” How this is to be achieved
sentimentality and we should at least acknowledge he does not make clear, but it is certain that loss
the benefits of the new geography. As George Grant of attachment to places and the decline of the
(1969, p. 138) expresses it: ability to make places authentically do constitute
real deprivations, and that the redevelopment of
It might be said that the older systems of mean such attachments and abilities is essential if we
ing have been replaced by a new one. The are to create environments that do not have to be
enchantment of our souls by myth, philosophy ignored or endured. Furthermore, there appears to
or revelation has been replaced by a more imme be a possibility of doing this outside the context
diate meaning – the building of free and equal of technique, for sense of place is in its essence
men by the overcoming of chance. both prescientific and intersubjective.
The possibilities for maintaining and reviving
But in what sense freedom and in what sense equal man’s sense of place do not lie in the preservation
ity? To master chance in human and non-human of old places – that would be museumisation; nor
nature requires the most efficient use of technique can they lie in a selfconscious return to the tradi
that is possible, and that in turn requires the perfec tional ways of placemaking – that would require
tion of science and powerful central government. the regaining of a lost state of innocence. Instead,
Louch (1966, p. 239) has declared: “Totalitarianism placelessness must be transcended. “That human
is too weak a word and too inefficient an instrument activity should become more dispersed is inevit
to describe the perfect scientific society.” Alexis de able”, Georges Matoré (1966, p. 6) has written, “but
Tocqueville (1945, vol. II, p. 337) wrote: “The will to compensate let the occupied, lived-in space
of man is not shattered but softened, bent and acquire more cohesion, become as rich as possible,
guided – such centralised power does not destroy, and grow large with the experience of living.”
but compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies Similarly Harvey Cox (1968, p. 424) has argued that
a people.” beyond the stage of homogeneous space, in which
If Tocqueville, Grant, and Ellul are correct, and every place is interchangeable with every other
in the landscape of industrial cultures there is mas place, lies a stage of human space in which “space
sive evidence to support them, then opposition to is for man and places are understood as giving
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270 E dward R elph
pace, variety and orientation to man”. This will not What is needed is not a precisely mathematical
come about automatically but through deliberate procedure that treats the environments we live in
effort and the development of ‘secularisation’, an like some great machine that we do not yet quite
attitude which corresponds closely to selfconscious understand, but an approach to the design of
authenticity. Secularisation “dislodges ancient op the lived-world of both everyday and exceptional
pressions and overturns stultifying conventions. It experiences – an approach that is wholly self
turns man’s social and cultural life over to him, conscious yet does seek to create wholly designed
demanding a constant expenditure of vision and environments into which people must be fitted,
competence” (Cox, 1965, p. 86). While the danger an approach that is responsive to local structures
always remains of this being short-circuited by of meaning and experience, to particular situations
new orthodoxies that will result in placelessness, and to the variety of levels of meaning of place;
secularisation provides a very real basis for optim an approach that takes its inspiration from the ex
ism about places so long as we can live up to istential significance of place, the need that many
the responsibilities it demands. Cox continues: “A people have for a profound attachment to places,
secular civilisation need not be monochrome or and the ontological principles of dwelling and spar
homogeneous. But the character lent by diversity ing identified by Heidegger (Vycinas, 1961). Such
cannot be left to chance. Like everything else in an approach cannot provide precise solutions to
the secular city variety must be planned or it does clearly defined problems, but, proceeding from an
not happen.” appreciation of the significance of place and the
The creating of a variety of places which give particular activities and local situations, it would
pace, orientation, and identity to man is clearly no perhaps provide a way of outlining some of the main
simple task. It involves what Nairn (1965, p. 93) directions and possibilities, thus allowing scope for
has called “the terrific assumption” that “each place individuals and groups to make their own places,
is different, that each case must be decided on its and to give those places authenticity and significance
own merits, that completely different solutions may by modifying them and by dwelling in them.
be needed for apparently similar cases”. To acknow David Brower (in Gussow, 1971?, p. 15) has
ledge this does not mean that humanist place- written that “the places we have roots in, and the
making must be chaotic and unstructured, but flavour of their light and sound and feel when things
rather that its order must be derived from significant are right in those places, are the wellsprings of our
experience and not from arbitrary abstractions and serenity”. It is not possible to design rootedness
concepts as represented on maps and plans. The nor to guarantee that things will be right in places,
implication is that selfconscious and authentic but it is perhaps possible to provide conditions that
place-making is not something that can be done will allow roots and care for places to develop. To
programmatically. A method like that developed do this is no easy task, and indeed how or whether
by Christopher Alexander (Alexander, 1964, 1966; such a complex synthesis of procedure and senti
Alexander and Poyner, 1970), based on the decom ment can be achieved in designing a lived-world
position of sets of environmental objects and of places is by no means clear. But if places matter
activities into their atomic elements, and the re to us, if we are at all concerned about the psycholog
constitution of these into a design solution, does ical consequences and moral issues in uprooting
have considerable value for improving current and increasing geographical mobility and placeless
design strategies and possibly for achieving designs ness, then we must explore the possibility of develop
that fit local situations well; and approaches like ing an approach for making places selfconsciously
Gordon Cullen’s analysis (1971) of the structures and authentically. The only alternatives are to cele
of visual experience of townscape are potentially of brate and participate in the glorious non-place urban
great use in improving the quality of appearance society, or to accept in silence the trivialisation
of landscapes. But these, and almost all the other and careless eradication of the significant places
procedures of environmental design, are either too of our lives. And, as Sinclair Gauldie (1969, p. 182)
formal and too rigidly prescriptive, or they treat has written: “To live in an environment which has
experience and meaning only as other variables to be endured or ignored rather than enjoyed is to
capable of manipulation. be diminished as a human being.”
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CONCLUSION Cullen, G. (1971) The Concise Townscape (London:

Architectural Press).
A deep human need exists for associations with Ellul, J. (1964) The Technological Society (New York:
significant places. If we choose to ignore that need, Random House).
and to allow the forces of placelessness to continue Gauldie, S. (1969) Architecture: The Appreciation of the
unchallenged, then the future can only hold an en Arts 1 (London: Oxford University Press).
vironment in which places simply do not matter. If, Grant, G. (1969) Technology and Empire (Toronto:
on the other hand, we choose to respond to that need Anansi).
and to transcend placelessness, then the potential Gussow, A. (1971?) A Sense of Place (San Francisco:
exists for the development of an environment in Friends of the Earth).
which places are for man, reflecting and enhancing Kurtz, S. (1973) Wasteland: Building the American Dream
the variety of human experience. Which of these (New York: Praeger).
two possibilities is most probable, or whether there Louch, A.R. (1966) Explanation and Human Action
are other possibilities, is far from certain. But one (Berkeley: University of California Press).
thing at least is clear whether the world we live in Matoré, G. (1966) “Existential space” Landscape t
h
has a placeless geography or a geography of significant 15 (3) 5–6. r
places, the responsibility for it is ours alone. Nairn, I. (1965) The American Landscape (New York: e
Random House). e
Pappenheim, F. (1959) The Alienation of Modern Man
REFERENCES (New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks).
Proust, M. (1970) Swann’s Way, Part Two (London:
Alexander, C. (1964) Notes on the Synthesis of Form Chatto & Windus).
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press). Rapoport, A. (1972) “Australian aborigines and the
Alexander, C. (1966) “A city is not a city” Design 206 definition of place” Environmental Design: Research
47– 55. and Practice Ed. W.J. Mitchell, Volume 1, Proceed
Alexander, C., and Poyner, B. (1970?) “The atoms of ings of the 3rd EDRA Conference, Los Angeles,
environmental structure” Working Paper No. 42, pp. 3-3-1 to 3-3-14.
Centre for Planning and Development Research, Tocqueville, A. de (1945) Democracy in America
University of California, Berkeley. Volume II (New York: Vintage Books).
Cox, H. (1965) The Secular City (Toronto: Macmillan). Vycinas, V. (1961) Earth and Gods (The Hague:
Cox, H. (1968) “The restoration of a sense of place” Martinus Nijhoff).
Ekistics 25 422–424.
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“The Phenomenon of Place”
from Architectural Association Quarterly (1976)
Christian Norberg-Schulz
Design theories are often derived from the larger philosophical and cultural movements where they draw their
inspiration. This is certainly the case with the use of phenomenology and its application to environmental
knowledge as expressed in the writings of Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000). He draws on the phenom-
enological works of both Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger to develop a critique of modern architecture
and urbanism and urge a return to place-based design.
Phenomenology was first delineated by Edmund Husserl in his 1906 work The Idea of Phenomenology.
It attempted to explain how people receive sensory material about the physical world (the phenomena of
objects and situations) and consciously process this material to find meaning. Norberg-Schulz adopts Hus-
serl’s need for a “return to things” within the everyday lifeworld, whereby people can readily find meaning in
the physical elements that structure place-based experience. In this article, he reintroduces the reader to
important concepts such as physical character, identity, space, and place, as well as the Roman concept of
genius loci, the guardian spirit or essence of place. The work is also influenced by Martin Heidegger’s short
essay, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” which poses existential questions relating “being” and identity to notions
of place, highlighted by the author’s example of place-based identity markers found in common language –
“I am a New Yorker,” or “I am a Roman.”
“The Phenomenon of Place,” along with other works by Norberg-Schulz, is a direct response to a perceived
crisis in the design professions. Environmental phenomenology arose as a means of providing a more com-
municative method of design, whereby place-based meaning could be transmitted more clearly than the overly
diagrammatic and mixed messages found in modernism. Because of its universalizing nature and non-place
qualities, modern design is perceived here as the product of elite and abstract mental constructs often devoid
of accessible or popular meaning. This perception is very different from the critical regionalist understanding
that modernism itself can be made relevant to varied regional contexts. Within his writing, Norberg-Schulz
bemoans the loss of design’s communicative role. He suggests designers should make visible, differentiate,
and “concretize” the physical character and essence of places. Here Norberg-Schulz parallels the efforts of
other authors interested in design communication, such as Charles Jencks, Kevin Lynch, Aldo Rossi, and
Robert Venturi, who address issues of semiotics, text, legibility, and imageability in design.
Norberg-Schulz’s work has had various positive impacts on the design field. In many ways, environmental
phenomenology provides a theoretical basis for contextualism and renewed design interests in materiality,
texture, sensory experience, and the poetics of design. His writing on place, genius loci, identity, and physical
character is part of a larger thematic literature on theories of place and space that began in academic circles
in the late 1960s and continues nowadays. His advocacy of place in design is central to the growth of place-
making strategies, Critical Regionalism, and the work of many designers around the world.
Christian Norberg-Schulz was a theorist and professor of architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture.
He studied at Harvard, the Zurich Polytechnic and the Technical University of Trondheim, Norway. He was
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“ T he P henomenon o F P lace ” 273
associated with the Norwegian CIAM group in the 1950s and was co-director of Lotus International. He was
a voluminous author of architectural and design history and theory. His works include the following: Intentions
in Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965); Existence, Space and Architecture (New York: Praeger,
1971); Meaning in Western Architecture (New York: Praeger, 1975); Architecture, Meaning and Place (New
York: Rizzoli, 1980); Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980);
“Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture,” in Perspecta 20 (New Haven, CT: Yale Architectural Journal, 1983);
The Concept of Dwelling: On the Way to Figurative Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1985); and Architecture,
Presence, Language and Place (Milan: Skira, 2000).
Other key texts on environmental phenomenology and its use in design include: Gaston Bachelard, The
Poetics of Space (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994, original 1958); Martin Heidegger’s essays “Building
Dwelling Thinking” and “. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . . ,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971); Kenneth Frampton, “On Reading Heidegger,” in Oppositions 4 (October
1974); David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer (eds), Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenom-
enology of Person and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); David Seamon (ed.), Dwelling,
Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology (Albany, NY: State University of New York t
h
Press, 1993); Sarah Menin (ed.), Constructing Place: Mind and the Matter of Place-Making (London: Rout- r
lege, 2004); and Dylan Trigg, The Memory of Place: A Phenomenology of the Uncanny (Athens, OH: Ohio e
University Press, 2012). e
For a comprehensive overview of the history of space and place see: Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into
Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1993) and The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997);
Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press,
2001); Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (New York: Wiley/Blackwell, 2004); and Phil Hubbard and
Rob Kitchin (eds), Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 2nd edn. (New York: Sage Publications, 2010).
For critical perspectives on the production and use of space see: Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space,
trans. David Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Mark Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban
Space (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985); Ali Madanipour, Design of Urban Space: An Inquiry into
a Socio-Spatial Process (Chichester, UK: John Wiley, 1996); and Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
Our everyday life-world consists of concrete The concrete things which constitute our given
“phenomena.” It consists of people, of animals, of world are interrelated in complex and perhaps
flowers, trees and forests, of stone, earth, wood contradictory ways. Some of the phenomena may
and water, of towns, streets and houses, doors, for instance comprise others. The forest consists
windows and furniture. And it consists of sun, moon of trees, and the town is made up of houses.
and stars, of drifting clouds, of night and day and “Landscape” is such a comprehensive phenomenon.
changing seasons. But it also comprises more in- In general we may say that some phenomena form
tangible phenomena such as feelings. This is what an “environment” to others. A concrete term for
is “given,” this is the “content” of our existence. environment is place. It is common usage to say
Thus Rilke says: “Are we perhaps here to say: house, that acts and occurrences take place. In fact it is
bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window, – at meaningless to imagine any happening without
best: Pillar, tower” (Rilke, 1972, Elegy XI). Every- reference to a locality. Place is evidently an integral
thing else, such as atoms and molecules, numbers part of existence. What, then, do we mean with
and all kinds of “data,” are abstractions or tools the word “place”? Obviously we mean something
which are constructed to serve other purposes than more than abstract location. We mean a totality
those of everyday life. Today it is common to mis- made up of concrete things having material sub-
take the tools for reality. stance, shape, texture and colour. Together these
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274 C hristian N orberg - S chulz
things determine an “environmental character,” might proceed to obtain the needed understanding.
which is the essence of place. In general a place One of the poems used by Heidegger to explain
is given as such a character or “atmosphere.” A the nature of language, is the splendid “A Winter
place is therefore a qualitative, “total” phenomenon, Evening” by Georg Trakl (Heidegger, 1971). The
which we cannot reduce to any of its properties, words of Trakl also serve our purpose very well,
such as spatial relationships, without losing its con- as they make present a total life-situation where
crete nature out of sight. the aspect of place is strongly felt:3
Everyday experience moreover tells us that dif-
A Winter Evening
ferent actions need different environments to take
place in a satisfactory way. As a consequence, Window with falling snow is arrayed,
towns and houses consist of a multitude of par- Long tolls the vesper bell,
ticular places. This fact is of course taken into The house is provided well,
consideration by current theory of planning and The table is for many laid.
architecture, but so far the problem has been treated Wandering ones, more than a few,
in a too abstract way. “Taking place” is usually Come to the door on darksome courses,
understood in a quantitative, “functional” sense, Golden blooms the tree of graces
with implications such as spatial distribution and Drawing up the earth’s cool dew.
dimensioning. But are not “functions” inter-human Wanderer quietly steps within;
and similar everywhere? Evidently not. “Similar” Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
functions, even the most basic ones such as sleep- There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
ing and eating take place in very different ways, Upon the table bread and wine.
and demand places with different properties, in
accordance with different cultural traditions and We shall not repeat Heidegger’s profound analysis
different environmental conditions. The functional of the poem, but rather point out a few properties
approach therefore left out the place as a concrete which illuminate our problem. In general, Trakl
“here” having its particular identity. uses concrete images which we all know from our
Being qualitative totalities of a complex nature, everyday world. He talks about “snow,” “window,”
places cannot be described by means of analytic, “house,” “table,” “door,” “tree,” “threshold,” “bread
“scientific” concepts. As a matter of principle sci- and wine,” “darkness” and “light,” and he character-
ence “abstracts” from the given to arrive at neutral, izes man as a “wanderer.” These images, however,
“objective” knowledge. What is lost, however, is also imply more general structures. First of all the
the everyday life-world, which ought to be the real poem distinguishes between an outside and an
concern of man in general and planners and archi- inside. The outside is presented in the first two lines
tects in particular.1 Fortunately a way out of the of the first stanza, and comprises natural as well
impasse exists, that is, the method known as phe- as man-made elements. Natural place is present
nomenology. Phenomenology was conceived as a in the falling snow which implies winter, and by
“return to things,” as opposed to abstractions and the evening. The very title of the poem “places”
mental constructions. So far, phenomenologists have everything in this natural context. A winter evening,
been mainly concerned with ontology, psychology, however, is something more than a point in the
ethics and to some extent aesthetics, and have given calendar. As a concrete presence, it is experienced
relatively little attention to the phenomenology as a set of particular qualities, or in general as a
of the daily environment. A few pioneer works Stimmung or “character,” which forms a background
however exist but they hardly contain any direct to acts and occurrences. In the poem this character
reference to architecture.2 A phenomenology of is given by the snow falling on the window, cold,
architecture is therefore urgently needed. soft and soundless, hiding the contours of those
Some of the philosophers who have approached objects which are still recognized in the approach-
the problem of our life-world, have used language ing darkness. The word “falling” moreover creates
and literature as sources of “information.” Poetry a sense of space, or rather: an implied presence
in fact is able to concretize those totalities which of earth and sky. With a minimum of words, Trakl
elude science, and may therefore suggest how we thus brings a total natural environment to life. But
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the outside also has man-made properties. This is Trakl’s poem illuminates some essential phe-
indicated by the vesper bell, which is heard every- nomena of our life-world, and in particular the basic
where, and makes the “private” inside become part properties of place. First of all it tells us that every
of a comprehensive, “public” totality. The vesper situation is local as well as general. The winter
bell, however, is something more than a practical evening described is obviously a local, nordic phe-
man-made artifact. It is a symbol, which reminds nomenon, but the implied notions of outside and
us of the common values which are at the basis of inside are general, as are the meanings connected
that totality. In Heidegger’s words: “the tolling of with this distinction. The poem hence concretizes
the evening bell brings men, as mortals, before the basic properties of existence. “Concretize” here
divine” (Heidegger, 1971, p. 199). means to make the general “visible” as a concrete,
The inside is presented in the next two verses. local situation. In doing this the poem moves in
It is described as a house, which offers man shelter the opposite direction of scientific thought. Whereas
and security by being enclosed and “well provided”. science departs from the “given”, poetry brings us
It has, however, a window, an opening which makes back to the concrete things, uncovering the meanings
us experience the inside as a complement to the inherent in the life-world (Norberg-Schulz, 1963, t
h
outside. As a final focus within the house we find chapter on “symbolization”). r
the table, which “is for many laid”. At the table Furthermore Trakl’s poem distinguishes between e
men come together, it is the centre which more than natural and man-made elements, whereby it sug- e
anything else constitutes the inside. The character gests a point of departure for an “environmental
of the inside is hardly told, but anyhow present. phenomenology.” Natural elements are evidently
It is luminous and warm, in contrast to the cold the primary components of the given, and places
darkness outside, and its silence is pregnant with are in fact usually defined in geographical terms.
potential sound. In general the inside is a compre- We must repeat however, that “place” means some-
hensible world of things, where the life of “many” thing more than location. Various attempts at a
may take place. description of natural places are offered by current
In the next two stanzas the perspective is literature on “landscape,” but again we find that the
deepened. Here the meaning of places and things usual approach is too abstract, being based on
comes forth, and man is presented as a wanderer “functional” or perhaps “visual” considerations (see,
on “darksome courses.” Rather than being placed for instance, Appleton, 1975). Again we must turn
safely within the house he has created for himself, to philosophy for help. As a first, fundamental dis-
he comes from the outside, from the “path of life,” tinction Heidegger introduces the concepts of
which also represents man’s attempt at “orienting” “earth” and “sky,” and says: “Earth is the serving
himself in the given unknown environment. But bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in
nature also has another side: it offers the grace of rock and water, rising up into plant and animal . . .”
growth and blossom. In the image of the “golden”
tree, earth and sky are unified and become a world. The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the
Through man’s labour this world is brought inside course of the changing moon, the glitter of the
as bread and wine, whereby the inside is “illum stars, the year’s seasons, the light and dusk of
inated”, that is, becomes meaningful. Without the day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency
“sacred” fruits of sky and earth, the inside would and inclemency of the weather, the drifting
remain “empty”. The house and the table receive clouds and blue depth of the ether . . .
and gather, and bring the world “close”. To dwell Heidegger, 1971, p. 149
in a house therefore means to inhabit the world. But
this dwelling is not easy; it has to be reached on Like many fundamental insights, the distinction
dark paths, and a threshold separates the outside between earth and sky might seem trivial. Its im-
from the inside. Representing the “rift” between portance however comes out when we add Heideg
“otherness” and manifest meaning, it embodies suf- ger’s definition of “dwelling:” “the way in which
fering and is “turned to stone.” In the threshold, you are and I am, the way in which we humans are
thus, the problem of dwelling comes to the fore on the earth, is dwelling . . .” But “on the earth”
(Heidegger, 1971, p. 204). already means “under the sky” (Heidegger, 1971,
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pp. 147, 149). He also calls what is between earth words: “the thing things world,” where “thinging”
and sky the world, and says that “the world is the is used in the original sense of “gathering,” and
house where the mortals dwell” (Heidegger, 1957, further: “Only what conjoins itself out of world
p. 13). In other words, when man is capable of becomes a thing” (Heidegger, 1971, pp. 181–2).
dwelling the world becomes an “inside.” Our introductory remarks give several indica-
In general, nature forms an extended compre- tions about the structure of places. Some of these
hensive totality, a “place,” which according to local have already been worked out by phenomenologist
circumstances has a particular identity. This iden- philosophers, and offer a good point of departure
tity, or “spirit,” may be described by means of the for a more complete phenomenology. A first step
kind of concrete, “qualitative” terms Heidegger uses is taken with the distinction of natural and man-
to characterize earth and sky, and has to take this made phenomena. A second step is represented
fundamental distinction as its point of departure. by the categories of earth-sky (horizontal-vertical)
In this way we might arrive at an existentially and outside-inside. These categories have spatial
relevant understanding of landscape, which ought implications, and “space” is hence re-introduced,
to be preserved as the main designation of natural not primarily as a mathematical concept, but as an
places. Within the landscape, however, there are existential dimension (Norberg-Schulz, 1971, where
subordinate places, as well as natural “things” such the concept “existential space” is used). A final and
as Trakl’s “tree.” In these things the meaning of particularly important step is taken with the con-
the natural environment is “condensed.” cept of “character.” Character is determined by
The man-made parts of the environment are how things are, and gives our investigation a basis
first of all “settlements” of different scale, from in the concrete phenomena of our everyday life-
houses and farms to villages and towns, and sec- world. Only in this way we may fully grasp the
ondly “paths” which connect these settlements, as genius loci; the “spirit of place” which the ancients
well as various elements which transform nature recognized as that “opposite” man has to come to
into a “cultural landscape.” If the settlements are terms with, to be able to dwell.4 The concept of
organically related to their environment, it implies genius loci denotes the essence of place.
that they serve as foci where the environmental
character is condensed and “explained.” Thus
Heidegger says: THE STRUCTURE OF PLACE
the single houses, the villages, the towns are Our preliminary discussion of the phenomena of
works of building which within and around them- place led to the conclusion that the structure
selves gather the multifarious in-between. The of place ought to be described in terms of “land-
buildings bring the earth as the inhabited landscape” and “settlement,” and analyzed by means
scape close to man, and at the same time place of the categories “space” and “character.” Whereas
the closeness of neighbourly dwelling under the “space” denotes the three-dimensional organization
expanse of the sky. of the elements which make up a place, “character”
Heidegger, 1957, p. 13 denotes the general “atmosphere” which is the most
comprehensive property of any place. Instead of
The basic property of man-made places is therefore making a distinction between space and character,
concentration and enclosure. They are “insides” in it is of course possible to employ one comprehen-
a full sense, which means that they “gather” what sive concept, such as “lived space.”5 For our purpose,
is known. To fulfill this function they have openings however, it is practical to distinguish between space
which relate to the outside. (Only an inside can in and character. Similar spatial organizations may
fact have openings). Buildings are furthermore re- possess very different characters according to the
lated to their environment by resting on the ground concrete treatment of the space-defining elements
and rising towards the sky. Finally the man-made (the boundary). The history of basic spatial forms
environments comprise artifacts or “things,” which have been given ever new characterizing interpre-
may serve as internal foci, and emphasize the tations.6 On the other hand it has to be pointed out
gathering function of the settlement. In Heidegger’s that the spatial organization puts certain limits to
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characterization, and that the two concepts are properties of concrete space. Finally it has to be
interdependent. mentioned that natural elements (such as hills) and
“Space” is certainly no new term in architectural settlements may be clustered or grouped with a
theory. But space can mean many things. In current varying degree of proximity.
literature we may distinguish between two uses: All the spatial properties mentioned are of a
space as three-dimensional geometry, and space “topological” kind, and correspond to the well-
as perceptual field (Norberg-Schulz, 1971, pp. 12ff ). known “principles of organization” of Gestalt theory.
None of these however are satisfactory, being The primary existential importance of these prin-
abstractions from the intuitive three-dimensional ciples is confirmed by the researches of Piaget on
totality of everyday experience, which we may the child’s conception of space (Norberg-Schulz,
call “concrete space.” Concrete human actions in 1971, p. 18). Geometrical modes of organization
fact do not take place in an homogeneous isotropic only develop later in life to serve particular pur-
space, but in a space distinguished by qualitative poses, and may in general be understood as a
differences, such as “up” and “down.” In architec- more “precise” definition of the basic topological
tural theory several attempts have been made to structures. The topological enclosure thus becomes t
h
define space in concrete, qualitative terms. Giedion a circle, the “free” curve a straight line, and the r
thus uses the distinction between “outside” and cluster a grid. In architecture geometry is used to e
“inside” as the basis for a grand view of architec- make a general comprehensive system manifest, e
tural history (Giedion, 1964). Kevin Lynch pene- such as an inferred “cosmic order.”
trates deeper into the structure of concrete space, Any enclosure is defined by a boundary:
introducing the concepts of “node,” “landmark,” Heidegger says: “A boundary is not that at which
“path,” “edge,” and “district” to denote those ele- something stops but, as the Greeks recognized,
ments which form the basis for man’s orientation the boundary is that, from which something begins
in space (Lynch, 1960). Paolo Portoghesi finally its presencing” (Heidegger, 1971, p. 154: presence
defines space as a “system of places,” implying is the old word for being). The boundaries of a
that the concept of space has its roots in concrete built space are known as floor, wall and ceiling. The
situations, although spaces may be described by boundaries of a landscape are structurally similar,
means of mathematics (Portoghesi, 1975, pp. 88ff ). and consist of ground, horizon, and sky. This simple
The latter view corresponds to Heidegger’s state- structural similarity is of basic importance for the
ment that “spaces receive their being from locations relationship between natural and man-made places.
and not from ‘space’ ” (Heidegger, 1971, p. 154). The enclosing properties of a boundary are deter-
The outside–inside relation, which is a primary as- mined by its openings, as was poetically intuited by
pect of concrete space, implies that spaces possess Trakl when using the images of window, door and
a varying degree of extension and enclosure. Whereas threshold. In general the boundary, and in particular
landscapes are distinguished by a varied, but the wall, makes the spatial structure visible as con-
basically continuous extension, settlements are en- tinuous and/or discontinuous extension, direction
closed entities. Settlement and landscape therefore and rhythm.
have a figure–ground relationship. In general, any “Character” is at the same time a more general
enclosure becomes manifest as a “figure” in relation and a more concrete concept than “space.” On
to the extended ground of the landscape. A the one hand it denotes a general comprehensive
settlement loses its identity if this relationship is atmosphere, and on the other the concrete form
corrupted, just as much as the landscape loses its and substance of the space-defining elements. Any
identity as comprehensive extension. In a wider real presence is intimately linked with a character
context any enclosure becomes a centre, which may (Bollnow, 1956). A phenomenology of character has
function as a “focus” for its surroundings. From to comprise a survey of manifest characters as well
the centre space extends with a varying degree of as an investigation of their concrete determinants.
continuity (rhythm) in different directions. Evidently We have pointed out that different actions demand
the main directions are horizontal and vertical, that places with a different character. A dwelling has
is, the directions of earth and sky. Centralization, to be “protective,” an office “practical,” a ballroom
direction and rhythm are therefore other important “festive” and a church “solemn.” When we visit a
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foreign city, we are usually struck by its particular poiesis, that is, “making” (Heidegger, 1954, p. 12).
character, which becomes an important part of A phenomenology of place therefore has to com-
the experience. Landscapes also possess character, prise the basic modes of construction and their
some of which is of a particular “natural” kind. relationship to formal articulation. Only in this way
Thus we talk about “barren” and “fertile,” “smiling” architectural theory gets a truly concrete basis.
and “threatening” landscapes. In general we have The structure of place becomes manifest as en-
to emphasize that all places have character, and that vironmental totalities which comprise the aspects
character is the basic mode in which the world is of character and space. Such places are known as
“given.” To some extent the character of a place “countries,” “regions,” “landscapes,” “settlements,”
is a function of time; it changes with the seasons, and “buildings.” Here we return to the concrete
the course of the day and the weather, factors “things” of our everyday life-world, which was our
which above all determine different conditions point of departure, and remember Rilke’s words:
of light. “Are we perhaps here to say . . .” When places are
The character is determined by the material and classified we should therefore use terms such
formal constitution of the place. We must therefore as “island,” “promontory,” “bay,” “forest,” “grove,”
ask: how is the ground on which we walk, how is or “square,” “street,” “courtyard,” and “floor,”
the sky above our heads, or in general: how are the “wall,” “roof,” “ceiling,” “window,” and “door.”
boundaries which define the place. How a boundary Places are hence designated by nouns. This
is depends upon its formal articulation, which is implies that they are considered real “things that
again related to the way it is “built.” Looking at a exist,” which is the original meaning of the word
building from this point of view, we have to con- “substantive.” Space, instead, as a system of rela-
sider how it rests on the ground and how it rises tions, is denoted by prepositions. In our daily life
towards the sky. Particular attention has to be given we hardly talk about “space,” but about things that
to its lateral boundaries, or walls, which also con- are “over” or “under,” “before” or “behind” each
tribute decisively to determine the character of the other, or we use prepositions such as “at,” “in,”
urban environment. We are indebted to Robert “within,” “on,” “upon,” “to,” “from,” “along,” “next.”
Venturi for having recognized this fact, after it had All these preparations denote topological relations
been considered for many years “immoral” to talk of the kind mentioned before. Character, finally, is
about “facades” (Venturi, 1967, p. 88). Usually the denoted by adjectives, as was indicated above. A
character of a “family” of buildings which consti- character is a complex totality, and a single adjec-
tute a place, is “condensed” in characteristic motifs, tive evidently cannot cover more than one aspect
such as particular types of windows, doors and of this totality. Often, however, a character is so
roofs. Such motifs may become “conventional ele- distinct that one word seems sufficient to grasp its
ments,” which serve to transpose a character from essence. We see, thus, that the very structure of
one place to another. In the boundary, thus, char- everyday language confirms our analysis of place.
acter and space come together, and we may agree Countries, regions, landscapes, settlements, build
with Venturi when he defines architecture as “the ings (and their sub-places) form a series with a
wall between the inside and the outside” (Venturi, gradually diminishing scale. The steps in this series
1967, p. 89). may be called “environmental levels” (Norberg-
Except for the intuitions of Venturi, the problem Schulz, 1971, p. 27). At the “top” of the series we
of character has hardly been considered in current find the more comprehensive natural places which
architectural theory. As a result, theory has to a “contain” the man-made places on the “lower” levels.
high extent lost contact with the concrete life-world. The latter have the “gathering” and “focusing”
This is particularly the case with technology, which function mentioned above. In other words, man
is today considered a mere means to satisfy practi- “receives” the environment and makes it focus in
cal demand. Character however, depends upon how buildings and things. The things thereby “explain”
things are made, and is therefore determined by the the environment and make its character manifest.
technical realization (“building”). Heidegger points Thereby the things themselves become meaningful.
out that the Greek word techne meant a creative That is the basic function of detail in our surround-
“re-vealing” Entbergen of truth, and belonged to ings (Norberg-Schulz, 1971, p. 32). This does not
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imply, however, that the different levels must have other. One side is set off against the other by
the same structure. Architectural history in fact shows the bridge. Nor do the banks stretch along the
that this is rarely the case. Vernacular settlements stream as indifferent border strips of the dry
usually have a topological organization, although land. With the banks, the bridge brings to the
the single houses may be strictly geometrical. In stream the one and the other expanse of the
larger cities we often find topologically organized landscape lying behind them. It brings stream
neighbourhoods within a general geometrical struc- and bank and land into each other’s neighbour-
ture, etc. We shall return to the particular problems hood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape
of structural correspondence later, but have to say around the stream.
some words about the main “step” in the scale of Heidegger, 1971, p. 152
environmental levels: the relation between natural
and man-made places. Heidegger also describes what the bridge gathers
Man-made places are related to nature in three and thereby uncovers its value as a symbol. We
basic ways. Firstly, man wants to make the natural cannot here enter into these details, but want to
structure more precise. That is, he wants to visual- emphasize that the landscape as such gets its value t
h
ize his “understanding” of nature, “expressing” the through the bridge. Before, the meaning of the land- r
existential foothold he has gained. To achieve this, scape was “hidden,” and the building of the bridge e
he builds what he has seen. Where nature suggests brings it out into the open. e
a delimited space he builds an enclosure; where
nature appears “centralized,” he erects a Mal (Frey, The bridge gathers Being into a certain “loca-
1949); where nature indicates a direction, he makes tion” that we may call a “place.” This “place,”
a path. Secondly, man has to symbolize his under- however, did not exist as an entity before the
standing of nature (including himself ). Symbolization bridge (although there were always many “sites”
implies that an experienced meaning is “translated” along the river-bank where it could arise), but
into another medium. A natural character is for comes-to-presence with and as the bridge.
instance translated into a building whose properties Richardson, 1974, p. 585
somehow make the character manifest (Norberg-
Schulz, 1963). The purpose of symbolization is to The existential purpose of building (architecture)
free the meaning from the immediate situation, is therefore to make a site become a place, that is,
whereby it becomes a “cultural object,” which may to uncover the meanings potentially present in the
form part of a more complex situation, or be moved given environment.
to another place. Finally, man needs to gather the The structure of a place is not a fixed, eternal
experienced meanings to create for himself an image state. As a rule places change, sometimes rapidly.
mundi or microcosmos which concretizes his world. This does not mean, however, that the genius loci
Gathering evidently depends on symbolization, and necessarily changes or gets lost. Later we shall
implies a transposition of meanings to one place, show that taking place presupposes that the places
which thereby becomes an existential “centre.” conserve their identity during a certain stretch of
Visualization, symbolization and gathering are time. Stabilitas loci is a necessary condition for
aspects of the general processes of settling; and human life. How then is this stability compatible
dwelling, in the existential sense of the word, de- with the dynamics of change? First of all we may
pends on these functions. Heidegger illustrates the point out that any place ought to have the “cap
problem by means of the bridge; a “building” which acity” of receiving different “contents”, naturally within
visualizes, symbolizes, and gathers, and makes the certain limits.7 A place which is only fitted for one
environment a unified whole. Thus he says: particular purpose would soon become useless.
Secondly it is evident that a place may be “inter-
The bridge swings over the stream with ease preted” in different ways. To protect and conserve
and power. It does not just connect banks that the genius loci in fact means to concretize its es-
are already there, the banks emerge as banks sence in ever new historical contexts. We might
only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge also say that the history of a place ought to be its
designedly causes them to lie across from each “self-realization.” What was there as possibilities
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at the outset, is uncovered through human action, on, and therefore Venetian painters must see every
illuminated and “kept” in works of architecture thing clearer and with more joy than other people”
which are simultaneously “old and new” (Venturi, (Goethe, 1786). Still in 1960 Lawrence Durrell wrote:
1967). A place therefore comprises properties hav- “As you get to know Europe slowly tasting the
ing a varying degree of invariance. wines, cheeses and characters of the different
In general we may conclude that place is countries you begin to realize that the important
the point of departure as well as the goal of our determinant of any culture is after all – the spirit
structural investigation; at the outset place is pre- of place” (Durrell, 1969, p. 156). Modern tourism
sented as a given, spontaneously experienced total- proves that the experience of different places is
ity, at the end it appears as a structured world, a major human interest, although also this value
illuminated by the analysis of the aspects of space today tends to get lost. In fact modern man for a
and character. long time believed that science and technology had
freed him from a direct dependence on places.8
This belief has proved an illusion; pollution and
THE SPIRIT OF PLACE environmental chaos have suddenly appeared as
a frightening nemesis, and as a result the problem
Genius loci is a Roman concept. According to an- of place has regained its true importance.
cient Roman belief every “independent” being We have used the word “dwelling” to denote the
has its genius, its guardian spirit. This spirit gives total man–place relationship. To understand more
life to people and places, accompanies them from fully what this word implies, it is useful to return
birth to death, and determines their character or to the distinction between “space” and “character.”
essence. Even the gods had their genius, a fact which When man dwells, he is simultaneously located
illustrates the fundamental nature of the concept in space and exposed to a certain environmental
(Paulys, n.d.). The genius thus denotes what a thing character. The two psychological functions involved,
is, or what it “wants to be,” to use a word of Louis may be called “orientation” and “identification.”9
Kahn. It is not necessary in our context to go into To gain an existential foothold man has to be able
the history of the concept of genius and its relation- to orientate himself; he has to know where he is.
ship to the daimon of the Greeks. It suffices to point But he also has to identify himself with the environ-
out that ancient man experienced his environment ment, that is, he has to know how he is in a certain
as consisting of definite characters. In particular place.
he recognized that it is of great existential import The problem of orientation has been given a
ance to come to terms with the genius of the local- considerable attention in recent theoretical litera-
ity where his life takes place. In the past survival ture on planning and architecture. Again we may
depended on a “good” relationship to the place in refer to the work of Kevin Lynch, whose concepts
a physical as well as a psychic sense. In ancient of “node,” “path,” and “district” denote the basic
Egypt, for instance, the country was not only cul- spatial structures which are the object of man’s
tivated in accordance with the Nile floods, but the orientation. The perceived interrelationship of these
very structure of the landscape served as a model elements constitutes an “environmental image,” and
for the lay-out of the “public” buildings which should Lynch asserts: “A good environmental image gives
give a man a sense of security by symbolizing its possessor an important sense of emotional se-
an eternal environmental order (Norberg-Schulz, curity” (Lynch, 1960, p. 4). Accordingly all cultures
1975, pp. 10ff ). have developed “systems of orientation,” that is,
During the course of history the genius loci spatial structures which facilitate the development
has remained a living reality, although it may not of a good environmental image. “The world may
have been expressively named as such. Artists and be organized around a set of focal points, or be
writers have found inspiration in local character broken into named regions, or be linked by remem-
and have “explained” the phenomena of everyday bered routes” (Lynch, 1960, p. 7). Often these sys-
life as well as art, referring to landscapes and urban tems of orientation are based on or derived from
milieu. Thus Goethe says: “It is evident, that the a given natural structure. Where the system is weak,
eye is educated by the things it sees from childhood the image-making becomes difficult, and man feels
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“lost.” “The terror of being lost comes from the has to enjoy the creaking sound of snow under the
necessity that a mobile organism be oriented in its feet when he walks around, he has to experience
surroundings” (Lynch, 1960, p. 125). To be lost is the poetical value of being immersed in fog, as
evidently the opposite of the feeling of security Hermann Hesse did when he wrote the lines:
which distinguishes dwelling. The environmental “strange to walk in fog! Lonely is every bush
quality which protects man against getting lost, and stone, no tree sees the other, everything is
Lynch calls “imageability,” which means “that shape, alone . . .”11 The Arab, instead, has to be a friend
colour or arrangement which facilitates the making of the infinitely extended, sandy desert, and the
of vividly-identified, powerfully-structured, highly burning sun. This does not mean that his settlements
useful mental images of the environment” (Lynch, should not protect him against the natural “forces”;
1960, p. 9). Here Lynch implies that the elements a desert settlement in fact primarily aims at the
which constitute the spatial structure are concrete exclusion of sand and sun. But it implies that
“things” with “character” and “meaning.” He limits the environment is experienced as meaningful.
himself, however, to discuss the spatial function Bollnow says appropriately: “Fede Stimmung ist
of these elements, and thus leaves us with a frag- Übereinstimmung,” that is, every character consists t
h
mentary understanding of dwelling. in a correspondence between outer and inner r
Nevertheless, the work of Lynch constitutes an world, and between body and psyche (Bollnow, e
essential contribution to the theory of place. Its 1956, p. 39). For modern urban man the friendship e
importance also consists in the fact that his em- with a natural environment is reduced to frag
pirical studies of concrete urban structure confirm mentary relations. Instead he has to identify with
the general “principles of organization” defined by man-made things, such as streets and houses. The
Gestalt psychology and by the researches into child German-born American architect Gerhard Kallmann
psychology of Piaget.10 once told a story which illustrates what this means.
Without reducing the importance of orientation, Visiting at the end of the Second World War his
we have to stress that dwelling above all presup- native Berlin after many years of absence, he wanted
poses identification with the environment. Although to see the house where he had grown up. As must
orientation and identification are aspects of one be expected in Berlin, the house had disappeared,
total relationship, they have a certain independence and Mr Kallmann felt somewhat lost. Then he
within the totality. It is evidently possible to orientate suddenly recognized the typical pavement of the
oneself well without true identification; one gets sidewalk: the floor on which he had played as
along without feeling “at home.” And it is possible a child! And he experienced a strong feeling of
to feel at home without being well acquainted with having returned home.
the spatial structure of the place, that is, the place The story teaches us that the objects of identific
is only experienced as a gratifying general charac- ation are concrete environmental properties and
ter. True belonging however presupposes that both that man’s relationship to these is usually developed
psychological functions are fully developed. In during childhood. The child grows up in green,
primitive societies we find that even the smallest brown or white spaces; it walks or plays on sand,
environmental details are known and meaningful, earth, stone, or moss, under a cloudy or serene
and that they make up complex spatial structures sky; it grasps and lifts hard and soft things; it hears
(Rapoport, 1975). In modern society, however, at- noises, such as the sound of the wind moving the
tention has almost exclusively been concentrated leaves of a particular kind of tree; and it experi-
on the “practical” function of orientation, whereas ences heat and cold. Thus the child gets acquainted
identification has been left to chance. As a result with the environment, and develops perceptual
true dwelling, in a psychological sense, has been schemata which determine all future experiences
substituted by alienation. It is therefore urgently (Norberg-Schulz, 1963, pp. 41ff ). The schemata
needed to arrive at a fuller understanding of the comprise universal structures which are inter-
concepts of “identification” and “character.” human, as well as locally-determined and culturally-
In our context “identification” means to become conditioned structures. Evidently every human
“friends” with a particular environment. Nordic man being has to possess schemata of orientation as
has to be friends with fog, ice, and cold winds; he well as identification.
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The identity of a person is defined in terms of To gather means that the everyday life-world has
the schemata developed, because they determine become “gewohnt” or “habitual.” But gathering is
the “world” which is accessible. This fact is con a concrete phenomenon, and thus leads us to the
firmed by common linguistic usage. When a person final connotation of “dwelling.” Again it is Heidegger
wants to tell who he is, it is in fact usual to say: who has uncovered a fundamental relationship.
“I am a New Yorker,” or “I am a Roman.” This Thus he points out that the Old English and High
means something much more concrete than to say: German word for “building,” buan, meant to dwell,
“I am an architect,” or perhaps: “I am an optimist.” and that it is intimately related to the verb to be.
We understand that human identity is to a high
extent a function of places and things. Thus Heidegger What then does ich bin mean? The old word
says: “Wir sind die Be-Dingten” (Heidegger, 1971, bauen, to which the bin belongs, answers: ich bin,
p. 181).12 It is therefore not only important that our du bist, mean: I dwell, you dwell. The way in
environment has a spatial structure which facilitates which you are and I am, the manner in which
orientation, but that it consists of concrete objects we humans are on earth, is buan, dwelling.
of identification. Human identity presupposes the Heidegger, 1971, p. 147
identity of place. Identification and orientation are
primary aspects of man’s being-in-the-world. Whereas We may conclude that dwelling means to gather
identification is the basis for man’s sense of belong- the world as a concrete building or “thing,” and
ing, orientation is the function which enables him that the archetypal act of building is the Umfriedung
to be that homo viator which is part of his nature. or enclosure. Trakl’s poetic intuition of the inside–
It is characteristic for modern man that for a long outside relationship thus gets its confirmation, and
time he gave the role as a wanderer pride of place. we understand that our concept of concretization
He wanted to be “free” and conquer the world. denotes the essence of dwelling (Norberg-Schulz,
Today we start to realize that true freedom presup- 1963, pp. 61ff, 68).
poses belonging, and that “dwelling” means belong- Man dwells when he is able to concretize the
ing to a concrete place. world in buildings and things. As we have men-
The word to “dwell” has several connotations tioned above, “concretization” is the function of
which confirm and illuminate our thesis. Firstly the work of art, as opposed to the “abstraction” of
it ought to be mentioned that “dwell” is derived science (Norberg-Schulz, 1963, pp. 168ff ). Works
from the Old Norse dvelja, which meant to linger of art concretize what remains “between” the pure
or remain. Analogously, Heidegger related the objects of science. Our everyday life-world consists
German “wohnen” to “bleiben” and “sich aufhalten” of such “intermediary” objects, and we understand
(Heidegger, 1971, pp. 146ff ). Furthermore he points that the fundamental function of art is to gather
out that the Gothic wunian meant to “be at peace,” the contradictions and complexities of the life-
“to remain in peace.” The German word for “peace,” world. Being an imago mundi, the work of art helps
Friede, means to be free, that is, protected from man to dwell. Hölderlin was right when he said:
harm and danger. This protection is achieved by
means of an Umfriedung or enclosure. Friede is also Full of merit, yet poetically, man
related to zufrieden (content), Freund (friend) and Dwells on this earth.
the Gothic frijön (love). Heidegger uses these lin-
guistic relationships to show that dwelling means to This means: man’s merits do not count much if he
be at peace in a protected place. We should also is unable to dwell poetically, that is, to dwell in the
mention that the German word for dwelling Wohnung, true sense of the word. Thus Heidegger says: “Poetry
derives from das Gewohnte, which means what is does not fly above and surmount the earth in order
known or habitual. “Habit” and “habitat” show an to escape it and hover over it. Poetry is what first
analogous relationship. In other words, man knows brings man onto the earth, making him belong to
what has become accessible to him through dwell- it, and thus brings him into dwelling” (Heidegger,
ing. We here return to the Übereinstimmung or cor- 1971, p. 218). Only poetry in all its forms (also as
respondence between man and his environment, and the “art of living”) makes human existence mean-
arrive at the very root of the problem of “gathering.” ingful, and meaning is the fundamental human need.
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Architecture belongs to poetry, and its purpose 4 Heidegger points out the relationship between
is to help man to dwell. But architecture is a difficult the words gegen (against, opposite) and Gegend
art. To make practical towns and buildings is not (environment, locality).
enough. Architecture comes into being when a “total 5 This has been done by some writers, such
environment is made visible,” to quote the definition as K. Graf von Dürckheim, E. Straus, and O.F.
of Susanne Langer (1953). In general, this means Bollnow.
to concretize the genius loci. We have seen that this 6 We may compare with Alberti’s distinction
is done by means of buildings which gather the between “beauty” and “ornament.”
properties of the place and bring them close to 7 For the concept of “capacity” see Norberg-
man. The basic act of architecture is therefore to Schulz, Intentions (1963).
understand the “vocation” of the place. In this way 8 See M.M. Webber, Explorations into Urban
we protect the earth and become ourselves part of Structure (1963), who talks about “non-place
a comprehensive totality. What is here advocated urban realm.”
is not some kind of “environmental determinism.” 9 Norberg-Schulz, Intentions (1963), where the
We only recognize the fact that man is an integral concepts “cognitive orientation” and “cathetic t
h
part of the environment, and that it can only lead orientation” are used. r
to human alienation and environmental disruption 10 For a detailed discussion, see Norberg-Schulz, e
if he forgets that. To belong to a place means to Existence (1971). e
have an existential foothold, in a concrete everyday 11 Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern! Einsam ist jeder
sense. When God said to Adam: “You shall be a Busch und Stein, kein Baum sieht den anderen,
fugitive and a wanderer on the Earth,”13 he put man jeder ist allein.
in front of his most basic problem: to cross the 12 Heidegger, “We are the be-thinged,” the con-
threshold and regain the lost place. ditioned ones.
13 Genesis, chapter 4, verse 12.
NOTES
REFERENCES
1 The concept “everyday life-world” was intro-
duced by Husserl in The Crisis of European Appleton, J. (1975) The Experience of Landscape.
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936). London.
2 Heidegger, “Bauen Wohnen Denken”; Bollnow, Bollnow, O.F. (1956) Das Wesen der Stimmungen.
“Mensch und Raum”; Merleau-Ponty, “Phe Frankfurt am Main.
nomenology of Perception”; Bachelard, “Poetics Durrell, L. (1969) Spirit of Place. London.
of Space”; also L. Kruse, Räumliche Umwelt Frey, D. (1949) Grundlegung zu einer vergleichenden
(Berlin: 1974). Kunstwissenschaft. Vienna and Innsbruck.
Giedion, S. (1964) The Eternal Present: The Beginnings
3 Ein Winterabend of Architecture. London.
Goethe, J.W. von (1786) Italianische Reise, 8, October.
Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster fältt, Heidegger, M. (1954) Die Frage nach der Technik.
Lang die Abendglocke läutet, In Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfullingen.
Vielen ist der Tisch bereitet Heidegger, M. (1957) Hebel der Hausfreund. Pfullingen.
Und das Haus ist wohlbestellt. Heidegger, M. (1971) Poetry, Language, Thought, ed.
Mancher auf der Wanderschaft A. Hofstadter. New York.
Kommt ans Tor auf dunklen Pfaden. Husserl, E. (1936) The Crisis of European Sciences and
Golden blüht der Baum der Gnaden Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, IL.
Aus der Erde kühlem Saft. Langer, S. (1953) Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art.
Wanderer tritt still herein; New York.
Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle. Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA.
Da erglänzt in reiner Helle Norberg-Schulz, C. (1963) Intentions in Architecture.
Auf dem Tische Brat und Wein. Oslo and London.
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Norberg-Schulz, C. (1971) Existence, Space and Archi definition of place. In P. Oliver (ed.), Shelter, Sign
tecture. London and New York. and Symbol. London.
Norberg-Schulz, C. (1975) Meaning in Western Archi Richardson, W.J. (1974) Heidegger: Through Phenom
tecture. London and New York. enology to Thought. The Hague.
Paulys (n.d.) Realencyclopedie der Klassischen Alter Rilke, R.M. (1972) The Duino Elegies. New York.
tumwissenschaft, VII. Venturi, R. (1967) Complexity and Contradiction in
Portoghesi, P. (1975) Le inibizioni dell’architettura Architecture. New York.
moderna. Bari, Italy. Webber, M.M. (1963) Explorations into Urban Structure.
Rapoport, A. (1975) Australian Aborigines and the Philadelphia.
9780415668071_P3_02.indd 284 10-26-2012 3:20:13 PM

“The Problem of Place in
America”
from The Great Good Place (1989)
Ray Oldenburg
As the previous two readings show, issues of place in modern society have become important because of
declines in both design quality and resulting activity levels in urban space. In this first chapter of The Great
Good Place, Ray Oldenburg suggests urban decline is associated with historical post-war trends of subur-
banization, urban renewal, increasing residential mobility, growing auto dependency, freeway expansion, and
single-use zoning – all of which have contributed to the disappearance of informal gathering spaces. Newer
suburban subdivisions and neighborhoods failed at providing spaces for community life for inhabitants largely
due to the increasing isolation of family life and the extreme individualization championed by American soci-
ety. In physical settings dependent on single-occupancy auto trips to the strip mall and the zoned illegality
of neighborhood retail uses, few opportunities exist for chance meetings on sidewalks, in corner bars or at a
local café within walking distance from home. In households where one’s work life takes up so much time, and
where television has become the primary source of nightly entertainment, it becomes no surprise that people
have little time for community-oriented activities such as bowling, bocce, and billiards. In a related manner,
the increasing prevalence of obesity, chronic heart disease, and high stress levels can also be attributed to
unwalkable suburban form, the increase in auto dependency, and lack of places to relax and blow off steam.
In light of this systematic loss of social space, Ray Oldenburg posits that a possible solution to “the prob-
lem of place in America” might be the championing of the “third place.” He defines third places as those
informal public gathering spaces where people can come together on neutral ground, free of charge, to develop
friendships, enjoy conversation, voluntarily interact and enjoy being part of a larger spatial community. Olden-
burg suggests third places are essential ingredients to a well-functioning democracy, for developing social
cohesion, endowing a sense of identity and providing psychological support outside of home (the first place)
and the work setting (the second place). They are the pubs, coffee houses, general stores, bookshops, post
offices, laundromats, beauty salons, community centers, bowling alleys, stadiums, and other quasi-public social
spaces (including streets, sidewalks, and parks) where people can come together to enjoy each other’s
company and conversation. Third places might be thought of as regular local hangouts (without the negative
connotation of a dive) or like the French rendezvous (without the romantic connotation). Because of their
accessibility and inclusiveness, third places promote social equality and are considered social levelers, places
where little distinction is made on the basis of demographic, economic, social, or cultural differences. These
places tend to allow people of different backgrounds to get to know one another in settings that are socially
expansive and non-threatening.
Although he focuses primarily on programmatic land use elements, urban designers can take inspiration in
Oldenburg’s valorization of the public realm as a locus for social life. While not addressing specific design issues,
those interested in improving streets, parks, and other public meeting grounds will be forced to consider the
9780415668071_P3_03.indd 285 10-26-2012 3:20:08 PM

286 R a Y O L D E nb U r G
physical elements that make these places function for active human occupation, including: streetscaping,
seating, lighting, climate protection, and other amenities that help to make places comfortable and useable.
Third places were much more prevalent in earlier times, especially in the denser, urban villages of traditional
pedestrian-oriented towns and cities. Historically they provided compensatory social space away from home
and work. In modern American society, however, they became rare with the rise of suburbia and zoning. With
renewed interest for in-town living, as well as the rise of creative class interests in place-based urban lifestyles,
we are beginning to see a rebound in the number of cafés, pubs, and local-serving retail nodes in closer
proximity to housing. Counter-productive to the concept of the third place, however, are recent efforts at the
privatization of public space, the growing prevalence of private security and policing, and heightened surveil-
lance activities in light of real and perceived threats of crime and terrorism. These new concerns can be
witnessed in the rise of gated communities, theme parks, malls, office parks, entertainment centers, mega-
projects, and new towns, places where behavior is monitored and other personal freedoms are often limited.
Ray Oldenburg is an urban sociologist and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of West
Florida in Pensacola, Florida. He continues to work as a consultant to cities and community-based advocacy
groups around the world. He has taught at the University of Nevada, the University of Wisconsin-Stout, and
the University of Minnesota. He also edited a companion piece to The Great Good Place titled Celebrating
the Third Place: Inspiring Stories from the “Great Good Places” at the Heart of our Communities (New York:
Marlowe/Avalon, 2001). Other articles and chapters by Oldenburg include: selections on Third Places, Bars
and Pubs in the Encyclopedia of Community, Karen Christensen (ed.) (Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire
Publishing Group, 2003); and, “The Essential Hangout,” with Dennis Brissett, Psychology Today (April 1980).
For other books on third spaces and informal social meeting grounds see: Bernard Rudofsky, Streets for
People: A Primer for Americans (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); Claude Fisher, To Dwell Among Friends
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Anne Vernez Moudon (ed.), Public Streets for Public Use
(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987); Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987); and Christian Mikunda, Brand Lands, Hot Spots and Cool Spaces:
Welcome to the Third Place and the Total Marketing Experience (London: Kogan Page, 2004).
Other literature on the importance of public space in the making of community can be found in: Don
Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guildford Press,
2003); Setha Low, Dana Taplin, and Suzanne Scheld, Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural
Diversity (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005); Anthony M. Orum and Zachary P. Neal, Common
Ground? Readings and Reflections on Public Space (London: Routledge, 2009); Jeffrey Hou (ed.), Insurgent
Public Space: Guerilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (London: Routledge, 2010);
Magda Angeles, In Favour of Public Space (Barclona: Actar, 2010); and Ali Madanipour, Whose Public
Space? International Case Studies in Urban Design and Development (London: Routledge, 2010), excerpted
in this volume (see pp. 443–458).
Books on the decline of social life, public space, and increasing privatization include: David Riesman,
Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950); Vance
Packard, A Nation of Strangers (New York: Pocket Books, 1972); Martin Pawley, The Private Future: Causes
and Consequences of Community Collapse in the West (London: Pan, 1973); Richard Sennett, The Fall of
Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977); David Popenoe, Public Pleasure, Private Plight (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction, 1984); Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 20th anniversary edition, 1990); Michael Sorkin (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park:
The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Noonday Press, 1992); Robert D. Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of America Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) and
Better Together: Restoring the American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003); Don Mitchell,
The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003); and
Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (London: Routledge, 2005).
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“ T h E P rob L E m of P L ac E in A m E rica ” 287
A number of recent American writings indicate tence.”1 Though proclaimed as offering the best of
that the nostalgia for the small town need not both rural and urban life, the automobile suburb
be construed as directed toward the town itself: had the effect of fragmenting the individual’s world.
it is rather a “quest for community” (as Robert As one observer wrote: “A man works in one place,
Nisbet puts it) – a nostalgia for a compassable sleeps in another, shops somewhere else, finds
and integral living unit. The critical question is pleasure or companionship where he can, and cares
not whether the small town can be rehabilitated about none of these places.”
in the image of its earlier strength and growth The typical suburban home is easy to leave
– for clearly it cannot – but whether American behind as its occupants move to another. What
life will be able to evolve any other integral people cherish most in them can be taken along in
community to replace it. This is what I call the the move. There are no sad farewells at the local
problem of place in America, and unless it is taverns or the corner store because there are no
somehow resolved, American life will become local taverns or corner stores. Indeed, there is often
more jangled and fragmented than it is, and more encouragement to leave a given subdivision
American personality will continue to be unquiet than to stay in it, for neither the homes nor the t
h
and unfulfilled. neighborhoods are equipped to see families or indi r
MAX LERNER. America as a viduals through the cycle of life. Each is designed e
Civilization, 1957 for families of particular sizes, incomes, and ages. e
There is little sense of place and even less oppor-
The ensuing years have confirmed Lerner’s diag- tunity to put down roots.
nosis. The problem of place in America has not Transplanted Europeans are acutely aware of
been resolved and life has become more jangled the lack of a community life in our residential areas.
and fragmented. No new form of integral com- We recently talked with an outgoing lady who had
munity has been found; the small town has yet to lived in many countries and was used to adapting
greet its replacement. And Americans are not a to local ways. The problem of place in America
contented people. had become her problem as well:
What may have seemed like the new form of
community – the automobile suburb – multiplied After four years here, I still feel more of a
rapidly after World War II. Thirteen million plus foreigner than in any other place in the world
returning veterans qualified for single-family dwell- I have been. People here are proud to live in a
ings requiring no down payments in the new ‘good’ area, but to us these so-called desirable
developments. In building and equipping these mil- areas are like prisons. There is no contact
lions of new private domains, American industry between the various households, we rarely see
found a major alternative to military production the neighbors and certainly do not know any of
and companionate marriages appeared to have them. In Luxembourg, however, we would fre-
found ideal nesting places. But we did not live quently stroll down to one of the local cafés in
happily ever after. the evening, and there pass a very congenial
Life in the subdivision may have satisfied the few hours in the company of the local fireman,
combat veteran’s longing for a safe, orderly, and dentist, bank employee or whoever happened
quiet haven, but it rarely offered the sense of place to be there at the time. There is no pleasure to
and belonging that had rooted his parents and be had in driving to a sleazy, dark bar where
grandparents. Houses alone do not a community one keeps strictly to one’s self and becomes
make, and the typical subdivision proved hostile to fearful if approached by some drunk.
the emergence of any structure or space utilization
beyond the uniform houses and streets that charac Sounding the same note, Kenneth Harris has
terized it. commented on one of the things British people
Like all-residential city blocks, observed one miss most in the United States. It is some rea
student of the American condition, the suburb is sonable approximation of the village inn or local
“merely a base from which the individual reaches pub; our neighborhoods do not have it. Harris
out to the scattered components of social exis- comments:
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The American does not walk around to the local communities they cover it up with a wealth
two or three times a week with his wife or with of frantic activity. That’s the reason tennis has
his son, to have his pint, chat with the neighbors, gotten so big. They all go out and play tennis.6
and then walk home. He does not take out the
dog last thing every night, and break his journey A majority of the former stay-at-home wives are
with a quick one at the Crown.2 now in the labor force. As both father and mother
gain some semblance of a community life via their
The contrast in cultures is keenly felt by those daily escapes from the subdivision, children are
who enjoy a dual residence in Europe and America. even more cut off from ties with adults. Home
Victor Gruen and his wife have a large place in Los offers less and the neighborhood offers nothing for
Angeles and a small one in Vienna. He finds that: the typical suburban adolescent. The situation in
“In Los Angeles we are hesitant to leave our sheltered the early seventies as described by Richard Sennett
home in order to visit friends or to participate in is worsening:
cultural or entertainment events because every such
outing involves a major investment of time and In the past ten years, many middle-class children
nervous strain in driving long distances.”3 But, he have tried to break out of the communities, the
says, the European experience is much different: schools and the homes that their parents have
spent so much of their own lives creating. If
In Vienna, we are persuaded to go out often any one feeling can be said to run through
because we are within easy walking distance the diverse groups and life-styles of the youth
of two concert halls, the opera, a number of movements, it is a feeling that these middle-class
theatres, and a variety of restaurants, cafés, and communities of the parents were like pens, like
shops. Seeing old friends does not have to be a cages keeping the youth from being free and
prearranged affair as in Los Angeles, and more alive. The source of the feeling lies in the per-
often than not, one bumps into them on the ception that while these middle-class environ-
street or in a café. ments are secure and orderly regimes, people
suffocate there for lack of the new, the unex-
The Gruens have a hundred times more residential pected, the diverse in their lives.7
space in America but give the impression that they
don’t enjoy it half as much as their little corner The adolescent houseguest, I would suggest, is
of Vienna. probably the best and quickest test of the vitality
But one needn’t call upon foreign visitors to of a neighborhood; the visiting teenager in the sub-
point up the shortcomings of the suburban ex- division soon acts like an animal in a cage. He
periment. As a setting for marriage and family life, or she paces, looks unhappy and uncomfortable,
it has given those institutions a bad name. By the and by the second day is putting heavy pressure
1960s, a picture had emerged of the suburban on the parents to leave. There is no place to which
housewife as “bored, isolated, and preoccupied with they can escape and join their own kind. There is
material things.”4 The suburban wife without a car nothing for them to do on their own. There is noth-
to escape in epitomized the experience of being ing in the surroundings but the houses of strangers
alone in America.5 Those who could afford it com- and nobody on the streets. Adults make a more
pensated for the loneliness, isolation, and lack of successful adjustment, largely because they demand
community with the “frantic scheduling syndrome” less. But few at any age find vitality in the housing
as described by a counselor in the northeastern developments. David Riesman, an esteemed elder
region of the United States: statesman among social scientists, once attempted
to describe the import of suburbia upon most of
The loneliness I’m most familiar with in my job those who live there. “There would seem,” he wrote,
is that of wives and mothers of small children “to be an aimlessness, a pervasive low-keyed un-
who are dumped in the suburbs and whose hus- pleasure.”8 The word he seemed averse to using is
bands are commuters . . . I see a lot of general- boring. A teenager would not have had to struggle
ized loneliness, but I think that in well-to-do for the right phrasing.
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Their failure to solve the problem of place in or corner store or park.”13 The bright spot in this
America and to provide a community life for their dispute is that the same set of remedies would cure
inhabitants has not effectively discouraged the both the family and the city of major ills.
growth of the postwar suburbs. To the contrary, Meantime, new generations are encouraged
there have emerged new generations of suburban to shun a community life in favor of a highly priva-
development in which there is even less life outside tized one and to set personal aggrandizement above
the houses than before. Why does failure succeed? public good. The attitudes may be learned from
Dolores Hayden supplies part of the answer when parents but they are also learned in each genera-
she observes that Americans have substituted the tion’s experiences. The modest housing develop-
vision of the ideal home for that of the ideal city.9 ments, those un-exclusive suburbs from which
The purchase of the even larger home on the even middle-class people graduate as they grow older
larger lot in the even more lifeless neighborhood and more affluent, teach their residents that future
is not so much a matter of joining community hopes for a good life are pretty much confined to
as retreating from it. Encouraged by a continuing one’s house and yard. Community life amid tract
decline in the civilities and amenities of the public housing is a disappointing experience. The space t
h
or shared environment, people invest more hopes within the development has been equipped and r
in their private acreage. They proceed as though a staged for isolated family living and little else. The e
house can substitute for a community if only it is processes by which potential friends might find e
spacious enough, entertaining enough, comfortable one another and by which friendships not suited to
enough, splendid enough – and suitably isolated the home might be nurtured outside it are severely
from that common horde that politicians still refer thwarted by the limited features and facilities of
to as our “fellow Americans.” the modern suburb.
Observers disagree about the reasons for the The housing development’s lack of informal
growing estrangement between the family and the social centers or informal public gathering places
city in American society.10 Richard Sennett, whose puts people too much at the mercy of their closest
research spans several generations, argues that as neighbors. The small town taught us that people’s
soon as an American family became middle class best friends and favorite companions rarely lived
and could afford to do something about its fear right next door to one another. Why should it be
of the outside world and its confusions, it drew any different in the automobile suburbs? What
in upon itself, and “in America, unlike France or are the odds, given that a hundred households are
Germany, the urban middle-class shunned public within easy walking distance, that one is most likely
forms of social life like cafés and banquet halls.”11 to hit it off with the people next door? Small! Yet,
Philippe Ariès, who also knows his history, counters the closest neighbors are the ones with whom
with the argument that modern urban development friendships are most likely to be attempted, for how
has killed the essential relationships that once does one even find out enough about someone a
made a city and, as a consequence, “the role of block and a half away to justify an introduction?
the family over-expanded like a hypertrophied cell” What opportunity is there for two men who both
trying to take up the slack.12 enjoy shooting, fishing, or flying to get together and
In some countries, television broadcasting is gab if their families are not compatible? Where
suspended one night a week so that people will not do people entertain and enjoy one another if, for
abandon the habit of getting out of their homes whatever reason, they are not comfortable in one
and maintaining contact with one another. This another’s homes? Where do people have a chance
tactic would probably not work in America. Sennett to get to know one another casually and without
would argue that the middle-class family, given its commitment before deciding whether to involve
assessment of the public domain, would stay at other family members in their relationship? Tract
home anyway. Ariès would argue that most would housing offers no such places.
stay home for want of places to get together with Getting together with neighbors in the develop-
their friends and neighbors. As Richard Goodwin ment entails considerable hosting efforts, and it
declared, “there is virtually no place where neigh- depends upon continuing good relationships be-
bors can anticipate unplanned meetings – no pub tween households and their members. In the usual
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course of things, these relationships are easily pressed to supply all that is wanting and much that
strained or ruptured. Having been lately formed is missing in the constricted life-styles of those
and built on little, they are not easy to mend. Worse, without community. The resulting strain on work
some of the few good friends will move and are and family institutions is glaringly evident. In the
not easily replaced. In time, the overtures toward measure of its disorganization and deterioration,
friendship, neighborliness, and a semblance of com- the middle-class family of today resembles the low-
munity hardly seem worth the effort. income family of the 1960s.16 The United States
now leads the world in the rate of divorce among
its population. Fatherless children comprise the
IN THE ABSENCE OF AN INFORMAL fastest-growing segment of the infant population.
PUBLIC LIFE The strains that have eroded the traditional family
configuration have given rise to alternate life-styles,
We have noted Sennett’s observation that middle- and though their appearance suggests the luxury
class Americans are not like their French or German of choice, none are as satisfactory as was the trad
counterparts. Americans do not make daily visits itional family when embedded in a supporting
to sidewalk cafés or banquet halls. We do not have community.
that third realm of satisfaction and social cohesion It is estimated that American industry loses
beyond the portals of home and work that for from $50 billion to $75 billion annually due to
others is an essential element of the good life. Our absenteeism, company-paid medical expenses, and
comings and goings are more restricted to the home lost productivity.17 Stress in the lives of the workers
and work settings, and those two spheres have is a major cause of these industrial losses. Two-
become preemptive. Multitudes shuttle back and thirds of the visits to family physicians in the United
forth between the “womb” and the “rat race” in a States are prompted by stress-related problems.18
constricted pattern of daily life that easily generates “Our mode of life,” says one medical practitioner,
the familiar desire to “get away from it all.” “is emerging as today’s principal cause of illness.”19
A two-stop model of daily routine is becoming Writes Claudia Wallis, “It is a sorry sign of the times
fixed in our habits as the urban environment affords that the three best-selling drugs in the country are
less opportunity for public relaxation. Our most an ulcer medication (Tagamet), a hypertension drug
familiar gathering centers are disappearing rapidly. (Inderal), and a tranquilizer (Valium).”20
The proportion of beer and spirits consumed in In the absence of an informal public life,
public places has declined from about 90 percent Americans are denied those means of relieving
of the total in the late 1940s to about 30 percent stress that serve other cultures so effectively. We
today.14 There’s been a similar decline in the seem not to realize that the means of relieving
number of neighborhood taverns in which those stress can just as easily be built into an urban en-
beverages are sold. For those who avoid alcoholic vironment as those features which produce stress.
refreshments and prefer the drugstore soda fountain To our considerable misfortune, the pleasures of
across the street, the situation has gotten even the city have been largely reduced to consumerism.
worse. By the 1960s, it was clear that the soda We don’t much enjoy our cities because they’re not
fountain and the lunch counter no longer had a very enjoyable. The mode of urban life that has
place in “the balanced drug store.”15 “In this day become our principal cause of illness resembles a
of heavy unionization and rising minimum wages pressure cooker without its essential safety valve.
for unskilled help, the traditional soda fountain Our urban environment is like an engine that runs
should be thrown out,” advised an expert on drug- hot because it was designed without a cooling
store management. And so it has been. The new system.
kinds of places emphasize fast service, not slow Unfortunately, opinion leans toward the view
and easy relaxation. that the causes of stress are social but the cures
In the absence of an informal public life, people’s are individual. It is widely assumed that high levels
expectations toward work and family life have of stress are an unavoidable condition of modern
escalated beyond the capacity of those institutions life, that these are built into the social system, and
to meet them. Domestic and work relationships are that one must get outside the system in order to
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gain relief. Even our efforts at entertaining and that of having to live a rather Spartan existence.
being entertained tend toward the competitive But there is no stigma and little deprivation of
and stressful. We come dangerously close to the experience. There is an engaging and sustaining
notion that one “gets sick” in the world beyond public life to supplement and complement home
one’s domicile and one “gets well” by retreating and work routines. For those on tight budgets who
from it. Thus, while Germans relax amid the rous- live in some degree of austerity, it compensates for
ing company of the bier garten or the French recu- the lack of things owned privately. For the affluent,
perate in their animated little bistros, Americans it offers much that money can’t buy.
turn to massaging, meditating, jogging, hot-tubbing, The American middle-class life-style is an exceed
or escape fiction. While others take full advantage ingly expensive one – especially when measured
of their freedom to associate, we glorify our free- against the satisfaction it yields. The paucity of
dom not to associate. collective rituals and unplanned social gatherings
In the absence of an informal public life, living puts a formidable burden upon the individual to
becomes more expensive. Where the means and overcome the social isolation that threatens. Where
facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly there are homes without a connection to commu- t
h
shared, they become the objects of private owner- nity, where houses are located in areas devoid of r
ship and consumption. In the United States, about congenial meeting places, the enemy called bore- e
two-thirds of the GNP is based on personal con- dom is ever at the gate. Much money must be spent e
sumption expenditures. That category, observes to compensate for the sterility of the surrounding
Goodwin, contains “the alienated substance of environment. Home decoration and redecoration
mankind.”21 Some four trillion dollars spent for becomes a never-ending process as people depend
individual aggrandizement represents a powerful upon new wallpaper or furniture arrangements to
divisive force indeed. In our society, insists one add zest to their lives. Like the bored and idle rich,
expert on the subject, leisure has been perverted they look to new clothing fashions for the same
into consumption.22 An aggressive, driving force purpose and buy new wardrobes well before the
behind this perversion is advertising, which condi- old ones are past service. A lively round of after-
tions “our drive to consume and to own whatever dinner conversation isn’t as simple as a walk to the
industry produces.”23 corner pub – one has to host the dinner.
Paragons of self-righteousness, advertisers pro- The home entertainment industry thrives in
mulgate the notion that society would languish in the dearth of the informal public life among the
a state of inertia but for their efforts. “Nothing American middle-class. Demand for all manner of
happens until somebody sells something,” they love electronic gadgetry to substitute vicarious watching
to say. That may be true enough within a strictly and listening for more direct involvement is high.
commercial world (and for them, what else is Little expense is spared in the installation of sound
there?) but the development of an informal public and video systems, VCRs, cable connections, or
life depends upon people finding and enjoying one that current version of heaven on earth for the
another outside the cash nexus. Advertising, in its socially exiled – the satellite dish. So great is the
ideology and effects, is the enemy of an informal demand for electronic entertainment that it cannot
public life. It breeds alienation. It convinces people be met with quality programming. Those who create
that the good life can be individually purchased. In for this insatiable demand must rely on formula
the place of the shared camaraderie of people who and imitation.
see themselves as equals, the ideology of advertis- Everyone old enough to drive finds it necessary
ing substitutes competitive acquisition. It is the to make frequent escapes from the private com-
difference between loving people for what they are pound located amid hundreds of other private
and envying them for what they own. It is no co- compounds. To do so, each needs a car, and that
incidence that cultures with a highly developed car is a means of conveyance as privatized and
informal public life have a disdain for advertising.24 antisocial as the neighborhoods themselves. Fords
The tremendous advantage enjoyed by societies and “Chevys” now cost from ten to fifteen thousand
with a well-developed informal public life is that, dollars, and the additional expenses of maintain
within them, poverty carries few burdens other than ing, insuring, and fueling them constitutes major
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expenditures for most families. Worse, each drives is not much in evidence in the United States. It is
his or her own car. About the only need that sub- replaced by a set of strategies designed to avoid
urbanites can satisfy by means of an easy walk is contact with people in public, by devices intended
that which impels them toward their bathroom. to preserve the individual’s circle of privacy against
In the absence of an informal public life, industry any stranger who might violate it. Urban sophistica-
must also compensate for the missing opportunity tion is deteriorating into such matters as knowing
for social relaxation. When the settings for casual who is safe on whose “turf,” learning to minimize
socializing are not provided in the neighborhoods, expression and bodily contact when in public, and
people compensate in the workplace. Coffee breaks other survival skills required in a world devoid
are more than mere rest periods; they are depended of the amenities. Lyn Lofland notes that the 1962
upon more for sociable human contact than phys- edition of Amy Vanderbilt’s New Complete Book of
ical relaxation. These and other “time-outs” are Etiquette “contains not a single reference to proper
extended. Lunch hours often afford a sufficient behavior in the world of strangers.”25 The cosmo-
amount of reveling to render the remainder of the politan promise of our cities is diminished. Its
working day ineffectual. The distinction between ecumenic spirit fades with our ever-increasing
work-related communications and “shooting the retreat into privacy.
breeze” becomes blurred. Once-clear parameters
separating work from play become confused. The
individual finds that neither work nor play are as TOWARD A SOLUTION:
satisfying as they should be. THE THIRD PLACE
The problem of place in America manifests itself
in a sorely deficient informal public life. The struc- Though none can prescribe the total solution to the
ture of shared experience beyond that offered by problem of place in America, it is possible to describe
family, job, and passive consumerism is small and some important elements that any solution will have
dwindling. The essential group experience is being to include. Certain basic requirements of an informal
replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness public life do not change, nor does a healthy society
of individuals. American life-styles, for all the advance beyond them. To the extent that a thriving
material acquisition and the seeking after comforts informal public life belongs to a society’s past, so
and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, do the best of its days, and prospects for the future
alienation, and a high price tag. America can point should be cause for considerable concern.
to many areas where she has made progress, but Towns and cities that afford their populations
in the area of informal public life she has lost an engaging public life are easy to identify. What
ground and continues to lose it. urban sociologists refer to as their interstitial spaces
Unlike many frontiers, that of the informal are filled with people. The streets and sidewalks,
public life does not remain benign as it awaits devel parks and squares, parkways and boulevards are
opment. It does not become easier to tame as being used by people sitting, standing, and walking.
technology evolves, as governmental bureaus and Prominent public space is not reserved for that
agencies multiply, or as population grows. It does well-dressed, middle-class crowd that is welcomed
not yield to the mere passage of time and a policy at today’s shopping malls. The elderly and poor,
of letting the chips fall where they may as develop- the ragged and infirm, are interspersed among
ment proceeds in other realms of urban life. To the those looking and doing well. The full spectrum of
contrary, neglect of the informal public life can local humanity is represented. Most of the streets
make a jungle of what had been a garden while, at are as much the domain of the pedestrian as of the
the same time, diminishing the ability of people to motorist. The typical street can still accommodate
cultivate it. a full-sized perambulator and still encourages a new
In the sustained absence of a healthy and vigor- mother’s outing with her baby. Places to sit are
ous informal public life, the citizenry may quite abundant. Children play in the streets. The general
literally forget how to create one. A facilitating scene is much as the set director for a movie would
public etiquette consisting of rituals necessary to arrange it to show life in a wholesome and thriving
the meeting, greeting, and enjoyment of strangers town or city neighborhood.
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Beyond the impression that a human scale has reestablished in daily life, it will be necessary to
been preserved in the architecture, however, or that articulate their nature and benefit. It will not suffice
the cars haven’t defeated the pedestrians in the battle to describe them in a mystical or romanticized way
for the streets, or that the pace of life suggests gentler such as might warm the hearts of those already
and less complicated times, the picture doesn’t convinced. Rather, the core settings of the informal
reveal the dynamics needed to produce an engaging public life must be analyzed and discussed in terms
informal public life. The secret of a society at peace comprehensible to these rational and individualistic
with itself is not revealed in the panoramic view outlooks dominant in American thought. We must
but in examination of the average citizen’s situation. dissect, talk in terms of specific payoffs, and reduce
The examples set by societies that have solved special experiences to common labels. We must,
the problem of place and those set by the small urgently, begin to defend these Great Good Places
towns and vital neighborhoods of our past suggest against the unbelieving and the antagonistic and
that daily life, in order to be relaxed and fulfilling, do so in terms clear to all.
must find its balance in three realms of experience. The object of our focus – the core settings of
One is domestic, a second is gainful or productive, the informal public life – begs for a simpler label. t
h
and the third is inclusively sociable, offering both Common parlance offers few possibilities and none r
the basis of community and the celebration of it. that combine brevity with objectivity and an appeal e
Each of these realms of human experience is built to common sense. There is the term hangout, but e
on associations and relationships appropriate to it; its connotation is negative and the word conjures
each has its own physically separate and distinct up images of the joint or dive. Though we refer to
places; each must have its measure of autonomy the meeting places of the lowly as hangouts, we
from the others. rarely apply the term to yacht clubs or oak-paneled
What the panoramic view of the vital city fails bars, the “hangouts” of the “better people.” We
to reveal is that the third realm of experience is have nothing as respectable as the French rendez-
as distinct a place as home or office. The informal vous to refer to a public meeting place or a setting
public life only seems amorphous and scattered; in which friends get together away from the confines
in reality, it is highly focused. It emerges and is of home and work. The American language reflects
sustained in core settings. Where the problem of the American reality – in vocabulary as in fact
place has been solved, a generous proliferation of the core settings of an informal public life are
core settings of informal public life is sufficient to underdeveloped.
the needs of the people. For want of a suitable existing term, we intro-
Pierre Salinger was asked how he liked living in duce our own: the third place will hereafter be used
France and how he would compare it with life in to signify what we have called “the core settings
the United States. His response was that he likes of informal public life.” The third place is a generic
France where, he said, everyone is more relaxed. designation for a great variety of public places that
In America, there’s a lot of pressure. The French, host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily
of course, have solved the problem of place. The anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the
Frenchman’s daily life sits firmly on a tripod con- realms of home and work. The term will serve well.
sisting of home, place of work, and another setting It is neutral, brief, and facile. It underscores the
where friends are engaged during the midday and significance of the tripod and the relative import
evening aperitif hours, if not earlier and later. In ance of its three legs. Thus, the first place is the
the United States, the middle classes particularly home – the most important place of all. It is
are attempting a balancing act on a bipod consist- the first regular and predictable environment of the
ing of home and work. That alienation, boredom, growing child and the one that will have greater
and stress are endemic among us is not surprising. effect upon his or her development. It will harbor
For most of us, a third of life is either deficient or individuals long before the workplace is interested
absent altogether, and the other two-thirds cannot in them and well after the world of work casts them
be successfully integrated into a whole. aside. The second place is the work setting, which
Before the core settings of an informal public reduces the individual to a single, productive role.
life can be restored to the urban landscape and It fosters competition and motivates people to rise
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above their fellow creatures. But it also provides Third places have never since been as pro
the means to a living, improves the material quality minent. Attempts at elegance and grand scale con-
of life, and structures endless hours of time for a tinued to be made but with far less impact. Many
majority who could not structure it on their own. cultures evolved public baths on a grand scale.
Before industrialization, the first and second Victorian gin palaces were elegant (especially when
places were one. Industrialization separated the place contrasted to the squalor that surrounded them).
of work from the place of residence, removing The winter gardens and palm gardens built in some
productive work from the home and making it of our northern cities in the previous century
remote in distance, morality, and spirit from family included many large and imposing structures. In
life. What we now call the third place existed long modern times, however, third places survive with-
before this separation, and so our term is a con out much prominence or elegance.
cession to the sweeping effects of the Industrial Where third places remain vital in the lives
Revolution and its division of life into private and of people today, it is far more because they are
public spheres. prolific than prominent. The geographic expansion
The ranking of the three places corresponds of the cities and their growing diversity of quarters,
with individual dependence upon them. We need or distinct neighborhoods, necessitated the shift.
a home even though we may not work, and most The proliferation of smaller establishments kept
of us need to work more than we need to gather them at the human scale and available to all in the
with our friends and neighbors. The ranking holds, face of increasing urbanization.
also, with respect to the demands upon the indi- In the newer American communities, however,
vidual’s time. Typically, the individual spends more third places are neither prominent nor prolific. They
time at home than at work and more at work than are largely prohibited. Upon an urban landscape
in a third place. In importance, in claims on time increasingly hostile to and devoid of informal gath-
and loyalty, in space allocated, and in social rec- ering places, one may encounter people rather
ognition, the ranking is appropriate. In some coun- pathetically trying to find some spot in which to
tries, the third place is more closely ranked with relax and enjoy each other’s company.
the others. In Ireland, France, or Greece, the core Sometimes three or four pickups are parked
settings of informal public life rank a strong third under the shade near a convenience store as their
in the lives of the people. In the United States, third owners drink beers that may be purchased but not
places rank a weak third with perhaps the majority consumed inside. If the habit ever really catches
lacking a third place and denying that it has any on, laws will be passed to stop it. Along the strips,
real importance. youths sometimes gather in or near their cars in
The prominence of third places varies with the parking lots of hamburger franchises. It’s the
cultural setting and historical era. In preliterate best they can manage, for they aren’t allowed to
societies, the third place was actually foremost, loiter inside. One may encounter a group of women
being the grandest structure in the village and com- in a laundromat, socializing while doing laundry
manding the central location. They were the men’s chores. One encounters parents who have assumed
houses, the earliest ancestors of those grand, ele- the expense of adding a room to the house or
gant, and pretentious clubs eventually to appear converting the garage to a recreation room so
along London’s Pall Mall. In both Greek and Roman that, within neighborhoods that offer them nothing,
society, prevailing values dictated that the agora their children might have a decent place to spend
and the forum should be great, central institutions; time with their friends. Sometimes too, youth will
that homes should be simple and unpretentious; develop a special attachment to a patch of woods
that the architecture of cities should assert the not yet bulldozed away in the relentless spread of
worth of the public and civic individual over the the suburbs. In such a place they enjoy relief from
private and domestic one. Few means to lure and the confining over-familiarity of their tract houses
invite citizens into public gatherings were over- and the monotonous streets.
looked. The forums, colosseums, theaters, and American planners and developers have shown
amphitheaters were grand structures, and admission a great disdain for those earlier arrangements in
to them was free. which there was life beyond home and work. They
9780415668071_P3_03.indd 294 10-26-2012 3:20:08 PM

have condemned the neighborhood tavern and 4 Slater, Philip E. (1971) “Must Marriage Cheat
disallowed a suburban version. They have failed Today’s Young Women?” Redbook Magazine.
to provide modern counterparts of once-familiar February 1971.
gathering places. The gristmill or grain elevator, 5 Gordon, Suzanne (1976) Lonely in America.
soda fountains, malt shops, candy stores, and cigar New York: Simon & Schuster.
stores – places that did not reduce a human being 6 Ibid., 105.
to a mere customer, have not been replaced. Mean 7 Sennett, Richard (1973) “The Brutality of Modern
time, the planners and developers continue to add Families,” in Marriages and Families, ed. Helena
to the rows of regimented loneliness in neighbor- Z. Lopata. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 81.
hoods so sterile as to cry out for something as 8 Riesman, David (1957) “The Suburban Disloca
modest as a central mail drop or a little coffee tion,” The Annals of the American Academy of
counter at which those in the area might discover Political and Social Science. November 1957, 142.
one another. 9 Hayden, Dolores (1984) Redesigning the American
Americans are now confronted with that condi- Dream. New York: W.W. Norton, Chapter 2.
tion about which the crusty old arch-conservative 10 See Sennett, op. cit., and Ariès, Philippe (1977) t
h
Edmund Burke warned us when he said the bonds “The Family and the City.” Daedalus. Spring r
of community are broken at great peril for they are 1977, 227–237 for succinct statements of the e
not easily replaced. Indeed, we face the enormous two views. e
task of making “the mess that is urban America” 11 Sennett, op. cit., 84.
suitably hospitable to the requirements of gregari- 12 Ariès, op. cit., 227.
ous, social animals.26 Before motivation or wisdom 13 Goodwin, op. cit., 38.
is adequate to the task, however, we shall need 14 Kluge, P.F. (1982) “Closing Time,” Wall Street
to understand exactly what it is that an informal Journal (27 May 1982).
public life can contribute to both national and in- 15 Ferguson, Frank L. (1969) Efficient Drug Store
dividual life. (Therein lies the purpose of this book.) Management. New York: Fairchild Publications,
Successful exposition demands that some state- 202.
ment of a problem precede a discussion of its 16 Bronfenbrenner, Urie (1979) “The American
solution. Hence, I’ve begun on sour and unpleasant Family: An Ecological Perspective,” in The
notes and will find it necessary to sound them American Family: Current Perspectives. Cambridge,
again. I would have preferred it otherwise. It is the Mass.: Harvard University Press, Audiovisual
solution that intrigues and delights. It is my hope Division (audio cassette).
that the discussion of life in the third place will 17 Wallis, Claudia (1983) “Stress: Can We Cope?”
have a similar effect upon the reader, just as I hope Time (6 June 1983).
that the reader will allow the bias that now and 18 Ibid.
then prompts me to substitute Great Good Place 19 Ibid.
for third place. I am confident that those readers 20 Ibid.
who have a third place will not object. 21 Goodwin, Richard (1970) “The American
Condition,” New Yorker (4 February 1970), 75.
22 Kando, Thomas M. (1980) Leisure and Popular
NOTES Culture in Transition, 2nd ed. St. Louis: C.V. Mosby.
23 Ibid., 101.
1 Goodwin, Richard N. (1974) “The American 24 Generally, the Mediterranean cultures.
Condition,” New Yorker (28 January 1974), 38. 25 Lofland, Lyn H. (1973) A World of Strangers.
2 Harris, Kenneth (1949) Traveling Tongues. London: Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 117.
John Murrary, 80. 26 Sometimes the phrase employed is “the mess
3 Gruen, Victor (1973) Centers for Urban Environ that is man-made America.” Planners appear
ment. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 217. to use it as much as anyone else.
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“Critical Regionalism:
An Architecture of Place”
from Repairing the American Metropolis:
Common Place Revisited (2002)
Douglas S. Kelbaugh
Although we tend to think of regionalism as a twentieth-century pursuit, regional attitudes in design are recog-
nizable characteristics of most pre-industrial place-based settlements. These urbanisms had to rely on building
materials that could be sourced regionally, designs that were scaled and erected based on human physical
capability, and local craftsmanship that developed in response to local conditions for construction. Prior to
the industrial revolution when transport, communication, and manufacturing processes liberalized access to
resources and technical innovations, we might say that most built environments were de facto regional. Then
in the industrial period, all of this changed as materials could be transported across the globe, factory-based
production could mass produce building components, and communication improvements allowed the sharing
of design techniques and strategy without regard to context. A conscious turn to regional design became a
strategy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and again in the late twentieth century to reinstill a sense
of place and local culture that had been lost with growing industrialization, global homogenization, and the
widespread use of universalizing (and often oppressive) architecture movements. Regional design approaches
helped to make neo-classicism, factory-based production, and international style modernism more palatable
to local tastes – as well as help to reinforce a sense of place-based pride. From Marie Antoinette’s rustic
milkmaid’s cottage, to Barry and Pugin’s Houses of Parliament – from the Craftsman aesthetics of Ruskin,
to Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh buildings – notions of regionalism have been used to conjure up and reinforce
imagery associated with local culture, everyday life, regional craft traditions, and national identity.
Critical Regionalism in the late twentieth century was born of a similar discontent with the universalizing
and globalizing nature of modern design. The term was first defined in 1981 by Alexander Tzonis and Liane
Lefaivre to describe the work of several Greek architects in the mid-twentieth century who were able to
combine local inspiration and regional attitudes with the prevailing modernism of the time. It was further defined
in a series of ground-breaking articles by Kenneth Frampton. These and other authors suggest that Critical
Regionalism is an attempt to resurrect local differentiation in design with the pragmatic realization that it will
be modulated by the exigencies of the modern world, for example, the inclusion of modern technologies in
form-making. It is “critical” in two senses: first, it is a critique of the universalizing intentions of international
modernism, and second, it is a critique of the sentimentalizing and nostalgic practices of regional culture and
local traditions in themselves. This burgeoning movement alerts us to the often placeless nature of modernism,
while attempting to reinforce a contemporary and phenomenologically based authenticity – one that is more
representative of places and local constraints.
In the reading included here, Douglas S. Kelbaugh suggests that Critical Regionalism might be perceived
as “regionalism with an edge.” His writing is an attempt to define the term in clear language and in a manner
that is highly accessible to practitioners and lay readers. His “Five Points of a Critical Regionalism” imply ways
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“ C ritical R E gi O N alism : A N A rchit E ct U r E O f P lac E ” 297
in which the practice of Critical Regionalism might be guided thematically: by reinforcing place qualities,
valorizing nature, highlighting local histories, and emphasizing regional craft traditions. Importantly he also
suggests the importance of limits, boundaries, and constraints in design decision-making – qualities that might
lead to better scaled and more responsive design solutions. While a strong advocate of critical regionalist
theory, Kelbaugh also considers dissenting and critical voices in his writing – a practice seldom used by other
authors on the topic.
Douglas S. Kelbaugh FAIA is Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the former Dean of the
University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Planning. He has taught at several
design schools around the world. At the University of Washington, he popularized use of the modern urban
design charrette. He has been partner in several design firms over the course of his career, most recently
joining the Dubai-based development firm Limitless as Executive Director of Design and Planning. Other books
by Kelbaugh include: The Pedestrian Pocket Book: A New Suburban Design Strategy, written with Peter
Calthorpe (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989); Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and
Regional Design (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1997); Repairing the American Metropolis:
Common Place Revisited (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002); and most recently, Writing t
h
Urbanism: A Design Reader, edited with Kit McCullough (London: Routledge, 2008). His article Three Urban- r
isms: New, Everyday and Post (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2002) has become an important piece e
in comparing the leading design theories of late-twentieth-century urbanism. e
The literature on Critical Regionalism and larger issues of contextualism are steadily growing as it becomes
a dominant theme in postmodern urbanism: see Nan Ellin’s discussion of Critical Regionalism in her book
Postmodern Urbanism, revised edition (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999). Works on Critical
Regionalism by Kenneth Frampton include: “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of
Resistance,” in Hal Foster (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays in Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, WA:
Bay Press, 1983); “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism,” Perspecta (no. 20, 1983); Modern Architecture: A
Critical History (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985); and “Place-form and Cultural Identity,” in John Thackara
(ed.), Design after Modernism: Beyond the Object (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988). For additional
readings on this topic see several works by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “The Grid and the Pathway:
An Introduction to the Work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis,” Architecture in Greece (Athens: no. 5,
1981); “Why Critical Regionalism Today?” Architecture and Urbanism (no. 235, May 1990); Critical Region-
alism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World (Munich: Prestel, 2003); Architecture of Regionalism
in the Age of Globalization: Peaks and Valleys in the Flat World (London: Routledge, 2011); and Alexander
Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre, and Bruno Stagno (eds), Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of
Globalization (New York: John Wiley, 2001).
Other key texts on Critical Regionalism include: Thomas Schumacher, “Regional Intentions and Con
temporary Architecture: A Critique,” in Center 3 (1987); Alan Colquhoun, “Regionalism and Technology,” in
Modernity and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Douglas Reichert Powell, Critical
Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 2007); and Vincent Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place,
Identity, Modernity and Tradition (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007).
I didn’t like Europe as much as I liked Disney different happens all the time and people are
World. At Disney World all the countries are happy. It’s much more fun. It’s well designed.
much closer together, and they show you just
A college graduate just back from her
the best of each country. Europe is boring. People
first trip to Europe
talk strange languages and things are dirty.
Sometimes you don’t see anything interesting in Regionalism is an ambiguous term. To an urban
Europe for days, but at Disney World something planner it means thinking bigger: planning at the
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298 D O U glas S . K E lba U gh
scale of a region rather than at the scale of the sub Before exploring Critical Regionalism’s general
division or municipality. To an architect, regionalism principles – ones that could be applied anywhere
means thinking smaller: resisting the forces that – it is necessary to take a relatively lengthy and
tend to homogenize buildings across the country admittedly subjective look at recent architectural
and around the globe in favor of local forces. Critical history. First, a few words about the twentieth-century
Regionalism is a term coined by architects that chronology of architectural history in this country
means thinking regionally in ways that are both reac might be helpful. Roughly speaking, the century
tive and liberative. It guards against the mindless started during an architecture of Neoclassical or
nostalgia and sentimentality for traditional architec Beaux-Arts style. In America, Neoclassicism – some
ture to which regionalism has been prone in the past. times simply called Classicism – was given a big
This chapter is about the theory of regionalism boost by the World’s Columbian Exposition in
as opposed to regional architecture. It theorizes Chicago in 1893. Beaux-Arts refers to the Parisian
about what kind of architecture is appropriate for academy where leading architects of the era
regionalism in general rather than for one region studied the axial formality and monumentality that
in particular. It is not about the particular charac often characterized civic architecture during the
teristics of the architecture of a specific metro City Beautiful Movement around the turn of the
politan region, like Seattle, or a bioregion, like the last century. Modernism started as an avant-garde
Pacific Northwest (where, for example, the preva movement in Europe after World War I. It was
lence of wood, large windows and overhangs, atten brought to America in the 1930s, debuting as the
tion to views, a soft and impure color palette, and International Style in a show at the Museum of
Japanese influence are defining characteristics). Modern Art. It slowly became accepted by American
Critical Regionalism is actually more of an corporations, institutions, and individual clients
attitude than a theory or a set of motifs. It is an and was the prevalent architectural mode after
attitude that celebrates and delights in what is World War II. Postmodernism emerged in the
different about a place. What makes a local archi 1970s, about the time solar and environmental
tecture local and unique is valued more than what architecture was a movement. Deconstructivism
makes it typical and universal. In that sense it is replaced Postmodernism in the late 1980s, but has
a reaction to the standardization and universality lost momentum. Critical Regionalism started to gain
that Modernism promoted. It is also an attitude of a following in the 1980s.
resistance, sometimes an angry response to many [ . . . ]
of the changes made in the name of progress that
are blanching geographic differences in place and
culture. It is against foreign ideas and styles that REGIONALISM WITH AN EDGE
are imposed rather than imported.
Architecture is in a rare position to embody and If Modernism as it was once known is dead, Post
express regional differences – more so than manu modernism finished, and Deconstructivism in de
factured products like cars, chairs, shoes, or even cline, there is an existential dilemma for architects.
clothing. Perhaps only food is as local, although On the one hand, the social and technological
regional food products are now shipped far and agenda of Modernism still seems correct. But the
wide. Because architecture is one of the few re Modernist commitment to place, context, history,
maining items in modern life that is usually not craftsmanship, and resource and energy conserva
mass-produced and mass-marketed, it can resist tion seems distinctly lacking. On the other hand,
the commodification of culture. Because it is a the urban agenda of Postmodernism still seems
site-specific and one-of-a-kind production, it can right-minded, but its Neoclassical ornament and
resist the banalization of place. And because it is tectonics seem pasty and superficial when attempted
one of the few hand-built items left in the indus today. There is something spiritually as well as
trialized world, it can resist standardization. Architec physically hollow about most Postmodern struc
ture can still be rooted in local climate, topography, tures. And Deconstructivism gives in too easily to
flora, building materials, building practices, archi the dehumanizing and alienating forces of the
tectural types, cultures, history, and mythology. millennium at hand.
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On another axis altogether is a third position ate the genius loci. It is critical of simpleminded
that breaks this existential bind and “distances itself or excessive importation of culture from other
equally from the Enlightenment Myth of Progress places. It honors local climate, topography, vegeta
and from a reactionary, unrealistic impulse to return tion, building materials, and building practices. It
to architectonic forms of the pre-industrial past” prefers local authenticity to sophisticated imitation.
(Frampton 1983, 17). This alternative way of look That which makes a place unique is worth celebrat
ing at things is Critical Regionalism, a term popu ing and protecting with architecture. This act of
larized and given gravity by Kenneth Frampton. To protection is also an act of resistance. Critical
further quote his seminal text, Critical Regionalism Regionalism says no to outside influence and hot
resists the contemporary practice of architecture new ideas more than it says yes. It must be picky
that is “increasingly polarized between, on the one and stubborn in this age of aggressive hype and
hand, a so-called ‘high-tech’ approach predicated universal civilization. It realizes that the more well-
exclusively upon production and, on the other, defined and highly evolved a place is, the less likely
the provision of a ‘compensatory facade’ to cover it is to be improved by random imports, experi
up the harsh realities of this universal system” (ibid). mentation, or change for change’s sake. It resists t
h
This resistance to global production and consumer the kind of cultural homogenization and commod r
ism seems more valid today than two decades ago. ification that makes the Puget Sound Basin like e
Critical Regionalism is two-handed. On the right California’s Bay Area, Sydney like Perth, Houston e
hand is the mark of a particular region: each region like Atlanta, and that makes one suburb like the next.
determining its own architectural fate and shaping Critical Regionalism must, on the other hand, be
its built environment without mimicking other places. careful not to be too sensitive or resistive to change,
On the left hand are characteristics common to lest it turn into a sour cynicism or saccharin sentim
regionalist architecture in any region in the country, entality. It also has the potential to degenerate into
perhaps the world. These regional characteristics a scared or snobbish xenophobia. It must walk that
are most easily expressed at the scale of small build thin line between conservation and reactionaryism.
ings, especially residential architecture, where de It can’t afford to be bitter about lost battles for
signs and builders are often most sensitive to site, former good causes or it will risk becoming too
climate, and tradition. Large buildings, particularly negative about today’s challenges. As Jacques Barzun
high-rise and long-span structures, have design de ends The Columbia History of the World: “The build
terminants that are more universal, such as gravity, ing or rebuilding of states and cultures, now or at
wind, and, to a lesser extent, seismic loads. Climate any time, is more becoming to our nature than
affects large buildings less because their heating and longings and lamentations” (Barzun 1992, 1165).
cooling needs are driven by the internal loads of Critical Regionalism is not provincialism, a
lights and people rather than ambient solar radiation myopic cousin of regionalism. Provincials don’t know
and temperature. Accordingly, they are less likely what they don’t know. Critical Regionalists know
to develop regional idiosyncrasies or variations. the limits of their world, which can be cosmo
politan without being elitist. Travel can build an
understanding of what is worthy of both bringing
FIVE POINTS OF A CRITICAL home and returning home for. Indeed, the revolu
REGIONALISM tion during the 1960s in air travel, which made
it possible for the middle class to see the world,
These five characteristics or attitudes, originally accelerated the awareness of regional differences.
proposed in 1985, are my attempt to define Critical As much as they respect place, Critical Regionalists
Regionalism: are not sentimental about it. They resist indulging
in nostalgia and literally recapturing how sweet
it was in the old days or old country. Critical
1 Sense of place Regionalism may at times be too self-conscious
about what is worth preserving about a place, but
Critical Regionalism first and foremost starts out cannot be afraid when it is necessary to be bold
with a love of place. This topophilia seeks to liber and visionary about the future.
9780415668071_P3_04.indd 299 10-26-2012 3:20:04 PM

ETtTtI D O U G L A S S. K E L B A U G H
Romantic Organic Abstract Mechanistic

Figure 1 Nature has been viewed and copied at different scales by different epochs. Critical Regionalists, like
environmentalists, particularly admire and are inspired by nature at the organic level. Modernists preferred the abstract
mechanics of atomic physics, just as Romanticists took great strength from pastoral landscapes. Deconstructivists have
mimicked fractal geometry, which attempts to describe naturally occurring shapes that repeat themselves at any scale.
Some contemporary architectural thinkers have been inspired by chaos theory in another attempt to copy nature.
2 Sense of nature architect views nature. It can be called romantic at

the landscape scale, humanistic at the anatomical
Human subtlety will never devise an invention level, organic at the vegetable level, abstract at the
more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than microscopic level, and mechanistic at the atomic
does Nature. level [Figure 1]. Nature seems most understandable
Leonardo da Vinci and accessible at the scale of fauna and flora. These
scales, although ruled by natural laws that can be
Nature is a good model for design because it expressed as abstract mathematical formulae and
holds the key to vitality, beauty, and sustainability. Euclidean and fractal geometries, are less abstract
Designers can learn from the incredible simplicity to the human eye. The animal and plant kingdoms
and sophistication of biological and ecological are full of figural, ornate form.
systems. Diversity, symbiosis, synergy, balance - Nature has provided a bottomless source of forms
these are profound and inspiring messages for all and images. The Romantic Age looked to nature at
designers. Working together, architects, industrial the scale of the bucolic landscape. The Art Nouveau
designers, landscape architects, urban designers, and period looked to nature at the vegetative scale - the
urban planners can fulfill an ecological role, namely palm frond and sinuous vine - much as the Victorians
to protect and preserve ecosystems, natural cycles had admired the giant lily pads they imported into
and chains, and the symbiosis between organisms their hot-houses from distant continents. The Arts
and their environment. Their role is also to reverse and Crafts movement had its love affair with wisteria,
entropy, which is done by creating order and mean dripping from wooden arbors. Modernist architects
ing. The most meaningful and highly evolved order and theorists have also extolled the virtues of na
is to be found in nature. ture, looking for underlying formal principles there
Nature has inspired designers and artists in dif rather than in history or culture. One scale at which
ferent ways. The word “natural” has been used over nature seemed to inspire them was atomic physics.
the years to describe and defend varying positions, This sub-visual scale represents nature at its most
such as romantic, picturesque, and organic. Nature abstract, which is not a surprising preference given
per se does not demand any one interpretation. In the Modernist mania for abstract form. Natural
fact, all phenomena can be called natural in the forms at a visual scale, like the symmetrical snow
final analysis. flake or the nautilus shell that grows in a pure spiral,
Many positions, some opposing, can be taken were also an inspiration to Modernists.
from or based on nature and natural phenomena. Critical Regionalists and green architects can
It depends on the scale at which the artist or wax enthusiastic about a water hyacinth or sea
manatee, which can cleanse sewage treatment however beautiful they may still appear. An archi
wastes of heavy metals. They might also be at tectural type that has stood the test of time, like
tracted to the fuzziness of chaos theory, which deals the basilica or courtyard house, must be doing
with natural phenomenon that are too complex to something right in terms of responding to climate,
be described or even understood by linear analysis social and cultural needs, tradition, and economy.
and conventional geometry. A sense of nature for The best buildings from the past – whether ver
them is messier, more organic, and not as visual as nacular or Architecture with a capital A – continue
the precise, dry, Euclidean geometry of Modernism. to set the high standard of excellence for today’s
While Modernism looked to physics and engineer designers.
ing for lessons and inspiration, regionalism looks Architectural history is also a deep and rich
to the life sciences and ecology, which have enjoyed archive for designers. Whether by a vernacular farm
great attention and breakthroughs in recent de house or classical temple, architects have always
cades. Buildings and cities, like plants and animals, been inspired by the past. Historical precedents
can be viewed as vital rather than as inert and are a good point of departure when designing build
denatured. They can be treated as organisms which ings. Their design vocabulary and syntax can be t
h
are conceived, grow, flex, adapt, interact, age, die creatively transformed to express and to accom r
and decay – always rooted in their habitat. Site- modate new technical and programmatic forces. e
specific design – with its sensitivity to the living Traditional architectural language can evolve, much e
environment – is fundamental to a sense of nature. as spoken language does in multilingual dialects
We must occasionally remind ourselves that and much as new words are coined to name new
human culture and its artifacts are young and im scientific and technological developments. This
mature compared to nature. A trip to the mountains incremental evolution applies to both vernacular
or the forests is a sobering if pleasant reminder of and high-style architecture. Conventional architec
nature’s power. Architects who cavalierly dip into tural language can be converted, subverted, in
the history of architecture for pleasing and familiar verted, or perverted. If it evolves too suddenly, it
forms rather than into nature for enduring patterns loses its meaning and power. Change is most suc
and types must beware: history’s gene pool is cessful when it is fresh but not too radical or too
smaller, its process of natural selection far briefer. abrupt, so that it “rhymes” with a familiar imagery.
A Gothic cathedral, as refined as it is, pales before Rhyme – likeness tempered by slight variation – is
the overwhelming complexity and four-dimensional naturally pleasing to the human eye, as it is to
order of a rain forest or salt marsh, perhaps even the ear.
a cubic yard of rich topsoil. A modern metropolis To paraphrase psychologist Nicholas Humphrey,
might match the complexity of an ecosystem but aesthetic pleasure must convey some biological
not its order or sustainability. The history of archi advantage, as nature gives away nothing for free
tecture, replete as it is with impressive and wonder (Humphrey 1980, 159). His thesis shines a different
ful achievements, is nowhere near as amazing or light on the role of history in aesthetics. If aesthetic
as sublime as nature. pleasure, like sexual and appetite gratification, has
played an important role in our biological survival
and evolution, it is because it provokes and encour
3 Sense of history ages human beings to classify the sensory world
visually. Subtle variations on a shape are more visu
No one can deny that the best buildings, gardens, ally stimulating than exact repetitions of a shape.
and cities of the past are overwhelming in the awe Unstimulating patterns are inherently less interest
and joy they can elicit. But they yield more than ing to the viewer and therefore less likely to be
beauty and pleasure. They offer lasting lessons – viewed attentively. Sorting out and correctly read
ones that are more easily applied than the lessons ing the sensory world were critical to survival and
of nature. History should be respectfully studied evolution. To put it simply: the more pleasurable
for design principles rather than used as a grab bag the task, the greater the attention, the greater
of forms. Time-tested architectural types are more the understanding, and the greater the biological
valuable antecedents than specific historical styles, advantage. Humphrey postulates that what is both
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stimulating and legible is imagery that “rhymes” cially products that take advantage of miniaturiza
with other familiar images, whether across space tion and mass production. Because the construction
or over time. To “rhyme,” images must be neither of architecture is labor-intensive, it is doomed in
too similar nor too dissimilar. In the former case, the foreseeable future to fall further and further
the human tends to lose interest too easily and in behind more mechanized and industrialized produc
the latter case to become confused and discouraged tion. Unlike the performing and visual arts, which
too easily. Thus, the happy medium between these suffer economically from a similar labor intensity,
two extremes has over millions of years, Humphrey there is little government subsidy for architecture.
hypothesizes, come to be seen as beauty. The For the public’s dollars, architecture also has to
aesthetic pleasure it affords is functional as much compete with ever-cheaper consumer items, such
as titillating. When design rhymes across time as televisions, cars, clothes, and travel – all of which
it demonstrates a sense of history, and when it continue to become cheaper in real dollars. Most
rhymes across space, it reinforces a sense of place. Americans will choose, understandably, a $400 CD
(For further development of these and other ideas player over a solid-core oak door. In the meantime,
on the origins and role of aesthetic pleasure, Critical Regionalists keep ripping the fake plastic
see the writings of both Jay Appleton and Grant wood off their dash-boards and refrigerator handles.
Hildebrand, especially the latter’s latest book, The The ongoing slippage in the quality of con
Origins of Architectural Pleasure.) struction is exacerbated if not actually caused by
the way contemporary real estate development is
financed. Investors, developers, and builders are
4 Sense of craft typically blinded by methodologies and mindsets
that have become gospel at American business
The construction of buildings has become junkier. schools. For the past forty years, MBAs have learned
Stewart Brand, who has studied the evolution of “discounted cash flow” as a method to compare
building technology since founding The Whole Earth alternative investments. Along with “net present
Catalogue a generation ago, agrees. “The trend in value” and “internal rate of return,” different pro
construction during this century has been toward jected cash flows can be compared over time to
ever lighter framing with the result that buildings select the alternative with the highest yield.
look and feel increasingly like movie sets: impres As Robert Davis, founder / developer of Seaside
sive to the eye, flimsy to the touch, and incapable and former Chair of the Congress for the New
of aging well” (Brand 1994, 113). They are usually Urbanism, has written, this methodology has tended
built with less human care and of less natural and to produce the short-term thinking and investing
less substantial materials. Copper has given way that is now pervasive in the industry (Davis &
to aluminum, brass to brass plate, slate to asphalt, Leinberger 1999, 43–50). It is the thinking that
marble to plastic laminate, wood to particle board, makes Wal-Mart willing to build on the outskirts
tongue and groove siding to Texture-One-Eleven of town a new 60,000-square-foot store that has
plywood, and plaster to Sheetrock. It’s the last of an expected life span of five years. After the local
these, gypsum drywall, which epitomizes the dete market has been primed, they build a 110,000
rioration of quality in our buildings and the slippage square-foot building a little further out and abandon
from tectonic toward scenographic design. The the first building, whose cheap roof and mechanical
Sheetrocking of every new house in America has system are beginning to wear out. While Wal-Mart
brought a slow and subtle loss of precision and and other bigbox discount retailers represent other
substantiality in construction. The ubiquitous alu interesting controversies and dilemmas, there is
minum sliding glass door has had an equally wide- little disagreement about the low quality of their
scale and dumbing effect. building construction, which is not surprising given
The loss of craft is part of a bigger economic that the building is treated more like an operating
web that is unfortunately beyond the control of the expense than an investment. Their real estate
designer, or for that matter, the region. Basically, development strategy is becoming commonplace,
architectural craft and detail are getting relatively with investors encouraging developers to build
more expensive than manufactured items – espe retail and office space with the cheapest available
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systems and materials, not to mention repeatable need for human scale in the built environment. It
designs that are often gussied up with signage is also about the need for psychological bound
and entrance marquees to look different from one aries – ones that make life more understandable
another and more upscale than they are. There is, and negotiable. As others have pointed out, spatial
of course, nothing new about architecture pretend boundaries demarcate the beginning of the pres
ing to be more than it is, but the life expectancy encing of a place as much as the ending of a place
and craftsmanship of buildings in the United States and its power. Boundless architectural and urban
has never been lower, including the wood buildings space has less nearness, less presence. Limits are
thrown up in the “wild west.” Real estate invest what differentiate place from raw space, whether
ment, before discounted cash flow and its short- they separate sacred from profane space or one
term returns became widely accepted, used to be secular space from another. The German language
built to last. has the word “raum” to describe a finite place or
room. The Japanese use “ma” to denote a bounded
space, although it literally translates as “interval.”
5 Sense of limits English is less precise about place. t
h
The appreciation of natural resources as limited r
The Modern Movement, especially the International was parallel and simultaneous to the renewed per e
Style, saw space as abstract, neutral, and continu ception of architectural space as finite. This sense e
ous. It placed objects in a universal Cartesian grid, of limits is one position on which passive solar
ignoring circumstance and place. At the regional architecture, Critical Regionalism, and Postmodern
scale this grid ultimately came to spread itself ism all converged in the early 1980s. Typology is
evenly across the countryside. At the architectural another idea on which architectural and urban
scale, Modernists saw space as flowing freely within theory converged during that period. All these ideas
open interiors and between the interior and exterior are now worth reconsideration a generation later.
in buildings that were increasingly transparent. With
Postmodernism there arose a renewed interest in
discrete, static space. Human-scale rooms began CRITICAL REGIONALISM CRITICIZED
to replace free-flowing spaces. The notion of a
room before Modernism was positive, figural, con There have been some negative responses to
tained, often symmetrical, and enclosed by thick Critical Regionalism. One has been that it is inher
walls of real mass. These are the attributes of Post ently elitist because of the low regard in which
modern space, although the mass is now more it sometimes holds popular taste. This disdain,
apparent than real. The notion of public space as architects like Dan Solomon claim, is as noncon
finite, contained, outdoor rooms, defined by back ducive to the making of everyday neighborhoods
ground buildings and punctuated by foreground and cities as is the Modernist preoccupation with
buildings, was also revived in the 1980s. individual buildings. This is a fair comment, as
The room as a discrete architectural element many of the architects (Utzon, Ando, Botta, Wolfe)
was respectable again. Also seen as positive were cited in Kenneth Frampton’s essays on Critical
other aspects of finite geometry: the axis, which Regionalism are striving for a profound architec
establishes geometric beginning and terminus; sym ture. This aspiration is not particularly amenable to
metry, which creates a centerline; frontality, which doing quiet background buildings or to sublimating
distinguishes front layers from back layers; and fat the designer’s ego to the court of community opinion.
walls, which rely or pretend to rely more on com This is not a problem when designing isolated build
pression than tension for structural stability. These ings. But, in the urban context, architectural heroics
formal devices all resulted in an architecture and can be problematic.
urban design that looked and felt more finite, more The contemporary works of Tadao Ando, Toyo
massive, and more static. Ito, and many of their fellow Japanese architects
A sense of limits is about the need for finitude are examples of strong and exquisite design. It is
for physical and temporal boundaries to frame and an architecture that places a high premium on
limit human places and activities. It is about the originality and creativity and that thumbs its nose
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at its urban context, which has lost much of its This statement has some truth to it. Architectural
coherence since World War II. It may be an inevi regionalism and nationalism have been invoked by
table and necessary irony in a society so driven by fascist movements. Critical Regionalism can look
social consensus and conformity that individual darkly conservative. However, it’s a question of
clients and architects express themselves so insis scale. First, Critical Regionalism is not nationalism.
tently with architectural statements. This single- Regions are smaller than most nation-states. The
minded pursuit of architectural originality and ideal region is arguably the metropolis. Secondly,
integrity is beautifully realized on remote sites. The Modernism, however international or liberal, wasn’t
context-be-damned attitude also produces fine able to banish “ancient mysteries” or “racial and
individual buildings in tightly packed cities but a tribal differences.” It simply repackaged these ques
chaotic urban fabric. A certain urban homogeneity tions at increasingly larger scales. It has consorted
sets in because many buildings are close together, with corporate and governmental giganticism,
similarly sized, and consistently inconsistent. So a whether capitalist or socialist, and been party
rough-cut uniformity ironically emerges from and to this century’s trade-up from national to global
within the egotistical variety; another kind of con commerce and world war. Multinational and supra
formity and uniformity obtains. Nonetheless, this national corporations, international finance, con
self-referential work, like its counterparts in Europe tinental trading groups, and universal culture can
and America, is often more interested in finding be as brutal as national and regional rivalries – only
a place in glossy international journals and the cooler and more insidious. Wars can now be very
annals of architectural history than in the local impersonal, fought at great physical distance on
neighborhood. cool video screens with push buttons and electronic
Another criticism has been that Critical Region mice – without in-your-face screams and blood.
alism can be socio-politically reactionary – a step The “wrath of unresolved injustices” is less
back into the brutal national and regional ethno sinister and more likely to be understood and re
centrism and racism of the past. Alan Balfour, while solved at the more personal and humane scale of
chair of the AA School of Architecture in London, the city and region than at the numbing scale of
makes these observations: the universal civilization which Modernism tends.
To be sure, the bad ghosts and negative karma that
The emergence of a European economic union haunt local, internecine conflict are hot and ugly.
is coupled, in paradox, by aggressive assertions But visceral conflicts are less likely to be fought
of nationalism. Consider, for example, what is than war with distant enemies who are faceless
already underway in those nations lately released abstractions and objects of manufactured hatred.
from the grip of Russia – Hungary, Poland, and Balfour is absolutely right, however, about the need
Romania – where architecture is seen as the for architecture to hold its place in a reality that is
most potent means of restoring and represent more and more electronically mediated. But con
ing the national identity. Students are encour temporary reality is least mediated at the regional
aged to resurrect ancient mysteries, that is, to and local scale that Critical Regionalism attempts to
imagine objects that may unwittingly reinforce revive. That is precisely where it hopes to establish
racial and tribal differences. In spite of good and find an existential foothold – not against the
intentions, the monsters may return. Critical future but against placeless internationalism.
Regionalism seemed at first a benign proposition A third critique has been that regionalism,
but is now proving to have a sinister subtext. whether good or bad, no longer makes technological
Such forms may bring with them all the wrath or economic sense. Modern industrial production
of unresolved injustices. Architecture must hold and transport make regional building practices and
its place in this maelstrom of mediated reality materials a romantic anachronism. Regionalism is
that will increasingly try to dislocate the future. wishful thinking and indulgent longing for a past
It cannot all be left to television . . . to construct that is lost forever. This argument is based on a
the present only from the past is to condone the straight-line projection of technological revolution-
death of the future. without-end. It fails to take into account that the
Balfour 1994, 51 march of technology and mass culture will not
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continue indefinitely if enough people no longer notions of city and architecture are thrown into
believe that it is delivering a better life. Progress question.
may not always be measured in economic terms, Eisenman 1994, 51
at least not as we presently understand progress
and economics. We need not be slavish techno These are accurate and perceptive comments on
logical drones, committed to every new break contemporary circumstances. Eisenman acknow
through. Technology has been so spectacularly ledges that places such as Serbia and Slovakia are
successful for so long that we’ve been blinded by still brought together primarily by shared charac
its light and are only now fully realizing the trade teristics, land, and language. However, places that
offs and total cost – whether it be in economic, have shifted from the mechanical to the electronic
social, environmental, or moral currency. Just be age are problematic for architecture. They must,
cause there is the technological know-how and the he argues, confront the possibility of a placeless,
money to dress every new Asian hotel lobby and electronic reality. It is a truism that modern tele
restroom in marble from Italy doesn’t mean it’s communications – infinitely light and almost
sensible to ship the Carrara Mountains halfway infinitely fast electrons – are transforming our t
h
round the planet (a tectonic shift that would make world. Computers, phone, facsimile, e-mail, internet, r
geologists blush). It may appear economical with video, virtual reality, etc., are subversive of tradi e
today’s market pricing, but this pricing system must tional life and culture. They will be superseded by e
and will change to better reflect the costs. As prices even faster, more powerful and more convenient
and costs are more accurately aligned (they will mediations of reality and modes of communication.
never be exactly because external costs are con But none of these developments makes traditional
tinually being created or discovered), regionalism architecture, urbanism, and regionalism less neces
and localism may be not only more possible but sary and meaningful. Indeed, it can and already
more automatic. has been argued that the fleeting world of elec
Yet another criticism has been that a singular tronic information increases the human appetite
attitude to architectural design is no longer possible, for real, palpable place. This is especially true in
given the realities of global electronic communica residential and neighborhood design. It’s one thing
tion. Peter Eisenman, formerly a zeitgeister, argues for Eisenman to design a de-centered convention
that it is now impossible to operate with a single center in Columbus, Ohio, or a deconstructed office
spirit of the times – the unitary organizing world building in Tokyo; quite another for him to play
view that animated the work of past eras: with a residential quarter. He is mistaken to suggest
that electronic media might kill the human need
What characterizes the Rome of Sixtus V, for the physical proximity of the traditional city.
Haussmann’s Paris or the work of Le Corbusier . . . Like Marshall McLuhan’s prediction in the 1960s
is that their plans derived from a singular body that new electronic media would kill the book, and
politic. Now, ironically, at a time when the entire unlike Victor Hugo’s prediction that books would
world can be seen as part of a single operating supplant the cathedral, his prognostication will
network, such a singular world view is no longer prove more wrong than right.
possible. Today, the world can be explained not Last, Steven Moore of the University of Texas
by a single zeitgeist, but by two divisions. The has argued that Critical Regionalism, as espoused
first division is a traditional one based on land, by Frampton anyway,
industry and people. The other division is based
on information, which links technologically relies upon philosophical assumptions drawn
and culturally sophisticated world centers . . . from opposing camps. Critical regionalism pro
A Berliner of today probably has more in com poses to retain its hope in technology and simul
mon with a New Yorker than with a resident taneously wants to revalue nature and place as
of another German city, so similar are Berlin positive forces in history . . . In other words, to
and New York as cultural and information construct a hypothesis that relies alternately
centers. When physical proximity is no longer upon opposing assumptions of critical theory and
a part of the zeitgeist of a place, the traditional those of Martin Heidegger leads to philosophical
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confusion. What is needed . . . is not more tastes. Careful and critical work can develop re
hybridization of disparate forces, but a single gional integrity and character any time or any place,
set of philosophical assumptions that will lead urban or rural. It is not a question of size or wealth
to a coherent position. or age. Charleston, Savannah, and Siena achieve
Moore 1999, 2 their greatness despite their small size; Istanbul,
Bombay, and Palermo despite their poverty; Sydney,
His position assumes that the Modernist pre Seattle, and Vancouver despite their newness. It is
occupation with technology is completely contrary a question of cultural confidence and fortitude, as
to the Postmodernist interest in place, that the well as critical intelligence, discrimination, and sen
two are polar opposites. Although they tend to sitivity. In the end, respect for place, nature, history,
be polarizing forces, they need not be. Technology craft, and limits will precipitate a Critical Regionalism.
can be related to, if not rooted in, place, especially These five tenets contribute to an architecture of
with computerized industrial production capable of place – not an abstract and cerebral architecture
customizing individualized units. As for conflicting but a real, palpable one. However, for all its power
philosophical bases, reality is full of contradictions to satisfy the basic human need for particular place
and antinomies. Indeed, this internal contradiction and for home, Critical Regionalism gives us little
gives Critical Regionalism vitality, just as I will soon help in connecting to universal meaning in the built
suggest that its external polarity with typology gives environment or in our lives. For that equally basic
it other energies. human need we turn to typology.
The human desire and need for the commodity,
firmness, and delight, as well as the meaning that
architecture can provide will not be erased by BIBLIOGRAPHY
information technology. Architecture is information.
Moreover, it embodies knowledge. Architecture is Appleton, Jay. 1990. The Symbolism of Habit. Seattle,
a unique and irreplaceable way of knowing the WA: University of Washington Press.
world – its own epistemology. Looking at a moni Appleton, Jay. 1996. The Experience of Landscape. New
tor or talking into a telephone all day makes face- York: Wiley.
to-face human interaction in well-designed buildings Balfour, Alan. 1994. ‘Education – The Architectural
and outdoor spaces all the more necessary, satis Association,’ Journal of the Indian Institute of
fying, and worthwhile. Regional differences are Architects. October 1994.
relished and appreciated all the more. Authenticity Barzun, Jacques. 1992. The Columbia History of the
and materiality command a higher, not a lower, World. New York: Harper and Row.
premium in this increasingly mediated world. In Brand, Stuart. 1994. How Buildings Learn. New York:
the end, architecture is not words, metaphors, or Viking-Penguin.
paper, but buildings. Davis, Robert and Christopher Leinberger. 1999. ‘Financ
ing New Urbanism,’ Threshold 18, Design and Money.
Formidable or modest, they occupy a place, they Boston, MA: MIT Department of Architecture.
transform a landscape, they loom in front of our Eisenman, Peter. 1994. ‘Confronting the Double
eyes, they can be inhabited. They are the stage Zeitgeist,’ Architecture. October 1994.
of power, commerce, worship, toil, love, life . . . Frampton, Kenneth. 1983. ‘Critical Regionalism,’ in
This is the art that does not represent and does The Anti-Aesthetic, Hal Foster (ed.). Port Townsend,
not signify but is. WA: Bay Press.
Larson 1993, 252 Hildebrand, Grant. 1999. The Origins of Architectural
Pleasure. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
If a region keeps seriously at it, with enough Humphrey, Nicholas. 1980. ‘Natural Aesthetics,’
thoughtful designing and building, something critic Architecture for People. London: Cassel.
ally regionalist will emerge. This is especially true Larson, Margali Sarfatti. 1993. Beyond the Post Modern
for small-scale residential and institutional construc Façade. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
tion, which is most subject to local climate and Moore, Steven. 1999. ‘Reproducing the Local,’ Platform.
building practices as well as local tradition and Spring 1999.
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“A Crisis in the Urban Landscape,”
“The Origins and Theory of Type,”
and “Legitimacy and Control”
from The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for
Planners and Architects (2010)
Brenda Case Scheer
Earlier readings in this section discuss key concepts and issues related to place and identify the reasons
why place-making has become a central concern of the urban design field. Over the last 25 years, practicing
urban designers have been grappling with how to achieve a sense of place in contemporary built environ-
ments given the array of social and economic forces that seem to work against it. An approach that some
designers advocate relies on the use of built form types that derive from typological and morphological study.
In the physical design fields, typology is the theory and study of architectural types and, increasingly, also
landscape types. Closely related, morphology is the study of urban form patterns (street and block layouts,
lot divisions, buildings, and land uses) at a range of related scales (region, city, neighborhood, and site) typi-
cally over time. Some theorists have taken to combining the terms into a new term, “typomorphology,” which
focuses on larger scale urban form patterns. Others refer to this as “tissue studies.”
Today, the use of figure-ground plans to study and compare urban form patterns is so common that it is
easy to forget that the design fields only recently re-embraced this method, which had been used during the
Renaissance. Beginning in the late 1970s, architects and urban designers who had become disillusioned with
the Modern Movement’s focus on functionalism and its abandonment of traditional building forms in favor of
industrially inspired “international style” (i.e. traditionless) forms, and alarmed at the negative effects modern
buildings and their placements were having on urbanism, began looking back to building forms from earlier
eras for inspiration of an alternative design approach. Author-theorists working in Europe, such as Aldo Rossi,
Saverio Muratori, Gianfranco Caniggia, M.R.G. Conzen, T.R. Slater, Leon and Robert Krier, and Philippe
Panerai, created and drove the exploration of these new research interests, many arguing for the reconstruc-
tion of the European City. Theorist Leon Krier declared that the Modern Movement’s “form follows function”
dictum, which spurred the search for a new built form for every design commission, was absurd and inefficient.
He argued that most spatial and architectural design problems had been previously solved, often with elegant
form, and that there was no need for architects to constantly reinvent new form. He and others studied and
made classifications of enduring form types, both the exceptional and the commonplace, and argued that
great richness could be found in those types that had stood the test of time. In the United States, interest in
typological and morphological methods was championed by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in their writings on
Collage City (see Part Two pp. 178–197).
In today’s urban design practice, typological and morphological approaches are used for research and to
guide design practice. Typological practice has been particularly influential in the development of form-based
design guidelines and form-based codes in use among adherents of the New Urbanism.
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308 B ren D a C ase S cheer
Brenda Case Scheer’s recent book The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for Planners and Architects,
selected parts of which are reprinted here, explores the history, theory, and current use of architectural types,
expressly linking theory and research with contemporary urban design and architectural practice. Like many
others, Scheer laments the placelessness found in many contemporary urbanized areas, which is caused in
large measure by the repetitive use of standardized architectural types, such as strip malls, tilt-up office build-
ings, and fast-food restaurants. However, rather than attributing blame solely to the perverse effects of ill-
conceived land use regulations or cultural amnesia of better building forms, she argues that these modern
types are emergent from existing cultural and economic conditions. Her goal is to give planners and design-
ers an understanding of how types originate and evolve, so that they can help manipulate change effectively.
She deals, as well, with the nuances of built form types in order to inform the development of place-appropriate
form-based codes.
For readers, it may be helpful to know some definitions. Type is a three-dimensional template that gets
used over and over in endless variations. Archetype is the ideal expression of a type. A model is a type realized
as a real, individual building. It reflects the accommodation and particularization of the type to the specifics
of site and context, and is also an expression of its designer, builder, and owner. A prototype is a standardized,
mass-produced expression of a type that contains little or no individuality, a prime example being suburban
tract housing. Proponents of typologically based urban design practice argue that using tried and true build-
ing types that fit existing contexts and achieve a sense of complementarity through form similarity, but which
also have authentic differences because of their considered variations (i.e. nuanced models rather than standard
ized prototypes) can achieve sense of place.
Scheer is Dean and Professor of Architecture and City and Metropolitan Planning at the College of Architec
ture + Planning at the University of Utah. She has for many years practiced architecture, urban design, and
real estate development through her firm Scheer and Scheer, Inc., and was formerly the director of urban
design for the City of Boston. Scheer’s other works related to typology include Suburban Form: An Inter
national Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2004), co-edited with Kiril Stanilov, which includes her piece
“The Radial Street as a Timeline: A Study of the Transformation of Elastic Tissues.” Her many journal articles
include “The Anatomy of Sprawl,” Places: A Forum of Environmental Design (vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 25–37, Fall
2001), “Destruction and Survival: The Story of Over-the-Rhine,” Urban Morphology (vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 15–27,
2001), and “Edge City Morpohology: A Comparison of Commercial Centers,” Journal of the American Planning
Association (vol. 64, no. 3, pp. 298–310, Summer 1998), co-authored with Mintcho Petkov. In addition, with
Karl Kropf she revised Susan Jane Fraser’s English translation of Gianfranco Canniggia and Gian Luigi
Maffei’s Architectural Composition and Building Typology: Interpreting Basic Building (Firenze: Alinea, 2001).
Sheer has also written extensively on issues related to design review, including Design Review: Challenging
Urban Aesthetic Control (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1994), co-edited with Wolfgang F.E. Preiser.
For writings that speak to the use of type in a range of disciplines, in both research and theory, look to
the many excellent essays in Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1994), edited by Karen A. Franck and Lynda H. Schneekloth. Within this book, Anne Vernez Moudon’s
excellent piece “Getting to Know the Built Landscape: Typomorphology,” reviews three European schools of
thought on typomorphology – the Italian School, the Versailles School, and the English or Conzenean School
– and analyzes their contributions to knowledge about built urban form. Moudon’s book Built for Change:
Neighborhood Architecture in San Francisco (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986) presents a thorough analy-
sis of the evolution and development of physical form of San Francisco’s Alamo Square neighborhood from
the mid-nineteenth century through the 1980s, providing an excellent example of how the Conzenean method
of typomorphological analysis can be used for urban design research.
Early works concerned with type that come from the architectural field are Anthony Vidler’s “The Third
Typology,” Oppositions (vol. 7, Winter 1976); Aldo Rossi’s highly theoretical book The Architecture of the
City, a translation by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman of L’Architettura della Citta (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1982); Robert Krier’s Urban Space (New York: Rizzoli, 1979, first German text 1975) and Elements
of Architecture Architectural Design Profile (London: Architectural Design AD Publications, volume 49, 1983);
and Leon Krier, Houses, Palaces, Cities (London: Architectural Design AD Editions, volume 54, 1984).
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“ A C r i s i s i n t h e U r b a n L a n d s ca p e ” 309
More recently, architect Douglas S. Kelbaugh, who is both a New Urbanist and a Critical Regionalist and
recently served as Dean of the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of
Michigan, has written an evocative book that challenges the current state of architecture and urban design
education and practice, Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited (Seattle, WA: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 2002). The book contains an excellent chapter called “Typology: An Architecture
of Limits” that speaks of the use of typology in architecture and urban design practice, arguing that it provides
an enduring, universal code of urban design that can help link the uniqueness of local place to the larger
world of human culture. John Ellis’ article “Explaining Residential Density Places,” Places (vol. 15. no. 2,
pp. 34–43, 2004), shows how the concept of type is useful for understanding potential residential densities
associated with different building forms, and hence a method for developing urban design framework plans.
Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson’s Retrofitting Suburbia (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011)
explores the use of architectural types that can be used to transform suburban areas into more urban and
sustainable places. A work that theorizes the use of typomorphology in the landscape architecture field is
Katherine Crew and Anne Forsyth, “LandSCAPES: A Typology of Approaches to Landscape Architecture,”
Landscape Journal (vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 37–53, 2003). t
h
Writings on form-based codes include Daniel G. Parolek, Karen Parolek, and Paul C. Crawford’s Form- r
Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers (Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley e
and Sons, 2008) and David R. Walters’s Designing Community: Charrettes, Masterplans, and Form-Based e
Codes (London: Elsevier/Architectural Press, 2007).
A CRISIS IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE probable culprit is ordinary land-use regulation,

which can prohibit good urbanism.2 There is con-
We know how to design cities. Designers can whip siderable merit in this idea. Twentieth-century
out attractive watercolor drawings that envision a building has evolved in unanticipated ways, such
rejuvenation of our sad urban landscape of strip that zoning has had a very limited effect on urban
malls, car dealerships, fast food kiosks, ragged gar- form. Zoning is not oriented around a formal plan;
den apartments, wide parking-dominated streets, rather, a zoning map has blocks of color that de-
and isolated subdivisions. If the new urbanism had scribe the perimeters of a regulated area. Land-use
not already offered us clear examples of better and zoning plans indicate none of the apparatus
design, we have but to walk the streets of Paris or that might constitute an urban design: street layouts
Savannah, Georgia, or St. Petersburg, Russia, to and sizes, parcel size and shape, public space, build-
breathe in ancient and timeless lessons from our ing form, and scale. A land-use plan frustrates urban
ancestors. density and spatial form with its metrics of setbacks
So why is it that for every much-heralded 50- and floor area ratios that are driven by the goal to
acre new urbanism gesture, there are literally thou- limit intensity and isolate uses. Parking ratios, sub-
sands of acres of new strip malls, gas stations, division regulations, and separation of uses can
apartment complexes, office parks, subdivisions, also prevent a well-designed urban form. A pre-
and big box stores?1 Multiscreen theaters, conven- dominant opinion among planners and designers
tion centers, soccer stadiums, airports, and shop- is that if we could change the regulation, we would
ping malls all resist the good urbanism lessons. produce more compact and livable cities.
Observe the far edge of any city: Why do big box A second prominent idea is that, as a culture,
stores proliferate like weeds in a garden, despite we have forgotten what is good and we need to be
the efforts of planners and designers? What is it reminded through examples.3 lf only we could show
that we don’t understand that confounds our at- people that dense urbanism is attractive and healthy
tempts to change this ubiquitous landscape? and socially interesting, they would come to de-
Planners and designers have been searching for mand it everywhere. If only we could all develop
the answers for some time, with mixed results. One a shared ideal about what is livable and good, as
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people who lived in traditional urban environments founding problem for planning in general, but
apparently did, we would be able to build it. especially for urban design, whose pretty pictures
Both of these answers to the question of why can seem laughable 20 years down the road. Like
we don’t make cities the way we should – inade- an old science fiction movie, planners’ illustrated
quate regulation or lack of appropriate examples visions of the future can seem oddly anachronistic
– make a leap of faith: The proper, that is, tradi- in ways that written documents might not.
tional, urban form will blossom, eventually crowd- This dilemma cannot be easily solved. Design,
ing out the strip mall and big box weeds if only for designers, has historically meant the creation
regulation can be aligned and better design can be of an object. Urban design, as practiced, assumes
demonstrated to the public. It is assumed that in the creation of an object, albeit a rather large and
order to redesign our cities and suburbs according complicated one with multiple parts built at differ-
to smart growth principles, our culture will need ent times. Alternatively, many urban designers now
to produce new building types on a grand scale. understand urban design less as the creation of a
For example, big box stores should be replaced by series of specific buildings and open spaces and
mixed use types, and low-density single-family more as a framework for change that is continuous
homes by higher-density types. and ever evolving.
In this book, I offer a different perspective, born In plotting an urban design strategy, planners
of research in many different places over time. In can manipulate or limit the conditions that affect
any one place, most buildings conform to one or and change the physical environment over long
another of a limited set of building types – for periods of time. This requires an understanding of
instance, a strip mall is an example of a type. These the normal dynamic forces that operate on the built
types are used over and over because they align landscape. Some of these forces are obvious to
with the conditions of the culture and economy. In planners: zoning, markets, transportation, and so
other words, they emerge or evolve as a complete on. What is not well understood is the mechanism
resolution of a complex, interwoven set of prob- by which these forces work their magic. Why does
lems. As long as the conditions that gave rise to a big box store happen, or a strip mall? How can
the type continue to exist, the type will proliferate, we change these places? Often the frustrating
with minor variations. Only when conditions change answer is that, despite our knowledge of better
will these types evolve to respond to the new con- ideas, we cannot change them; instead, they keep
ditions, with some allowance for natural resistance popping up. These ordinary building types are per-
to change. Changing types on a grand scale so that sistent, ubiquitous, and resistant to the planner’s
they emerge naturally is difficult without first creat- bag of tricks.
ing a corresponding change in these conditions. Since ordinary building types are the most
Thus it is that big box stores, for example, continue visible building blocks of the urban landscape, plan-
to be far more prolific than mixed use retail types. ners must study the naturalized conditions under
Managing the dynamic of typological change is which they arise, flourish, and change to have any
an essential skill for planners. Yet most urban design hope of transforming them or the urban landscape
ideas are based on a static understanding of the that contains them. By understanding types as
built environment, and they anticipate an end, when emergent from culture, we can recognize that it is
the plan is complete. A master plan is an imagined not possible to invent new types or substantially
future environment, a blueprint or framework to alter a type solely for the purpose of serving a
get from one point of time to a day in the future. different kind of urban design idea; these attempts
Few plans actually are completed with any fidelity, betray a fundamental misunderstanding of how the
however, for a variety of reasons. A major one is urban environment creates and recreates itself.
the simple fact that conditions of the urban econ- Instead, we must see types for what they are:
omy and culture change too profoundly and too natural adaptations that satisfy a specific set of
frequently for the master plan to be relevant for a conditions. It is the conditions themselves that can
long period of time. A plan that is a singular vision, be manipulated, not the type.
or which is very precise, may not have the flexibil- A wholesale change in the urban environment
ity to be adapted for these changes. This is a con- cannot be accomplished without orchestrating this
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evolution. This book is about understanding how and weaknesses that are worth questioning. Are
types originate and evolve, so that planners and Wal-Mart and strip shopping centers the best
designers can help to manipulate this change we can do? Are incessant growth and expansion
effectively with the tools at hand. Assisting and necessary for quality of life? Is it worthwhile and
encouraging the evolution of common types is in perhaps even critical to take on the complicated
the long run, the only way to ensure that more task of deeply understanding the emergent types
urban types will be successful on their own terms that surround us and the conditions that create
– that is, that good types will appear more or less them? It may even be possible to push evolutionary
spontaneously, without excessive regulation to force change to happen more quickly by manipulating
them to happen. Manipulation of types requires a the conditions under which these types thrive.
sophisticated understanding of building types and Consumer values and expectations are com
their relationship to urban form and the conditions ponents of these conditions. Seen in this way, the
that drive them. Although we can imagine an ideal design and construction of an idealistic new urban-
city, it may not be possible to build it or rebuild ism project does not represent an evolutionary shift
our urban landscape significantly unless the com- but a form of consumer advertising that may t
h
plicated processes of typological and urban trans- slightly influence the slow process of typological r
formation are understood. change over time. e
That is not to say that altering the course of At present there are many exemplary urban-style e
urban development is impossible in the long run. projects that are featured in design media. Most
In less than a century, the urban and suburban form of these arise from very particular situations that
of the United States was dramatically reshaped by almost always include massive control of a single
a combination of interrelated forces, including the large site. These exemplary projects can be seen
globalization of the economy (which brought us as leaps, not evolutions. Most exemplary projects
Wal-Mart, for example); technological shifts in com- give preference to satisfying ideals: the formal and
munication, construction, and transportation (cars, imagistic attributes of a place predominate. As a
jets, electricity, TV, phones, steel, computers); the result, they must often overcome enormous resis-
transformation of education, civil rights, and the tance to be built at all. This resistance can take the
role of women; the rise of corporations, govern- form of irate neighbors, reluctant bankers, planning
ments; and so much more. The reason we do not regulation, dicey market studies, parking needs, and
build cities in the lovely traditional forms that we a host of other cultural and economic barriers.
know from history is obvious: the patterns and Because they have not emerged or evolved from
types in older cities emerged from completely dif- the crucible of complex cultural conditions, these
ferent cultural, technological, and economic condi- exemplary projects cannot be expected to prolifer-
tions. The dramatic shifts over the past 100 years ate naturally. Although they may be financially
guaranteed that a new urban landscape would successful – our ultimate measure of value in this
emerge to challenge the traditional form. culture – they are still much riskier than “normal”
That emergent urban landscape is all around us, development.
for better and worse. It reflects our shared values This book undertakes the task of unraveling the
and embodies our expectations, which is why idea of building types as emergent forms that drive
American cities are so similar everywhere. Citizens most urban development and transformation. By
of older cities also shared similar common expect studying types and how they change over time,
ations of form, if not explicit values about how a designers and planners can become connoisseurs
city should be. Building types from the 18th and of the physical environment, easily recognizing a
19th centuries embody those expectations. In the wide variety of urban patterns and able to classify,
same way, our contemporary building types, like it date, and analyze the strengths and weaknesses
or not, also embody the habits, values, society, and of them.
economics that have lately evolved. Building type is an idea that actually has many
There are good reasons why designers are not related but different meanings in architecture.
satisfied with the types that emerge from cultural Typologies are classification systems, with import
processes. Our shared values have serious problems ant uses in fields as different as linguistics and
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biology.4 In architecture, the most common use of to those who want to understand the development
the term describes a loose classification of buildings of typology and morphology (the study of urban
based on their primary use – library, school, airport, form) as developed since the Enlightenment.
for example. Buildings of the same use-type have In this book, I will be demonstrating the follow-
the same function but may take many different ing four theories of type, which are derived from
configurations. Later in this chapter, I will describe the study of the evolution of six American cities
use-types and other ideas of building types, but and towns, including several suburban examples:5
everywhere else in this book the word type will be
used to describe formal types. Formal types share 1 Most buildings are exemplars of particular defin-
characteristics of the same form – for instance, a able types. These types are not arbitrary but
big box or a row house – but may be adapted eas- represent the resolution of forces impinging on
ily for many different functions, even though they the building industry and culture in general at
may be commonly associated with one function the time they were built. Types are not autono-
and originally derived from that function. Form mous, plucked from previous eras and imposed
types are particularly useful because they constitute in a new place. At their origin, they participate
a way of analyzing and describing the space, shape, in a culture, which means that they interact with
density, and many other physical configurations of the culture and all its conditions. A new or trans-
the built environment. Just as the term land use formed type can be introduced successfully on
does not give us much information about the phys- a grand scale only when the conditions for its
ical configuration of a place, use-types – library, introduction are right.
retail, and so on – do not tell us the shape or scale 2 Because types emerge and evolve rather than
or configuration of buildings. being wholly invented, improving the built en-
Formal types, on the other hand, can be used vironment implies an understanding of how the
to describe the shape, feel, scale, and configuration process of typological transformation occurs,
of the environment but without being specific about especially through changing conditions such
the precise architectural character, building use, or as market demand, technology, cultural values,
intensity of activities. This opens up an important infrastructure creation, and regulation.
arena for planners and planning regulation. By 3 Typological observation is an important urban
describing the existing and future city according analysis tool. Existing environments reveal their
to building types and their urban configurations, recent and even ancient history through a close
planners have a tool that is oriented toward creat- reading of their origins, common types, and their
ing specific physical configurations of the city rather transformation over time. Signs of transforma-
than – or in addition to – the economic and intensity tion are particularly informative: the story told
configuration, or what is known as land use. Using by the observable typological and morphological
type as a basis for physical planning also implies process adds an unusually concrete and yet
a certain flexibility and possibility for change – of subtle confirmation of the written history of a
use, character, intensity, and so on – that is missing place and is an essential step in urban design.
in most regulatory systems. 4 Building types in and of themselves represent
In particular, planners who are creating form- ideas that are carried forward in time. This
based codes or aesthetic zoning are already involved signification and historical continuity imbue
in a regulatory system that relies on a sophisticated building types with a design value and power.
understanding and coding of types. This book is Designers often deliberately impose some his-
specifically intended to help planners understand toric typological characteristics on a new build-
the subtleties of the idea and answer confounding ing in order to endow it with some of the
questions about use-type and formal types, archi- significance of a historic type. As a culture, we
tectural guidelines, site plans, and form-based vaguely recognize types and have expectations
codes, and how type is related to the urban form. about them, which can be reflected – with
In the next chapter, I also introduce a brief history subtlety or with more overt quotation – by the
of the idea of type, which can provide a background architect.
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Formal types conditions was the original use of the building, but
a very precise fit with function is counterproductive
What is a type? A type is a class of buildings hav- to the useful life of a type. Buildings of a particu-
ing formal characteristics in common, usually as a lar type may have significantly different functions
result of having certain global functions in common. as they exist over time. In the row house, the
There are several defining characteristics of a type: servants no longer live on the top floor, and the
circulation, overall shape and scale, entrance con- family may have long been replaced by a law office
ditions, and situation on the site. Building types are and four small apartments, all with minimal damage
abstract. Each individual building of a given type to the building or even to its fit with the original
is an exemplar of that type, a variation that contains type abstraction. This flexibility of internal con-
all the elements of the abstract term but may also figuration, urban scale, and use, which is common
look quite different from any other exemplar. in some types, gave the row-house type a mag-
Take the example of a 19th-century row house: nificent resilience. Over time, particular buildings
it has multiple stories; it is relatively narrow, with may come and go, but the type itself can remain
party walls; and it has small punched windows and serviceable for many centuries by the means of t
h
a tall stoop. . . . It is typically entered on one side minor transformations. r
of a three-part facade division, which indicates its On the other hand, some types become obsolete e
internal circulation pattern. Stairs and corridors more quickly, especially if they are tied inflexibly e
inside the building are along one side of the struc- to a single function – for example, a blacksmith’s
ture in a central core, with front rooms and back shop. One of the most important forces of trans-
rooms open to light. The row house was used formation is obsolescence. Types sometimes
primarily for residences initially, with an internal become obsolete or are regulated out of existence,
configuration leaving the main family with the first, a particular opportunity or concern for those who
second, and third floor; the uppermost floors were make policy.
used by servants; and the lower level, beside or In the United States, the flexible, attractive row
below the stoop, could be rented out. house is in danger of such lethal regulation. The
As with most types, this type has a common site tall stoop of a residential row house is not acces-
configuration relative to its neighbors and to the sible to people with physical disabilities. In most
street. It is arranged in rows, usually lining the places, this means the row house can be built only
street, with a rear yard of varying depth. This type as a single-family home, not as a place of business
appears in many places and in many styles, with or multiple dwellings, which gives it its flexibility.
some variation in stories but not in proportion, With clever design, one can make a building that
original use, or site configuration.6 somewhat resembles the original, but not within
Each variation could be considered a different the framework of the original type, which assumes
type, or for some purposes, within a family of that everyone will climb up and down. Even though
similar types. There is not a systematic or univer- historic row-house buildings continue to be popular
sal nomenclature or classification of types; types – see Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Brooklyn,
are sometimes named and identified within regions New York – the type, with its inherent use flexibil-
– for example, Boston’s triple-decker – but the same ity, cannot be reproduced in a new neighborhood.
type could be classified or named differently in a While we enjoy and still occupy older types such
different region. . . . To complicate it even more, as row houses, their currency today is to represent
names like “row house” have no specific universal a few ideas that we would like to retain, since it is
meaning. difficult for row houses to satisfy contemporary
Type is related to function but not precisely. We conditions. We admire the urban environment, the
might consider building types to be the customary public facade, the street character, the density, the
building of countless vernacular builders over time. scale, and the materials of the row-house type. But
The row-house type just described is a common so far, contemporary adaptations of this type gen-
one in European urban culture because it fit very erally fall far short of the desirable 19th-century
well with the conditions of its time. One of these urban environment. The conditions under which a
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type arises are a cultural package, and it is difficult larger project that has strong architectural similar-
or impossible to separate out one or two desired ity – scale, massing, detail, material, and landscape
characteristics of a row house without losing the – and a much freer relationship to the site, park
integrity of the type altogether. ing, garden, and street. Even when owned separately,
On the other hand, all types evolve. The row town houses are governed by private regulations,
house has not directly evolved much in recent years and it is difficult for an owner acting independently
in the United States because it has been edging of the association that controls the complex to
toward obsolescence for many decades, even as modify their own town house on the exterior or
a single-family home. It has no parking, it has a interior. . . . This means that it is not nearly as flex-
limited garden, its tall ceilings require expensive ible in responding to changes in cultural and social
heating, and its height and vertical arrangement of conditions. This particular constraint did not exist
spaces have fallen out of favor for residences. It in the older row-house type.
must be built as a single-ownership unit with fire-
proof party walls. It is too narrow to adapt for large
units that need width, light, and good circulation. To Other definitions of type
be occupied by more than one family or a business,
it has to be equipped with an expensive elevator, This section will describe other uses of the word
further constraining width and light. These prob- type so that we can understand how they are dif-
lems can be overcome in the Back Bay of Boston, ferent from the formal type. A use-type is very com-
or the Upper West Side of New York City, where monly associated with architectural design. In this
property values allow these expensive adaptations, definition, a building type is a series of buildings
but for speculative building on a large scale, the that have an identifiable use, such as a library or
row house of the 19th century can no longer be recreation center. Architects study building types
considered a model except as an image. to assist with programming a new building, pro-
The great-grandchild of the row-house type is gramming being the definition of spaces and their
the town house, a similar building in that it is built relationship, size, and requirements. Type studies
side by side in rows. . . . The town house is a single- primarily focus on unusual architecture, so standard
family building that may or may not have street configurations – say, a simple school plan with
frontage and rarely has a stoop. It may form a street classrooms and a center hall – tend not to be docu
wall or a courtyard with others. Its proportion and mented unless they have significant innovations.
frontage are very different from the row house, Architects are interested in innovations, so looking
because it lacks a stoop, each floor has a greatly at the latest library helps to visualize how the func-
diminished floor-to-ceiling height, and it usually has tional and stylistic characteristics of libraries are
only three floors (though two floors are also com- changing.
mon). In some forms, a garage constitutes the first [ . . . ]
floor, dramatically affecting the urban realm. The limitation of use-type in describing form
Just as important to the urban context and the can be illustrated by retail types. Formally, retail
public realm, the old-style row-house type was can function successfully in any of these types: an
owned fee simple: it sits on its own plot of land indoor mall, a lifestyle center, a main street, a strip
and shares only a wall with its neighbor, not a mall, a freestanding store, a big box, and a drive-
contractual relationship. Built separately, one at a through. Retail uses can also be part of another
time, each row house was somewhat unique and dominant use, such as an airport, an office building,
sometimes had no architectural similarity to its or a hospital. So designating a block of land as
neighbors except the loose characteristics of the retail or commercial on a land-use or zoning plan
type that they both exemplify. The owner custom- tells us nothing about its eventual urban form.
arily expected to extensively remodel both the Similarly, knowing that a building is retail tells us
outside and the inside at will, within a legal frame- nothing about its configuration.
work suited to continuous adaptability.7 Residential types commonly combine the idea of
The contemporary town house, on the other formal type and use-type. Residential types include
hand, is developed as part of an ensemble, a much row houses, lofts, garden apartments, courtyard
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houses, cottages, high-rise apartments, motels, and editing, critics can develop use-type comparisons
so on. While the characterization of use is key, all to define iconography that has its own life, much
of these at least imply a certain formal arrange- as historians revisit or reinterpret the past to reveal
ment, even if it is understood only vaguely. patterns.
On the other hand, there are other residential The pervasive confusion of formal type and use-
use-types that do not imply form at all: multifamily type derives from historical patterns, where these
apartment, single-family house, dormitory, retire- ideas were much more difficult to separate. For
ment home, monastery, shelter, or halfway house. example, a cathedral, in certain eras and regions,
Each of these can be designed with several dif came in only one or two formal types.8 The use
ferent types. and the form were very specifically aligned. Many
Describing and showing examples of use-types use-types – schools, office buildings, factories –
helps architects to precisely program specific spaces: originated with this congruity of form and use, only
What are the common pieces and parts, and how to diverge as the culture, technology, and economy
do they work together? How big is a hotel dining diversified.
room? Where is the kitchen in relation to it? Even Because designers enjoy the potential for inven- t
h
more important are the technical conditions that tion that is glorified in the use-type, they also are r
are revealed in use-type study, such as laboratory compelled from time to time to invent new types. e
configurations, the need for ventilation, the code The innovation-type is an imaginary building created e
requirements for exiting, and so on. These variables to propose an extraordinary idea that would propel
can be quite different and compelling in different the built world in a specific direction or toward
uses. Expertise in these areas is valued and re- specific goals, often idealistic in nature. Myriad
warded, and this is one reason why a use-type examples of these exist, from Boullée and Ledoux . . .
retains its power as an organizing idea for archi- to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation.9 Innovation-
tectural practice. types are like architectural experiments, speculative
Most of the time, there is no assumption of a and not likely to emerge through the normal pro-
standard formal arrangement or part in a use-type; cesses of typological evolution. They represent an
in fact the innovative projects that appear in the idea that would be a special leap. Projects such as
architecture type study are singular and architectur- these are often heralded as new types, and they
ally interesting buildings, not ones that demonstrate are interesting in their own rights as thoughtful
business as usual. The use-type is also inventive reactions to specific contemporary conditions or
– that is, architects are encouraged to create new as influential models for real buildings.
use-types through imaginative combinations of old An innovation-type is a building intended to be
uses or the recognition of new uses. used over and over, thus singular speculations can-
Architects, historians, and critics make extensive not be classified as innovation-types. A project that
comparisons of use-types to analyze contemporary speculates on using shipping containers for housing
and historic modes of expression and to track and in many places and contexts is an innovation-type.
validate design trends. What does a cathedral of Similarly, proposals for buildings over and under
today look like? In a cathedral building type study, interstate highways, or thin buildings that line high-
the critic might find several common themes of ways and mediate between pedestrian spaces and
contemporary practice: soaring space and manipu- auto zones, are innovation-types in that they rep-
lation of light characterized by streaks and patterns, resent an idea about how to treat many such places
deep shadows, and dramatic highlights. She might that exist all over the world. . . . These are speculative
point out that today’s cathedrals demonstrate a solutions that do not arise naturally, because they
striking sublimation of iconography or even sym- do not address most conditions of contemporary
bolism, that they are spaces scrubbed of overt urban form: they satisfy only one or two conditions
religious expression and yet somehow spiritual and that are important to their inventor.
contemplative. There is no science in this interpre- Innovation-types are rarely popularized or
tation: the examples chosen exemplify the themes adopted in the way that their authors hope – as
because they were specifically chosen to do so, and solutions – although some versions are built as
those that did not were left out. Over time and with examples, almost as experiments. Occasionally an
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innovation-type that is built will resonate very fication was not much remarked upon before the
strongly and influence the evolution of similar forms. Enlightenment, since the differences in buildings
Finally, a prototype is a building deliberately de- were obvious and types were somewhat standard-
signed for no specific site and meant to be copied ized within a culture. Before the Renaissance,
almost exactly, with minor adjustments in size and architects passed along ideas of what a temple, a
orientation to fit the conditions of different sites. palace, or a basilica type should be, primarily by
Branded businesses – for example, chain motels, imitating or elaborating on previous examples.
McDonald’s, and Jiffy Lube – all use prototypes, and Occasionally architects would adapt a previous type
so do some religious organizations and shoestring- for a new use. These types were sanctified and
budget public agencies such as school districts, fire legitimized by imitation and by their presumed
departments, and transit authorities. Although based sacred origin. Scandal could ensue if “proper” models
in economies of repetition, the prototype has other were abused.10
cultural conditions attached to it, especially its Houses were even simpler forms of imitation–
branding and marketing potential. A hallmark of copies of ideas that were so generally accepted
prototypes often is that they are very easy to read; over a given geographic area that the form was
one might almost call them “logo” buildings. People repeated without really considering any substantive
are conditioned to interpret these buildings correctly alternative or variation, except through a very slow
and know almost instantly what experiences can evolution.11
be found inside. According to the architectural historian Anthony
Even when they are vacated, they still have Vidler, in the 18th century Enlightenment theorists
power: A Taco Bell prototype that has been stripped began proposing that legitimacy in architecture was
of its signage and abandoned for another use can not the result of divine approbation and that it
still be easily associated with the brand. . . . might be otherwise created by nature or reason.
The explicit understanding and classification of
building types reflected a conscious effort to pro-
THE ORIGINS AND THEORY OF TYPE vide rational explanations for existing types and
provided a rational legitimacy for architectural form.
To understand the origin of type is to understand In particular, Enlightenment architects were
the origin and legitimacy of architecture itself: Are interested in origins, as most Enlightenment think-
types found in nature? Inspired by God? Evolved ers were. To discover the first building and the
from some original primitive types? Or generated succession of buildings that followed was to give
from rational principles? Even today, planners are architecture legitimacy not through God or imita-
referencing “ideal” building types as one way to tion but through nature and the rational perfection
judge whether a building conforms to the preferred of nature over time. The purpose of the search for
type (making it more likely to be approved) or origins was to legitimize certain formal ideas while
deviates from it (possibly leading to its rejection). declaring others to be degenerate. The approved
A simple system of classification is likely to have ideas were known as types, using the word to mean
encoded the earliest buildings into “house” and abstract models.
“not-house.” Since, formally, a house in a given Most of the initial rationales for origins included
culture is a simple form repeated over and over, the imitation of nature, which the Abbé Laugiér
house type conflates both form and use. Something proposed was man’s first lesson in shelter. He em-
that was “not-house” arose when cultures began to broidered on Vitruvius’s primitive hut – a theo-
specialize functions: priests and rulers needed retical explanation for the first architecture that
temples, palaces, and storehouses. The differing presumed tree trunks as uprights, with a roof of
forms of the temple type and the storehouse type crossed branches. . . . This hut, it was thought, might
reflected very different ideas about their relative have provided man with all subsequent ideas of
place in the culture, especially their place in the construction: tapered columns, peaked roofs, and
cosmology. details of joinery. Architecture evolving – being
Over time, the number of types and their variety perfected – from this system would have columns
became more sophisticated. Typology as a classi- with organic-themed capitals, for example. French
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“The Origins and Theory of Type” 317
Enlightenment theorist Quatremère de Quincy re- rational principles that drove their similarities?
stated it this way: “One should turn one’s eyes to What could explain their differences? His thesis
the type of the hut in order to learn the reason for laid out the proposal that there were three forms
everything that may be permitted in architecture, of primitive building from which all architecture
to learn the use, intention, verisimilitude, suitability derived: the cave, the tent, and the carpentered
and utility of each thing.”12 building – that is, the primitive hut. Quatremère
Types were at first defined as ideal models. This proposed that Egyptian and Greek architecture
idea arose from the 18th-century admiration for evolved from two different primitive types: the
Greek art and architecture, as opposed to the “de- Egyptian from caves, and the Greek from carpentry.
generate” forms of the Baroque. Greek sculpture, Any similarities were explained by slight cultural
for example, idealized the human body: no actual contamination. Furthermore, he speculated that
person was depicted in such an idealization, but Chinese architecture was evolved from tents, and
instead the artist selected the perfect features, the the details and expressions of their design could
perfect body, and so on.13 Greek architecture, it was be attributed to that. This idea specifically denied
theorized, had been derived originally from the the sacredness of form and detail in favor of a t
h
primitive hut and perfected over time through adapt rational idea of primitive man and his available r
ation to human proportion, ideal climate, landscape, resources and common living practices. Quatremère e
and freedom. The resulting architecture – for also believed that only Greek architecture had e
example, the Greek temple of the classical period been fully developed and perfected, since it arose
– was seen as an ideal model for all architecture. in perfect conditions of ideal climate and local
It was Quatremère, writing in the early 19th materials, mature aesthetic and philosophic appre-
century, who for the first time used the word type ciation, and relative freedom of thought. This idea
in ways that are directly related to our understand- later influenced those who believed that types were
ing today. a resultant of specific conditions of place, history,
and culture.16
The word type presents less the image of thing At the same time that Quatremére was writing,
to copy or imitate, than the idea of an element, J.N.L. Durand was a teacher at the École Polytech
which ought in itself to serve as a rule for the nique, one of the first formal training grounds for
model. The model, as understood in the practice architects. Durand published two important books,
of an art, is an object that should be repeated which illustrated ideas of type in two ways. The
as it is; the type, on the contrary, is an object first was his Parallèle, a huge, handsome book that
with respect to which each artist can conceive reproduced plans, elevations, and sections of his-
works of art that may have no resemblance to toric buildings at the same scale. . . .17 Used for
each other. All is precise and given in the model, generations by architecture students as a reference,
all is more or less vague in the type.14 it included examples from many traditions and cul-
tures, not just classical. Importantly, Durand usually
Moving away from the historical practice of imita- arranged the buildings in his Parallèle by functional
tion as a legitimizing force in architecture, he de- and formal classification: churches, lodges, palaces,
fined building type as an ideal, abstract form of a and so on. This reiterated the blossoming scientific
building, not an actual example to be duplicated idea of type: a classification system by form and
or closely imitated. With this distinction, Qua- function, inclusive of all important examples and
tremère allowed the possibility that man (architects) without judgment as to their ideal nature.18 By
could create new abstractions and forms (types), reproducing the buildings at the same scale and
albeit he preferred that they did so within a system with the same drawing technique, Durand treated
of ideals, which he believed could only be based disparate examples as if they were scientific
on classical Greek architecture. specimens.
Quatremère was interested in Origins as well Durand’s second important contribution to the
and he engaged the question, current at the time: idea of type was quite different. As a teacher,
Did ancient Greek architecture influence ancient he developed an ideal but rational system of archi
Egyptian or the other way around?15 Were there tecture using columns, walls, and pure geometric
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forms, with the goal of allowing the architect Some ideas thus produced in the Enlighten
to more clearly express the function of buildings ment include that type is a product of culture, that
without resorting to copying unsuitable classical types provide a set of rules or characteristics but
buildings. Durand was particularly interested in allow design variety, that types confer legitimacy as
rethinking function as a way of generating new long as each type reflects specific kinds of values,
forms, and creating architecture that could vary and that types can support a rational classification
and yet have the legitimacy of working within a system derived from both form and function. In
rational system of rules. These rules were derived the next period when the idea of type gained
from simple parts and simple geometry combined traction again – the middle of the 20th century –
in specific relationships.19 these ideas were transformed slightly and greatly
In his book Précis, Durand proposed that using expanded.
building systems in this manner freed the architect
to discard imitation and address contemporary
conditions through an infinitely variable system. Round two: type has a moment
His system required the architect to work with sym- in the sun
metry and classical elements, proportions, and
materials, but it allowed the specific design to vary Although the modern movement in architecture
according to the needs of the building.20 Durand derived in part from the acceptance of typologies
thus invented a system flexible enough to accom- based on function and structure, modernists did
modate the rapidly changing contemporary pro- not devote much discussion to the idea of type.
grams but restrictive enough to provide a uniform Prototypes – that is, models intended for appro-
architectural standard. . . . priation in different places – were common. For
Both Quatremére and Durand, although very instance, Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation was
different in their intentions, discarded mimesis as intended to provide a model for high-rise hous-
a legitimate force and completed the transformation ing blocks everywhere.22 Repetition of industrial
of architecture from its basis in classical examples parts was one of the hallmarks of modernism, so
and divine inspiration to the rational justifications modularity, modes of production, repetition, and
we know today. This rational basis for architecture universality of programs and forms overwhelmed
would lead away from imitation and into the simple subtle ideas about type, bringing modernism more
geometry that was assumed to be closer to original in line with earlier ideas of mimesis rather than the
types, or geometric purity derived from ideal Greek more flexible notion of type.
form. Modernism’s willful rejection of the extant city
Durand, with his reliance on the generative and desire to entirely remake the urban form led
qualities of geometry and rational functionalism, is to a powerful reaction in the middle of the 20th
considered one of the first modern architects, century. Ideas of building type were revived as a
heralding a shift to legitimacy through rationality, way to recover and provide continuity with the
a notion that persists today. Durand’s system, a fabric of old cities.23 As these ideas progressed and
language of architecture, demonstrated the very changed in different intellectual settings, more or
powerful essence of building types: a way of design less vague ideas of typology gained great currency
ing that was neither entirely free of constraint nor among architects and urban designers, peaking
overly prescribed, yet resulted in works that had in the 1980s with the translation of a number of
automatic legitimacy. important treatises into English.24
In later generations, this generative principle The primary differences between the earliest
gave the idea of type its power: types are abstrac- Enlightenment ideas of type and those of the 20th
tions that follow certain rules (that is, contain century were the latter’s emphasis on the city, and
certain widely accepted characteristics) yet allow the role of building types in the city. In the Enlighten
the artistic interpretation of those characteristics, ment, the city was not mentioned as a part of typolog
to the point where, as Quatremére wrote, “each ical legitimacy or idealism, nor were the ordinary
artist can conceive works of art that may have no buildings of the city – the houses and shops – seen
resemblance to each other.”21 as worthy of consideration for architects. Types
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“The Origins and Theory of Type” 319
were recognized for public buildings, sacred build- courtyard house – into generic forms and made
ings, and great palaces. suggestive transformations of these through formal
In the 20th century, this situation was reversed, manipulation. . . . The results were a catalogue of
with the ordinary fabric of the city becoming a types that recalled pieces of the city and that would
revered model and the initiation of the “continuity fit with the city but did not relate to specific func-
of the city” ideal. Early in the century, modernists tions.28 These were not meant to be inclusive, but
were focused on common structures such as mass suggestive of a method of design, in the same vein
housing, and these became an important arena for as Durand’s Précis.
architects for the first time. But because modernist These Europeans viewed the typological project
architects promoted high-density towers for cities, as a method of putting a stop to excessive indi-
the separation of uses and transport, and the de- viduality that was disruptive to the continuity of
struction of the crowded, infected old city, by mid- cities. They also saw it as a method of bringing
century the modernist project had many critics. contemporary architecture into alignment with
The Italians, in particular, mourned a crisis the specific and unique nature of different cultures,
brought on by modern architecture’s intent to de- which naturally had developed different urban forms t
h
stroy the historic urban fabric. They sought a design and types over time. This was a specific critique r
method that would act through the analysis of of modernism, which deliberately internationalized e
urban form to unite contemporary architecture with and universalized architectural expression. e
history and provide the urban continuity denied by The most intensive and controversial message
modernism.25 of the typological project, however, was the idea
In the 1950s, Salvatore Muratori and his disciple, that types convey meaning. Architects can exploit
Gianfranco Caniggia, helped to form the Italian these meanings in one of two ways: by using the
school, which was a fertile group of architects who type to relate specifically to a historical moment,
emphasized the nature of the crisis as a failure to as when a temple type is appropriated for use as
understand or adapt to processes of change in archi a bank; or by using the type as part of a subversive
tecture and the city. . . . Through intensive study of or critical stance, as when a form associated
Rome and Florence, they uncovered a rigorous with a prison is appropriated as a city hall. This
method of discovering and defining types.26 technique, subtle as it is in using historic forms to
Caniggia saw types not as reflective of an ideal convey critical themes such as the abuse of power,
but as organic, arising and changing according to posed a real danger of being misunderstood,
specific conditions of time and place. The city was especially in the translation from Europe to the
an agglomeration of these types, both the profane United States.29
and magnificent, which varied over time and space. Critics have suggested that the typological pro
Any given urban type, he theorized, could be traced ject reached its nadir when the critical stance was
to a simpler type, an original type, and eventually overcome by simple iconographic appropriation,
all these types could be traced to a single-room which led to the postmodern historic pastiche so
structure. A particular type could vary in several reviled by contemporary architects. Appropriation
ways: if it was in the middle of the block, it would of historic motifs without the analytical and critical
likely be different than if it was on a corner, for understanding of type and its relationship to the
example. Due to their slightly different traditions, city was a degenerative situation that led to archi-
a row house in Padua would have variations from tecture that simply put a historic-looking face on
a row house in Rome, even during the same historic a building without considering its urban situation
era. Over time, the row-house type in Rome would or subtleties of type.30
itself evolve to be different than in earlier eras.27 The geographers of the English school ap-
Although this was primarily an analytical approached the problem of the city far more analytic
proach, most of the Italians were clear that their ally, and their discoveries informed others working
intentions were to appropriate these typological in a more architectural vein. M.R.G. Conzen did
ideas into design. In a similar vein, the Krier broth- not start out from a typological approach but dis-
ers, Rob and Léon, abstracted ideas of geometric covered the importance of the town plan to the
types found in the historic fabric – for example, a definition of a type.31 Conzen proposed that the
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town plan – lots, blocks, and streets – was the slightly different scale or block structure. . . . There
underlying formal constraint of all buildings. In fore, at the heart of most American cities is a set
studying the city, he looked at both the ordinary of gridded districts, now often interrupted by an
situations of these configurations and also the overlay of highways, railroads, and utility corridors.
unusual configurations that would present them- The grids of streets created blocks, and those
selves – for example, in the “fringe belts” at the blocks were subdivided to be sold off at the same
edge of urban development.32 time the grid was created. The lots thus created
Even after Italian and American architects ex- were scaled to receive specific building types. A
hausted the typological project as an overworked variety of building types could be accommodated
architectural moment, urbanists still continue to because grids and lots are not always uniform. A
explore morphological patterns and their rela close examination of the historic lots and blocks
tionship to building types, developing an analytic in some places reveals a sophisticated understand-
approach that now encompasses cities of great ing of this idea.
variety on all continents. That approach is reflected In New York City, for example, the lots that face
in this book. numbered streets are relatively narrow and were
Although architects can be dismissive of the intended for common housing types. When lots on
architectural misadventures of the late 20th-century the same block faced the wider avenues, dimen-
typological project, new urbanists such as Léon Krier sions shifted, and larger, grander types were built.
and Andres Duany have significantly extended its Some of these support commercial use. . . . Although
urbanistic ideas, molding it into a populist movement much of what was built no longer exists, this con-
that dismisses the excesses of modem architecture trast in scale and type persists today, with large
and the “elite” architects that work in that vein grand buildings presiding over the avenues, while
today.33 It is due to this movement and its many smaller buildings cluster along the streets.
supporters that ideas such as form-based codes Perhaps the finest example of this grid differen-
and the legitimacy of type as a basis for judgment tiation can be found in Savannah, Georgia, with its
have become more commonplace. lovely parks and streets. The character and types
[ . . . ] found here vary because some streets are inter-
rupted by parks, while others are not.34 Alleys pro-
vide a third level of distinction. . . . Because these
LEGITIMACY AND CONTROL places were built with a common understanding of
the building types, and with very real technological
Urban design, planning, and urban form and material limitations, the initial development
tended to be quite consistent. The lot dimensions,
Accepting, for the moment, that current planning which were minimal to support the types, acted as
practice points in the direction of urban continuity a check on development, preventing intrusive and
and that sustainability goals are not incompatible overscaled projects but also reinforcing a specific
with this practice, it is clear that planning controls density.
that exploit an understanding of morphology and This situation prevailed into the early 20th cen-
typology can be very successful in controlling the tury, when zoning was first introduced. At the time
look and feel of a physical environment and its these codes were developed, it was assumed that
urban design. some kind of orderly tissue – a grid of streets and
By contrast, for much of the 20th century, plan- lots – would exist; so, for example, a 10-foot min
ners operated with tools that were inadequate to imum setback would provide a consistent frontage
address urban form; and indeed, that was not their and prevent a tone-deaf builder from invading the
intention. In the 18th and 19th centuries in the common space of the street. Design was already
United States, cities and towns were invariably restricted, so to speak, by the consistent types and
founded with a grid of streets. Over time, as a place the lot and street dimensions.
grew, new town land was needed, and a new sec- The standard for the zoning laws of very large
tion of gridded streets was added to the first, some- cities provided the legislative template for all places,
times with a slightly different orientation and a no matter how inappropriate. Cities at the turn of
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the 20th century were overcrowded and unhealthy limitations. A sparsely distributed set of country
to a degree that is hard to imagine now except by roads, instead of dense urban grids, provided the
visiting third-world countries. Responding to intense backbone of all urban development, which was
and persuasive urban issues of that age, the ideals sporadically extended into the countryside. . . .
reflected in zoning, especially in places such as Highway builders struggled to keep up, widening
Chicago and New York, addressed problems of the former country roads over and over to accom-
intensive and very unhealthy overcrowding; noxious modate the traffic.
industries and their resulting smoke, toxins, and A new set of controls was developed to over-
water pollution; and the lack of access to green come another set of problems with isolated sub
open areas. The ideals conveyed in the zoning laws divisions. Subdivision regulations were devised to
included, naturally, separation of land uses, provi- set construction standards and minimum sizes for
sion of greater open space, and limits on the size new lots, and these tended to match the goals of
and density of buildings. But since zoning’s main zoning: lower density, green spaces, and an enforced
purpose was to prevent noxious land uses, such as consistency of use and size. These standards were
tanneries and other urban industries, from invading also technical, including the sizing and minimum t
h
nice neighborhoods, the importance of the under- specifications for sidewalks, lighting, grading, sewers, r
lying tissue framework was never emphasized. water, and the like. Because these were isolated e
Since zoning emphasized land-use and intensity places, the actual layout of the lots and streets did e
limitations, physical dimensional limitations were not receive much scrutiny, nor was continuity of
somewhat neglected, especially since zoning was the urban fabric acknowledged as a concern. As
promoted at the dawn of the automobile era, when subdivisions became the only system of creating
urban dimensions, orderly blocks, and consistent new local streets and lot patterns in expanding
types could be assumed. As development pushed areas, jurisdictions gave over their historic town-
out to the suburbs, this framework also disappeared. planning role to private interests.
Without an orderly underlying tissue and consistent As long as the primary tools to control private
lot size, the few dimensional aspects of zoning, development were so general, the urban design of
such as setbacks and floor area ratios, had no con- places was impossible to control. Cities allocated
sistent physical results. land to different uses, but the uses could and did
Transferring zoning ideals to small towns and take an infinite variety of forms, so the results were
suburbs never made much sense, but that transfer both unsatisfying and physically unrelated to one
occurred anyway through the standardization of another. Cities also laid out approximate locations
zoning codes throughout the country. The zoning for arterial streets and highways and dictated the
template allowed even small towns some measure amount of open space, but they did not plan their
of control that had not existed, and they seized it own street networks or arrange open space as a
in record numbers. The control of land use, in complement to public space design. Open spaces
particular, was a very powerful tool that gave city were relegated to leftover land.
leaders a politically attractive leverage over virtually The manner in which zoning has been applied
all landowners. The politicization of zoning, and its has also been a failure for urban continuity. An
usefulness in manipulating land values, made it an older section of a town might have a consistent
even less effective tool for formal control. tissue and common types, but these have been
The early 20th century gave people the means ignored in order to apply the ideal zoning formulas
and the incentive to move out of the city and that privilege large lots, open space, and large set-
into the countryside: the private automobile. The backs. Thus, a nice older neighborhood in Denver
standard grid additions gave way to a wholly new – where the average size of a lot is 4,500 square
kind of place development: the stand-alone sub feet – until recently was zoned for a minimum lot
division, barely anchored to the old system of roads size of 8,000 square feet. The lack of association
that connected towns. . . .35 Town founding and between the reality on the ground and the zoning
orderly growth through the means of a layout of restrictions has caused much difficulty, especially
grids and grid additions halted completely. Urban as neighborhoods change and buildings turn over
development exploded beyond the bounds of these within them.
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By the middle of the 20th century, it became be created using a variety of techniques – land-
fairly clear that zoning was not sufficient to control scapes, vistas, axes, geometric configurations, and
development, preserve great places, and actually architectural consistency – our newly burgeoning
plan for attractive growth. Two related planning ideas value of urban continuity privileges a particular
grew from this dissatisfaction: historic preservation kind of incremental physical arrangement typified
and design guidelines. Preservation focused on by lots, blocks, and open spaces arranged in tradi-
recognizing and saving places, especially individual tional configurations.
buildings that retained their historic character. Many Even this kind of order can actually be quite
neighborhoods that might have been destroyed by messy: the underlying tissue of the city grid of
the misguided application of zoning were saved by most big cities creates substantial orderliness, even
preservation efforts. though there is a cacophony of signs, uses, type
Design guidelines were inspired by the effective- variations, and the visual messiness of everyday
ness of historic preservation efforts. Without much comings and goings. This is a lively urban order.
thought, jurisdictions based them on the template Having a strong tissue and similar building types
of historic preservation guidelines, emphasizing creates a background datum against which a lively
materials, details, styles, and sign controls. These variety can play. . . .
were applied to nonhistorical neighborhoods in an In this kind of environment, the order is found
attempt to control the aesthetic quality of places as a background, mostly provided by the uniformity
and manage change.36 and consistency of the tissues and a certain over-
Many issues arise in the application of design all consistency in building types. The urban types
guidelines, whether regulatory or not. Most of these themselves work best when their architectural
stem from the difficulty of defining “good” design language is within a range of scale, variation, and
and from the need to justify most regulations on richness, defined by the rhythms of openings in
some basis. Guidelines, often very arbitrary, are the facade, three-dimensional depth, and material
difficult to develop, are difficult to administer, and application, rather than style.
go against the grain of what most people feel is On the other end of the spectrum is the calm,
their right to determine how their property looks. leafy green order that we associate with suburban
Perhaps the most important shortcoming is that subdivisions and office parks. The underlying tissue
design guidelines are often ineffective in producing here is just as orderly: a pattern of similar-sized
a coherent urban environment, unless one already lots and streets, with a related set of building types.
exists. Design guidelines tacitly promote the idea Instead of the cacophony of lively and visually
that the disorder and ugliness of the urban environ- stimulating objects layered onto a strong order, we
ment is a cosmetic problem, that it can be solved have “soft” order – widely spaced and somewhat
with sign controls, consistent styles, street trees, varied types, with a gentle but steady rhythm of
and a limited color palette. Without an understand- house, space, house. A variety of site conditions
ing of the importance of morphology and typology – lawns and driveways, walls and fences, gardens
in creating order, guidelines can have peculiar and groves – provide variety and visual interest. . . .
results. This happens when an arbitrary style is These two environments represent two poles in
applied to a contemporary type, such as the pueblo the kinds of districts where attention to building
style strip shopping center or more banal examples types and tissues is an effective technique for con-
of contemporary types dressed up with less than trolling urban form. Their commonality is that they
authentic historic styles. . . . have an underlying street and lot pattern – static
tissue – that retains a basic order and provides a
strict limitation on what can be built there. For
Typology and codes example, in a typical single-family neighborhood, the
lot size and orientation restrict the size and general
Much of the task of urban design is to foster a type of the building. Circumscribing that further
sense of order in the built environment, while still are legal restrictions such as setbacks and height
allowing growth, change, and a great diversity of limits. Uniformity is gained through these, while
activities, aesthetics, and forms. While order can variety comes from variations in materials, colors,
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 322 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

landscaping, details, and, to a lesser extent, some has specific formal layouts and goals. Such codes
variation of the types found in the neighborhood. are specifically typological, in that they implicitly
In order to reinforce a sense of order and allow reference the types that are acceptable in a place,
for variety in static districts, it is necessary to define according to a set of ideals that usually give pre
and preserve the critical characteristics of the ference to higher-density development. Although
tissue and the common building types. This same types are referenced, they are not usually described
strategy works whether you are talking about a holistically in a form-based code. Instead, they are
suburban neighborhood, a business park, or a lively described by regulating their pieces and parts: front-
urban downtown. It is possible, and sometimes ages (architectural features on the public way),
desirable, to manipulate the standard controls of setbacks, building envelopes, side yards, and so on.37
traditional zoning for this purpose, although certain The code is developed and applied in different
concepts such as floor area ratio, which has no pre districts that correspond to different densities and
dictable formal result, must be abandoned in favor appropriate types. As with zoning, there is a map,
of clear delineation of maximum (not minimum) with delimited territories where different regulations
setbacks and building envelopes. apply. Within those boundaries, a form-based code t
h
Changing traditional zoning parameters in a will enumerate frontages, setbacks, lot sizes, build- r
given jurisdiction is often easier than substituting ing heights, parking, and land uses.38 Building types e
an entirely new and untried system of controls such can also be defined and restricted. In addition, there e
as a form-based code. On the other hand, zoning may be some regulation of the street design, with
regulations are very strict in their application of attention to sidewalks, travel lanes, and landscaping.
land-use separations, which may not be desirable Civic spaces can also be required and regulated
in a more urban environment. And zoning is a use- as to their function, design, and location. Some
less tool for formal control if the underlying tissue form-based codes go further and regulate the build-
is highly varied and there is no sense of typological ing design – materials, window shapes, and so on.
consistency. Form-based codes thus combine the functions of
Even in consistent static tissues, zoning is a tool subdivision regulation, preservation, and design
designed to direct land use and economic and func- guidelines, and they hark back to the traditions of
tional priorities, not form. It may not be possible old-fashioned town planning.
or appropriate to use zoning to address the sub Given this program of regulation, it is easy to
tleties of building types. A possible alternative is see how the concepts and flexible logic of urban
aesthetic zoning, or form-based codes, a system of morphology and typology can be channeled for
regulation that explicitly foregrounds the formal this purpose. As in lot-block and all other static
characteristics of a place as the critical criterion to tissues built in history, the expected and customary
be controlled. Form-based codes usually discard building types are the foundation that inspires the
zoning altogether and replace it with a place-based creation of a specific tissue pattern. A form-based
regulation of formal configurations that can be code uses regulation to create or strengthen an
built, which implies a range of density and some urban tissue and to restrict types, whether by defin-
limitation on land use. However, land uses are more ing types or by defining a building envelope and
lightly regulated so that a mix of uses in a par- other details. Form-based codes are a way of re-
ticular district can be promoted. Form-based codes turning to a tradition of city building, albeit with
recognize different neighborhood configurations heavy regulation instead of the limitations of ex-
and densities, and they act to preserve and enhance pectations, culture, technology, and custom.
the relationship between each property and its The underlying assumption of a form-based
surrounding physical and formal context. code is that the physical configuration of a place
can be manipulated as a means to control economic
function, density, social goals, and ecological pri-
Form-based codes and typology orities. Like zoning, however, and unlike traditional
city formations, form-based codes have a very specific
Form-based codes are designed to preserve static political and social agenda, so that they legitimize
neighborhoods and create new development that certain building types and disdain others. The ones
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 323 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

that tend to be ignored or shuffled off into special space, could suggest a variety of acceptable types,
zones are some of our most enduring and prosaic as they do in Savannah, Georgia.
types: the suburban office building, strip shopping In the historic process of town development,
centers, gas stations, storage buildings, stadiums, tissues were designed to fit the types that were
big box stores, airports, and so on. These are types common at the time of the tissue formation, not
that do not tend to be compatible with the small- to make a statement about density, best practices,
scale lot-block static tissue that is the key element or the like. A key lesson, drawn from Salt Lake City
of the effectiveness of form-based codes. and other places, is that creating a tissue that is
misaligned with common development types can
have repercussions through time. Idealism, whether
Using morphology and typology in it is Brigham Young’s ideal low-density village or
form-based codes the new urbanist ideal high-density village, will
only go so far in holding back the forces of urban
One of the shortcomings of form-based codes as development and transformation.
they currently are promoted is that they are not As a start for a form-based code, the acceptable
usually place specific. The SmartCode used in many types should be drawn from regional examples, with
places as a template specifies eight categories of the idea that building types are regionally unique
place – known as transects – with very specific and created to address specific conditions. In some
regulations and types appropriate for those cat places, duplexes are common; in others, they barely
egories. It also suggests calibrating the code to exist. The theory of typology assumes that there
common local types, which is usually interpreted are economic, social, and environmental conditions
as adopting some of the unique building types or that shape demand for types. Designing a place for
frontages found in a place. an unproven type or one that clearly is not really
If codes are really to be reflective of place, desired will slow down the development and cause
however, common templates must be rethought other problems later. The tissue plan and the code
entirely. Creating a code requires that an existing developed for new areas of a region should recognize
place be thoroughly analyzed for its morphological common types or encourage slight modifications
history and its current typological conditions. The to common types that already exist in that region.
subtleties of the tissue formation and evolution are Where a pattern already exists, it should be
particularly revealing of why and how a place de- thoroughly understood, particularly the forces that
veloped over time, and what the forces still acting have acted on it. Only then can a code be aligned
on it might be. For example, it would be important with the typological transformations that have al-
to understand Salt Lake City’s peculiar grid and its ready occurred and will likely occur in the future.
effects over time . . . to prepare a code that would A particular issue is the proposed reuse of some
respond to those unique and still extant conditions. older types, for example, a row house. Some historic
Superficial analysis and application of a standard types are no longer viable due to modern building
transect would miss the importance of lot size codes, technological innovations, and car culture.
and orientation to the subsequent failures in the Their modern equivalents may not have the same
urban context. Opportunities to exploit the large character or public face.
block size and unusual alley structure would also
be lost.
Form-based codes on undeveloped land require Form-based codes – a caution
the development of an underlying tissue, which
must be exactly specified by the planner or the Although form-based codes are a way of creating
developer. The code will not operate correctly with- and enforcing order, they cannot be used for certain
out a plan of the tissue, which is analogous to the kinds of existing tissues. As we have seen, the con
old grid plan layouts used by town founders every- cepts of type, morphology, and the fit of a certain
where.39 Sophisticated variations within the lot con tissue to the common types are very relevant to
figurations of the plan, especially those responding creating a form-based code. But without a clear
to natural conditions, street variation, and civic and relatively small-scale static tissue, a form-based
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 324 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

code has little meaning, just as a given zoning set- to zoning and thoroughly encoded in it. Zoning
back has no physical result on a five-acre site. encourages the public and their officials to view
Therefore, form-based codes are a reasonable urban problems as questions of general density,
solution where static tissues occur, yet they have land-use separation, and street hierarchies.
very limited applicability in regulating the elastic The technique of form-based coding is not lim-
or campus tissues that dominate in the suburbs. . . . ited to solving one or two contemporary issues – it
Where a consistent tissue does not exist or cannot might be flexible enough to solve different kinds
be created with new development or by repair, the of problems as they arise in this century. This will
problem of creating order and variety is much more be true if certain idealistic agendas are not so firmly
complex and cannot be simply guided through a attached to the technique and are replaced with a
hands-off application of form-based codes. . . . more pragmatic and open-ended position. A variety
Several other critiques of form-based codes can of goals should be offered, with examples of how
also be asserted, based on lessons that typological coding can be applied. Form-based codes could be
transformation and morphology present to us. effective in problems of environmental degradation
The first is that ideology can be a problem. The or landscape integration, for example, but not if t
h
Enlightenment concept of type was born in a cru- the “right” answer is always higher density, pedes- r
cible of ideology, defining as good those buildings trian districts, and mixed use. e
that reflected the ideal types, based on their origins The key to this kind of flexibility is to recognize e
and their evolution from classical forms. Quickly, urban change and transformation as central condi-
though, that idealism gave way to the judgment of tions of all active cities. In a form-based code, this
types based on their fit with function, standardized will mean abandoning inflexible ideals or standard-
classical parts, and structure. ized formulas in favor of representing and codifying
The return to idealism today is troubling. Typo the actual place as it has been acted upon over
logical transformations always move away from time. Even new development occurs in the regional
their historic origins, by branching into several landscape and reflects the farm roads and fields
different new types or by extensive modification. that were its residents’ first marks on the land.40
These types respond to exact values and conditions Successful and truly urban places change con-
at first, and then become common and stubbornly stantly, especially at the level that design guidelines
persistent standards, before finally being supplanted were created to control: signs, colors, and porch
by new types. To the extent that form-based codes details. Enacting a code that freezes current types
recreate anachronistic places or require anachro- might seem attractive to those who fear change,
nistic types, they are moving against the tide of but it will limit the ability of types to have trans-
evolutionary development and have a risk of failing. formative effects and successful adaptations. Look
There is nothing in the technique or regulatory ing back at Over-the-Rhine or any 19th-century
methods of form-based codes that requires a city, it is clear that a dense fabric arose on the same
backward-looking agenda, however. But, just as tissue template of smaller types. Historically, it
with the initial applications of zoning law, there would have been unfortunate if there had been a
is a desire to codify a set of ideal formulas and regulatory resistance to replacing the poor wooden
principles that address perceived problems in structures with grand five-story buildings.
present-day American cities. These problems are On the other hand, the emphasis on creating
chiefly centered on auto-centric development and sound tissues in form-based codes is completely
sprawl, and the answer seems to be higher density consistent with the desire for orderly change: the
and a mix of uses. initial urban tissue has immense effect on the future
In the 1920s, zoning took aim at deplorable development of the city. It may not be the only
overcrowding, pollution, and the lack of open space. way to organize an orderly place, but it is a method
Yet we are still living with the techniques of zoning, that offers enormous flexibility for the future.
even though the problem set has completely changed. For this reason, form-based codes should be
Adaptation of the zoning technique to new prob- explicitly about guiding change, not preserving a
lems has been difficult, not because the tool lacks place as a historic relic. New types will eventually
flexibility but because of the initial idealism attached evolve and replace the types put in place today.
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 325 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

How can the form-based codes created today allow Cities (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
and encourage this eventuality while still providing This book is an excellent and well-produced
order? It may be possible to design form-based catalogue of high-density low-scale urban types,
codes to be minimally restrictive, as opposed to both traditional and contemporary.
the current trend that planners have in mind to 7 Anne Vernez Moudon, Built for Change: Neigh
regulate all things physical. A strong emphasis on borhood Architecture in San Francisco (Cambridge.
carefully designed and varied tissues and public Mass.: MIT Press, 1986). This is a groundbreak-
spaces is the most obvious answer, a lesson we can ing study of a San Francisco neighborhood.
easily glean from a place such as Savannah, Georgia. 8 Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types
By the same token, building types should be defined (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976). This is an
with more flexibility, and design guidelines should iconic catalogue of use-types conflated with
be very limited, in order to insure that types can formal types in historical examples.
evolve and respond to changing conditions and 9 Anthony Vidler, “The Third Typology,” Opposi
tastes. tions 7 (Winter 1976): 3–4; and The Writing of the
Walls: Architectural Theory in the Late Enlighten
ment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural
NOTES Press, 1987). Vidler is a major force in the historic
understanding of the idea of type, especially
1 Stephen M. Wheeler, “Built Landscapes in as it was understood in the Enlightenment.
Metropolitan Regions,” Journal of Planning 10 Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the Walls:
Education and Research 27 (2008): 410. Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment
2 D. Parolek, K. Parolek, and P. Crawford, Form- (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press,
Based Codes (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 1987), 126.
2008). This book is intended as a guide for 11 Gianfranco Caniggia and Gian Luigi Maffei,
planners producing form-based codes. Interpreting Basic Building: Architectural Composi
3 Witold Rybczynski, “Architects Must Listen to tion and Building Typology ([1979] Florence:
the Melody,” New York Times, September 24, Alinea Editrice, 2001), 43–45.
1989. Like many critics of modernism, Rybc 12 A. C. Quatremère de Quincy, “Type” [1825],
zynski here argues that contemporary disorder introd. and trans. Anthony Vidler, Oppositions
is due to a lack of “collective wisdom” and 8 (Spring 1977): 147–50.
“architectural good manners.” 13 Vidler, The Writing of the Walls, 125–38.
4 Lindsay J. Whaley, Introduction to Typology: 14 Quatremère de Quincy, “Type,” 147–50.
The Unity and Diversity of Language (Thousand 15 Sylvia Lavin, Quatremère de Quincy and the
Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997). This book is a sum- Invention of a Language of Modern Architecture
mary of the linguistic idea of type. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 42–61.
5 Brenda Scheer, “The Anatomy of Sprawl,” 16 Ibid.
Places: A Forum of Environmental Design 14, 17 Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Recueil et parallèle
no. 2 (Fall 2001): 25–37; “Who Made This Big des edifices de tout genre anciens et moderns,
Mess?” Urban Design, no. 93 (Winter 2005): remarquables par leur beaute, par leur grandeur
25–27; Brenda Scheer and Mintcho Petkov, ou par leur singuIarite, et dessines sur une même
“Edge City Morphology: A Comparison of echelle (Paris: Gillé, 1799).
Commercial Centers,” Journal of the American 18 Sergio Villari, J. N. L. Durand (1760–1834): Art
Planning Association 64, no. 3 (Summer 1998): and Science of Architecture (New York; Rizzoli
298–310; and Brenda Scheer and Dan Ferdel International, 1990), 55.
man, “Destruction and Survival: The Story of 19 Antoine Picon, “From ‘Poetry of Art’ to Method:
Over-the-Rhine,” Urban Morphology 5, no. 2 The Theory of Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand,”
(2001): 15–27. These are research case studies in J. N. L. Durand, Précis of the Lectures on
of types and their urban patterns. Architecture; With Graphic Portion of the Lectures
6 Eric Firley and Caroline Stahl, The Urban on Architecture ([1802] Los Angeles: Getty
Housing Handbook: Shaping the Fabric of Our Research Institute, 2000).
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 326 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

20 Durand, Précis of the Lectures on Architecture. History, ed. H. J. Dyos (New York: St. Martin’s
21 Quatremère, quoted in Vidler, Writing of the Press, 1968), 114–30.
Walls, 152. 33 Léon Krier and Diru Thadani, The Architecture
22 David Vanderburgh, “Typology,” in Encyclopedia of Community (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,
of 20th-Century Architecture, vol. 3. ed. R. Stephen 2009).
Sennott (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), 1,356. 34 Stanford Anderson, “Savannah and the Issue
23 Aldo Rossi, Architecture of the City, trans. Diane of Precedent: City Plan as Resource,” in Settle
Ghirardo and Joan Ockman ([1966] Cambridge, ments in the Americas: Cross-cultural Perspectives,
Mass.: MIT Press, Oppositions Books, 1982). ed. Ralph Bennett (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated
This is L-architettura della citta, the classic text University Press, 1993), 114–37.
that caused much excitement when it was 35 Michael Southworth and Peter Owens, “The
translated into English. Evolving Metropolis: Studies of Community,
24 Terence Goode, “Typological Theory in the Neighborhood, and Street Form at the Urban
U.S.: The Consumption of Architectural Auth Edge,” Journal of the American Planning Associ
enticity,” Journal of Architectural Education 46, ation 59, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 271–87. t
h
no. 1 (1992): 2–13. Goode takes a somewhat 36 Brenda Scheer, “Invitation to Debate,” in Design r
controversial stance that links typological Review: Challenging Aesthetic Control, ed. Brenda e
theory to post modern pastiche. Case Scheer and Wolfgang F. E. Preiser (New e
25 Caniggia and Maffei, Interpreting Basic Building, York: Chapman & Hall, 1994), 1–10.
1–40. 37 See SmartCode, created by Duany Plater-
26 Anne Vernez Moudon, “Getting to Know the Zyberk & Company, available as open source
Built Landscape: Typomorphology,” in Ordering online at www.smartcodecentral.org/smart-
Space: Type in Architecture and Design, ed. filesv9_2.html.
Karen A. Franck and Linda Schneekloth (New 38 D. Parolek, K. Parolek, and P. Crawford, Form-
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994). This is Based Codes (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons,
the authoritative history of the three move- 2008).
ments – Italian, English, and French – of urban 39 Practitioners developing form-based codes use
morphology. the term regulating plan to refer to the entire
27 Caniggia and Maffei, Interpreting Basic Building, map of a place that identifies areas subject to
70–82. different regulations, which would be analogous
28 Rob Krier, Urban Space (New York: Rizzoli, 1979). to a zoning map. This is not the historic mean-
29 Goode, “Typological Theory in the U.S.” ing of the term. Some also refer to each specific
30 Ibid. area as a transect – analogous to a zoning
31 M. R. G. Conzen, “Alnwick, Northumberland: A district – another confusing use of the term,
Study in Town-plan Analysis,” publication no. 27 which also has a different meaning in history.
(London: Institute of British Geographers, 1960). 40 Brenda Scheer, “The Anatomy of Sprawl,”
32 M. R. G. Conzen, “The Use of Town-plans in Places: A Forum of Environmental Design 14,
the Study of History,” in The Study of Urban no. 2 (Fall 2001): 25–37.
9780415668071_P3_05.indd 327 10-26-2012 3:20:00 PM

“Charter of the New Urbanism”
Congress for the New Urbanism (1996)
The leading current movement directed toward combating urban sprawl and creating compact, walkable
neighborhoods is a professionally based movement called the New Urbanism. It emerged in the 1980s as
architects and urban designers sought ways to re-create what were felt to be the best physical qualities of
traditional neighborhoods and small towns – connected street grids, local shopping, community parks, rear
alleys, and front porches. Initially referred to as “Traditional Neighborhood Design,” the movement coalesced
under the rubric of the New Urbanism in 1993 and organized itself as the Congress for the New Urbanism
(CNU). Several years later, the CNU issued a charter that reaffirmed the principles articulated in the 1991
Ahwahnee Principles, which had been developed by the non-profit Local Government Commission with the
help of leading members of the fledgling movement, and incorporated physical form approaches that had been
developed in the first New Urbanist projects, particularly at the new town of Seaside, Florida. The Charter
of the New Urbanism, reprinted here, outlines twenty-seven guiding principles for architecture and urban
planning that focus on physical spatial structure. The principles are organized according to three interrelated
spatial scales: metropolis, city, and town; neighborhood, district, and corridor; and block, street, and building.
The New Urbanism is criticized, especially in academic circles, on numerous grounds: that its traditionally
inspired built forms are anti-modern and nostalgic; that its recommendations are too prescriptive and formulaic;
that its emphasis on form smacks of physical determinism; that its projects are elitist because they are not
particularly affordable; and that it is contributing to urban sprawl because many projects are built on greenfield
sites and are of relatively low density. Nonetheless, the movement represents a coming together of many
practicing professionals who, understanding the nature of the land development and housing industry, are
intent on achieving urban development that is highly livable, community building, and more socially and envir
onmentally responsible than would otherwise be built. In some ways, New Urbanism can be likened to a
movement of utopian-minded former students, shocked by the realities of the “real world” and the limitations
of public urban planning, and focused upon creating something better – something they thought they might
be doing when they entered the field initially. And, inherent problems and faults notwithstanding, the New
Urbanism is proving popular in the marketplace.
Leading practitioners of the New Urbanism, and founding members of the CNU, are Miami-based Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, Berkeley-based Peter Calthorpe, Dan Solomon of San Francisco, and
Stefanos Polyzoides and Elizabeth Moule of Los Angeles. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany designed
Seaside, on the Florida panhandle. Since then they have had a hand in designing numerous other commu
nities, including the well-known Kentlands. The firm pioneered the development of form-based codes as an
alternative to traditional zoning practices, developed a New Urbanist “Lexicon,” and created a New Urbanist
“Transect,” which organizes development guidelines along a rural to urban continuum. Their own writings and
writings about their work include Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Towns and Town-Making Principles,
edited by Alex Krieger with William Lennertz (New York: Rizzoli, 1991); Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk,
and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York:
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“ C H arter O f t H e N ew U rbanism ” 329
North Point Press, 2000); and Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon, The Smart Growth Manual (New
York: McGraw Hill, 2010). Peter Calthorpe focuses on regional planning and has been a leading advocate
for “transit-oriented development.” His book The Next American Metropolis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1993) promotes clustering new developments at stops along transit lines and presents guidelines for
achieving walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. His firm has developed the concept into a plan for the
Metropolitan Portland region, and several new communities have been built, most notably Orenco Station.
Peter Calthorpe’s recent book Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011)
looks at how regionally scaled urbanism can be combined with green technology to address climate change
issues. Dan Solomon and his firm have designed numerous urban infill projects in San Francisco, the Bay Area,
and elsewhere. Solomon writes eloquently about the shortcomings of modern architectural practice and design
education in his book Global City Blues (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003). In Britain, notable proponents
of the New Urbanism include Great Britain’s Prince Charles, who has promoted its concepts through the
Prince of Wales Institute. In Europe, the most influential advocates are architects Leon and Rob Krier, who
have produced many designs for new city neighborhoods.
Writings on the New Urbanism include Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, Retrofitting Suburbia t
h
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011); Philip Langdon, New Urbanism Best Practices Guide (Ithaca, NY: r
New Urban News, 2009); Tigran Haas (ed.), New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future e
(New York: Rizzoli, 2008); Douglas Faar, Sustainable Urbanism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008); Jill Grant, Plan- e
ning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2008); Emily Talen,
New Urbanism and American Planning (New York: Routledge, 2005); Peter Katz, The New Urbanism: Toward
an Architecture of Community (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994); and Todd W. Bressi (ed.), The Seaside Institute,
The Seaside Debates: A Critique of the New Urbanism (New York: Rizzoli, 2002).
Writings on the techniques of New Urbanism include Daniel G. Parolek, Karen Parolek, and Paul C. Craw-
ford, Form Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Designers, Municipalities and Developers (Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, 2008); and David Walters, Designing Community: Charrettes, Masterplans and Form-
Based Codes (Oxford: Architectural Press Elsevier, 2007).
For more information on the Ahwahnee Principles, see the Local Government Commission’s website (http://
www.lgc.org/ahwahnee/principles.html). The Congress for the New Urbanism’s website provides information
about New Urbanist activities and available publications (http://www.cnu.org/).
THE CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM WE ADVOCATE the restructuring of public
views disinvestment in central cities, the spread policy and development practices to support the
of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race following principles: neighborhoods should be
and income, environmental deterioration, loss of diverse in use and population; communities should
agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well
of society’s built heritage as one interrelated as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by
community-building challenge. physically defined and universally accessible public
WE STAND for the restoration of existing urban spaces and community institutions; urban places
centers and towns within coherent metropolitan should be framed by architecture and landscape
regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology,
into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse and building practice.
districts, the conservation of natural environments, WE REPRESENT a broad-based citizenry, com-
and the preservation of our built legacy. posed of public and private sector leaders, commu
WE RECOGNIZE that physical solutions by them nity activists, and multidisciplinary professionals.
selves will not solve social and economic problems, We are committed to reestablishing the relationship
but neither can economic vitality, community stabil- between the art of building and the making of
ity, and environmental health be sustained without community, through citizen-based participatory
a coherent and supportive physical framework. planning and design.
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330 Congress for the New Urbanism
WE DEDICATE ourselves to reclaiming our distributed throughout the region to match job
homes, blocks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, dis- opportunities and to avoid concentrations of
tricts, towns, cities, regions, and environment. poverty.
We assert the following principles to guide pub- 8 The physical organization of the region should
lic policy, development practice, urban planning, be supported by a framework of transportation
and design: alternatives. Transit, pedestrian, and bicycle
systems should maximize access and mobility
throughout the region while reducing depen-
The region: metropolis, city, and town dence upon the automobile.
9 Revenues and resources can be shared more
1 Metropolitan regions are finite places with geo- cooperatively among the municipalities and
graphic boundaries derived from topography, centers within regions to avoid destructive com-
watersheds, coastlines, farmlands, regional parks, petition for tax base and to promote rational
and river basins. The metropolis is made of mul- coordination of transportation, recreation, pub-
tiple centers that are cities, towns, and villages, lic services, housing, and community institutions.
each with its own identifiable center and edges.
2 The metropolitan region is a fundamental
economic unit of the contemporary world. Gov The neighborhood, the district, and
ernmental cooperation, public policy, physical the corridor
planning, and economic strategies must reflect
this new reality. 1 The neighborhood, the district, and the corridor
3 The metropolis has a necessary and fragile re- are the essential elements of development and
lationship to its agrarian hinterland and natural redevelopment in the metropolis. They form
landscapes. The relationship is environmental, identifiable areas that encourage citizens to
economic, and cultural. Farmland and nature take responsibility for their maintenance and
are as important to the metropolis as the garden evolution.
is to the house. 2 Neighborhoods should be compact, pedestrian-
4 Development patterns should not blur or erad- friendly, and mixed-use. Districts generally em-
icate the edges of the metropolis. Infill develop- phasize a special single use, and should follow
ment within existing urban areas conserves the principles of neighborhood design when
environmental resources, economic investment, possible. Corridors are regional connectors of
and social fabric, while reclaiming marginal and neighborhoods and districts; they range from
abandoned areas. Metropolitan regions should boulevards and rail lines to rivers and parkways.
develop strategies to encourage such infill de- 3 Many activities of daily living should occur
velopment over peripheral expansion. within walking distance, allowing independence
5 Where appropriate, new development contigu- to those who do not drive, especially the elderly
ous to urban boundaries should be organized as and the young. Interconnected networks of
neighborhoods and districts, and be integrated streets should be designed to encourage walking,
with the existing urban pattern. Noncontiguous reduce the number and length of automobile
development should be organized as towns and trips and conserve energy.
villages with their own urban edges, and planned 4 Within neighborhoods a broad range of housing
for a jobs/housing balance, not as bedroom types and price levels can bring people of diverse
suburbs. ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction
6 The development and redevelopment of towns strengthening the personal and civic bonds es-
and cities should respect historical patterns, sential to an authentic community.
precedents, and boundaries. 5 Transit corridors, when properly planned and
7 Cities and towns should bring into proximity a coordinated, can help organize metropolitan
broad spectrum of public and private uses to structure and revitalize urban centers. In con-
support a regional economy that benefits people trast, highway corridors should not displace
of all incomes. Affordable housing should be investment from existing centers.
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“ C H arter O f t H e N ew U rbanism ” 331
6 Appropriate building densities and land uses 3 The revitalization of urban places depends on
should be within walking distance of transit stops, safety and security. The design of streets and
permitting public transit to become a viable buildings should reinforce safe environments, but
alternative to the automobile. not at the expense of accessibility and openness.
7 Concentrations of civic, institutional, and com- 4 In the contemporary metropolis, development
mercial activity should be embedded in neigh- must adequately accommodate automobiles. It
borhoods and districts, not isolated in remote, should do so in ways that respect the pedestrian
single-use complexes. Schools should be sized and the form of public space.
and located to enable children to walk or bicycle 5 Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable,
to them. and interesting to the pedestrian. Properly con
8 The economic health and harmonious evolution figured, they encourage walking and enable
of neighborhoods, districts, and corridors can neighbors to know each other and protect their
be improved through graphic urban design codes communities.
that serve as predictable guides for change. 6 Architecture and landscape design should grow
9 A range of parks, from tot-lots and village greens from local climate, topography, history, and t
h
to ballfields and community gardens, should be building practice. r
distributed within neighborhoods. Conservation 7 Civic buildings and public gathering places e
areas and open lands should be used to define require important sites to reinforce community e
and connect different neighborhoods and districts. identity and the culture of democracy. They
deserve distinctive form, because their role is
different from that of other buildings and places
The block, the street, and the building that constitute the fabric of the city.
8 All buildings should provide their inhabitants
1 A primary task of all urban architecture and land with a clear sense of location, weather and time.
scape design is the physical definition of streets Natural methods of heating and cooling can be
and public spaces as places of shared use. more resource-efficient than mechanical systems.
2 Individual architectural projects should be seam- 9 Preservation and renewal of historic buildings,
lessly linked to their surroundings. This issue districts, and landscape affirm the continuity and
transcends style. evolution of urban society.
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“Themes of Postmodern
Urbanism”
from Postmodern Urbanism (1996)
Nan Ellin
The postmodern era of the late twentieth century is a highly debated topic among academics, not just
as historic periodization but also as an identifiable design movement (which many say continues today). To
some chroniclers, postmodernism is the cultural expression associated with a very specific period of time
beginning in the 1950s, through the turn of the century. The cultural work of this period includes a wide range
of fields, including: literature, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, religion, history, music, and anthropology.
Postmodern social movements and characteristics are well known: feminism, post-structuralism, pluralism,
cultural relativism, and the end of paradigmatic meta-narratives. The postmodern here refers to a continuing
critique of Enlightenment attitudes that challenge dominant structures of modernism, science and theology.
To others, such as Frederic Jameson and David Harvey, the postmodern is synonymous with the period of
late capitalism, often associated with consumer perspectives, globalization, neo-Marxism, and multinational
corporate interests.
Within the built environment professions, the postmodern period is associated with both discontentment
and rejection of modern design and planning practices – but also a design movement that championed
improved communication of design intentions, humor-irony-camp-kitsch, and the rebirth of place-based con-
textualism. Some of the discontented include a list of now-famous authors and designers associated with
the history of urban design, including: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott
Brown, Colin Rowe, Edward Relph, the CNU, and Douglas Kelbaugh (all represented in this volume). With
reference to the built environment professions, postmodern debates continue and become intensified, as many
practitioners seek to distance themselves from comparisons and connotations to built works from the early
years of the movement, including some very shallow and ill-appreciated projects, for example, the Piazza d’Italia
in New Orleans, or any number of dated office buildings, museums, or libraries with thinly applied decoration.
The great chronicler of this movement within the design professions is Charles Jencks in his 1977 publication,
The Language of Postmodern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli).
In a literary tour-de-force, Nan Ellin’s Postmodern Urbanism has become one of the more important texts
describing the postmodern period. What Jencks does for postmodern architecture, Ellin does for postmodern
urban design and urbanism. Describing the key elements of the postmodern reflex, as well as its European
and Anglo-American branches, she provides a comprehensive synthesis of a complex history, which she
manages to make highly accessible. In early chapters she reviews the various design characteristics and larger
theoretical attributes of the postmodern period of the 1960s to 1990s, while in later chapters she situates
postmodern urban design within the professions, provides objective critique, and looks to the future. The
central chapter in which she describes the themes, critiques, and outcomes of postmodern urbanism is pre-
sented here in an abridged form, providing the key lessons from the beginning and end of the chapter.
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“ T hemes of P ostmodern U rbanism ” 333
For Ellin, “postmodern urbanism” is defined relative to the previous modernism: first, by a return to his-
toricism and a renewed search for urbanity; second, by a new emphasis on contextualism, regionalism, site/
place, pluralism, and the search for character and populism; third, by the renewed use of decoration, ornament
ation, symbolism, humor, collage, and human scale (among others); and fourth, by a humble and anti-utopian
apoliticism that no longer seeks ideal solutions on a large scale. Postmodern urban design is associated with
characteristics of small-scale, legible and neo-traditional projects that cater to consumer tastes and involve
citizen participation (to name a few of its key elements). In assessing the postmodern urban she illustrates four
different critical stances from which we might peer more deeply into its reality: Form Follows Fiction; Form
Follows Fear; Form Follows Finesse; and Form Follows Finance. These are summarized below. At the end
of the reading she considers the positive contributions of postmodern urbanism and how it might be morph-
ing to address more serious concerns and correct its past infatuations with nostalgia and the inauthentic.
With respect to Form Following Fiction, she presents postmodern urbanism’s enchantment with the pre-
industrial past, the use of irony, nostalgia, facadism, and the romanticizing of history; a history which rarely
corresponds “to contemporary needs and tastes,” such as desires for speed, efficiency, nuisance-free living
and convenience. In re-creating the facades of previous eras, postmodern designers sampled from a variety t
h
of styles, materials, and histories to emphasize appearance and aesthetics, regardless of their inappropriate- r
ness with respect to context, geography, or semiotics. This first critique suggests that postmodern urbanism e
can all too easily devolve into kitsch, inauthenticity, and sentimentality based on the simulation of set pieces e
from other times.
The second critique involves the decline of the public realm, the increasing prevalence of physical controls,
surveillance, and policing, and the growing privatization of public space due to Form Following Fear. She
attributes this to the triumph of individualism in western society, the corresponding increase of single-family
dwellings and gated communities, and the growing importance of the home – relative to the decline of pub-
lic life. Privatization also takes a corporate face in the controlled and policed spaces of the shopping mall,
theme park, office complex, and new town development. Accompanying these is the decline of public space
in the city, attributable to both fear in the city (associated with perceptions of crime, the ghetto, poverty and the
“other”) and many cities’ neglect and poor maintenance of these spaces. Here postmodern urbanism has
become a language of security, which includes the privatization and control suggested above, but also the
use of comfortable neo-traditional trappings.
Ellin’s critique of Form Following Finesse is the most difficult to grasp, dealing with elite concerns for
aesthetics, semiotics, and political neutrality. Postmodern urbanism is viewed here as a narcissistic undertak-
ing of architects engaging in “archi-speak” among themselves, producing work for the sake of image and
fame, and a preoccupation with aesthetics rather than solving social problems. Ellin points out the economic
ally regressive nature of some postmodern projects (despite their use of progressive planning and design
theories) that, indeed, make the city less affordable and less accessible to moderate income residents. With
respect to the social critiques and idealism apparent in modernism, postmodern urbanism abandons most
discussions of politics, critical social theory, or political economy.
The final critique, Form Following Finance, suggests that because of the apolitical stance of many designers,
postmodern urbanism exacerbates existing urban inequalities and reinforces corporate capitalist agendas.
Because of its populist nature, postmodern design may in fact be promoting enhanced opportunities for
consumption and profit-making. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings, the rise of the festival marketplace,
the growth of themed resorts, and the prevalent post-industrial redevelopment formula (cineplexes, food courts,
entertainment, bookstores, stadia, malls, and museums) all suggest an increasing commercialization of urban
development and the importance of market forces in the postmodern urban.
Nan Ellin is an urban theorist, Professor and Chair of the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning
at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Having also taught at Arizona State University, she teaches urban
design, urbanism, community building, and place-making. In her writing she advances ideas about sustainable
urbanism and collaborative engagement with communities. Her work in Phoenix, Arizona has helped to lever-
age interest in reuse of the city’s vast and under-utilized canal network. In addition to Postmodern Urbanism
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), she is the author of Integral Urbanism (London: Routledge,
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334 N an E llin
2006); Phoenix: 21st Century City, with Edward Booth-Clibborn (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2006);
“The Tao of Urbanism,” in Stephen Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth (eds), What We See: Advancing
the Investigations of Jane Jacobs (Oakland, CA: New Village Press, 2010); and Good Urbanism (London:
Routledge, forthcoming). She is also the editor of Architecture of Fear (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1997). She holds a PhD from Columbia University and was a Fulbright Scholar in France, where she
studied European New Urbanism.
Theoretical works on the concepts, history, and critiques of postmodernism include: Jean-François Lyotard,
The Postmodern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism
or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984); David Harvey, The
Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989);
Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London:
Verso, 1989); Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Modernity (London:
Sage, 1995); David Lyon, Postmodernity, 2nd edn. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
Michael J. Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Christopher Butler, Post
modernity: A Very Short Introduction (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Jim Powell, Post
modernism for Beginners (Danbury, CT: For Beginners Books, 2007); and Stuart Sim (ed.) The Routledge
Companion to Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 2011).
Classic texts on postmodern design, urbanism, and planning include: Charles Jencks, The Language of
Postmodern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977); Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour,
Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977);
Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1980); Michael J. Dear, “Post-
modernism and Planning,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (vol. 4, pp. 367–384, 1986);
Sharon Zukin, “The Postmodern Debate over Urban Form,” Theory, Culture, Society (vol. 5, nos. 2–3, pp.
431–446, 1988); Michael J. Dear, “The Premature Demise of Postmodern Urbanism,” Cultural Anthropology
(vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 538–552, 1991); Michael Sorkin (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park: The New American
City and the End of Public Space (New York: Noonday Press, 1992); John Urry, Consuming Places (London:
Routledge, 1995); Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Charlene Spretnak, The Resurgence of the Real: Body,
Nature and Place in a Hypermodern World (London: Routledge, 1997); Philip Allmendinger, “Planning Practice
and the Post-Modern Debate,” International Planning Studies (vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 227–248, 1998) and Planning
in Postmodern Times (London: Routledge / RTPI Library Series, 2001); John Hannigan, Fantasy City: Pleasure
and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (London: Routledge, 1998); and David Grahame Shane, Urban
Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (New York: Wiley, 2011).
The reactions to modernist architecture and plan proceeds from the business-person and artist to
ning can be mapped along two axes, one indicating the facilitator, political activist, and social engineer.
the formal ambitions of urban designers and the Although the reactions to modernist architecture
other the ways in which they perceive their role and planning might be mapped along these axes,
[Figure 1]. These axes meet at the point where such an exercise would ultimately reveal little since
urban designers aspire to realize their personal theory is often a mask or justification for personal
artistic and financial ambitions, with little or no ambitions or vice versa.
theoretical justification entering the mix, and the Rather than chart the rhetoric of these various
axes diverge along the designers’ respective theoret approaches, then, this chapter peers beyond it, by
ical paths. The formal ambition axis moves from reviewing and assessing the major themes which
producing good and beautiful built forms to drawing fall along the axes of postmodern urbanism as inscri
inspiration from mass culture, the social context, the bed within the larger postmodern reflex. These over
site, and the past. The urban designer’s role axis lapping themes include contextualism, historicism,
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“T H E M E S OF P O S T M O D E R N URBANISM” EEE1
(T H E O R E T IC A L )
CERTAIN PASTS
(Historicism,
the searchfo r urbanity)
THE SITE
(Regionalism or
physical contextualism)
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

(Social contextualism)
T
MASS CULTURE H
R
E
E
RFAI1TY
THE URBAN D E S I G N E R ’S ROLE
(To produce good and beautiful
architecture and cities)
Roles to effect change through urban design
Figure 1 The axes of Postmodern Urbanism.
the search for urbanity, regionalism, antiuniversal- ism was accomplice called for new responses from
ism, pluralism, collage, self-referentiality, reflexivity, urban designers. Whereas “modernism from the
preoccupation with im age/decor/scenography, 1910s to the 1960s . .. responded to the challenge
superficiality, depthlessness, ephemerality, fragmen of establishing social order for a mass society; post
tation, populism, apoliticism, commercialism, loss modernism since the 1960s . . . responded to the
of faith, and irony. The critique of postmodern challenge of placelessness and a need for urban
urbanism advanced in this chapter is organized as community” (Ley 1987, 40). In contrast to modern
follows: Form Follows Fiction; Form Follows Fear; urbanism’s insistence upon structural honesty and
Form Follows Finesse; Form Follows Finance; and functionality, postmodern urbanism sought to sat
The Result. The concluding section, On Balance, isfy needs that were not merely functional and to
presents certain correctives of postmodern urban convey meanings other than the building tectonics.
ism as well as promising initiatives that have In architectural theory, Ada Louise Huxtable
emerged in the 1990s. observed, there was “a search for meaning and
The challenge to the modern project and the symbolism, a way to establish architecture’s ties
decline of the public realm to which modern urban with human experience, a way to find and express
336 N an E llin
a value system, a concern for architecture in the from the past than may initially appear to be the
context of society” (Huxtable 1981a, 73–74). case. Indeed, they converge where urban design
As modernism’s minimalist tendencies grew ever draws from a fictionalized and mediamassaged past
more stifling, urban designers embraced maximalism or vernacular.1 Like the historicist tendency, these
and inclusivity, as expressed in the maxims “Less others betray a sense of insecurity and/or con
is a bore” (Venturi 1966) and “More is more” (Stern fusion and suggest a desire for self-affirmation, self-
in Williams 1985). The parallel shift occurring in expression, self-discovery, and “rootedness.” And
literature is evocatively portrayed by the protagonist like historicism, these efforts also tend to be more
in John Barth’s Tidewater Tales (1986), a writer rhetorical than real, largely because their premises
whose increasingly minimalist style ultimately contain denials and because the formulation and
blocks his ability to write or dream until circum implementation of these agendas by elites subvert
stances (including the birth of his first child) re- their initial claims. We might say that postmodern
ignite his creative juices, this time in a maximalist urban form follows fiction, finesse, fear, and finance
form. Likewise in urban design theory, universalism as well as function. But then so did modern urban
and purism were gradually supplanted by pluralism form.
and contextualism while the role of the urban de Ultimately, despite its efforts to counter the
signer shifted from that of inspired genius, artist, negative aspects of modern urbanism, postmodern
or social engineer to that of a more humble, and urbanism falls into many of the same traps. Despite
at times servile, facilitator. its eagerness to counter the human insensitivity
[ . . . ] of modern urbanism, postmodern urbanism’s pre
occupation with surface treatments and irony makes
it equally guilty of neglecting the human compon
THE RESULT ent. By denying transformations that have taken
place, postmodern urbanism may even be accen
A principal feature of postmodern urbanism is con tuating the most criticized elements of modern
textualism (historical, physical, social, and mass urbanism such as the emphasis on formal consid
cultural), in contrast to modern urbanism’s break erations and elitism. Ingersoll has asserted:
from the past and the site. When contextualism is
achieved in urban design, it is usually appreciated To project a return to a “traditional” city and
(successful) unless somehow inappropriate or re with it a future of “neovillagers” may be more
garded by the users as a patronizing gesture. In of a fantasy than any science-fiction vision of a
most cases, however, contextualism is not achieved, society dominated by robots. If the urban pro
because of economic and political constraints, cess is confined to aesthetic criteria alone, the
the invention of histories, shortcomings of urban social consequences, such as the elimination of
designers (who may only be paying lip service to emancipatory demands from the urban program,
contextualism while pursuing more personal goals), may be as unpleasant as those wrought by the
and other reasons. In short, these goals usually functionalist fallacies of the postwar period . . . It
prove elusive owing to urban designers’ ironic fail is as if urbs, the bound city form of the past,
ure to acknowledge the larger contexts in which could be considered without civitas, the social
they build. When contextualism is not achieved, agreement to share that lost urban promised
the urban design initiative is usually not appreciated land.
(unsuccessful), except in certain instances where (Ingersoll 1989a, 21)2
people believe a place is historically, physically,
or socially contextual (even if it is not) or don’t As Clarke has said, although its agenda suggests
care because the place succeeds for other reasons an antithesis, “postmodernism has a legacy from
such as the standard of living it offers, its prestige, modernism it has yet to contradict” (Clarke 1989,
and/or its location. 13). Although architects “may no longer be talking
The contextual attempts to gain inspiration from of the unadorned cube as the aesthetic model,” he
the site, the social context, and mass culture have contends, their works are still divorced from the
more in common with attempts to gain inspiration larger context, particularly social, in which they are
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situated (ibid.). Although this style may look dif Other contextualisms have also succeeded to
ferent on the surface, it is just as fragmented as some extent in achieving an urbanism that is mean
what it pretends to be criticizing, because flexible ingful to more people (i.e. a more pluralistic urban
accumulation favors urban design interventions ism). Efforts to design in a physically contextual
which distinguish themselves, thereby mitigating manner have, for the most part, been an antidote
against contextualism.3 The modernist refusal to to the modernist emphasis on the architectural
acknowledge context, as epitomized in the reflecting object and disregard for the site. Its close cousin,
glass wall (see Jameson 1984; Holston 1989; Harvey regionalism, has also proven to be a welcome de
1989, 88), might be interpreted as a refusal to parture from the high modernist contempt for exist
acknowledge the emergent mass culture and culture ing styles even though, like historicism, it may
of consumption.4 But postmodern urbanism’s con appear as a caricatured, mass-produced travesty
tinued denial of the conditions of a mass society, of the regional context, and/or a neocolonialist
despite its efforts to acknowledge them through undertaking (by developers, technocrats, and urban
contextualism, merely exacerbates the problems of designers) to prevent the “natives” from becoming
modern urbanism. This denial is epitomized by cer more cosmopolitan (like the earlier French colonial t
h
tain postmodernists’ refusal to build any physical urban design). r
structure or place, only to design or theorize. Although Residential design in postmodern urbanism offers e
justified as a form of resistance, this informed certain advantages over that of modernism. The e
choice only perpetuates the conditions they oppose Athens Charter maintained that instead of con
(Dutton 1986, 23). nected low-rise housing lining the streets, housing
should be provided in high-rise buildings located
in the center of large lots away from streets and
ON BALANCE from each other in order to maximize open green
space and natural light in the homes. Secondly, it
While much ink has been spilled on pronouncing maintained that these buildings should be raised
the banes of postmodern urbanism (along with onto pilotis to open up views from the ground and
postmodernism generally), there is also widespread endow large buildings with a sense of lightness.
sentiment that it offers a number of correctives to Finally, it recommended that roofs be flat to offer
that which preceded it. Indeed, Relph has suggested additional living space. Urban design theory since
that these reactions to modern urbanism have the 1960s reverses each of these tenets, with towers
ushered in “a quiet revolution in how cities are made and slabs (tours and barres) giving way to houses
and maintained” with the result that “repressive and apartment buildings and with superblocks sup
architecture and planning by great corporate or planted by city blocks (ilôts). These changes have
government bureaucracies is being replaced by been applauded for providing a more human scale,
more sensitive and varied alternatives” (Relph 1987, offering more personalized and personalizable living
215; see Mangin 1985; Muschamp 1994b). spaces, and adding visual interest to the landscape.6
Although historicism can be “essentially elitist, Concerted efforts to create high-quality public
esoteric, and distant” (Clarke and Dutton 1986, 2) spaces have also produced some welcome results.
and can devolve into kitsch, it can also provide a In many instances, the “return to the street” from
sense of security and “rootedness” when judiciously the shopping mall has been successful in bringing
applied, as in the reconstruction of European vitality back to street life. Increased attention to
central cities (Gleye 1983). The potentially creative the provision of traditional public space – parks,
component of borrowing from the past is suggested plazas, and squares – as well as to landscaping, has
by folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who offered an antidote to the privatization and concret
maintains that “traditionalizing” or “restoring” ing of urban settings. Likewise, the effort to design
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1983, 208) is a universal “mixed-use” projects has provided an antidote to
behavior which entails a process of giving form modernism’s rigid and anti-urban separation of
and meaning by referring to something old while functions.
creating “new contexts, audiences, and meanings And while hyperreal environments may be criti
for the forms” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 211).5 cized for being artificial, it can be argued that it is
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338 N an E llin
precisely that quality which people like about them. rally behind saving every fast-food restaurant in
Accused of distracting people from the injustices their neighborhood.
and ugliness of their lives, of placating them, and And while movements to “preserve” nature or
of being places of “spectacle and surveillance” (as wildlife may sometimes be thinly veiled attempts
in Harvey’s criticism of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, to preserve the intimacy of one’s community as
1989), hyperreal environments might also be ap well as land values, no one would deny the import
plauded for the diversion they offer, for simply ance of designing in harmony with nature. The
providing places in which people can relax and growing sensitivity towards the environment rep
have fun in the company of family and friends.7 resents a great advance in contemporary urban
Other beneficial aspects of these environments are design theory, expressed in terms of “growth man
the vast multipliers they create in the local economy agement” or “sustainable design.” Such theory and
(Ley and Mills 1993). And for urban designers, practice focuses on design intervention that does
themed environments remain one of the few major not deplete any natural resources or impose hard
opportunities to give full rein to their powers of ship upon any people, and preferably enhances the
creative expression. environment and living conditions.8
The critique of postmodern urbanism as enhanc Most of the more exemplary recent urban design
ing settings for consumption is a double-edged initiatives are engaged in healing scars left by in
sword that really boils down to a critique of con terventions of the modern era, when the building
sumption. While critics of mass society highlight of railroads and highways was undertaken with
the extent to which the market dictates our sense little consideration for the surrounding communities
of identity, forces us to consume, and exacerbates and natural landscapes. Much of this work has
social inequalities, others point out the market’s to do with re-using abandoned transit corridors,
potential for empowerment since we can personal designing new ones, and redesigning existing fabrics
ize or resist that which it offers us. There is no both urban and suburban, sometimes in collabora
question that people worldwide prefer abundance tion with local communities. While sharing the
over scarcity, full shelves over empty ones, and that emphasis on enhancing the public realm with the
they vindicate their “right” to select from a variety neotraditionalists, this tendency is not necessarily
of options along with their “freedom” to shop. As intent upon emulating past townscapes, but con
Ley and Mills have pointed out, “Access to goods siders instead contemporary lifestyles and prefer
(as basic as bread) is as much a facet of democra ences and aspires to retain the valuable elements
tization as free elections and guarantees for the of modern urbanism and architecture.
rights of the marginalized. [The] hardback editions And rather than direct its focus to the traditional
for the few become the paperback editions for the center, this tendency is more often concerned with
many” (Ley and Mills 1993, 271). And as long as we the edge between the city, suburb, and countryside;
are going to shop, why not do so in a pleasant between neighborhoods; and between functional
environment? uses, as well as the more metaphorical edges be
While the preservation movement may be tween disciplines, professions, and local communities.
criticized for inventing histories (and therefore not In its more extreme versions, it even champions
really preserving anything) and for advancing the the elimination of the traditional center, which
interests of certain elites, the valorization it be brings with it old social inequalities. Speaking gener
speaks of the existing urban fabric (including ally (not about urban design specifically), Hal Foster
industrial and commercial landscapes) represents describes this as a “postmodernism of resistance”
a welcome corrective to modernism’s obsession or “reaction” entailing “a critique of origins, not a
with forgetting the past and starting over on a clean return to them” (Foster 1983, vii).
slate. It also suggests a valorization of cultural tradi Rather than preserve, renovate, or create a
tions and of cultural differences that was largely center or a past, this urban design theory holds that
absent from modern urbanism. Indeed, many de we should focus attention on the edge/periphery/
velopers would say we have gone overboard in this border with an eye towards the future. Acknow
direction as local communities’ attachment to exist ledging that most biological activity occurs in nature
ing forms and nostalgia for the past leads them to where different zones meet, for instance, Richard
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Sennett maintains that “urban design has similarly the restructuring of the Barcelona waterfront, as
to focus on the edge as a scene of life” (Sennett overseen by the architect Oriol Bohígas.11 With this
1994, 69). Sensitive to the fragmentation of the renewed focus on the periphery, Donald Olsen sug
built environment as well as among the urban de gests, the central city “may revert to its preindus
sign professions and between these and their con trial role as a work of art, designed for ostentation
stituents, then, designers have been increasingly rather than for use, a symbol of prestige, a center
setting themselves the task of “mending seams.”9 of specialized consumption, a place to indulge in
In Western Europe, ironically, the concerted luxurious vice, to spend money made elsewhere”
search for urbanity and the creation of centrality (Olsen 1983, 266). Or, this interest in the periphery
has been largely played out on urban wings rather may be symptomatic of the growing irrelevance of
than on center stage, as suburbs increasingly be distinctions between the city, the suburb, and the
come the site for urbanization, immigration, and countryside and between urbanism and suburban
government subsidy for building. Consequently, ism as ways of life, as foreseen by Marx (1858),
many architects and planners began adapting these Arthur Schlesinger (1940), and Herbert Gans (1962).
ideas to the building of satellite cities, industrial The mending of seams has been central to a t
h
re-use, and the reorganization of suburban spawl, number of recent urban design initiatives in North r
as exemplified by the French program Banlieues ’89, America, as apparent, for instance, in the re-use of e
launched in 1985. Carriers of the modern torch transit corridors. Landscape architect and urban e
also turned their gaze to suburbs because, as designer Diana Balmori has proposed building a
François Barre maintained,10 “Classic urbanity loses light rail system and green way on the site of an
its logic there . . . but modernity finds without a abandoned canal and rail line connecting New
doubt a great many promising departures” (in Haven to the center of Connecticut and the Mass
Nouvel 1980, 17). Barre asserted, achusetts border, to create a corridor that unites
segregated communities and enhances pedestrian
it is on the periphery that urban development ways (E. Smith 1994, 7). The Greenway Plan for
is now taking place. The notion of center itself Metropolitan Los Angeles similarly centers on re
is dissolving . . . If the suburbs interest people vitalizing 400 miles of abandoned rail and infra
today, it is precisely because of the wild produc structure rights-of-way as well as river and flood
tion there which does not refer to any model control channels (E. Smith, 6).12 And in Boston,
but instead to a sort of superposition or col where a tunnel is being substituted for the express
lage . . . It is without doubt the most faithful way which disrupted a formerly vibrant lower-
representation of the present time . . . The sub middle-class neighborhood, Alex Krieger proposed
urb offers an accumulation of modesty and a restoring the urban fabric and interweaving it with
slightly wild abundance . . . ; this reality expresses open spaces in an effort to resonate with the past but
itself more through music, film, and the city than also consider current and future uses (E. Smith, 7).13
any thing one could find in architecture. The re-use of abandoned transit lines has been
(Barre 1985, 54–55) greatly assisted by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
(RTC), a national nonprofit organization created in
And the way one assesses the situation, he reminds 1988 to assist local activists around the United
us, depends on one’s perspective, both geographical States in converting abandoned railroad corridors
and ideological: “Things look different depending into public “linear parks,” also called rail-trails or
on whether you look at them from the periphery rails-with-trails (Ryan and Winterich 1993; Ryan
or the center” (Barre 1985, 54). 1993). With a nationwide membership in 1994 of
Architects of all persuasions, then, grew inter 60,000, RTC had conducted 13 assessment studies
ested in designing on the edges of cities, including around the country and almost 1,000 miles of trails
Krier (Berlin project), Rossi (1991, Berlin project), had been constructed, with others in progress.
Rem Koolhaas (Euralille), and Steven Holl (1991, Studies of rail-trails in Baltimore, Seattle, and the
projects for American cities). The apotheosis of East Bay of San Francisco reported that properties
this attention to the edge and to integrating func adjacent to the trails sold better than before the
tionalist tenets with the traditional city is found in trails were built and that the trails also generate
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340 N an E llin
economic activity for the communities through A number of efforts to reclaim vacant lots
which they pass (LAING 1994). for use by the surrounding neighborhoods also go
The design of new transportation hubs and beyond shaping the physical environment. The
corridors is another instance of healing scars landscape architect Achva Benzinberg Stein, for
and mending seams. A number of proposals for instance, designed the Uhuru Garden in Watts, Los
subway and light rail stations for the Los Angeles Angeles, to include gardens as well as facilities for
metropolitan area, for example, aspire to retain that instruction in gardening and for selling what is
which the local community values while providing grown. Intended primarily for use by the local
that which it desires. Johnson Fain and Pereira residents of a public housing project, students at
Associates devised a plan for a Chatsworth station the local public school, and members of a local
which includes a replica of the historic Chatsworth drug rehabilitation center, this garden incor
Station, a child-care center, and other civic and porates native California vegetation as well as
commercial services, all linked to the natural land indigenous irrigation techniques (E. Smith, 14).
scape by pedestrian and bicycle paths (E. Smith, 6). Other efforts to convert vacant lots into community
For a more urban site, Koning Eisenberg Architects gardens in South Central Los Angeles have been
proposed a station in Hollywood which would retain undertaken from the grassroots by the LA HOPE
the small scale of the residential blocks while pro Horticulture Corps and the LA Regional Food Bank
viding market stalls clustered around the station Garden.
along with a larger mercado, and necessary hous In certain regards, then, we might consider con
ing (including a single-room occupancy hotel) over temporary urban design theory as the mature young
shops at street level, all in an effort to enhance the adulthood emerging and benefiting from the mis
neighborhood identity. California-based architects takes of its rebellious modern adolescence.15 To
Marc Angélil and Sarah Graham sought to create best seize this moment, however, the urban design
a center for the town of Esslingen, Switzerland by professions must be vigilant.
clustering shops, offices, and housing around a rail
road station, all heated and cooled by an extensive
system of solar energy (E. Smith, 11). And in a NOTES
plan for a highway corridor for the small town of
Chanhassen in Minnesota, the architect William 1 Joseph Rykwert contends that history is back,
Morrish and landscape architect Catherine Brown but
aspired to retain the small-town character which
its inhabitants valued, preserve the natural environ It is a catalogue history, devoid of narration,
ment, and integrate the new road into the com in which the phenomenal past is digested
munity rather than allow it to divide and conquer to a set of timeless motifs on which the
the community (Muschamp, 1994a).14 designer can call to deck out his project in
A final emergent trend to note is the effort to a garb which will produce, so it is generally
go beyond shaping the physical environment, to thought, the right kind of denotation re
also affect changes in public policy and in public sponse in the public. While market forces,
opinion regarding the potential value of urban de the traffic engineer and the planning admin
sign. Along with DPZ and Calthorpe, Morrish and istrators operate as before, their sins are
Brown are also engaged in these efforts, as dem now covered by a skin of ornament bor
onstrated by their 1987 master plan for the public rowed from the history books.
art program in Phoenix, which “used art as a bridge (Rykwert 1988, Preface)
between the public and those who make public
policy” (Muschamp 1994a) and in two more recent 2 Ingersoll’s chilling question brings this home:
efforts in Minneapolis, one to create jobs while also
providing a series of small neighborhood parks Is it only coincidence that the exploded
at the Hennipin County Works, and the other to housing blocks of Pruitt-Igoe, the icons that
better integrate public housing with private-sector have come to symbolize the end of modern
housing (ibid.). ism, were blown up in 1972, the same year
9780415668071_P3_07.indd 340 10-26-2012 3:19:52 PM

that the neutron bomb was unveiled as ‘original’ and the restoration, between the past
America’s ultimate weapon? and the present” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1983,
(Ingersoll 1989, 21) 212).
6 These changes have been most apparent in the
3 Clarke elaborates: “Flexible accumulation has many new styles of public housing (for example,
become the mobilization of image – the em Moley (1979); Querrien (1985); Maitino and
ployment of spectacle within the urban arena. Sompairac (1986); Barbe and Duclent (1986)),
Disneyland becomes an urban strategy” (Clarke even though less public housing has been built
1989, 14). Disneyland presents seductive im during this period than the modern one. These
ages, he says, but these changes have also been apparent in the effort
to generate “traditional neighborhood develop
seem alien and fragmented. While the style ments” or an “urbanism of houses.”
is new, the fragmentation is much like that 7 Ley and Mills highlight these practices, “which
of the previous architectural epoch. It occurs escape the imputed social control of spectacle”
because symbolic capital must distinguish (Ley and Mills 1993, 259). Even Harvey con t
h
itself. It must define its edges to protect cedes that such environments might accom r
itself as both symbol and investment. As plish “the construction of some limited and e
such it cannot be “infill” within the urban limiting sense of identity in the midst of a e
continuum [cannot be contextual], it has to collage of imploding spatialities” (Harvey 1989,
be a separate event. 303–304).
(ibid.) 8 An ACSA/AIA teachers’ seminar on the theme
of “Sustainability and Design” was held in May
4 The Athens Charter (1933) has been criticized 1994.
for insufficiently acknowledging the cultural, 9 This attention to the edge has nothing to do
historical, or topographical contexts of cities. with the building of “edge cities,” which instead
Rather than design with regards to contem of breaking down barriers, create new ones,
porary contingencies, this de-contextual approach and which are market-driven rather than the
posited “an imagined future . . . as the critical product of considered thought and action.
ground in terms of which to evaluate the pres 10 Barre was editor of Architecture d’Aujourd’hui
ent” (Holston 1989, 9). As Holston maintains, before becoming Director of the Public
this Development Corporation of La Villette.
11 In addition to Bohígas, the other architects of
teleological view of history dispenses with the master plan for the Barcelona waterfront,
a consideration of intervening actors and called La Nova Icària, are Josep Martorell,
intentions, of their diverse sources and David Mackay and Albert Puigdomènech.
conflicts. Rather, the only kind of agency See Lampugnani (1991, 114–117) and Bohígas
modernism considers in the making of his (1991, 119–123). Michael Rotondi, Director of
tory is the intervention of the prince (state the Southern California Institute of Architecture,
head) and the genius (architect-planner). has described this interest in edges saying,
(ibid.)
All the things talked about now . . . regard
A fatal contradiction of the Modern movement, less of the title, are really about order and
then, inhered in the putative desire to help disorder, trying to understand the relation
usher in a more egalitarian society alongside a ship of center to periphery . . . It has to do
conviction that the architect/planner is infal with the redefinition of centers as a result
lible and must have unlimited power. of astronomical discoveries.
5 “The impossibility of perfect or complete (in G. White 1988, 173)
replication,” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says, “offers
opportunities for innovation, for reflection Anthony Vidler has described the “posturban
about the relationship between the proposed sensibility” saying, “the margins have entirely
9780415668071_P3_07.indd 341 10-26-2012 3:19:52 PM

342 N an E llin
invaded the center and disseminated its focus” BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1992, 186).
12 This plan was developed by Johnson Fain and Barbe, Bernard and Alain Duclent. 1986. Le Vécu
Pereira Associates. de l’architecture. La Noiserai. (H. Ciriani), Les Arcades
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Jameson, Fredric. 1984. ‘Postmodernism, or the Muschamp, Herbert. 1994b. ‘Architecture as Social
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“Introduction,” “Preface:
The Current State of Everyday
Urbanism,” and “Blurring the
Boundaries: Public Space and
Private Life”
from Everyday Urbanism (2008)
Margaret Crawford
The idea that cities are social entities that must be responsive to local concerns and daily life has been central
to user-based urban design theory since the 1960s. In the 1990s, this idea coalesced into a theoretical and
practical stance known as Everyday Urbanism which valorizes the spontaneous, un-pedigreed, un-self-conscious
vernacular design of everyday urban settings and contends that the public and domestic life that centers on
these spaces, particularly that of poorer and more marginal members of the community, is rich with complex
meaning and substance. Everyday Urbanism theory cautions designers to not apply design assumptions based
on high design style or elite spatial form precedents to their work in cities, especially lower-income areas.
Rather, design proposals should be informed by an understanding and appreciation of everyday activities,
which provide a vital link to real community issues.
Critics of Everyday Urbanism argue that it is city-making by default rather than by design, become troubled
by the absence of larger design aspirations, and worry that it speaks to an erasure of professional design
expertise. Defenders argue that it is pragmatic and inclusive, and that designers don’t disappear from city-
building but become co-authors of neighborhood transformations along with local communities.
First published in 1999 and republished in an expanded version in 2008, the book Everyday Urbanism,
edited by John Leighton Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski, established the basis of the field. The
book’s “Introduction” and “Preface,” written by Margaret Crawford, lay out the intellectual underpinnings and
scope of Everyday Urbanism, with the latter, written for the 2008 edition, discussing how the field has grown
and changed since its inception and offering a rebuttal to criticism.
Crawford’s chapter “Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Private Life” addresses an issue that has
been of major concern for urban designers in recent years: a perceived loss of the public realm. Crawford
contends that while places where people gather have become increasingly privatized and commercialized, for
example, shopping malls, this does not mean that democratic public space no longer exists. Through obser-
vations of how people in Los Angeles use the sidewalks, parks, and parking lots in their communities for
everyday activities that include political expression and small-scale local exchange, such as vending, she
concludes that these “marginal” public spaces constitute a “new urban arena for democratic action that chal-
lenges normative definitions of how democracy works.”
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 344 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

Additional key essays within Everyday Urbanism (2008) are Walter Hood’s “Urban Diaries: Improvisation
in West Oakland, California,” John Leighton Chase’s “The Space Formerly Known as Parking,” John Kaliski’s
“The Present City and the Practice of City Design,” and the book’s concluding chapter “Everyday Urban
Design: Toward Default Urbanism and/or Urbanism by Design” also by John Kaliski.
Margaret Crawford is Professor of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and was formerly
Professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and before that
Chair of the History, Theory and Humanities program at the Southern California Institute for Architecture. Her
research focuses on the evolution, use, and meanings of urban space. Crawford’s other books include Build-
ing the Workingman’s Paradise (London, New York: Verso, 1995), which chronicles the rise and fall of
American company towns, and The Car and the City: the automobile, the built environment, and daily urban
life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992) co-edited with Martin Wachs, which was spurred by
an interest in Los Angeles urbanism. She has also written numerous book chapters and journal articles on
topics as varied as immigrant spatial practices and shopping malls. One of three offerings in the “Michigan
Debates on Urbanism” series, the book Everyday Urbanism: Margaret Crawford vs. Michael Speaks (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture, 2005) edited by Rahul Mehrotra, t
h
presents an elaboration of a series of debates about the leading competing “urbanisms” (New Urbanism, r
Everyday Urbanism, and Post Urbanism) which were held at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College e
of Architecture and Urban Planning during the winter of 2004. e
Other recent books that deal with Everyday Urbanism include Jeffrey Hou (ed.), Insurgent Public Space:
Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (New York: Routledge, 2010); and Karen A. Franck
and Quentin Steven (eds), Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life (London: Routledge, 2007).
A study that focuses on design activism is Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford (eds), Expanding Architecture (New
York: Metropolis Books, 2008). Douglas Kelbaugh’s article “Toward an Integrated Paradigm: Further Thoughts
on the Three Urbanisms” published in Places in 2007 (vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 12–19) identifies Everyday Urbanism,
New Urbanism and Post Urbanism as the dominant urban design paradigms and compares and contrasts them.
Books that address issues of spatial justice include Don Mitchell’s The Right to the City: Social Justice
and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003); David Harvey’s Social Justice and the
City (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009); and Edward Soja’s Seeking Spatial Justice (Minne-
apolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). Works of social theory that address issues of spatial pro-
duction include Henry Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) translated by Donald
Nicholoson-Smith; Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1984) translated by Steen Rendall; and Edward Soja’s Postmodern Geographics: The Reassertion of
Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989).
INTRODUCTION political, economic, and experiential – that they can

never be reconciled into a single understanding.
What do we mean by everyday urbanism? These two Urbanism is thus inherently a contested field. The
words – one ordinary, the other obscure – together term also carries with it important echoes of the
identify a new position in understanding and ap sociologist Louis Wirth’s famous essay title and
proaching the city. Rather than urban design, urban characterization “Urbanism as a Way of Life.”1 This
planning, urban studies, urban theory, or other spe formulation emphasizes the primacy of human ex
cialized terms, urbanism identifies a broad dis perience as the fundamental aspect of any defini
cursive arena that combines all of these disciplines tion of urbanism.
as well as others into a multidimensional consid “Everyday” speaks to this element of ordinary
eration of the city. Cities are inexhaustible and human experience and itself conveys many com
contain so many overlapping and contradictory plicated meanings. At a common-sense level, every
meanings – aesthetic, intellectual, physical, social, day describes the lived experience shared by urban
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 345 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

346 M argaret C rawford
residents, the banal and ordinary routines we know Derrida and Michel Foucault, who dominated
all too well – commuting, working, relaxing, moving academic and architectural discourse over the last
through City streets and sidewalks, shopping, buy two decades, Lefebvre, Debord, and de Certeau
ing and eating food, running errands. Even in this insisted on the connection between theory and
descriptive incarnation, the everyday city has rarely social practices, between thought and lived experi
been the focus of attention for architects or urban ence. Lefebvre pointed out that “when the philoso
designers, despite the fact that an amazing number pher turns back towards real life, general concepts
of social, spatial, and aesthetic meanings can be which have been worked out by means of a highly
found in the repeated activities and conditions that specialized activity and abstracted from everyday
constitute our daily, weekly, and yearly routines. life are not lost. On the contrary, they take on a
The utterly ordinary reveals a fabric of space and new meaning for lived experience.”3 All of the
time defined by a complex realm of social practices authors included in this book share with these three
– a conjuncture of accident, desire, and habit. philosophical predecessors similar assumptions
The concept of everyday space delineates the about everyday life.
physical domain of everyday public activity. Existing The belief that everyday life is important gov
in between such defined and physically identifiable erns our work. Lefebvre was the first philosopher
realms as the home, the workplace, and the institu to insist that the apparently trivial everyday actually
tion, everyday urban space is the connective tissue constitutes the basis of all social experience and
that binds daily lives together. Everyday space the true realm of political contestation. Lefebvre
stands in contrast to the carefully planned, officially described daily life as the “screen on which society
designated, and often underused public spaces that projects its light and its shadow, its hollows and
can be found in most American cities, These mon its planes, its power and its weakness.”4 In spite of
umental spaces only punctuate the larger and more this significance, Lefebvre warns, the everyday is
diffuse landscape of everyday life, which tends to difficult to decode due to its fundamental ambiguity.
be banal and repetitive, everywhere and nowhere, As the first step in analyzing this slippery concept,
obvious yet invisible. Ambiguous like all in-between Lefebvre distinguished between two simultaneous
spaces, the everyday represents a zone of social realities that exist within everyday life: the quotidian,
transition and possibility with the potential for new the timeless, humble, repetitive natural rhythms of
social arrangements and forms of imagination.2 life; and the modern, the always new and constantly
changing habits that are shaped by technology
and worldliness.5 Lefebvre structured his analysis
Between philosophy and common of everyday life around this duality, looking past
sense potentially alienating aspects in an effort to unearth
the deeply human elements that still exist within
Although the incoherence of everyday space might the everyday. While most urbanists influenced by
seem to defeat any conceptual or physical order, Lefebvre have critiqued modernity’s negative effects
the concepts of everyday life as identified by Henri on the city,6 we have tried optimistically to focus
Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and Michel de Certeau serve on the other side of the equation – the possibility
as an introduction to this rich repository of urban of reclaiming elements of the quotidian that have
meaning. These three French theorists, all of whom been hidden in the nooks and crannies of the urban
died in the last decade, were, respectively, a Marx environment. We have discovered these qualities
ist philosopher and sociologist, a filmmaker and in overlooked, marginal places, from streets and
would-be revolutionary, and an anthropologist and sidewalks to vacant lots and parks, from suburbia
historian. Pioneers in investigating the completely to the inner city.
ignored spheres of daily existence, their work iden We believe that lived experience should be more
tified the everyday as a crucial arena of modern important than physical form in defining the city. This
culture and society. While acknowledging the op perspective distinguishes us from many designers
pression of daily life, each discovered its potential and critics who point to the visual incoherence of
as a site of creative resistance and liberatory power. everyday space as exemplifying everything that is
In contrast to the French theorists such as Jacques wrong with American cities. Like Lefebvre, Debord,
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 346 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

and de Certeau, we understand urbanism to be economic transactions, where multiple experiences

a human and social discourse. The city is, above accumulate in a single location. These places where
all, a social product, created out of the demands differences collide or interact are the most potent
of everyday use and the social struggles of urban sites for everyday urbanism.
inhabitants. Design within everyday space must The goal of everyday urbanism is to orchestrate
start with an understanding and acceptance of what the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin called
the life that takes place there. This goes against the “dialogism.” A mode of textual analysis, dialogism
grain of professional design discourse, which is can easily be applied to design practices. Bakhtin
based on abstract principles, whether quantitative, defined dialogism as the characteristic epistemo
formal, spatial, or perceptual. Whatever the inten logical mode of a world dominated by “heteroglossia”
tion, professional abstractions inevitably produce – the constant interaction between meanings,
spaces that have little to do with real human im all of which can potentially influence the others.
pulses. We agree with Raymond Ledrut’s conclusion “Dialogization” occurs when a word, discourse,
“The problem today – which has nothing ‘philo language, or culture becomes relativized, deprivi
sophical’ about it – is that of the real life ‘of ’ the leged, and aware of competing definitions for the t
h
city and ‘in’ the city. The true issue is not to make same things. Undialogized language remains au r
beautiful cities or well-managed cities, it is to make thoritarian or absolute.10 To dialogize design in the e
a work of life. The rest is a by-product.”7 city challenges the conceptual hierarchy under e
For us, the play of difference is the primary ele which most design professionals operate. Everyday
ment in the “real life” of the city. Lefebvre observed life provides a good starting point for this shift
that abstract urban spaces, primarily designed to because it is grounded in the commonplace rather
be reproduced, “negated all differences, those that than the canonical, the many rather than the few,
come from nature and history as well as those that and the repeated rather than the unique; and it is
come from the body, ages, sexes, and ethnicities.”8 uniquely comprehensible to ordinary people.
This is visible everywhere in increasingly generic Not surprisingly, since everyone is potentially
yet specialized spaces that parcel daily experience an expert on everyday life, everyday life has never
into separate domains. Though difference is pro been of much interest to experts. Lefebvre pointed
gressively negated in urban space, however, it none out that although experts and intellectuals are
theless remains the most salient fact of everyday embedded in everyday life, they prefer to think of
life. Its burdens and pleasures are distributed un themselves as outside and elsewhere. Convinced
evenly, according to class, age, race, and gender. that everyday life is trivial, they attempt to evade
Lefebvre focused particular attention on the victims it. They use rhetoric and metalanguage as “perma
of everyday life, especially women sentenced to nent substitutes for experience, allowing them to
endless routines of housework and shopping. ignore the mediocrity of their own condition.”11
Lefebvre also identified immigrants, low-level em Lefebvre also described the purpose of such dis
ployees, and teenagers as victims of everyday life, tancing techniques: “Abstract culture places an
although “never in the same way, never at the same almost opaque screen (if it were completely opaque
time, never all at once.”9 the situation would be simpler) between cultivated
To locate these differences physically in every [people] and everyday life. Abstract culture not only
day lives is to map the social geography of the city. supplies them with words and ideas but also with
The city of the bus rider or pedestrian does not an attitude which forces them to seek the ‘meaning’
resemble that of the automobile owner. A shopping of their lives and consciousness outside of them
cart means very different things to a busy mother selves and their real relations with the world.”12
in a supermarket and a homeless person on the To avoid this breach with reality, everyday
sidewalk. These differences separate the lives of urbanism demands a radical repositioning of the
urban inhabitants from one another, while their designer, a shifting of power from the professional
overlap constitutes the primary form of social ex expert to the ordinary person. Widespread exper
change in the city. The intersections between an tise in everyday life acts as a leveling agent, elim
individual or defined group and the rest of the city inating the distance between professionals and
are everyday space – the site of multiple social and users, between specialized knowledge and daily
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 347 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

experience. The designer is immersed within con the discontinuous and spontaneous moments that
temporary society rather than superior to and punctuate daily experience – fleeting sensations of
outside it, and is thus forced to address the con love, play, rest, knowledge. These instants of rup
tradictions of social life from close up. ture and illumination, arising from everyone’s daily
existence, reveal the possibilities and limitations of
life.13 They highlight the distance between what life
Time and space is and what it might be. Although these moments
quickly pass into oblivion, they provide the key to
Both Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre argued the powers contained in the everyday and function
that the temporal is as significant as the spatial as starting points for social change. Guy Debord
in every day life. De Certeau drew a distinction saw them as potential revolutions in individual ev
between two modes of operation: strategies, based eryday life, springboards for the realization of the
on place, and tactics, based on time. Strategies possible.14 By recognizing and building on these
represent the practices of those in power, post understandings of time, we can explore new and
ulating “a place that can be delimited as its own barely acknowledged realms of urban experience.
and serve as the base from which relations with
an exteriority composed of targets or threats can
be managed.” Strategies establish a “proper” place, The politics of everyday life
either spatial or institutional, such that place tri
umphs over time. Political, economic, and scientific Like these writers, we want to draw attention to
rationalities are constructed on the strategic model. the transformational possibilities of the everyday.
In contrast, a tactic is a way of operating without Alice Kaplan and Kristen Ross have pointed out
a proper place, and so depends on time. As a result, that the political is hidden within the contradictions
tactics lack the borders necessary for designation and possibilities of lived experience.15 The most
as visible totalities: “The place of a tactic belongs banal and repetitive gestures of everyday life give
to the other.” Tactics are the “art of the weak,” rise to desires that cannot be satisfied there. If these
incursions into the field of the powerful. Without desires could acquire a political language, they
a proper place, tactics rely on seized opportunities, would make a new set of personal and collective
on cleverly chosen moments, and on the rapidity demands on the social order. Therefore the prac
of movements that can change the organization of tices of everyday urbanism should inevitably lead
a space. Tactics are a form of everyday creativity. to social change, not via abstract political ideologies
Many of the urban activities we describe are tactical. imposed from outside, but instead through specific
By challenging the “proper” places of the city, this concerns that arise from the lived experience of
range of transitory, temporary, and ephemeral urban different individuals and groups in the city.
activities constitutes counterpractices to officially While acknowledging our debts to Lefebvre and
sanctioned urbanisms. Debord, the general position of writers included in
Lefebvre also identified another set of multiple this book is not identical to theirs. Both Lefebvre
temporalities composing urban life. Everyday time and Debord identified the urban environment as a
is located at the intersection of two contrasting but unique site for contesting the alienation of modern
coexisting modes of repetition, the cyclical and capitalist society and believed that this aliena
the linear. The cyclical consists of the rhythms of tion could be overcome, thus rendering individuals
nature: night and day, changing seasons, birth and whole once again. They saw both the society they
death. Rational processes define linear patterns, attacked and the future society they desired as
time measured into quantifiable schedules of work totalities.16 We instead acknowledge fragmentation
and leisure with such units as timetables, fast food, and incompleteness as inevitable conditions of post
coffee breaks, and prime time. Repeated across modern life. We do not seek overarching solutions.
days, weeks, months, years, and lifetimes, these There is no universal everyday urbanism, only a
competing rhythms shape our lived experience. multiplicity of responses to specific times and places.
More important to Lefebvre than these predictable Our solutions are modest and small in scale – micro-
oscillations, however, is a third category of time, utopias, perhaps, contained in a sidewalk, a bus
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“Preface: The Current State of Everyday Urbanism” 349
bench, or a minipark. In a rare nontotalizing the world were already paying keen attention to
moment, Debord declared that “One day, we will the existing city, reading Lefebvre and de Certeau,
construct cities for drifting . . . but, with light re and adjusting their design approaches accordingly.
touching, one can utilize certain zones which al Doug Kelbaugh’s recognition of Everyday Urbanism
ready exist. One can utilize certain persons who as one of the three dominant paradigms of con
already exist.”17 temporary urbanism reflects this widespread re
[ . . . ] sonance.18 By giving this collection of influences,
sympathies, and interest a name, Everyday Urbanism
provided a concept to which, it turned out, a sur
PREFACE: THE CURRENT STATE OF prising number of people could relate. Their re
EVERYDAY URBANISM sponses acknowledged our aspiration to make EU
an “open work,” an umbrella concept that could
. . . The concept [of Everyday Urbanism] originally shelter many different activities, rather than an ex
emerged from a specific context, our own daily clusive or regulated enterprise . . . Everyday Urbanism
experience of the endlessly fascinating urban land embraces the diversity of life, in contrast to other t
h
scape of Los Angeles. Continually being re-inhab schools of urban design that target a particular ethos r
ited in new ways and reinvented by its residents, and then create an approach to further this world e
the city challenged us, as design professionals and view. If upper case Everyday Urbanism still designates e
academics, to engage with it in a productive way. a design approach, lower case everyday urbanism
The liveliness of the urban life around us height has become an accepted term to positively describe
ened our dissatisfaction with the limits of prevailing ordinary urban places and activities.
urban design discourse. Whether engaged in nor [ . . . ]
mative professional practice or avant-garde specu We now understand that Everyday Urbanism
lation, urban designers often seemed unable to functions more as an attitude or a sensibility about
appreciate the city around them and displayed the city. In practice we have moved away from
little interest in the people who lived in it. Instead, developing or following a body of theory to em
they approached the city in primarily abstract and bodying an approach that can be applied to many
normative terms. We conceived of Everyday Urban different situations and activities. Although ideas
ism as an alternative urban design concept, a new provided by Lefebvre, de Certeau, and Bakhtin
way to reconnect urban research and design with initially enabled us to engage with everyday life,
ordinary human and social meanings. Borrowing once that engagement begins, responding to the
selectively from the concepts of everyday life pro demands of specific urban situations ensures that
vided by Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and the project immediately takes on a life of its own.
Mikhail Bakhtin, we proposed a new set of urban Rather than a singular formal product, this can re
design values. These put urban residents and their sult in any number of different outcomes. Radically
daily experiences at the center of the enterprise, empirical rather than normative and generalizable,
encouraged a more ethnographic mode of urban Everyday Urbanism constitutes a flexible collection
research, and emphasized specificity and material of ideas and practices that can be reconfigured
reality. Depicting and designing for an almost according to particular circumstances.
infinite variety of everyday lives demanded a broad Multiple and heterogeneous, Everyday Urbanism
range of representations, leading us to explore was never intended to be an over-arching approach
various genres of writing and to encourage con to design. Since it does not seek to transform the
tributors to experiment with new types of expres world or even the built environment, Everyday
sive drawing and hyper-realistic model making and Urbanism can work partially in many different
photo collage. situations. Unlike most urban design techniques, it
. . . In retrospect, it seems clear that rather than can maneuver in the nooks and crannies of exist
inventing a new idea, Everyday Urbanism actually ing urban environments. An accretional approach,
encapsulated a widespread but not yet fully articu it makes small changes that accumulate to trans
lated attitude toward urban design. It turned out form larger urban situations. As a practice, it is
that many architects, planners, and students around appropriate for certain circumstances but perhaps
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 349 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

not for others. It is not intended to replace other for the crucial role that middle class public opinion
urban design practices but to work along with, on plays in the micro-public sphere of neighborhood
top of, or after them. Similarly, depending on the and urban politics. Public meetings, the local press,
situation, Everyday Urbanists can step in and out vocal individuals, and organized pressure groups
of professional roles if they discover other ways all come together to shape both public opinion and
of accomplishing their goals. Although frustrating public action. This has led us to emphasize repre
to critics, this shape-shifting quality provides Every sentation and communication as one of our key
day Urbanism with a flexibility noticeably absent contributions to political discourse and action, giv
in other urban design approaches and is, we would ing us a stronger voice in these ongoing debates.
argue, fundamental to operating in a world of con We have also realized that even if we don’t prevail,
stant changes. by visualizing and communicating alternatives,
Everyday Urbanists take advantage of their our visions of transforming everyday urban life can
lack of affiliation to think about ordinary places in still play a powerful role in shaping municipal de
new ways. Although understanding existing urban bates and policy initiatives. The ongoing struggles
situations is our starting point, the essence of of urban politics highlight another ordinary but
Everyday Urbanism is to reinterpret and re-imagine important temporal dimension we neglected – the
them. Finding unforeseen possibilities in ordinary slow pace and ongoing commitment necessary to
places requires invention and creativity. Thus, realize projects in a democratic context.
Everyday Urbanism needs to work both from the [ . . . ]
bottom up (in terms of subject and sympathy) and
from the top down (utilizing sophisticated know
ledge and techniques). In de Certeau’s terms, this BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES: PUBLIC
means being both tactical (unofficial action that is SPACE AND PRIVATE LIFE
not authorized by government or any official power
structure) and strategic (plans formed on a top [ . . . ] the following investigation originated in my
down basis by those with power). By trying to pro dissatisfaction with a critical position that emerged
duce “ordinary magic” out of circumstances that in architectural discourse a few years ago. Critics
most designers would find unpromising, Everyday and historians began to see multiple versions of
Urbanism may in fact have more visionary and the theme park in the increasingly spectacular and
transformative goals than any other form of con centralized zones of leisure and consumption –
temporary urbanism. gentrified shopping streets, massive shopping malls,
Finally, our work with residents, city govern festival marketplaces. According to Michael Sorkin,
ments, and local organizations on real projects has one of the primary theorists in this arena, these ersatz
pointed to another important dimension of every and privatized pieces of the city – pseudopublic
day urban practice: the many aspects of urban life places – were distinguished by consumption, sur
that are deeply embedded in the daily workings of veillance, control, and endless simulation . . .
city government and its regulation and enforcement What concerned me more than the emerging
functions. This realization challenged some of our theme-park sensibility as depicted in these studies
theoretical assumptions: Lefebvre, de Certeau, and was part of the book’s subtitle, “The End of Public
Bakhtin all depicted and dismissed the state as Space.” This summarizes a fear repeated by many
monolithic, reactionary, and at odds with everyday other critics, urbanists, and architects. In his essay
life. Our experience with local politicians, city agen in Sorkin’s book, Mike Davis expresses alarm at
cies, and officials suggests a far more complex and the “destruction of any truly democratic urban
contradictory reality. Boundaries between local spaces.”19 It is easy to find evidence to support this
governments and citizens are often blurry. Many argument. Los Angeles, for example, is often cited
people occupy multiple roles, moving between as an extreme demonstration of the decline of
identities as citizen, bureaucrat, professional, or public space. The few remaining slices of traditional
advocate. Elected politicians and city officials can public space (for example, Pershing Square, his
be both obstructive and supportive of innovative torically the focus of the downtown business dis
solutions. We have also gained a new appreciation trict, which was recently redesigned by Ricardo
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“ B l u r r i n g t h e B o u n d a r i e s : P u b l i c Sp a c e a n d P r i v a t e L i f e ” 351
Legorreta) are usually deserted, while Citywalk, the pounded by the lack of a clear link between public
simulated cityscape, shopping, and entertainment space and democracy. The two are assumed to be
center collaged from different urban elements by closely connected, but exact affinities are never
MCA and Universal Studio, is always jammed with specified, which makes it even more difficult to
people. imagine political opposition to the mall or theme
The existence and popularity of these com park.
mercial public places is used to frame a pervasive This universalization, pessimism, and ambiguity
narrative of loss that contrasts the current debase led me to seek an alternative framework – a new
ment of public space with golden ages and golden way of conceptualizing public space and a new way
sites – the Greek agora, the coffeehouses of early of reading Los Angeles. This essay represents an
modern Paris and London, the Italian piazza, the account of my attempts to rethink our conceptions
town square. The narrative nostalgically posits of “public,” “space,” and “identity.” The investiga
these as once vital sites of democracy where, tion revealed to me a multiplicity of simultaneous
allegedly, cohesive public discourse thrived, and public activities in Los Angeles that are continually
inevitably culminates in the contemporary crisis redefining both “public” and “space” through lived t
h
of public life and public space, a crisis that puts experience. In vacant lots, sidewalks, parks, and r
at risk the very ideas and institutions of democracy parking lots, these activities are restructuring urban e
itself. space, opening new political arenas, and producing e
It is hard to argue with the symptoms these new forms of insurgent citizenship.
writers describe, but I disagree with the conclusions
they draw. This perception of loss originates in
extremely narrow and normative definitions of both Rethinking “public”
“public” and “space” that derive from insistence on
unity, desire for fixed categories of time and space, Nancy Fraser’s article “Rethinking the Public
and rigidly conceived notions of private and public. Sphere” provided an important starting point for
Seeking a single, all-inclusive public space, these my quest.22 Her central arguments clarify the sig
critics mistake monumental public spaces for the nificant theoretical and political limitations of pre
totality of public space. In this respect, critics of vailing formulations of “public.” Fraser acknowledges
public space closely echo the conclusions of social the importance of Jürgen Habermas’s characteriza
theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Richard tion of the public sphere as an arena of discursive
Sennett, whose descriptions of the public sphere relations conceptually independent of both the state
share many of the same assumptions.20 Habermas and the economy, but she questions many of his
describes the public sphere as overwhelmed by assumptions about the universal, rational, and non
consumerism, the media, and the state, while contentious public arena.
Sennett laments in his book’s very title “the fall of Habermas links the emergence of the “liberal
public man.” The word “man” highlights another model of the bourgeois public sphere” in early
key assumption of this position: an inability to con modern Europe with the development of nation-
ceive of identity in any but universalizing terms. states in which democracy was represented by
Whether as universal man, citizen, consumer, or collectively accepted universal rights and achieved
tourist, the identified subjects posit a normative via electoral politics. This version of the public
condition of experience. sphere emphasizes unity and equality as ideal con
Not surprisingly, the political implications that ditions. The public sphere is depicted as a “space
follow from the overwhelmingly negative assess of democracy” that all citizens have the right to
ments of the narrative of loss are equally negative. inhabit. In this arena, social and economic inequal
Implicit is a form of historical determinism that ities are temporarily put aside in the interest of
suggests the impossibility of political struggle determining a common good. Matters of common
against what Mike Davis calls “inexorable forces.”21 interest are discussed through rational, disinterested,
The universal consumer becomes the universal victim, and virtuous public debate. Like the frequently
helpless and passive against the forces of capitalism, cited ideal of Athenian democracy, however, this
consumerism, and simulation. This tyranny is com model is structured around significant exclusions.
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In Athens, participation was theoretically open to rights but also demanded new rights based on their
all citizens, but in practice the majority of the specific roles in the domestic or economic spheres.
population – women and slaves – were excluded; Always changing, these demands continually re
they were not “citizens.” The modern bourgeois define democracy and redraw boundaries between
public sphere also began by excluding women and private and public.
workers: women’s interests were presumed to be Fraser’s description of multiple publics, con
private and therefore part of the domestic sphere, testation, and the redefinition of public and private
while workers’ concerns were presumed to be can be extended to the physical realm of public
merely economic and therefore self-interested. space. First, these ideas suggest that no single
Middle-class and masculine modes of public speech physical environment can represent a completely
and behavior, through the required rational delib inclusive space of democracy. Like Habermas’s
eration and rhetoric of disinterest, were privileged idealized bourgeois public sphere, the physical
and defined as universal. spaces often idealized by architects – the agora,
Recent revisionist histories, notes Fraser, con the forum, the piazza – were constituted by exclu
tradict this idealized account, demonstrating that sion. Where these single publics are construed as
nonliberal, nonbourgeois public spheres also ex occupying an exemplary public space, the multiple
isted, producing their own definitions and public counterpublics that Fraser identifies necessarily
activities in a multiplicity of arenas.23 For example, require and produce multiple sites of public expres
in 19th and 20th century America, middle-class sion. These spaces are partial and selective in re
women organized themselves into a variety of sponse to the limited segments of the population
exclusively female volunteer groups for the pur they serve from among the many public roles that
poses of philanthropy and reform based on private individuals play in urban society.
ideals of domesticity and motherhood. Less affluent
women found access to public life through the work
place and through associations including unions, Redefining “space”
lodges, and political organizations such as Tammany
Hall. Broadening the definition of public to encom In order to locate these multiple sites of public
pass these “counterpublics” produces a very dif expression, we need to redefine our understanding
ferent picture of the public sphere, one founded on of “space.” Just as Nancy Fraser looked beyond the
contestation rather than unity and created through officially designated public to discover the previ
competing interests and violent demands as much ously hidden counterpublics of women and workers,
as reasoned debate. Demonstrations, strikes, riots, we can identify another type of space by looking
and struggles over such issues as temperance and beyond the culturally defined physical realms of
suffrage reveal a range of discursive sites character home, workplace, and institution. I call this new
ized by multiple publics and varied struggles be construction “everyday space.” Everyday space is
tween contentious concerns. the connective tissue that binds daily lives together,
In the bourgeois public sphere, citizenship is amorphous and so persuasive that it is difficult even
primarily defined in relation to the state, framed to perceive. In spite of its ubiquity, everyday space
within clear categories of discourse, and addressed is nearly invisible in the professional discourses of
through political debate and electoral politics. This the city. Everyday space is like everyday life, the
liberal notion of citizenship is based on abstract “screen on which society projects its light and its
universal liberties, with democracy guaranteed by shadow, its hollows and its planes, its power and
the state’s electoral and juridical institutions. Fraser its weakness.”24
argues instead that democracy is a complex and In the vast expanses of Los Angeles, monumen
contested concept that can assume a multiplicity tal, highly ordered, and carefully designed public
of meanings and forms that often violate the strict spaces like Pershing Square or Citywalk punctuate
lines between private and public on which the lib the larger and more diffuse space of everyday life.
eral bourgeois public sphere depends. In the United Southern California’s banal, incoherent, and repeti
States, counterpublics of women, workers, and im tive landscape of roads is lined with endless strip
migrants have historically defended established civil malls, supermarkets, auto-repair facilities, fast-food
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outlets, and vacant lots that defeat any conceptual “space.” Both the direct causes of the riots and
or physical order. According to Lefebvre, these their expression of the riots were embedded in
spaces are like everyday life: “trivial, obvious everyday life. For Rodney King, a drive on the free
but invisible, everywhere and nowhere.” For most way ended in a savage beating that shocked the
Angelenos, such spaces constitute an everyday re world. The ordinary act of purchasing a bottle of
ality of infinitely recurring commuting routes and juice in a convenience market after school resulted
trips to the supermarket, dry cleaner, or video store. in Latasha Harlin’s death. The verdicts in the Harlin
The sites for multiple social and economic transac and King trials unleashed a complex outpouring of
tions, these mundane places serve as primary inter public concern. Multiple and competing demands
sections between the individual and the city. (some highly specific, others barely articulated), a
Created to be seen and approached from mov spontaneous and undefined moment of public ex
ing vehicles, this generic landscape exists to ac pression, exploded on the streets and sidewalks of
commodate the automobile, which has produced Los Angeles. African Americans, many of whom
the city’s sprawling form. Connected by an expan called the uprising the “justice riots,” attacked the
sive network of streets and freeways, Los Angeles criminal-justice system. Concepts of universally t
h
spreads out in all directions with few differences defined civil rights failed to ameliorate or condemn r
of density or form. Experienced through the auto the visible racism of the Los Angeles Police Depart e
mobile, the bus, or even the shopping cart, this ment and the court system, which to many consti e
environment takes mobility as its defining element. tuted a denial of the fundamental rights of citizenship.
Everyday life is organized by time as much as by The riots dramatized economic issues: poverty,
space, structured around daily itineraries, with unemployment, and the difficulty of financial self-
rhythms imposed by patterns of work and leisure, determination, all exacerbated by recession and
week and weekend, and the repetitious gestures of long-term effects of deindustrialization. The dis
commuting and consumption. turbances also revealed the city’s tangled racial
In contrast to the fluidity of its urban fabric, the dynamics: 51 percent of those arrested were
social fabric of Los Angeles is fragmented; it is not Hispanic (and of that group, most were recent
a single city but a collection of microcities defined immigrants) while only 34 percent were African
by visible and invisible boundaries of class, race, American. Immigrants were pitted against one an
ethnicity, and religion. This multiplicity of identities other, and stores owned by Koreans were the focus
produces an intricate social landscape in which of much of the burning and looting.
cultures consolidate and separate, reacting and The automobile played a prominent role in the
interacting in complex and unpredictable ways. rioting, from the initial act of pulling Reginald
Spatial and cultural differences exist even within Denny from his truck to the rapid expansion of
these groups. “Latino,” for example, describes the looters who moved across the city by car. Spaces
now dominant ethnic group but hides the significant formerly devoted to the automobile – streets, park
differences between Mexicans and Cubans, for ex ing lots, swap meets, and strip malls – were tem
ample, or even between recent immigrants and porarily transformed into sites of protest and rage,
second- or third-generation Chicanos. Mobility pre into new zones of public expression.
vails here too. When new immigrants arrive from
Central America, they tend to move into African
American neighborhoods. Both African Americans Everyday public spaces
and Latinos shop in Korean and Vietnamese shops.
Other areas of the city, once completely white, then The riots underlined the potent ability of everyday
primarily Latino, are now mostly Asian. spaces to become, however briefly, places where
These generally distinct groups came together lived experience and political expression come to
– intensified and politicized – in the urban dis gether. This realm of public life lies outside the
turbances of 1992. According to Nancy Fraser’s domain of electoral politics or professional design,
redefinition of the public sphere, these events can representing a bottom-up rather than top-down
be seen as a form of public expression that pro restructuring of urban space. Unlike normative
duces an alternative discourse of “public” and public spaces, which produce the existing ideology,
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 353 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

these spaces help to overturn the status quo. In the material space that we experience nor a rep
different areas of the city, generic spaces become resentation of space.”25 Thirdspace is instead a
specific and serve as public arenas where debates space of representation, a space bearing the pos
and struggles over economic participation, democ sibility of new meanings, a space activated through
racy, and the public assertion of identity take place. social action and the social imagination. Multiple
Without claiming to represent the totality of public public activities are currently transforming Los
space, these multiple and simultaneous activities Angeles everyday spaces, among them the garage
construct and reveal an alternative logic of public sale and street vending.
space.
Woven into the patterns of everyday life, it
is difficult even to discern these places as public The garage sale
space. Trivial and commonplace, vacant lots, side
walks, front yards, parks, and parking lots are being An unexpected outcome of the recession of the
claimed for new uses and meanings by the poor, 1980s and the collapse of the real-estate market
the recently immigrated, the homeless, and even in Southern California was the proliferation of ga
the middle class. These spaces exist physically rage sales, even in the city’s wealthiest areas. As
somewhere in the junctures between private, com an increasing number of people found themselves
mercial, and domestic. Ambiguous and unstable, un- or underemployed, the struggle for supplemen
they blur our established understandings of these tal income turned garage sales into semipermanent
categories in often paradoxical ways. They contain events, especially on the west side of Los Angeles.
multiple and constantly shifting meanings rather Cities such as Beverly Hills have passed ordinances
than clarity of function. In the absence of a distinct limiting the number of garage sales per household
identity of their own, these spaces can be shaped to two per year. The front yard, an already am
and redefined by the transitory activities they ac biguous territory, serves as a buffer between resi
commodate. Unrestricted by the dictates of built dential privacy and the public street. Primarily an
form, they become venues for the expression of honorific space, the lawn is activated as the garage
new meanings through the individuals and groups sale turns the house inside out, displaying the in
who appropriate the spaces for their own purposes. terior on the exterior. Presenting worn-out posses
Apparently empty of meaning, they acquire con sions, recently the contents of closets and drawers,
stantly changing meanings – social, aesthetic, polit for public viewing and purchase transforms the
ical, economic – as users reorganize and reinterpret usually empty lawn into a site of representation.
them. Unwanted furniture, knickknacks, and clothes are
Temporally, everyday spaces exist in between suddenly accessible to anyone passing by, melding
past and future uses, often with a no-longer-but- the public and the extremely private. The same
not-yet-their-own status, in a holding pattern of economic forces that caused the proliferation of
real-estate values that might one day rise. The tem garage sales also produced their mobile clientele,
porary activities that take place there also follow shoppers who drive through the city in search of
distinct temporal patterns. Without fixed schedules, sales or who discover them accidentally on the way
they produce their own cycles, appearing, reappear to somewhere else.
ing, or disappearing within the rhythms of everyday In the Mexican American barrio East Los Angeles,
life. Use and activity vary according to the seasons, with its less affluent population of homeowners
vanishing in winter, born again in spring. They are and low real-estate values, commerce and domes
subject to changes in the weather, days of the week, ticity have coexisted for a long time. A more per
and even time of day. Since they are usually per manent physical restructuring has already taken
ceived in states of distraction, their meanings are place, generated by a distinct set of social and
not immediately evident but unfold through the economic needs: the front yard is marked by a
repetitious acts of everyday life. fence, delineating an enclosure. The fence struc
Conceptually, these spaces can be identified tures a more complex relationship between home
as what Edward Soja, following Henri Lefebvre, and street. Different configurations of house, yard,
called the “thirdspace,” a category that is neither and fence offer flexible spaces that can easily be
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 354 10-26-2012 3:19:47 PM

adapted for commercial purposes. The fence itself tion. Like the garage sale, vending supplements
becomes a display for ads or goods. Paving the income rather than constituting an occupation – or,
lawn, a widespread practice, creates an outdoor more likely, supports only the most marginal of
shop. For Latino women who don’t work outside existences. The varieties of vending visible across
the house, the garage sale has become a permanent the city publicly articulate its multiple economic
business. Many move beyond recycling used items and social narratives. In neighborhoods populated
to buying and reselling clothes from nearby gar by Central American immigrants, women prepare
ment factories. Garages are simultaneously closets or package food or craft items in the home for sale
and shops, further linking the commercial and on the sidewalk, extending the domestic economy
the domestic and producing a public place for into urban space. The social dramas of migration
neighborhood women. Men use the paved yards to Los Angeles are played out daily on the streets.
differently, as spaces for auto repair or car custom The ubiquitous orange sellers, found on street divid
izing. This attracts other neighborhood men, estab ers all over the city, are recent and undocumented
lishing a gathering place that is similarly domestic arrivals who work to pay off the coyote who brought
and commercial. them across the border. Other immigrants vend for t
h
economic mobility, an alternative to sweatshop labor, r
that may eventually lead to a stall at a swap meet e
Street vendors or to a small shop. Both sellers and goods can be e
read as local messages, attesting to the economic
All over the city, informal vendors appropriate mar necessities and cultural values of a neighborhood.
ginal and overlooked sites chosen for their acces Vending on public property, streets, and side
sibility to passing motorists and pedestrians: street walks is illegal in both the city and county of Los
corners, sidewalks, and parking lots and vacant lots Angeles. When enough vendors congregate in a
that are often surrounded by chain-link fences. single place regularly enough, however, they can
Through the types of goods they sell, vendors bring muster the political power to change the nature
to these urban spaces the qualities of domestic life. of urban space. Chanting “We are vendors, not
Used dresses from innumerable closets form a mural criminals,” Central American vendors demonstrated
of female identity. Cheap rugs cover the harshness at the Rampart police station, demanding the
of chain link, overlaying the fence with the soft right to pursue their economic activities without
textures and bright patterns of the interior, defining police harassment. Since many of the vendors are
a collective urban living room and evoking a mul undocumented, this makes them doubly illegal.
tiplicity of dwelling places, an analogue for the Central American vendors have organized them
diversity of the city. The delicate patterning of lace, selves, acquired legal representation, and pressured
flowers, and pillows, the softness of T-shirts and the city to change its laws to permit limited vend
stuffed animals – all invoke the intimacy of the interior ing. Through the defense of their livelihood,
rather than the no-man’s-land of the street. In pub vendors are becoming a political and economic
lic places, familiar items such as tables, chairs, and force in the city.
tablecloths, usually seen inside the home, transform
neglected and underused space into islands of human
occupation. Exchange both commercial and social, Democracy and public space
including that of the messages transmitted by
T-shirts and posters, takes place. The vendors’ tem This brings us back to the question that started this
porary use hijacks these spaces, changing their investigation: how can public space be connected
meaning. Publicly owned spaces are briefly inhab with democracy? Individual garage sales might not
ited by citizens; private spaces undergo an ephem in themselves generate a new urban politics, but
eral decommodification. Temporarily removed from the juxtapositions, combinations, and collisions of
the marketplace, these spaces now represent more people, places, and activities that I’ve described
than potential real-estate value. create a new condition of social fluidity that begins
Vending is a complex and diverse economy of to break down the separate, specialized, and hier
microcommerce, recycling, and household produc archical structures of everyday life in Los Angeles.
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 355 10-26-2012 3:19:48 PM

Local yet also directed to anyone driving or passing NOTES

by, these unexpected intersections may possess
the liberatory potential that Henri Lefebvre attri 1 “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” first published
butes to urban life. As chance encounters multiply in 1938, has been extensively reprinted. See
and proliferate, activities of everyday space may Albert J. Reiss, ed., On Cities and Social Life
begin to dissolve some of the predictable boundar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938);
ies of race and class, revealing previously hidden and Richard Sennett, ed., Classic Essays in the
social possibilities that suggest how the trivial Culture of Cities (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
and marginal might be transformed into a kind of Hall, 1969). For a discussion of other meanings
micropolitics. of urbanism, see Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism,
In some specific circumstances, as I’ve sug (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1996), 225.
gested, the intersection of publics, spaces, and 2 For Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, “be
identities can begin to delineate a new urban arena twixt and between,” see The Forest of Symbols
for democratic action that challenges normative (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967),
definitions of how democracy works. Specifically 93–110. Also see Donald Weber on the related
constituted counterpublics organized around a concept of “border,” in “From Limen to Border:
site or activity create what anthropologist James A Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner
Holston calls “spaces of insurgent citizenship.”26 for American Cultural Studies,” American Quarterly
These emergent sites accompany the changes that 47 (September 1995): 525–37.
are transforming cities such as Los Angeles. Global 3 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life (London:
and local processes, migration, industrial restructur Verso, 1991), 95.
ing, and other economic shifts produce social reter 4 Ibid., 18.
ritorialization at all levels. Residents with new 5 Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern
histories, cultures, and demands appear in the city World (New York: Harper, 1971), 25.
and disrupt the given categories of social life and 6 See, for example, Kristen Ross, Fast Cars and
urban space. Expressed through the specific needs Clean Bodies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
of everyday life, their urban experiences increas 1995); Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies
ingly become the focus of their struggle to redefine (London: Verso, 1989), and Thirdspace: Journeys
the conditions belonging to society. Once mobilized, to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined
social identities become political demands, spaces Places (New York: Blackwell, 1996); and Mark
and sites for political transformation, with the poten Gottdeiner, The Social Production of Urban Space
tial to reshape cities. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).
The public sites where these struggles occur 7 Raymond Ledrut, “Speech and the Silence of
serve as evidence of an emerging but not yet the City,” in The City and the Sign: An Introduction
fully comprehensible spatial and political order. to Urban Semiotics, ed. Mark Gottdeiner and
In everyday space, differences between the domes Alexandros Langopoulos (New York: Columbia
tic and the economic, the private and the public, University Press, 1986), 133.
and the economic and the political are blurring. 8 Henri Lefebvre, “Space: Social Product and Use
Rather than constituting the failure of public space, Value,” in Critical Sociology: European Perspectives,
change, multiplicity, and contestation may in fact ed. J.W. Freiberg (New York: Irvington, 1979),
constitute its very nature. In Los Angeles, the ma 289.
terialization of these new public spaces and activi 9 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 127.
ties, shaped by lived experience rather than built 10 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four
space, raises complex political questions about the Essays, ed. Michael Holmquist (Austin: University
meaning of economic participation and citizenship. of Texas Press, 1981), 426–27.
By recognizing these struggles as the germ of an 11 Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, 92.
alternative development of democracy, we can 12 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 238.
begin to frame a new discourse of public space, 13 Henri Lefebvre, La Somme et le Reste, vol. 2
one no longer preoccupied with loss but instead (Paris: La Nef de Paris, 1959), discussed in
filled with possibility. David Harvey, “Afterword” in Henri Lefebvre,
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 356 10-26-2012 3:19:48 PM

The Production of Space (New York: Blackwell, Variations on a Theme Park: The New American
1991), 429. City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill
14 Guy Debord, “Preliminary Problems in Con and Wang, 1990), 155.
structing a Situation,” in Ken Knabb, Situationist 20 See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Trans
International Anthology (Berkeley: Bureau of formation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Public Secrets, 1981), 43–45. Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge,
15 Alice Kaplan and Kristen Ross, introduction to Mass.: MIT Press, 1989); and Richard Sennett,
“Everyday Life” issue of Yale French Studies 73 The Fall of Public Man (New York: Vintage
(Fall 1987): 4. Books, 1974).
16 Further discussions of the concept of totality 21 Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles,” 154–80.
see Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adven 22 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere:
tures of a Concept from Lukas to Habermas A Contribution to the Critique of Actually
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), Existing Democracy,” in The Phantom Public
276–99; and Peter Wollen, “Bitter Victory: The Sphere, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: Univer
Art and Politics of the Situationist International,” sity of Minnesota Press, 1993). t
h
in On the Passage of a Few People Through a 23 Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in r
Brief Moment in Time, ed. Elizabeth Sussman the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: e
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). Cornell University Press, 1988); Mary P. Ryan, e
17 Guy Debord, “La Théorie de la dérive,” in Les Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots,
Levres Nues 9 (November 1956): 10. 1825–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
18 See Doug Kelbaugh’s introduction to Every Press, 1990).
day Urbanism: Margaret Crawford vs. Michael 24 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life.
Speaks in the series Michigan Debates on 25 Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles
Urbanism (Ann Arbor: A. Alfred Taubman College and Other Real and Imagined Places (New York:
of Architecture and Urban Planning, 2005). Basil Blackwell, 1996).
19 Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militar 26 James Holston, “Spaces of Insurgent Citizen
ization of Urban Space,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., ship,” Planning Theory 13 (Summer 1996): 30–50.
9780415668071_P3_08.indd 357 10-26-2012 3:19:48 PM

“The Generic City” and “Whatever
Happened to Urbanism?”
from S, M, L, XL (1994)
Rem Koolhaas
For those able to muster the patience to penetrate the visual cacophony of the book S, M, L, XL by Rem
Koolhaas, his firm the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and Bruce Mau, there exists within its eye-
popping graphics a couple of very lucid statements about contemporary cities: “The Generic City” and “What-
ever Happened to Urbanism?” The book itself is a mixed-media collage of contemporary architectural images,
manifestos, travelogues, works from Koolhaas’ professional practice OMA, a glossary of terms that punctuates
the entire work, and various critiques or essays on the state of contemporary architecture and urbanism. The
book is organized in a spatially scalar way according to its title, from issues of the Small (houses, bus stops,
hotels, details, and such) to the Extra Large (issues of cities, regions, urban form, mega-projects, and so on).
The two pieces presented here share Koolhaas’ deft use of language that both sensationalizes and poses
questions worthy of his celebrity. As with his past writing, Koolhaas provides an often humorous, unsentimen-
talized and existential view of the contemporary urban scene. The themes in these two pieces focus on a
similar outcome – an urbanism that has lost its way. In the first, he describes the urbanism of the generic
city, and in the second he provides a call to action.
In the first selection Koolhaas describes the unsatisfactory urbanism we tend to produce all too regularly
and which is found increasingly at the periphery of traditional city centers. Koolhaas suggests the Generic
City is a justified reflection of present-day need and society’s current urban abilities. Its physical characteris-
tics are spaces of anomie and atomism, neutral and beige with unnoticeable buildings, dominated by the
automobile, signified by an increasingly tropical friendliness, where people dine at waterfronts on shrimp that
tastes like nothing. From the fun he derives in describing these characteristics, one might get the impression
that Koolhaas is not only an existential documentarian, but might be the Generic City’s champion. He writes
very similarly to the ways in which Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown described Las Vegas or Joel
Garreau defined the Edge City. But to assume Koolhaas is satisfied with this state of conditions would be to
underestimate his call for a deeper and more serious urbanism.
Koolhaas’ critical stance in this work is “simply to abandon what doesn’t work – what has outlived its use –
to break up the blacktop of idealism with the jackhammers of realism and to accept whatever grows in its
place” – in this case the dominance and propping up of the exhausted historic urban center. He argues
against the straitjacket of urban identity building and the destructive centralization that is required to keep
central urban areas flourishing. In its place, the importance of the periphery is put forth as the true represen-
tation of contemporary urbanism, not only as a place where modernism can flourish in the form of shopping
centers, parking lots, freeways and airports, but also as “free style” spaces where architects are free to
innovate without the strictures and limitations of historic contexts. Although he notes the unstoppable march
of postmodern choice and style, his critique also suggests both “the death of the street” as well as “the final
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“The Generic City” 359
death of planning.” For the traditional urbanist, reading Koolhaas was akin to the experiences of seeing a
horror movie – causing one to flinch uncomfortably, sometimes scream, feel repulsion, and continuously look
over the shoulder when leaving the theater – because one knows that danger lurks, yet hopes it was all fic-
tion. As many commuters know from passing through the urban periphery on a daily basis – whether outside
Atlanta or Paris – this is no fiction.
In the second short piece, “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” (an addition to “The Generic City” within
this second edition of this Reader), Koolhaas laments the loss of the “profession of urbanism.” He suggests
that urbanism has sabotaged itself and been ridiculed out of existence by the failed modernist project, the
irrelevant use of nostalgia, and the city’s devolution to a mere set of architectural elements – without any
underlying connective tissue, responsive infrastructure, or collective rationale. And all of this dissatisfaction
with traditional design practice, he suggests, has led to no credible alternative to the chaos of our current
urban predicament. This piece provides a very direct clarion call for resuscitating urbanism, addressing the
need to grow our cities in response to urbanization pressures, and supporting an urban attitude. He suggests
we focus on becoming supporters of urban thinking and look to ways of growing and modifying our cities
– rather than simply producing architecture. The theme of this work parallels several other critiques of status t
h
quo urban design practice provided in this Reader, including those by Rowe and Koetter, Michael Sorkin, and r
several of the environmentalists. e
Remment (Rem) Lucas Koolhaas is an architect and theorist working out of multiple Offices for Metro- e
politan Architecture in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, and Beijing. A counterpart to OMA is AMO: a re-
search studio that pushes the boundaries of urbanism and architecture to investigate media, technology,
fashion, sociology, and other temporal interests. Koolhaas gained early notoriety for his 1982 entry into the
Parc de la Villette competition, ultimately placing behind winner Bernard Tschumi. A winner of the Pritzker
Architecture Prize in 2000, his many projects include the masterplans for Lille and Almere; housing in Fukuoka,
Japan; several Prada retail stores and catwalks; the public library in Seattle; museum projects and performance
halls in Dallas, St. Petersburg-Russia, Paris, Taipei, Porto, and Seoul; and the Dutch Embassy in Berlin. Just
as interesting as his built works are the number of OMA competition entries and unrealized designs across
the world.
Key texts by Koolhaas include: Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York:
Monacelli Press, 1997, original 1978); Mutations: Harvard Project on the City, edited with Stefano Boeri,
Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi, and Daniela Fabricius (Barcelona: Actar, 2001); Colours, written with Norman
Foster and Alessandro Mendini (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2001); Project on the City II: The Harvard Design School
Guide to Shopping: Harvard Project on the City, edited with Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, and Sze
Tsung Leong (Cologne: Taschen, 2001); Project on the City I: Great Leap Forward, edited with Chuihua
Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, and Sze Tsung Leong (Cologne: Taschen, 2002); Content (Cologne: Taschen,
2004); a transcribed interview between Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks,
edited with Kayoko Ota and James Westcott (Cologne: Taschen, 2011); and The Maddalena Effect: An
Architectural Affair, written with Guido Bertolaso and Stefano Boeri, and edited with Michele Brunello and
Francisca Insulza (New York: Rizzoli, 2010).
A number of texts and monographs have been written on Koolhaas and his professional work at the Office
for Metropolitan Architecture. The most important of these are: Heike Sinning, More is More: OMA/Rem
Koolhaas (Tübingan: Wasmuth, 2001); Jean Attali, et al. What is OMA? Considering Rem Koolhaas and the
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rotterdam: NAi, 2004); Germano Celant (ed.) Rem Koolhaas: Unveiling
the Prada Foundation (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2008); Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas/OMA: Essays in
Architecture (London: Routledge, 2008); and Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architec-
ture: An Ethnography of Design (Netherlands: Uitgeverij: 2009).
Forms of contemporary urbanism are characterized often by two very different expressions, both implied
by Koolhaas in this reading. The first, Everyday Urbanism, cannot be considered a design movement in any sense
of the term, but rather a description of the lived realities of the un-idealized populist city. Everyday Urbanism
is the non-utopian informalism of trailerparks, freeway signage, the ad-hoc use of vacant lots, community
gardens, garage sales, and the vast informal settlements found in poor countries, for example. Considered a
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360 R em K oolhaas
classic of the postmodern era, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las
Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977) was an early recognition of the populist themes found in Everyday
Urbanism, although these authors do not allude to the term itself (see the selection by these authors in Part
Two: pp. 169–177). Other authors describing Everyday Urbanism include: John Chase, John Kaliski, and
Margaret Crawford (eds), Everyday Urbanism (New York: Monacelli Press, 1999) (excerpted in Part Three:
pp. 344–357); and Rahul Mehrotra (ed.), Everyday Urbanism: Michigan Debates on Urbanism (Ann Arbor,
MI: Taubman School, University of Michigan, 2005).
A second form of contemporary urbanism, Post Urbanism, has been directly associated with the built work
of Koolhaas and OMA, as well as designers such as Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, Frank
Gehry, Lebbeus Woods, Herzog & de Meuron, and Peter Eisenman, among others. It is physically character-
ized by decontextualized design, stylistic sensationalism, dependent on “shock and awe,” with respect to its
use of non-contextual and overpowering forms. Post Urban design tends to be free-form, avant-garde archi-
tecture that is at times abstractly geometrical, frequently relying on surface detailing of a building’s skin, and
in most instances, personal expressions of the designer. Key texts in Post Urban literature include: Bernard
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); The State of Architecture at the
Beginning of the 21st Century, edited with Irene Cheng (New York: Monacelli Press, 2004), and Event Cities
1, 2 and 3 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, 2001, 2005); Charles Jencks, The Architecture of the Jumping
Universe – A Polemic: How Complexity Science is Changing Architecture and Culture (London: Academy
Editions, 1997); Lebbeus Woods, Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act (Chichester, UK: John Wiley/
Architectural Monographs 22, 1992); Roy Strickland (ed.), Post Urbanism and Reurbanism: Michigan Debates
on Urbanism (Ann Arbor, MI: Taubman School, University of Michigan, 2005); and Gyan Prakash (ed.), Noir
Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Written
before the introduction of landscape or ecological urbanism, Douglas Kelbaugh provides a very accessible
review of contemporary design theories dominating the literature, including both post and everyday urbanism,
in Three Urbanisms: New, Everyday and Post (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2000).
These readings are indicative of a long line of Post Urban critiques and histories that suggest the traditional
monocentric city may be passing into obsolescence, often replaced by a new megapolitan or mega-region
urbanism. These authors acknowledge the rise of a new poststructuralist/metropolitan/polycentric/sub
urban/non-place urban realm. Those describing this Post Urban zeitgeist include: Melvin Webber, “Order in
Diversity: Community without Propinquity,” in Lloyd Wingo Jr. (ed.), Cities and Space – The Future Use of
Urban Land (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963); Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis, The Urban-
ized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), The Urban
Place and Non-Place Urban Realm: Explorations into Urban Structure (Philadelphia, PA: University of Penn-
sylvania, 1964), and “The Post-City Age,” Daedalus (vol. 97, no. 4, pp. 1091–1110, 1968); Francoise Choay,
L’Histoire et la Methode en Urbanisme (Paris: Annales ESC, 1970); Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier:
The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Fishman,
Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books and HarperCollins, 1987) and
“America’s New City: Megalopolis Unbound,” in The Wilson Quarterly (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Winter 1990, pp. 25–45); Jean Gottmann and Robert Harper (eds), Since
Megalopolis: The Urban Writings of Jean Gottmann (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990);
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Jon C. Teaford, The
Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America, The Columbia History of Urban Life (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006); Peter Hall and Kathy Pain, The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from
Mega-City Regions in Europe (London: Routledge, 2009); Catherine Ross (ed.), Megaregions: Planning for
Global Competitiveness (Washington DC: Island Press, 2009); and Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang,
Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography (Chicago: APA/
Planner’s Press, 2011).
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THE GENERIC CITY a polished caricature. There are exceptions: London

– its only identity a lack of clear identity – is per
1. Introduction petually becoming even less London, more open,
less static.) 1.4 Identity centralizes; it insists on an
1.1 Is the contemporary city like the contemporary essence, a point. Its tragedy is given in simple geo
airport – “all the same”? Is it possible to theorize metric terms. As the sphere of influence expands,
this convergence? And if so, to what ultimate con the area characterized by the center becomes larger
figuration is it aspiring? Convergence is possible and larger, hopelessly diluting both the strength
only at the price of shedding identity. That is and the authority of the core; inevitably the dis
usually seen as a loss. But at the scale at which tance between center and circumference increases
it occurs, it must mean something. What are the to the breaking point. In this perspective, the recent,
disadvantages of identity, and conversely, what are belated discovery of the periphery as a zone of
the advantages of blankness? What if this seem potential value – a kind of pre-historical condition
ingly accidental – and usually regretted – homogen that might finally be worthy of architectural atten
ization were an intentional process, a conscious tion – is only a disguised insistence on the priority t
h
movement away from difference toward similarity? of and dependency on the center: without center, r
What if we are witnessing a global liberation move no periphery; the interest of the first presumably e
ment: “down with character!” What is left after compensates for the emptiness of the latter. Con e
identity is stripped? The Generic? 1.2 To the extent ceptually orphaned, the condition of the periphery
that identity is derived from physical substance, is made worse by the fact that its mother is still
from the historical, from context, from the real, we alive, stealing the show, emphasizing its offspring’s
somehow cannot imagine that anything contemp inadequacies. The last vibes emanating from the
orary – made by us – contributes to it. But the fact exhausted center preclude the reading of the
that human growth is exponential implies that the periphery as a critical mass. Not only is the center
past will at some point become too “small” to be by definition too small to perform its assigned
inhabited and shared by those alive. We ourselves obligations, it is also no longer the real but an
exhaust it. To the extent that history finds its de overblown mirage on its way to implosion; yet its
posit in architecture, present human quantities will illusory presence denies the rest of the city its
inevitably burst and deplete previous substance. legitimacy. (Manhattan denigrates as “bridge-and-
Identity conceived as this form of sharing the past tunnel people” those who need infrastructural sup
is a losing proposition: not only is there – in a port to enter the city, and makes them pay for it.)
stable model of continuous population expansion The persistence of the present concentric obsession
– proportionally less and less to share, but history makes us all bridge-and-tunnel people, second-class
also has an invidious half-life – as it is more abused, citizens in our own civilization, disenfranchised by
it becomes less significant – to the point where its the dumb coincidence of our collective exile from
diminishing handouts become insulting. This thin the center. 1.5 In our concentric programming
ning is exacerbated by the constantly increasing (author spent part of his youth in Amsterdam, city
mass of tourists, an avalanche that, in a perpetual of ultimate centrality) the insistence on the center as
quest for “character,” grinds successful identities the core of value and meaning, font of all signifi
down to meaningless dust. 1.3 Identity is like a cance, is doubly destructive – not only is the ever-
mousetrap in which more and more mice have to increasing volume of dependencies an ultimately
share the original bait, and which, on closer inspec intolerable strain, it also means that the center has
tion, may have been empty for centuries. The stron to be constantly maintained, i.e., modernized. As
ger identity, the more it imprisons, the more it “the most important place,” it paradoxically has to
resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contra be, at the same time, the most old and the most
diction. Identity becomes like a lighthouse – fixed, new, the most fixed and the most dynamic; it under
over determined: it can change its position or the goes the most intense and constant adaptation,
pattern it emits only at the cost of destabilizing which is then compromised and complicated by
navigation. (Paris can only become more Parisian the fact that it has to be an unacknowledged trans
– it is already on its way to becoming hyper-Paris, formation, invisible to the naked eye. (The city of
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362 R em K oolhaas
Zurich has found the most radical, expensive solu around the equator – a large proportion of Generic
tion in reverting to a kind of reverse archaeology: Cities is Asian – seemingly a contradiction in terms:
layer after layer of new modernities – shopping the over-familiar inhabited by the inscrutable. One
centers, parking, banks, vaults, laboratories – are day it will be absolutely exotic again, this discarded
constructed underneath the center. The center no product of Western civilization, through the rese
longer expands outward or skyward, but inward manticization that its very dissemination brings in
toward the center of the earth itself.) From the its wake . . . 2.4 Sometimes an old, singular city,
grafting of more or less discreet traffic arteries, like Barcelona, by oversimplifying its identity, turns
bypasses, underground tunnels, the construction of Generic. It becomes transparent, like a logo. The
ever more tangentiales, to the routine transformation reverse never happens . . . at least not yet.
of housing into offices, warehouses into lofts, aban
doned churches into nightclubs, from the serial
bankruptcies and subsequent reopenings of specific 3. General
units in more and more expensive shopping pre
cincts to the relentless conversion of utilitarian 3.1 The Generic City is what is left after large sec
space into “public” space, pedestrianization, the tions of urban life crossed over to cyberspace. It
creation of new parks, planting, bridging, exposing, is a place of weak and distended sensations, few
the systematic restoring of historic mediocrity, and far between emotions, discreet and mysterious
all authenticity is relentlessly evacuated. 1.6 The like a large space lit by a bed lamp. Compared to
Generic City is the city liberated from the captivity of the classical city, the Generic City is sedated, usually
center, from the straitjacket of identity. The Generic perceived from a sedentary position. Instead of
City breaks with this destructive cycle of depen concentration – simultaneous presence – in the
dency: it is nothing but a reflection of present need Generic City individual “moments” are spaced far
and present ability. It is the city without history. It apart to create a trance of almost unnoticeable
is big enough for everybody. It is easy. It does not aesthetic experiences: the color variations in the
need maintenance. If it gets too small it just ex fluorescent lighting of an office building just before
pands. If it gets old it just self-destructs and renews. sunset, the subtleties of the slightly different whites
It is equally exciting – or unexciting – everywhere. of an illuminated sign at night. Like Japanese food,
It is “superficial” – like a Hollywood studio lot, it the sensations can be reconstituted and intensified
can produce a new identity every Monday morning. in the mind, or not – they may simply be ignored.
(There’s a choice.) This pervasive lack of urgency
and insistence acts like a potent drug; it induces a
2. Statistics hallucination of the normal. 3.2 In a drastic reversal
of what is supposedly the major characteristic of
2.1 The Generic City has grown dramatically over the city – “business” – the dominant sensation of the
the past few decades. Not only has its size in Generic City is an eerie calm: the calmer it is, the
creased, its numbers have too. In the early seven more it approximates the pure state. The Generic
ties it was inhabited by an average of 2.5 million City addresses the “evils” that were ascribed to
official (and ±500,000 unofficial) residents; now it the traditional city before our love for it became
hovers around the 15 million mark. 2.2 Did the unconditional. The serenity of the Generic City is
Generic City start in America? Is it so profoundly achieved by the evacuation of the public realm, as
unoriginal that it can only be imported? In any case, in an emergency fire drill. The urban plane now
the Generic City now also exists in Asia, Europe, only accommodates necessary movement, funda
Australia, Africa. The definitive move away from mentally the car; highways are a superior version
the countryside, from agriculture, to the city is not of boulevards and plazas, taking more and more
a move to the city as we knew it: it is a move to space; their design, seemingly aiming for auto
the Generic City, the city so pervasive that it has motive efficiency, is in fact surprisingly sensual, a
come to the country. 2.3 Some continents, like Asia, utilitarian pretense entering the domain of smooth
aspire to the Generic City; others are ashamed by it. space. What is new about this locomotive public
Because it tends toward the tropical – converging realm is that it cannot be measured in dimensions.
9780415668071_P3_09.indd 362 10-26-2012 3:19:42 PM

The same (let’s say ten-mile) stretch yields a vast they are on the way to replacing the city. The in-
number of utterly different experiences: it can last transit condition is becoming universal. Together,
five minutes or forty; it can be shared with almost airports contain populations of millions – plus the
nobody, or with the entire population; it can yield largest daily workforce. In the completeness of their
the absolute pleasure of pure, unadulterated facilities, they are like quarters of the Generic City,
speed – at which point the sensation of the Generic sometimes even its reason for being (its center?),
City may even become intense or at least acquire with the added attraction of being hermetic systems
density – or utterly claustrophobic moments of from which there is no escape – except to another
stoppage – at which point the thinness of the airport. 4.3 The date/age of the Generic City can
Generic City is at its most noticeable. 3.3 The Generic be reconstructed from a close reading of its air
City is fractal, an endless repetition of the same port’s geometry. Hexagonal plan (in unique cases
simple structural module; it is possible to recon penta- or heptagonal): sixties. Orthogonal plan and
struct it from its smallest entity, a desktop computer, section: seventies. Collage City: eighties. A single
maybe even a diskette. 3.4 Golf courses are all that curved section, endlessly extruded in a linear plan:
is left of otherness. 3.5 The Generic City has easy probably nineties. (Its structure branching out like t
h
phone numbers, not the resistant ten-figure frontal- an oak tree: Germany.) 4.4 Airports come in two r
lobe crunchers of the traditional city but smoother sizes: too big and too small. Yet their size has no e
versions, their middle numbers identical, for instance. influence on their performance. This suggests that e
3.6 Its main attraction is its anomie. the most intriguing aspect of all infrastructures is
their essential elasticity. Calculated by the exact for
the numbered – passengers per year – they are
4. Airport invaded by the countless and survive, stretched
toward ultimate indeterminacy.
4.1 Once manifestations of ultimate neutrality, air
ports now are among the most singular, character
istic elements of the Generic City, its strongest 5. Population
vehicle of differentiation. They have to be, being
all the average person tends to experience of a 5.1 The Generic City is seriously multiracial, on
particular city. Like a drastic perfume demonstra average 8% black, 12% white, 27% Hispanic, 37%
tion, photomurals, vegetation, local costumes give Chinese/Asian, 6% indeterminate, 10% other. Not
a first concentrated blast of the local identity only multiracial, also multicultural. That’s why it
(sometimes it is also the last). Far away, comfort comes as no surprise to see temples between the
able, exotic, polar, regional, Eastern, rustic, new, slabs, dragons on the main boulevards, Buddhas in
even “undiscovered”: those are the emotional reg the CBD (central business district). 5.2 The Generic
isters invoked. Thus conceptually charged, airports City is always founded by people on the move, poised
become emblematic signs imprinted on the global to move on. This explains the insubstantiality of
collective unconscious in savage manipulations of their foundations. Like the flakes that are suddenly
their non-aviatic attractors – tax-free shopping, formed in a clear liquid by joining two chemical
spectacular spatial qualities, the frequency and re substances, eventually to accumulate in an uncer
liability of their connections to other airports. In tain heap on the bottom, the collision or confluence
terms of its iconography/performance, the airport of two migrations – Cuban emigres going north and
is a concentrate of both the hyper-local and hyper- Jewish retirees going south, for instance, both ultim
global – hyper-global in the sense you can get goods ately on their way someplace else – establishes, out
there that are not available even in the city, hyper- of the blue, a settlement. A Generic City is born.
local in the sense you can get things there that you
get nowhere else. 4.2 The tendency in airport
gestalt is toward ever-greater autonomy: sometimes 6. Urbanism
they’re even practically unrelated to a specific
Generic City. Becoming bigger and bigger, equipped 6.1 The great originality of the Generic City is
with more and more facilities unconnected to travel, simply to abandon what doesn’t work – what has
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364 R em K oolhaas
outlived its use – to break up the blacktop of surprisingly accommodating – not only does the
idealism with the jackhammers of realism and to population double every so many years, but also,
accept whatever grows in its place. In that sense, with the loosening grip of the various religions, the
the Generic City accommodates both the primordial average number of occupants per unit halves –
and the futuristic – in fact, only these two. The through divorce and other family-dividing phe
Generic City is all that remains of what used to be nomena – with the same frequency that the city’s
the city. The Generic City is the post-city being population doubles; as its numbers swell, the
prepared on the site of the ex-city. 6.2 The Generic Generic City’s density is perpetually on the decrease.
City is held together, not by an over-demanding 6.6 All Generic Cities issue from the tabula rasa;
public realm – progressively debased in a surpris if there was nothing, now they are there; if there
ingly long sequence in which the Roman Forum is was something, they have replaced it. They must,
to the Greek agora what the shopping mall is to otherwise they would be historic. 6.7 The Generic
the high street – but by the residual. In the original Cityscape is usually an amalgam of overly ordered
model of the moderns, the residual was merely sections – dating from near the beginning of its
green, its controlled neatness a moralistic assertion development, when “the power” was still undiluted
of good intentions, discouraging association, use. In – and increasingly free arrangements everywhere
the Generic City, because the crust of its civilization else. 6.8 The Generic City is the apotheosis of the
is so thin, and through its immanent tropicality, multiple-choice concept: all boxes crossed, an an
the vegetal is transformed into Edenic Residue, the thology of all the options. Usually the Generic City
main carrier of its identity: a hybrid of politics and has been “planned,” not in the usual sense of some
landscape. At the same time refuge of the illegal, bureaucratic organization controlling its develop
the uncontrollable, and subject of endless mani ment, but as if various echoes, spores, tropes, seeds
pulation, it represents a simultaneous triumph of the fell on the ground randomly as in nature, took hold
manicured and the primeval. Its immoral lushness – exploiting the natural fertility of the terrain – and
compensates for the Generic City’s other poverties. now form an ensemble: an arbitrary gene pool that
Supremely inorganic, the organic is the Generic sometimes produces amazing results. 6.9 The writ
City’s strongest myth. 6.3 The street is dead. That ing of the city may be indecipherable, flawed, but
discovery has coincided with frantic attempts at that does not mean that there is no writing; it may
its resuscitation. Public art is everywhere – as if simply be that we developed a new illiteracy, a new
two deaths make a life. Pedestrianization – intended blindness. Patient detection reveals the themes,
to preserve – merely channels the flow of those particles, strands that can be isolated from the
doomed to destroy the object of their intended seeming murkiness of this Wagnerian ur-soup:
reverence with their feet. 6.4 The Generic City is notes left on a blackboard by a visiting genius 50
on its way from horizontality to verticality. The years ago, stenciled UN reports disintegrating in
skyscraper looks as if it will be the final, definitive their Manhattan glass silo, discoveries by former
typology. It has swallowed everything else. It can colonial thinkers with a keen eye for the climate,
exist anywhere: in a rice field, or downtown – unpredictable ricochets of design education gather
it makes no difference anymore. The towers no ing strength as a global laundering process. 6.10
longer stand together; they are spaced so that they The best definition of the aesthetic of the Generic
don’t interact. Density in isolation is the ideal. 6.5 City is “free style.” How to describe it? Imagine an
Housing is not a problem. It has either been com open space, a clearing in the forest, a leveled city.
pletely solved or totally left to chance; in the first There are three elements: roads, buildings, and na
case it is legal, in the second “illegal”; in the first ture; they coexist in flexible relationships, seemingly
case, towers or, usually, slabs (at the most, 15 meters without reason, in spectacular organizational diver
deep), in the second (in perfect complementarity) sity. Anyone of the three may dominate: sometimes
a crust of improvised hovels. One solution con the “road” is lost – to be found meandering on an
sumes the sky, the other the ground. It is strange incomprehensible detour; sometimes you see no
that those with the least money inhabit the most building, only nature; then, equally unpredictably, you
expensive commodity – earth; those who pay, what are surrounded only by building. In certain frighten
is free air. In either case, housing proves to be ing spots, all three are simultaneously absent. On
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these “sites” (actually, what is the opposite of a took the blueprints back home. Nobody knows
site? They are like holes bored through the concept where, how, since when the sewers run, the exact
of city) public art emerges like the Loch Ness location of the telephone lines, what the reason
Monster, equal parts figurative and abstract, usually was for the position of the center, where monu
self-cleaning. 6.11 Specific cities still seriously de mental axes end. All it proves is that there are
bate the mistakes of architects – for instance, their infinite hidden margins, colossal reservoirs of
proposals to create raised pedestrian networks with slack, a perpetual, organic process of adjustment,
tentacles leading from one block to the next as a standards, behavior; expectations change with the
solution to congestion – but the Generic City sim biological intelligence of the most alert animal.
ply enjoys the benefits of their inventions: decks, In this apotheosis of multiple choice, it will never
bridges, tunnels, motorways – a huge proliferation of be possible again to reconstruct cause and effect.
the paraphernalia of connection – frequently draped They work – that is all. 6.16 The Generic City’s
with ferns and flowers as if to ward off original sin, aspiration toward tropicality automatically implies
creating a vegetal congestion more severe than a the rejection of any lingering reference to the city
fifties science-fiction movie. 6.12 The roads are as fortress, as citadel; it is open and accommodating t
h
only for cars. People (pedestrians) are led on rides like a mangrove forest. r
(as in an amusement park), on “promenades” that e
lift them off the ground, then subject them to a e
catalog of exaggerated conditions – wind, heat, 7. Politics
steepness, cold, interior, exterior, smells, fumes – in
a sequence that is a grotesque caricature of life in 7.1 The Generic City has a (sometimes distant)
the historic city. 6.13 There is horizontality in the relationship with a more or less authoritarian regime
Generic City, but it is on the way out. It consists – local or national. Usually the cronies of the “leader”
either of history that is not yet erased or of Tudor- – whoever that was – decided to develop a piece
like enclaves that multiply around the center as of “downtown” or the periphery, or even to start
newly minted emblems of preservation. 6.14 a new city in the middle of nowhere, and so, trig
Ironically, though itself new, the Generic City is gered the boom that put the city on the map. 7.2
encircled by a constellation of New Towns: New Very often, the regime has evolved to a surprising
Towns are like year-rings. Somehow, New Towns degree of invisibility, as if, through its very permis
age very quickly, the way a five-year-old child siveness, the Generic City resists the dictatorial.
develops wrinkles and arthritis through the disease
called progeria. 6.15 The Generic City presents the
final death of planning. Why? Not because it is not 8. Sociology
planned – in fact, huge complementary universes
of bureaucrats and developers funnel unimaginable 8.1 It is very surprising that the triumph of the
flows of energy and money into its completion; for Generic City has not coincided with the triumph
the same money, its plains can be fertilized by of sociology – a discipline whose “field” has been
diamonds, its mud fields paved in gold bricks . . . But extended by the Generic City beyond its wildest
its most dangerous and most exhilarating discovery imagination. The Generic City is sociology, hap
is that planning makes no difference whatsoever. pening. Each Generic City is a petri dish – or an
Buildings may be placed well (a tower near a metro infinitely patient blackboard on which almost any
station) or badly (whole centers miles away from hypothesis can be “proven” and then erased, never
any road). They flourish/perish unpredictably. Net again to reverberate in the minds of its authors or
works become over-stretched, age, rot, become its audience. 8.2 Clearly, there is a proliferation of
obsolescent; populations double, triple, quadruple, communities – a sociological zapping – that resists
suddenly disappear. The surface of the city ex a single overriding interpretation. The Generic City
plodes, the economy accelerates, slows down, is loosening every structure that made anything
bursts, collapses. Like ancient mothers that still coalesce in the past. 8.3 While infinitely patient,
nourish titanic embryos, whole cities are built on the Generic City is also persistently resistant to
colonial infrastructures of which the oppressors speculation: it proves that sociology may be the
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366 R em K oolhaas
worst system to capture sociology in the making. City. On the liberated grounds, around the restored
It outwits each established critique. It contributes hovels, still more hotels are constructed to receive
huge amounts of evidence for and – in even more additional tourists in direct proportion to the era
impressive quantities – against each hypothesis. In sure of the past. Its disappearance has no influence
A tower blocks lead to suicide, in B to happiness on their numbers, or maybe it is just a last-minute
ever after. In C they are seen as a first stepping rush. Tourism is now independent of destina
stone toward emancipation (presumably under tion . . . 9.4 Instead of specific memories, the as
some kind of invisible “duress,” however), in D sociations the Generic City mobilizes are general
simply as passé. Constructed in unimaginable num memories, memories of memories: if not all mem
bers in K, they are being exploded in L. Creativity ories at the same time, then at least an abstract,
is inexplicably high in E, nonexistent in F. G is a token memory, a deja vu that never ends, generic
seamless ethnic mosaic, H perpetually at the mercy memory. 9.5 In spite of its modest physical pres
of separatism, if not on the verge of civil war. ence (Lipservice is never more than three stories
Model Y will never last because of its tampering high: homage to/revenge of Jane Jacobs?) it con
with family structure, but Z flourishes – a word no denses the entire past in a single complex. History
academic would ever apply to any activity in the returns not as farce here, but as service: costumed
Generic City – because of it. Religion is eroded in merchants (funny hats, bare midriffs, veils) volun
V, surviving in W, transmuted in X. 8.4 Strangely, tarily enact the conditions (slavery, tyranny, disease,
nobody has thought that cumulatively the endless poverty, colony) that their nation once went to war
contradictions of these interpretations prove the to abolish. Like a replicating virus, worldwide, the
richness of the Generic City; that is the one hypo colonial seems the only inexhaustible source of the
thesis that has been eliminated in advance. authentic. 9.6 42nd Street: ostensibly the places
where the past is preserved, they are actually the
places where the past has changed the most, is the
9. Quarters most distant – as if seen through the wrong end
of a telescope – or even completely eliminated.
9.1 There is always a quarter called Lipservice, 9.7 Only the memory of former excess is strong
where a minimum of the past is preserved: usually enough to charge the bland. As if they try to warm
it has an old train/tramway or double-decker bus themselves at the heat of an extinguished volcano,
driving through it, ringing ominous bells – domes the most popular sites (with tourists, and in the
ticated versions of the Flying Dutchman’s phantom Generic City that includes everyone) are the ones
vessel. Its phone booths are either red and trans once most intensely associated with sex and mis
planted from London, or equipped with small Chi conduct. Innocents invade the former haunts of
nese roofs. Lipservice – also called Afterthought, pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, transvestites, and to a
Waterfront, Too Late, 42nd Street, simply the Vil lesser degree, artists. Paradoxically, at the same
lage, or even Underground – is an elaborate mythic moment that the information highway is about to
operation: it celebrates the past as only the recently deliver pornography by the truckload to their living
conceived can. It is a machine. 9.2 The Generic rooms, it is as if the experience of walking on these
City had a past, once. In its drive for prominence, warmed-over embers of transgression and sin
large sections of it somehow disappeared, first un makes them feel special, alive. In an age that does
lamented – the past apparently was surprisingly not generate new aura, the value of established
unsanitary, even dangerous – then without warning, aura skyrockets. Is walking on these ashes the near
relief turned into regret. Certain prophets – long est they will get to guilt? Existentialism diluted to
white hair, gray socks, sandals – had always been the intensity of a Perrier? 9.8 Each Generic City
warning that the past was necessary – a resource. has a waterfront, not necessarily with water – it
Slowly, the destruction machine grinds to a halt; can also be with desert, for instance – but at least
some random hovels on the laundered Euclidean an edge where it meets another condition, as if a
plane are saved, restored to a splendor they never position of near escape is the best guarantee for
had . . . 9.3 In spite of its absence, history is the its enjoyment. Here tourists congregate in droves
major preoccupation, even industry, of the Generic around a cluster of stalls. Hordes of “hawkers” try
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to sell them the “unique” aspects of the city. The 11. Architecture
unique parts of all Generic Cities together have
created a universal souvenir, scientific cross be 11.1 Close your eyes and imagine an explosion of
tween Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and Statue of beige. At its epicenter splashes the color of vaginal
Liberty: a tall building (usually between 200 and folds (unaroused), metallic-matte aubergine, dusty
300 meters) drowned in a small ball of water pumpkin; all cars on their way to bridal white
with snow or, if close to the equator, gold flakes; ness . . . 11.2 There are interesting and boring
diaries with pockmarked leather covers; hippie buildings in the Generic City, as in all cities. Both
sandals – even if real hippies are quickly repatri trace their ancestry back to Mies van der Rohe:
ated. Tourists fondle these – nobody has ever the first category to his irregular Friedrichstadt
witnessed a sale – and then sit down in exotic tower (1921), the second to the boxes he conceived
eateries that line the waterfront: they run the full not long afterward. This sequence is important:
gamut of food today: spicy: first and ultimately obviously, after initial experimentation, Mies made
maybe most reliable indication of being elsewhere; up his mind once and for all against interest, for
patty: beef or synthetic; raw: atavistic practice that boredom. At best, his later buildings capture the t
h
will be very popular in the third millennium. 9.9 spirit of the earlier work – sublimated, repressed? r
Shrimp is the ultimate appetizer. Through the sim – as a more or less noticeable absence, but he never e
plification of the food chain – and the vicissitudes proposed “interesting” projects as possible buildings e
of preparation – they taste like English muffins, i.e., again. The Generic City proves him wrong: its more
nothingness. daring architects have taken up the challenge Mies
abandoned, to the point where it is now hard to
find a box. Ironically, this exuberant homage to the
10. Program interesting Mies shows that “the” Mies was wrong.
11.3 The architecture of the Generic City is by
10.1 Offices are still there, in ever greater numbers, definition beautiful. Built at incredible speed, and
in fact. People say they are no longer necessary. conceived at even more incredible pace, there is
In five to ten years we will all work at home. But an average of 27 aborted versions for every realized
then we will need bigger homes, big enough to use – but that is not quite the term – structure. They
for meetings. Offices will have to be converted to are prepared in the 10,000 architectural offices
homes. 10.2 The only activity is shopping. But why nobody has ever heard of, each vibrant with fresh
not consider shopping as temporary, provisional? inspiration. Presumably more modest than their
It awaits better times. It is our own fault – we didn’t well-known colleagues, these offices are bonded by
think of anything better to do. The same spaces a collective awareness that something is wrong with
inundated with other programs – libraries, baths, architecture that can only be rectified through their
universities – would be terrific; we would be awed efforts. The power of numbers gives them a splen
by their grandeur. 10.3 Hotels are becoming the did, shining arrogance. They are the ones who
generic accommodation of the Generic City, its design without any hesitation. They assemble, from
most common building block. That used to be the 1,001 sources, with savage precision, more riches
office – which at least implied a coming and a going, than any genius ever could. On average, their edu
assumed the presence of other important accom cation has cost 30,000 dollars, excluding travel and
modations elsewhere. Hotels are now containers housing; 23% have been laundered at American
that, in the expansion and completeness of their Ivy League universities, where they have been
facilities, make almost all other buildings redundant. exposed – admittedly for very short periods – to
Even doubling as shopping malls, they are the clos the well-paid elite of the other, “official” profession.
est we have to urban existence, 21st-century style. It follows that a combined total investment of 300
10.4 The hotel now implies imprisonment, volun billion dollars ($300,000,000,000) worth of archi
tary house arrest; there is no competing place left tectural education ($30,000 [average cost] × 100
to go; you come and stay. Cumulatively, it describes [average number of workers per office] × 100,000
a city of ten million all locked in their rooms, a [number of worldwide offices]) is working in
kind of reverse animation – density imploded. and producing Generic Cities at any moment.
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368 R em K oolhaas
11.4 Buildings that are complex in form depend the less their essential repetition is noticed. 11.10
on the curtain-wall industry, on ever more effective The style choice is postmodern, and will always
adhesives and sealants that turn each building into remain so. Postmodernism is the only movement
a mixture of straitjacket and oxygen tent. The use that has succeeded in connecting the practice of
of silicone – “we are stretching the facade as far architecture with the practice of panic. Postmodern
as it will go” – has flattened all facades, glued glass ism is not a doctrine based on a highly civilized
to stone to steel to concrete in a space-age impu reading of architectural history but a method, a
rity. These connections give the appearance of mutation in professional architecture that produces
intellectual rigor through the liberal application of results fast enough to keep pace with the Generic
a transparent spermy compound that keeps every City’s development. Instead of consciousness, as
thing together by intention rather than design – its original inventors may have hoped, it creates a
a triumph of glue over the integrity of materials. new unconscious. It is modernization’s little helper.
Like everything else in the Generic City, its archi Anyone can do it – a skyscraper based on the
tecture is the resistant made malleable, an epidemic Chinese pagoda and/or a Tuscan hill town. 11.11
of yielding no longer through the application of All resistance to Postmodernism is anti-democratic.
principle but through the systematic application It creates a “stealth” wrapping around architecture
of the unprincipled. 11.5 Because the Generic City that makes it irresistible, like a Christmas present
is largely Asian, its architecture is generally air- from a charity. 11.12 Is there a connection between
conditioned; this is where the paradox of the recent the predominance of mirror in the Generic City – is
paradigm shift – the city no longer represents it to celebrate nothingness through its multiplication
maximum development but borderline underdevel or a desperate effort to capture essences on their
opment – becomes acute: the brutal means by way to evaporation? – and the “gifts” that, for cen
which universal conditioning is achieved mimic turies, were supposed to be the most popular,
inside the building the climatic conditions that efficient present for savages? 11.13 Maxim Gorky
once “happened” outside – sudden storms, mini- speaks in relation to Coney Island of “varied bore
tornadoes, freezing spells in the cafeteria, heat dom.” He clearly intends the term as an oxymoron.
waves, even mist; a provincialism of the mechanical, Variety cannot be boring. Boredom cannot be varied.
deserted by gray matter in pursuit of the electronic. But the infinite variety of the Generic City comes
Incompetence or imagination? 11.6 The irony is close, at least, to making variety normal: banalized,
that in this way the Generic City is at its most in a reversal of expectation, it is repetition that
subversive, its most ideological; it elevates medi has become unusual, therefore, potentially, daring,
ocrity to a higher level; it is like Kurt Schwitter’s exhilarating. But that is for the 21st century.
Merzbau at the scale of the city: the Generic City
is a Merzcity. 11.7 The angle of the facades is the
only reliable index of architectural genius: 3 points 12. Geography
for sloping backward, 12 points for sloping forward,
2-point penalty for setbacks (too nostalgic). 11.8 12.1 The Generic City is in a warmer than usual
The apparently solid substance of the Generic City climate; it is on its way to the south – toward the
is misleading: 51% of its volume consists of atrium. equator – away from the mess that the north made
The atrium is a diabolical device in its ability to of the second millennium. It is a concept in a state
substantiate the insubstantial. Its Roman name is of migration. Its ultimate destiny is to be tropical
an eternal guarantor of architectural class – its – better climate, more beautiful people. It is inhab
historic origins make the theme inexhaustible. It ited by those who do not like it elsewhere. 12.2 In
accommodates the cave-dweller in its relentless the Generic City, people are not only more beauti
provision of metropolitan comfort. 11.9 The atrium ful than their peers, they are also reputed to be
is void space: voids are the essential building block more even-tempered, less anxious about work, less
of the Generic City. Paradoxically, its hollowness hostile, more pleasant – proof, in other words, that
insures its very physicality, the pumping up of the there is a connection between architecture and
volume the only pretext for its physical manifesta behavior, that the city can make better people
tion. The more complete and repetitive its interiors, through as yet unidentified methods. 12.3 One of
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the most potent characteristics of the Generic City alien to it: it has no layers. Its next layer takes place
is the stability of its weather – no seasons, outlook somewhere else, either next door – that can be the
sunny – yet all forecasts are presented in terms of size of a country – or even elsewhere altogether.
imminent change and future deterioration: clouds The archaeologue (= archaeology with more inter
in Karachi. From the ethical and the religious, the pretation) of the 20th century needs unlimited plane
issue of doom has shifted to the inescapable do tickets, not a shovel. 14.4 In its improvements,
main of the meteorological. Bad weather is about the Generic City perpetuates its own amnesia (its
the only anxiety that hovers over the Generic City. only link with eternity?). Its archaeology will there
fore be the evidence of its progressive forgetting,
the documentation of its evaporation. Its genius
13. Identity will be empty-handed not an emperor without
clothes but an archaeologist without finds, or a
13.1 There is a calculated (?) redundancy in the site even.
iconography that the Generic City adopts. If it is
water-facing, then water-based symbols are distrib t
h
uted over its entire territory. If it is a port, then 15. Infrastructure r
ships and cranes will appear far inland. (However, e
showing the containers themselves would make no 15.1 Infrastructures, which were mutually reinforc e
sense: you can’t particularize the generic through ing and totalizing, are becoming more and more
the Generic.) If it is Asian, then “delicate” (sensual, competitive and local; they no longer pretend to
inscrutable), women appear in elastic poses, sug create functioning wholes but now spin off func
gesting (religious, sexual) submission everywhere. tional entities. Instead of network and organism,
If it has a mountain, each brochure, menu, ticket, the new infrastructure creates enclave and impasse:
billboard will insist on the hill, as if nothing less no longer the grand récit but the parasitic swerve.
than a seamless tautology will convince. Its identity (The city of Bangkok has approved plans for three
is like a mantra. competing airborne metro systems to get from A
to B – may the strongest one win). 15.2 Infrastruc
ture is no longer a more or less delayed response
14. History to a more or less urgent need but a strategic weapon,
a prediction: Harbor X is not enlarged to serve a
14.1 Regret about history’s absence is a tiresome hinterland of frantic consumers but to kill/reduce
reflex. It exposes an unspoken consensus that his the chances that harbor Y will survive the 21st
tory’s presence is desirable. But who says that is century. On a single island, southern metropolis Z,
the case? A city is a plane inhabited in the most still in its infancy, is “given” a new subway system
efficient way by people and processes, and in most to make established metropolis W in the north look
cases, the presence of history only drags down its clumsy, congested, and ancient. Life in V is
performance . . . 14.2 History present obstructs the smoothed to make life in U eventually unbearable.
pure exploitation of its theoretical value as absence.
14.3 Throughout the history of humankind – to
start a paragraph the American way – cities have 16. Culture
grown through a process of consolidation. Changes
are made on the spot. Things are improved. Cul 16.1 Only the redundant counts. 16.2 In each time
tures flourish, decay, revive, disappear, are sacked, zone, there are at least three performances of Cats.
invaded, humiliated, raped, triumph, are reborn, The world is surrounded by a Saturn’s ring of
have golden ages, fall suddenly silent – all on the meowing. 16.3 The city used to be the great sexual
same site. That is why archaeology is a profession hunting ground. The Generic City is like a dating
of digging: it exposes layer after layer of civilization agency: it efficiently matches supply and demand.
(i.e., city). The Generic City, like a sketch which is Orgasm instead of agony: there is progress. The most
never elaborated, is not improved but abandoned. obscene possibilities are announced in the cleanest
The idea of layering, intensification, completion are typography; Helvetica has become pornographic.
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370 R em K oolhaas
17. End work. Its ideas, aesthetics, strategies are finished.

Together, all attempts to make a new beginning
17.1 Imagine a Hollywood movie about the Bible. have only discredited the idea of a new beginning.
A city somewhere in the Holy Land. Market scene: A collective shame in the wake of this fiasco has
from left and right extras cloaked in colorful rags, left a massive crater in our understanding of moder
furs, silken robes walk into the frame yelling, ges nity and modernization.
ticulating, rolling their eyes, starting fights, laughing, What makes this experience disconcerting and
scratching their beards, hairpieces dripping with (for architects) humiliating is the city’s defiant per
glue, thronging toward the center of the image sistence and apparent vigor, in spite of the collec
waving sticks, fists, overturning stalls, trampling tive failure of all agencies that act on it or try to
animals . . . People shout. Selling wares? Proclaim influence it – creatively, logistically, politically.
ing futures? Invoking Gods? Purses are snatched, The professionals of the city are like chess play
criminals pursued (or is it helped?) by the crowds. ers who lose to computers. A perverse automatic
Priests pray for calm. Children run amok in an pilot constantly outwits all attempts at capturing
undergrowth of legs and robes. Animals bark. Stat the city, exhausts all ambitions of its definition,
ues topple. Women shriek – threatened? Ecstatic? ridicules the most passionate assertions of its pres
The churning mass becomes oceanic. Waves break. ent failure and future impossibility, steers it impla
Now switch off the sound – silence, a welcome cably further on its flight forward. Each disaster
relief – and reverse the film. The now mute but foretold is somehow absorbed under the infinite
still visibly agitated men and women stumble back blanketing of the urban.
ward; the viewer no longer registers only humans Even as the apotheosis of urbanization is glar
but begins to note spaces between them. The center ingly obvious and mathematically inevitable, a chain
empties; the last shadows evacuate the rectangle of rearguard, escapist actions and positions post
of the picture frame, probably complaining, but pones the final moment of reckoning for the two
fortunately we don’t hear them. Silence is now professions formerly most implicated in making
reinforced by emptiness: the image shows empty cities – architecture and urbanism. Pervasive ur
stalls, some debris that was trampled underfoot. banization has modified the urban condition itself
Relief . . . it’s over. That is the story of the city. The beyond recognition. “The” city no longer exists. As
city is no longer. We can leave the theater now . . . the concept of city is distorted and stretched be
yond precedent, each insistence on its primordial
condition – in terms of images, rules, fabrication
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO URBANISM? – irrevocably leads via nostalgia to irrelevance.
For urbanists, the belated rediscovery of the
This century has been a losing battle with the issue virtues of the classical city at the moment of their
of quantity. definitive impossibility may have been the point of
In spite of its early promise, its frequent bravery, no return, fatal moment of disconnection, disqual
urbanism has been unable to invent and implement ification. They are now specialists in phantom pain:
at the scale demanded by its apocalyptic demo doctors discussing the medical intricacies of an
graphics. In 20 years, Lagos has grown from 2 to amputated limb.
7 to 12 to 15 million; Istanbul has doubled from 6 The transition from a former position of power
to 12. China prepares for even more staggering to a reduced station of relative humility is hard to
multiplications. perform. Dissatisfaction with the contemporary city
How to explain the paradox that urbanism, as has not led to the development of a credible alter
a profession, has disappeared at the moment when native; it has, on the contrary, inspired only more
urbanization everywhere – after decades of con refined ways of articulating dissatisfaction. A pro
stant acceleration – is on its way to establishing a fession persists in its fantasies, its ideology, its pre
definitive, global “triumph” of the urban condition? tension, its illusions of involvement and control,
Modernism’s alchemistic promise – to transform and is therefore incapable of conceiving new mod
quantity into quality through abstraction and repe esties, partial interventions, strategic realignments,
tition – has been a failure, a hoax: magic that didn’t compromised positions that might influence, redirect,
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“Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” 371
succeed in limited terms, regroup, begin from scratch that only the specific imagination of urbanism can
even, but will never reestablish control. invent and renew.
Because the generation of May ’68 – the largest The death of urbanism – our refuge in the par
generation ever, caught in the “collective narcissism asitic security of architecture – creates an imman
of a demographic bubble” – is now finally in power, ent disaster: more and more substance is grafted
it is tempting to think that it is responsible for the on starving roots.
demise of urbanism – the state of affairs in which In our more permissive moments, we have sur
cities can no longer be made – paradoxically be- rendered to the aesthetics of chaos – “our” chaos.
cause it rediscovered and reinvented the city. But in the technical sense chaos is what happens
Sous le pavé, la plage (under the pavement, beach): when nothing happens, not something that can be
initially, May ’68 launched the idea of a new begin engineered or embraced; it is something that infil
ning for the city. Since then, we have been engaged trates; it cannot be fabricated. The only legitimate
in two parallel operations: documenting our over relationship that architects can have with the sub
whelming awe for the existing city, developing phi ject of chaos is to take their rightful place in the
losophies, projects, prototypes for a preserved and army of those devoted to resist it, and fail. t
h
reconstituted city and, at the same time, laughing If there is to be a “new urbanism” it will not be r
the professional field of urbanism out of existence, based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipo e
dismantling it in our contempt for those who plan tence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will e
ned (and made huge mistakes in planning) airports, no longer be concerned with the arrangement of
New Towns, satellite cities, highways, high-rise more or less permanent objects but with the irriga
buildings, infrastructures, and all the other fallout tion of territories with potential; it will no longer
from modernization. After sabotaging urbanism, we aim for stable configurations but for the creation
have ridiculed it to the point where entire university of enabling fields that accommodate processes that
departments are closed, offices bankrupted, bur refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will
eaucracies fired or privatized. no longer be about meticulous definition, the im
Our “sophistication” hides major symptoms position of limits, but about expanding notions,
of cowardice centered on the simple question of denying boundaries, not about separating and iden
taking positions – maybe the most basic action in tifying entities, but about discovering unnameable
making the city. We are simultaneously dogmatic hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city
and evasive. Our amalgamated wisdom can be eas but with the manipulation of infrastructure for end
ily caricatured: according to Derrida we cannot be less intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts
Whole, according to Baudrillard we cannot be Real, and redistributions – the reinvention of psycho
according to Virilio we cannot be There. “Exiled to logical space. Since the urban is now pervasive,
the Virtual World”: plot for a horror movie. urbanism will never again be about the “new,” only
Our present relationship with the “crisis” of the about the “more” and the “modified.” It will not be
city is deeply ambiguous: we still blame others for about the civilized, but about underdevelopment.
a situation for which both our incurable utopianism Since it is out of control, the urban is about to
and our contempt are responsible. Through our become a major vector of the imagination. Rede
hypocritical relationship with power – contemptu fined, urbanism will not only, or mostly, be a profes
ous yet covetous – we dismantled an entire dis sion, but a way of thinking, an ideology: to accept
cipline, cut ourselves off from the operational, and what exists. We were making sand castles. Now we
condemned whole populations to the impossibility swim in the sea that swept them away.
of encoding civilizations on their territory – the To survive, urbanism will have to imagine a new
subject of urbanism. newness. Liberated from its atavistic duties, urban
Now we are left with a world without urbanism, ism redefined as a way of operating on the inevi
only architecture, ever more architecture. The neat table will attack architecture, invade its trenches,
ness of architecture is its seduction; it defines, ex drive it from its bastions, undermine its certainties,
cludes, limits, separates from the “rest” – but it also explode its limits, ridicule its preoccupations with
consumes. It exploits and exhausts the potentials matter and substance, destroy its traditions, smoke
that can be generated finally only by urbanism and out its practitioners.
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372 R em K oolhaas
The seeming failure of the urban offers an excep In a landscape of increasing expediency and
tional opportunity, a pretext for Nietzschean frivol impermanence, urbanism no longer is or has to be
ity. We have to imagine 1,001 other concepts of the most solemn of our decisions; urbanism can
city; we have to take insane risks; we have to dare lighten up, become a Gay Science-Lite Urbanism.
to be utterly uncritical; we have to swallow deeply What if we simply declare that there is no
and bestow forgiveness left and right. The certainty crisis – redefine our relationship with the city
of failure has to be our laughing gas/oxygen; mod not as its makers but as its mere subjects, as its
ernization our most potent drug. Since we are not supporters?
responsible, we have to become irresponsible. More than ever, the city is all we have.
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Part four
Design Issues in
Urban Development
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Plate 5 Retail development of the One New Change Shopping Mall in the City of London is being
constructed at a pace, scale, and density that addresses both developer desires for economic gain and government
aspirations for economic development. While the “City” is the historic and global financial hub of London, it is being
incrementally diversified with new commercial, cultural, and residential structures. This photo of the One New Change
Shopping Mall (designed by Jean Nouvel and under construction in the mid-2000s) is taken from the dome of
St. Paul’s Cathedral adjacent to the project in the Cheapside area. Urban development in the district is coordinated by
the City of London Corporation (the local government administration), and benefits from special tax laws that provide
incentives for businesses locating there. Urban design and development is tightly controlled to ensure a coherent urban
fabric that harmonizes with the historic structures in the area. At the same time, these new structures will provide
highly imageable and modern settings for flagship stores, high end restaurants, and retailers that cater to the elite
business interests of the district. (Photo: M. Larice)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR
For many urban designers, the final readings in Part Three allude to contemporary development problems
in city-making. The existential phenomena of postmodern urbanism, everyday urbanism, or post urbanism
each present a different set of dissatisfactions and problems in approaching the future of the city. The
arguments embedded within these urbanisms imply direct critiques of contemporary urban develop
ment practices. Within postmodern urbanism, the development industry is primarily concerned with the
economic development realities of consumer comfort, nostalgia, place-making, private control, and
popular marketing – largely at the expense of socio-economic problems facing cities. For everyday urbanism,
the contemporary city is the result of incremental development processes that are less about the creation
of engineered and coherent urbanism, and more about the uncoordinated patchwork of ordinary places
produced by atomistic and budget conscious developers. And within post urbanism, developers treat the
city as a series of separate internalized projects with little concern for holding the larger urban fabric
together. Each of these urbanisms responds directly to localized issues, but may be approaching irrelevancy
when addressing larger temporal urban concerns we face with respect to sustainability, climate change,
public health, resource availability, the growing wealth gap, or even local livability.
It would seem natural that the built environment professions would be on the front lines in respond-
ing to the physical development concerns of cities. And indeed, many professionals are inclined toward
addressing these issues (as some of the readings in Part Four suggest). However, as competition for
design work increases (largely in response to tighter budget realities and growth in the total number of
built environment professionals), many designers lose their more noble ambitions in the face of daily
bread-winning. While each of the built environment professions maintains some measure of ethical
responsibility for responding to temporal problems (as outlined in each associated professional code of
ethics), the larger reality of practice suggests many designers have devolved into mere client service
providers for short-term interests – with less concern for long-term implications. All of this is quite
understandable when we recognize that built environment activity rides on the back of professional firm
and public agency employment, weekly project staffing, contracts and budgeting, bill-paying, and each
professional’s domestic economy. As much as we’d like to think the urban design professions are acting
in concert to solve the crushing problems of our time, these responsibilities are falling primarily to policy-
makers and government officials for large-scale direction – and secondarily to those who champion these
concerns (individually or organizationally) and would translate or implement the spirit of this direction.
Perceptions of urban designers, architects, and landscape architects as out-of-touch and irrespon-
sible aesthetes (or planners as elite social scientists or growth machine advocates) are melting away
as each profession reinvents itself and moves toward more responsive and pragmatic problem solving.
In addition to increasing democratization and participation in city planning, planners are also responding
with policies that address key environmental, social, and economic concerns. Many architects are
embracing sustainable building practices. Most landscape architects recognize the role their work plays
in helping to sustain resources and integrate urban and natural systems. Nowadays, many designers
and activists are engaged in advocating and producing responsible designs that challenge status quo
development forms and processes. Issues of sustainability, ecological responsibility, smarter growth, and
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376 INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR
livability are increasingly at the forefront of design practice. Some of these responses take the form of
new design movements. Some use manifestos to declare their positions. Others appear as interest groups
convening over a strong idea. What is common here is an interest in avoiding the unsustainable mistakes
of previous development patterns and discovering a new way forward. While these new movements are
diverse and their motives different, they often utilize similar design strategies in implementing their visions:
more compact urban form, denser housing models, greener technologies, more walkable streets, more
land use mixing, more human-scaled design, more user-friendly communities, greater resource conserva-
tion, advanced technologies, and fewer negative environmental externalities.
We start this part of the Reader with an exploration of the definitions and characteristics of sprawl.
Oliver Gillham’s first chapter from The Limitless City discusses the reasons for suburban sprawl and
its impacts on metropolitan regional form. In discussing sprawl, he highlights both the formal design
aspects as well as the institutional, economic, and systemic rationales for low-density urban development.
The next reading, Eduardo Lozano’s chapter on urban density, “Density in Communities, or the Most
Important Factor in Building Urbanity,” champions denser urban development and the usefulness of
density in building a sense of urbanity. He explores the reasons why density is generally unpopular, and
later debunks myths about higher density housing and overcrowding. Lozano’s closing recommendations
suggest the need to find acceptable building typologies, greater and more sensitive ways to integrate
density into communities, and wider choice in environmental, social, and physical outcomes. This read-
ing is largely associated with the Smart Growth movement that first developed in the United States but
is now spreading globally.
The next two selections each target a different problem associated with contemporary development
patterns. In the excerpts from Frank, Engelke, and Schmid’s Health and Community Design: The Impact
of the Built Environment on Physical Activity, the authors suggest the obesity epidemic and other
chronic health conditions in the United States (and arguably elsewhere across the globe) are partly the
result of urban form patterns that favor vehicular use at the expense of physical activity. They argue for
a policy shift in city planning and urban design that would redirect development standards, design
guidelines and transportation policy to encourage healthier living. They advocate urban design patterns
that are better connected and encourage walking, biking, and the social life of the city.
Rather than focusing on public health, Ali Madanipour’s selection from Whose Public Space?: Inter-
national Case Studies in Urban Design and Development highlights the importance of the public realm
of cities for maintaining socio-cultural health. He sees a danger in the increasing privatization of public
space and its increasingly contested nature. To correct this trend, Madanipour calls for maximizing access
to what is normally considered public space. Both of these last two selections are concerned with com
munity health practices within urban design. Interestingly the design arguments within each of the selections
(whether targeting public or social health) focus on greater connectivity, access, and a validation of
public realm strategies and policies.
In Ian Bentley’s chapter “Profit and Place” from his book Urban Transformations: Power, People and
Urban Design, the author addresses contemporary urban development processes directly. Bentley sees
the quality of life and the physical quality of contemporary cities declining because of profit-motivated
changes in the way cities are developed. He presents his argument about declining urban quality in the
form of three transformations of wealth in the process of real estate development. In the first transforma-
tion, the author discusses how wealth is converted into property through land, locations, materials, and
labor. Developers are able to maximize profits from cost savings and scrimping in quality within each of
these categories. A second transformation of wealth occurs through the design professions themselves,
and how costs can be saved by hiring specialized designers, deskilled construction labor, globalized design
practices, and more homogenous designs – all of which results in less daring, less interesting, and less
place-based products. The final wealth transformation happens when developers bring their products
to market – offering expected building types, short-changing the public realm, and marketing economically
“safe” design. Bentley’s litany of cost savings by developers is both stunning and not surprising to urban
observers who’ve already witnessed a decline in the construction and design quality of cities over time.
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INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR 377
Very different to Bentley’s thesis on declining urban quality, the urban design of globalizing cities
suggests a very different set of urban development problems. The final two selections focus on two
very different urban development phenomena: the spectacular rise of Arabian Gulf coast cities, and the
rapid urbanization of China’s huge population. In Yasser Elsheshtawy’s new writing for this volume
“Urban Dualities in the Arab World,” he suggests Gulf coast cities exhibit two varied implications in their
global strategies: first, a sense of cultural loss as urban history is erased by new development and
gentrification, and second, a growing wealth gap that converts residents into economic winners and
losers. In the case studies of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Elsheshtawy shows how two cities are approaching
global competitiveness through very different strategies: Dubai based on urban spectacle, real estate
and finance sector development, and a lust for superlatives; Abu Dhabi based on global culture, govern-
ment largesse, and progressive urban design and planning practices. In maturing the UAE’s “insta-cities”
into legitimate urbanisms, a host of regional urban development and design problems surface: unsustain-
able energy practices, costly water desalinization, coastal ecosystem degradation, problematic labor
practices, human rights issues, problems in overcoming unbearable heat in making a vibrant public
realm, and the construction of livable urbanism in arid geographies. While similarities and differences
exist between these two Emirati urban strategies, globalization produces greater development problems
elsewhere.
The urbanization and globalization of Chinese cities presents a very different set of urban development
concerns. The rapid growth of cities and internal movement of the Chinese population to urban places
is being managed and coordinated with both amazing efficiency and staggering scale. The selections f
from Tom Campanella’s book The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for o
u
the World present the scale of Chinese urbanization over the last few decades, in addition to its global r
ambitions in reshaping the nature of Chinese cities. The chapters presented here, “The Urbanism of
Ambition” and “China Reinvents the City” illustrate the scale of this growth and evolution. Like the
Emirati cases by Elsheshtawy, Campanella’s Chinese urbanization presents a number of urban develop-
ment issues that should be a concern to all of us. These urban development issues are challenging
China directly, but also presage crises coming to the rest of the world: the growing competition for rare
energy resources, global climate change vis-à-vis carbon emission and pollution issues, and the need
to house exponential population growth. China’s central government (like the centralized power of the
UAE’s royal sheikdoms) has the unfettered ability and open budgets to expedite this urbanization, but
to what end?
For smaller nation-states with strong, centralized social governments (e.g., the UK, Sweden, Denmark,
Germany) addressing urban development and sustainability issues has been an ongoing and incremental
policy arena that’s been developing over time (see the selection by Beatley on “Planning for Sustain-
ability in European Cities” in Part Five of this Reader, pp. 558–568). For places with massive poverty
and without the bureaucratic or economic ability to marshal desirable urban outcomes (think Lagos-
Nigeria or Dhaka-Bangladesh), solving massive infrastructure, service, and housing problems becomes
nearly unfathomable. And for free-market liberal democracies like the United States (where power is
dispersed and decentralized) the examples of the UAE and China might be less applicable. How does a
country like the USA respond to large-scale crises or coordinate long-term national urban change (either
in response to resource challenges, wealth-gap concerns, or climate change for example), when attend-
ing to short-term local objectives is the norm? In comparison to China’s ability and scale of national
urbanization, consider the American difficulties in implementing affordable housing, local mass transit,
high-speed rail, or infrastructure upgrade.
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“What is Sprawl?”
from The Limitless City: A Primer on
the Urban Sprawl Debate (2002)
Oliver Gillham
Although typically associated with nineteenth-century industrialization, the seeds of sprawl in the United States
were planted with the early institutionalization of strong individual property rights, the country’s frontier spirit,
and the rise of profit-driven speculative development. With the building of streetcar lines, first and second
ring suburbs were built around the historic centers of towns and cities, beginning their stretch into previously
peripheral areas. The massive proliferation of sprawl, however, is largely associated with late industrialization,
the widespread distribution of automobiles and freeways, the rise of zoning practices that emphasized low-
density development, federal tax programs that provided economic incentives to both homebuyers and builders,
and an ever-increasing volume and scale of production housing by corporate developers. Post-war production
of tract housing exacerbated the speed and march of sprawl in historic developments such as Levittown, and
continues across many parts of the world today. Although this reading focuses primarily on the United States,
indicators of sprawl can be seen from Canada to Australia, South Africa to Southeast Asia.
Oliver Gillham was a pragmatist who presents a balanced portrayal of both the benefits and detriments
of low-density suburban development in his book The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate.
In his introductory chapter to The Limitless City, he defines the characteristics and causes of suburban sprawl
in clear and simple language. He closes the chapter with a discussion of the metropolitan and regional effects
of unimpeded, low-density suburban growth. A large portion of the book tackles the externalities of suburban
development and the sprawl debates that continue to rage among academics, civic leaders, advocates, and
lobbyists. While recognizing the likely survival of sprawl, he concludes the book with an eye to mitigating
future negative impacts by means of policy, infrastructure, and design initiatives.
Oliver Gillham was an architect and planner based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He worked on urban
revitalization and sprawl alleviation projects around the world. He was an architecture graduate of Harvard
University, and was influenced heavily in his career by his great uncle Frank Lloyd Wright. After his death in
2008 at age 59, his last book was published: Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People,
written with Lance Jay Brown and David Dixon (New York: Wiley, 2009).
In addition to Gillham, several other authors have made attempts at defining the characteristics of sprawl,
including: Reid Ewing, “Characteristics, Causes, and Effects of Sprawl,” Environmental and Urban Issues
(vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 1–15, 1994); J. Thomas Black, “The Economics of Sprawl,” Urban Land (vol. 53, no. 3,
pp. 6–52, 1996); Kenneth A. Small, Urban Sprawl: A Non-Diagnosis of Real Problems (Cambridge, MA:
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2000); Dolores Hayden, A Field Guide to Sprawl (New York: W.W. Norton,
2004); Robert Burchell et al., Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development (Washington,
DC: Island Press, 2005); and Douglas E. Morris, It’s a Sprawl World After All: The Human Cost of Unplanned
Growth – and Visions of a Better Future (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2005).
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“ W hat is S prawl ? ” 379
A number of advocacy movements and policy agendas have arisen since the mid-1970s to deal with the
negative externalities of sprawl. Proposals from these groups vary greatly and include growth management
techniques, land use, transportation, and design recommendations. Among these are Smart Growth organizations
(see the online publication: Getting to Smart Growth, http://www.smartgrowth.org), the Congress for the New
Urbanism (see the Charter of the New Urbanism in this Reader, and http://www.cnu.org), the California-based
Local Government Commission (see the Ahwahnee Principles at http://www.lgc.org), the Urban Village Move-
ment, see Peter Neal (ed.), Urban Villages: The Making of Community (London: E & FN Spon, 2003), and
the Compact City Movement, see Mike Jenks, Elizabeth Burton, and Katie Williams (eds), The Compact City:
A Sustainable Urban Form? (London: E & FN Spon, 1996).
Works on the history of suburbia and sprawl include: Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology
and the Pastoral Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Robert Fishman, Bourgeois
Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier:
The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Sam Bass Warner Jr.,
Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston 1870–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard and MIT Presses,
1962); Herbert Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (New
York: Pantheon, 1967); James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of
America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk,
and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York:
North Point Press, 2000); Adam Rome, The Bulldozer and the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise
of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Dolores Hayden, Building f
Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage, 2004); Owen D. Gutfreund, o
u
Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape (New York: Oxford r
University Press, 2005); and Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005).
Other texts that address methods of combatting sprawl include: Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the
American Dream (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); Peter Calthorpe, The Next American Metropolis: Ecology,
Community and the American Dream (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993); Peter Calthorpe
and William Fulton, The Regional City (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001); Philip Langdon, A Better Place
to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); David
Bollier, How Smart Growth Can Stop Sprawl (Washington, DC: Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse, Essential
Books, 1998); James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere: Remaking our Everyday World for the 21st
Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Gregory D. Squires, Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences,
and Policy Responses (Urban Institute Press, 2002); Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson,
Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning and Building Healthy Communities (Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2004); Joel S. Hirschhorn, Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money
(New York: Sterling & Ross, 2005); Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon, The Smart Growth Manual
(New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009); and Galina Tachieva, Sprawl Repair Manual (Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2010).
Debates over the possible ills and benefits of sprawl continue. A number of researchers rely on isolated
and reductionist demographic, economic, environmental, and transportation data to show that problems of
sprawl may be highly mythologized and unsupported by fact-based realities. Others suggest that anti-sprawl
efforts limit citizen choice and personal freedoms, are economically inefficient, and disregard improvements
in technology in mitigating the impacts of sprawl. For additional material on the continuing sprawl debates
see the following: Reid Ewing, “Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl Desirable?,” Journal of the American Planning
Association (vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 107–126, 1997); Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Are Compact
Cities a Desirable Planning Goal?,” Journal of the American Planning Association (vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 95–106,
1997) and The Case for Suburban Development (Los Angeles, CA: Lusk Center Research Institute, 1996);
Jane S. Shaw and Ronald D. Utt (eds), A Guide to Smart Growth: Shattering Myths, Providing Solutions
(Bozeman, MT: Property and Environment Research Center and Heritage Foundation, 2000); Randal O’Toole,
The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities (Brandon:
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380 O liver G illham
Thoreau Institute, 2001); Gregg Easterbrook, “Suburban Myth: The Case for Sprawl,” New Republic (March 15,
1999); and importantly, the Lone Mountain Coalition, The Lone Mountain Compact: Principles for Preserving
Freedom and Livability in America’s Cities and Suburbs (Bozeman, MT: Property and Environment Research
Center, 2000) – a Libertarian position statement supported by a number of academics and advocates.
More nuanced and recent debates over the costs of sprawl include: Anthony Flint, This Land: The Battle
over Sprawl and the Future of America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); William T.
Bogart, Don’t Call it Sprawl: Metropolitan Structure in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); George A. Gonzales, Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of Capital (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 2009); and Thad Williamson, Sprawl, Justice and Citizenship: The Civic
Costs of the American Way of Life (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Images of urban sprawl are familiar to almost every near a city”) actually dates from 1958.1 The current
one. Smart growth groups often flash images of Encarta World English Dictionary presents a subtly
the nation’s great urban centers erupting across the different, contemporary interpretation, stating that
countryside in a devastating flow of superhighways, urban sprawl is “the expansion of an urban area
shopping centers, baking asphalt, and twinkling cars. into areas of countryside that surround it.”2 “Un
Our contemporary metropolitan areas have been developed” has become “countryside” (a word with
widely described as a vast horizontal world of more pastoral associations), while “city” has become
places and things that are accessible only through “urban area” (a vaguer term that can include suburbs
relentless driving. as well as city centers).3 But the dictionaries aren’t
These are the images that we read about in the the last word on the subject. There are other defini
work of James Howard Kunstler, Jane Holtz Kay, tions and descriptions offered by groups on both
Andres Duany, and other well-known writers and sides of the issue, and they vary from the subtle
urbanists vigorously protesting the ill effects of differences that can be found in dictionaries to much
sprawl. Not everyone agrees, of course, that this more extreme characterizations. The character
suburban world is as negative as is often portrayed. izations below provide a sampling of the different
And, as we shall see, it is a world that Americans descriptions of what constitutes sprawl.
have brought upon themselves willingly. Still, the
rhetoric grows louder and more widespread each
day, as more and more people decry the maze of Sample characterizations of sprawl
crowded suburban expressways in which the nation
has become lost. Even the supporters of the status The Heritage Foundation: “ ‘Sprawl’ simply refers
quo no longer deny the existence of sprawl, but any to the low-density, residential development
consensus stops right there, because not everyone beyond a city’s limits.”4
agrees about exactly what sprawl is.
Reason Public Policy Institute: “Many people
think sprawl is synonymous with suburbanization
CHARACTERISTICS AND INDICATORS . . . Another way of characterizing this process
OF SPRAWL is thinking of sprawl as the ‘transitional period
between rural and urban land use.’ ”5
Despite powerful imagery and deepening national
concern, there is no single, clear and succinct Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Executive
definition of sprawl that is shared by everyone. More Office of Environmental Affairs: “What is sprawl?
over, the idea of what constitutes sprawl has been Planners define it as low-density, single-use
known to change over time. The definition from development on the urban fringe that is almost
the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (“the spreading totally dependent on private automobiles for
of urban developments . . . on undeveloped land transportation.”6
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National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rural Ewing goes on to note that one or more of these
Heritage Program: “Sprawl is dispersed, low characteristics have been cited as descriptors of
density development that is generally located sprawl by a long list of widely regarded urban
at the fringe of an existing settlement and over scholars dating back to 1957.12 Still unsatisfied with
large areas of previously rural landscape. It is this definition, Ewing names two additional “indica
characterized by segregated land uses and dom tors” of sprawl, included in Florida’s anti-sprawl
inated by the automobile.”7 rule, that he feels help to more accurately define
the term:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: “[Sprawl
is a] pattern of growth [that] has largely occurred n Poor accessibility
in an unplanned, ad hoc fashion.”8 n Lack of functional (that is, public) open space.
The Sierra Club: “Sprawl – scattered develop Below, each of the characteristics and indicators
ment that increases traffic, saps local resources cited by Ewing is explored in depth.
and destroys open space.”9
Natural Resources Defense Council: “Sprawling Leapfrog development

development eats up farms, meadows, and forests,
turning them into strip malls and subdivisions Leapfrog development means exactly that: subdivi
that serve cars better than people.”10 sions, shopping centers, and office parks that have f
“leapfrogged” over intervening tracts of farmland o
u
As can be seen from these characterizations, descrip or forest or both. The result is a haphazard patch r
tions of sprawl vary from simple portrayals of a work, widely spread apart and seeming to consume
transitional landscape to more suggestive charac far more land than contiguous developments.
terizations of wholesale destruction of the nation’s Unless preserved or unbuildable, the remaining
farms and forests. One thing that almost all of the open tracts are usually filled in with new develop
definitions shown have in common is that they portray ment as time progresses. Familiar to most people,
sprawl as essentially a suburban phenomenon – this pattern characterizes many rapidly developing
“beyond a city’s limits,” “transitional,” or “on the suburban and exurban fringe areas.
urban fringe.” It is also generally characterized as
low density, favoring automobiles, and possibly
“scattered,” “unplanned,” or “ad hoc” in its pattern. Commercial strip development
One of the more widely accepted character
izations of sprawl (one that encompasses many of Commercial strip development is characterized
the attributes listed above) has been developed by huge arterial roads lined with shopping centers,
by Professor Reid Ewing of Florida International gas stations, fast-food restaurants, drive-thru banks,
University, an architect of Florida’s statewide office complexes, parking lots, and many large
growth management plan. His definition of sprawl signs. Retail is configured in long, low boxes or
is essentially a list of descriptors that has been small pavilions surrounded by multiple acres of
used by groups working to curb sprawl (such as surface parking. Landscaping is usually minimal
the Natural Resources Defense Council and the so as not to interfere with parking and signage.
National Trust for Historic Preservation) as well as The office complexes differ little from the shopping
those defending the status quo (like the Reason centers, but usually are a little taller. Sidewalks and
Public Policy Institute). Ewing posits the following pedestrian crosswalks are rare, and trips between
four forms of development as among the most different centers on the strip are almost all by
widely cited characteristics of sprawl: automobile. The concept of the strip is so famous
that it has become an American icon, enshrined in
n Leapfrog or scattered development Las Vegas and celebrated in the book Learning from
n Commercial strip development Las Vegas, by architects Robert Venturi and Denise
n Low density Scott Brown, as well as in such films as American
n Large expanses of single-use development.11 Graffiti.
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Low density area while dwelling units and population do not.

These different methods are appropriate to differ
In terms of density, sprawl is neither a crowded ent scales of analysis. Population or employment per
urban core nor an open countryside. It lies between square mile is appropriate to the city and regional
the two in varying gradations. Compared to older scale. Dwelling units and FAR are usually used for
city and town centers, the density of sprawl is very community and neighborhood scale. Table 1 provides
low indeed. Suburban buildings are often single- a comparison of selected rural, suburban, and urban
story and widely spaced, with intervening parking residential densities in dwelling units and FAR.
lots and roadways. Sprawl is not a typical older city
with solid blocks of eight- and ten-story buildings;
nor is it a typical older Main Street of two- and Single-use development
three-story buildings. It isn’t even a rural village of
comfortably spaced single-family homes and stores. The low-density pattern of sprawl is often further
If present, tall buildings are often separated from one characterized by the deliberate segregation of land
another by large areas of roadways and parking. uses. Housing consists predominantly of single-
Low-density and leapfrog patterns are both blamed family homes on individual lots. While older down
for making sprawl both land consumptive and auto towns may have a combination of stores, offices,
dependent. and apartments all on one street – and sometimes
Density can be defined several ways: by the on top of one another – such mixing of uses is
number of people per acre or per square mile or rarely a feature of most post-World War II suburban
by the number of dwelling units per acre or floor areas. In these areas, different land uses are usually
area ratio (FAR). FAR is the ratio of the number of intentionally disconnected, sometimes by large
square feet of built area to land area. Built area distances. This separation is formalized through
usually includes all floors of all buildings. Note that zoning and subdivision bylaws and the dictates of
FAR takes account of built commercial space in an a compendium of widely used planning standards.
Table 1 Selected residential densities

Dwelling
Building type units/acre FAR
Rural Single-family, 100 acres 0.01 0.0005

Single-family, 25 acres 0.04 0.0018
Suburban Single-family, acre 1 0.05
Single-family, 1/2 acre 2 0.09
Single-family, quarter-acre 4 0.18
Urban Townhouse 24 0.88
3-story apartment 50 1.38
High-density urban Townhouse 36 1.16
Note: The above data is based on an analysis of characteristic development in the Boston metropolitan region. This
data is given for illustrative purposes only. Typical developments may vary significantly from the examples given
depending on age of project, target market, setting, local codes, and other factors.
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Poor accessibility (or automobile gardens. In other areas, much of the open space
dominance) is taken over by paved parking areas that are
also in private hands. The great malls may provide
Low-density development combined with segre galleria-like “public” spaces, where crowds of
gated land uses leads to what Ewing terms “poor shoppers gather, but again the malls are ultimately
accessibility.” As he describes the situation: privately owned. Except around the school yard,
public open space can be quite difficult to find in
Residences may be far from out-of-home many suburban areas. This is another key indicator
activities, a state of poor residential accessibility. of sprawl: that it is, for the most part, an unbroken
Or out-of-home activities may be far from one fabric of privately owned land divided only by public
another, a state of poor destination accessibility. roads. The major civic open spaces, parks, and
Both types of accessibility affect the efficiency commons that grace many older urban-core areas
of household travel patterns.13 can be few to nonexistent in much of the nation’s
post-war suburban world.
Ewing believes that this characteristic is a good
indicator of sprawl because it is measurable in
terms of typical trip lengths, average trip times, A DEFINITION OF SPRAWL
vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and vehicle hours
traveled (VHT) – the idea being that the longer Having reviewed the principal characteristics and
trips and trip times become (the higher the number indicators of sprawl described by Ewing and f
of VMT or VHT or both), the worse the accessibility accepted by many professionals in the field, it is o
u
situation becomes. now possible to propose a definition of sprawl that r
“Poor accessibility” arguably may be a somewhat will be used throughout this book. It will be what
judgmental term. Essentially, this indicator shows a logician would call a connotative definition of
that the distances between suburban origins and sprawl – that is, an analytical definition by genus
destinations are relatively far, a consequence of and difference, or by class and subclass.16 In this
low-density development and large expanses of kind of definition, sprawl is a type (or subclass) of
single-use development. Implicit within these dis urbanization (the broader class of urban develop
tances is another widely used gauge of sprawl: ment as a whole). As a subclass, sprawl has a set
automobile dominance or auto dependency.14 The of distinct attributes that differentiate it from all
longer distances between activities means that the other types of urbanization (for example, a city
only way to get around easily is by car. For this of crowded skyscrapers or a medieval hill town).
reason, many people list auto dependency not only Using the connotative method, we can translate
as an indicator but also as a main characteristic of Ewing’s set of characteristics and indicators into
sprawl.15 Compared to denser downtown environ a broad definition:
ments, suburban sprawl offers relatively little transit,
and often walking or biking between home and Sprawl (whether characterized as urban or sub
different activities can be very difficult. urban) is a form of urbanization distinguished by
leapfrog patterns of development, commercial strips,
low density, separated land uses, automobile domin
Lack of public open space ance, and a minimum of public open space.
In ideal circumstances, the low-density residential This definition has no suggested connection with
pattern of sprawl can achieve the sought-after a nearby city center, which makes it a more accurate
appearance of rustic cottages nestled in a leafy, characterization of contemporary sprawl develop
parklike setting. It was this idyllic effect that the ment patterns. (As we shall subsequently see, this
planners of some of the finest early suburbs tried form of urbanization can occur anywhere within
to achieve. Yet, even in the best of situations, or adjoining a metropolitan region, without any
the parklike setting is rarely public. It belongs to necessary connection to the core city.) The defin
individual homeowners as part of their yards and ing attributes of sprawl addressed earlier are also
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common to most types of late-twentieth-century law, each parcel of land comes with a bundle of
suburban development. For this reason, we can add rights related to ownership, including water and air
a secondary definition of sprawl: rights and the rights to sell the land, pass it along
to heirs, use it, or develop it. These privately held
Sprawl (whether characterized as urban or suburban) entitlements give land value and marketability. As
is the typical form of most types of late-twentieth- long as land remains privately owned – and its
century suburban development. rights remain unencumbered – it is susceptible to
being subdivided and built upon.
With this definition in hand, we can now explore Land itself – along with the rights attendant
the meaning of another very important term: sub- to its ownership – can be bought and sold like any
urbanization. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary other commodity. Without a highly developed sys
defines suburbanization as “making suburban” or tem of private land ownership and a viable market
“giving a suburban character to.”17 Planners have for land, sprawl as we know it would be virtually
sometimes used this term to describe the spreading impossible. The concept of private land ownership
of suburbs or suburban patterns across a region is the foundation upon which the private home is
or a nation.18 If we take this to mean specifically built. It wasn’t always that way, however. Native
late-twentieth-century suburban development, then Americans viewed the land as something held in
we can make the following definition: common. It was the early settlers from Europe who
brought the concept of individual land ownership
Suburbanization is the spread of suburban develop-
to the United States.
ment patterns across a region or a nation – that is,
With the arrival of the Europeans, land owner
the proliferation of sprawl forms of urbanization
ship quickly achieved great importance in the New
across a region or a nation.
World. Since then, it has remained a basic tenet of
the American ethos that being a landowner is the
The terms sprawl and suburbanization will be used
key to being a successful, fully vested member of
interchangeably throughout this book.
society. In fact, during the decades following the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution, many states
WHAT MAKES SPRAWL? limited voting rights to landowners. Thus, you not
only had to be a white male over age twenty-one,
The aforementioned definitions of sprawl and sub but also had to own land to be counted as a real
urbanization still do not tell the whole story. While citizen. As Kenneth T. Jackson tells us in Crabgrass
we now have an idea of what sprawl looks like and Frontier:
what its principal traits are, we still don’t know
why it is the way it is or exactly what goes into its The idea that land ownership was a mark of
construction. While sprawl development owes its status, as well as a kind of sublime insurance
existence to many factors, it is important to under against ill fortune, was brought to the New World
stand four essential ingredients of suburbanization: as part of the baggage of the European settlers.
They established a society on the basis of the
n Land ownership and use private ownership of property, and every attempt
n Transportation patterns to organize settlements along other lines ulti
n Telecommunications technology mately failed. The principle of fee-simple tenure
n Regulations and standards. enabled families to buy, sell, rent, and bequeath
land with great ease and a minimum of inter
The sections that follow deal with each factor in turn. ference by Government. It became . . . “the freest
land system anywhere in the world.”20
Land ownership and use Today, the American Dream is still to own one’s
own home on one’s own piece of land. More than
Most of the land in the United States – about two-thirds of Americans own their own homes,
70 percent – is privately held.19 Under American and many have most of their money tied up in that
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very investment – which is also their shelter.21 to repeat the same formula many times, which
Purchasing a home is often the biggest investment partly explains the repetitiveness of suburban devel
Americans will make in their lifetimes. opment. Single-family homes, shopping centers, and
office parks in their current forms have been very
successful models.
Real estate markets
A colossal industry has been built around real The cost of land
estate, not only around simply buying and selling
the land or its rights (or both) but also around But sprawl would not have its current attributes
deliberately increasing the value of the land by if land were scarce and expensive. The existence
building on it. This is why most land gets developed: of a large market for land development helps to
to increase its value and create wealth. Along with explain U.S. patterns of urbanization overall, not
the basic bundle of entitlements, increasing land just suburban sprawl. The unique pattern of sprawl
value is every landowner’s right in America, just as can be partly attributed to the abundance and
making a profit is every individual’s right whether relatively low cost of land, which is necessary to
that person owns land or not. The private owner allow dispersed, low-rise development to occur.
ship of land and the huge, almost liquid, market for Tall vertical cities like New York result, among other
it are vital to the very survival of suburban sprawl. things, from the high cost of the land under the
In 1997, the U.S. real estate industry produced buildings. To justify the higher cost of the land, a f
revenues totaling over $240 billion.22 That same developer has to build to a much higher density in o
u
year, related industry revenues for private construc Manhattan than in a typical suburban environment. r
tion totaled nearly $400 billion.23 The size of the real Why does land cost more in some center cities
estate and construction industries gives them signifi than it does in the suburbs? The higher cost can
cant influence in what gets built, where, and in be traced to two factors: clustering and access. It
what quantity. The real estate development industry is widely accepted that the monetary advantages of
delivers its products in response to demand – clustering (also known as the economies of agglo
demand for houses, demand for offices, demand meration) are among the primary forces driving
for shops, demand for hotel rooms, and so forth. urbanization in general.24 Businesses benefit eco
Wheat fields in Kansas are wheat fields and not nomically by being able to shop for goods and
housing partly because of real estate markets. services in a cluster. Furthermore, employees benefit
There is a smaller market for housing in the middle from being able to shop for jobs in that same cluster
of rural Kansas than exists in a big metropolitan and employers benefit from the large labor pool
area, but there is a market for land on which to grow that results. The gathering of the labor pool in turn
wheat. It is market demand that initially establishes causes housing, stores, and other uses to be drawn
what, where, and how much of everything gets built. into the resulting conurbation.
The industry simply delivers the product. The second factor is access. Many cities originated
But market demand is also determined to some by gathering around some major means of access
degree by the product industry delivers. There was to other, more distant markets in order to reduce
little demand for personal computers before the first transportation cost. Businesses originally needed
one was invented and brought to market. Similarly, to be as close as possible not only to one another,
there was no recognizable market for indoor sub but also to a central import-export node, such as
urban shopping malls before the first one was built a harbor, river port, or rail station. This need rein
in Southdale, Minnesota, in 1956. When a success forced clustering, which in turn drove up land cost
ful formula like the indoor suburban shopping and density. A typical result was the late-nineteenth
mall comes along, it can rapidly develop into a new or early-twentieth century U.S. manufacturing city
market, exploding across the countryside. Financing with a high-density central business district gathered
feeds a growth industry, be it business or real estate. near port facilities and rail termini.
If a formula is successful and therefore profitable, The equation changes when access becomes
it becomes easy to finance. The tendency is then much more widespread, as happened with the
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introduction of cars, trucks, and pervasive high- network). Mode choice refers to the availability
speed roadway networks. Widespread access means of different kinds of transportation. Transporta
that cheap land far from any city center becomes tion modes consist of everything from walking to
a usable commodity for businesses and homes automobiles, railroads, boats, and air travel. When
alike. Without a compelling need to cluster, homes you travel from your home to work, what choices
and businesses will naturally begin to spread out. do you have for making the trip? Can you, for
As Terry Moore and Paul Thorsnes have written example, choose between walking, biking, driving,
in The Transportation/Land Use Connection: and riding public transportation? Sometimes a trip
may involve multiple modes – for instance, driving
Business firms . . . respond to land prices by to the train from home or taking a bus from the
spacing themselves as widely as possible. train to work. The transfer between each mode is
Spacing reduces competition for land which called a mode change.
reduces its price. No other reasons (such as In the suburbs and beyond, mode choices
proximity to a port) exist to cause competition typically are few. In many instances, the car is the
for land, and businesses reduce cost by occupy only choice. When trip origins and destinations are
ing lower-priced land.25 highly dispersed over a wide area (the result of a
continuum of low-density development), the private
What is true for businesses is also true for home automobile is often the only adequate mode of trans
owners. Reduced land cost means that single- portation. When alternative choices are available,
family homes on relatively generous individual a discouraging number of different mode changes
plots of land within commuting distance of work may be required. A traveler may have to change
suddenly become an affordable commodity for from bus to bus to rail and back to bus again. All
many Americans. This demonstrates the very close things being equal, the more mode changes that
relationship between land and transportation in are required, the greater the disincentive will be to
defining modern patterns of human settlement. choosing an alternative to the automobile.
To have any worth, land must be served by some Travel time and cost also affect mode decisions.
means of transportation, whether a transit stop, a Travel time may be influenced by congestion on
highway interchange, or even just a lane or an alley the roadways or the number of transit stops. Cost
way connecting to a larger roadway system. When may be affected by the cost of passage as well as
land is both accessible and inexpensive, building by the availability of reasonably priced parking.
at much lower densities can be profitable. This The automobile can sometimes seem to be the
combination is fundamental to sprawl development. least expensive mode due to the tendency to ignore
both the cost of the car and the overall cost of the
auto/roadway transportation system – even though
Transportation patterns
that cost is actually quite substantial in both dollars
Land and market forces alone could not establish and externalities.
the low-density membrane that characterizes sprawl. Modal choices can vary significantly, depending
History and economics tell us that without a trans on the kind of trip taken. Trips generally can be
portation system capable of serving this pattern, categorized as either local or long distance. Local
sprawl simply would not exist. Without automobiles trips (also referred to as daily trips) are less than
and paved roadways, we would inhabit an entirely 100 miles one way. These trips basically fall into
different world. two categories: work trips or commuting (travel
to and from work), and nonwork trips (errands,
shopping, school, and so forth).
Mode choice
Two major transportation factors determine Local work trips

development patterns: mode (or modal) choice and
the physical layout or pattern of the transportation Commuting trips in contemporary suburbs are
system itself (sometimes known as the transportation almost invariably beyond walking distance and
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mostly have been since the days of railroads and all person miles traveled in the nation.28 Thus, it
streetcars. In those cases where a major urban core is tempting to dismiss the contribution of long-
or other high-density employment center is involved, distance travel in defining the pattern of sprawl as
bus or rail transit may be available for trip making, relatively trivial. This might be justified were it not
but a car may be needed to get to the train or bus. for the issue of the central import-export node
As suburban patterns develop farther and farther described earlier in this chapter.
from major urban centers, the car becomes the only In the early part of the twentieth century, long-
real mode choice for most commuter trips. More distance passengers and freight accessed a typical
than 70 percent of all commuting trips in the nation city by means of one or more centrally located
have nothing to do with downtown; rather, they are import-export nodes, such as a rail station or a port.
to and from suburban and exurban destinations.26 This phenomenon reinforced the dense clustering
For this type of commuting trip, the automobile of early-twentieth-century manufacturing cities.
often is the only option. Roadways and airports have significantly changed
that pattern. Clustering is still an urbanizing force,
but highway interchanges and multiple regional
Local nonwork trips airports have replaced rail terminals and harbors
as primary import-export nodes, radically altering
As with work trips, the car is usually the only choice the geographic scale and pattern of clustering.
for suburban nonwork trips because of the low Today, about 83 percent of the value of all
density and horizontal separation of uses. This means freight in the United States is shipped by truck and f
that many basic errands are generally too far to walk, plane, while 97 percent of all passengers travel by o
u
and the “trip-ends” – or origins and destinations – air and by road when taking a long trip.29 Ports and r
are too dispersed for any form of mass transit to rail termini are still used for heavy bulk cargo, but
make sense. These disparate origins and destina almost all people and most valuable goods travel
tions do not usually lend themselves to any sort of in planes, cars, and trucks. As suburbs have spread
fixed-route transit system. Bicycles might work, but and air and roadway travel has increased, the
because of lack of suitable roads, distance, weather, center-city train depot has become increasingly less
or other reasons, biking is often ruled out. relevant. Long-distance trips are now more likely
Furthermore, local trips may include a number to be made from one suburban area to another,
of stops on each trip with varying numbers of with the car being the only practical way to get to
people and bundles to be picked up or dropped off. and from the airport at either end of the trip.
This succession of stops is called trip chaining. A In the end, almost all contemporary transporta
typical example might be a short journey where tion choices use the car somehow in the process.
a parent takes a child to a music lesson and then The car is often the choice for local trips, commut
drives on to drop off the dry cleaning, make a ing, and long-distance travel. Because automobile
stop at a hardware outlet, and then do the grocery travel accounts for 92 percent of the total person
shopping. Interestingly, local nonwork trips are by miles traveled in the United States, the roadway
far the largest segment of all travel. According to system is by far the nation’s foremost transportation
the U.S. Department of Transportation, nonwork network.30 This means that auto-dependent devel
trips make up more than 75 percent of total person opment is basically self-perpetuating. Any new land
miles traveled in the United States.27 development that hopes to succeed has to hook
into the transportation pattern that connects every
thing else, which means extending the pattern of
Long-distance travel automobile dominance and limited mode choice.
In sheer numbers, the amount of local travel in the

United States is overwhelming when compared to The transportation network
long-distance travel. More than 99 percent of all
person trips made in the United States on all modes The nation’s roadway network is one of the
are local, accounting for more than 75 percent of most powerful forces determining the shape of
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metropolitan regions across the United States. the same time leaving enough room to park most
Railroad, water, and air transportation have never of the cars at grade.
been able to match the access granted by road
ways. Com bine this omnipresent network with
automobiles and trucks, and once-simple roadways Telecommunications technology
are converted to a high-speed transportation sys
tem that often outmatches railroads in travel time Electronic telecommunications are rapidly trans
and accessibility. Mode choice could never be so forming the world around us. As William J. Mitchell
dramatically skewed toward the automobile if it recently wrote in his foreword to Thomas Horan’s
were not for the universal presence of roadways. Digital Places:
It is this vast network that has made decentral
ization possible on a truly gigantic scale. It also, to Digital telecommunications networks [will] trans
a very large extent, defines the look and feel of form urban form and function as radically as . . .
our suburban world. As James S. Russell recently mechanized transportation networks, telegraph
observed in Harvard Design Magazine: “What unites and telephone networks and electrical grids
suburbia is not shared public space, or a coherent [have] done in the past. These networks . . . loosen
architectural vision, but a vast civil-engineered net many of the spatial and temporal linkages
work of roads.”31 that have traditionally bound human activities
As noisy, congested, and chaotic as the na together in dense clusters, and they . . . allow
tion’s roadway system can appear, it actually pos new patterns to emerge.32
sesses a very intricate hierarchical structure.
Under ideal circumstances, all of its component We cannot know for certain what kind of world will
roadways are designed to function together as finally emerge from this new revolution. However,
a unified structure of greater and lesser arteries we can clearly see what electricity, telephones, and
and veins – like the human circulatory system, computers have already done.
only made to move vehicles instead of blood cells.
As extensive as it is, the entire network ultimately
comprises just a few distinct roadway types. Electricity
Together, this system of expressways, arterial roads,
collector roads, local streets, and cul-de-sacs makes The electrical grid is as pervasive as the roadway
up almost the entire public environment of our system (in fact, it often follows it). This shared
suburbs. ubiquity has freed businesses and homes to locate
But roads alone don’t describe all of the system. just about anywhere and be assured of a power
All of the automobiles need someplace to park, source to run the machinery necessary for modern
and these parking areas define suburban sprawl living and commerce. Before the twentieth century,
as much as, if not more than, the roadway system. no such widespread infrastructure existed. The
Garages, carports, and driveways adorn every con machinery that electricity runs includes much of
temporary residential subdivision, and shopping the infrastructure of modern telecommunications,
centers, malls, and office parks offer great fields of such as computers, remote telephones, modems,
surface parking. Sometimes, these areas are land fax machines, printers, copiers, and the like. With
scaped but often only minimally to avoid blocking out available electrical power everywhere, most
clear views of commercial signs. These areas could of the machines of modern commerce would not
be designed differently (the cars could be – and exist, nor would the systems that run our homes.
sometimes are – placed underground or in struc Corporations could not do business in a low
tures), but surface parking is the most economical density suburban environment without at least
way to build parking as long as land is inexpensive electricity and telephone. Initially, it was the tele
enough. And, as we have seen, it is the roadway phone that greatly reduced the need for businesses
and car transportation system that has helped to share a common location – such as a major
to make the cost of accessible land inexpensive city – in which communications are facilitated by
enough to decentralize clustering patterns while at proximity.
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Telecommunications and computers more than 80 percent of the employment growth

in the United States between 1980 and 1990 was in
Although telephones have been in existence since suburban and exurban locations – not downtown.34
the end of the nineteenth century, the truly expon
ential advances in telecommunications and infor
mation systems have occurred only in the past fifty Wiring the home
years. This technology revolution has made sub
urban sprawl possible on a scale that could never Suburban housing owes much to telephone, radio,
have been envisioned in the early twentieth century. and television. The telephone allowed instant com
The development of mainframe computers con munication between worker and household, even
nected by telephone lines in the 1950s and 1960s if the worker was miles away, making it easier
meant that information could be readily and simul to manage business and domestic affairs in two
taneously shared by a network of remote facilities. locations. The spread of residential subdivisions
Until then, major corporations had struggled to keep far from any theater district or concert hall also has
all of their operations under one roof to realize been helped considerably by radio and television.
what economists refer to as “economies of scale Countless channels of programming have brought
of production.” entertainment right into the home. You no longer
Businesses realize economies of scale when the need to get in your car to go to the movies. By
average cost of a unit of output (anything from 2000, average daily household television viewing
a camshaft to a bank statement) falls as the total was approaching eight hours per day, the number f
volume or scale of output increases. To realize these of television sets was climbing toward an average o
u
economies, businesses typically massed people and of 2.5 per household, and more than 80 percent of r
machines together under one roof. This phenom American households owned a VCR. Between 1995
enon, together with clustering, has historically been and 1998, the number of households connected to
one of the primary forces shaping urbanization the Internet increased from less than 10 percent
by centralizing urban development.33 For example, to more than 50 percent. Greater than 80 percent
many service industry businesses once realized of the nation spends each evening watching televi
economies of scale by having everyone in one sion.35 Thus, even suburban movie houses have
building in a big city. This meant paying a single had to transform themselves into huge multiplex
rent check while simplifying management, infor entertainment centers to survive. The advent of
mation sharing, and communications. At the same home entertainment centers and digital TV and
time, the businesses were clustered near their recording media may make further inroads into the
customers and vendors, giving them ready access cinema business.
to both.
Together with roadways, cars, and airports,
advances in telecommunications and computer The Internet and beyond
technology have substantially changed how these
forces work, allowing many companies to abandon There is little question that modern information
older models and to decentralize, relocating major systems have vastly expanded the freedom of
portions of their businesses to suburban locations location in our society. Businesses and residences
or even to other parts of the country or overseas can now situate themselves practically anywhere.
– wherever land or labor or both cost less. Many Employees don’t even have to show up at the
major corporations also realized that they no longer office to go to work anymore. The number of tele
needed to have even their headquarters downtown. commuters (those who spend at least part of
Now, the head office could move closer to the their days working from home via computer and
suburban homes of the CEO and other corporate telephone) quadrupled from 4 million to almost
officers, while links with customers and vendors 16 million between 1990 and 1998.36 By 2000, the
could be handled electronically. Combined with number had jumped to nearly 24 million.37 The
roadways, automobiles, and airports, the growth of fiscal 2001 appropriations bill for the U.S. Depart
electronic telecommunications helps explain why ment of Transportation requires that every federal
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agency give at least 25 percent of its eligible work Zoning and building codes
force the option of working outside the office by
fall 2001.38 As we have seen, the fact that land is private is
The future of the retailing industry also may fundamental to its development potential. How land
be changing as on-line retailing becomes more gets developed – where and for what use – is largely
popular. Books, music, computers, and an ever determined by real estate markets. Even density
expanding list of other items can now be ordered and form are determined to some extent by market
electronically on-line and sent via air express right forces. But once the market for development has
to your door. The volume of “e-retailing,” as it is been established (or is on the way to becoming so),
called, increased at an annual rate of 67 percent publicly regulated land use controls, or zoning, also
from 1999 through the end of 2000.39 Since then, can become a critical determinant in how land can
there has been an industry shakeout, but people be developed.
are still buying on-line. It is impossible to predict In most American communities where there is
where all of this will ultimately lead, but these a market for new development, zoning controls
communications developments undeniably have land – and to some extent its value – by regulating
given us more freedom than ever to choose where both land use and density. Use districts are estab
we live and work. It seems almost as certain that lished together with height and bulk regulations,
they have made decentralization increasingly easier. the number of units or square feet of building
allowed per acre, and setbacks that buildings are
required to observe from the street and from one
Regulations and standards another. Zoning can govern what landowners can
build on their own land as well as clarify expectations
Another key factor that helps determine the final about what can be built next door. For example,
pattern of suburbanization is the battery of regula a home owner who decides to put an addition on
tions, codes, and standards that govern develop a house may find that zoning controls the size and
ment in communities across the United States. The location of the new construction. The addition may
result of a century-long interdisciplinary effort, this be limited in height, square footage, how far it may
vast compendium of rules forms the “genetic code” extend toward the boundaries of the lot, and what
of sprawl. Various parts of the compendium can its use may be. After market forces have been
be found in the subdivision regulations and zoning established, zoning can ultimately be a major factor
codes of most U.S. municipalities. Other segments in determining what any given development will
can be found in the roadway manuals and standards consist of and what it will look like. Some early
issued by state and federal governments. Still other subdivisions were built in rural areas that had no
sections appear in the myriad privately published zoning. As communities grew, zoning was often put
standard planning and design reference works for in place with the endorsement of home owners for
engineers, surveyors, planners, architects, and land their own protection.
scape architects. Without some sort of formal control over how
These works set forth guidelines for minimum land in a particular district is used, each landholder
roadway widths, street patterns, parking layouts, lot in the district is continually at risk from neighbors.
grading, and many other items, right down to steps, If you invest in building a house, you don’t know
curbing, and residential swimming pools. Although for sure that a tannery or a pulp mill won’t get built
the patterns established by the genetic code can next door someday. This is one reason for controls:
be very hard to make out from the monotony and to provide reasonable expectations for the con
chaos we see on the ground, they are very much tinued value of a given piece of land and thereby
a part of the suburban world around us. It is this create a relatively stable marketplace. Regulations
genetic code that forms the pattern that we can also exist to protect the public. Building a tannery
see from the air, and it is this same compendium or a pulp mill in the middle of a residential neigh
of rules, regulations, and standards that makes borhood can endanger public health and welfare.
sprawl development in Georgia look just like sprawl Crowding wooden residential structures too close
development in California or New Jersey. together without adequate ventilation or emergency
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access can be both a health hazard and a fire hazard. law. Similarly, Boston’s Beacon Hill, Nantucket,
Thus, zoning bylaws, subdivision regulations, and Santa Fe, Carmel – all of these well-known
related codes continue to be considered necessary places, many of which have become tourist
and effective for protecting public health and welfare. destinations, exist in direct violation of current
In suburban areas, separation of land uses can zoning ordinances. Even the classic American
be far more extreme than in older, urban-core areas. Main Street, with its mixed-use buildings right
In older cities, compatible land uses are often mixed up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most
together. But, as Reid Ewing notes in his definition municipalities.40
of sprawl shown earlier in this chapter, classic sub
urban zoning partitions all land uses into distinctly Many contemporary land use codes have ruled out
separate districts, which often are defined by road older, walkable cities and downtowns in favor of
ways. Large arterial roadways and highway corridors, horizontally separated zoning districts – in other
for example, are often zoned commercial or light words, sprawl zoning. This is why you can’t walk
industrial. Typically, industrial uses will be buffered to a corner store; it’s usually too far away. It is true
from any residential uses by roads, landscaping, that not everyone wants to live over a store, but
and open spaces or by intervening commercial uses Duany’s argument is that current codes don’t allow
(or both). Commercial uses, in turn, are themselves any choice in the matter.
buffered from adjoining residential uses, often by On the other hand, lest zoning be blamed for
roadways and landscaped areas. While some con too much, it is useful to observe that places like
temporary planners may rue the extreme to which Nantucket and Beacon Hill have zoning bylaws f
the separation of uses has been taken, it should be and other regulations that actually work to protect o
u
remembered that many people still prefer quiet their historic character and require that new r
residential streets with nothing but houses on them. development fit the existing pattern. Also note that
To these people, dictating otherwise would disrupt a sprawling city like Houston, Texas, has no zoning.
the character of the neighborhood and threaten In theory, Houston could have built itself like
property values. Manhattan or Colonial Williamsburg, or even a
But the codes do not stop at simply separat medieval Italian hill town, but it did not turn out
ing uses. Frequently, they also distinguish between that way. Even without zoning, Houston exhibits
different varieties of the same kind of use. For many of the sprawl characteristics of other metro
example, housing is sometimes separated into multi politan areas. It is spread out and generally low
family and single-family detached housing or even density, ranking fourth in degree of sprawl (ahead
into different kinds of single-family housing, usually of Los Angeles and Miami) out of twenty-eight
based on lot size (for example, half an acre, one metropolitan areas ranked by the Surface Trans
acre, or two acres per unit). It has been argued portation Policy Project.41
that such finer gradations may discriminate by seg
regating people by economic class, with the plots
in large-lot zoning areas available only to wealthy The requirements of finance
people.
In many ways, horizontal zoning seems very To some degree, Houston makes up for its lack of
rational, both from the private as well as the public zoning with other types of regulations, but market
perspective. Because it protects public health and and financing factors have also helped fill the gap.
welfare as well as property values, a lot of people As noted earlier, markets help define real estate
support it. Yet, as we have seen, it is this very product and most housing, offices, and shopping
horizontal separation of uses – ruling out other malls require financing to get built. In the case of
possible outcomes – that helps to define sprawl. housing, much of the financing takes the form of
As Andres Duany, one of the founders of New residential mortgages. Many home mortgages are
Urbanism, writes in Suburban Nation: guaranteed by government agencies who, over the
years, have developed their own preferences and
The problem is that one cannot easily build standards for what should be built. Those standards
Charleston any more, because it is against the are reflected in many contemporary zoning codes
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and contribute to the genetic code of suburban estimated to live in the total New York Consolidated
development written into the manuals of many Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) defined by
design and development professionals and some the U.S. Census Bureau.44 The same is true of Boston,
times even into covenants contained in the deeds where almost 5.5 million people inhabit the CMSA
of various projects. but only 1.5 million live in the Boston urban-core
The banks and insurance companies that finance area.45
many suburban commercial and residential pro What is true of New York and Boston is true
jects have similar standards. Their requirements of the nation. In 1950, nearly 60 percent of the
can dictate the size of the project, the uses that nation’s metropolitan population lived in the center
may be included, the number of parking spaces city. By 1990, the balance had shifted markedly
needed, and even the materials to be used in and more than 60 percent of the U.S. metropolitan
construction. To finance, build, and sell their real population lived in suburban areas outside the
estate products, developers in places like Houston center city.46 By now, that figure has doubtless
have had to follow many rules established else climbed higher.47 Even though the year 2000 census
where – just as if the missing suburban zoning shows population gains in cities like New York,
were in place. Chicago, and Boston, it also shows that population
has increased at a far more accelerated rate in
suburban areas surrounding those same cities.48 It
THE LIMITLESS CITY is estimated that, if current trends continue, about
four-fifths of the nation’s growth in the decades
The dictionary definition of urban sprawl presented ahead will be in the suburbs – and that means a
earlier implies that sprawl emanates from a nearby growth in employment as well as in population.49
city. Sprawl is fundamentally suburban in origin, During the 1970s, 95 percent of the nation’s
and a suburb, as its name would suggest, is sup population growth and 66 percent of job growth
posed to be subordinate to a city. That meaning is were in the suburbs. During the 1980s, all of the
encapsulated in the Webster’s New World Dictionary nation’s population growth was in suburban and
definition of a suburb: “a district, especially a exurban areas along with more than 80 percent of
residential district, on the outskirts of a city.”42 In employment growth. By 1990, 62 percent of the
1966, when that definition was written, it was a nation’s jobs were in suburban and exurban loca
fairly accurate characterization of the situation. tions.50 Suburbs are also where the money is. By
From 1920 until the mid-1960s, big industrial cities 1995, the median income in our older, urban-core
were the nation’s dominant centers of population areas was $29,000, while in what used to be the
and employment, the economic engines where most nation’s suburbs, the median income was nearly
Americans lived and worked.43 In that era, suburbs $41,000 – more than 40 percent higher than in
resembled the dictionary definition: generally less the cities.51
populated outlying residential areas that served What is true of jobs, population, and income
as bedroom communities for the big cities. (Los is also true of construction. As Joel Garreau has
Angeles, a polycentric city almost from the begin said in his book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier :
ning, was a clear exception.) “Americans are creating the biggest change in a
hundred years in how we build cities. Every single
American city . . . is growing in the fashion of Los
Beyond suburbs Angeles.”52 In America today, single-family detached
housing (that is, suburban housing) comprises more
Since the 1960s, however, that situation has changed square feet of floor space than all other building
dramatically. At the dawn of the twenty-first cen types combined.53 Between 1979 and 1999, new
tury, more people live and work in suburbs than office space in the suburbs was constructed at
live and work in the nation’s center cities. The triple the rate of that being built in U.S. central
statistics are revealing: slightly over 8 million people cities.54 These simple facts demonstrate that, over
live within the city limits of New York City, but that the last few decades, far more construction has
is only 40 percent of the over 20 million people occurred in the nation’s suburbs than in the cities.
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These statistics and commentary highlight the The nation’s metropolitan regions have grown
fact that suburbia doesn’t really seem to fit its so quickly and spread so far that they have become
dictionary definition anymore. As Michael Pollan multi-jurisdictional, overspreading city, town, county,
wrote in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, sub and even state borders. When communities within
urbs are no longer “sub” to any “urb:” a metropolitan region increasingly share more in
common, the political boundaries created in earlier
“Urban sprawl” might be a better term. Certainly times can become quite transparent. As Bruce Katz
sprawl hints at the centerlessness of it, “urban” and Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution
at the fact that there’s nothing in the city you recently wrote in an article for the Atlantic Monthly:
can’t find here. And maybe, as some have sug
gested, that is what [we’re] looking at but can’t People work in one municipality, live in another,
quite see: a new kind of city, one we still don’t go to church or the doctor’s office or the movies
have the words or name for.55 in yet another, and all these different places
are somehow interdependent. Newspaper city
desks have been replaced by the staffs of metro
Metropolitan nation
sections. Labor and housing markets are area-
wide. Morning traffic reports describe pileups
Suburbia has so vastly outgrown our older cities
and traffic jams that stretch across a metro
that many urban planners and economists have
politan area. Opera companies and baseball
come to recognize that the old distinctions are not
teams pull people from throughout a region. f
as meaningful as they once were in determining o
Air or water pollution affects an entire region,
what drives the nation’s economy and defines u
because pollutants, carbon monoxide, and run r
society. Cities or suburbs no longer matter as much
off recognize no city or suburban or county
as do “metropolitan regions.” To quote Robert Yaro,
boundaries.58
executive director of New York’s Regional Plan
Association:
Most metropolitan regions are an elaborate mosaic
It is now widely recognized that the nation’s of individual cities, towns, and villages, each with
metropolitan regions are its basic economic its own social, economic, and educational facilities.
units. The largest of these places are incubators But, like a mosaic, each of these individual com
of new technologies and industries and centers munities is part of the larger whole, set into a
of American culture, communications, and regional matrix of political, economic, infrastructure,
media. They are the crucibles in which the new and ecological systems. All regional communities
American society of the early twenty-first cen share and depend upon this matrix for their well-
tury will be formed from the swelling ranks being. Yet, even with these shared regional interests,
of immigrants and native-born Americans who only some cities have managed to keep up with
live in them.56 this fact by continually annexing adjoining territory.
For many older urban areas, annexation simply is
Our once-great industrial cities have become not a viable option. This results in outdated juris
subsumed into sprawling conurbations that cover dictional boundaries in many areas, creating some
hundreds and even thousands of square miles.57 of the allegedly more intractable problems of sprawl.
Metropolitan regions like Los Angeles-Riverside-
Orange County don’t even have a single dominant
city center. They are polycentric. Predominantly sub Local and regional tension
urban in geography, population, and employment,
these urbanized areas are spread out like no Older political boundaries persist in part because
metropolis has ever been before. Just as Manhattan many localities still place great value on their
is vertical, the new metropolitan region is flattened independence, even though advancing suburban
out beyond the horizon. Where the elevator ization has made them an intimate part of a greater
made possible the skyscraper, so the automobile metropolitan region. Many people in the metro
has enabled a new horizontal metropolis. politan United States still view themselves as
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residents of small, autonomous towns with little suburban commercial development often draws still
or no real connection to any larger region. Local more resources out of the city.
determination is a proud American tradition dating
back to the town meetings of colonial times, which
are still the prevalent form of municipal govern Beyond metropolitan
ment in places such as New England. Home rule
invites local participation, offering many people a In 1915, urban planner and regionalist Patrick
framework for a rich community life. Thus, home Geddes predicted that America’s northeastern
rule is widely perceived to be a good thing, cities would eventually flood over the landscape,
even though it can sometimes result in haphazard depleting the urban cores, and that “the not very
municipal boundaries and fragmented political distant future will see practically one vast city-line
structures. along the Atlantic Coast for five hundred miles.”59
The tension between home rule and the regional What may have seemed like science fiction eighty-
nature of the nation’s metropolitan areas is one five years ago seems a lot closer to becoming reality
of the most compelling characteristics of sprawl, today.
as well as an engine that helps drive its continued Metropolitan areas are not necessarily composed
spread. The self-perpetuating contest between dif entirely of urbanized area as defined by the U.S.
ferent jurisdictions for commercial tax dollars to Census Bureau (an area having a density of at least
offset residential tax expenditures produces ever one thousand people per square mile). They are
more shopping centers and office and industrial essentially functionally related regions containing
parks. New commercial development creates new large population nuclei and adjacent urbanized
employment, which in turn generates demand for communities “having a high degree of economic
more housing, which drives the need for more com and social integration.”60 In other words, some
mercial tax dollars, and so on. metropolitan areas can be a patchwork of urbanized
Because it is a regional phenomenon, sprawl areas and as yet undeveloped land. Others, such
development not only leapfrogs tracts of property as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, contain
but can also leapfrog entire municipalities, reacting more than one thousand people per square mile
to development controls in one community by throughout the entire region.
sprouting up next door, in another town or county. Census Bureau maps depict America’s north
While one town may turn down a major store eastern cities as a chain of regional metropolitan
or shopping mall on the grounds of community areas, linked together along the Eastern Seaboard.61
preservation, the town next door may roll out the The Northeast is not alone. The same thing has
carpet for the same project. Similarly, a new office happened to the nation’s midwestern, southern,
park may generate new taxes for one locality but and West Coast cities. The Los Angeles-Riverside-
result in tax-draining, new residential subdivisions Orange County metropolitan area flows south as
and schools in an adjacent community. far as Mexico and north to Santa Barbara and
In the heat of this competition, local jurisdictions beyond. San Francisco-Oakland-San José spreads
are sometimes unwilling or unable to accommodate west to Sacramento-Yolo and south to Salinas.
such larger, areawide needs as affordable housing, Chicago-Gary-Kenosha stretches east toward Detroit-
infrastructure improvements, and regional land use Ann Arbor-Flint and north to Milwaukee-Racine.
controls within their boundaries, thus perpetuating Seattle-Tacoma reaches out toward Salem-Portland,
the spread of sprawl while ensuring the continued and so on. The nation’s metropolitan regions are
existence of some of its main detractions. A related, extending beyond their own limits to merge with
familiar issue is dwindling urban resources in the other regions, perhaps to form even larger units in
face of suburban prosperity. Even though the city the future or maybe to redefine the meaning of the
may remain a key part of the regional image and term metropolitan area, changing anew the scale in
economy, suburban localities are not usually willing which we view urban sprawl. Perhaps it was a vision
or eager to share their revenues with other juris such as this that prompted Lewis Mumford to write
dictions. Furthermore, the endless quest for new in 1961 that “the whole coastal strip from Maine to
9780415668071_P4_01.indd 394 10-26-2012 3:23:31 PM

Florida might coalesce into an almost undifferen practices to create the finished product. These
tiated conurbation” composed of “undifferentiated regulations, standards, and practices largely deter
urban tissue, without any relation either to an inter mine the shape, size, and configuration of the land
nally coherent nucleus or an external boundary of subdivisions, houses, cul-de-sacs, parking lots, and
any sort.”62 strip commercial buildings that make up our sprawl
ing suburbs.
But our suburbs are no longer suburbs in the
SPRAWL IN SUMMARY strict sense of the word. Cities and suburbs together
create the contemporary metropolitan regions that
Urban sprawl traditionally has been viewed as are now the fundamental economic units of our
a suburban phenomenon, something that happens society. Within these metropolitan regions, our
as an urbanized area spreads into undeveloped suburbs are bigger in geography, population, and
countryside. This spreading of development can employment than our cities. Our metropolitan
be further characterized by leapfrog patterns, com regions are dominated by what we call sprawl, as
mercial strips, overall low density, large areas of we have now defined it: a form of urbanization
single-use development, and a heavy reliance on distinguished by leapfrog patterns, commercial strips,
automobiles for transportation. With these charac low density, separated land uses, automobile dominance,
teristics, sprawl can largely be equated with what and a minimum of public open space. We have defined
the nation has called “suburbia” since at least the the spread of this pattern throughout a region as
1950s. suburbanization. Through suburbanization, sprawl f
American attitudes toward the private ownership can extend over thousands of square miles, encom o
u
of land combined with market forces and a large passing many different political jurisdictions left r
industry in real estate and construction are pre over from an era before metropolitan regions
conditions to sprawl, just as they have been for much became the dominant centers of our nation. Thus,
of the nation’s urbanization. But it is inexpensive sprawl is often politically fragmented, with different
land – made so by the proliferation of automobiles cities, towns, and even counties setting their inter
and roads – that makes the low-density pattern of ests before those of the broader region of which
sprawl so widespread. Automobiles and roads have they are a part. This tension between home rule and
redefined the so-called economies of agglomeration regional interests has become a defining character
or clustering, allowing businesses and residents istic of our sprawling metropolitan regions.
alike to scatter widely. At the same time, reliance Lastly, our metropolitan regions are getting
on the automobile reinforces low-density, single-use bigger and more spread out everyday, merging into
development patterns by ruling out many other one another, forming areas of urbanization that
transportation modes, basically compelling further now stretch across thousands of square miles. This
expansion to be equally dependent on cars and is what urban sprawl has become: a city without
roads. limits.
Pervasive power and communications networks
aided roadways and automobiles in redefining
clustering. At the same time, these networks also NOTES
changed the meaning of economies of scale, free
ing businesses from the need to operate under one 1 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, www.m-w.com.
roof and freeing employees from the need to be 2 Encarta World English Dictionary, www.encarta.
in a central workplace. In these ways, both power msn.com.
and communications networks have helped foster 3 The U.S. Census Bureau defines an “urbanized
low-density suburban patterns. area” as basically an area with at least one
Although land, markets, automobiles, and com thousand persons per square mile. That trans
munications networks form the framework of lated to somewhat less than two persons per
sprawl development, a regulatory environment of acre – a fairly low residential density for many
codes and standards act together with financial suburban areas. See the U.S. Census Bureau,
9780415668071_P4_01.indd 395 10-26-2012 3:23:31 PM

Urban and Rural Definitions, www.census.gov/ 18 See Kenneth T. Jackson, “Suburbanization,”

population.census-data/urdef.txt. in The Reader’s Companion to American History,
4 Jane S. Shaw and Ronald D. Utt, eds, A Guide to ed. Eric Froner and John A. Garraty (Boston:
Smart Growth: Shattering Myths, Providing Solutions Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 1040–43; see also
(Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation- Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The
Jane, 2000), 2. Suburbanization of the United States (New York:
5 Samuel R. Staley, Policy Study No. 251 – The Oxford University Press, 1985).
Sprawling of America: In Defense of the Dynamic 19 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural
City (Los Angeles: Reason Public Policy Institute, Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), Land
1999), 9. Ownership, 1992, www.nhq.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/
6 Jay Wickrersham, The State of Our Environment kmusser/mapgif.pl?mapid=2788. The figure ex
(Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, cludes Alaska. Including Alaska and excluding
Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, nonland acreage, this figure falls to about 60
2000), 24. percent. See National Wilderness Institute, State
7 National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rural by State Government Land Owner ship (1995),
Heritage Program Web site: www.ruralheritage. www.nwi.org.
org/sprawl.html. 20 Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 53.
8 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), New 21 U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancy Survey:
England, The State of a New England Environment, First Quarter 2001, Table 5. Homeownership Rates
1998 (Boston: EPA, 1998), chapter on sprawl, for the United States: 1965 to 2001, www.census.
as posted on their Web site: www.epa.gov/ gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/q101tab5.html.
region01/ra/soe98.html. 22 U.S. Census Bureau, 1997 Economic Census
9 Sierra Club Web site: www.sierraclub.org/sprawl. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000),
10 Natural Resource Defense Council Web site: Table 1.
www.nrdc.org/cities/default.asp. 23 U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Industry
11 Reid Ewing, “Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl Desir and Trade Outlook 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
able?” Journal of the American Planning Association, Department of Commerce, 2000), 6-2.
vol. 63, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 2–4. 24 Terry Moore and Paul Thorsnes, The Trans
12 Ewing provides a table listing seventeen urban portation / Land Use Connection: A Framework
planners, theorists, and authors, starting with for Practical Policy (Chicago: American Planning
William Whyte and including Anthony Downs, Association, 1994), 9.
Constance Beaumont, Richard Moe, and 25 Ibid., 20.
others. Ewing, “Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl 26 Alan E. Pisarski, Commuting in America II: The
Desirable?,” 3. Second National Report on Commuting Patterns
13 Ibid., 4. and Trends (Lansdowne, Va.: Eno Transportation
14 For example, Anthony Downs as cited in Kenneth Foundation, 1996), 72.
A. Small, “Urban Sprawl: A Non-Diagnosis of 27 U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), Bureau
Real Problems,” Metropolitan Development Patterns of Transportation Statistics (BTS), 1995 Nation
2000 Annual Roundtable (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln wide Personal Transportation Survey (Washington,
Institute of Land Policy, 2000), 27. D.C.: DOT, 1995), 11. See also Jane Holtz Kay,
15 For example, see the previous note and also Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over
Susan M. Wachter, “Cities and Regions: Findings America and How We Can Take It Back (New
from the 1990 State of the Cities Report”, in York: Crown, 1997), 21.
Metropolitan Development Patterns 2000 Annual 28 U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), Bureau
Roundtable (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Transportation Statistics Transportation Statistics
of Land Policy, 2000), 22. Annual Report, 1999 (Washington, D.C.: DOT,
16 See Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic (New 1999), 36.
York: Macmillan, 1968), 89–114. 29 Ibid., 37, 46.
17 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, www.m-w.com. 30 Ibid., 37.
9780415668071_P4_01.indd 396 10-26-2012 3:23:31 PM

31 James S. Russell, “Privatized Lives,” Harvard 44 The New York CMSA includes parts of New York,
Design Magazine, no. 12 (Fall 2000): 24. New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. CMSA data from
32 William J. Mitchell, “The Electronic Agora,” U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 PHC-T-3
foreword in Thomas A. Horan, Digital Places: Tanking Tables for Metropolitan Areas, Table 1,
Building Our City of Bits (Washington, D.C.: Urban www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phct3/
Land Institute, 2000), xi. tab01.pdf. Additional New York City data from
33 Moore and Thorsnes, The Transportation / Land U.S. Census Bureau, Table 22: Population of the
Use Connection, 10 and following. 100 Largest Urban Places: 1990, www.census.gov/
34 Pisarki, Commuting in America II, 25. population/documentation/twps0027/tab22.txt.
35 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Released June 1998. New York City data for
Revival of American Community (New York: Simon 2000 from Susan Sachs, “New York City Tops
& Schuster, 2000), 222–23, 228. 8 Million for First Time,” New York Times, March
36 Horan, Digital Places, 33. 16, 2000.
37 Jonathan Glazer, “Telecommuting’s Big Experi 45 See previous note and the Boston Metropolitan
ment,” New York Times, May 9, 2001. Area Planning Council Area Web site (May
38 Glazer, “Telecommuting’s Big Experiment.” 1999): www.mapc.org.
39 U.S. Commerce Department, “Retail, E-Commerce 46 Pisarski, Commuting in America II, 18; and David
Sales in First Quarter 2001,” U.S. Commerce Rusk, Cities Without Suburbs (Washington, D.C.:
Department News, May 16, 2001, www.census. Woodrow Wilson Centre, 1995), 5 and following.
gov/mrts/www/current.html. 47 When this book was being written, the 2000 f
40 Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff census data were only being made available. o
u
Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and Where possible, the latest 2000 census data has r
the Decline of the American Dream (New York: been used. In many cases, only projections based
North Point Press, 2000), xi. on 1990 data have been available.
41 See Barbara McCann et al./Surface Transporta 48 See for example David W. Chen, “Outer Suburbs
tion Policy Project/Centre for Neighborhood Outpace City in Population Growth,” New York
Technology, Driven to Spend: The Impact of Times, March 16, 2001; and Cindy Rodriguez,
Sprawl on Household Transportation Expenses “City, State Take on New Cast,” Boston Globe,
(Washington, D.C.: 2001), chap. 3, fig. H, www. March 22, 2001.
transact.org/reports/driven/.default.html. See 49 F. Kaid Benfield, Matthew D. Raimi, and Donald
also Haya El Nasser, “A Comprehensive Look D.T. Chen, Once There Were Greenfields: How
at Sprawl in America,” USA Today, February Urban Sprawl Is Undermining America’s Environment,
22, 2001. USA Today used a different ranking Economy, and Social Fabric (Washington, D.C.:
methodology in which the Houston-Galveston- Natural Resource Defense Council, 1999), 6.
Brazoria region ranks number 234 in a range 50 Pisarski, Commuting in America II, 25–26.
of scores from 26 to 536. 51 U.S. Census Bureau, “March 1996 Current Popu
42 Webster’s New World Dictionary, College Edition lation Survey: Income 1995 – Table A: Comparison
(New York: The World Publishing Co., 1966), 1455. of Summary Measures of Income by Selected
43 Sometime between 1960 and 1970, depending Characteristics: 1994 and 1995,” www.census.
on source and definitions used, see U.S. Census gov.hhes/income95/in95sum.html.
Bureau/Campbell Gibson and Emily Lennon, 52 Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier
Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign Born (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 3.
Population of the United States, 1850–1990, 53 U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Informa
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 1999). tion Administration, Buildings and Energy in the
See also U.S. Census Bureau, Selected Historical 1980’s (Washington, D.C.: Department of Energy,
Census Data: Urban and Rural Definitions and Data, 1995), 3.
www.census.gov/population/www.censusdata/ 54 Robert E. Lang, Office Sprawl: The Evolving
ur-def.html. See also Pisarski, Commuting in Geography of Business (Washington, D.C.: The
America II, 18–19. Brookings Institution, 2000), 3.
9780415668071_P4_01.indd 397 10-26-2012 3:23:31 PM

55 Michael Polland, “The Triumph of Burbopolis,” 59 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (London:
New York Times Magazine, April 9, 2000, 54– Williams & Norgate, 1915), 48–49. See also
55. Richard Moe and Carter Wilkie, Changing Places:
56 Robert D. Yaro, “Growing and Governing Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl (New
Smart: A Case Study of the New York Region” York: Henry Holt, 1997), 47.
in Bruce Katz, ed., Reflections on Regionalism 60 U.S. Census Bureau, Urban and Rural Definitions,
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt,
2000), 43. and About Metropolitan Areas, www.census.gov/
57 See also Robert Fishman’s foreword in Peter population/www/estimates/aboutmetro.html.
Calthrope and William Fulton, The Regional City 61 See U.S. Census Bureau map gallery, www.
(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001), xv. census.gov/geo/www/mapGallery/ma_1999.pdf.
58 Bruce Katz, and Jennifer Bradley, “Divided 62 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins,
We Sprawl,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1999, Its Transformations, Its Prospects (New York:
26–42. Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961), 540–41.
9780415668071_P4_01.indd 398 10-26-2012 3:23:31 PM

“Density in Communities,
or the Most Important Factor
in Building Urbanity”
from Community Design and the Culture of Cities (1990)
Eduardo Lozano
Related to the sprawl debates of the past few decades, disagreements over the benefits and detriments
of higher density development are just as heated. Proponents of denser and more compact cities suggest
that greater densities have positive spillover effects in supporting transit, reducing car usage, enhancing local
economic development, providing various environmental benefits, and promoting greater social interaction.
Fear of higher density development is fostered in part by images of questionable mid-century new-town
developments and poorly managed public housing. To many people, the term density itself frequently suggests
ideas about various environmental and social problems. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) responses to higher-
density residential living are common, yet often unfounded and unsubstantiated. Opponents of higher density
development are typically not opposed to higher densities elsewhere – just not next to their current low-density
residences. Other fears are based on the effects of social and psychological overcrowding and its impacts
on behavioral freedom.
Various studies have shown, however, that overcrowding (typically a function of economics and culture) need
not be necessarily equated with density (a function of geography and urban form). Other empirical research
has suggested that very high densities can be reached with urban forms that are quite acceptable to most
people living in the city. Different studies have shown that negative perceptions of density can be mitigated
through better design, for example, the use of vegetation to screen buildings, varied building heights, richer
facade detailing, and careful design of transition spaces. Many desirable neighborhoods in pre-industrial walking
cities maintain densities ten times higher than the typical low-density suburban forms in use today, but are
generally perceived to be of much lower density. The use of classic high-density rowhouses and low- to mid-rise
building forms provides the living space, private exterior space, mixed uses, and social amenities desirable in
creating livable neighborhoods.
Measures of density used by urban designers are varied, but are typically a ratio of housing units, people,
or floor space over a unit of land, such as acres, hectares, or square miles. Measures of gross density include
all land uses and lands within a geographic area (including public rights-of-way), while net densities usually
include only the parcel lands where residential uses are located. Gross density measures are inadequate
predictors of urban form or the human experience of a place, as housing units may be clustered densely on
a portion of the land, or distributed evenly across it in lower densities. Measures of density are important in
understanding the thresholds necessary for various services and activities to function properly in the city, such
as the number of people to support a bus system versus a light rail system, or the number required in the
catchment area for a supermarket.
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400 E d U A rdo L o Z A no
Eduardo Lozano’s chapter on density from his book Community Design and the Culture of Cities discusses
the uses of density in reinforcing communities and diminishing density fears and opposition. One of the key
problems with perceptions of density, he discusses, has been the polarization of residential densities at either
end of the scale; very low sub-urban living versus over-urban high-rise tower living in central city areas. He
suggests restoring a range and balance of community-oriented densities, thereby minimizing the detrimental
perceptions of both low- and higher-density places. Published in 1990, this reading presages later ideas about
Smart Growth, Compact Cities, and Urban Villages that would emphasize densification, infill, and complete
communities.
Born in Argentina, Eduardo Lozano is an architect and urban designer who holds a PhD in Planning from
Harvard University. He taught at Princeton and Harvard Universities, and helped establish Princeton’s Urban
Studies program. His firm, Lozano, Baskin & Associates, is located in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Studies of population crowding and residential density have a long history in design and planning circles.
Some of the best known works include: Rolf Jensen, High Density Living (London: L. Hill, 1966); Amos
Rapopori, “Toward a Redefinition of Density,” Environment and Behavior (vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 133–158, 1975);
Andrew Baum, Glenn E. Davis, and John R. Aiello, “Crowding and Neighborhood Mediation of Urban Density,”
Journal of Population (vol. 1, Fall, pp. 266–279, 1978); Paul M. Insel and Henry Clay, Too Close for Comfort:
The Psychology of Crowding (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hill, 1978); and Mark Baldassare, Residential
Crowding in Urban America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979).
For contemporary literature on promoting density through design see the following: Richard Haughey,
Getting Density Right: Tools for Creating New Compact Development (Washington, DC: ULI, 2008); Clare
Cooper Marcus and Wendy Sarkissian, Housing as if People Mattered: Guidelines for Medium-Density Family
Housing (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); Steven Fader, Density by Design: New Directions
in Residential Development, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2000); Julie Campoli and Alex
MacLean, Visualizing Density: A Catalog Illustrating the Density of Residential Neighborhoods (Washington,
DC: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy – Working Paper, 2002); and Christian Schittich, High-Density Housing:
Concepts, Planning, Construction (New York: Princeton Architectural Press and Birlhauser, 2004).
Material on achieving density through compact development and urban village concepts can be found in
the following sources: Mike Jenks, Elizabeth Burton, and Katie Williams (eds), Compact City: A Sustainable
Urban Form? (London: Spon Press, 1996); David Sucher, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village,
revised edn (City Comforts Inc., 2003); Gert de Roo and Donald Miller (eds), Compact Cities and Sustainable
Urban Development (London: Ashgate, 2000); Tony Aldous, Urban Villages (London: Urban Villages Group,
1992); Peter Neal (ed.), Urban Villages: The Making of Community (London: Spon Press, 2003); David Bell
and Mark Jayne (eds), City of Quarters: Urban Villages in the Contemporary City (London: Ashgate, 2004);
and Alberto Magnaghi, The Urban Village: A Charter for Democracy and Sustainable Development in the
City (London: Zed Books, 2005).
deNSiTY iN uRbAN SeTTLemeNTS a sizable number of people and institutions con-

centrated in that town or city. This large potential
Urban settlements are characterized primarily by for interaction is created by density and, in turn,
a high concentration of people and activities in encourages higher density.
space relative to the surrounding regions; that is, Urbanity has also been defined in terms of sophisti
they are characterized by high-density. Density is cated behavior – courtesy, refinement, politeness,
basic to settlements because it generates urbanity, and civility. Civility is related to a Latin word for
that elusive yet essential quality that is both cause city, civitas, to which other major concepts, such as
and effect of dense clusters of human habitats. civilization and citizenship, are related. The realm
Urbanity can be defined as the potential capacity of the city, that is, the realm of dense human settle
of the inhabitants of a town or city to interact with ments, has always been identified with high levels
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“ D ensity in C omm U nities , or the M ost I mport A nt F A ctor in B U ilding Urb A nity ” 401
of culture and linked with the most civilized expres- Let us first make some comparisons of density
sions of social behavior. Clearly, because historical within the so-called industrialized Western countries.
cities were not homogeneous, fairly uncivilized To take well known European examples, the gross
behavior coexisted with the most refined lifestyles; residential density of Paris is 84 people per acre,
one need simply recall London in the writings of and that of London, 60 people per acre. In the United
Dickens or the engravings of Hogarth. Today, espe States, the gross residential density of New York
cially in the United States, the identification of cities is 47 people per acre, that of San Francisco is 24
with civilization is rapidly losing validity, as shown people per acre, that of Chicago and Philadelphia,
by the association of social problems such as crime, 23 per acre, and that of Boston, 21 people per acre.1
vandalism, illiteracy, addiction, and morbidity with Thus, the most dense U.S. metropolis, New York,
“urban problems,” as if it were the nature of cities has only between one-half and three-quarters the
and not social factors that caused them. residential density of its European counterparts;
Consistent with contemporary cultural values, the remaining major U.S. cities are in a completely
no design variable has been so maligned as density. different range, with residential densities that are
Most people associate density with crowded slums; barely one-fourth to one-third of the European
and the complementary relationship between values. And if we consider the almost three hundred
urbanity and density is ignored in favor of dispersed urbanized areas in the United States, which include
suburban environments. Myriad factors contribute the gamut of smaller cities and towns, gross resi-
to the reduction of density in U.S. metropolises. dential density decreases to a mere 6 people per
One factor is the private automobile, which enables acre, a value that raises serious doubts about the f
people to live in scattered patterns. Another factor urbanity of U.S. cities and towns. o
u
is a nostalgic desire to re-create the lifestyle of Localized density values also reveal differences r
rural areas and small towns. A third, and seldom between U.S. and European cities. In Paris, the
acknowledged, factor is the aim of excluding central city residential density is 380 people per
people of lower social strata from upper-class areas, acre;2 in Manhattan, residential density is around 100
where larger lots ensure higher land costs. Such people per acre. The lowest residential densities
government policies as federal housing and high in Paris, in single-family-home neighborhoods, are
way programs have provided critical support for around 12 to 15 people per acre, which correspond
low-density sub-urbanization – which has become, to fairly dense single-family-home areas in U.S.
by default, practically the only choice for middle- cities – less than one-quarter acre lots. But most
class families. Paris residential areas are composed of mid-rise
The densities of U.S. cities today are the re- apartment buildings, with values of around 60 to
sult, for the most part, of disjointed decisions by 75 people per acre.
investors and developers pursuing financial objec- New planned settlements show similar differences.
tives within the limitations of zoning regulations. To restrict the comparison to British new towns,3
Perceived market demand and the potential for the net residential densities are 45 people per acre
profits are the guiding principles, quite often sup- in Harlow, 48 in Peterborough, 62 in Runcorn, and
ported by incentives built into zoning regulations 90 in Cumbernauld. In contrast, Reston, Virginia
or the granting of special variances. The result – heralded as the most urbane of the U.S. new
is over-urban densities in downtown office centers towns – has a net residential density of 22 people
and sub-urban densities in residential areas. In per acre, while Columbia, Maryland – probably the
European cities, the influence of the public sector most successful new town from a financial point
is far stronger than it is in the United States; of view – has only 15 people per acre. Indeed, the
decisions are, in general, affected by notions average net density of U.S. new towns is between
of the public interest and acceptance of higher 12 and 18 people per acre, which represents a
residential densities. But the differences between gross density of 8 to 12 people per acre – that is,
urban areas in the world are rooted in more than suburbs with single-family homes in quarter-and
political systems; they are rooted in the cultural half-acre lots.
values of each society, as is to be discussed later Clearly, the wide disparity between planning
in this chapter. standards can be traced to radically different cultural
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 401 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

expectations that translate into market acceptance. a cultural “hunger for land” typical of most of U.S.
At the core of these cultural differences we will society, which willingly trades off propinquity for
find the trade-off between the assumed negative space. The resulting decline in density prevents the
sociopsychological effects of density – most of extension of mass-transit systems to most outlying
which have to do with crowding – and the positive residential areas, thus forcing residents to commute
effects of density – which have to do with urbanity, by private car at costs that are beyond the capacity
as will be discussed below. of low-income groups to pay.
A critical difference in the density structure of These cultural preferences are supported by
cities is found in the social allocation of density local governments when, for example, they enact
zones to population groups. In urban areas, there zoning limitations that block the development of
is a systematic organization of density values, with greater density in suburbia, a major factor in the
the highest values at the center and exponentially maintenance of suburban land values per acre at
decreasing values toward the periphery. Within this relatively low rates but land values per parcel at
general principle, there are complex relationships higher levels owing to the extensive area require-
between density gradients, size of the settlement, ments for minimum lots.
level of economic development and technology, In central areas, the need to enlarge the supply
history and growth rate of the urban area, and of higher-density housing owing to the relatively
other factors. Typically, in historical cities, the elite limited capacity of these areas to expand, and the
occupied central areas of high-density and perhaps opposition of the inner suburbs – the old residential
some outlying sectors of summer residences in areas developed based on trolley car accessibility
low-density patterns. Typically, the land use hetero during the early decades of the twentieth century –
geneity of historical cities meant that there were results in higher land values for landlords,6 and
congested poor areas near the center as well as higher rents in the slums and ghettoes. In effect,
poor suburbs at the periphery. the only option for expanding housing for the
This has all changed in U.S. cities – and in other poor has been to accelerate deterioration, which
regions under their cultural influence – with the results in social conflict with surrounding neigh
suburbanization of the upper and middle classes. borhoods and increasing degradation of the urban
As a result, most poor people live on expensive environment.
high-density, centrally located land, and most of A trend that has become apparent in the past
the affluent groups live on cheaper low-density, decade or two, employment suburbanization, has
suburban land. Some urban economists explain increased social inequality and further eroded
this apparent paradox as an efficient allocation of urbanity. Rather than having a major employment
resources by allowing factor substitution of land center in the downtown area, cities have begun
and building inputs in the production function. to sprout suburban low-density employment belts
Wealthy suburbia uses more land, the cheaper dispersed along highways and, lately, major exurban
input, in relation to buildings, because its affluent employment centers. Only a fraction of urban
population can afford long trips to work; central employment today is located in central cities.
city housing uses less land, the expensive input, in The result is that the overwhelming majority of
relation to buildings, because its poor population employees in suburban work places drive to work
cannot afford long trips to work and must be near because public transportation is simply not eco-
the largest concentration of employment.4 nomically feasible. The poor and minorities, locked
The line of argument stemming from this in slums and ghettoes in central cities, have been
explanation is that location is the result of social particularly hard hit by this trend, since the only
choices in a set of optimizing trade-offs. The wealthy advantage of their location – easy access to down-
select the cheaper suburban land because they can town employment and urban transit systems – is
afford large tracts as well as the cost and time becoming increasingly irrelevant as they, too, seek
involved in long commuting trips. Correspondingly, employment in the newer highway-oriented areas.
the cheaper land is less dense than the expensive The trend has been reinforced by the willingness
land closer to the centers.5 This choice, which the of local governments to zone huge parcels of land
middle class follows closely, can be explained by for low-density business (e.g., the so-called office
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 402 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

and industrial parks), guided by their own goal of or activities viable. Clearly, the greater the number
expanding the local property tax base. and variety of urban activities, the richer the life
Indeed, local governments, which are responsible of a community; thus, urbanity is based on density.
for the regulation of zoning, have been unanimous Urban interaction is ultimately equated with
in adopting the objective of density reduction. Their communication. Traditionally, the interactions of
purpose in establishing density ratios is not to en- a population within an area were based on spatial
courage densities high enough to achieve urbanity, propinquity, that is, on personal communication.
but rather to prevent densities from reaching cer Today instant communications have reduced our
tain maxima, supposedly for health and amenities reliance on physical propinquity – and thus density
reasons. Only rarely is a minimum density required – to generate interaction.
for urban services, mass transportation, and social Public transportation and density are closely
interaction. intertwined. High-density makes feasible various
Clearly, the emergence of segregated, low transportation modes, as well as pedestrian access
density patterns in U.S. cities is, to a large degree, to trains, subways, and buses, and thus is a crucial
a self-fulfilling prophecy. By using zoning controls determinant of accessibility in an urban system.
to limit densities, as well as by downgrading mass- Capacity, technology, and the cost of transportation
transit systems to a “second rate option,” cities systems are intimately related to density; subways
have ensured a segregated pattern whereby the can move large amounts of people, for example,
poor are crowded into expensive land near the but because of their high cost they must run
center, the wealthy expand to cheaper land far away through high-density corridors to be efficient. Each f
from the slums, and the image of success is a mode of urban mass-transportation technology – o
u
low-density estate. None of the social costs of this with its respective cost and capacity – is associated r
urban system are accounted for. with a density threshold.
The effect of density on transportation is visible
in the process of daily commuting. The separation
LOCATIONAL EFFECTS OF DENSITY, of workplaces from residential areas, forced by
URBANITY, AND THRESHOLDS large-scale land use homogeneity and segregation
means that very few people can walk to work. In
Density is the critical variable in determining urbanity addition, because of the low-density prevalent in
because of its locational effects. Density determines many residential suburban areas, people have no way
the accessibility of people to people, of people to of getting to work except by automobile, since even
work, of people to services and recreation; in short, buses are uneconomical to operate below certain
it allows urban relationships to flourish. thresholds. And to make the situation worse, the
Interaction among the elements of an urban dispersion of employment in low-density outlying
system is a precondition for the system’s existence. zones means that urban mass-transit service cannot
Interaction with a large number and variety of be provided to those areas – forcing full reliance
people and groups is at the core of the concept of on the private automobile.
communities, that is, organizations with sustained Many programs have been implemented in U.S.
interpersonal relationships, because it not only cities to remedy the shortcomings of a low-density
fulfills the need for affiliation and belonging but urban pattern. Commuter rail and outlying subway
offers an opportunity for a wide range of human stations have parking facilities to permit suburban
behavior. Indeed, “interactions are the basis for residents to drive to the stations. This solution is
the formation and continued existence of social limited by the capacity of parking lots – or the
organizations.”7 The presence of dense settlements patience of driving spouses – except when costly
maximizes the potential for such interactions. parking garages are provided, and is tailored mainly
The relationship between density and urbanity to commuting and other scheduled trips. Highway
is based on the concept of viable thresholds: At lanes are reserved for express buses and cars with
certain densities (thresholds), the number of people more than two people. Given their constraints, some
within a given area is sufficient to generate the of these programs have succeeded in fulfilling their
interactions needed to make certain urban functions modest objectives. It is apparent that the largest
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 403 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

of the U.S. metropolises could not function without A detached single-family house normally ranges
mass-transportation systems, but the fact remains from a net density of 1 to 5 du/acre. Tighter
that those systems at best provide a second-rate clustering would allow a density increase of up to
service and at worst are poorly maintained and 8 du/acre. A semidetached two-family house ranges
vandalized systems where crime is an everyday from 5 to 12 du/acre. A town house with party walls
experience. could range from 10 to 16 du/acre. The net density
A comparison between the urban transportation of 12 du/acre is the first urbanity threshold, since
systems of Boston and Paris illustrates the effects below that level it is difficult to provide community
of density.8 The city of Boston proper, with a popu facilities in close proximity to the dwellings.9 The
lation of more than 600,000 in 46 square miles, tight pattern of single- and two-family houses is
has a density of 21 people per acre, whereas Paris, commonly found in many inner metropolitan areas
with a population of more than 2,200,000 over and in most small towns of Middle America. It
40 square miles, has 84 people per acre – a density is a small-scale, true urban environment, catalyst
four times higher than that of Boston. As a result, of many vital communities, immortalized by Frank
every Parisian is within four to five blocks of one Capra in his films of the 1930s and 1940s. The
of the 279 Metro stations, where silent and clean town house (or row house) has been the basic raw
trains run every 60 to 90 seconds. For a Bostonian, material for many cities, its density allowing the
this is a dream that could never be matched, simply generation of an urban environment with com
because four very expensive miles of subway would munity facilities nearby; the brownstones of New
be needed in Boston to serve the same population York and the townhouses of Boston are among the
that can be served with only one mile in Paris. many examples found on the eastern seaboard.
The relationship between density and urbanity Tighter clustering with perhaps some mix of
extends beyond transportation, reaching to the two-story flats would allow density to increase
viability of, and accessibility to most urban services. to 20 du/acre. The net density of 20 du/acre is
In the retail sector, for example, there is an increase another threshold, since above it direct access to
in the number of shops and stores as residential the ground cannot be provided from each unit,
density increases. Population density and the avail- leading to a radical change in the nature of the
able income of the population living within an outdoor open space, a reduction of unit identity,
accessible distance determine a series of thresh- and a need for common parking areas.10 Thus, the
olds. Below a certain density, no retail stores can threshold of 20 du/acre is the watershed that divides
exist; as density increases, feasibility thresholds are the types of dwellings that can maintain a unit
reached, allowing an increasing number and variety identity from those that are merged into larger
of stores. From the point of view of the merchant, combinations.
commercial feasibility is an economic consideration; Low-rise apartment buildings, such as three-
for residents, easy accessibility of commercial ser- story walkups, have a net density that ranges from
vices is not only a convenience but a social amenity. 35 to 50 du/acre. At the upper level of this range,
Recognizing density thresholds is thus critical 45 to 50 du/acre, visual intimacy can begin to be
to understanding the effects of density on urbanity. lost,11 and a concentrated urban scale emerges.
In the retail sector, for example, the effects of Midrise apartment buildings, six stories high, range
density on the number and variety of retail stores from 65 to 75 du/acre. The upper range, 75 to
in a commercial center can be studied through the 80 du/acre, is another threshold, since above this
effects of distance on shopping trips, the size of level there can be a wide variety of facilities and
the center as an attraction to shoppers, and balance activities easily accessible to each dwelling, indicating
with competing commercial centers. It is also pos- that from two points of view – space and acces-
sible to sketch a series of residential density ranges sibility – we are already in the realm of the higher
and suggest an initial set of thresholds; the relation- hierarchical levels of the urban environment. At
ships presented below, expressed in dwelling units the same time, the provision of parking and open
per acre (du/acre), correspond to the ranges com- space becomes an important design issue.12
monly found in the United States; other countries At the top of the urban hierarchy, high-rise apart-
have different density thresholds. ments can range from 50 to 100 du/acre. Above
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 404 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

that range we enter the level of high-density central a multivariate phenomenon due to the interaction
city buildings, with all the limitations and advantages of spatial, social, and personal factors and is
that the core of urbanity can provide – maximum characterized by stress.14 As a result, density is a
accessibility, but also limited open space, congested quantifiable index that is easy to apply universally
streets, and, in general, pressure for space. Clearly, and to measure physically and economically, whereas
cities that provide substitutes for the automobile crowding is a subjective and highly personal experi
in the form of good mass transit and some major ence translated into psychological stress, involving
open space – Central Park in New York, Luxembourg numerous factors, and impossible to apply univer-
or Les Tuilleries in Paris, Hyde Park in London, sally. Clearly, many of the objections to density can
Palermo in Buenos Aires – certainly offer attractive be legitimately directed toward crowding.
central locations. The most general way to study the relationship
among social variables is statistical correlation. This
method will not prove that the relationship is one
SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS of cause and effect, but it will associate phenomena,
OF DENSITY AND CROWDING highlighting areas for more conclusive research.
In this respect, we must reiterate warnings about
The pervasive aversion to urban density and the conceptualizing the relationship between the built
implementation of density control measures have environment and human behavior in a deterministic
been justified on the basis of the assumed negative way, by mistakenly assuming that behavior is a
effects of density on people. But how real are these direct response to environmental stimulus.15 The f
effects? effects of density have been statistically studied, o
u
It is important, first, to distinguish density from and although on first impression density appears r
crowding. Although often confused, density and to be related to pathological behavior, more detailed
crowding are measures of different phenomena. analysis indicates otherwise. The small apparent
Density is the ratio of people or dwelling units to effects of density on pathological behavior are
land area. Differences in density have economic reduced to insignificance when controls for social
and physical implications but no clear social or psy class and ethnicity are introduced.16
chological effects. Crowding is the ratio of people For example, a statistical analysis of census data,
to dwelling units or rooms. Different degrees of involving a number of public housing projects
crowding have clear social and psychological effects. around the world,17 correlates measures of popu
Studies of urban patterns have shown that, at the lation density with indices of social and medical
neighborhood level, there is no correlation between pathology, as well as with the effects of inter
density and crowding and that different densities mediate variables such as income and education
have no systematic relationship to people’s percep- controlled through partial correlation. The results
tion of crowding.13 The difference between the two indicate that, although high population density is
ratios can be shown by example: high-density and commonly associated with social disorganization, the
low crowding can exist in a high-rise, upper-class positive correlation between density and pathology
apartment building, where there are many dwelling disappears when measures of social status are
units per acre but few persons per dwelling. In utilized as control variables.18 In other words, such
contrast, low-density and high crowding can be factors as poverty and low educational levels are
found in isolated rural shacks in a depressed region, at the root of social disorganization and patho-
where there are few dwellings per acre but many logical behavior. I should add that even this statistical
people per room. interpretation must be qualified. There are many
The most important difference between the two societies in which people with extremely low
concepts is that density reflects mainly physical incomes and poor education lead a structured
and economic conditions, whereas crowding reflects social life without such pathological behavior. The
social and psychological conditions. Thus, density difference seems to lie in the existence of a tradi-
is a measure of the physical (univariate) condition, tional social order within the community pattern.
involving limited use of space. In contrast, crowd- This phenomenon is observed in the Third World,
ing is a perceived condition of limited space; it is where rural migrants who lived a structured life in
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villages are traumatized by the breakup of traditional crowded in the midst of strangers, but quite com-
ties in cities, leading to social disorganization and fortable and secure in the presence of an equal
environmental degradation, on top of economic number of friends.”28 In addition, laboratory research
poverty. has shown that conditions that potentially cause
High density in U.S. slums is the result of the crowding have no negative effects on the perfor-
poor being forced to concentrate on expensive land mance of human tasks if the physical consequences
around the city center in order to be near jobs and of spatial restrictions (high temperature, stuffiness,
transportation, and being unable to move to other limited movement) and other environmental stresses
areas because of segregation barriers. Crowding (noise) are controlled.29 Spatial restriction is a
is the result of the poor being forced to fit large necessary precondition of, but is not sufficient by
families into small apartments because of high rents. itself to cause, crowding stress. Thus, crowding
Such concentration of poverty, with people living is not objective and abstract, but subjective and
in crowded, deteriorating quarters, with limited personalized. The demand for space, however,
access to jobs and education, is the cause of high originates in fairly universal needs for privacy and
incidences of disease, socially pathologic behavior, personal turf. Privacy does not mean withdrawal,
and the creation of a “lumpen” subculture. but the ability to control visual and auditory inter-
Crowding, measured as the number of people per action,30 and can be defined at various levels:
room, has been found to be highly correlated with solitude, intimacy, anonymity in a crowd, and con-
such indices of social pathology as high mortality trol of intrusion through psychological barriers.31
and juvenile delinquency since the earliest studies But even privacy is not an absolute concept; it
conducted in this field.19 This conclusion has been depends on the cultural milieu.
supported by later studies, which strongly suggest One of the most critical factors affecting the
that interpersonal pressure or crowding may be perception of crowding, as well as of density, is
linked with pathological behavior.20 It is important culture, which controls much of human behavior.
to note that studies conducted on different neigh- In addition, expectations and past experiences
borhoods found no correlation between crowding affect one’s perception of crowding. Correlation
and density and an inverse relationship between studies show that spatial restriction is not always
the level of crowding analysis and the importance associated with social pathology and that cultural
of physical density measures at the city level.21 But traditions define different parameters for density
residential crowding has consistently been found and crowding. The fact that Hong Kong, with a
to have negative consequences.22 residential density ten times higher than that of
Recall that crowding is a perceived condition. Manhattan, is a thriving city not particularly bur-
The perception of crowding is inversely related to dened with behavioral pathologies is one indication
one’s ability to exercise behavioral freedom and to of the importance of a cultural framework. Indeed,
exert control over one’s social and physical environ- the relationship between high neighborhood densities
ment.23 That is, crowding is experienced when the and social pathology is mediated by personal and
number of people in one’s environment is large cultural factors.32
enough to reduce one’s behavioral freedom and The mediating effects of culture in spatial percep
choice.24 This gives rise to overmanned situations;25 tion in general, and in the perception of crowding
it imposes behavioral restrictions and creates social and density in particular, are probably the most
interference, leading to competition for scarce important obstacle to the generalization of research
resources.26 findings outside of a specific environment. Differ
Crowding is perceived when a person’s demand ent social groups have different perceptions of what
for space exceeds the supply of space.27 But this constitutes trespassing in space and what consti-
situation could originate in physical factors – tutes permissible involvement in public and private
restricted space, arrangement of space, light con areas, leading Hall to assert that “culture is possibly
ditions – as much as it could originate in social the most significant single variable in determining
factors, such as the presence of other persons felt what constitutes stressful density,” because “people
to be competitors, since “an individual may feel brought up in different cultures live in different
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perceptual worlds . . . People perceive space quite is that they offer limited alternatives for patterns
differently.”33 Cultural norms mediate the percep- of behavior.39 In addition, because of cultural vari-
tion and adjustment of interpersonal space and, ations in activity, family and gender, privacy and
thus, the sensory thresholds for residential crowd- social intercourse,40 the same environment would
ing and urban density. be perceived and used differently by different
It has been suggested that crowding may be the people, according to their values, experience, and
result of perceived urban congestion and excessive motivation.41 In the context of the postindustrial
social stimulation;34 the inability to avoid or reduce metropolis, where cosmopolitans share urban space
social or visual contact35 may cause a cognitive with locals of various cultural extractions, these
overload leading to stress and withdrawal.36 Cultural concepts are critical to community designers.
norms radically change the thresholds of such Sommers developed the concept of personal space,
perception. in which territoriality is a way to attain privacy
However, cultural differences in the perception through physical or symbolic barriers, and space
of crowding and density cannot be adjusted through is personalized to satisfy one’s needs for identity,
an anthropological classification of cultures. It has security, self-fulfillment, and a frame of reference.42
been said, for example, that urban scale must be The personalization of the suburb of Levittown or
consistent with ethnic scale, since each ethnic group Le Corbusier’s project at Pessac is an indication of
seems to have developed its own scale.37 Does this people’s preference for diversity. Territoriality, like
mean that an Irish neighborhood must be planned many other urban concepts, is culture specific;
in a different way than a Polish one? To what extent the hierarchy of private to public turfs varies with f
should subcultures be disaggregated in environments different cultural parameters. o
u
as rich as urban areas? A clue to understanding In summary, crowding stress cannot be pre- r
this issue, at least for planners and designers, is dicted on the basis of spatial considerations alone;
given by one of the oldest neighborhoods in Boston, it is determined by a combination of environmen-
the North End, which today is largely Italian; its tal and personal factors acting over time. The psy-
tightly packed, mid-rise, relatively high-density chological stress of crowding involves not only
pattern, its narrow streets and alleys seem to be realization that demands for space cannot be met
ideally suited for an Italian neighborhood. However, by the supply, but also an emotional imbalance in
the North End was built and settled by groups which a person feels infringed upon, alienated, and
migrating from England in the eighteenth century deprived of privacy. The size of physical space –
(some of whose descendants now live in exclusive and thus the number of people per area – is only
suburbs with quite different lifestyles). The explan one of the variables of crowding. The noise and
ation for this is that the original English settlers light levels in a space, the number of objects and
belonged to the same European urban culture from their arrangement, the social situation, the activities
which the more recent Italians originated. Thus, a taking place, and the personal psychology are all
straightforward ethnic label may not account for the factors that, together, determine the perception of
truly differential factors within urban subcultures, crowding and the level of stress. The close, personal
or the common elements they share. proximity of urban life, when seen from the vantage
The complexity of the relationships between point of suburban life, may seem threatening since
built environment and human behavior has led the attraction (or focus) of urban activities may not
to the formulation of various theories that go be sufficiently perceived by suburban observers.
beyond the effects of crowding and density. Barker A dense urban situation may be unappealing to a
has proposed the concept of behavioral settings, person not familiar with the activities taking place
in which the built environment is interpreted as in that environment and unaccustomed to the urban
affording (but not determining) behavioral oppor- rituals and routines that structure – and give mean-
tunities;38 in order to survive, an urban environment ing to – dense urban life.
must be adaptable to different behaviors and to Crowding has an opposite: undercrowding.
changing behaviors. One of the criticisms raised by Undercrowding is defined as an excessive abun-
Frampton to Modern and Postmodern architecture dance of space in which an individual suffers social
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isolation and needs enclosure and contact with is the objective, then the establishment of a sky
others – sometimes manifesting as agoraphobia, exposure plane would be more adequate. This con-
or fear of large spaces. Too much space can be as trol approach, tailored for central areas, limits the
undesirable as too little. vertical height of buildings along the street line,
Thus, the limitation of density in a community but could allow setbacks determined by a sloping
does not address the problems caused by crowding. plane. If ensuring usable open space is the objective,
In the design of a community, crowding must be then the use of an open-space ratio is recommended.
prevented through a sensitive handling of the var- This ratio states the percentage of a lot that must
ious relationships between people and inhabited be kept undeveloped. If an adequate relationship
space. In contrast, density must be based on to land in terms of future demands on municipal
community-related considerations in order to reach utilities and street capacity is the objective, then the
desired thresholds of urban services. establishment of a floor area ratio would be suit-
able. This ratio, equally valid in central or peripheral
areas, limits the building gross floor area (i.e., the
TOWARD URBAN DENSITIES sum of all its floors) for given uses per lot area –
which would ensure a balance between develop-
As already mentioned, density planning has been ment and infrastructure capacity.
used almost exclusively to establish maximum A more flexible use of various control approaches
density limits, with a clear preference for low levels. to suit the needs of a particular problem would
Zoning is the typical mechanism for establishing be desirable: incentives could be introduced in
density limits, using such criteria as ensuring order to foster additional community objectives.
adequate daylight, sunlight, air, usable open space, For example, if a setback at the sidewalk level were
room for community facilities, a feeling of open- desired at a specific intersection, the sky exposure
ness and privacy, and adequate relationship of plane could be allowed at a steeper angle; or if
building cost to land and improvement costs.43 more open space were desired, the incentive could
Except for the last one, an economic objective be higher allowable density.
legitimately influenced by density, there are very There are two distinct areas of concern. One is
few objective justifications for these requirements. crowding on a residential scale; the other is density
Consequently, controls on density are frequently on an urban scale. Residential crowding, a cause
unwarranted, their real use being to prevent un- of pathological behavior, is the result of the seg-
desirable development. regation of poor people in high-rent areas. Attempts
Daylight and sunlight are, in fact, only very to solve this complex problem must be an integral
loosely related to density, since they begin to be part of our efforts to eliminate discrimination in all
restricted only at the highest values; they are its dimensions and to give everyone a share of the
influenced to a much greater degree by the type community wealth. Land use and housing integra-
of building, landscaping, and fenestration. Usable tion, access to education and good employment,
open space has a tenuous connection with density; and provision of housing for all income groups
it is possible to obtain a large amount of open must be high-priority public policies. Clearly, this
space in high-density areas (with high-rise buildings) amounts to a radical program, and in no way can
and, vice versa, a small amount of open space in one understate the seriousness of the obstacles likely
relatively low-density areas (with single-family unit to be encountered in trying to implement it. How
subdivisions). Nor does privacy bear a consistent ever, it is essential to recognize that the orthodox
relation to density: some low-density areas have application of density limits in order to solve the
little privacy because windows open to surrounding problem of crowding has absolutely no effect on
yards facing neighboring windows without fences, this problem.
and there is no transition between houses and the On an urban scale, density can, and should, be
community. handled through density regulation, among other
There are better ways to fulfill these require- planning and design tools. Yet regardless of the
ments than through the stringent application of flexibility with which various control approaches
density indices. If ensuring daylight and sunlight can be used, the fact remains that the application
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of all of them is biased by cultural values. As already to the existence of density corridors that make
mentioned, the concern for over-dense areas has high-quality mass transit feasible. To paraphrase
led to an almost complete disregard for the opposite the chicken and the egg question: What comes first,
problem – that of under-dense areas. Metropolitan urban densities or good mass transit? We will return
densities are affected by two extremes, which we to this issue later in this chapter.
shall call areas of over-urban density and areas of Speculation in land values and gigantism in organ
sub-urban density. Over-urban density can create izations and projects constitute another vicious
a perception of crowding. It reduces choice, privacy, circle that feeds on itself. As mentioned before, land
and opportunities for personalization. The environ- values rise to astronomical levels in the expectation
ment loses adaptability, flexibility, and opportunities of huge profits reaped by giant developments;
for alternative human behavior. In short, people giant developments exist because land values are
lose control of the environment. Sub-urban density astronomically high and corporations demand ever
can lead to isolation. It reduces the capacity for larger built complexes. The reduction of over-urban
interaction and, thus, choice. The environment pro- densities; the elimination of huge anonymous
vides few options for human behavior. In another lobbies, elevator banks, corridors, and office pools;
way, people also lose control of the environment. the introduction of human scale in the workplace
The basic question is, How can we reestablish and of civilized urban scale in the community –
density as a building block of urban life and urban these appear nothing short of impossible. For com-
communities? munity designers to lead the charge against these
corporate trends would seem folly . . . until one f
remembers David and Goliath. We shall return to o
u
The pattern of density: balance and variety this issue later as well. r
A large proportion of the population in metro-
The major obstacle to reestablishing a range of politan areas is caught in the daily stressful swing
urban densities is that there has been a polarization either between over-urban and sub-urban areas or
of densities at both extremes of the spectrum. between suburban residential life and suburban
In addition, these density extremes are experienced employment. The balance strategy aims at restor-
daily by the metropolitan population, giving rise to ing a wide range of urban densities. It must not
a polarization that feeds on itself. The crowding of be misunderstood, however, as leading toward a
daily commuters in packed trains and buses or on homogeneous environment. Far from it. Another
congested highways, and the regimented anonymity design strategy is to open this wide range of urban
of huge corporate workplaces, lead people to seek density options to all population groups.
respite in quiet suburbia, with identifiable houses Optimal density is not one constant value but
and patches of green. Millions of people experience many different values. In the continuum between
daily the rather traumatic shift from a sub-urban personal privacy and community-wide interaction,
environment to an over-urban one, and vice versa, density is one of the key factors in increasing
in the belief that the first extreme is a cure for the choice. The challenge for planners, designers, and
ills of the other. civic leaders is to create neighborhoods of varying
One design strategy is to ameliorate the crowd- densities, with small semi-private community areas
ing experienced during the trip to and from work as well as large public spaces, so that both inter
and in the workplace itself, thereby reducing stress action and seclusion can be enjoyed. These are
and thus the need for compensation in the form necessary conditions for a true community design.
of low-density suburbs. This strategy assumes that, The optimal situation is to be able to choose, at
in order to restore a range of community densities, different times, the thrill of urban life as well as the
it is necessary to erode the two pathological soothing quality of small-scale environments.
extremes of over-urban and sub-urban densities. By “urban thrill” I do not mean Times Square,
We could call this a strategy of balance. and by “small-scale environment” I do not mean
This strategy faces serious obstacles. The an isolated suburb – not necessarily, at least. These
improvement of the trip to and from work – making two types of spaces, which could be near one
it shorter and more comfortable – is clearly linked another, need not evoke the stereotypical images
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of skyscrapers and single-family estates. London have rejected a plan to extend the subway system
offers many urban-scale dense areas that do not to their communities: the probable reason was a
oppress with crowding, anomie, or exhaustion, fear of “undesirable people” gaining access to the
and yet constitute the highest level in the urban community, as well as an aversion to converting
hierarchy – Regent Street is one of many examples low-density residential areas in the vicinity of the
– as well as intimate areas in close relation to the proposed transit corridor into higher-density multi
former – the famous Mews are delightful examples family residential and commercial uses.
– plus many in between – Grosvenor Square, to Clearly, the selective coordination of zoning of
mention one. key areas on the metropolitan scale would be a
It is very important that the range of density breakthrough of major proportions, because every
options be kept open to all population groups. Today municipality jealously guards its right to zone the
there is a wide range of options for only a very land within its boundaries. There is a growing
few – elite groups who could choose any space from number of reasons to change this archaic political
a luxurious penthouse in the city center to a rural mosaic into a more responsive and integrated
estate. As income decreases, choice narrows; the metropolitan organization. Among them are the
poor must accept subhuman conditions in marginal need to develop a first-rate public transportation
environments. The importance of the strategy pro- system, to protect water resources (including
posed here lies in the opening of density choices reserves and aquifers) and open space, to treat
– and thus lifestyles to some degree – to all. sewage properly, to isolate and clean contaminated
waste dumps, as well as to open up location and
housing choices to people of all races and social
The regulation of density classes.
Meanwhile, planners and designers must explore
The implementation of the design strategy of balance a number of fronts in order to implement the design
demands a certain control of densities across strategies of balance and variety in density. The
the metropolitan area. A reduction of over-urban reduction of overcrowding and anomie in corporate
density and crowding in some central areas, a and bureaucratic workplaces demands a number
reconcentration of suburban workplaces in denser of complementary controls and incentives, only
centers, and an increase in suburban densities the most important of which I will mention here.
require planning efforts on a metropolitan scale, The scale and bulk of office buildings should be
with participation and consensus of the various reduced through a combination of maximum floor
municipalities forming the metro area. The most area ratio (building floor area over land area), height,
critical argument for metropolitan integration of gross floor area served by one elevator core, and
efforts is the need to coordinate density and public distance to windows. These controls aim at dis
transportation. One of the most ironic planning aggregating the building bulk and providing less
contradictions in the United States is that decisions crowded, less anonymous, and more humane
on density and mass transportation not only are workplaces. This approach is part of the general
made independently but often are at odds with one decentralization and sub-optimization strategy for
another. dealing with large organizations.
Although every transportation authority has The introduction of giant office complexes, com-
responsibility over a metropolitan area, most plan- pletely out of scale and character with the prevailing
ning of transit networks and services is undertaken urban pattern, has resulted in over-urban densities
without minimum coordination with the local and led to major environmental conflicts. Designing
municipal agencies responsible for density (and buildings in scale with the existing pattern is a first
land use) zoning. Furthermore, every municipality step toward regaining an urban community without
has the right to veto improvements or extensions overcrowding. Limiting the floor area that can
of mass transit to its residents, thus hampering the be served by one elevator core and designating
effective planning of urban transportation. In the the maximum distance from a work station to the
past few years, for example, several Boston suburbs nearest window are controls that aim at providing
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a better environment while eliminating the dis to locate within their boundaries; they offer tax
orientation, anonymity, and crowding of oversized incentives, sometimes very generous ones, to tilt
buildings. The purpose of establishing realistic floor the balance in their favor. The major reason for
area ratios is to bring development in scale with, this competition is that businesses pay more to
among other parameters, the traffic capacity of towns in property taxes than what they consume
streets. in municipal services, thus providing substantial
Central city zoning must support public trans- fiscal benefits. However, in the heat of the com
portation, offering incentives to developers and petition, towns offer incentives such as tax breaks
agencies that cooperate in improving it. Among to such a degree that they often end up losing the
other possibilities, buildings should provide access benefits.
to underground subway stations, should give first Any strategy for reconcentrating suburban employ
priority to the upgrading of station entries with ment must face the fact that some municipalities
visibility and light from sidewalks, and should con- would lose their property tax base. A solution to
tribute additional amenities at the sidewalk level this problem is the already mentioned establish-
for pedestrians – for example, arcades to protect ment of a metropolitan authority, which would be
people from bad weather, waiting areas for bus responsible for pooling the collection of property tax
and taxi stops, and restrooms. This type of public- revenues and their distribution to each municipality
oriented facility designed in coordination with the based on some agreed-upon criteria. Currently,
city and transit authorities – rather than the cur- property taxes are used within the municipality that
rently fashionable consumerist “atriums” – must collects them, and tax revenues are raised on the f
be encouraged. A historical precedent are the basis of valuation and rate. A criterion for redistri- o
u
gallerias that flourished in the preceding century. bution could be revenue allocation by population r
At the same time, incentives for the provision in general, and low-income groups in particular.
of small plazas in the front of every office building This not only would assure each municipality of
could well be eliminated. Most of these plazas are tax revenues regardless of the business uses within
wind-swept barren spaces that break the continuity its boundaries, but also would improve the equality
of streets and avenues. They are a clear example of distribution. If this approach were taken, land
of an urban pattern being undermined by building could be devoted to the best use – free of fiscal
types without community sense. Open space in considerations – and densities could be more easily
central areas must be the result of a conscious reconcentrated.
planning decision within the urban pattern; Central Finally, strategies for increasing suburban re
Park in New York, the plazas of Savannah, the sidential densities should combine a number of
squares of London, and the tree-lined boulevards alternative approaches. Minimum lot sizes should be
of Paris are examples of properly planned open reduced; for areas with single-family units, quarter-
spaces. acre lots satisfy the need for private open space
A strategy of reconcentration should be used while permitting some form of surface public trans-
to redirect the trend toward suburbanization of portation. Zero lot lines should be encouraged in
employment. Strategic nodes with actual or potential more urban situations. Several communities have
access to extensions of public transportation sys- begun to experiment with cluster zoning, whereby
tems should be zoned for secondary or tertiary the same number of dwelling units that can exist in
employment centers, with mixed uses and urban a given area under normal zoning are concentrated
densities. Large dispersed employment areas along in a much smaller area and the area remaining
highways should ideally be phased out if serving them is devoted to open space. This approach, which is
with public transportation proves to be unfeasible. very valuable in low-density suburbs, could be
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done because improved by requiring that the remaining open
of a specific fiscal characteristic of many U.S. muni space be planned as an integral part of the open-
cipalities: the local property tax. space system in the community and that the cluster
Most suburban towns, except the most affluent of dwellings also be planned in relation to the
ones, compete strenuously to induce businesses existing built pattern.
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Cluster zoning could be expanded into a full in its architecture of walls and private gardens.
policy of channeling peripheral developments into And yet it allows itself the luxury – indeed, the
“villages.” In many suburban and exurban areas, new basic requirement for human life – of a rich com-
construction could replicate traditional settlement munity life.
forms, such as villages and hamlets. If those villages Another widespread dwelling type, originating
were zoned at crossroads, certain thresholds would in northern Europe and later transferred to North
be reached: services and facilities within walking America, is the party-wall row house or town house,
distance of the village inhabitants, as well as bus which has formed, with multiple variations, the
service, could be provided and rural areas and farm majority of urban patterns in those countries. This
land preserved. The village approach is related to our type, like the preceding one, while preserving
previous proposal to redevelop obsolete shopping individual privacy within the house, combines into
centers as mixed-use integrated local centers. Both dense urban patterns that encourage community
approaches involve reconcentration and achieve- interaction.
ment of higher densities and urban thresholds. At the level in which dwellings combine to form
apartment buildings, there is a rich variety of types
offering a trade-off between the advantages of
Density and dwelling types higher densities and a lack of direct access to the
ground. At the opposite end of the spectrum is
One of the problems of defining density in oper the single-family dwelling on a lot with a range of
ational terms is the relatively weak relationship options in terms of frontage, side yard require-
between density and building types. The same den- ments, and fences.
sity can be obtained with radically different building In all cases, a successful pattern should offer a
types, and the same type can be used to obtain proper gradation between the privacy of the house
different densities. For example, the myth that high- and the various levels of community. A proper
density is equivalent to high-rise construction has sequence of intermediate levels must account for
been dispelled by the “rediscovery” of tightly elements both on private turf – front yards, fences,
packed, high-density, low-rise types. Since density entrances to buildings, balconies – and on public
is nothing more than a quantitative index with turf – residential and metropolitan streets, neigh-
perhaps some clues to possible design solutions, it borhood and urban centers, quiet plazas and bust
has few deterministic implications in terms of visual ling squares. A successful density control system
images and behavioral settings. Even environments must consider those intermediate levels.
with the same density and building type can be Ultimately, the repossessing of community den-
very different in character, depending on the design sities, with all that this implies in terms of urbanity,
nuances – as the differences between old town will depend on the establishment of urban patterns
house neighborhoods and newer versions in count- in which suitable building types can be developed,
less developments clearly show. Yet dwelling types a variety of conditions and environments can be
offer some key opportunities for achieving certain achieved, a hierarchy of urban thresholds can be
density levels. reached, and human beings can choose the level
The Mediterranean cultures – Greek and Roman, of community interaction at which they wish to
Egyptian, Italian and Spanish, Moroccan, Portuguese, participate.
and French – all used a recurrent dwelling type in
endless variations: the patio house or court house
(which is also found across most of the American NOTES
continent). The first known example is the so-called
House of Abraham in Ur. Using this dwelling type, 1 U.S. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of
these cultures built urban communities that became the U.S.: 1970 Census of the Population.
the cradle of civilization. Their cultural values are 2 Jean Bastié, “Paris: Baroque Elegance and
reflected in the Arab proverb “Paradise without Agglomeration,” in H. Wentworth Eldredge (ed.),
people should not be entered because it is hell.” World Capitals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/
Middle Eastern culture treasures privacy, as shown Anchor Press, 1975), pp. 55–89.
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 412 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

3 David A. Crane and Associates, A Comparative 18 Stokols, “Social-Psychological Model.”

Study of New Towns (New York Urban Develop 19 Omer R. Galle, Walter R. Gove, and J.
ment Corporation, 1970). McPherson, “Population Density and Pathology,”
4 Edwin S. Mills, Urban Economics (Glenview, Ill.: Science, 176 (1972): 23–30.
Scott, Foresman, 1972). 20 Galle and Grove, “Crowding and Behavior.”
5 William Alonso, Location and Land Use (Cambridge, 21 Schmidt, “Crowding in the Urban Environment.”
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 22 Paul R. Hopstock, John R. Aiello, and Andrew
6 Irving Hoch, “The Three-Dimensional City: Baum, “Residential Crowding Research,” in
Contained Urban Space” in Harvey S. Perloff Aiello and Baum (eds), Residential Crowding,
(ed.), The Quality of the Urban Environment pp. 9–21.
(Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 23 J. Brehm, A Theory of Psychological Reactance
1969), pp. 73–135. (New York: Academic Press, 1966).
7 Jon T. Lang, Creating Architectural Theory: The Role 24 H. Proshansky, W. Ittelson, and L. Rivkin, Environ
of Behavioral Sciences in Environmental Design mental Psychology (New York: Holt, 1970).
(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987). 25 A.W. Wickerm, “Undermanning Theory and
8 Robert Campbell, “Romance of Paris is Fueled Research: Implications for the Study of Psy
by its Density,” Boston Globe, 14 August 1984. chological and Behavioral Effects of Excess
9 Kevin Lynch, Site Planning, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Population,” Representative Research in Social
Mass.: MIT Press, 1971). Psychology, 4 (1973): 185–206.
10 Ibid. 26 A. Sagert, “Crowding: Cognitive Overload and f
11 Ibid. Behavioral Constraint,” in W. Preiser (ed.), Pro o
u
12 Ibid. ceeding of the Environmental Research Association, r
13 Donald E. Schmidt, “Crowding in the Urban vol. 2 (Stoudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson
Environment: An Integration of Theory and & Ross, 1973), pp. 254–60; Daniel Stokols, “The
Research,” in John R. Aiello and Andrew Baum Experience of Crowding in Primary and
(eds), Residential Crowding and Design (New Secondary Environments,” Environment and
York: Plenum Press, 1979), pp. 41–59. Behavior, 8 (1976): 49–86.
14 Daniel Stokols, “A Social-Psychological Model 27 Stokols, “The Experience of Crowding.”
of Human Crowding Phenomena,” Journal of 28 Stokols, “Social-Psychological Model.”
the American Institute of Planners, 38, No. 2 29 W. Griffitt and R. Veitch, “Hot and Crowded:
(1972): 72–83. Influences of Population Density and Temper
15 Lang, Creating Architectural Theory. ature on Interpersonal Affective Behavior,”
16 Omer R. Galle and Walter R. Grove, “Crowding Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17,
and Behavior in Chicago, 1940–1970,” in Aiello No. 1 (1971): 92–8; D.C. Glass and J.E. Singer,
and Baum (eds), Residential Crowding, pp. 23–39. Urban Stress (New York: Academic Press, 1972).
17 R.S. Schmitt, “Density, Health, and Social Dis 30 Lang, Creating Architectural Theory.
organization,” Journal of the American Institute 31 A. Westin, Privacy and Freedom (New York:
of Planners, 32, No. 1 (1996): 38–40; idem, Ballantine, 1970).
“Implications of Density in Hong Kong,” ibid., 32 William H. Michaelson, Man and His Urban
29, No. 3 (1963): 210–17; idem, “Density, Environment: A Sociological Approach (Reading,
Delinquency, and Crime in Honolulu,” Sociology Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1970).
and Social Research, 41 (1957): 247–6; Paul- 33 Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (Garden
Henry Chombart de Lauwe, Famille et Habitation City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966).
(Paris: Edition du Centre National de la 34 J.A. Desor, “Towards a Psychological Theory
Recherche Scientific, 1967); H. Winsborough, of Crowding,” Journal of Personality and Social
“The Social Consequences of High Population Psychology, 21, No. 1 (1972): 79–83.
Density,” Law and Contemporary Problems, 30, 35 I. Altman, The Environment and Social Behavior
No. 1 (1965): 120–6; R. Mitchell, “Some Social (Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1975).
Implications of High Density Housing,” American 36 S. Milgram, “The Experience of Living in Cities,”
Sociological Review, 36 (1971): 18–29. Science, 167 (1970).
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 413 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

37 Hall, The Hidden Dimension. 40 Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Engle
38 R.G. Barker, Ecological Psychology (Stanford, Calif.: wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969).
Stanford University Press, 1968); idem, “Ex 41 Lang, Creating Architectural Theory.
plorations in Ecological Psychology,” American 42 Robert Sommers, Personal Space: The Behavioral
Psychologist, 20 (1965): 1–14. Basis of Design (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
39 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical Hall, 1969).
History (New York: Oxford University Press, 43 American Public Health Association, Planning
1980). the Neighborhood (Chicago, 1960).
9780415668071_P4_02.indd 414 10-26-2012 3:23:26 PM

“Introduction,” “Physical Activity
and Public Health,” and “Urban
Design Characteristics”
from Health and Community Design: The Impact of
the Built Environment on Physical Activity (2003)
Lawrence D. Frank, Peter O. Engelke, and Thomas L. Schmid
Urban designers have long understood that built form influences human behavior, not by way of environmental
determinism but rather through environmental possibilism. The design qualities of places make some activities
possible and easy to undertake and other activities impossible or difficult. Spatial design can invite, welcome,
and encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. In recent years, a growing interest in how built form
relates to public health has emerged in the planning and public health fields, particularly the relationship with
chronic diseases such as obesity and depression, which are becoming more prevalent in western societies.
In the United States, childhood obesity affects so many young people that it has been identified as an epidemic,
and there is also considerable alarm about adult obesity. In many individuals, obesity has been found to cor-
relate with low levels of physical activity. Given the scale of the chronic obesity problem, might built form be
a culprit, particularly the automobile-oriented cities and neighborhoods that dominate so much of the American
landscape?
In the 1980s and 1990s, concerned public health researchers began focusing on moderate types of
physical activity, such as walking and biking, because of the realization that these forms might be easier for
most people to accomplish than intensively vigorous activity. They found that just 30 minutes of moderate
physical activity a day is enough to generate substantial long-term health benefits. Building on this finding,
many researchers are focusing on how built environments, particularly residential neighborhoods, support or don’t
support walking and biking. Larry Frank, Peter Engelke, and Thomas Schmid’s work Health and Community
Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity (2003) was one of the first books to present
a comprehensive study of this issue. Drawing on their extensive research of neighborhoods in Atlanta and
Seattle, and research done by others, they explore the dimensions of the problem, make cogent arguments
for the importance of addressing it, and offer evidence-based assessments of the types of neighborhood
environments that promote walking and biking. They identify transportation systems, land use patterns, and urban
design characteristics of the built environment as key co-contributors to walkability and bikability, and identify
American suburban sprawl environments as being largely unfriendly to these activities. In the end, admitting that
the task will not be easy, they call for broad coordinated changes in public policy at national, regional and local
levels directed at encouraging the creation of physical activity friendly environments. Essentially, they argue that
a public policy paradigm shift must occur that would radically change street and neighborhood design standards,
zoning requirements, development guidelines, and transportation funding initiatives, among other things.
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416 L a W R e N C e D . F R a N K , P ete R O . E N gel K e , a N d T H o M as L . S C H M id
In the chapter “Physical Activity and Public Health,” they lay out the rationale for why moderate types
of physical activity are the most important to focus on to combat the obesity problem. The chapter “Urban
Design Characteristics” focuses on how the small-scale design characteristics of an environment influence
how people perceive it – as friendly or threatening, interesting or dull, attractive or ugly – and hence the
desirability of walking or biking there.
In many ways, contemporary city planning started with the public health movement of the late 1800s.
At that time the focus was on diseases that seemed to be associated with terrible living conditions for the
poor in cities. Peter Hall writes about these conditions and the public reaction that spawned city planning
interventions in his book Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002) within the
chapter “The City of Dreadful Night.”
Lawrence D. Frank holds the Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Urban Transportation Systems at the Univer
sity of British Columbia and is a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution. He holds a PhD in Urban Design
and Planning from the University of Washington, and has studied the effects of urban form on walkability,
travel patterns, and sustainability for many years. His other works include Urban Sprawl and Public Health:
Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004) co-authored
with Howard Frumkin and Richard Jackson, and numerous journal articles and professional reports including
“Many Pathways from Land use to Health: Associations between Neighborhood Walkability and Active Trans-
portation, Body Mass Index, and Air Quality,” Journal of the American Planning Association (vol. 72, no. 1,
pp. 75–87, 2006), and “Multiple Impacts of the Built Environment on Public Health: Walkable Places and
the Exposure to Air Pollution,” International Regional Science Review (vol. 28, pp. 193–216, 2005), co-authored
with Peter O. Engelke.
Peter O. Engelke is a Visiting Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC and also works as a re-
search consultant on German energy policy. Subsequent to writing Health and Community Design, he earned
his PhD in environmental history from Georgetown University. His current research focuses on placing global
urbanization trends within environmental security and energy security contexts. A book on global environmen-
tal history since 1945 is forthcoming.
Thomas L. Schmid is Team Lead for the Research and Development Team, Division of Nutrition, Physical
Activity and Obesity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where he conducts and
evaluates research on effective strategies to promote physical activity and quality of life. He is also an Adjunct
Professor in the School of Public Health at Emory University and a senior advisor to the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation’s Active Living Research program. He earned a PhD in psychology, focusing on behavior
analysis, from West Virginia University. He has published widely on issues related to community design and
public health, evaluation and behavior change, with a particular focus on Latin America, including “A framework
for physical activity policy research,” Journal of Physical Activity and Health, (vol. 1, pp. S20–S29, 2006),
co-authored with M. Pratt and M. Witmer.
A recent book that brings together and summarizes research investigating links between public health
and the built environment is Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and
Sustainability (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011) edited by Andrew Dannenberg, Howard Frumkin, and
Richard Jackson. A related book is Richard Jackson and Stacy Sinclair’s Designing Healthy Communities
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011), which is the companion book to a public television documentary
that highlights how the design of the built environment can address or prevent childhood and adult health
concerns. Another recent comprehensive study of public health and environmental design is Jason Corburn’s
Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2009). Going beyond concerns with how urban form can be changed to promote physical activity, this work
argues for a broader conception of the healthy city that addresses health disparities arising from environmental
inequities. James A. Kushner’s Healthy Cities: The Intersection of Urban Planning, Law, and Health (Durham,
NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007) explores the legal mechanisms that can be used to better integrate
health concerns into planning and urban design policy.
Recent years have seen a plethora of journal articles concerned with the impacts of urban form on public
health. Those concerned with physical activity include Chanam Lee and Anne Vernez Moudon’s “Neighbourhood
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 416 10-26-2012 3:23:20 PM

Design and Physical Activity,” Building Research & Information (vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 395–411, 2008); Robert
Cervero et al.’s “Influences of Built Environments on Walking and Cycling: Lessons from Bogota,” International
Journal of Sustainable Transportation (vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 203–226, 2009); and Brian Saelens and Susan
Handy’s “Built Environment Correlates of Walking: A Review,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
(vol. 40, no. 7, pp. S550–S556, 2008). Those concerned with environmental justice issues include B.B. Cutts
et al.’s “City Structure, Obesity, and Environmental Justice: An Integrated analysis of physical and social
barriers to walkable streets and park access,” Social Science & Medicine (vol. 69, no. 9, pp. 1314–1322,
2009).
INTRODUCTION A century ago, American cities were highly walk

able places. They were compact. Commercial, retail,
Community design influences human behavior. The and even industrial operations existed in close
ways that cities, suburbs, and towns are designed proximity to housing, allowing people to walk to
and built impact the people who work, live, and work or school or the store. Out of necessity, build
play in them. The placement, layout, and design ings and streets were designed to the human scale.
of transportation systems, of office complexes, of Streetcar and trolley systems provided a major form f
parks, and of the countless physical elements that of transportation for millions of passengers every o
u
make up communities result in real places that day, in every major city in the nation, which meant r
have real significance in terms of how we spend that people had the means to make longer journeys
our time and what activities we engage in. Where without the use of a car. When combined, all of
people live, where they work, how they get around, this produced environments in which someone could
how much pollution they produce, what kinds of satisfy their basic daily needs within a comfortable
environmental hazards they face, and what kinds walking distance of their home or within a distance
of amenities they enjoy are a direct product of how reachable through a combination of walking and
communities are designed. This book is about how trolley riding.
our communities influence one important type of Unfortunately, the burgeoning cities of the
“behavior,” physical activity, and the health outcomes industrial era also brought with them a host of
that are associated with it. serious problems. They were dirty and polluted.
Unfortunately, the great majority of Americans They were crowded. Most importantly, they pro
do not get enough physical activity to maintain duced health problems for their inhabitants. The
their health over the long run. Physical inactivity is worst of these were the communicable disease
an enormous health problem in this country, con epidemics – typhus, yellow fever, and all manner
tributing to, among other things, premature death, of other infectious diseases – that swept through
chronic disease, osteoporosis, poor mental health, them with frightening regularity. The very conditions
and obesity. The environments in which most that made the industrial city a highly walkable place,
people spend their time – the modern American including its concentration of people, its mixing
city and the suburbs and exurbs that have been the of uses, and its high density of buildings, came to
dominant form of development in this country for be blamed – not quite accurately, as research even
over a half century – are an important contributor tually showed – for creating the conditions in which
to this problem. The cities and suburbs that we epidemics could occur. So during the nineteenth
inhabit are not now, and have not been for a long and early twentieth centuries, critics tore away at
time, places that encourage some critically import the intellectual foundation of the compact industrial
ant forms of physical activity. In short, our physical city. They sought to replace it with a new paradigm,
environment inhibits many forms of activity, such a new way of thinking about how to build cities.
as walking, and has become a significant barrier to In the old city’s place they created the modern
more active lifestyles. decentralized city, where housing was separated
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from workplaces and buildings placed far apart from everyday patterns of life. The dominant forms of
one another, separated by expanses of grass and community design have contributed to this decline
trees. America’s new cities of big lawns and big by making walking and cycling for transportation
distances would, they hoped and expected, produce difficult if not impossible. Many of the reasons why
more healthy living. What resulted was the city are clear to even the casual observer. Long distances
that we are so familiar with today – dominated by between places mean that most people cannot walk
suburbs, spread out, with different uses separated or bicycle from one place to another. The streets
one from another and almost everything reliant and roads that connect these far-flung places are
on automobile travel. This mass suburbanization designed for cars, often making them unsafe and
also led directly to a decline, in terms of population, extremely unattractive for pedestrians and bicyclists.
wealth, and public investment in the older, estab To make matters worse, most developers and retailers
lished central parts of most cities, resulting in the have long given up on the profitability of designing
widespread abandonment of the fabric of the old places that are visually attractive to people who
walkable city. might want to walk from place to place, favoring
Widespread criticism of this development model instead designs that attract motorists. As a result,
has appeared only during the last couple of de being physically active now requires planning for
cades. Much of it is a reaction to the omnipresent activities such as running, biking, aerobics, or weight
automobile congestion that is the hallmark of the lifting that can be done during leisure time.
decentralized city. Some of it is centered on the Coincidentally, during the post-World War II
monstrous-yet-monotonous ugliness of the endless period, public health research came to focus more
strip malls and parking lots that have proliferated and more on recreational and vigorous physical
from one end of the country to the other. Many activity as the way to improve public health. For years,
people are concerned about the environmental con health experts recommended that each individual
sequences of the modern city. These concerns focus get at least twenty minutes of high-intensity exercise
on the enormous amount of land consumed, the air each day. The basic idea was that anything less
quality problems produced by all of the cars needed would result in little or no improvement in long-
to keep these cities running, the vast quantities of term health. And, judging by the attention paid
municipal water that is required to irrigate the lawns to such forms of exercise in the popular media, it
of the new suburban landscapes, or the rainwater would seem that vigorous physical activity has been
that is wasted as polluted runoff from parking lots a runaway success. Specialty magazines devoted to
and streets. An even more recent source of criticism participatory sports and exercise programs ranging
is from the field of public health, which is beginning from running to weight lifting to climbing jam the
to explore potentially uncomfortable linkages be racks at newsstands. An array of televised sports
tween the decentralized city and different indicators occupies much of the country’s attention on week
of health. ends, bringing basketball, football, hockey, baseball,
and a slew of other offerings into millions of homes.
Advertisers in the print and electronic media per
Physical activity, past and present petually barrage the country with images of the
perfectly fit human figure, both male and female.
In the old cities, getting enough physical activity Yet this picture of a fit and healthy society is
during one’s day wasn’t an issue because it was as enormously misleading. The fact is that most Ameri
much a part of life as eating or sleeping. Today, cans don’t get enough physical activity to meet
physical activity has been engineered out of most the health recommendations set by public health
aspects of life. Work is no longer physically demand agencies. Despite the omnipresence of televised
ing for most people and daily living patterns, from sports, the billions of dollars in exercise equipment
mowing the grass to cooking dinner to washing and apparel sold every year, the millions of words
clothes, require significantly less manual effort than published on fitness and exercise regimens, and
they once did. The modern city has changed all the endless rhetoric springing from athletic shoe
of this, creating environments in which it is less and apparel companies’ advertising campaigns,
and less common to work physical activity into the only about 5 percent of the population – one person
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 418 10-26-2012 3:23:20 PM

in twenty – gets enough physical activity through recommend trying to get at least thirty minutes
vigorous exercise to satisfy public health standards per day, there is a belief that even ten or twenty
(CDC 2001b). Even worse, some studies have found additional minutes per day might generate some
that as much as 40 percent of the population is benefits. Vigorous physical activity is still considered
sedentary (being completely inactive) (Schoenborn to be an important means of staying healthy, but
and Barnes 2002); they report that they get no public health experts now believe that adding a half
physical activity at all during their leisure hours. hour or more of moderate physical activity per day
For all of the promotion and attention paid to sports- on most days of the week is enough to generate
and gym-based exercise as the way to get people long-term health benefits.
physically fit, the great majority of the population This consensus opinion carries enormous signific
has not succeeded in becoming physically active ance for addressing the problem of physical inactivity.
through these means. While millions of people do It suggests – perhaps demands – that public health
get a great deal of health benefit as well as personal agencies not limit themselves to programs that rely
satisfaction from sports, from training for endurance solely on motivating individuals to take up vigorous
and strength events, and from going to the gym for exercise. Rather, the door has been opened for
a workout, many more find that they don’t have an examination of the environmental influences
the will or the ability or the time or the resources of moderate physical activity. If one needs a half
to do any of these things. hour or more of moderate physical activity per day,
These are some of the reasons why, beginning accumulated in numerous short bouts, it might be
in the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, public wise to focus on creating environments that allow f
health agencies and researchers began to take these types of activities to occur as a matter of o
u
a serious look at more moderate types of physical course, as incidental to doing other things. For many r
activity such as walking and bicycling. Mounting people, perhaps even the majority of the population,
evidence from epidemiological studies began to such an approach may be the only realistic way to
reveal that moderate forms of physical activity could increase physical activity (incidentally, increasing
provide both short- and long-term health benefits, physical activity in this way may also be a way
contributing to a reduction in the risk of premature to reduce automobile use and lessen its attendant
mortality, chronic disease, and a host of other problems, such as air pollution and congestion).
maladies. Moreover, public health researchers began For different segments of the population who are
to believe that a focus on more moderate forms disadvantaged – many elderly and physically handi
of physical activity might enable a broader cross- capped people, for instance – vigorous activities may
section of the population to become physically be out of the question completely. For physically
active. Because moderate physical activity is lower capable people in the prime of life, other obstacles
in intensity, it is easier for a person who is seden such as a lack of time may severely constrict
tary to begin and to maintain their participation their ability to work out on a regular basis. For
over the long term. Moderate physical activity can the significant percentage of the population that is
be purposive, meaning that it can be integrated sedentary, the benefits of adding a half hour of
into daily living habits, and as a result it should moderate physical activity each day are enormous:
be more attractive to people who don’t have the physical activity follows a dose-response curve,
necessary free time to work out at a gym or go wherein the marginal benefits to increased exercise
mountain biking in the woods. accrue the most to those who are the least active
What is old, then, is new: public health agencies to begin with.
now endorse those forms of moderate physical
activity such as walking and bicycling that used
to be very commonplace in American cities and Community design, physical activity,
towns. Public health officials recommend that people and health: a conceptual model
accumulate at least thirty minutes of moderate
activity on most, preferably all days of the week. Figure 1 provides a simple model of the relationships
Adding any additional amount of moderate activ between physical activity, health, and the environ
ity is good; in fact, while public health agencies ments in which people live and work. . . . Causality
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Figure 1 Model of linkages between the built environment, physical activity, and public health.
flows, roughly, from the built environment (the com arrangement of these activities, or land uses, deter
munities in which we live and environments in mine how close different places such as housing,
which we work) through physical activity patterns work, and entertainment are to one another, thereby
to public health outcomes. Physical activity is at making journeys on foot or by bicycle practical
the literal as well as conceptual center of the model, or impractical. They also shape physical activity
providing the linkage between the real, built environ patterns through the distribution of open space
ment and the health outcomes that are of such and recreational facilities where sports and other
concern to public health officials. activities can take place. Finally, urban design charac
The built environment denotes the form and teristics influence how people perceive the built
character of communities. It is made up of the environment. Design plays a large role in determin
countless specific places – homes, streets, offices, ing whether an environment is perceived as hostile
parking lots, shopping malls, restaurants, parks, or friendly, attractive or ugly, and vibrant or dull.
movie theaters – that constitute a city or town or Urban design denotes small-scale features of the
suburb. Our model utilizes three broad categories built environment that impact how people feel about
– transportation systems, land use patterns, and being in specific places.
urban design characteristics – to provide coherence The conceptual model provided in figure 1 illu
to the built environment. Transportation systems con strates the interactive nature between one’s health
nect places to each other, determining how feasible and the environment in which one lives, works, and
it is to use different types of transportation, includ engages in other activities. The arrows that run in
ing walking and bicycling, to get from one place to both directions between physical activity and health
another. Local transportation systems are impacted denote how physical activity is both a cause and
by major investments in highways, airports, and other an effect. The arrow extending from public health
infrastructure decisions made by regional and state to physical activity reflects the likelihood that some
officials. Land use patterns consist of the arrange health outcomes, such as high levels of obesity
ment of residences, offices, restaurants, grocery stores, or chronic disease in the population, may make
and other places within the built environment. The it harder for some people to engage in physical
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“Physical Activity and Public Health” 421
activity. Basically, the poorer the health of the to encourage or discourage health-promoting behav
population, the more difficult it becomes to increase iors, two of which are walking and bicycling. Public
physical activity levels. However, our central focus policies that influence how to build communities –
is on how the built environment influences physical which zoning and building codes to adopt, which
activity levels. transportation systems to build, and so on – can
This leads to a second observation on causality best be understood and assessed once the health
in the model: physical activity is only one con benefits and costs of such choices are included in
tributor, albeit a very important one, to health the calculus.
outcomes. There are, of course, many other reasons
why people suffer from ill health. To take one
example, during the 1990s and into the new cen PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
tury, the high rates of obesity in the United States
became the focus of much research within public The prevention and cure of many infectious diseases,
health circles as well as a favorite subject of the due in large part to advances in medical science
press. Obesity has multiple causes, ranging from as well as widespread improvements in sanitation,
genetics to poor diet to environmental factors diet, and housing, was a contributing factor in the
and personal behavior. While one’s genetics are an dramatic increase in longevity between the begin
important determinant of obesity, diet and physical ning and end of the twentieth century. In 1900, the
activity are things that can be controlled. The built average American could expect to live to age forty-
environment impacts both of these behaviors. (While nine; by 1997, this figure was around seventy-six f
we focus on physical activity in this book, the loca years (Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related o
u
tion of quality food outlets versus fast food venues Statistics 2000). Obviously, the public health issues r
is another way that the built environment impacts facing Americans and residents of other wealthy
our health; in poorer parts of cities, for example, countries have changed in dramatic ways. Certainly,
there tend to be fewer food establishments – the suffering and premature deaths that used to
restaurants and grocery stores – serving healthy accompany infectious disease epidemics are now
foods.) As tempting as it is to point to the built rare. However, hundreds of thousands of Americans
environment as a main cause of problems such as still die from preventable deaths each year. Deaths
obesity, it is not acceptable to draw a straight line from chronic diseases, most notably heart disease
between the two and imply that only environmental and various cancers, have replaced deaths from
improvement will solve the problem; clearly there infectious disease. Many deaths . . . can be traced
are other determinants of obesity. to bad habits.
Nonetheless, the intent . . . is to argue that most They are preventable in that they are mostly
of the communities where Americans live are import caused by behaviors that can be modified; smoking,
ant contributors to current public health problems. for example, is a well-known cause of lung cancer.
Simultaneously, they can also be the source of But premature mortality is not the only consequence
important solutions to these problems. Communities of preventable medical problems. Chronic diseases
can be designed to make physical activity in them and other preventable afflictions also subtract from
possible and even desirable. Environments that one’s quality of life. For instance, osteoporosis, a
encourage moderate physical activity may also have condition that tends to affect many older women,
features that make them more livable in other ways, is characterized by a deterioration in one’s bone
by improving one’s quality of life – they may gener mass and structure; the onset of osteoporosis may
ate more social interaction, foster less dependence be delayed or prevented by modifiable behaviors,
on the automobile, be safer for their inhabitants, for example dietary and exercise patterns.
and give people more choices with respect to how Unfortunately, Americans engage in many differ
they get around and spend their time. In these pages ent behaviors that lead to such ill health. Physical
we do not seek to condemn any particular form inactivity is one of the most common and most
of community design. Rather, a central goal is to preventable patterns of behavior. In this chapter we
develop a better understanding of the ways in describe how this widespread inactivity is a major
which the features of the built environment serve determinant of poor health in the general population,
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 421 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

in terms of premature mortality, the onset of chronic obtained through moderate activities such as walk
diseases, and a poor quality of life. Physical activity ing and bicycling. These new recommendations are
can be a significant part of the solution to many for adults to accumulate at least thirty minutes of
of these health problems. Recent public health re moderate physical activity on most, preferably each
search has shown that moderate forms of physical day of the week.
activity can be helpful types of exercise. While Since the publication of the Surgeon General’s
more vigorous forms of activity such as running report, the body of scientific literature that supports
can generate health benefits for participants, from this position has continued to grow. Regular, moder
a public health perspective it may be better to focus ately intense physical activity helps to maintain
on moderate types of physical activity because they the functional independence of older adults and
are easier for inactive people to begin and maintain enhances the quality of life for people of all ages.
over time. Moderately intense activities can be built The literature also shows that such physical activity
into the lives of many Americans by changing the helps maintain normal muscle strength and joint
way communities are designed and built. Two of structure and function, lower high blood pressure,
the most common types, walking and bicycling, are relieve depression and anxiety, lower obesity levels,
easily incorporated into people’s lives when the built and is necessary for normal skeletal development
environment is properly structured to encourage during childhood. Physically inactive people are
them. However, when our communities are struc almost twice as likely to develop coronary heart
tured so that they inhibit or prevent such activities, disease as people who engage in regular physical
as is the case in most parts of the country, many activity. This risk is almost as high as several well-
people are unable to get the amount of physical known risk factors such as cigarette smoking, high
activity needed for long-term health. blood pressure and high cholesterol. Sadly, however,
physical inactivity in the United States is more com
mon than any of these other major risk factors,
Physical activity and health: with different studies showing that the majority
basic premises of Americans do not get enough physical activity
to meet minimum standards set by the Surgeon
While it has long been known that physical activity General and other health organizations (USDHHS
is an important component of a healthy lifestyle, 1996). While a lifetime of regular physical activity
a report issued by the Surgeon General in 1996 titled is the goal, it is never too late to start. In fact
Physical Activity and Health represented a watershed when sedentary people become more active they
moment in the history of the public health com gain immediate health benefits, often with a larger
munity’s approach to physical activity and fitness relative improvement than their more fit counter
(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services parts. . . . the marginal benefits that result from a
1996, hereafter USDHHS 1996). Prior to this report, unit increase in physical activity for the sedentary
the general advice given by public health officials person is thought to be larger than the same
to the public was echoed in the phrase “no pain-no increase would be for the person who is already a
gain,” whereby individuals were advised to try and committed runner or soccer player.
get at least twenty minutes of high intensity aerobic While genetics provide an important contribution
exercise three or more days a week (Pate et al. to longevity, daily habits may play an even more
1995). Implicit in this advice was the idea that any critical role in determining life expectancy. Epidemi
thing less than a sustained high-energy effort would ological studies have consistently linked physical
be a waste of time, resulting in little or no health inactivity to mortality over the long run. Based
improvement over time. While the Surgeon General’s upon statistical evidence, these studies generally
report recognized the benefits of the increased fit show that individuals with higher physical activity
ness that vigorous exercise can provide, it took a levels experience lower mortality rates. One found,
much more inclusive view of physical activity and for example, that men who engaged in moderate
health. In a nutshell, it voiced the expert opinion, physical activity had a risk of dying that was only
based upon an exhaustive reading of recent health 73 percent of that for the least active group of
research, that significant health benefits can be men in the study (Leon et al. 1987). Another study
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 422 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

concluded that slight improvements in fitness can organizations, for example the Centers for Disease
have a dramatic effect on long-term mortality risk Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States,
(Blair et al. 1989). believe that long-term patterns of behaviors –
Other studies have yielded similar findings, even in particular, tobacco use, poor nutrition, and lack
after controlling for the influence of one’s genetics of physical activity – play significant roles in the
(Paffenbarger and Lee 1996). In an effort to isolate onset of four main chronic diseases (cardiovascular
the influence of physical activity patterns on mort disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic obstructive
ality while taking genetics into account, Kujala et al. pulmonary disease) and, thus, in premature mortal
(1998) examined the relationship between exercise ity (CDC 1999a). In a study of data from national
patterns and mortality in about 19,000 subjects who health surveys, the CDC determined that a seden
shared the same childhood environments and nearly tary lifestyle was the most common modifiable risk
identical genetic structure. The researchers tracked factor for coronary heart disease (CHD, a form of
the health status of the subjects over a twenty-year cardiovascular disease), present in 58 percent of
period. The results showed that the risk of death reported cases. In contrast, cigarette smoking was
declined with increasing physical activity in both men present 25 percent of the time, obesity 22 percent,
and women, even after genetic and other familial and hypertension 17 percent (CDC 1990). Physical
variables are taken into account. inactivity also has been linked to the other chronic
Studies such as this one have contributed to diseases. The Surgeon General’s 1996 report con
an expanded interest, within public health circles, cluded that physical inactivity is associated with
regarding how “behavioral risk factors” (e.g., smok an increased risk of colon cancer and diabetes f
ing, poor diet, inadequate physical activity) influence (USDHHS 1996). Other studies have addressed o
u
health and mortality. Hundreds of thousands of walking as a predictor of diabetes. One compared r
premature deaths per year can be attributed to poor the activity patterns with the risk of becoming
diet and inadequate levels of physical activity. One diabetic for women over a period of eight years;
study estimated the number of deaths attributable those who walked frequently had only 58 percent
to poor dietary and physical activity patterns in the of the risk of becoming diabetic when compared
United States in 1990 (McGinnis and Foege 1993). with sedentary women, even after controlling for
The authors’ goal was to assess the role played age, hypertension, and other variables (Hu et al.
by underlying behaviors (tobacco use, poor diet 1999).
and activity patterns, alcohol abuse, etc.) instead There is enormous potential for physical activity
of the immediate health conditions that caused to reduce the amount of chronic disease in the
death (lung disease, emphysema, diabetes, heart United States. One study (Powell and Blair 1994),
disease, etc.), which were seen as the result of risky found that between 32 percent and 35 percent
behavior. The authors reviewed studies published of deaths attributable to CHD, colon cancer, and
between 1977 and 1993 of the causes of death in diabetes could have been prevented if every person
different study populations, allowing them to derive in the United States were to become highly active.
approximations of the number of deaths in the The authors of this study, realizing that it would
United States that could be assigned to underly be unlikely for all people in the country to be
ing behavior. . . . Poor diet and sedentary living active at this level, also generated estimates based
patterns, estimated to have caused some 300,000 on smaller improvements in physical activity rates
deaths (14 percent of all deaths), ranked as the within the population. Modest improvements in
second leading cause, behind tobacco but ahead physical activity levels, they estimated, would still
of such well-known causes as firearms and motor result in substantial reductions in deaths attribut
vehicle accidents. able to the three diseases because of the huge
numbers of people who fall into the inactive cat
egories. For example, if half of the population
Physical inactivity and chronic disease classified as sedentary were to become irregularly
active (meaning getting some activity but not enough
Chronic diseases and mortality are, of course, to meet guidelines), the total number of deaths
intimately linked. National and international health attributable to CHD, colon cancer, and diabetes would
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 423 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

drop 3.9 percent, 2.5 percent, and 1.5 percent, re a communicable disease epidemic (Mokdad et al.
spectively. If half of the people who are irregularly 1999).2
active were to become regularly active (thus Overweight and obesity have been linked in
meeting the guidelines), those figures would be 7.1 the public health literature to a variety of diseases
percent, 7.4 percent, and 5.2 percent. This study and health problems. Overweight and obesity are
illustrates the public health principle of obtaining large associated with high blood pressure, gallbladder
population benefits from small average individual disease, osteoarthritis, and type 2 diabetes mellitus,
change. A few percentage points’ improvement relationships that get stronger as a person gets
in the national average for blood pressure, or a heavier. These findings are consistent for both men
few minutes added to the national average of daily and women. Further, as a person’s weight increases
exercise would result in a large number of saved their chance of having two or more of these chronic
lives. conditions multiplies (Must et al. 1999).
While physical inactivity by itself does not gener
ally cause overweight and obesity, the combination
Physical inactivity: overweight and obesity of sedentary lifestyles with other risk behaviors such
as improper diet leads to these conditions. Only
In the United States, rising overweight and obesity some of the increase in overweight and obesity
is a serious public health problem. “Overweight” rates can be explained by the increases in average
and “obesity” are clinical terms used by public health caloric intake over time for the American population;
agencies that classify people according to their low and declining levels of physical activity are
height and weight status; the overweight category also assumed to be a significant contributor (Koplan
is one category above normal (heavier than normal and Dietz 1999). The Surgeon General’s report, for
for one’s height), while the obese category is yet example, subscribes to the formulation that dietary
another category above overweight.1 Unfortunately, patterns plus exercise are important determinants
more than half of American adults are categorized of overweight and obesity in the United States
as being overweight or obese. A national study of (USDHHS 1996; see also Must et al. 1999). Numerous
CDC data reported that in 1999–2000 nearly one- cross-sectional studies reviewed by the Surgeon
third (30.5 percent) of adults were obese and nearly General reported lower weight among people with
two-thirds (64.5 percent) were overweight or obese higher levels of physical activity.
(Flegal et al. 2002). To make matters worse, levels The Surgeon General’s report concluded that:
of overweight and obesity have been climbing for physical activity promotes fat loss while preserving
many years. Roughly speaking, the prevalence of or increasing lean mass; the rate of weight loss
obesity in the United States increased by 61 percent is associated with the frequency and duration of
during the 1990s alone. This trend appears to be physical activity; the combination of increased
affecting all major demographic groups in society. physical activity and dieting is more effective than
Rising overweight and obesity is pervasive and dieting alone for long-term weight regulation; and
widespread in the United States, affecting the young the full extent that physical inactivity contributes
and old, black and white, rich and poor. Maps show to obesity levels in children is not yet determined.
both the rapid increase in obesity over time as well
as the extent of the problem in the United States
(Mokdad et al. 2001). Physical inactivity and quality of life
Levels of childhood obesity are similarly worri
some. In the 1960s and 1970s about 4 to 6 percent Regular physical activity has a large number of
of children and adolescents (ages 6–19) were benefits beyond those of reducing the risk of chronic
overweight; by 1999, this number had more than disease and premature mortality. Physical activity
doubled to 13–14 percent (CDC 1999d). Overall, maintains muscle strength, bone mass, and proper
the rate of increase of obesity in the American joint function and may also play an important role
population – about 50 percent during the 1990s – in fostering and maintaining mental health. People
is considered so severe that many have compared may have a more positive self-evaluation of their
its spread and dispersion characteristics to that of physical and mental status if they are more active,
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 424 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

a phenomenon that becomes more prevalent as costs the country more than $150 billion each year
they get older (Unger 1995). in direct and indirect costs, including hospital and
A lifetime of physical activity may, in fact, gener nursing home services, prescription drugs, and
ate its greatest benefits for the elderly. A recent lost productivity (Stone 1996). Studies that have
analysis of elderly women, for example, reported examined the results of one of the most thorough
that inactive, nonsmoking women at age sixty-five national surveys of medical expenditures, the National
have 12.7 years of active life expectancy, compared Medical Expenditure Survey, report lower direct
to 18.4 years of active life expectancy for more medical costs for people who are active versus
highly active women (Ferucci et al. 2000). Because those who are sedentary. Annual medical costs
physical activity is believed to delay the onset remained lower for the regularly active group (rang
of disability and chronic diseases, the functional ing from $330 to more than $1,000 per person),
limitations and subsequent loss of independence even after controlling for the independent influence
that are associated with aging are also delayed. of physical limitations, gender, and smoking status.
Physical activity is believed to be able to help delay These findings also applied to particular types of
or prevent the onset of osteoporosis in the elderly, health care costs. For example, direct health care
a condition characterized by decreased bone mass costs for treatment of people who had arthritis were
and increased bone fragility. This is a particularly found to be about $1,200 less for those who were
severe problem in older women, contributing to the physically active than those who were sedentary
widespread and growing number of hip fractures (Pratt, Macera, and Wang 2000; Wang et al. 2001).
from falls. Regular physical activity throughout f
one’s life may prevent or delay the development o
u
of osteoporosis, particularly by helping to develop Levels of physical inactivity r
and maintain bone mass during adolescence and
middle age (USDHHS 1996; Shephard 1997). Many A minority of the American population engages in
studies also demonstrate that physical activity enough regular, sustained exercise to meet public
improves symptoms of depression in adults. One health recommendations. Data released by the
study found that exercise programs for adults pro CDC in 2001 from the Behavorial Risk Factor Sur
duced improvements in depressive symptoms that veillance System (BRFSS) showed that in 2000 only
were comparable to improvements from medication about one out of three adults reported enough
(Singh, Clemets, and Fiatarone 1997), while another moderate or vigorous activity to meet public health
reported that physical activity for adults reduces guidelines while a similar number (29 percent) were
the amount of cognitive decline as an adult ages sedentary – reporting no leisure time physical
(Yaffe et al. 2001). The benefits of exercise are not activity. The remainder (about 46 percent) reported
limited to improvements in cognitive function. A some activity but at a level insufficient to maintain
Boston study of forty- to seventy-year-old men found personal health and wellness. . . . These patterns
that physical activity status was “significantly” asso of leisure time activity have remained essentially
ciated with erectile dysfunction (impotence). The stable since the 1980s (CDC 2001b).
highest risk was for men who remained inactive, Poor physical activity habits typically start at
and the lowest was among those who remained a young age. Among high school students more
active or became physically active, even if begun than one in three (35 percent) do not participate
at middle age (Derby et al. 2000). regularly in vigorous physical activity. Regular par
ticipation drops from 75 percent of ninth graders
to 61 percent of twelfth graders. From 1991 to 2001
Economic cost of physical inactivity participation in daily physical education classes in
high school dropped from 42 percent to 31 percent
Premature death and disability caused by coronary of students. Overall about one in three (31 percent)
heart disease, diabetes mellitus, cancers, and other students do not meet minimum guidelines for phys
illnesses related to physical inactivity result in ical activity (Grunbaum et al. 2002). Unfortunately,
tremendous health care costs. According to the there is evidence that such bad habits persist into
American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease adulthood. Studies in the United States and Europe
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 425 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

have found that there is a moderate to low correla predictors of other behaviors – that is, people who
tion between activity levels in childhood and later tend to be careful about what they eat also may
as adults. Children who are inactive are more likely be careful about getting enough physical activity
to be inactive when they are adults than their active (or, conversely, if people have some bad habits
peers (Malina 2001; Telama et al. 1997). Physical such as smoking or taking illegal drugs they may
activity patterns also vary by other demographic be less concerned about an unhealthy diet or abuse
and socioeconomic patterns. Rates of physical of alcohol).
activity are lower for females than males, generally While this approach has value for those in the
lower for minorities, the elderly, the less educated, field of public health who design health promotion
and the poor, and declines with age. programs, it is less salient for our purposes than
a second meaning of the term. Within the context
of physical activity research, lifestyle activities are
Encouraging physical activity: those that can fit easily into one’s daily routine. For
adoption and adherence instance, riding a bicycle to the store may be an
easier habit to establish and maintain than finding
One of the flaws in the “no pain–no gain” model the extra time to go to the gym and work out. This
of physical activity outlined at the beginning of stands in contrast to traditional exercises that are,
this chapter is that people may have a difficult time as the kinesiologist William Morgan has written,
beginning the types of exercise that this model nonpurposeful and therefore have little meaning
prescribes and, further, an even more difficult time in and of themselves. (Morgan quotes the Roman
in sticking to such exercise routines over longer poet Marcus Valerius Martialis [a.d. 38–103] in this
terms. Public health research often centers on these context, who asked, “Why do strong arms fatigue
phenomena – called adoption (beginning a physical themselves with frivolous dumbbells? To dig in a
activity regimen) and adherence (sticking to one vineyard is worthier exercise for men.” See Morgan
over time) – because they are important concepts 2001). The point is that if activities with more
in explaining why people have problems altering inherent meaning were emphasized, it would be
their physical activity patterns. Given the findings easier for people to incorporate them into their
of the Surgeon General and others that significant routines. Gardening, walking to do an errand, and
health benefits for an individual can be achieved cycling to work have more inherent meaning than
via thirty minutes or more of moderate physical pedaling a stationary bike to nowhere.
activity, which can be accumulated throughout the This form of lifestyle intervention consists of
course of the day in short bouts (i.e., in as little as public health programs that place their emphasis
ten minutes at a time), attention has been focused upon the environmental conditions that encourage
on the question of whether people can more readily or inhibit physical activity, and prescribe the creation
adopt and adhere to these forms of physical activ of activity-supportive environments. For example,
ity. Sustained participation in structured activities adding well-marked, extensive bike lanes through
(the gym-based model of exercise) has proven to out a small city would, according to this model,
be very difficult to achieve for many people. In help to create an environment in which people
contrast, there is some evidence to suggest that find it safe and easy to bicycle to work or school.
unstructured activities (where people do not have Similarly, educational programs that encourage
to join a gym or other structured, formal setting) taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator are
of moderate intensity may be more effective. While designed to increase physical activity for people
structured exercise programs may have a slightly at work. In contrast are structured interventions,
greater effect on health than unstructured activities programs designed around structured exercise
per unit of time, the latter type may be better for regimens. These latter interventions use guidelines
many people because it is easier to get people to of exercise frequency, intensity, and duration in
adopt and adhere to them (Dunn, Andersen, and order to set performance goals for participants –
Jakicic 1998). where intensity is the amount of exertion, duration
Some health educators use the term “lifestyle” is the amount of elapsed time spent exercising, and
to denote that patterns of some behaviors are good frequency is the number of exercise sessions engaged
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 426 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

in over a period of time (Bouchard and Shephard a lifestyle intervention program wherein participants
1994). In this type of intervention, public health were simply encouraged to engage in moderate
researchers or practitioners take a direct role in physical activities; the main components of this
getting people to participate in structured activities intervention focused on education. The other group
such as aerobics dance classes. was placed in a highly structured exercise program
Lifestyle interventions have been shown to be that consisted of enrolling participants in a health
as effective, and in some cases more effective, than club. Results from the six months of direct inter
structured interventions in overcoming the adop vention showed that the lifestyle physical activity
tion and adherence hurdles. Lifestyle interventions intervention was as effective in increasing physical
can yield positive and long-term effects, in terms activity as the structured program. During the
of increasing the levels of moderately intense eighteen-month follow-up, the authors found that
physical activity and in reducing the levels of seden both groups continued to enjoy significant and com
tariness within studied groups (Dunn et al. 1998). parable improvements in physical activity levels,
Those who are sedentary or mostly inactive are cardiorespiratory fitness, blood pressure, and per
more likely to be more responsive to lifestyle inter centage of body fat (Dunn et al. 1999). Other studies
ventions that encourage the adoption of moderately have shown similar results, with lifestyle interventions
intense, inexpensive, and convenient forms of phys performing as well as structured interventions in
ical activity (Shephard 1997). Moderate activities lowering weight, systolic blood pressure, and serum
of shorter duration may allow people to more readily lipid and lipoprotein levels (Andersen et al. 1999).
fit physical activity into their daily schedule and Once such activities are begun, participants are f
habit patterns. Moreover, the lower intensity thresh more likely to continue and to obtain long-term o
u
old allows sedentary people to start engaging in improvements in levels of physical activity (Dunn, r
the activity without fear of the physical pain that Andersen, and Jakicic 1998). For these reasons, less
accompanies vigorous exercise. Moderate physical strenuous forms of exercise may be more effective
activities also typically require less in the way of in inducing long-term changes in the behavior of
specialized equipment and/or access to specialized sedentary adults (Owen and Bauman 1992).
facilities, and may generate less apprehension for Walking and bicycling are important in this
the beginner with respect to the social embarrass context because they are two types of moderately
ment that may accompany working out at a fitness intense physical activity that can be incorporated
facility. In contrast, vigorous activities in structured easily into daily routines in the built environment.
settings present a number of barriers: they simply Walking improves cardiovascular capacity, bodily
may be too difficult, time-consuming, or embar endurance, lower body muscular strength and flex
rassing for many people, especially for people who ibility, posture, enhances metabolism of lipoproteins
are elderly, overweight/obese, or out of shape and insulin/glucose dynamics, and may increase bone
due to a prolonged sedentary lifestyle. In addition, strength (Morris and Hardman 1997). Walking may
people may be physically unable or mentally un also help to manage arthritis – one study reported
prepared to participate in vigorous activities like that regular walking reduces pain and improves
jogging or aerobics over the long term. function in people with knee arthritis (Kovar et al.
An example of the effectiveness of lifestyle 1992). In fact walking is a core component of many
interventions is provided by a study published in arthritis treatment programs. Walking is the most
the Journal of the American Medical Association. A readily available form of physical activity in the
group of researchers tracked how well two different world, as most people can and do engage in it
interventions did at improving levels of physical every day, and thus is the easiest form of physical
activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and cardiovascular activity to undertake. As a result, walking is ideal as
disease risk factors amongst 235 adults. The study a start-up activity for the sedentary, the overweight/
consisted of six months of direct interventions obese, and the elderly, because of its simplicity
wherein the researchers monitored and encouraged and low threshold of activity (Morris and Hardman
participation; eighteen months of maintenance inter 1997; Shephard 1997).
vention (where the intervention was less frequent As with walking, cycling’s independent effects
and intense) followed. One group was assigned to on health continue to accumulate. In Europe, where
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 427 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

cycling rates are much higher than in the U.S., there as aerobic dance may be too difficult; moderate
is a growing body of research suggesting that exercise can be more easily worked into a person’s
cycling for transportation or recreation can provide daily routines, becoming a part of one’s lifestyle
significant health benefits. For example, a number and thus requiring no long-term commitment to a
of studies have reported a lower risk of death for structured exercise program at a facility; and adher
those who are active cyclists (for recreation or ence rates to exercise programs consisting of mod
transportation) compared with those who are not erate and purposeful exercise may be higher than
(Andersen et al. 1999; Hillman 1992; Oja, Vuori, those involving more strenuous forms.
and Paronen 1998; Vuori, Oja, and Paronen 1994).
It is also less stressful on joints and bones than is
walking. Although cycling is slightly less accessible URBAN DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS
than walking (cycling requires some equipment,
obviously, and also requires more balance and co Urban design characteristics represent the third
ordination than walking), it is an activity that most major category of the built environment. These
of the population can engage in if they so choose. characteristics influence an individual’s percep
The number of bicycles in the United States, at tions about the desirability of walking, bicycling,
100 million or more, alone testifies to the viability or engaging in recreational exercise at, on, or within
and affordability of this form of physical activity. a particular place. Most, if not all, features of the
built environment constitute design elements. Un
like the motorist, a person who is walking, jogging,
Conclusion or bicycling is unsheltered from the elements, both
human and natural. Furthermore, the distances
A consensus is developing within public health that are typically covered while engaging in such
circles that lifestyles are key to understanding activities are very short, at most a few miles or,
chronic disease patterns in the general population, frequently, only a few hundred yards. As a result,
leading to calls for more research into the underly the individual is powerfully influenced by the design
ing behavioral trends and patterns that produce characteristics of their immediate surroundings:
chronic diseases and conditions. The dramatically the streets, parks, squares, plazas, buildings, lawns,
increasing levels of overweight and obesity in the sidewalks, bus stop shelters, crosswalks, trash bins,
United States have also served to point many in curbs, fences, billboards, plantings, and the host of
the public health community toward understanding other elements that together define the world we
how poor dietary and physical activity patterns inhabit.
contribute to these problems. As this chapter has Yet design for the purpose of encouraging phys
shown, there is increasing evidence suggesting that ical activity was not something that was given much
nonstructured forms of exercise can be a critical emphasis during the last decades of the twentieth
component in improving Americans’ overall health. century. Perhaps this reflects a long-standing bias
This perspective derives additional force from the against aesthetic considerations within the dis
fact that so many people get very little exercise, cipline of city planning, a position that has roots
and even though most say they would like to be as far back as the reaction against the City Beautiful
more active, they seem to have a hard time increas movement at the turn of the twentieth century.
ing the amount of activity they get. Because such Many in the then-emerging field of city planning
a large percentage of the population is sedentary dismissed the emphasis on aesthetics that was
or only active occasionally, and because more an inherent part of the City Beautiful movement,
health risks accrue to people within this category calling instead for a discipline based on modern,
than to those who are more frequent exercisers, rational principles and devoted to functional
public health researchers repeatedly stress the need considerations such as the protection of public
to activate sedentary individuals. The rationale is health, the free-flowing movement of people and
threefold: moderate forms of exercise such as walk goods throughout the city, and the efficiency of
ing can actually be performed by beginning exercis business operations. Some have called this change
ers, whereas more strenuous forms of exercise such a shift from the City Beautiful to what is termed
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 428 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

“Urban Design Characteristics” 429
the “City Efficient.” What transpired, in other words, for they are the places where much of the physical
was a shift in emphasis from urban form to urban activity in the built environment occurs. Streets
function. are the places where people walk, jog, and bicycle
Similarly, too, changes were occurring in other most often. They form the main component of
fields that contributed to the idea that functional the built environment connecting destinations to
rather than aesthetic considerations ought to be one another, including destinations such as parks
given more prominence with respect to urban form. that might themselves be locations for physical
. . . during the course of the century, especially the activity. Finally, they are places where social
middle part of the century, modern architectural activities can and do occur, which contribute to
thought about how to design important elements the basic desirability of a place for certain forms
of the built environment underwent something of physical activity.
of a major change, hastened by the automobile’s The term street design refers to the layout and
increasing presence. A number of architects dis design of individual streets and street segments.
carded principles that had ordered basic relation The influence of street design is independent of
ships between different design elements for millennia, the basic structure of the street network, that is,
as technological innovations such as the automo whether the street network is highly connected or
bile demanded that cities be reorganized. Many of not. A street’s design can discourage walking or
these ideas were, as it turned out, compatible with bicycling, for example, even though it forms a part
the goals established by the new subfield of trans of a fine grid network (Antupit, Gray, and Woods
portation engineering. At mid-century, engineers 1996). Streets are important design elements and f
were also wrestling with the problems and oppor have a tremendous influence on the basic fabric of o
u
tunities created by the automobile. The singular any place, whether urban or suburban. As Jane r
focus on the automobile that developed within Jacobs once put it, “streets and their sidewalks,
transportation engineering resulted in a consensus the main public places of a city, are its most vital
about design that, among other things, downgraded organs. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city
streets from multifaceted instruments of urban looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks
design to cogs in a functional machine with a single dull” (Jacobs 1993, 37). Street design influences
purpose, to move automobile traffic as efficiently physical activity by shaping one’s desires to engage
as possible. in such activity within the built environment. Here,
By the final third of the century, such ideas had desirability can be defined in two ways: in terms
come to dominate the design and construction of of how the street’s basic design influences one’s
basic elements of the built environment. Only in perception of safety and in terms of how it influ
the very last decade of the twentieth century did ences one’s perception of the physical and social
challenges to these ideas begin to receive wide attractiveness of the street and areas immediately
spread attention. This chapter concentrates on how adjacent to the street. Different design treatments
the design of two basic elements of the built en can produce radically different settings for a person
vironment – the street and the site – has evolved who wishes to engage in physical activity on or
over time and how each contributes to physical along the street. The street can be either dangerous
activity. While modern approaches to design led and unpleasant, meaning that a person would be
to streets and sites that catered to the needs and less likely to want to walk, jog, or bicycle along it,
interests of motorists, during the 1990s and into or safe and pleasant, which would encourage such
the new century there was a perceptible shift activity.
toward a more comprehensive view of the design . . . the definition of a “street” includes more
of such spaces. than just the street surface itself. Not only does it
include the carriageway (lanes dedicated to moving
traffic) and special-purpose lanes on the street sur
Street design face (for parking and/or bicycling), the definition
also includes medians, tree planting strips imme
Of the two basic elements upon which this chapter diately adjacent to the street surface, the sidewalk
focuses, streets are perhaps the most important, and objects on the sidewalk, and all spaces up to
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 429 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

the private property lot line. The inclusiveness of principles have focused on the needs of the motor
this definition is fairly standard; urban designers tend ist, to the exclusion of all other users of the street
to include these basic elements, or variations thereof, and also the wider interests of the community.
when defining the street. The mix of elements – Among the oldest and most influential engineering
the presence or absence of sidewalks, the number societies is the American Association of State and
and width of street lanes, the presence of shade Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), whose
trees along the street – depends on the street’s members have had close links to road building,
purpose. Among many, if not most, American traffic automotive, and trucking interest groups from its
engineers as well as many transportation planners, founding in 1914 forward (Ehrenhalt 1997). Since
street purpose is defined in functional terms having the 1950s, AASHTO has published the definitive set
to do with moving the city’s automobile traffic, of design standards for the transportation engineer
measured by the number of vehicles that can be ing profession in a one-thousand-page manual titled
moved along the street over an hour or day. The A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets,
nomenclature used to define streets within this but universally referred to as the “Green Book.”
hierarchy is itself illustrative. The streets with the These standards are central to understanding why
heaviest traffic volumes are called arterials, while most streets in the United States look and function
those that are slightly smaller but still carry a sig the way that they do, for they have long been used
nificant amount of traffic are called feeder streets. by engineers in state or local transportation depart
These names show that streets are designed with ments to design or redesign a very large percentage
traffic flow uppermost in mind. This observation is of the nation’s roads and streets. Until 1991, federal
well founded: typically, arterials and feeders have law required Green Book standards to be used on
most of the street space devoted to the carriageway any federally funded roadways. Basically, the Green
and very little, if any, space devoted to medians, Book’s central imperative is to design streets around
sidewalks, and other elements. motorist safety and convenience, ignoring other
Anyone who attempts to walk, jog, or bicycle design criteria for other users and purposes. The
on or alongside most nonresidential streets in the design standards contained in the Green Book have
United States knows full well how difficult, unpleas virtually eliminated certain types of streetscapes
ant, and even dangerous such an experience can that enhance the experience of the nonmotorist on
be. It is apparent to even the casual observer that or along the street.
streets are places where cars rule, in terms of the Guidelines contained in the Green Book result
amount of street space devoted exclusively to the in two basic priorities for street design. First, the
car, the sheer number of cars on the street, and guidelines encourage the design of streets for
the speed of the average car traveling along the the fast movement of traffic. Under the guidelines,
street. This is no accident. Rather, it is the result engineers use the “eighty-fifth percentile” rule,
of a few important assumptions about the purposes wherein streets are designed or redesigned for the
for which a street is designed. safety of the fifteenth fastest driver out of every
Streets can be said to have at least two core one hundred on the street. In order for the fifteenth
purposes: first, to move people and goods between fastest motorist to be able to drive at high speeds
destinations and, second, to serve as a stage for in relative safety, inevitably the best type of street
social interaction in a public setting (Gutman 1986). is one that is wide, straight, and level (with little
In the twentieth century, many professionals involved elevation change). Width gives the driver enough
in urban design questions designed streets to fulfill room to safely operate the vehicle at a high speed,
only the first purpose. They also did so for only while straightness and a level surface provides the
one type of movement, that of the motorist. Over driver with a long and wide field of vision, neces
the course of the twentieth century, responsibility sary for safe braking distances at higher speeds
for the design and construction of the nation’s roads (Burrington 1996). Second, the guidelines stress the
and streets became the sole province of trans importance of unimpeded traffic flow, defined in
portation engineering, which sought to standardize terms of the degree of traffic congestion on the
the construction of streets according to seemingly street. Traffic congestion is addressed via “level of
objective and technical engineering principles. These service” standards that rank stretches of roadway
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 430 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

in terms of traffic flow performance. The level of traffic rapidly from place to place. In his view, the
service measure is based on a ratio, the number of perfect city was one in which pedestrians used an
vehicles distributed over a given stretch of roadway. extensive system of ground-level walkways while
A street segment where vehicles cannot move gets automobiles and trucks whizzed around on mas
the worst grade, while the highest grade goes to a sive elevated roads designed exclusively for long-
segment where cars are moving without obstruction. distance and high-speed traffic (Le Corbusier 1964).
In many cases, streets are designed to ensure a The modern, functional view of the street as
high level of service to meet future demand, not a tool for the movement of motorized traffic con
just current demand. The level of service system tradicted centuries of thought on the purposes for
is another way of formalizing street design criteria which a street exists. This view seriously under
in favor of fast-moving automobile traffic. Vehicular mined the notion that streets are legitimate public
movement trumps all other considerations, includ spaces for multiple uses, including nonautomotive
ing the mobility of the auto passengers (level of forms of movement along the street surface, which
service standards count the number of vehicles, not includes both utilitarian and recreational physical
the number of passengers) as well as those outside activity (walking, bicycling, jogging, rollerblading).
the vehicle. Pedestrians tend to be seen as imped This view, as referenced above, also completely
ing the free flow of motorized traffic, for example discounted (or, perhaps more accurately, entirely
through slowing traffic when crossing streets (Ewing ignored) the idea that the streetscape is a stage
1997; Epperson 1994). American street design is, as upon which social activity occurs. Social activity
a result, among the least pedestrian- and bicyclist- on the street includes planned and spontaneous f
friendly in the world. In many other countries, activities – sitting on a bench, eating or drinking o
u
streets are designed for slower vehicle speeds and at an outdoor cafe table, window shopping, playing, r
to accommodate fewer vehicles – authorities create conversing with others, dining outdoors, people
design guidelines that result in narrower streets, watching, bumping into a neighbor for a chat, and
tighter curves, more sidewalks, and a much more so on. Socializing, both planned and spontaneous,
intensive use of traffic calming devices.3 tends to occur in environments that are place-
Modernist planners and architects of the early- specific, where people identify with a particular space
and mid-twentieth century also shared many of the and where they feel comfortable being around other
beliefs of engineers, in particular that street design people in that space; the presence of other people,
parameters should be set by the needs of motorists. in fact, is one of the key ingredients in making
In their view, the street’s central purpose was something – a park, square, or street – a desirable
to move motorized traffic efficiently between the place to be (Selberg 1996; Gehl 1987). Socializing
city’s functional cells, between the far-flung districts is important in its own right, contributing to social
(residential, industrial, and commercial) that single- cohesion and community identity. However, it is also
use zoning had begun to impose upon the city’s tremendously important with respect to physical
structure during the first decades of the twentieth activity. Streetscapes that encourage socializing also
century. The famed Swiss architect Le Corbusier, tend to be perfect environments for walking. The
for example, considered the multiuse and multi view of the street as a space for social interaction
purpose street to be a dangerous anachronism, out rejects the idea . . . that lots of people occupying the
of touch with the requirements of the automobile. same space automatically translates into the per
“Our streets no longer work,” he wrote in The ception that the space is crowded. In contrast, this
Radiant City, published in 1933. “Streets are an view emphasizes the importance of having lots of
obsolete notion. There ought not to be such things people on the street in order to make the space appear
as streets; we have to create something that will lively and interesting. While there may be an absolute
replace them.” To protect pedestrians from the limit beyond which most people would define a place
ravages of the automobile, he envisioned a city as uncomfortably crowded and therefore undesir
that not only completely separated pedestrians from able, this perspective emphasizes that having a
vehicular traffic but also fundamentally changed the healthy number of people in a space is a desirable
physical nature of the street in accordance with feature for inducing activity.4 A focus on the efficiency
what he saw as its sole function, to move motorized of movement completely misses this point.
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Modernists did know that motorists have differ streets that are wide, low in visual detail, and con
ent needs with respect to street design than other tain no abrupt corners. The street that is ideal for
users of the street. Unfortunately, they solved this nonmotorists – narrow, with abrupt changes, and
design problem by reconfiguring the street for the a high level of detail along its edges – will not allow
use of motorists and to the detriment of all others. for safe automobile travel at higher speeds. Large,
The design of streets for multiple uses and modes boldly stated design elements (buildings, signage,
requires an understanding of how the different users etc.) that are spaced far apart from each other and
of the street perceive, and behave upon, the street that are set far back from the street surface itself
scape, and what needs arise from these differences. are necessary for the fast-moving motorist to be
At the most fundamental level, motorists, pedestrians, able to drive quickly and safely yet still be able
joggers, and bicyclists perceive street design features to process details in the environment. The typical
differently because of the divergence in speeds at arterial street in the United States provides ample
which they move along the street. The rate of speed evidence for this hypothesis. Here, all of the archi
at which one is traveling will greatly determine tectural cues of structures alongside these streets
the ability to process detail in the environment. In signal the influence of the street’s design on every
evolutionary terms, human senses are adapted to thing that surrounds it. Huge billboards compete
the speed at which humans move through space with the garish architecture of fast-food restaurants
under their own power while walking. Our ability and strip malls in order to attract the motorist’s
to distinguish detail in the environment is therefore attention as he or she zips past at forty miles per
ideally suited to movement at speeds of perhaps hour. Each design element is freestanding, with large
five miles per hour and under. The fastest users of surface parking lots separating them from each
the street, motorists, therefore have a much more other in order to provide the necessary spacing to
limited ability to process details along the street – keep visual cues comprehensible to the motorist.
a motorist simply has little time or capacity to It is very difficult, then, to integrate the need
appreciate design subtleties. Conversely, pedestrian of motorists for fast movement with the needs of
travel, being much slower, allows for the apprecia pedestrians and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of
tion of environmental detail (Gehl 1987). Joggers bicyclists. Only a few types of street designs can
and bicyclists fall somewhere in between these polar accomplish such a trick. Perhaps the most famous
opposites; while they travel faster than pedestrians, examples are Parisian boulevards such as the
their rate of speed is ordinarily much slower than Champs-Elysées, where heavy traffic coexists along
that of the typical motorist. side intense pedestrian activity. This is possible
These principles are easily translated into spe because of the enormous sidewalks on both sides
cific street design requirements for motorists versus of the street, the double rows of street trees, the
nonmotorists. According to the architect Amos extent and quality of street furniture on the side
Rapoport, the ideal streetscape for pedestrians walks, and the highly detailed building facades
and bicyclists maintains the pedestrian’s visual and containing pedestrian attractions (shops, cafes, etc.)
sensory attention at the slow speeds at which they that abut the sidewalk.
travel . . . Designing the best street for nonmotorists The design of the street surface itself – its width,
requires that the street and its immediate environs the number of lanes for traffic, any provisions for
contain abrupt, irregular, complex, and detailed on-street parking, the type of paving materials used,
features, with these features being interspersed at and so forth – is critical in determining the speed and
short intervals (Rapoport 1987). Streets that have volume of automobile traffic upon the street. This
bland architecture and that are dominated by long influences the nonmotorist’s perceptions of the risk
featureless horizons will not only be less interesting of danger from automobiles. For bicyclists, who
to the nonmotorist but will also increase the per must often share the carriageway with automobiles,
ception of the distance that one needs to cover to these considerations are paramount. High-volume,
reach a particular destination (Gehl 1987). The street fast-moving traffic represents perhaps the worst
designed primarily around the speeds at which scenario for the bicyclist, especially as streets
the motorist travels will be radically different. To with this type of traffic tend to carry regular truck
perform tasks at high speeds safely, motorists need and bus traffic as well. These conditions also have
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 432 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

negative consequences for spaces immediately of Transportation Engineers (ITE), a professional

adjacent to the street, as people who are not in engineering society that is something of a com
vehicles tend to react negatively to the noise and petitor to AASHTO, released a publication containing
stress that accompany high-traffic and high-speed street design guidelines for use in neo-traditional
streets (Appleyard 1981; Appleyard and Lintell 1982). neighborhoods.6 Design should be “specific for the
To enhance the nonmotorist’s sense of safety, the particular street at hand,” the document stated,
design of the carriageway and other elements must meaning design for a broad set of purposes and for
serve to slow traffic speeds and reduce volumes, a streetscape defined by its architectural context.
for example by reducing the carriageway width and The ITE guidelines encouraged design with bicyc
having shorter turning radii at intersections. lists and pedestrians uppermost in mind, including
The design elements that parallel the carriageway the provision of a full range of safety, mobility, and
surface also have an influence on the perception aesthetic design treatments for people engaging in
of the nonmotorist. Safety can be enhanced through these activities. The guidelines suggested replacing
the ways that nonmotorized facilities are designed. the current nomenclature for describing the street
Some facilities, such as wide sidewalks and bike network that is used by nearly all transportation-
lanes, act as physical buffers to moving traffic on planning agencies – arterials, collectors, and local
the carriageway. Others make crossing the street streets. In their place, ITE proposed the use of
on foot safer, such as pedestrian-friendly medians terms such as boulevard, avenue, street, drive, and
and traffic signals and well-marked, raised cross alley. The intent behind the reintroduction of these
walks (Untermann 1987).5 Design treatments such classic terms was to further the idea that streets f
as appropriate street lighting can also enhance contribute to the built environment through their o
u
safety at nighttime by making pedestrians feel design and are not just pipelines through which r
safer from crime (Painter 1996). Finally, amenities traffic is run (ITE 1999). Advocacy, citizen, and pro
such as “street furniture” add aesthetic value to the fessional groups form a loose and diverse coalition
streetscape, an important consideration for some that has organized around basic conceptual changes
one who is not in a vehicle. Street furniture consists to street design standards. Unlike the premises
of interesting design touches that enhance the behind the Green Book, “context sensitive design”
experience of the pedestrian, such as postal boxes, – the general term given to this change in thinking
telephone booths, benches, street trees, bus stops, regarding street design – does not elevate motorists’
public art, and attractively designed street lamps mobility to the highest goal. Rather, it seeks to
(Project for Public Spaces 1993). supplement this goal with broader considerations,
Fortunately, the long-standing dominance of including design for multimodal transportation and
the automobile in American street design may be for integrating the street into the built environment
eroding. There is growing pressure for acceptance of which it is a part. In so doing, it explicitly
of the basic premise that streets should serve a acknowledges that engineers cannot continue to be
number of purposes, only one of which is the move the sole arbiters of street design. Rather, it proposes
ment of vehicles. Some of this stems, of course, that a host of professional and nonprofessional
from complaints by pedestrian and bicycling advo stakeholders, including architects, environmental
cates concerning road and street design. Some ists, historians, landscape architects, and citizens’
comes from ordinary citizens who have concerns groups need to be incorporated into the design
about proposals to widen specific local roads and process from the outset (Stamatiadis 2001; Antupit,
streets. Some comes from architects and urban Gray, and Woods 1996).
designers who have reacted to modernist street In 1991, after the passage of ISTEA, states were
design, recognizing that streets, when designed allowed to set their own design guidelines for roads
improperly, can destroy the urban fabric. Some, how built with federal funds. A few states, such as Vermont,
ever, also comes from quarters where one would passed design standards of their own. Some also
least expect such pressure, from a few engineering sought to protect transportation engineers from law
professionals as well as a small number of state suits filed by accident victims where the accident
and local departments of transportation. With occurred on street segments that weren’t designed
respect to the latter groups, in 1999 the Institute according to AASHTO guidelines. Vermont’s law,
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 433 10-26-2012 3:23:21 PM

implemented in 1997, gave engineers permission northern Europe, inspiring public agencies to experi
to deviate from the Green Book, including the right ment with different types of traffic calming schemes.
to design streets for lower speeds (Ehrenhalt 1997). During the 1980s, for example, German state govern
A number of cities around the country have also ments created, among other things, “Tempo 30”
begun to create guidelines oriented around design programs, wherein the goal was to reduce average
context and multimodality. In 1997, for example, vehicle speeds on neighborhood roads to thirty
Portland METRO, the metropolitan planning organ kilometers per hour (eighteen miles per hour).
ization for the Portland region, issued street design Measures taken included narrowing streets at critical
guidelines consistent with these goals. Among other points, creating pedestrian islands and crossings,
things, the guidelines stated that streets should introducing speed humps and on-street plantings,
accommodate multiple modes, ensure pedestrian and, as in the Netherlands, introducing far stricter
and bicyclist safety, enhance sociability, contribute traffic rules (Clarke and Dornfeld 1994). Additionally,
to a high quality built environment, and add to the the Germans were among the first to recognize that
identity of the neighborhoods in which streets are traffic calming measures needed to be implemented
located. Further, as with the ITE guidelines, METRO across a larger area than just a single street, as
outlined an alternative nomenclature for describing such interventions tended to divert traffic to other
the street system, suggesting the use of terms such local streets. As a result, German municipalities
as throughway and boulevard to reflect the context- began creating Tempo 30 zones comprising an entire
specific nature of streets (Metro Regional Services neighborhood or even larger area (Ewing 1999).
1997). While METRO emphasized that these guide Studies of areas where the Tempo 30 program was
lines were not design standards, they nonetheless introduced have generally shown a successful reduc
contributed to an erosion of confidence in the basic tion in average vehicle speeds as well as a decrease
premises behind the Green Book standards. in accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists.
There are other challenges to the dominance of In the United States, traffic calming was imple
autocentric street design that do not necessarily mented later than in Europe and only within certain
involve the rewriting of design standards. Traffic cities that were willing to implement it. Estimates of
calming, for example, is an increasingly widespread the number of communities that have implemented
practice in the United States. Traffic calming orig traffic calming schemes vary widely depending
inated in Europe and it is there that it has been on the scope of the survey and the definition of
employed the most intensively. Starting in the late “traffic calming,” but it is generally accepted that
1960s, Dutch towns began experimenting with the a few hundred communities nationwide may have
woonerf or “living yard” where neighborhood streets active traffic calming programs. In those areas in
were transformed, through design interventions, the United States where traffic calming has been
into spaces wherein nonmotorists ruled the street tried, it has been implemented less intensively than
and motorists had to move slowly and cautiously in Europe, meaning that the multiple, overlapping
in order to avoid pedestrians and cyclists, rather design treatments found there are generally absent
than the other way around. Commonly, a woonerf in the American context. Rather, frequently only
scheme placed obstacles such as benches, play one or two devices may be employed, often over
objects, and plantings on the street surface itself a single street segment rather than over an entire
in order to require vehicles to weave in and out, at area such as a neighborhood (Ewing 1999). To a
slow speeds, to negotiate the street. significant degree, this is a function of the fact that
Cobblestones and brick surfacing techniques Americans began traffic calming later than else
were used to roughen the ride for vehicles. Roads where. Studies from various American cities where
were bent or narrowed, access points for vehicles were traffic calming has been tried, most intensively
identified and their widths constricted, and strict perhaps in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle,
rules for motorists were created. While woonerven generally support the notion that traffic calming
proved to be enormously successful at slowing slows traffic speeds and reduces the number of
traffic, they were also very expensive. Nonetheless, accidents, although evidence for the latter is not
they opened the way for a host of street design as convincing. The bulk of studies from Europe,
interventions between the 1970s and 1990s across North America, and Japan show that traffic calming
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 434 10-26-2012 3:23:22 PM

techniques can be very successful in achieving of the street as a place for physical activity. This
these goals. Like the disconnected network, traffic argument rests on the principle that the streetscape
calming serves to discourage through traffic. Yet is not just a linear corridor that connects destina
traffic calming offers a major advantage over the tions. Rather, the streetscape is a multidimensional
disconnected network in the fact that it leaves con space that shapes, and is shaped by, objects on
nections in place for nonmotorists, thereby serving its periphery. There is, in other words, a direct
to make driving more difficult and walking and interaction between the street and the environment
bicycling less difficult in the areas in which traffic adjacent to the street (Gutman 1986). While the
calming schemes are introduced. street is an important instrument for placing the
Finally, the level of service concept has also buildings, parks, squares, and other elements of urban
been undergoing some scrutiny. Level of service form along it within a particular context, these same
measures for pedestrian and bicycle facilities were elements also define the basic qualities of the street.
nonexistent until fairly recently. Transportation organ Buildings, squares, lawns, parking lots, trees, and other
izations, city governments, and individuals have, objects that border the street give it a frame of
however, been working to develop such standards. reference. Their placement and orientation to the
It is generally recognized that these standards can street influences the types of behavior among street
be helpful tools in making streets more inviting users, motorists and nonmotorists alike.
to nonmotorists. Unlike motorists, nonmotorists The basic elements of the site that are important
probably do not make decisions about which route include the size of the building (width and height),
to choose based upon the flow of pedestrian or the design of the building’s facade, the building’s f
bicyclist travel. In fact, the opposite is probably orientation to and setback (distance) from the street, o
u
true: nonmotorists may well seek out streetscapes the placement of parking spaces on the site, and the r
that have characteristics that are opposite of those design of the spaces between the building facade
sought by the motorist. Relatively crowded pedes and the street. As with the design of the streetscape
trian spaces, for example, including pedestrian malls, itself, similar principles apply with respect to the
squares, markets, and parks, may be desirable for relationship between site design and physical
pedestrian and bicycle travel. Route choice for a activity. Site design elements shape perceptions of
nonmotorist is based on a myriad number of other how attractive and safe the street is, which in turn
variables, including safety, attractiveness, and dis influences a person’s decision to walk, jog, bicycle,
tance (Highway Research Center 1994; Alexander or socialize on the street. Sites, in other words, are
et al. 1977). Professionals who specialize in non important for activity along the street: streets
motorized transportation have been working to designed with the nonmotorist in mind need to
develop level of service measures for pedestrians have certain types of buildings and private spaces
and bicyclists that are based upon a more realistic on their edges, otherwise the fullest potential of the
understanding of how the street influences such street as a space for physical activity will not be
behavior (Dixon 1995; Epperson 1994; Khisty 1994; realized. This holds true primarily for pedestrians
Moe and Reavis 1997; Sarkar 1994). Aesthetic at and for people who are interested in socializing
tractiveness, comfort, convenience, safety, security, within the confines of the streetscape, for site
and system coherence are all variables that can be design most directly shapes activities that are very
included in these standards. Streets, then, are “graded” slow or involve no movement at all. Once again,
based upon performance measures for each variable: the relationship between site design and bicycling
sidewalk width and continuity, the placement and is less straightforward. Bicyclists move at higher
design of crosswalks, the presence or absence of speeds than pedestrians and, most frequently, ride
bike lanes, and the design of street intersections. along the street surface itself (in the carriageway
or special-purpose bike lanes). Bicyclists thus should
be, at least theoretically, less influenced by highly
Site design detailed site designs along the street edges.
There is a widespread belief that pedestrian travel
Site design is important for physical activity patterns is influenced by the characteristics of buildings and
in that sites contribute to the basic attractiveness other site-level design attributes (Southworth 1997;
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 435 10-26-2012 3:23:22 PM

Pedestrian Federation of America 1995; Corbett been a quasi-public space (the front porch), deliber
and Velasquez 1994). For decades, urban designers ately designed to encourage social interaction, was
have been pointing out the flaws inherent in build replaced by a wholly private space (the garage) that
ings that are massive and featureless, designed had no relationship to the public sphere (the street).
with more regard for automobile than pedestrian These observations apply equally to commercial
access, or removed from the streetscape entirely. and retail site designs. Office and retail complexes
It is generally asserted that in order for a building have long been oriented toward the needs of the
to encourage pedestrian activity, it needs to sit close automobile user, containing linear design features,
to the edge of the sidewalk, have an interesting bland building exteriors, large building setbacks, sig
facade with design treatments that encourage inter nificant distances between buildings, and enormous
action between the interior and exterior of the parking lots. Suburban office parks often sit behind
structure (such as doors, windows, stoops, porches, huge lawns or are even hidden entirely from the
etc.), and not be inordinately tall or wide. Related street, buffered by large forested tracts. Retail
arguments extend to the interactive effects of developers site faceless, cheaply built structures
multiple buildings along a street; there should be behind massive surface parking lots, where the
small gaps (or no gaps at all) between buildings and space between a development’s sidewalks, if there
the architectural styles should be complementary are any, and the facade consists of an unappetizing
but not uniform. combination of asphalt and cars. To make matters
From the early twentieth century on, these prin worse, these structures have few exterior features
ciples were not heeded. Planners and architects that make them interesting buildings in the first
placed structures far back from the road in an place – hence the term “big box” retail. It should
attempt to ensure that fresh air and sunshine therefore come as no surprise that most con
reached the interior of the structure as well as to temporary retail center and office complex designs
protect the building from the dirt and pollution of inevitably generate less pedestrian activity than
the motorized traffic that ran along the street. This older designs that were built fronting a pedestrian-
divorced the private sphere from the public through oriented street. This is not just because the newer
the introduction of a large open space between the designs have uninviting spaces. They also decon
building facade and the streetscape, one that now centrate destinations. The huge parking lots and
tends to be occupied by either large amounts of general orientation of the site’s buildings to one
parking or by expansive lawns fronting residential another within such complexes often create signifi
and corporate property (in the words of the archi cant distances between destinations even within the
tect Thomas Schumacher, lawns do not “function development itself (Cervero 1986). Smaller build
to enclose or define street space but only to isolate ings with more intricate features that are placed
the street from the house” [Schumacher 1986, 141]). close together attract pedestrians because they con
A contemporaneous development was the basic centrate destinations and, as a result, pedestrian
design of the house itself. During the course of the activity.
twentieth century, as neighborhoods became more Unfortunately, retail, office, and residential site
auto-dependent, single family houses began to be design has become uniform. Regulatory and financial
designed with porches facing the rear of the house mechanisms impede or outright prohibit the con
instead of the front, as in older architectural styles struction of buildings that might encourage more
(Calthorpe 1993). Front porches encouraged social on-street, pedestrian activity. Real estate financing,
and physical activity in two ways: they facilitated for example, is systemically biased against projects
interaction between the residents and passersby, that run counter to established design formulas for
and their elegant designs raised the detail level of shopping centers and other developments. Banks
the house’s facade. At the same time as designers and other real estate investors evaluate projects based
began to place porches on the back of the house, upon the proven track record of standard devel
they began to replace the front porch with the opment projects. Developers will obtain financing
garage door – a large, featureless vertical slab on only if they conform to established design criteria,
the front of the house – as the dominant design none of which encourage pedestrian activity; for
feature on the house’s facade. As a result, what had example, lending institutions often require that a
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 436 10-26-2012 3:23:22 PM

shopping center’s parking lot be placed in front of insights provided from direct observation of how
of the building so that it can be seen easily by people react to specific surroundings.
motorists driving past (Leinberger 2001). More There have been, however, a number of studies
over, developments that have pedestrian-friendly within the fields of planning and public health that
design features are more complex and costlier to have employed cross-sectional research designs that
build. To lenders, this translates into higher project are focused on urban design variables. A public
risk and, therefore, higher lending rates (Gyourko health study using Canadian data attempted to
and Rybczynski 2000). The outcome is that build assess the relationship between environmental
ers often have trouble obtaining financing of any factors and walking to work (Craig et al. 2002). In
kind for novel projects that might include, for this study, researchers created eighteen different
example, a mixture of uses or a pedestrian-oriented measures of neighborhood characteristics and then
design. rated twenty-seven different neighborhoods along
Nonetheless, in recent years many groups have each measure. Characteristics included such items
called for overhauling contemporary site design as “complexity of stimulus” (amount and variety of
practices. Peter Calthorpe laid out a number of visual and auditory stimulation, including building
alternative criteria for site design, all of which detail and architectural variety), “visual aesthetics”
are designed to encourage pedestrian travel. “Build (color, composition, texture, and proportion of
ings should address the street and sidewalk with objects), and “social dynamics” (whether people
entries, balconies, porches, architectural features, could be seen moving about, sitting, and standing
and activities which help create safe, pleasant walk in the neighborhood). More people walked to work f
ing environments,” he wrote. “Building intensities, in the areas that had higher environmental scores. o
u
orientation, and massing should promote more The relationships between social indicators (includ r
active commercial centers, support transit, and ing income, education, and poverty status) and
reinforce public spaces. Variation and human-scale walking were not significant. A small number of
detail in architecture is encouraged. Parking should other studies in the field of public health have
be placed to the rear of the buildings” (Calthorpe also revealed that certain types of environments
1993). Many of these principles have been integrated are associated with more physical activity (see, e.g.,
into the New Urbanist residential developments Ball et al. 2001).
that have actually been developed, whether done Within planning circles, a few studies have also
by Calthorpe’s firm itself or others (Southworth 1997). been conducted that have attempted to quantify
Moreover, these principles have been integrated micro-scale urban design features and to assess the
into recommendations for the wholesale redesign relationship between these variables and physical
of commercial and retail centers, including main activity. A well-known study conducted in Portland,
stream development and real estate organizations, Oregon, during the early 1990s (Parsons et al. 1993a,
and have even been incorporated into some “level 1993b) offers a case in point. This study attempted
of service” standards for pedestrians (see, e.g., Beyard to construct a composite variable of the pedestrian
and Pawlukiewicz 2001; Jaskiewicz 1996). friendliness of some four hundred “traffic analysis
zones” in and around Portland. The composite vari
able, termed the “Pedestrian Environment Factor”
Empirical evidence (PEF), assessed each zone using four environ
mental parameters: ease of street crossings, side
Because urban design is qualitative in nature, rigor walk continuity, street network characteristics, and
ous studies of the influence of design characteristics topography. Points were assigned for each zone,
on behavior are rare. Much of the research into with zones receiving a PEF ranking ranging from
urban design, logically enough, is within the pur 4 (low) to 12 (high). Data from a household travel
view of architects, landscape architects, and urban survey was then matched to the PEF rankings. The
designers. On-the-ground research in these fields resulting data showed that zones with higher PEF’s
emphasizes case studies and observational tech generated more transit, bicycle, and walk trips, and
niques. Therefore, many of the theories about design fewer auto trips, with persons in the highest four
and behavior provided in this chapter are the result PEF categories making nearly four times as many
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 437 10-26-2012 3:23:22 PM

walk and bike trips as households located in the NOTES

bottom five categories. The study’s authors also
attempted to measure the effect of building set 1 The determination of one’s weight status is
backs on pedestrian travel in the Portland area. They defined by public health agencies using a
gathered data for all commercial structures in three measure called body mass index (BMI), which
Portland-area counties in order to establish how is a ratio of a person’s weight to their height.
many buildings in each of the region’s traffic analysis The CDC defines a healthy BMI for an adult
zones were built before 1951. (The researchers at 18–25 kilograms per square meter (kg/m2).
believed that structures built during the decades An overweight person is defined as having
before the 1950s were typically built to the front a BMI of 25–29.9 kg/m2 while someone who
of the lot line, rather than set back to allow for is defined as obese has a BMI of 30 kg/m2
automobile parking.) In areas with no buildings built and over.
before 1951, 1.9 percent of travelers walked or biked. 2 This is also the position taken by the Centers for
In areas that were over four-fifths covered by older Disease Control. See “Obesity and Overweight:
buildings, 5.3 percent did so. A Public Health Epidemic”: Available online at
http://cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/epidemic.
htm.
Conclusion 3 [See] Ewing 1994. Ewing compared American,
British, and Australian residential street design
A primary goal of this chapter was to show that guidelines, using standards contained in author
design does matter. Although, as noted, this idea is itative manuals in each country, and found that
denigrated by some in the planning and engineer minimum road widths and turning radii were
ing disciplines, the built environment has been significantly larger in the American manual than
shaped by a paradigm that is centered on designing in the British and Australian cases (turning radii
streetscapes for the motorists’ convenience. Unfor are larger to extend sight distances for motorists,
tunately, the street and site design guidelines and resulting in higher turning speeds). Along those
standards created and implemented over the last streets where the British and Australian standards
half century have served to create environments did not require sidewalks, both manuals mandated
in which only drivers feel at home. Such regulatory the use of intensive traffic calming methods and
and advisory devices form a large part of the other design features to ensure that traffic could
explanation as to why the built environment seems not safely move at speeds faster than twenty
to be so hostile to pedestrians and bicyclists. For miles per hour.
example, the creation of level of service standards 4 Applying numbers to terms such as “uncom
that are based upon vehicle-to-roadway capacity have fortably crowded” or “over-crowded” would be
served to downgrade alternative modes of travel, exceedingly difficult, as crowding is an inherently
both within transportation planning and engineering subjective experience. Not only does the defini
circles as well in reality, on the ground. The level tion of overcrowding vary from person to person,
of service standard is an important tool driving each individual’s assessment of overcrowding
transportation funding allocations. Because the can vary from place to place. Also, different
methodology that has been erected in support of cultural settings likely produce different reactions
the level of service standard has emphasized the with respect to what differentiates a comfortable
improvement of traffic flow along congested street experience from an uncomfortable one. For a
segments, transportation dollars are prioritized for fuller exposition see Churchman 1999.
automobile travel at these locations. Until a new 5 Raised crosswalks have the potential to be safer
system for multiple modes of travel is devised, than crosswalks that are placed on the same
containing the same level of rigor and engendering level as the carriageway. In A Pattern Language,
the same amount of respect in engineering and Christopher Alexander and co-authors write, “No
planning circles, arguments for sufficient funding amount of painted white lines, crosswalks,
for nonmotorized investments will continue to be traffic lights, button operated signals, ever quite
met with considerable resistance. manage to change the fact that a car weighs
9780415668071_P4_03.indd 438 10-26-2012 3:23:22 PM

a ton or more, and will run over any pedestrian, Bouchard, Claude, and Roy Shephard. 1994. Physical
unless the driver brakes. . . . The people who activity, fitness, and health: International proceedings
cross a road will only feel comfortable and safe and consensus statement. Conference Proceedings.
if the road crossing is a physical obstruction, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetic Publishers.
which physically guarantees that the cars must Burrington, Stephen. 1996. Restoring the rule of law and
slow down and give way to pedestrians.” See respect for communities in transportation. New York
Alexander et al. 1977, 281. University Environmental Law Journal 5: 691–734.
6 In a 1997 article in Governing magazine, Alan Calthorpe, Peter. 1993. The Next American Metropolis:
Ehrenhalt wrote that ITE is a more progressive Ecology, Community, and the American Dream. New
rival to AASHTO because it has a broader con York: Princeton Architectural Press.
stituency, consisting of planners and consultants Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1990.
as well as engineers. See Ehrenhalt 1997. Coronary heart disease attributable to sedentary
lifestyle – selected states. 1988. Morbidity and Mort
ality Weekly Report 39: 541–4.
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“Introduction,” “The Changing
Nature of Public Space in City
Centres,” and “Whose Public
Space?”
from Whose Public Space?: International Case Studies
in Urban Design and Development (2010)
Ali Madanipour
Public space has always played an important role in cities. Aside from housing, more urban land is devoted to
public space – streets, squares, plazas, and parks – than any other use. In cities, public spaces provide the con-
nective tissue between privately owned and occupied spaces. They give access to private property, and are
places for congregation and exchange. Because the space is public, communities have both the opportunity
and responsibility of saying how it should be designed and managed to meet community needs and aspirations.
But is “public space” always public, in the sense of being available and accessible for use by everyone?
In America and Great Britain since the contraction of government in the 1970s, there has been a tendency
to “privatize” public space. Many urban plazas and parks have commercial uses within them that cater to limited
segments of society, such as relatively expensive cafés and restaurants. In central cities, there are many spaces
that appear to be public but are not, such as shopping malls and some parks created in redevelopment areas,
and many places that are public but appear not to be because of how they’ve been designed and are
managed, such as plazas at the base of large office buildings provided to satisfy planning requirements that
look like corporate spaces and are often overseen by private security guards. Many urban streets are largely
effectively privatized because so much of their space is devoted to the use of privately owned vehicles.
The public realm is a primary focus of urban design theory and practice. How it should be provided and
designed is a central issue for the field. The recent book, Whose Public Space?: International Case Studies
in Urban Design and Development, edited by Ali Madanipour, adds an important contribution to the debate.
The book presents case studies of public space development, management, and use in cities around the
globe, illustrating the similarities and differences that exist in a range of urban and cultural contexts, and
identifying inherent tensions and conflicts. Madanipour’s introduction to the section of the book that focuses
on public space in central cities, “The Changing Nature of Public Space in City Centres,” excerpts of which
are included here, highlights the particularly challenging issues involved where “demand for and tensions over
public spaces’ production and control are highest.” In the book’s concluding chapter “Whose Public Space?,”
Madanipour brings the case studies together and offers a critical analysis of how they “map out the changing
nature of public space.” He identifies the general themes that apply to public space across the global spec-
trum and ultimately concludes that public spaces should be designed and evaluated on the principle of access
equality.
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 443 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

444 A L i M a D anip O U R
Ali Madanipour teaches architecture, urban design, and planning at the School of Architecture, Planning,
and Landscape at the University of Newcastle in England, and is a founding member of the University’s Global
Urban Research Unit. Madanipour was born in Iran and practiced architecture before turning to an academic
career. His interests include design, development, and management of cities, the social and psychological
significance of urban space, processes that shape urban space, agencies of urban change, and implications
of change for disadvantaged social groups and the environment. His writings have been widely translated.
Madanipour’s other books include Knowledge Economy and the City (London: Routledge, 2011), Design-
ing the City of Reason (London: Routledge, 2007), Public and Private Spaces of the City (London: Routledge,
2003), Tehran: The Making of a Metropolis (New York: John Wiley, 1998), Social Exclusion in European
Cities: Processes, Experiences, and Responses (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1996), Design of Urban Space:
An Inquiry into a Socio-spatial Process (New York: John Wiley, 1996), and three co-edited anthologies:
Social Exclusion in European Cities (London: Routledge, 2003), co-edited with Judith Allen and Goran Cars;
Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity, and Social Milieux (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), co-edited with Goran
Cars and Patsy Healey; and The Governance of Place (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), co-edited with Angela
Hull and Patsy Healey.
Recent anthologies on public space include Common Ground?: Readings and Reflections on Public
Space (London: Routledge, 2010), edited by Anthony M. Orum and Zachary P. Neal; Insurgent Public Space:
Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (New York: Routledge, 2010) edited by Jeffrey
Hou; The Politics of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2006), edited by Setha Low and Neil Smith; and
the earlier Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1992), edited by Michael Sorkin.
Recent works that focus on planning and design issues related to public space include Anastasia Loukaitou-
Sideris and Renia Ehren’s Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2009); Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Trideb Banerjee’s Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and
Politics of Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Matthew Carmona et al.’s Public Space:
The Management Dimension (London: Routledge, 2008).
Classic urban design texts on public space design include Allan Jacobs’ Great Streets (Boston, MA: MIT
Press, 1993); Jan Gehl’s Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1987); Randy Hester’s Planning Neighborhood Spaces with People (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984);
and William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (New York: Project for Public Spaces, 1980).
Stephen Carr et al.’s Public Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) focuses on environment
and behavior issues related to public space. Matthew Carmona, et al.’s Public Places, Urban Spaces (Oxford:
Architectural Press, 2010) includes a chapter on the social dimension of urban design that summarizes urban
design theory and practice related to public space.
Works that shed light on contemporary issues related to the production of public space include Nan Ellin’s
Postmodern Urbanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) and Don Mitchell’s The Right to the
City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003).
Two of the major theorists of the public sphere in the twentieth century were Hannah Arendt and Jürgen
Habermas. Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998) analyzes
the ancient public sphere, and Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) examines the bourgeois public sphere. Works of social theory which provide
insight into the nature of public realm, including physical public space, include Richard Sennett’s The Fall of
Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1977) and The Conscience of the Eye (New York: Knopf, 1990); Mark
Gottdiener’s The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994); and Fran
Tonkiss’s Space, the City and Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005).
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 444 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

INTRODUCTION 1999, 2003a, 2007), and major research projects

funded by the European Commission among others
Public spaces mirror the complexities of urban (Madanipour et al. 2003b; Madanipour 2004). The
societies: as historic social bonds between indi chapters, with the exception of Chapter 6, are writ
viduals have become weakened or transformed, ten specifically for this book, reporting on major
and cities have increasingly become agglomerations research projects funded by international organiza
of atomized individuals, public open spaces have tions, national governments and research councils.
also changed from being embedded in the social All of these research projects, with the exception
fabric of the city to being a part of more impersonal of Chapter 11, have recently been conducted at
and fragmented urban environments. Can making the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape,
public spaces help overcome this fragmentation, Newcastle University. This book is the first attempt
where accessible spaces are created through inclu to bring together the results of these various research
sive processes? Do the existing and new public endeavours in a single volume. The book is written
spaces of the city serve the public at large, or are for scholars and practitioners in built environment
they contested and exclusive? Whose public spaces and social sciences, including urban design and plan
are they? This book offers some answers to these ning, architecture, urban geography and sociology,
questions through case studies of making public with an interest in the relationship between space
space in different countries. and society, and the dynamics of change in con
The book investigates the making of public space temporary cities around the world, as particularly
in contemporary cities, through analysing the process manifested in urban public spaces. f
of urban design and development in international The book’s key argument is that, although the o
u
case studies, focusing on the changing nature of social and spatial composition of cities differ con r
public space and the tensions that arise between siderably across the world, there are a number of
different perspectives and groups. Two broad frame general trends that can be observed: that public
works of place and process are used to study and spaces play a significant role in the life of cities
analyse the urban public spaces in transition. Public everywhere, and that for cities to work, there is an
spaces, it is argued in this book, should be accessible undeniable need for public space; that the nature
places, developed through inclusive processes. With of this role, and therefore the nature of public space,
these criteria, therefore, it would be possible to analyse in modern cities has radically changed; and that
and evaluate the spaces that are being developed the development and use of these spaces mirror
in cities around the world. the way a society is organized, shaped by unequal
The book’s authors share a common concern distribution of power and resources, which creates
about the quality and character of urban public tension and conflict as well as collaboration and
spaces, a concern that has led us to investigate a compromise. Public spaces, it is argued here, should
series of major empirical case studies. Crossing the be produced on the basis of equality for all by
cultural divides, the book brings these investigations being accessible places made and managed through
together to examine the similarities and differences inclusive processes.
of public space in different urban contexts, and
engage in a critical analysis of the process of design,
development, management and use of public space. Why has urban public space become
While each case study investigates the specificities a subject of interest?
of particular cities, the book as a whole outlines
some general themes in global urban processes. It Public space has been an integral part of cities
shows how public spaces are a key theme in urban throughout history, so much so that without it,
design and development everywhere, how they are human settlements would be unimaginable. How
appreciated and used by the people of these cities, could people step out of their front doors if there
but are also contested by and under pressure from were no public space to mediate between private
different stakeholders. territories? Like any other part of cities, such as
The book builds on the theoretical foundations houses, neighbourhoods, political and cultural insti
developed in earlier publications (Madanipour 1996, tutions, it is part of an ever-present vocabulary of
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urbanism. It has been used in different forms and companies were answerable to their shareholders,
combinations in many different circumstances, with and not to the urban community as a whole. Public
different degrees of accessibility and control, but goods, such as public space, therefore, were seen
they can all be seen as different variations on the as a liability, as they could not be sold and had no
same theme. This poses the question: if public spaces, direct profit for the private investor. Local authorities
in some form or other, have been a primary part and their elected politicians, meanwhile, could not,
of urban structure everywhere and at all times, or would not, invest in those public goods that did
why do we see a current wave of interest in public not have an immediate political or economic return.
space as a subject of social concern, political action They also saw public space as a liability, as some
and academic research? thing that required higher maintenance costs and
Recent attention to public space is rooted in the was a burden on their dwindling budgets. As a result,
structural changes that societies around the world both public- and private-sector agencies abandoned
have experienced in the past thirty years whereby public spaces as cities suffered from accelerated
the provision of public goods, such as public space, decline.
has been under pressure through the ascendancy Large-scale schemes, however, could not be
of the market-based paradigm. The aftermath of the developed without some sort of mediating space,
Second World War was characterized by structural some public areas that would link different buildings
intervention by the state in the economy, resulting and spaces. Private developers, therefore, preferred
in large-scale public-sector schemes in urban devel to control these spaces, so that the return on their
opment, particularly in western countries. Local investment could not be jeopardized by what they
authorities and their architects and planners were saw as potential threats to their operation. New
at the leading edge of urban renewal whereby cities public spaces that were developed after the 1980s,
were expanded and redeveloped with high-rise therefore, were controlled and restricted, in contrast
public housing schemes, motorways and new towns, to the more accessible and inclusive places of the
implementing the ideas developed earlier by the past. This was a widespread phenomenon, and
garden city movement and the modern movement became known as the privatization of public space.
in architecture. As the prosperity of the 1960s was It generated a fear that the city had become private
followed by economic decline in the 1970s, the territory in which people could not move easily and
post-war Keynesian accord between the state and the democratic aspirations of liberty and equality
the market came under pressure. Industrial decline would be undermined. This would be a fragmented
deprived the public sector of its funds, and urban city, in which some people would be free to go
renewal projects and new town development schemes almost anywhere, whereas others would be trapped
were abandoned. The solution that was introduced inside their ghettos or prevented from entering the
in the 1980s in the United Kingdom and the United exclusive spaces of the elite, facilitated through a
States was to dismantle the age of consensus and process of gentrification. The loss of public space
stimulate economic growth through market revival symbolized the loss of the idea of the city.
and competition. Radical de-industrialization, reduc An associated trend was the change in disciplin
tion in the size of the state, privatization, individu ary and professional division of labour, in which
alization, globalization and liberalization of the architects and planners both lost interest in public
economy were the new structural directions for the space, leaving it in an indeterminate state. Modernist
state and society, which spread around the world architecture was interested in refashioning the
and lasted for three decades until coming to a halt entire built environment, from the scale of cities
with a global financial crisis. This paradigm shift down to the level of individual pieces of furniture.
had major implications for urban design, planning Modernism was a relatively coherent, socially con
and development. cerned movement that sought to solve social
With reduction in the size and scope of the state, problems through physical transformation. With
urban development was transferred to the private economic decline, which removed the possibility
sector. The private sector, however, was inter of large-scale urban development schemes, and the
ested in those aspects of urban development that collapse of architecture’s confidence in its ability
would ensure a return on its investment. Private to deal with social problems, it withdrew into an
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“The Changing Nature of Public Space in City Centres” 447
aesthetic sphere. The postmodern reaction to and American cities. However, the global neoliberal
modernism was more interested in playfulness of trend posed a major challenge to public goods
appearance than in grappling with social concerns. everywhere, as partly evident in the threats facing
It focused on the site, trying to respond to the needs public space, which has resulted from the restless
of the client, and paid little attention to what lay process of globalization.
outside, the urban context, of which public space was
a major part. The architect’s clients were private
developers, and they were interested in rewards on THE CHANGING NATURE OF PUBLIC
their investment, which set the parameters for the SPACE IN CITY CENTRES
architect’s scope of action. Meanwhile, as a result
of rapid economic decline and the heavily criticized The nature and character of public spaces are
consequences of post-Second World War planning closely related to the nature and character of cities.
schemes, urban planning became focused on social As cities have changed, so have their public spaces.
issues, which included large-scale unemployment In smaller towns and cities of agrarian societies,
and the decline of infrastructure. There was no with their relatively cohesive and homogeneous
scope for concentrating on public spaces, which populations, some public spaces were major focal
would be considered as icing on the cake, a luxury points, where trade, politics, cultural performance
rather than a necessity. and socialization all took place. As modern cities
While public and private organizations and their have grown larger, with heterogeneous populations
associated professionals had lost interest in the spread across large areas, public spaces have f
public space, seeing it as irrelevant or expensive, multiplied and expanded, but have also become o
u
or were encroaching upon it for private gains, the more impersonal, losing many of their layers of r
social need for public space in the city had not significance. In the city of strangers, the meaning
disappeared. There were increasing concerns about of public space becomes less personal, more tran
the rise of individualism and the decline of public sient, and at best merely functional or symbolic.
goods, of which public space was a key manifesta There have been major changes in the nature
tion in the urban environment. Individuals were of cities during their long existence throughout
encouraged to follow their own interests, expecting millennia (Southall 1998), despite some common
the market to deliver prosperity. But social goods features that they share across this time. According
could not be delivered by the market, which had to Louis Wirth, cities are identified by size of popu
little interest in non-monetary forms of benefit. lation, density of settlement, and heterogeneity of
Social goods could not be delivered by the public inhabitants, and so are perceived as “relatively
sector either, as its financial ability to develop and permanent, compact settlements of large numbers
maintain public spaces was undermined. There was of heterogeneous individuals” (1964: 68). As these
a crisis about public goods in general, and about parameters of size, density and heterogeneity, and
public space in particular. the relationship among urban inhabitants and with
As the neoliberal market paradigm spread the outside world, have constantly taken new forms,
around the world, other countries adopted, or were the nature of cities and urban societies has changed
encouraged to adopt, the path of economic regener considerably. These changes can be seen in the
ation through stimulating the market and reducing different analyses made of the city. For Aristotle
the state’s size and scope. With the collapse of the (1992), the ancient city was an association, in which
Soviet bloc, the market paradigm grew in new coun people participated by playing different roles to
tries, becoming the undisputed form of economic construct a political community. Max Weber (1966)
development. In these countries, therefore, the wrote about medieval cities as a fusion of garrison
provision of public goods, which was already, or and market, indicating the defensive and economic
had become, less effective than in the rich western functions of cities, as well as their political and legal
countries, faced similar issues and problems. Of autonomy. In modern cities, however, the military
course, the extent of marketization and the crisis function of the city has been lost, its political func
of public space has not been the same everywhere, tion weakened, its economic function integrated
as is best evident in the differences between European into a larger national and international system, and
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even its population spread out into the suburbs. against the modernization of cities with wide
This is why one observer decided to write, “The boulevards and soulless public spaces (Sitte 1986).
age of the city seems to be at an end” (Martindale While this criticism partly captures the changing
1966: 62). And yet we know that the age of the condition of cities, it may also tend to misjudge the
city has just begun, as the turn of the twenty-first complexity of places and identities in cities, hence
century has been marked by a shift in the world’s promoting place as a particular enclosed space
balance of population from a predominantly rural with fixed identities, which is not what the spaces
to a predominantly urban population. of modern cities can or should be (Massey 1994).
The nature of public spaces has changed along This is part of a larger debate about the nature of
side the historic changes in the nature of cities. For modern cities, and of modernity itself.
most of urban history, the primary public spaces The transition from an integrative community
of the city were the core of the urban society, to the anonymity and alienation of large modern
integrating the political, economic, social and cul urban societies has been a key concern in the
tural activities of a small and relatively coherent development of sociology (Engels 1993; Tönnies
urban population. Examples of these primary spaces 1957; Simmel 1950). Behaviour in public spaces has
were the agora in Greek cities, the forum in Roman been analysed as the reflection of this transition,
cities, and market squares in medieval cities. The from engaging with others to avoiding them, as the
other public open spaces of the city, such as streets, overload of encounters and emotional stimuli, and
intersections, minor squares, etc., were also essential the wide gap between social classes, keep people
for everyday sociability and trade. In modern cities, apart and turn public spaces into residual places of
however, the city has grown, with populations so avoidance rather than encounter. Two of the major
large and heterogeneous that they could not rely theorists of the public sphere in the twentieth
on proximity and close encounters to engage in century, Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas,
their complex range of activities. Its physical space mourned the passing of these integrative societies
has also grown to such an extent that co-presence and complained about the rise of what was called
is no longer possible, or even desirable. The role a mass society. Arendt analysed the ancient polis
of public space in the close-knit community was (1958) and Habermas investigated the early modern
fairly clear: facilitating a multiplicity of encounters bourgeois public sphere (1989), both as examples
that were essential for everyday life and helping of situations in which interpersonal communication
consolidate the social order. In the modern city, a led to a rich public life. Both of them saw the rigid
large number of anonymous individuals are engaged routines of the industrial city as alienating, and as
in non-converging networks, while the transport, tending to degrade the qualities of public life.
information and communication technologies have The result has been a degree of false romantic
changed the location and shape of these networks. ization of historic public spaces. The Greek agora
These changes are reflected in the nature of public has been portrayed as the material manifestation
spaces, which have kept some of their historic func of this magnificent ancient civilization. This was
tions but now primarily play residual roles. a civilization, however, in which women, foreigners
The change in the nature of urban space can and slaves had no place in the public sphere. The
be traced in the relationship between “space” and medieval square has been portrayed as the picture
“place” in the literature, whereby space is con sque heart of the city, in what are often little more
sidered to be more abstract and impersonal, while than romantic and aesthetic notions of life in the
place is interpreted as having meaning and value. medieval city, and yet at the time it was a place
One of the key criticisms of the urban development dominated by trade, and it displayed the hierarchies
process in modern cities has been the transition and harshness of life within the city walls. The
from place to space, through a loss of meaning and eighteenth-century coffee houses in London or
personal association. The humanist critics of modern the salons in Paris are seen as the prototypes for
ism, as well as others, have raised this criticism in the emergence of a public sphere, in which people
response to the urban redevelopment programmes were able to discuss matters of common interest
of the mid-twentieth century (Jacobs 1961). The and come to an informed opinion about their
same criticism was raised in the nineteenth century society, and yet these places were often accessible
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only to the elite among the emerging bourgeoisie. identities, their flexibility and inclusiveness will be
The early modern city squares and boulevards are undermined, and so will their accessibility. They lie
portrayed as examples of the rise of a new age of outside the boundaries of individual or small group
reason and modernity, and yet they resulted from control, providing spaces that mediate between,
speculative development, monarchical power and and give access to, private spaces, as well as per
suppression of the poor. What we often see is the forming a multiplicity of functional and symbolic
architecture of the city, or at least a sanitized image roles in the life of an urban society. In the processes
of the history, on which we project our own expect of urban change, the conditions of accessibility are
ations, aesthetic, political and social. subject to change, hence changing the nature of
After the decline of industries and the collapse public spaces. In the controversies about privatiza
of the rigid routines of the industrial economy, tion of public space, it is the access to public spaces
the nature of public space has once again changed, that has been limited, narrowing the range of social
now being integrated into the service economy. The groups who can use these spaces, and making these
quality of public space becomes an essential sup spaces accessible only to a smaller group of people,
port mechanism for the flexible working practices often judged by their ability to pay.
of the service economy, and the consumption- The word public originates from the Latin and
driven basis on which this economy relies. Rather refers to people, indicating a relationship to both
than treating public spaces as functional residues society and the state. A public space may therefore
or breathing spaces of the city, which was the be interpreted as open to people as a whole,
attitude of industrial modernism, service-based post and/or being controlled by the state on their behalf. f
moderns embrace them for their aesthetic value, Public has been defined as the opposite of private, o
u
as well as their provision of spaces of consumption. which is the realm of individuals and their intimate r
Public spaces become an essential part of the relationships; and so public space is often defined
regeneration of cities through promoting retail in terms of its distinction from the private realm
development. The association of public space cre of the household. Public has also been seen as
ation and high-value consumption inevitably leads the opposite of the personal, hence equated with
to gentrification, in which one group of people and impersonal (Silver 1997: 43), the realm of the
activities are replaced by another. non-intimate others. What lies beyond personal,
The modern large city, which was once a western however, can also be inter-personal, where the
phenomenon, has now become a global one. The boundaries between personal and impersonal,
transition from integrative small communities to private and public, can be blurred.
fragmented large societies, which was associated The distinction between the public and the
with the experiences of modernity in nineteenth- private is a key theme in liberal political theory,
century Europe, has now been extended to most promoting the separation of private and public
parts of the globe through a restless process of interests and roles in order to prevent private
colonization, modernization and globalization. In interests encroaching on and undermining public
this context, as cities grow everywhere and services interests (Wacks 1993; Nolan 1995). The tension
form a major part of urban economies around the has been challenged by the critics of private
world, the condition of urban public spaces becomes property, who see this distinction as consolidating
ever more significant. the power of the elite at the expense of the poor.
It has also been challenged by women, who see it
as consolidating the role of men in public affairs
Accessible places and associating the private sphere with women,
hence keeping them locked in an inferior posi-
Public spaces play many different roles in urban tion in society (Fraser 1989). The subdivision of
societies and can be defined in a number of ways. the social world into public and private spheres,
The key feature of public space, however, is its and the establishment and maintenance of the
accessibility. Without being accessible, a place boundaries between them, has therefore been chal
cannot become public. If public open spaces are lenged and criticized from a number of different
conceived as enclosed particular places with fixed perspectives.
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 449 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

Yet another challenge to the notion of public more public it will be. Its degree of publicness will
sphere and public space comes from social diversity. also depend on the types of activities taking place,
Public policy has often been justified as directed which can create symbolic boundaries around these
towards public interest. The idea of public interest activities, or be inviting to as many people as wish
has been used to explain and defend the actions to join in. A degree of distinction between intimate
of public authorities. Their critics, however, argue and shared spaces, between private and public
that the way this public interest has been defined spaces, is essential for living in society. The con
is too narrow, and often privileges the elite. What troversy is usually about how these two areas
is usually considered to be an average citizen, for are defined, distinguished from one another, and
whom the laws are written and who is the basis separated by what sort of boundary. Much of urban
of public action, is argued to exclude women, the design has been interested in how this boundary
elderly, children, ethnic minorities and the poor. is articulated, how a dividing line can be set up
What is introduced as public interest, they argue, that is protective of the private sphere from the
is not really public in an inclusive sense. This poses intrusion of others, while protecting the collective
a challenge to the notion of public: either abandon sphere from individual interest; in other words, how
the idea and replace it with a notion of society this boundary can enhance, rather than degrade,
subdivided into tribes and interest groups, or try the quality of life in cities.
to expand the notion of public so as to include all To determine the extent to which a place or
citizens equally. activity is public or private, Benn and Gaus (1983)
In spatial terms, public spaces are by definition suggested three criteria as dimensions of social organ
public, and as such expected to be accessible to ization: access, interest and agency, with access
all. However, public is not a single entity, as it is divided further into access to spaces, activities,
composed of different social strata, each with a information and resources. A place is public, there
different set of characteristics, interests and powers. fore, if it is controlled by public authorities, con
Furthermore, within those strata there are a large cerns people as a whole, is open or available to
number of individual differences. There are strong them, and is used or shared by all the members
centrifugal and fragmentary forces that create and of a society. This provides a useful framework for
separate social strata, which will then be reflected assessing the publicness of a place. The criteria of
in the constitution of the public. The tension interest, agency and access, however, approach space
between the public and the private can be seen instrumentally, seeing it as an asset in exchange,
in the European medieval city, as well as in many using it as a resource, treating it as a commodity.
cities around the world to this day, where the streets This interpretation appears to draw on an analysis
and open spaces of the city are gradually being of social relations as exchange among strangers,
threatened by the expanding houses and private rather than a set of emotional and meaningful
spaces, to the extent that a minimum amount of ties (Madanipour 2003a). There must be additional
space is left for passing through and for conducting dimensions at work, which should also be taken
trade and other essential functions (Saalman 1968). into account.
It is a tension that we can clearly see in our own The symbolic dimensions of public spaces are
time, in which private interests tend to claim the as significant as their functional ones. In the small
urban space, undermining the publicness of its towns and cities of agrarian societies, public spaces
public spaces, in what is termed the privatization were developed and used as integrative nodes for
of public space. a variety of instrumental and expressive needs.
The nature and character of a public space Performing social rituals in public was as import
depend on how it is distinguished from the private ant as engaging in trade or deliberating on how
sphere. In other words, the way in which its bound to manage the town. Even before then, as can be
aries are constructed determines the type of public observed in the remaining hunter-gatherer societies
space and its quality. If the boundary is rigidly of today, the common spaces of a group, in which
guarded by walls, gates and guards, it is no longer they sing and dance, tell stories and perform rituals,
considered a public space. In contrast, the more are a significant part of living together as a group.
accessible and permeable a place becomes, the In modern urban societies, however, while humans
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 450 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

have remained social beings, it is true that the Provision and free access to public spaces, there
nature and methods of expressiveness, and there fore, are essential for any society. But we should
fore the character of urban public spaces, have not naively believe in physical determinism, think
changed. Much of cultural reading of cities places ing that spatial solutions are sufficient to address
a performative emphasis on public spaces, seeing societal problems. As public space is a part of the
them as places for performance and assertion of public sphere, we can apply the logic of the public
identity. On the other hand, the functionalist read sphere in democratic societies to analysing public
ing of the city appeared to ignore this symbolic space. In these societies, the establishment of a
dimension and focus entirely on the way cities political public sphere did not remove the social
functioned, hence seeing public spaces as essential divide between rich and poor, but it did provide
for the health of the city, as its lungs. A key argu opportunities for expressing opinion and avenues
ment is that both these camps have failed to see for trying to influence action. In other words, the
the multidimensionality of public space. Access, public sphere was an integral part of a democratic
therefore, has both instrumental and expressive society. In the same sense, public space is a neces
dimensions. A public space is one that allows a sary part of an open society, a space that everyone
range of necessary activities to take place, but also is able to enter and participate in some collective
a place in which “unnecessary” social activities are experience. This may not amount to solving social
performed. An example is the ritual of passeggiata and economic problems, but it does provide a forum
in Italian cities, the evening walk in which the for socialization and a counterweight to exclusion
inhabitants of the city put on their best clothes and ary and centrifugal forces that tend to tear apart f
go out of their homes for a slow stroll in public the social fabric of polarized societies. o
u
spaces to see and be seen. This is a symbolic and r
expressive, as well as functional, exercise, a com
plex urban ritual that cannot be reduced to a single Inclusive processes
interpretation.
There are major tensions, however, inherent Different stages in design, planning, development
in the symbolic dimension of accessibility. On the and management of public spaces have a direct
one hand, the more accessible a place, the more impact on their accessibility and identity. If public
impersonal it tends to become, particularly in large spaces are produced and managed by narrow inter
cities. If a place is reserved for a known group ests, they are bound to become exclusive places.
of individuals or a class of society on the basis of As the range of actors and interests in urban devel
their economic or political resources, accessibility opment varies widely, and places have different
decreases and familiarity rises. While individuals dimensions and functions, creating public spaces
may suffer from the anonymity of the large city becomes a complex and multidimensional process.
(Simmel 1950) and prefer to establish a comfort To understand places, and to promote the develop
realm of familiarity, they will have to come into ment of accessible public places, therefore, it is
contact with a large number of strangers in their essential to study this process and to encourage its
everyday life in the city. However, if the city be broadening, to make it inclusive.
comes subdivided into zones of comfort for social Cities have historically grown and been developed
groups, it has been fragmented and tribalized. by a large number of people over time. As new
Much of the literature in urban design encourages technologies have emerged, the size of companies
designers and decision makers to subdivide the city has grown and the areas of expertise have multi
into neighbourhoods and identifiable, defendable plied through a process of specialization, construct
zones, hence knowingly or unknowingly limiting the ing the built environment has become far more
accessibility of urban spaces. There is, therefore, complex than hitherto. The process has also
a parallel between accessibility and anonymity: become faster than before, in line with the growth
spaces that would deter strangers would not be in the productive capacity of developers. An army
accessible. They may have served local people of specialists and a mountain of resources can be
well, but their accessibility would be controlled and employed to create new parts of cities in relatively
limited. short periods of time. While this complexity has
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 451 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

multiplied the number of agencies involved in the under the management of the main developer and
process, it has allocated a specific task to each the associated design team. However, while this
agency, as cogs in a large machine geared towards increases efficiency and productivity in city build
a particular mode of operation. As the number of ing, it narrows the range of strategic actors and
agencies has grown, the organizational hierarchies their considerations.
and the division of labour have focused the process, The logic of production, however, is only one
ruled by technical and instrumental rationality. As among the logics with which cities are built and
technological know-how and the self-confidence run (Madanipour 2007). In deciding the best course
of modern city builders have grown, city building of action, the ability to make is certainly an
has been consolidated in fewer hands, managing important consideration, but not the only one. In
and coordinating complex hierarchies and networks deciding how to live our lives or how to manage
of agencies and individuals. our cities, we evaluate our options according to a
The medieval city, and for that matter the wide range of issues and considerations. To narrow
nineteenth-century industrial city, were seen as down the range of options to technical and instru
the result of accidents rather than careful planning. mental ones, therefore, would lead to distorted
The father of modern rationalist philosophy, René decisions.
Descartes (1968), preferred cities to be designed A key question in analysing the development
by a single designer, who could devise and imple process is: who is involved? An associated question
ment a single well-ordered system. The medieval is: who do the process and its outcome serve? An
city, as well as the laws and beliefs of the past, inclusive process would involve a larger number of
were the result of custom and example, rather than people and agencies and would spread the benefits
rational thinking. What he advocated was thinking of the process to larger parts of society, while an
everything anew, according to a rational order. This exclusive process would limit the number and range
way of thinking was the basis of the modernist of agencies and would reward a smaller number
approach to design, aiming to create and impose of people. The process of building cities involves
a new order on the cities of the past, even at the complex regulatory frameworks and large financial
cost of eradicating large parts of these cities. Rather resources, both of which are often closely entwined
than being conditioned by the past, modernist with political and financial elites. This tends to give
rationalists wanted a break with the past. these elites a powerful influence over the process
The considerable productive capacities of modern and its outcome.
city builders have made this possible. Designers In market economies, financial resources are
and planners are trained to think strategically and generated by the private sector, and it is taken for
plan for strategic and large-scale transformation granted that private investors expect to maximize
of cities. The changing nature of developers has rewards on their investment. In democracies, the
a direct impact on what they build. A century ago, elected representatives are expected to act on
locally based developers could be engaged in single behalf of their constituencies. However, the dis
small developments, creating more diverse cities. advantaged groups, who do not have access to
Now, in contrast, large national or international financial resources and are frequently disconnected
developers are able to engage in large-scale projects. from the political process, end up having no control
Developers can mobilize large amounts of capital or stake in the city building process. The places
and large teams of construction professionals, that are created are not designed to serve them,
and can use new construction technologies and as these groups are not often part of the decision-
machinery, enabling them to develop cities at larger making formula. This tends to make city building
scales and faster speeds. A large part of a city, dominated by powerful agencies and individuals,
therefore, can be designed by a single organization rather than involving a broad range of citizens.
within a relatively short period of time. As Descartes In the development process, development agencies
dreamed, a city can be designed by a single work with resources, rules and ideas in response
designer and developed by a single organization. to the needs of society and demands of the market.
The task is complex and will involve a large num However, if the needs and demands of the disadvant
ber of different teams. These are all, nevertheless, aged parts of society are not strongly represented,
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 452 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

politically or financially, as is often the case, the A key answer is the universality of the existence
process and its outcome may not serve them of, and the need for, public space in cities. Every
at all. where and in any period of history, human settle
Another key question in the development pro ments consist of a collection of different individuals
cess is the temporal dimension of change. Design and households, residing in their own private
as a goal-oriented problem-solving process tends territories and connected to one another through
to envisage the built environment as a finished semi-private, semi-public and public spaces. From
product, working out its structure and details and the earliest traces of human settlements in Meso
leaving nothing to chance. Cities, however, are con potamia to the metropolises of our own time, this
stantly changing, inhabited as they are by intelligent division of space into public and private has been
and dynamic people. At no point can there be a a key feature of urban societies. While the character
final shape for a city. The design and development and use of these public spaces may differ, the uni
of cities, therefore, will need to accommodate this versal existence of some form of public space and
change, embracing a dynamic conception of cities its social and economic significance for the city
rather than a fixed and rigid one. cannot be denied.
What is needed, therefore, in investigating, as Another, related, similarity between the cities is
well as making, the urban space is a multidimen in the converging methods of city building, in which
sional and multi-agency process involving as many the markets and new technologies are prominent.
individuals and agencies as possible, and a dynamic In our time, the spread of capitalism and the extent
process that can accommodate time and change. of global interdependency characterize cities every f
The result will be a dynamic multiplicity, in which where. Before the arrival of the dramatic economic o
u
city building is envisaged and organized as an crisis of 2008, a global consensus seemed to have r
inclusive and responsive process. The public spaces emerged in which markets were given free rein to
that are created by this process will be more inclu come up with solutions to all the economic prob
sive and accessible than the ones that serve narrow lems. All of the cities we have studied are part
interests; will be driven by technical and instru of the global market, albeit occupying different
mental concerns; or will be envisaged as fixed, positions in the marketplace, from more central
exclusive and rigid places. to more marginal. In all cities, the process of city
building is subject to the logic of the market, in
which land as a finite resource is the subject of
An interdependent world competition. What connects these cities and their
spaces, therefore, is the mechanism of the market.
Some readers may wonder why this book has brought Even if it operates completely differently in each
together what appear to be disparate experiences city, it is subject to the same general principle of
from such a wide range of countries. What can risk and reward, and distinction between private
African, European, Asian and Latin American cities and public interests. It also tends to generate, or
have in common? Each city and each country has accelerate, social stratification and division, creat
its own history and culture, with different social ing tensions between the rich and poor, and social
and economic conditions and prospects. What can inequalities that become manifest in the making
we gain from bringing these cases together? On the and use of public spaces.
surface, the differences between our case studies Also, all cities are subject to the impact of tech
are large and wide, to the extent that the existence nological change. Transport technologies have
of any links or comparisons between their public allowed them to spread, creating new social and
spaces may seem improbable. Some of these cities spatial distinctions between the centre and periphery.
are rapidly growing while others are shrinking. They Construction technologies have been embraced as
belong to different cultures and economic con the solution to city building problems, often applied
ditions, each embedded in a completely different by architects and planners with little consultation
reality. What might we find, these readers may with the city’s inhabitants. Cities’ position with regard
ask, in any attempt at placing them alongside one to manufacturing industries also creates overlaps
another? and commonalities: while some are abandoning
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 453 10-26-2012 3:23:16 PM

their industrial past, others are entering a period public housing residents in the Netherlands, street
of industrialization, each with its own distinctive, drinkers in Germany, low-income households in
but ultimately related, impact on the character Mexico, local businessmen in Taiwan, or middle-
of public space. Judging by their diverse character class South Africans, each with widely different views
and trajectory, we cannot envisage these cities and outcomes. Depending on their level of political,
to be on a linear temporal path in which some are economic and cultural power and influence, these
further along the line than the others, and the fate individuals and organizations can shape and deter
of some is going to be a model for the fate of the mine some of the features of the urban space,
others. We can, however, see how their linkages, creating the structural conditions within which
existing and potential, are forged through their others live and use the city. Their resources allow
current conditions and past histories. More than the more powerful individuals and institutions to
anything else, they are part of the same global make substantial physical and institutional changes
urban process, different components of the same in cities, while the claims by the less powerful groups
phenomenon and sharing many features of modern may take softer, temporary forms. Each individual,
urban societies. group or organization may try to shape the city in
[ . . . ] their own image, creating spaces that would enable
them to feel safe and in control, with or without con
sideration of what others may need. Public spaces,
WHOSE PUBLIC SPACE? even in their most public forms, therefore, tend to
find particular flavours, a different character asso
After investigating these cases from around the ciated with a particular combination of groups and
world, through the theoretical frameworks of place interests, under pressure to find a fixed identity
and process, can we now answer the question that within a particular fragment of society.
was posed as the title of this book, and identify Public spaces are shaped not only by claims,
to whom public spaces belong? The complexity of but also by the absence of claims, by withdrawal
the urban design, development and management from the public sphere. Withdrawal from public space
processes in these cases, and of the configuration may be due to a fear of crime, mistrust of other
of urban societies in which they are located, makes social groups, and intensified social polarization.
it impossible to find simple answers. But across This withdrawal is reflected in neglect and decline,
the cases, we are able to identify a recurring theme poor maintenance, accumulation of waste and refuse,
whereby individuals, social groups and organiza or lack of care and attention. Neglect of public
tions make or withdraw claims over space, thereby spaces may be a result of exaggerated preferences
implicitly or explicitly contesting the claim of others, for vehicular movement, which was the dominant
instigating a process of inclusion and exclusion, theme in shaping cities for much of the industrial
creating spaces with overlapping meanings. We can era. Such neglect may also reflect the absence of
see how public spaces are significant for all urban local governance – that is, coordinating mechanisms
societies, no matter what the size of the city, its to facilitate negotiation between different claims
economic basis or its political and cultural configura over space. Public spaces provide linkages between
tions. Public spaces, as significant material and private spheres, and represent the character and
social components of cities, are therefore subject quality of a city as a whole. The decline of public
to intense processes of social interaction through space reflects a breakdown in social and spatial
which their quality and character are determined. linkages and a deterioration of the city as a whole.
Claims could be made by powerful individuals The case studies presented in this book map
and institutions, such as a supermarket chain or a out the changing nature of public space. Public
shopping mall in England, a local authority in France, open spaces are changing from being embedded
a local prince in Nigeria, or housing designers in the social fabric of the city to being a part of more
and developers in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Claims impersonal and fragmented urban environments.
could also be made by individuals – or informal The various chapters show how public spaces are
groups of people who try to shape the space, changing alongside the changing nature of cities and
such as youth subcultures in the United Kingdom, urban societies: from places embedded in particular
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 454 10-26-2012 3:23:17 PM

“ W h o s e P u b l i c Sp a c e ? ” 455
communal traditions and routines to impersonal tices carrying only a fading trace of their economic
spaces produced by economic, political, technical and political content.
and management considerations – in other words, The city is often shaped at the intersection of
they are undergoing a transition from an expressive these claims and characters. Each claim may shape
to an instrumental character. Public spaces that one part of the city, or one aspect of a place, and
once were meaningful places are becoming a mere the interaction among these claims and counter
part of a transportation network dominated by claims shapes the complex city of people and places.
cars. They are also at risk of being taken over by Resistance, transgression and contest are as much
minority interests, being privatized in the name of a signifying character of these places as the claims
safety or exclusivity, further fragmenting the urban to establish a fixed or abstract identity for them.
society and space. The aims of designers to control the character of
The particular characters of public spaces may a housing scheme and its spaces may be met by
be instrumental or expressive. As instrumental a different use of the place, one that they did not
spaces, they are used as a means to an end, such envisage or approve. The intentions of local auth
as the development of a public bus station, or the orities to formalize development and promote a
pedestrianization of a street for the purpose of gain sanitized identity for the city may be met by the
ing commercial profit for businesses, or the gating colonization of space by groups that threaten that
of streets for the perceived safety of resident groups. image. The traditional authority and status of a place
Instrumental use can also be made for an essential may be undermined by the growth of population
need, such as the public spaces in low-income neigh around it and the expansion of places and activities. f
bourhoods in Mexico or small towns in France, Actions may have more unintended consequences o
u
where the quality of urban life is closely connected and challenges than there were intended outcomes. r
with the process of urban development and the pro City design and development becomes a con
vision of public spaces. As expressive spaces, they tinuous process of projection and contestation, in
may be used to project and explore identity, such as which some groups project an identity for a place
the gathering of youth subcultures or international and others accept or contest that identity, either
migrants in a European city, or a festival space in a by consciously transgressing the boundaries that this
traditional African city. The inclusive and partici process sets, or by ignoring it – knowingly or un
patory development of a common good such as knowingly. Even those who admit the claims of the
public spaces can help combine instrumental and projected identity of places, and therefore appear
expressive concerns, creating places that people use to fall in with the planned character and routines,
and can identify with, while reinvigorating society may undermine and transform these claims by per
through collective action. forming new activities, or by forgetting or ignoring
[ . . . ] the intended routines and practices. The place takes
Urban spaces may physically change very slowly, on a life of its own, one that may be very differ
but socially they may embody new beliefs and ent from what was intended, through conformity,
behaviours. Society’s economic and social con accident or defiance.
figuration may change from agrarian to industrial How can the complex and fluid process of urban
to services, and these changes may leave some design and development be led so as to ensure
spaces intact, but the pattern of their use and the the place is as public as possible, serving as many
nature of their meaning for the urban populations people as possible, rather than being at the service
will have changed dramatically. The design and of a privileged few? If the design and development
development processes may therefore result in of cities lies at the intersection of different claims,
substantial changes that introduce new beliefs and how can these claims all be taken into account?
practices, undermining the established patterns, There will be many occasions when the conflict
liberating some groups from their inferior positions, is so powerful that no bridge can be built between
but also abandoning the built environment that re different positions and interest groups. The choice
flected those traditions. Public spaces may retain appears to be between battling it out and trying to
some of the symbols and festivals, but these lose negotiate to find a solution. Such negotiation can
their original meanings, turning into aesthetic prac only take place through an inclusive process of city
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 455 10-26-2012 3:23:17 PM

design and development in which as many views as accused of naivety or lack of economic awareness.
possible need to be involved. Desire for exclusivity As the aim of the urban development process is
goes hand in hand with social inequality, and so often economic regeneration, place finds an instru
it is only through inclusive processes that the pos mental value, as a tool through which economic
sibility of creating accessible and shared places vibrancy can be delivered. Developers and local
increases. authorities may both look for quantity rather than
There is a large degree of overlap between the quality.
book’s chapters across its two parts. Overall, they Public space, urban regeneration and economic
show the gaps that exist between different perspec development, therefore, are closely entwined. In
tives and how the tension tends to be resolved some cases, the only way that public spaces can
in favour of more powerful groups. The power be developed and maintained is through engaging
resides with the designer who shapes the place, private-sector resources. So, the solution is not
the developer who initiates and coordinates the to exclude private investment from the process,
production of space, the investor who brings for and thus argue for poorer places and more deprived
ward financial resources, the public-sector agencies cities. The argument is that individual interests
that promote and regulate the transformation of should not be given free rein. The aim is to allow
the place, the homeowner who wishes to be in the character and quality of places to be established
control of the neighbourhood, the male domination through a variety of criteria and at the intersection
that prevents women from entering public arenas, of different voices, giving ultimate primacy to the
the higher-income groups that demand exclusive public and its different layers. Powerful groups
places, the majority populations who keep minorities inevitably try to exert a stronger influence in the
and subcultures out – and so on. Those who do process, and negotiations never become altruistic
not control resources and have no voice in political dialogues, which is why participation, inclusivity
representation, those who remain silent in the and transparency become essential.
process of spatial transformation, or those who are Urban sprawl has put pressure on both urban
physically weak can be at the receiving end, and centres and their peripheries. While urbanization
potentially lose out in a contest over the use and in much of the developing world is still ongoing,
control of space. This is an interdependent process, suburbanization in the developed world is a primary
with no one party in full control, although the degree feature, both trends leading to rapid and fragmented
of power and influence of agencies varies accord expansion of the city into the surrounding areas. In
ing to their economic and political capital or their the outward growth of cities, city centres and their
relations with the others around them. public spaces have lost much of their significance,
The ascendancy of the market paradigm in city even though the urban showcases are still in the
building, which shifted the initiative for investment centre, where the pressure of competition for space
to the private sector, has had a clear impact on how is still prevalent. Hollowing out of the centre, which
the process of urban design and development may is a feature of car-based urban growth, has been
be influenced. By encouraging private investors, experienced in most of our case studies. Marginal
either through partnerships or through reducing areas, meanwhile, have suffered from the shortage
regulatory pressures on them, the urban development of public spaces, both in rich suburbs and in poor
process has been bent towards their expectations. inner-city or peripheral neighbourhoods, albeit at
This shift of power towards the market is perhaps different levels. Public spaces are closely associated
the defining feature of many urban development with the degree of urbanization in a city, and
schemes in recent decades, with the unavoidable when urbanization suffers through suburbanization
outcome that the market determines the character and individualization, public spaces also suffer from
of the outcome, which often means producing places neglect and loss of meaning.
that facilitate monetary exchange. The prevalence The key issue is to have a clear sense of what
of economic justification for public spaces, there is gained and what is lost, as an inevitable com
fore, becomes the norm rather than the exception. ponent of any development process, and have some
It becomes an integral part of the logic of place control over this balance in favour of a wider range
making; anybody who questions this logic may be of people than many plans may suggest. Images
9780415668071_P4_04.indd 456 10-26-2012 3:23:17 PM

“ W h o s e P u b l i c Sp a c e ? ” 457
of busy and lively public spaces abound in the public spaces should be designed and developed,
promotional material put out by city authorities, as places that embody the principles of equality, by
developers and designers to show the attractiveness being accessible places made through inclusive and
of their cities, the success of their schemes or the democratic processes. Democratic and inclusive
desirable places that they aim to create. Inherent processes that create public space as a common good
in these images is the notion of happy shoppers and appear to be the best way of ensuring a better
joyous lifestyles, which would cause no problem if physical environment with social and psychological
these developments did not exclude many people significance for the citizens. Where everyday needs
with limited financial means or people who were for public spaces are met through participative pro
forced out of their places to make space for the cesses, the result is both physical improvement and
new arrangement. A place, therefore, should not social development, laying the foundations for further
be seen as a cosy tool to facilitate the supply and enhancement of democratic practices.
demand of consumer goods and lifestyles. An urban
place has many more layers, which should be taken
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of a place is the intention by some agencies to Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago:
narrow and control participation so as to ensure University of Chicago Press.
particular outcomes, namely creating places that Aristotle. 1992. The Politics. London: Penguin Books.
ensure a return on investment, that support and Benn, Stanley I. and Gerald F. Gaus. 1983. The public f
facilitate commercial operations and consumerist and the private: concepts and action. In Public and o
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lifestyles, and that can be used as brands and pro Private in Social Life, eds S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus. r
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is the assumptions made by the designers, developers Descartes, René. 1968. Discourse on Method and The
and local decision makers concerning who people Meditations. London: Penguin Books.
are and what they need. These assumptions may be Engels, Friedrich. 1993. The Conditions of the Working
biased in favour of particular social classes, cultural Class in England, ed. D. McLellan. Oxford: Oxford
groups, individual tastes and aesthetic considerations, University Press.
different concepts of order and disorder, and dif Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse
ferent historic periods, often reflective of those who and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minne
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to allocate the worst part of a scheme to public Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation
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They may impose an abstract geometry without Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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among the users, creating lines on the map rather Cities. New York: Vintage Books.
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But if the impact on others is exclusionary, such ——. 2003a. Public and Private Spaces in the City.
justification may lose its legitimacy. The principle by London: Routledge.
which the claims are evaluated and the character ——. 2003b. Cities’ Actions against Social Exclusion.
of public spaces examined should be the principle Brussels: Eurocities.
of equality. If a place is equally accessible to every ——. 2003c. Why are the design and development of
one, irrespective of their physical abilities, age, public spaces significant for cities? In Designing Cities:
gender, ethnicity, income level and social status, it Critical Readings on Urban Design, ed. A.R. Cuthbert.
can be called a public space. It is on this basis that Oxford: Blackwell.
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——. 2004. Marginal public spaces in European cities. Simmel, Georg. 1950. The metropolis and mental life.
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9780415668071_P4_04.indd 458 10-26-2012 3:23:17 PM

“Profit and Place”
from Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban
Design (1999)
Ian Bentley
At some point in the professional career of every designer, there comes a moment when budgetary realities
of projects cause great consternation and disappointment in their changes to design intentions. Whether this
moment comes as a jolt to possibilities during schematic design – or a later whittling away of design details
through value engineering – design outcomes get altered and incrementally change the visual and experiential
quality of cities. In this chapter from Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban Design, Professor Ian
Bentley exposes the links between developer motivations for profit and the diminishment of design quality.
Bentley frames the book around public disappointment with the evolution of city form over time as changes
in development financing, land acquisition, and design practices have taken root. These cumulative changes
create urban places that are different in scale, detail, materiality, and design quality – often producing places
that are unloved. He suggests a different set of values might be in play between designers and developer clients,
some of whom see profit as the primary intent of development. Much in the same line of thought as expressed
by John Logan and Harvey Molotch in Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place, 2nd edn. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2007), the historic evolution of use value into exchange value creates a very
different set of expectations for the design performance of cities.
Bentley educates the reader to some of the basic concepts of real estate development practice. He describes
the capital accumulation process that occurs through three distinct transformation phases in the development
process: 1. how development costs (wealth) are converted through those things bought in the marketplace for
the production of projects, that is, land, materials, labor, services; 2. how these are converted into a product
through the design process; and 3. how design products are transformed back into wealth again (as well as
profit in the undertaking) through sales in the marketplace. The author illustrates how developers can utilize
each of these phased wealth transformations into greater profits at the end of this process. The design outcomes
of these transformations have often resulted in the following: projects sited on less expensive land further
from desired locations; the increasing scale of development to maximize returns; a coarser grain development
that encloses the most space for the least cost; less walkable places because of this scale transformation;
specialized design firms who market more generic product expertise; deskilled construction labor that might
scrimp on attention to detail and work quality; globalized design practices where designers aren’t embedded
within the cultures or locations of their projects – often producing homogenizing results; cost savings on mate-
rial quality and innovative project components; the shortening of the construction calendar to save time and
money; a reduced range of specialized building types; and importantly, reductions in contributions to public
realm design and development. These are just a few of the many cost saving/quality reducing characteristics
that Bentley discusses. This list is impressive and disheartening in both its scope and length. The cumulative
impacts of these physical and wealth transformations change the experiential quality of urban living.
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460 I a N B E N tl E Y
Declining urban design and architecture quality has provoked a series of “corrections” and a number of
reactionary responses in practice – all of which raise a host of concerns and debates about the role of the
public sector in managing private sector development. The public has grown distrustful of developers who
master these cost cutting/profit maximization methods, as well as designers who are often deemed guilty by
association. Planning agencies have imposed additional oversight practices to ensure higher quality products;
sometimes resulting in design review boards as checks on shoddy design and development. Some cities
impose developer agreements and community benefits agreements to ensure attention to public realm amenities,
infrastructure, and service improvements – elements that developers might otherwise neglect. Other places
have imposed supplemental design guidelines, regulations and form-based codes to manage design expecta-
tions and shape their cities in desired directions.
While Bentley is highly critical of the modus operandi of some developers for cost cutting and profit, we
need to note that the associated decline in urban design quality is not a uniform outcome across all developer
practices. Given that real estate development attracts different consumers and market niches, not all projects
are targeted at increased profit margins through cost savings in design, materials, detailing, and location. Much
to the contrary, development targeted at higher end consumers often elevates design characteristics to a
marketing tactic. Most developers take great pride in the real estate projects they produce; many pioneering
innovative, creative, and valued project and building types. For over a decade now, the City of Vancouver
(through savvy collaboration between municipal urban designers and planners, the public, and developers)
has suggested much the opposite – that improving urban design and project quality has beneficial effects on
both short-term gain and long-term value.
Ian Bentley is Professor Emeritus in urban design at Oxford-Brookes University in the United Kingdom. For
many years he coordinated the Oxford Urban Design Studio and the Joint Centre for Urban Design. His written
works include: Identity by Design, with co-author Georgina Butina-Watson (London: Taylor & Francis/Architectural
Press, 2007); Responsive Environments, with co-authors Sue McGlynn, Graham Smith, Alan Alcock, and
Paul Murrain (London: Taylor & Francis/Architectural Press, 1985); and “Urban Design as an Anti-Profession,”
an article in which Bentley argues that urban design should remain a field of practice rather than becoming
a full-fledged profession: http://www.rudi.net/books/11651.
Publication of literature on profit-inducing development practices that result in positive urban design out-
comes is growing. Some of these publications include: Steve Tiesdell and David Adams, Urban Design in the
Real Estate Development Process (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and Shaping Places: Urban Planning,
Design and Development (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Dennis Jerke, Urban Design and the Bottom Line:
Optimizing the Return on Perception (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2008); Anne B. Frei and Richard
B. Peiser, Professional Real Estate Development: The ULI Guide to the Business, 2nd edn. (Washington, DC:
Urban Land Institute, 2003); and Rocky Mountain Institute et al., Green Development: Integrating Ecology
and Real Estate (New York: Wiley, 1998).
INTRODUCTION agencies deploy very large resources in the form-

production process. For example, the vast majority
The form-production process takes place through of developments are produced by private-sector
a complex pattern of negotiation and struggle developers specifically to be sold in the marketplace
between various actors. The built outcome of this at a profit. Perhaps less obviously, the private
process depends on the internal and external eco- sector produces a great deal of public space too.
nomic, political and cultural resources available The streets within private sector housing estates,
to each actor, and on the rules according to which for example, are mostly produced as integral parts
the various actors deploy the resources they have. of profit oriented overall schemes, and then merely
In capitalist situations, increasingly prevalent across handed over to state agencies for management
the globe, private sector profit-oriented development afterwards.
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“ P rofit a N d P lac E ” 461
Once any private-sector project has been sold, The same competitive constraints affect the
profit-oriented economic considerations become as practical operation of town planning controls. Here
crucial to the buyers as they were to the original too, State agencies are often forced to accept that
producers. This is perhaps most obvious in the they need development more than the developers
case of commercial and industrial property, which need them. Faced with the “OK, we’ll invest in
is mostly bought specifically for investment, by South Korea instead” line, from increasingly foot-
large financial institutions such as pension funds loose capital, they too are gripped in the pincers
and insurance companies, who then rent out their of profit-oriented economic rules. And they are often
purchases for use by others. In turn, these end-users backed in this by voters who become more and
themselves see the properties they rent primarily more worried about such issues as unemployment
in economic terms, as devices to help the cost- and falling property values, particularly in the
effective operation of their own businesses. Less de-industrializing rust-belt areas which form so
obviously, but more pervasively, all real-estate pro prominent a feature of those countries which came
perties have particular generic characteristics – early on to the industrial scene.
not shared with other commodities – which make [ . . . ]
it very likely that all who buy them will have their States, then, have commonly grown weaker in
future economic performance in mind, at least to terms of their capacity to control local and national
some extent. First, they last for a very long time: economies, and in practice we typically find some
in Britain, for example, it is estimated that only kind of alliance – if often an uneasy one – between
about 1 percent of the building stock is replaced the profit oriented private-sector developer, State f
each year, which implies that buildings are currently agencies at the local and national level, and many o
u
expected to last about a century, on average, before voters too – that “alliance of classes, structures r
they are replaced. This means that there is a high and social forces” which, for shorthand, Stuart Hall
probability that the original purchaser of any par- calls “the power bloc” [in much of the US literature,
ticular property will, at some stage, want to re-sell this equates with the “Growth Machine”]. The power
it. Second, real-estate properties are also far more bloc typically supports private-sector developers,
expensive than almost all other commodities, so and therefore helps them make a powerful impact
the eventual resale value is a very important on the vocabulary of types in good currency and
matter. Everyone who buys a property has to be on the wider production cultures through which
concerned about its likely economic performance these are defined as good design.
over time. We must not, however, drift into economic
In the private sector, then, producers and buyers determinism here: none of this means that either
alike are powerfully affected by economic rules. the typological vocabulary or the wider aspects of
If they break these, then sanctions of bankruptcy production culture are completely determined by the
await them. But what about State agencies? State private-sector developer’s economic requirements.
agencies, after all, produce a certain amount of The typification process is ultimately a process
urban form themselves. And through town planning of negotiation and struggle, in which all the pro-
processes, they also affect what private-sector tagonists have at least some power, no matter how
developers do. With the recent worldwide reduction limited, to affect the outcome on the ground. As I
in welfare state activities, the most important State know from my own experience, for example, well-
involvement in producing urban form concerns organized community groups are often far from
the infrastructure, such as major roads, which are powerless, whilst design professionals always have
so important in the urban milieu. Infrastructure at least some degree of autonomy in the form-
decisions, of course, are made partly on social production process, because they carry out com-
grounds, but there is a powerful economic com plex work requiring personal judgment which it
ponent here too. Indeed, with increasing global and is difficult for others to control with any rigor. The
regional economic competition, State decisions power of those who might oppose the power-bloc,
about the allocation of resources are increasingly however, is limited; and the potential which it
driven by economic considerations of the most confers, in terms of working towards better-loved
competitive kinds. places, has to be carefully targeted if it is to make
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 461 10-26-2012 3:23:12 PM

any significant impact. Attempts to use it in ways the attempts which central and local governments
which run counter to developers’ own profit-centered make to control developers’ individual efforts, so
interests will be strongly resisted, so it is important as to maintain the competitiveness of the whole
to attempt this only where developers’ interests settlement in the global market place, are also
really are inimical to getting better-loved places crucial to keeping the capitalist development pro-
on the ground. If we are to avoid frittering away cess going. Also of central importance, therefore,
our limited resources in needless conflicts, we have are the morphological elements around which
to know as much as possible about which aspects government agencies focus their attempts to con-
of form-production culture support private-sector trol development – the overall settlement which
developers’ interests, and so present likely barriers forms the area of jurisdiction itself, and the patterns
to change. of public space and land use within it. In the next
It is not too difficult to grasp the economic rules section we shall focus on the ways in which this
which private-sector developers have to follow, range of long-running morphological elements is
in capitalist situations, if they are to make enough called on to generate particular types of settlements,
profit to stay in business. There has been endless public space networks, patterns of land use, plots
(often critical) discussion of these matters for more and building developments during the capitalist era.
than a century, and the broad principles at least [ . . . ]
are widely known. But how do these economic
rules relate to form-types and to the wider form-
production culture within which these are situated? PROFIT AND PLACE
It is these far more difficult questions which are
addressed herein. If we want to understand how built form supports
The typological level of urban change can be the current holders of economic power, in capital-
viewed as a process through which new types develop ist situations, we have to start by exploring how
near the surface of production culture, generated capital is put to work in the economic system.
in relation to a matrix of relatively stable, long- In as near to a politically “neutral” definition as
lasting “deep” morphological elements, which are we are likely to find, the Oxford English Dictionary
embedded in and guaranteed by legal institutions, defines capital as “wealth in any form used to
and which constitute the basic “building blocks” help in producing more wealth.” To understand
which make typological changes possible within how wealth itself can be employed to produce more
the social system concerned. To understand the wealth, we have to explore what is sometimes
typological changes of the capitalist era, therefore, called a “capital accumulation process.” In essence,
we must first grasp the nature of the morphological this process can be thought of as a series of trans-
elements which underpin them. Amongst the long- formations. First wealth (in the form of money) is
running morphological elements which the capitalist converted into supplies of raw materials and labor,
form-production process took over from earlier bought as commodities in the marketplace. Second,
times, the most deeply institutionalized are those these are then converted into some other saleable
which underpin and constrain the making of profits. commodity. Third, this is then converted back into
Profit-oriented developers themselves are con- money by taking it to the market for sale.
cerned primarily with those elements of built form For this process to be profitable, the final amount
which can be bought and sold: plots of land, and received from sales has to be greater than that with
the buildings and associated outdoor spaces which which the process began. When this happens, so
are developed on them to increase their market that the process concerned is profitable enough to
value. If the production of urban form were left be worth setting up as an on-going enterprise, the
entirely to the efforts of particular profit-oriented original linear chain of transformations becomes
developers, however, there is every likelihood that a recurring cycle. This is the “capital accumulation
their individual impacts would lead to an overall cycle”; following the lead of Peter Ambrose. . . . This
situation whose unplanned nature would have cyclical process has an important time dimension.
unprofitable disadvantages for them all. From the The more often capital is cycled through the system
overall profit-generation point of view, therefore, the more it can grow. The quicker each cycle can
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“PROFIT AND PLACE" ET%1
M, C1 C2 m2 - profits
original raw materials saleable final taxes
capital and labour commodity capital
which have
been bought
as commodities I
transformation transformation transformation
T, Ta t3
(purchase) (production (sales)
process)
re-investment
Figure 1 The capital accumulation cycle.
be completed, therefore, the faster the stock of form to affect profits, therefore, comes through any
capital will grow, giving the enterprise concerned impact it may have on how these transformations
an advantage over slower-cycling competitors. are made. Of course, any given pattern of built
Built form has direct effects on the speed and form - or any working practice involved in produc
cost-effectiveness of the three key transformations ing it - might affect all the transformations in the
in the capital accumulation process at two related
levels. First, it forms the physical setting for the
production and sale of all sorts of commodities,
acting as what Henri Lefebvre calls “productive
capital accumulation process: the transformations
themselves are not discrete “things,” but merely
significant moments in a continuous process. Pro
posals for forms or working practices which have
r
u
fo
apparatus of a giant scale.” This gives built form a disadvantage in terms of the cost-effectiveness
a potential economic value in the capital accumu of any particular transformation (for example by
lation process, which in turn creates the oppor costing more than their competitors, in materials
tunity, at a second level, for producing built form or labor) may therefore still be implemented by
itself as a commodity which can be traded in the developers, if they can eventually be sold for a
marketplace, and for developing the profit-oriented disproportionately high price to offset these extra
businesses of construction and property devel costs. It is the cost-effectiveness of the overall
opment through which so many urban places are “package” of transformations, rather than that of
produced. any particular transformation in isolation, which
When they make market decisions, those with is the key to understanding why profit-oriented
capital to employ in these built form businesses will developers choose one particular form or working
be drawn towards the particular working practices practice rather than another.
and the particular aggregate settlement patterns, In this chapter we shall explore how physical
public space networks, plot developments and forms, considered as commodities to be traded
interfaces which they see as offering the best in the marketplace are affected by the developer’s
opportunities for capital accumulation. It is these, search for the most competitive ways of making
therefore, which become abstracted to the level of the three key transformations. As an analytical
“types” within development culture, and developers device for grappling with this highly complex pro
will defend them against less profitable proposals. cess, we shall consider the three transformations
To understand which types are likely to be abstracted one by one. First we shall explore the initial trans
and defended in this way, we have to explore the formation from money into land, labor and building
relationships between built form and the capital materials. Then we shall go on to investigate how
accumulation process in more depth. these are themselves transformed into saleable
The potential for capital accumulation in this building complexes. Finally, we shall analyze the
process of property development arises from its way these complexes are turned back into money
three key transformations. The only potential for built in the marketplace.
TRANSFORMATION ONE: LAND, LABOR, markets for saleable buildings are created at ever-
MATERIAL COSTS increasing distances from established centers. Each
new communication innovation creates the potential
In the first of these transformations, the materials for a further spread of development wherever
and workers needed for property development demand exists, or new demand can be created.
have to be brought to building sites which are geo- Landowners and land buyers alike are therefore
graphically fixed. At the dawn of the capitalist era, attracted to ideas for settlements with ever-greater
pre-industrial transport limitations meant that labor levels of dispersion. The pattern of land use at
and raw materials could only be purchased within a smaller scale, within the settlement, has also
a small geographical area near to the building been transformed through this market dynamic. In
site itself. Developers were therefore able to buy the competitive marketplace, landowners are only
these prerequisites of production only in restricted prepared to sell land to the highest bidder. Any
markets, and in consequence there were only limited developer wishing to acquire a particular site must
opportunities to shop around. All things being therefore bid higher than the competition, whilst
equal, any method of widening the area within still ensuring that the development will generate
which land, materials and labor could be purchased, an adequate profit overall.
for example through transport innovations, would Specialized as they are, however, not all devel-
be attractive to developers. This wider marketplace opers can afford to bid to the same level. The price
would increase competitive pressures on land which can be paid, whilst still achieving an accept-
owners, workers and the suppliers of raw materials able profit, depends on the particular developer’s
alike, which in turn would lead to reduced unit estimate of how much the finished project will
costs for producers. Provided the cost of the trans- fetch in the marketplace. In turn, this will depend
port innovation which created the opportunity for on a forecast of the amount any likely purchaser
these savings was less than the savings themselves, might be willing to pay in the location concerned.
then the innovation concerned would find a ready For any particular location, different developers
market. specialized in the production of space for different
Given the business opportunities this created in types of purchasers will make different forecasts.
the transport field, it is hardly surprising that the last There is likely to be a considerable disparity
two centuries have been marked by an explosive between what (say) a well-to-do house buyer and
proliferation of transport and communications a small manufacturer seek in terms of location, and
innovations, from canals through railways, buses, this will be reflected in the different amounts they
automobiles and aircraft to the fax machine and will be willing (or, perhaps able) to pay to locate
the information super-highway. These increasing in any particular place.
links between profitable production and processes The price which purchasers are able to pay
of innovation in communications technology have depends on their economic situation: typically, for
had dramatic impacts on the repertoire of types example, profitable companies or rich individuals
through which urban form is generated. will be able to outbid their poorer counterparts for
a given amount of space. All things being equal,
therefore, only the richest of all the users who might
Transport impacts on land availability want to locate in a particular area will in practice
be able to do so. Over time, this has led to a marked
The first of these impacts is felt through the effects change in the pattern of urban land use.
of transport innovations on the availability of the In pre-capitalist situations, this pattern was
building land which, as the fundamental raw material highly constrained by the reliance on feet and on
of the property development process, gives real animals for transport. Everything had to be near
estate its unique character as distinct from other to everything else, which meant that there was no
commodities. In order to survive in the capitalist practical alternative to a fine grain of mixed land uses:
marketplace, most landowners have to maximize housing near work, shops and cultural facilities. In
their productivity in competition with one another. contrast, the dynamic of the capitalist land market,
With the expansion of communications possibilities, set free by the increasing mobility made possible
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for those who could afford transport innovations, the developer’s control, as compared with edge
led over time to an ever-broader zoning of land which is not. This allows for innovations far beyond
uses, so that purchasers of space who had different the scale of the individual building; for example
levels of buying power become more and more to encompass new ways of structuring the public
segregated from one another within the overall spaces which are required within large sites. Effec
settlement fabric. tively, the practical constraints which bound cities
for millennia to particular patterns of urban form
become at least partially dissolved by the ability to
The growing scale of development seek for profit at this larger scale.
The practical logistics of the way land is acquired

for development also has important implications Labor costs, design specialization
at the smaller scale of the individual development and deskilling
site. Developers seek economies of scale in land
acquisition; they are drawn towards the largest suit- One of the most powerful factors governing the
able sites they can afford. As their available capital way these new opportunities have been taken up
increases, through the successful operation of the in practice is concerned with increasing the cost-
capital accumulation cycle over time, there is there- effectiveness of labor. This is crucial for profitability,
fore a tendency for the average size of development because labor costs are embedded in the costs of
sites to grow. This has important effects on all the all the other commodities which are used for pro- f
morphological elements with which we are con- duction: the costs of extracting and processing raw o
u
cerned. First, it brings about changes in the walls materials, and of making machinery and buildings r
of public space. In pre-capitalist cities plot widths to house production processes, in addition to the
were typically narrow, so that as many plots as direct wages of those who carry out the processes
possible could take advantage of the accessibility themselves. If we add up all the cumulative labor
offered by the network of public space; and each costs involved, we shall find that they form an
plot was occupied by a different building. There were extremely large proportion of all the costs of pro-
thus frequent entrances on to public space, and also duction; some theoreticians of the left, indeed,
a high level of visual complexity as each building would say that all these costs can ultimately be
differed, however slightly, from its neighbors. reduced to the costs of labor.
With larger plots and buildings, these character- Labor costs, then, are crucial for individual com-
istics change. First, since most buildings have only panies; but it is important to realize that in these
one entrance each, any given length of wall now days of global competition they are also crucial at
has fewer entrances, which reduce the liveliness of the level of the State, because of the great influence
the public space edge. Second, any given building of labor costs on the market competitiveness of
now has a wider frontage on to public space. Since the products produced in any nation state. In this
the distinction between one building and another is situation it is vital, for the market competitiveness
usually very noticeable, this too changes the char- of any State, or any enterprise within it, that labor
acter of the walls of public space, which become operates as cost-effectively as possible.
simpler in their visual organization. . . . More gener- Because labor costs are so important, developers
ally, increases in plot size open the door for trans- constantly seek new working practices to gain com-
formations in site layout. Small sites, hedged in by petitive advantages. When labor innovations are
their neighbors, permit innovation only at the scale offered in the marketplace, therefore, those which
of the individual building; issues of how public are most cost-effective in developers’ terms are
access should be arranged, for example, are already likely to be replicated, eventually to become typical.
fixed. As sites get larger, there are still fixes around This encourages a continuous economic rational
their edges: any new development has to join up ization of the services on offer, through a process
with the rest of the world, which is beyond the of ever-increasing specialization, in which broad
developer’s own control. Larger sites, however, have and complex working tasks are split down into
a greater proportion of inner area which is under ever-narrower parts, enabling a greater degree of
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specialized expertise to be applied to each parti became conceptually separated from “making.”
cular aspect of the development process. Developers Those who developed such a skill found a ready
themselves are not immune from this pull towards market amongst developers, so the history of
specialization. Increasingly, they produce space for capitalist property development is marked by the
particular specialized market sectors – particular ascendance of “designers” to prominent positions
types of housing, offices, shops or whatever. Within in the form-production process as a whole.
the complex division of labor which is generated The first designers, in this formalized sense, were
through this process, the skills of innovation are architects; but they, of course, were not immune from
particularly important to developers: faced with pressures towards offering ever more specialized
intense competition, they are always open to new and rationalized working practices in the competi-
ideas. This means that there are potential profits tive marketplace. As each new service was offered,
to be made from putting innovations on the market. it had to be sold to potential buyers as something
This potential, in turn, sets the scene for working different from all the other services already on offer
practices geared specifically towards innovation in – it had to develop its own “unique selling point,”
the form-production process. emphasizing the factors distinguishing it from its
This is very different from the pattern of pre- competitors. Through this process, various architects
capitalist working practices, in which the majority found markets for more specialized expertise;
of run-of-the-mill proposals for built form were giving rise to new types of engineering, surveying
put forward by craft workers. The ability of craft and so forth. To maintain differences between these
workers to innovate was restricted by the fact that new specialisms was easy enough, because they
they made little distinction between what we would covered different areas of expertise. It was more
nowadays call “designing” and “making” in their difficult, however, to distinguish them from the more
work. Existing types of buildings, structural systems “generalist” approach of architecture, their original
and constructional details were inextricably inter- parent, since architecture had always included some
locked, and were embodied together in the worker’s degree of expertise in them all. The distinction here
repertoire of practical skills. If major innovations was made through emphasizing the new practitio-
were proposed, the whole package had to be ners as “experts,” as distinct from the generalist
relearned. “artist” architect – a move with which architects
This did not mean that no innovation was pos- had to concur, to preserve a unique selling point
sible. There was always the potential for innovation for themselves in this competitive situation.
in small details, which therefore became the focus For their own economic survival, experts and
of aesthetic attention in this vernacular process. artists alike have to offer their products and services
Innovation was needed at a larger scale too: since in as wide a marketplace as possible. Calling on
each particular building site must to some extent the growing sophistication of communications tech-
be different to all others, craft builders were con- nologies, as important here as in other sectors
stantly faced with new situations, and had to adapt of capital accumulation, and taking advantage of
their interlocking package of types from site to opportunities offered first through imperialism and
site. Overall, however, the potential for innovation later through the development of a global economy
in this process was limited by the fact that all integrated beyond the borders of former empires,
the information used was tacitly embedded in the those designers who have proved most successful
types of forms and working practices themselves in the marketplace – whether as experts or as
– there were no abstract “principles,” except the artists – have progressively shifted their radii of
minimum needed for site-to-site adjustments. The action from a local through a regional to an increas-
prerequisite for more rapid innovation, with its ingly global scale. This shift has led to important
inherent market appeal to developers seeking com- changes in the nature both of expertise and of art,
petitive advantage, was the abstraction of these as designers in all fields seek knowledge which
principles from the tacit working practices of the can be used to underpin design practice anywhere
craft approach, and their ever-wider extension, to around the world, creating a demand for increas-
develop a new working practice in which “design” ingly general and abstract design cultures, uncoupled
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from particular local traditions of art or expertise, a “crafts” vocabulary to take over, as part of their
and from such considerations as local climates and own work, the detailed design decisions which could
building materials. no longer be made by skilled craft workers.
The disembedding of this global design culture More and more designers, therefore, became
from local particularities makes innovation easier attracted by typological innovations which did not
in every local situation. Though profit-oriented require such skills; so the demand for them fell
developers need innovations for their own market still further, in an accelerating spiral of deskilling.
survival, however, they do not want everyone in the The effects of this process at the typological level
development process to be innovative, because of were geared-up by the design media of magazines,
the inherent difficulty of controlling creative work- museums and so forth. [ . . . ]
ers who have complex skills. To make the process This interaction between economic pressures
easier to control, developers are therefore drawn on the designer in particular, and the deskilling
to new working practices which call for less creativ- of the workforce in general, has led over time to
ity from those workers who are “makers” rather a radical shift in aesthetic focus. In the vernacular
than “designers.” This attraction is reinforced by process, where innovative creativity could only
the fact that less skilled workers are more easily be focused on the small-scale details, it was these
replaced, and can therefore command only lower which received much of the craft worker’s aesthetic
wages in the marketplace. The upshot of all this is attention, leading to a rich variety of detailed
that the creativity demanded from the designer is expression within relatively constant building types.
counterposed to a radical reduction in the creativity With the shift from craft to design, however, f
which is required from most other form-production innovation could be focused on the whole building, o
u
workers. whose overall form now received the aesthetic r
Once under way, this deskilling process gains attention which had formerly been restricted to the
momentum by the way it interacts with the typifi- details. With cost-restrictions on the production of
cation process. First, designers invent new forms large-scale drawings, it became ever more difficult
which do not require craft skills. These forms are to focus aesthetic attention on the small details,
then bought in the marketplace. In this new con which therefore became considered effectively as
text it becomes less and less rational, in economic by-products of the whole, relevant largely to the
terms, for workers to invest the time and effort technical rather than the aesthetic sphere. This
required to acquire these skills in the first place. In dynamic fostered (and was, in turn, reinforced by)
turn, this makes it more difficult for any designers an ever-increasing simplification in the vocabulary
wanting to use craft skills in their buildings to find of detail-types, [ . . . ] generating designs which
workers who can carry them out. By the 1920s, for require the production of the minimum number
example, the British architect Laurence Turner was of drawings at the smallest feasible scale, within
bewailing the fact that: a rationalized, rectangular discipline – drawings
which can readily be produced on the drawing
The average masons who frequent builders’ board or through computer graphics systems, with
yards in London are without experience and the minimum of expensive hand work.
without knowledge of their craft, except in the As we can see from all this, the developer’s
performance of the simplest of their duties. To search for design innovations to improve the cost-
give them fine masonry to do would be to court effectiveness of the first transformation from money
disaster. It is not their fault, the work is not into labor, land and building materials clearly has
required from them. They lack experience. radical implications for all types of labor. These
implications feed through to affect not only built
The effects here were compounded by the fact that form itself, but also the relationship between all those
designers, themselves competing with one another involved in the form-production process on the one
in the labor market, were under constant pressure hand, and on the other hand those who will even-
to reduce their fees. This made it more and more tually use the results of their work on the ground.
difficult for those designers who still wanted to use Before the rise of the speculative development
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process, during the period when most buildings were with most other commodities, transport costs have
produced for particular known purchasers, there important impacts on the cost-effectiveness of the
was a very direct, personal relationship between materials concerned.
each purchaser and all those involved in the form- In the early years of capitalism, low-technology
production process. With the onset of speculative transport led to delivery delays and to transport
markets, this link became increasingly indirect. costs which were necessarily high in relation to the
Except for rich people building houses for their own cost of materials at their place of production. These
occupation, for example, the process of innovation factors usually limited developers and designers
was now controlled primarily through consider- to locally produced materials, so the “zoning” of
ations of market competition, and the acceptability materials took place at a fine grain, often with much
of any particular innovation came to be judged variation between one relatively small region and its
almost entirely in terms of its capacity to help the neighbors. As innovations in transport technology
developer survive in the competitive marketplace. came on-stream during the capitalist era, bringing
What we see here, then, is the gradual opening-up the potential for reductions in transport costs,
of a “producer–consumer gap,” with important developers were enabled to draw materials from
consequences which we shall later explore in more ever wider areas; to take advantage both of the
depth. availability of cheap materials-production labor
Clearly, we can now see that the developer’s in particular areas, and of increased economies of
drive to spend money on labor in the most profit- scale in production. This has led to a situation,
able way has a wide range of important conse- fostered by the increasing globalization of design
quences for the form-production process. But what culture which we have already remarked, in which
implications does it have for the other, inanimate the materials produced in the largest quantities, with
commodities such as building materials which are the greatest economies of scale in their production,
also involved in this first transformation? are likely to be used over large geographical areas.
At its extreme, this has fostered an internationaliza-
tion of materials use, on the one hand concentrating
Cost impacts on material choice the production of high added-value components in
the so-called “first world,” and on the other effec-
When they (or their designers) choose materials in tively buying cheap labor from the developing world
the marketplace, developers are attracted to those for first-world building sites.
which they regard as having the best balance In rich countries, even the smallest of projects
between on-site cost and sales impact. This does is nowadays affected by this global market. Whilst
not necessarily mean that they will buy the cheapest writing this chapter, I have been helping my son
materials, but it does mean that they will want to refurbish his house. In this tiny Oxford project, we
get any given material as cheaply as possible. The have used rooflights from Denmark, plasterboard
purchase price of materials at their point of pro from Germany and Ireland, tiles from Thailand and
duction is crucially affected by two related factors. Chile, and timber from Russia. In no case were
One is the labor cost of producing them. The other these materials selected for exotic appeal – they were
is the economies of scale which come from large- just the cheapest, reasonable quality items available.
scale production. The developer is therefore likely In larger projects, however, further economies of
to be attracted by materials which are produced by scale are possible if designers draw sparingly on this
cheap labor in large quantities. As we have seen, international palette of materials. Larger discounts
however, this attraction is tempered by transport can be achieved through buying large quantities
costs. Building sites are fixed in their geographical from a small range of materials, rather than small
locations. The sites where building materials are quantities across a wide range; and this gives eco-
produced, from factories to quarries, are also fixed; nomic advantages to schemes which employ few
so materials have almost always to be transported materials.
from where they are produced to where they are used. Overall, then, the shift to a capitalist form-
Since even the lightest and most compact of build- production process has carried with it radical changes
ing materials are heavy and bulky by comparison in the way building materials are employed; with
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implications both at the largest and the smallest It is therefore extremely important to the developer
scales. At the scale of the overall settlement, we that the process of converting these commodities
have seen a shift from locally produced to globally into a saleable product should take as short a time
produced materials. At the scale of the individual as possible. This requirement for rapid construction
building, however, materials are usually chosen has important form implications.
from this wide range in restricted ways. This gives First, it supports innovations which allow as
rise to a shift from a pre-capitalist situation in which, much construction as possible to be carried out
with rare exceptions, all buildings within a given under efficient factory conditions, rather than on
settlement used the same materials palette, to one messy and inconvenient building sites, often at the
in which neighboring buildings can differ widely in mercy (at least in the countries where capitalism
the palette they employ. On the one hand, large- began) of the vagaries of the weather. In principle,
scale variations disappear; on the other, variations this draws developers towards innovations which
between particular buildings intensify. Everywhere employ prefabricated, factory-made components. The
becomes more and more varied, just like every- attractiveness of such components, in developers’
where else. terms, is increased by the fact that they hasten the
To summarize, this analysis of the transforma- process of craft deskilling. From the mid-nineteenth
tion from money into land, labor and materials – the century, for example, the possessors of craft skills
first transformation in the capital accumulation found themselves competing with machine carving
cycle – has yielded a range of useful insights into and pressing techniques, even in a period when
the dynamics of profitable form. We have seen how developers and their designers still wanted to use f
this transformation entails a radical division of labor the detailed vocabulary associated with a craft- o
u
within the production workforce, associated with based construction process. Clearly, this accelerated r
a separation between “designing” and “making”; the relative decline in craftsmen’s wages, and gave
entailing a polarization of creativity in work- another twist to the deskilling spiral.
patterns as designers – specialized as “experts” or Factories producing prefabricated components,
“artists” – focus on innovation as a core skill, whilst however, are inevitably limited in number, relative
a radical deskilling affects the tasks of others. We to the number of building projects which might poten
have noted how the materials used in construction tially use their products. This disparity is increased
have shifted from local to global in their geographical when component-factories, themselves capitalist
origins, but with only a restricted range being used businesses seeking their own economies of scale,
in any particular building project. We have seen increase in size but decrease in number over time.
how settlement forms have become ever more dis- Because both factories and building sites have fixed
persed, and how land use patterns have moved locations, prefabricated elements will often have
from a fine grain of mixed uses to a broader zoned to be transported long distances to the sites where
pattern of segregation. And we have registered the they are eventually used. This transport process is
ever-increasing scope for radical innovation which disproportionately expensive in the case of large,
comes from the increasing size of development heavy elements; so in practice small components such
sites. All this is very revealing. Let us probe deeper, as tiles, bricks, lintels, doors, windows, staircases,
by analyzing the second key transformation in the cladding systems and the like, are far more common
form-production process: the transformation from than large assemblies. Given this restriction on the
labor, land and materials to the finished building scale of prefabrication, it becomes doubly important,
complex. in profitability terms, that the on-site constructional
processes should be based as far as possible on
simple, rationalized assembly techniques. Again, inno
TRANSFORMATION TWO: PRODUCTION vations which make this possible will have a double
PROCESSES attraction to the developer, since simple assembly
techniques can be implemented to an adequate
As long as capital is locked up in land, materials standard by deskilled, easily disciplined workers.
and labor, it is not circulating through the capital The developer’s desire to use workers in the
accumulation cycle, so it is not generating a profit. most cost-effective way supports design innovations
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 469 10-26-2012 3:23:12 PM

which involve repetitive building tasks, where iden- in good currency. Applied to ever-larger projects,
tical construction procedures can be repeated many as developers used the ever-growing availability
times in the course of a single building contract. of investment capital to gain economies of scale
This has a double impact on economic efficiency. in production, this changed typological repertoire
First, the repetition of constructional tasks, which has further reinforced the reduction of close-up
can never be completely deskilled, allows workers complexity endemic to the urban landscape in
to speed up production and increase productivity, capitalist times.
thereby reducing unit production costs, by spending To summarize, this analysis of the capital ac-
more of their working time higher up the learning cumulation cycle’s second transformation, from
curve for the operations concerned. Second, it per- land, materials and labor into a saleable building
mits easier control of the whole production process. complex, has given us further insights into the char-
The storage and handling of materials, for example, acteristics of modern urban form at an architectural
is simplified as the variety of materials is reduced, level – an architecture of rationalized, deskilled
whilst management is eased if design separates the construction techniques, using the minimum range
work of the various trades so that no worker is of different details and materials in ever-larger
delayed by waiting for another to finish. Attractions projects. To complete this exploration of the form-
like these were already obvious to many actors production process, we have to consider the form
in the development process by the beginning of implications of its final transformation – converting
the twentieth century: “Economical considerations the completed project into money by selling it in
require that as far as possible there should be the marketplace.
a repetition of parts,” as Cornes put it, in relation
to housing development, as early as 1905.
If developers are attracted to innovations which TRANSFORMATION THREE: SALES
generate these extra profit-potentials, architects
have an equal motivation to propose them in the The marketed product consists of a plot or plots
first place. This was already clear by the 1930s as of land, with built fabric on it. Only these can be
the British architect H.S. Goodhart-Rendel saw: sold as commodities; and it is only these, therefore,
from which profits can potentially be made. Public
if we wished to build now in [an] informed and space, in contrast, cannot be traded in the market.
unhurried manner, we should find its cost pro- Cities, however, are deeply involved with processes
hibitive, not to the employer but to the architect. of communication and exchange; and even in these
Just as in building itself, our methods have days of the information super-highway, public
changed owing to the enormously increased space is still a key medium through which these
cost of labor in relation to that of materials, processes take place. For the city to work in
so in practice we now must save all we can of these terms, public space has to be freely available
the principal’s time and that of his draftsman if to all – free in the economic sense as much as
any profit at all is to be got out of the six per (perhaps rather than) the political. If public space
cent fee. cannot directly be used to make profits, then it has
no direct economic interest to developers. This
Seventy years later, when the days of a 6 percent means that it will be produced as a by-product
architect’s fee seem like a far-off golden age, these of other commodities, such as buildings and cars,
pressures are intensified indeed. which can be used to generate profits. This “by-
Taken together, all these innovations allow a product quality” was already noticeable to the
given size of building to be constructed with less Austrian architect Camillo Sitte, for example, as
design time, and less time spent in the production early as 1889:
of construction information, than would be needed
for a more varied repertoire of materials and con- In modern urban planning the relationship be-
structional tasks. Not surprisingly, the capitalist era tween built and open space has been reversed.
has seen an ever-widening range of such innova- In the past, open space – streets and squares –
tions, abstracted into the repertoire of detail-types created a closed and expressive design. Today
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the building plots are arranged as regular self- typification process, guided by market signals, which
contained shapes, and whatever is left becomes we already explored. To understand more about
street or square. market norms, and to grasp the economic value
they have for those who buy them, we have to
Given the increasing potential for very large schemes, investigate the common factors which influence
however, there is scope to make profits through buyers when they make their market choices. As
attempts to commodify the spaces which connect has been pointed out, buildings have particular
together the various buildings within them. This characteristics which make them different from
process involves a shift from the highly connected other commodities which are bought and sold in
grid of streets, typical of the pre-capitalist city, the market. First, by comparison with other com-
towards introverted “enclave” spatial types such modities, they mostly last much longer. Second,
as culs-de-sac, malls, atria and the like, which can they are much larger: large enough to influence
be given spectacular sales appeal . . . , and whose the workings of the capital accumulation cycle by
common characteristic is summed up in the word forming the settings for the production, distribution
“exclusive” which is so often found in the real and sale of most other commodities. Third, they
estate ads. mostly cost more. All these characteristics have
With all the building fronts facing inwards onto important implications for the market choices which
the enclave, this typological shift leaves only the building-buyers make.
backs of the development as a whole facing onto In today’s dynamic social systems, the longevity
the outside world . . . , a transformation which sets of built form means that any building is probably f
the final seal on the “left over” quality of public far more permanent than its users’ social arrange- o
u
space itself. Through the cumulative effects of this ments. For instance, British home-owners moved r
process, the public space network is transformed from house on average about every six or seven years
a highly connected grid into a tree-like hierarchy, during the 1980s, and even now do so on average
and the capitalist city as a whole is transformed every twelve, whilst any particular house may well
into a series of islands, with spectacular interiors, set last a hundred years. This means that the house
in a “left over” sea. Within these islands, developers might be lived in by anywhere between eight and
are interested primarily in building plots and what sixteen different households, and the members
is built on them, and they have to sell these to of each, when buying it, know perfectly well that
make as much profit as they can. This means that they will be faced with the need to re-sell in due
they are drawn to innovations which seem likely course. The purchasers of buildings for other, non-
to improve sales appeal in the speculative market- residential uses – buildings which often cost even
place. Sales appeal must partly depend on prospective more – will usually have to face this situation too.
purchasers’ individual preferences. Unlike bespoke Given the high costs involved, and aware of this
producers, however, speculative developers cannot need to re-sell, purchasers of all sorts of buildings
take these directly into account, since they cannot will be attracted to forms which seem likely to hold
know the particular purchaser in advance. Speculative their value, at least until the next resale takes place.
developers are therefore attracted to innovations Like the building’s original developer, therefore,
which offer a wide and generalized market appeal, each of its successive potential purchasers during
and are suspicious of idiosyncratic schemes. “Yes, its long life will take into account the extent to
you like it, and I like it, but will it appeal to anyone which it conforms to their own concept of a widely
else?” is the kind of question which will have been saleable “market norm.”
heard many times by anyone who has worked in These characteristics of market norms are them-
this field. selves strongly affected by their perceived suitability
for housing particular uses. Where buildings are
bought to house processes of production, dis
Building specialization and resale tribution and exchange, purchasers will clearly be
attracted by those which seem to offer the best
The desire to avoid anything idiosyncratic leads balance between purchase price and promises of
to a homing-in on “market norms” through the economic efficiency. The first of these promises is
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 471 10-26-2012 3:23:13 PM

offered by the building’s location, which affects the the efficiency of the processes within, rather than
economic efficiency both of bringing raw materials supporting them. Increasing dangers therefore arise
and labor into production processes, and of send- when building interiors are tailored too tightly
ing finished commodities to the point of sale. This to any given pattern of activities. Adaptability
reinforces the importance of all sorts of commu- and flexibility become watchwords now, and the
nication and transport systems, and underlies the vocabulary of building types in good currency
well-known dictum in development industry folk- represents the balance which is struck, at any
lore that “there are three key factors in profitable particular time, between the specialized design
development: location, location and location.” which is needed to accommodate particular
In deciding whether to purchase a building in activities, and the flexibility required to allow for
a given location, entrepreneurs will clearly be unpredictable change.
influenced by its capacity to promote the economic
efficiency of the production or sales processes
which they want to carry on within it. Its influence Purchasing or renting
on the cost-effectiveness of labor has particular
importance here: as we have seen, labor forms a The third characteristic which distinguishes buildings
major proportion of overall business costs. Physical from other commodities – their higher purchase
design has an important effect in this regard. Build price – has further implications for purchasers’
ing layouts or arrangements of equipment which choices. Many purchasers, requiring space but faced
are inconvenient for particular processes of pro with this expense, prefer (or are forced) to hire
duction or sales can slow workers down, whilst [rent] rather than to buy. This is particularly true
more convenient arrangements make it possible for the most expensive types of property, such as
for the same tasks to be done faster. Developers commercial buildings in central locations, where
are therefore drawn to innovations which increase demand for scarce space in the best locations has
cost-effectiveness: layouts molded to support the pushed prices highest. Most purchasers in such
particular processes concerned. locations, therefore, buy buildings as investments
This has had a marked impact on the range for letting to others. Developers producing such
of building types in good currency. Pre-capitalist buildings are therefore attracted to innovations
settlements usually contained a relatively small which have particular investment advantages.
number of highly adaptable types, in each of which In deciding whether or not to buy a particular
a range of particular processes could, with some building investment, potential purchasers will take
compromise, take place. This pattern has progres- account of two main factors. The first is the financial
sively been replaced with one which contains a far return: how much money will end up in the investor’s
wider range of more specialized types, formed and bank account each year, after all the costs of get-
named for particular uses. By the late nineteenth ting it have been allowed for? But this is not all
century, as the American architect Henry van Brunt that matters: a second key factor is the financial
noted in 1886: “The architect, in the course of his risk involved. How widely will the building appeal
career, is called upon to erect buildings for every to likely purchasers or tenants? Will the location
conceivable purpose, most of them adapted to keep its appeal? These are the sorts of questions
requirements which have never before arisen in which prospective investors have to address. And in
history.” answering them, to choose between buildings which
As the speed of change affecting processes generate the same level of income, investors will
of production circulation and exchange increases, be drawn towards those with the lowest manage-
however, there is a limit to the proliferation of ment costs and widest market appeal, in locations
specialized building types. The problem here is that which seem most likely to improve their letting
the processes housed in any building now often prospects over time. Since investors will pay more
change quite radically within the economic lifespan for such buildings, developers will be attracted
of the building itself, with the ever-present danger towards them too. What do these characteristics
that the building’s form might begin to reduce imply for physical form?
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 472 10-26-2012 3:23:13 PM

When buildings are let to tenants, some manage- profitability of development is about the balance
ment costs are always present. These are likely to between these poles.
rise, all things being equal, as the number of tenants
increases. This is partly because there is more effort
involved in finding the tenants in the first place, in Attracting attention
drawing up leases and in collecting the rents. But
it is also because of the greater likelihood of dis- In almost all urban cultures, from all historical
putes over the day-to-day running of the building, periods, there are two common ways in which all
particularly if the tenants concerned are engaged kinds of “important” buildings have been given
in different kinds of activities: “how can you expect forms which stand out from their neighbors. First,
me to impress my clients when we get the smells they are often physically separated from adjoining
from the restaurant kitchen all the time?” buildings, to take on a free-standing pavilion form.
Attracted by low management costs, potential Second, they are often higher than the buildings
investors are therefore drawn towards simple build- around them. Developers seeking a unique selling
ings with single tenants, rather than intricate ones proposition, with widely appealing connotations
with large numbers of small tenants involved in of importance and prestige, are therefore drawn
a wide range of different activities. If, through par- to the tall free-standing pavilion type when other
ticular economic circumstances, no single tenant economic factors permit. [ . . . ]
can be found to occupy all the space, it may in Applied across a wide range of use-types, from
practice be necessary to let the building to a number family houses to office towers, this shift from con- f
of small occupiers. Even if this is known early in nected building masses to the free-standing pavilion o
u
the development process, however, there is still form has radical impacts on the character of public r
an investment attraction in designing it so that it space. First, public spaces become less enclosed:
can eventually accommodate a single, larger tenant, not only are there gaps between the pavilions, but
should the opportunity arise in the future. The also they are often set back from the edge of the
design, therefore, will be substantially the same as public space, separated from it by a band of private
if it had been designed for letting as one unit in the open space to set off their connotations of prestige.
first place. This creates further pressures towards This makes it hard to perceive the public space
the proliferation of single-use building types and itself as a positive “figure” in the urban scene. Now
towards market norms; but if all developers have it is the buildings which stand out as figures, against
the same market norms, why should any purchaser a neutral “ground” of public space – that, of course,
be attracted to one developer’s product rather than is the whole point of this shift, from the developer’s
another’s? How can any developer steal a march perspective. At a typological level, the composition
on the competition? of the public space network changes from “streets”
The desire for positive appeal in the market, and “squares” towards a more generalized type of
without falling into the trap of producing “idiosyn- “space.”
cratic” schemes, attracts developers towards forms
which have their own “unique selling point” – forms
which stand out with a clear individual character, THE RESULTING FORM OF CITIES AND
to be noticed by potential purchasers. To the extent DEVELOPMENT
that this can be achieved, to produce forms which
are seen as “unique” by potential purchasers, there The story we have pieced together so far, through
is always the potential of selling them for a exploring the dynamics of the capital accumulation
monopoly price. There is a tension here, however. cycle, has proved a complex one. To get into suf-
If the developer’s product is too “individual,” it ficient depth to make our exploration useful, we
may put off prospective purchasers, who fear it have had to make all sorts of analytical distinctions
may have too narrow a resale appeal. If it is too between factors which, in the real world, are linked
“normal,” then it runs the risk of not being noticed rather than separate. In conclusion, we have to pull
at all amongst its competitors. At one level, the together the overall patterns we have found.
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 473 10-26-2012 3:23:13 PM

In the course of our exploration, we have and they have changed from complex to simple, in
uncovered transformations in the types of forms terms of the patterning of the various elements from
and working practices in relation to every physical which they are composed. And, in parallel with all
scale within the overall settlement. The overall these physical transformations, making sense of
settlement pattern, for example, has become ever them and reinforcing them, we have seen the rise
more dispersed, whilst the typical pattern of land of designers as “experts” and as “artists” operating
use has been transformed from a fine grain of mixed with an increasingly generalized and abstracted
uses towards larger “zones” of single use, with design culture in an increasingly global market-
increasing social segregation. The nature of public place, in parallel with the gradual deskilling of most
space has changed in two important ways: first other workers in the form-production process.
from connected “grids” to introverted “enclaves,” These typological shifts support the operation
and second from “streets” and “squares” towards of the capital accumulation cycle, so the current
a more generalized type of “space.” Building types holders of economic power will want to defend
have become more and more specialized in their them against profit-reducing changes of direction.
intended uses, and the number of building types But we must not drift into economic determinism
in good currency has consequently undergone a here; these typological changes are produced not
radical increase. In their physical massing, buildings by “the economy” but by the very real people
have been transformed from constituent elements in who are involved in the form-production process
a generalized, highly connected mass into separate, – a process which is shot through, in practice, with
free-standing pavilions, whilst the typical size of conflicts and contradictions. For anyone to make
building project has radically increased. The inter- profits at all, the process which makes capital
faces between buildings and the public spaces accumulation possible has to be reproduced through
which adjoin them have increasingly shifted from time, and this does not happen automatically. The
“active” to “passive” in nature. Finally, at the small- current holders of power are constantly on the
est physical scale, the surfaces of buildings have lookout for ways of helping this reproduction
also undergone radical transformations. They have process to survive, in the face of the conflicts and
shifted from a “local” to a “global” use of materials, contradictions which threaten it.
9780415668071_P4_05.indd 474 10-26-2012 3:23:13 PM

“Urban Dualities in the Arab
World: From a Narrative of Loss
to Neo-Liberal Urbanism” (2011)
Yasser Elsheshtawy
Globalization is commonly explained as a series of international business linkages, a quickening time-space

compression and shrinking of the planet, and worldwide economic restructuring that delinks manufacturing
from decision-making. We should also remember that globalization is far from a new phenomenon, and can
be seen in cross-continental empires throughout history: from Rome’s reach across Europe, North Africa,
and western Asia, to the global colonizing experiences of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal. In contem
porary practice, we see cities assuming different structural roles as the global economy restructures. Building
from multiple global network theories that now exist (see various selections in The City Reader, fifth edition.
Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout, eds, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011; by the following selection authors:
Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells, Brenner/Keil, or Beaverstock/Smith/Taylor), some cities will retain their
roles as command and control centers (e.g., Tokyo or New York) whereas others will become finance and
banking centers (e.g., London or Hong Kong). At the other end of the economic ladder, cities will continue
to supply affordable labor pools (e.g., Manila or Bangalore), continue as extraction and production centers
(e.g., Johannesburg or Guangzhou), or struggle under the weight of their urban poor, who are often living in
slum conditions (e.g., Lagos or Mumbai). To ensure increased accumulation and some degree of economic
resiliency, it becomes a common urban strategy to compete for a more advantageous position in this global
hierarchy and diversify one’s economic base. Thus, beyond single function strategies, we see cities trans-
forming themselves to keep up, speed up, and wise up. However, all this restructuring results in unexpected
interurban contestations between classes – as people jostle for space, get displaced, seek political access,
and colonize new areas within the city. A concern for urbanists, regardless of global location, is the increasing
economic polarization (wealth gap) that descends upon urban areas everywhere with respect to the triumph
of neo-liberal economic attitudes.
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are fascinating examples of global urbanization: how resource wealth, real estate
development, tourism investment, and globalization can create cities in the blink of an eye. While Dubai has
a longer history of urban establishment (as a small port and trading city) than Abu Dhabi (which was a mere
palm thatched beach village at mid-century), both these cities have basically sprung up over the last few
decades. The United Arab Emirates achieved independence from Britain in 1971 and was established as
a country of semi-autonomous royal sheikdoms for defense purposes. In the years since the first export of oil
in 1962, the advantages of vast resource wealth have enabled these so-called “insta-cities” (places that seemed
to appear out of nowhere) to morph into legitimate metropoli. While the term “insta-city” is seen now as
pejorative, the rapid development of these Gulf coast cities is impressive: Doha, Kuwait City, Manama, Muscat,
Dubai, Abu Dhabi. Each used a different development strategy for achieving its goals – and the results vary
widely.
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 475 10-26-2012 3:23:06 PM

476 Y asser E lsheshtawy
Both Dubai and Abu Dhabi were largely developed by government parastatals directed by members of their
royal families. Dubai is the great example of mega-projects colliding across the coast of the Arabian Gulf – the
city is fragmented, confusing, and hard to fathom in scale. Abu Dhabi took a more integrated planning and
infrastructure approach and is being studied by city planning students around the globe. Where Dubai has
chosen to hop on the global “treadmill of superlatives,” for example, the tallest building, mall-oriented ski resorts,
seven star hotels, palm tree-shaped peninsulas, and new canals cutting through the desert; Abu-Dhabi is
focused on becoming a place of global culture, education, government, and sustainability. Abu Dhabi’s pace
of physical development is also rapid – and its ambitions are just as impressive as Dubai’s – but much more
coordinated with respect to the overall structure and livability of the city. Both of them continue to capture
the imagination – if not for their physical accomplishments, then, for the contrasts in wealth between minority
Emirati citizens and the 80 percent + of the population who are disenfranchised guest workers living in far more
Spartan conditions. These cities become perfect examples of both global spectacle and global polarization,
but also examples of varied development strategy.
Yasser Elsheshtawy proposes that these global strategies are indicative of the ongoing modernization of Middle
Eastern cities since the nineteenth century. In this new writing, he reinforces basic globalization themes, but
also suggests these development strategies result in a narrative of loss – similar to the effects of gentrification
in other boomtowns. He encourages critics to abandon orientalizing or “Arabian Nights” fantasies with respect
to these new Gulf coast cities. Those exoticizing ideas are more aptly associated with tradition-based urban-
isms found elsewhere in the Middle East. Instead, Elsheshtawy theorizes that Dubai and Abu Dhabi need to
be seen within the evolving discourse on globalization: places of disenfranchised immigrant communities, the
widening wealth gap, the expansion of slums, Darwinian winners and losers. Both cities also exhibit physical
characteristics of the global city: neo-liberal urbanization, mega-projects, gated communities, and splintering
of the city into places of rich and poor. Rather than illustrating this globalization with the well-published
examples of spectacle, he opts instead to show what happens to a local residential community and a cherished
market when they fall victim to global ambition. In the Dubai neighborhood case, the recent economic down-
turn saves a community of everyday life spaces, and forces reappreciation of modest urban qualities. In the
Abu Dhabi case we see erasure of the market and its replacement with a souk-like high-end shopping mall
that doesn’t quite replicate the authentic experience of the original place. These cases offer lessons and
cautions about over-generalizing these cities as mere global phenomena, when in fact they remain places of
sentiment, local history, real people, and everyday reality.
Yasser Elsheshtawy is an Associate Professor of Architecture at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain,
Abu Dhabi-UAE. He teaches architectural history and design studios. He is the editor of two books on Middle
Eastern urbanism and design: Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An Urban Kaleidescope in a Globalizing World
(London: Routledge, 2004) and The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development (London:
Routledge, 2008). The new writing in this selection further develops chapters in these books on Dubai and
Abu Dhabi. His book on the growth and development of Dubai illustrates the dynamics of global urbanism in
the Middle East more fully: Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle (London: Routledge, 2009).
The global spectacle of Dubai and the planning innovations of Abu Dhabi have received different amounts
of attention. For material on Dubai’s global ambitions and urban design see: Ahmed Kanna, Dubai, the City
as Corporation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010; Stephen J. Ramos, Dubai Amplified:
Design and the Built Enviornment (Farnham / London: Ashgate / Design and the Built Environment, 2010);
Christopher M. Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009);
and Syed Ali, Dubai: Gilded Cage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
For readings on the development and design of Abu Dhabi, see the following: Christopher M. Davidson,
Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Mohammed Al Fahim, From Rags
to Riches: A Story of Abu Dhabi (North Charleston, SC: Booksurge Publishing, 2008); Jo Tatchell, A Diamond
in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in Abu Dhabi, the World’s Richest City (New York: Grove Press, 2010);
and Victoria Hockfield, A History of Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates (Hockfield Press, 2010). To
see the planning documents of Abu Dhabi’s primary planning agency, the Urban Planning Council, please
refer to: http://www.upc.gov.ae/?lang=en-US.
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 476 10-26-2012 3:23:06 PM

“Urban Dualities in the Arab World” 477
For general material on the Arab-Islamic city and modernism, see: Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (eds),
Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Seattle, WA: University
of Washington Press, 2008); Abdulazia Y. Saqqaf (ed.), The Middle East City: Ancient Traditions Confront
a Modern World (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 1987); Khaled Ziadeh and Samah Selim (trans.), Neighborhood
and Boulevard: Reading through the Modern Arab City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Besim
Selim Hakim, Arabic-Islamic Cities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), and Arabic-Islamic Cities:
Building and Planning Principles (EmergentCity Press, 2008); and Hisham Mortada, Traditional Islamic
Principles of Built Environment (London: Routledge, 2003).
The word “Arab City” evokes a multitude of images, Transnational institutions such as the World Bank
preconceptions and stereotypes. At its most ele- and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
mentary it is for many a place filled with mosques increasing flow of labor in the form of low-income
and minarets; settings characterized by chaotic, slum- workers as well as highly paid consultants, are
like developments; a haven for terrorists; maze-like exerting a substantial influence – which could be
alleyways; crowded coffeehouses where people sit felt at the level of architecture and urban develop-
idling their time away smoking a nerghile; sensuality ment. Similar to what took place in the former f
hidden behind veils and mashrabiy’yas. But it is colonial city, reserved for the colonizing power, cities o
u
also a place of unprecedented development, rising are now configured to cater to the rich. Low-income r
skyscrapers, modern shopping malls; unabashed inhabitants are excluded and relegated to the
consumerism. Most importantly it is a setting where fringes – slums, labor camps and the like. High-end
one can observe the tensions of modernity and developments, luxurious shopping centers, gated
tradition; religiosity and secularism; exhibitionism communities have become defining features of the
and veiling; in short a place of contradictions and contemporary Arab city, much like what is taking
paradoxes. Each of these characterizations plays place elsewhere in the world.
into clichés about what constitutes an Arab or Middle Many of these issues have been endlessly debated
Eastern city. At the same time, arguments are made in global city theory. For example the notion of
that there is a divide in this region between newly exclusion is being presented as a characteristic of
emerging cities (the Gulf ) and the traditional centers world globalization (e.g., Friedman and Wolff, 1982;
– a form of “Gulfication” or “Dubaization” in which Marcuse and Van Kempen, 2000; Sassen, 2001).
these new centers are influencing and shaping the Furthermore, an essential component of world cities
urban form of “traditional” cities. Counter arguments discourse is the construct of networking. Cities are
are made that cities in the Middle East and North conceived as lying on a network, and research is
Africa are influenced by a variety of cities and directed at ascertaining the level of connectivity –
regions throughout the world and that the relation- a space of flows opposed to the space of places as
ship is far more complex than a one-way, linear developed by Manuel Castells (1996). Along that
directionality. same vein, the impact of network infrastructures on
The Arab/Middle Eastern city is thus caught city form affirming the connectivity among cities
between a variety of worlds, ideologies and struggles. and the fragmentary nature of contemporary urban
At its very essence it is a struggle for modernity structures was investigated as well (e.g., Sassen,
and trying to ascertain one’s place in the twenty- 2002; Graham and Marvin, 2001). However, a
first century. Certainly colonialism did play a large number of critics have pointed out that the typical
role in defining the region’s direction in the second global city discourse has left out many cities – they
half of last century, but that influence has largely are “off the map” – and increasingly have been
faded. Traditional colonial powers have left, and new calling for an examination of “marginalized” cities.
ones have taken their place, spurred in large part A central construct underlying these developments
by globalization and neo-liberal economic policies. is the notion of transnational urbanism in which
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 477 10-26-2012 3:23:06 PM

urbanizing processes are examined from “below,” theoretical backing through the work of Edward
looking at the lives of migrants, for example, and Said on Orientalism this became a rallying cry
the extent to which they moderate globalizing pro- for urbanists and architects, strengthened by the
cesses, a form of low-end globalization (Robinson, emergence of the Arabian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia
2002; Peter-Smith, 2001; Mathews, 2011). The global in particular, as a center for the debate concerning
city discourse – whereby certain cities are offered what came to be known as “Islamic Architecture”
as a model to which other cities must aspire to if and the revival of terms such as “The Islamic City.”
they are to emerge from “off the map” – is essen- Accordingly such readings of the Middle Eastern
tially in dispute. Underlying all these critiques is the city show it as an isolated entity somehow discon-
work of urban sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod (1995) nected from developments occurring elsewhere in
who has written extensively on Middle Eastern cities the “civilized” world. The city was always examined
and has reminded us that globalization needs to be in relation to, and in association with, “heritage,”
placed in its proper historical context. “tradition” and “culture,” as if it were divorced from
My aim in this writing is to discuss the develop- any surrounding reality. Furthermore, the “Islamic”
ment of Arab urbanization through this prism. perspective became a framework through which
Rather than engaging in a typical Orientalist dis- every single decision was evaluated, judged and
course which has defined the discussion on Arab criticized. All developments taking place were framed
cities throughout the last two decades – essentially within such an outlook, even in their interaction
blaming the West, former colonialists, Israel and so with “modern” counterparts. Examples are numer-
on for all the ills that have befallen Arab societies ous but perhaps the work of Saudi scholars, Saleh
– I would like to offer an alternative view: one that Al-Hathloul and Jamil Akbar could be considered
reframes the debate in a way that places more representative in this regard. They attempted to
responsibility on Arab citizens, policy makers, plan- establish a legal framework through which the
ners and architects. Moreover, an underlying premise Moslem city emerged and developed. Various
is that all that is taking place in our cities follows decisions pertaining to the built environment were
from, and is a response to, globalizing conditions thus always referred back to religious texts. Con
occurring all over the world. I begin though with a ferences in the 1980s and 1990s further legitimized
brief historical overview, showing the rather limited, these approaches, focusing on such constructs as
and limiting, margin within which this debate has the “Arab” city and the extent to which its “glory”
been framed. could be revived by tying it to cultural/religious
roots (e.g., Serageldin and El-Sadek, 1982). Attempts
at modernization and development were constructed
FRAMING ARAB CITIES vis-à-vis such a framework.
These conceptualizations were based on a cer-
Starting from the 1970s, much of the typical archi- tain assumption, namely that the “Moslem” (Arab)
tectural/urban narrative of the Middle Eastern city has been unable to develop, grow and in turn
was a narrative of loss. This has been influenced modernize – in short go beyond the twelfth century,
by discourses concerning postmodernism and critical the pinnacle of Moslem civilization. S/he is thus con
regionalism which centered on a revival of a demned to remain within this historic perspective.
historical dimension of the built environment, and This, of course, has been the Orientalist reading
moved away from modernizing discourses which of the Moslem/Arab mind initially exposed by
had dominated much of the twentieth century, Edward Said (1978) from a literary perspective, but
(e.g., Frampton, 1983). Within the Middle East this developed further by writers such as Zeynep Çelik
acquired another dimension due to colonization. dismantling the colonial French discourse in Algiers,
Thus within this narrative arguments were made and Timothy Mitchell exploring colonial policies
that a great, once flourishing civilization has through in Egypt just to cite a few. Continuing this trend
colonization been subjected to plundering and Nelida Fuccaro (2001) in reviewing urban studies
exploitation of resources – cities are therefore in in the Gulf region called for a comparative per
a perpetual state of underdevelopment. Finding spective both grounding urban settlements within
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their regional contexts and studying the “specificity” PROBLEMATIZING CITIES IN THE ARAB
of each – thus moving away from the “static ideal WORLD: NEO-LIBERAL URBANIZATION
type” of the “Islamic city.” Her analysis showed AND RISING INEQUALITY
that there is a body of research which examines
Gulf cities from a sociopolitical perspective, show- One of the significant factors affecting urban
ing that urban forms developed in response to development in the Middle East is what have come
unique contemporary conditions. She keenly noted, to be known as neo-liberal urbanization policies.
however, that grounding the city within the “Arab- These are based on the Washington Consensus orig
Islamic cultural domain” serves among other things inating in 1989, which constituted a set of policies
“processes of political legitimization.” liberating markets from state intervention and aimed
Significantly these approaches show that Arab for the most part at economies in developing
cities have been part of modernization efforts from nations (e.g. Newman and Thornley, 2005). Cities
the nineteenth century to the present. While being were particularly receptive to this, leading to what
subjected to colonialism, they nevertheless were able David Harvey (2006) has called “geographies of
to grow, develop and contribute to urbanization. exclusion,” that is, the creation of enclaves within
Urban forms unique to each city were developed, the city. Others have dubbed this neo-liberal urban-
responding to larger “global” issues. Even within ization, whereby the city is being re-configured to
the current discourse on globalization, the Arab city cater to the rich and powerful at the cost of low-
has responded in a unique manner which illustrates income city inhabitants, a development characterized
that it is not just an “Arabian nights” fantasy – but as being inherently “evil” (e.g. Davis and Monk, f
a real, vibrant, cosmopolitan entity which does not 2008). Obviously this has taken on many forms and o
u
differ from anywhere else in the world – whether underwent changes as these policies were applied r
in the aspiration of its citizens or in their daily in different cities. If we examine the Arab city,
struggle to make a living, as exemplified by the this becomes even more problematic given varying
events of the “Arab Spring” which took place geographical, political and financial contexts. Thus,
in urban centers. These events have also shown the rich cities of the Arabian Peninsula cannot be
that the exclusively “Islamic” reading of such compared to the declining traditional urban centers
cities is – to put it bluntly – outdated and counter- of the Middle East – yet given the interconnected-
productive. Heritage and culture are vital issues, ness in the region influences and exchanges do
but they should not be the sole, or dominant, factors take place. In this section I will be examining this
through which the Middle Eastern city is studied in more detail looking at the extent to which neo-
and analyzed.1 liberal urbanization has impacted the Arab city in
Instead there are much more relevant issues its varying manifestations. I will first show how the
shaping the urbanization discourse in the Middle concept of the global city has been closely tied to
East. These pertain to neo-liberal urbanization neo-liberal transformations; my focus then shifts
policies, increased levels of migration, the pro to an overall view of the Arab city and the degree
liferation of slums and informal settlements, an to which it is tied to the global city discourse.2
intensified gap between rich and poor, and higher
levels of inequality. A particularly pressing question,
which needs to be explored further, is the extent to The global city discourse in
which the Arab city has responded to, and engaged the Arab world
with, this shifting discourse concerning cities in the
region. Moreover, should this shift away from the Within classical global theory the notion of a “Global
“narrative of loss” that has defined urbanization City” indicates a city that concentrates financial
studies in the last century be viewed as a positive services, acting as a command and control center
development and a catalyst for change? And what for the rest of world. Three cities in particular are
role does the rise of cities in the Arabian Peninsula singled out: London, New York and Tokyo. While
play in all of this? I will explore this in more detail this concept can be attributed to many scholars,
in the following section. the work of social geographer Saskia Sassen is
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typically cited in this context. However the whole Neo-liberal urbanization

notion of a Global City is highly problematic and
has undergone many transformations. Neil Brenner One of the key changes occurring in cities due to
and Roger Keill in their introduction to the Global globalizing processes is the relative decline of the
City Reader have argued for a contextualization of nation-state and the increasing turn towards the
world city research and global city theory. This was private sector as a main actor in development. This
largely supported by an emerging body of research can be seen through the proliferation of NGOs in
at that time, focusing on marginalized cities, and a various countries, and the emergence of powerful
realization that local agents shape and interact with real estate companies who are increasingly shaping
global processes. Herbert Marcuse and Robert van the skylines of globalizing cities. In that vein, govern
Kempen for instance noted that cities engage in ments are engaged in a process of selling public
globalizing processes in different ways and accord- assets – such as land formerly occupied by the
ingly have introduced the more appropriate term military – to foreign (and local) developers. Of
globalizing cities. course one drawback is that the role of the state
Space is transformed in these cities to cater in providing and ensuring welfare for its citizens is
to a consumerist society; transnational migrants increasingly in decline – thus further exacerbating
and so on. The most visible manifestation of the inequality. Another phenomenon related to this –
sizeable new consumer elite is the striking trans- prompted by the free flow of laborers, ideas and
formation of the city center to be found in virtually capital – is the increased reliance on foreign experts
all our cities. Offices, hotels, luxury housing, and and consultants. Based for the most part in western
up-scale shops and restaurants have displaced low- societies, they bring their own expertise and back-
income residents (Gugler, 2004; Zukin, 2010). ground which influences and shapes many of the
Another aspect of this phenomenon is spectacular- developments taking place in the region.
ized urban space, and the steps cities have taken
to attract foreign investment by engaging in image
creation (e.g. Haila, 1997). As a result real estate Megaprojects
investments have become important tools in this,
which ties in with the work of geographer David Cities are assuming a powerful role, and as a result
Harvey (2006) in his examination of entrepreneurial of such processes they are increasingly being viewed
ism and urban governance favoring entrepreneurs as a product that needs to be marketed. These
at the expense of inhabitants. Peter Marcuse (2006) marketing efforts involve attracting headquarters
discusses spatial patterns in cities and the extent or regional branches of international companies and
to which they have changed due to globalization staging of “mega-events.”3 Other projects include
(if at all). For example, one outcome is a variety luxury housing, dining establishments and entertain
of juxtaposed and sometimes overlapping residential ment amenities to attract the professional personnel
cities and a city of unskilled work and the informal required to operate these global activities. Urban
economy. projects are used to act as a catalyst in further
From the preceding it is clear that the con- encouraging investment and tourism such as trade
cept of the global city is multi-layered, and more centers, conference centers and hotels. Looking
importantly has evolved significantly since it was at the Arab world this is one of the most visible
introduced. For the purposes of this chapter it is manifestations of change taking place in their
useful however to highlight a few issues pertaining respective urban centers.
to this concept as it impacts urban space which
would be of direct relevance for urban design in
Arab cities, as I will discuss in the next sections. Gated communities
They are: enactment of neo-liberal urbanization
policies; proliferation of megaprojects and gated This is perhaps one of the most significant issues
communities; and the “splintering” role of infra- impacting urban form in the region. Insecurity due
structure networks. The following is a brief elabor to the increasing influx of migrants, for example, and
ation on each of these: economic disparity are resulting in the abandonment
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and stigmatization of certain neighborhoods, the THE CASE OF ARAB CITIES: UNEVEN
development of an architecture of fear, and the URBANIZATION
gradual establishment of so-called “fortress cities”
and “cities of walls” where response to crime has The Arab city is not immune from these globalizing
led to spatial transformation; thus changing parts influences and their resultant patterns of inequality,
of cities into protected enclaves and “no-go areas” which are observable not just within cities but also
separated by high walls, gates, electronic surveillance across cities in the region. Various economic statistics
cameras and private security guards (UN-HABITAT, indicate that the pace of economic growth in the
2007; Caldeira, 2000). Another aspect of this relates GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) is stronger than the
to socio-cultural considerations, namely the desire rest of the Arab world. Indeed, several indicators
of various groups to live in homogeneous areas. show an increasingly widening, and alarming, gap.
The wealthy thus assert their identity and status The total population of GCC countries was
by living in clearly distinguishable neighborhoods approximately 37 million in 2006, representing 12
and communities separated from the main city, percent of the Arab population of the Middle East
or within enclaves in the city. These can be found and North Africa. However, the economy of GCC
in various cities in the region, ranging from the countries in 2006 accounted for more than 55 per-
informal urban conglomerations of Cairo punctuated cent of the Arab world’s $1.25 trillion economy. In
by exclusive hideaways, to the meticulous cityscape 1995 the GCC countries had an average per capita
of Dubai more or less defined by its exclusionary income of $8500, which was 7.3 times larger than
urban form. the remaining Arab countries. In 2006 the GCC per f
capita income rose to $19,300, which was 10.4 times o
u
larger than the average for other Arab countries. r
Splintering cities and the role of mobility The per capita income in some GCC countries such
as Qatar ($63,000) and the UAE ($38,000) was higher
According to Graham and Marvin (2001), the contem than many advanced industrial countries in 2006.
porary city is characterized by a new “landscape By 2008 the average rose to $35,000. Moreover the
infrastructure” containing embedded normative economy is estimated to reach $2.3 trillion by 2020
visions and social bias, which cause an “unbundling according to McKinsey.5 Latest figures indicate that
of infrastructure networks” which sustain the frag- the average GDP per capita in the Arab region is
mentation of the social and physical fabric of the $8,200 USD whereas it has reached $75,000 USD in
city. They have termed this phenomenon “splinter- Qatar. This contrasts sharply with Yemen, standing
ing urbanism.” Thus, the very tools of modernist at $2,090.6
planning become devices to further inequality: The latest Human Development Index released
streets for the sole use of vehicular traffic; the by the UNDP in 2010 shows that there are only three
absence of sidewalks; the “internalization” of shop- countries from the region falling within the very
ping centers; and the prevalence of “spatial voids” high category: UAE (32), Qatar (38) and Bahrain (39).
isolating buildings by surrounding them with large In the high category are: Kuwait (47), Saudi Arabia
parking lots. Examining the role of infrastructure (55) and surprisingly Jordan (82). Medium includes:
within the Arab region would be particularly useful Egypt (101) and Syria (111). Egypt is ranked below
given that many cities are currently undergoing African countries such as Botswana and Gabon. In
major transport initiatives.4 the low category are Yemen (133) and Sudan (154).
Having identified global factors affecting urban These numbers clearly indicate a growing gap
development in the region, ranging from enactment between countries in the GCC – all of whom are
of neo-liberal urbanization policies, proliferation ranked either very high or high, whereas the rest
of megaprojects, prevalence of gated communities of the region is located in the lower groups. It is
and the role played by infrastructure networks, I also interesting to observe that India is ranked at
now turn to the extent to which these issues have 119 – illustrating a very typical trend among newly
directly influenced the region as a whole. In parti emerging economies, whereby high economic in-
cular, the notion of inequality will be discussed in dicators do not necessarily translate into improved
more detail. lives and may even lead to greater inequalities.
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Such divisions are of course based on oil wealth. The movement of these migrants across the
As a result prior to 2008, estimates and studies region which is basically from those on the lower
projected a wildly optimistic picture. For instance scale of human development to the GCC region
the IMF noted that the bulk of the oil windfall has led to an intensification of spatial divisions
would be invested in the region where more than in their respective cities. Accommodating such an
$1,000 billion of projects were planned. A study influx – especially for those at the lower end of the
by McKinsey at the time estimated that over the scale – is done in specially designed labor camps
period 2005 to 2020 the Gulf is likely to have or neighborhoods removed from the city center for
a $3,000 billion oil surplus, half of which will stay example. At the same time the return of migrants
in the region, with another $750 billion or so of to their respective countries has led to a boom in
capital going into investments in the wider Middle construction and real estate development that has
East and North Africa.7 These numbers have been adopted both the process and imagery associated
largely modified, with many projects stalled or can- with megaprojects and gated communities as they
celled altogether. Moreover, the unfolding events exist in the Gulf region. Significantly patterns of
of the Arab Spring are expected to change the consumption acquired in the Gulf continue as
proliferation and continuation of these projects. evidenced in the construction of giant shopping
Yet, it is clear that this “great divide” has and malls for example, with many containing brands
will remain, which will lead to many problems. known in the Gulf. Thus these patterns of inequality
Among them, an increased rate of migration from have intensified as a result of the economic dis
poor Arab countries and other regions as well to the parity that exists within the region, further adding
richer ones in the GCC. This is particularly evident to what one may describe as an “urban duality.” I
at the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. would argue that this is the single most significant
Every day, according to media reports, hundreds are factor affecting urban development in the region.
sent back to Yemen, reaching hundreds of thousands Rather than being mired in past dreams of reviving
annually. These include many who have come from past glories, what defines urban visions today is
Africa – countries such as Somalia or Ethiopia. a market driven policy that aims at maximizing
They cross Yemen’s deserts and mountains fleeing profit. Increased consumption and commodification
both war and hunger. Saudi authorities in an effort of cultural traditions become one particular visible
to curb this have embarked on a massive effort outcome of this. In the process, many are excluded
to secure their borders, using elaborate defense or relegated to the fringes of respective cities. I
networks. Like the border between Mexico and will in the following sections discuss in greater
the United States it has become symptomatic of details the extent to which this has manifested itself
barriers separating the rich and the poor.8 in two major cities in the region, focusing on the
Looking at the rate of migration and labor spatial impact of such policies.
mobility is another important factor. According to
UN estimates the total number of migrants in the
region has reached 28.6 million out of a total popu CASE STUDIES: ABU DHABI AND DUBAI
lation of 352.2 million people. Income differences are
the main drivers behind the movement of workers, This section looks at two important cities in the
as I indicated. The percentage of Arab workers in Gulf region: Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Both cities, while
the GCC has significantly declined from 72 percent located within the same country, have adopted
at the beginning of the 1970s to 56 percent in 1985, quite different urbanization policies and their
and 31 percent in 1996. Nowadays, according to data degree of influence across the region has varied
by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as well. Moreover, their enactment of globalization
the percentage is estimated to be around 25 per- and neo-liberal policies is particularly poignant
cent. On the other hand the numbers of “economic” in relation to the discussion above. Dubai has of
migrants from South Asia for example have increased. course been a beacon of sorts for all those aspiring
Additionally, there is also the issue of forced migra- to global city status in the Middle East, to the extent
tions – the region hosts 4.7 million refugees, including that the word Dubaization has become a term
an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees.9 denoting the existence of a Dubai-based model of
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urbanization. The 2008 financial downturn has The city had no paved roads, no utility networks
contributed to a slight dimming of this vision. Abu and no modern port facilities. Water was only
Dhabi, learning from its neighbor’s mistakes, has available from cans brought into town by donkeys.
taken a slightly more measured approach focusing Traveling to Dubai from London took several days
on such catchy issues as environmental sustain- in unreliable piston-engine planes with overnight
ability (Masdar City) or culture (the museum district stops. Communication was also difficult. There were
in Saadiyat Island). The extent to which both cities few telephones and cables were sent by radio. The
have actually managed to effectively portray a masterplan developed by Harris aimed at rectifying
modern mode of urbanism in the region is debat- this by addressing some fundamentals: a map, a
able and the following is an attempt at discussing road system and directions for growth. This initial
this, looking at their historical development, urban plan would guide Dubai’s development and be
vision, and a discussion of select projects. modified due to the discovery of oil in 1966.
Developments followed the Harris masterplan
calling for the provision of a road system; zoning
DUBAI of the town into areas marked for industry, com-
merce and public buildings; areas for new residen-
Origins and urban development tial quarters and the creation of a new town center.
These rather modest goals were in line with the
In 1960, British architect John Harris was asked by Emirate’s limited financial resources (oil had not
the ruler to develop the city’s first masterplan. The yet been discovered in sufficient quantities). In f
situation of Dubai at that time was quite primitive. 1971, due to the city’s expansion and increased o
u
r
Figure 1 1962 Master Plan of Dubai prepared by John Harris (courtesy of Harris Architects).
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economic resources a new masterplan by Harris neighborhoods lack a sense of community – they
was introduced. The plan called for the construction have a transitory feeling.
of a tunnel running beneath the Creek connecting
Bur Dubai and Deira (the Shindagha Tunnel) and
the construction of two bridges (Maktoum and Proliferation of megaprojects
Garhoud); in addition, the building of Port Rashid
was also envisioned (Gabriel, 1987). Prior to the financial crisis, projects were announced
The late 1970s and early 1980s can be charac- on a daily basis, each attempting to upend the others
terized as a period of rapid expansion (Al Shafieei, in terms of size as well as architectural image.
1997). Of particular note was the emergence of These include the waterfront development by Rem
the city’s growth corridor along Sheikh Zayed Road Koolhaas for the now infamous developer Nakheel.
towards Jebel Ali. Dubbed the “new Dubai,” this area Here, a stylized version of Manhattan is planted
became the new commercial and financial center on an artificial island next to Palm Jebel Ali. This
of the city. Numerous projects were constructed particular project was portrayed in all seriousness
along this stretch of highway and the skyline of by some observers as a model for a new urbanity
the city changed. These rapid developments are in the Middle East.10 Another project was Dubailand’s
a result of increased resources and an attempt to Bawadi development – meant to evoke the Las
provide alternative sources for revenue. Yet the Vegas strip and containing the world’s largest hotel,
main problem caused by these new axes of growth Asia-Asia; or Palm Deira, 10 times larger than the
is fragmentation and the emergence of a city com- original palm island; and the Universe, a series of
posed of disjointed archipelagos or islands. Further islands resembling said universe located opposite
more, the speed with which some of these projects the Jumeirah coast. The sheer folly of these pro
were constructed necessitated an approach that jects – in some instances given legitimacy by the
would not be based on a “rigid” masterplan – hence involvement of such architects as Rem Koolhaas –
the development of the Dubai Structural Plan in exposes the obsessive degree to which a flawed
1995 whose main aim was to be flexible enough vision of urban development has been pursued.
to accommodate any changes. Conceptually the Ignoring social and cultural reality they never saw
Structural Plan is based on a series of nodes and the light of day and have for all practical purposes
growth axes, which, for the most part, account been cancelled.11 However, other projects and
for the city’s form as it appears today (also see buildings came to define the city’s rapid rise from
Elsheshtawy, 2004b, 2010). obscurity and its appearance on the world stage
As a result of these various development plans and it is the focus on “tall” buildings that played a
with their primary focus on the efficiency of car particularly important part in this.
movement, one of the first impressions of the city One of the first architectural manifestations of
is its fragmentary nature. Dubai is composed of modernization was the construction of the Dubai
multiple, disconnected centers, which are separated World Trade Centre, located at what was then the
by multi-lane highways. This precludes any mean- outskirts of the city, dating from 1979. For many
ingful pedestrian circulation or, for that matter, a years thereafter, indeed until the 1990s, the building
conventional urban fabric which can only be found was considered a major landmark in the city. The
in the “traditional” areas of Bur Dubai/Shindagha tower is even now known as Burj Rashid or Rashid’s
and Deira. This tabula rasa type development has tower among locals, acknowledging the former
resulted in large gaps or patches between develop- ruler who initiated the project. The building itself
ments; vast expanses of sand which need to be addressed some regional concerns, its architecture
filled. Thus the general feeling of the city in its responding to the harsh climate by the construction
present state is that of a construction site – it is of a deep outer skin that moderates the intensity
still a work in progress – which no doubt has been of light from the outside. In addition, the external
further exacerbated by the financial crisis. Further features use triangular arches evoking “Islamic” or
more, lacking the high population density that “Arab” elements.
would sustain such a momentous rate of building, The next building to emerge on the scene was
many areas appear empty without a sign of life. Its the sail-shaped Burj Al-Arab. Another pair of buildings
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 484 10-26-2012 3:23:07 PM

f
o
u
r
Figure 2 Skyline of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, dominated by super-tall buildings as seen from Dubai Metro.
using height to imply significance are the 51-storey All the buildings are located around an artificial
twin Emirates Towers. Designed by Hong Kong lake. Advertisements for the project invariably draw
based architect, Hazel Wong, who argues that the comparisons with existing “famous downtowns”
building is inspired by Islamic geometry and certain such as Manhattan, Paris and London. One could
mythological constructs related to the sun, earth argue that this is a perfect example of a “Debordian”
and moon, the towers’ footprints consist of two spectacle in a desert context – remote from any
triangles placed on a circular base. However, the contextual relevance! Comparisons with existing
buildings convey a high-tech, ultra-modern image, record holders illustrate the sheer magnitude of the
their sleek atria and speedy elevators visible from development and that the Burj has surpassed all
the main highway. This highway – Sheikh Zayed of them.
Road – also contains the World Trade Centre and The modernity discourse plays a prominent part
passes close to the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in justifying the construction of such a gigantic
in the world (as of 2011). This particular project – building. Simply by placing this tower in Dubai,
designed by American based Adrian Smith, from the city could proclaim itself to be truly modern,
SOM at the time – is interesting because a desert irrespective of the fact that it is designed by an
flower native to the region supposedly inspired it. American firm (SOM), built by a Korean construc-
Yet, statements attributed to the architect locate tion company (Samsung), worked on by a plethora
the tower’s conceptual origins to the movie The of Asian labourers, and that most of the apart
Wizard of Oz and the emergence of a glass tower ments and hotels are purchased by an expatriate
in the middle of a yellow field.12 clientele. Regardless of this, the developers felt the
Moreover, the tower has created its own context, need to contextualize the project and give it an
spurring further developments around it such as a “Arabian” touch, whether through some imaginary
residential area called “Old Town” and a large mall. conceptual directions (a desert flower) or the creation
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of pseudo-Arabian districts, which are part of the the upscale residential district of Jumeirah. Initially
overall development. Nevertheless it is important home to locals who were given residences during
to point out that the tower is meant to show the the reign of the late Sheikh Rashid, founder of
emergence of Dubai as a regional powerhouse, modern Dubai, it succumbed to migratory waves
enabling it to become a global city. Some local by its local population. As a result the residences
reactions do in fact suggest that the tower is a source were left to be occupied by South Asian and Filipino
of pride – both among Arab and local Emirati laborers, as well as a sizeable stateless (Bidoon)
citizens – suggesting that “Arabs” do have the population – many of whom are Shiites. There are
potential to develop such a project similar to others two parts to Satwa – divided by an active commercial
(the “West”). thoroughfare. To the north of this dividing line is a
middle class area, containing a mix of nationalities,
and to the south, towards Sheikh Zayed Road, is
Satwa, and the failure of neo-liberal the more run-down part. Composed of residences
urbanization in various states of decay, it has a curious mix of
outdoor seating areas, graffiti, informal gardens and
Many of these megaprojects are envisioned in the Husseiniyas (Shiite religious buildings) – all in close
desert or in the sea – away from any significant proximity to the city’s most visible landmarks. At
urban context – thus their impact on the city’s night, according to popular perception, it becomes
social structure is somewhat limited. However, one a haven for drug users and a place for illegal liquor
particular interesting proposal concerns the city’s consumption. Adding further to the tenuous status
district of Satwa – sandwiched between the ultra of the district is the presence of a large number
luxurious Sheikh Zayed Road, home of the above of “illegals” – people who have overstayed their
mentioned Burj Khalifa and Emirates Towers, and residency visa.
Figure 3 Skyline of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, as it appears from the district of Satwa.
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 486 10-26-2012 3:23:07 PM

Given these conditions a decision was made by dream.” Jumeirah Gardens never left the ground –
authorities in 2006 to raze the entire area to the aside from a few demolished buildings, fences sur-
ground and replace it with a luxurious mixed-use rounding others and abandoned signage on the
development. This wasn’t merely about an island road. Residents began to return to their homes, and
in the sea, but would have resulted in a massive interestingly the partially demolished villas were
relocation and exodus of its population, numbering for a while being used as shelter by an increasingly
about 100,000 – a huge number by Dubai standards. “homeless” population of construction workers.14
A model was unveiled during the 2008 Cityscape Satwa was viewed as a blight on the city’s urban
exhibition showing what was in store: canals weaving landscape that had to be wiped off. But, the financial
their way through the district, lined with indescrib- crisis led to a paradigm shift with regard to viewing
ably shaped towers, surrounded by low-rise villas these spaces. A recent campaign advertisement by
and gardens. The development – described as Emirates Airlines – a government-owned entity –
“utopian” by one of its architects, Gordon Gill – was shows a western tourist taking in the sights of Dubai
named Jumeirah Gardens.13 Prior to this unveiling moving between its various attractions. Among
residents had been issued with eviction notices and these is the district of Satwa. Our tourist walks
demolition work had seriously begun. Interestingly among its modest houses, between teeming streets,
while all of this was going on filmmakers, artists and enjoys some ethnic eateries. During his walk he
and journalists lamented the district’s destruction, interacts with the district’s residents. The advertise-
portraying it as Dubai’s version of Greenwich Village ment seems to suggest a move away from merely
in Manhattan. focusing on its high-tech architecture and mega- f
The Cityscape 2008 exhibition took place while projects. It aims to show that there is another, more o
u
the financial crisis was beginning to make its impact humane, side to the city. It also shows that there r
felt across the world. No sales were forthcoming is a return to appreciating and understanding the
and in the following months news about massive value of its everyday spaces – something that
layoffs, collapse of financial markets and a halt had been neglected in the city’s feverish drive to
to many projects heralded the end of the “Dubai establish some sort of relevance. There seems to
Figure 4 Scaled model of the Jumeirah Garden development during its unveiling at Cityscape Dubai, 2008.
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be recognition that Dubai derives its uniqueness Following the transfer of power, however, sub-
from precisely such settings. Or, some cynics may stantive changes took place aiming at transforming
note, it is simply a marketing ploy meant to attract Abu Dhabi into a global player, which significantly
budget conscious travelers, as was suggested in a impacted the city’s growth and urban form. Chief
BBC Middle East business report.15 among these was a change in the property owner-
Dubai, in its overall development pattern – ship law, allowing the sale of government granted
exemplified by the Satwa case – has become a land by nationals, as well as introducing a form
byword for neo-liberal urbanization policies (e.g., of ownership by foreigners.16 Furthermore, even
Kanna, 2010; Vora, 2011). It has in effect become a though Abu Dhabi had kept a low profile it invested
guiding light, a frame of reference for the remainder its vast oil income through its main overseas
of the region. Patterns of exclusion and an inten- financial arm – the Abu Dhabi Investment Author
sification of urban dualities are a by-product of this, ity (ADIA). Moreover, Abu Dhabi witnessed an
which acquires more acute and serious dimensions increase in capital due to two factors: increasing oil
in the region’s traditional centers given the strong prices and a changing political climate responsible
urban context and an absence of a tabula rasa type for a move home of Arab money – a “repatriation
development. And while the vision of Dubai as of capital” – due to post 9/11 security measures in
a model has faded somewhat, new urban centers the West. Thus, according to reports at the time,
have engaged in similar approaches. Among these, “phenomenal amounts of liquidity produced by
Abu Dhabi is of importance given its proximity to the current conditions have found a welcome home
Dubai and its adoption of urbanization policies that in real estate” (Oxford Business Group, 2006: 157).
will apparently transcend anything Dubai ever Projects ranged from entire new residential and
envisioned, as I will discuss in the following section. tourist complexes to vast malls and town-sized
commercial and industrial developments – as well
as developing the vast number of islands surround-
ABU DHABI ing the city.
In light of these massive developments the
Overview of urban development government of Abu Dhabi announced a modified
masterplan – “Plan Abu Dhabi 2030: Urban Structure
Abu Dhabi’s urban trajectory took a slightly different Framework Plan.” The plan was developed by
path than Dubai. For one thing, it was considered a the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC); an
village of sorts, without any substantive urban struc institution created through the royal family to
tures, up until 1966 when its former ruler Sheikh organize planning in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi,
Zayed initiated the city’s urban development pro- under the consultative advising of Larry Beasley,
cess. This entailed a complete eradication of the former Co-Director of City Planning for the City
old city – mostly of mud huts and non-permanent of Vancouver. Under the plan, the city is projected
structures. The city’s road system of massive urban to grow to over three million people by 2030. A
arterials was laid out along strict geometric lines series of principles are outlined, emphasizing the
following best practices at the time, forming incredibly city’s focus on identity and sustainability. Thus the
large super blocks ringed by tower housing at their plan states that Abu Dhabi will be a “contemporary
periphery; the center of these blocks left for low-rise expression of an Arab city” and will continue its
housing for Emirati families and expatriate workers. practice of measured growth, reflecting a sustain-
Sheikh Zayed’s vision of palm-lined boulevards and able economy. Furthermore it “pledges” to respect
locally inspired villa architecture established a very the natural environment of coastal and desert
different city than what was being developed in ecologies, and to manifest the role of Abu Dhabi as
Dubai. The city grew exponentially, and in spite a capital city. The plan provides for large areas of
of these rapid changes, the extent of urbanization new Emirati housing inspired by traditional family
was measured compared to its neighbor Dubai. structures, and a diverse mix of affordable housing
Indeed, up until 2004 – following the death of Sheikh options for low-income (expatriate) residents. Land
Zayed – the notion of megaprojects was alien to uses, building heights and transport plans for the
the urbanization discourse. city are specified as well.
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Figure 5 Scaled model of Abu Dhabi according to its 2030 development framework, indicating all future projects.
This vision includes several megaprojects whose claim as a separate “city” and instead positions it
actual execution is in doubt given the general slow- as a well-intentioned urban experiment within the
down in the construction sector. Among the various larger City of Abu Dhabi. Furthermore the city’s
projects proposed are: an expansion of the business islands are slated for massive development. Yas
district and the creation of new business and govern Island houses the Ferrari Theme Park and various
mental centres; the Capital District, a massive 4,500 sports and leisure attractions in addition to the
hectare development to be built 7km inland from futuristic Yas Hotel designed by avant-garde New
Abu Dhabi; and Norman Foster’s Masdar City, York based architects, Asymptote. Saadiyat Island
planned to be the world’s first zero-carbon, zero- is being developed as a cultural island housing five
waste city relying entirely on renewable energy and international museums including the Frank Gehry
recycling of waste. Its design has been initially designed branch of the Guggenheim Museum, and
envisioned as a walled city in the desert, where the Louvre Abu Dhabi designed by Jean Nouvel,
residents drive in, park at the periphery, and hop among other museum designers such as Zaha Hadid,
on personal-rapid-transit (PRT) to get to their Norman Foster and Tadao Ando. Suwwah Island
destinations – all on a podium level below the and Reem Island are emerging as main commercial
city, which leaves the city’s surface level primarily and financial areas to supplement the existing Central
pedestrian. These utopian visions are currently Business District; while Lulu island – an artificial
undergoing revisions. Surrounding the development island facing the city’s northern shores – will include
are solar panel fields, waste conversion and other a mix of residential, commercial and conservation
sustainable infrastructure facilities. The project’s areas. It should be noted however, that as of 2011,
location between the airport and one of the city’s reports are suggesting that Abu Dhabi is shifting its
incredibly low-density villa suburbs undermines its focus away from real estate towards infrastructure
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 489 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

projects such as the rail network, and the Emirates nestled between high-rise buildings in its central
Surface Transport Masterplan (Oxford Business business district. Entering it was like encountering
Group, 2011). a different world – a Foucauldian Heterotopia – com-
The notion of a paradigm shift in planning is no posed of small, informal shops, low-income migrant
exaggeration. According to one report “the city as workers – a sense of chaos contrasting sharply with
a whole, a mega project in itself, shall become the ordered appearance of its immediate context.
gardens on the gulf shore adorned by bastions of It projected an air of provinciality and informality.
glorious architecture.”17 However, such efforts The project was designed by Abd el Rahman
raised a series of issues – among them whether Makhlouf in 1972, to replace an original market that
there is a sufficient population to sustain these was located nearby. Historic photographs of this
developments. Estimates in Abu Dhabi suggest that original market show a ramshackle collection of huts
the population will increase to 800,000 and the and unpaved alleyways which in its primitive state
number of visitors by 2012 will supposedly reach was deemed unsuitable for a modern metropolis.
3 million. Such estimates, based on pre-crisis Rather than engaging in a process of upgrading
studies, need to be revised, yet it is safe to say that and conservation, it was decided to remove the
within a span of 40 years the city has been trans- original and build a new one, whose spirit evokes
formed quite dramatically. However, this has also the traditional markets of Arabian cities. Addressing
led to a series of problems, typical of rapidly urban- the city’s primarily nomadic population, and in
izing centers; among them an acute housing short- an attempt to settle them within an urban entity
age and an increased cost of living. Furthermore, “each tribe was given a quota for shop space.”18
these projects have sparked a debate about what Even though references were made to Arab-Islamic
constitutes a proper Abu Dhabi identity and whether principles the market was laid out along strictly
the city is only catering to tourists and transient geometric lines, following the general grid pattern
residents – and perhaps most significantly the rele of the city.
vance of such developments within urban studies The project from its very outset – and in spite
and in relation to the global cities discourse. To set of its initial top-down design – was transformed by
this within a proper context, one project is repre- its users into a place that more closely resembled
sentative of the changes taking place, to the extent a bazaar, subjecting it to a certain level of informal-
that the past is constantly being re-invented and ity. This informal character continued up until its
the city increasingly turning its back against demolition in 2005. Moreover the market was also
low-income inhabitants. This project is the Central a meeting point, a place of exchange and com-
Market. munication in a city where such open air spaces
are a rarity. Yet, the very fact that within the ordered
appearance of the surrounding business district and
The Central Market and geographies of its gleaming towers, an informal, chaotic space like
exclusion this could exist was disconcerting for city officials –
hence the decision for removal.
Abu Dhabi seemingly lacks vibrant urban settings: Following a series of competitions Foster Archi
its streets are lifeless, dominated by cars, and most tects was selected to design the market’s replacement.
public activities take place indoor in shopping malls. The physical facts illustrate the sheer enormity
However, a particular episode in the city’s march of the project – standing in stark contrast to the
towards modernity illustrates the extent to which original market, which was a humane, small-scale
residents are able to reclaim some of its spaces environment, fostering a sense of community and
and impose their own informal order; at the same intimacy. This is exemplified by two high-rise towers
time it also shows the degree to which authorities clad in a shimmering, gleaming curtain wall domin
motivated by a desire for urban order as well ating the Abu Dhabi skyline. The lower podium is
as financial profit are willing to counteract these covered in a lattice-like screen, evoking some sort
“informal” tendencies. of mashrabiy’ya, containing an upscale shopping mall
One of the memorable sights for anyone visiting called the “Emporium.” In addition there is also a
Abu Dhabi in the 1990s was the Central Market traditional market – replacing the original – which
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 490 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

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Figure 6 The Central Market of Abu Dhabi prior to its demolition, 2004.
is basically an indoor, multi-storey, shopping mall, media director at Aldar, the developer, observed
although its retail units replicate the old market’s that everything possible was being done to keep the
measurements. While the architects went out of ambience and color of a traditional souq, but –
their way to establish the project’s historic creden- and this is an important qualification – without the
tials and that it will be the new heart of the city, a slightly chaotic qualities of a bazaar. Moreover,
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 491 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

original owners will be compensated with shop space The project was opened in 2010 and the open-
in the “new traditional market” – what is actually air concept of the previous shopping area has been
being sold though is subject to approval by the abandoned in favor of a conventional, indoor air-
developer.19 conditioned space. Significantly, the overall setting
Thus a significant transformation has occurred has the feel and character of a high-end shopping
– from a small and dilapidated row of shops, which mall. Thus one finds a food court with the usual
nevertheless catered to a very significant part chain restaurants, souvenir shops and high-end
of the population, to an ultra-luxurious shopping retailers. Contributing to the sense of luxury is the
mall. What underlies all this, it seems, is a desire high design quality of various construction details.
to exclude these elements which were in some Outside, some efforts have been made to connect
way “spoiling” the modern metropolitan image that to the street. A series of entrances from various
officials are trying to portray. There simply is no roads lead to the ground floor and some store
room for loitering Pakistani shoppers looking for a fronts open to the outside as well. Benches in black
cheap bargain, or a gathering of Sri Lankan house granite are placed on sidewalks. Whether such a
maids exchanging news. As such this development place could truly be the center of town as it used
by its very nature responds to the capital schemes to be in the past is open for debate. Obviously for
depicted by David Harvey (2006) where he argues some segments in the population this has the
that capitalism favors a geography that caters to the potential to become a popular hangout, similar to
rich and is based primarily on social exclusion – many malls in the city. Yet for others it will never
seen here in unmistakably clear terms. Moreover the be the same again.20
project is symptomatic of the increased privatization In this discussion of Abu Dhabi I have chosen
of public space and the subsequent “sanitization” to focus on one project, the Central Market – given
of urban settings (e.g. Elsheshtawy, 2008a). its historical origins, transformation and, perhaps
Figure 7 The newly designed Central Market project in Abu Dhabi, 2010.
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 492 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

more significantly, its actual completion and sub- that we are witnessing a “global historic rebalanc-
sequent use. Its story is symptomatic of typical ing” which is due to three factors: the rise of the
high-end developments taking place throughout the China growth model; the rise of Arab wealth funds;
world – attributed to neo-liberal urbanization poli- and the importance of geography – what he terms
cies – showing both their success and their limita- the rise of an “Islamic corridor.” Cities will play
tion. Yet clearly the city is engaging in many other a significant role in the revival of this new Silk
ambitious projects – dwarfing the scale of the cen- Road. Iranian journalist Afshin Molavi argues that
tral market. While they are in various stages of key “caravan posts” on the new Silk Road are
planning and construction – some are on hold and regional economic “winners” or rising stars: Dubai,
others have been cancelled – the significance of Beijing, Mumbai, Chennai, Tokyo, Doha, Kuala
Abu Dhabi’s urban vision cannot be underesti- Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Shanghai,
mated. If these projects are realized they are set Abu Dhabi.22
to make the city one of the most important urban Yet the rise of cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi
centers in the region. has not been without its critics. Some arguments
are made that these rapidly rising centers could
never match the “flair” of global metropolises like
CONCLUSION: THE RISE OF THE EAST Tokyo, London and New York which “have been
able to hone the cultural amenities that make for
North and West and South up-breaking! a gracious urbanity.”23 Furthermore, according to
Thrones are shattering, Empires quaking; architect Erich Kuhne (quoted in Kotkin) “these f
Fly thou to the untroubled East, upstarts are often too busy building and trying to o
u
There the patriarchs’ air to taste! impress the rest of the world to focus on architec- r
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ture or plan niceties to make the heroic routine of
West-Eastern Divan, 181 everyday life more pleasant.” In much more severe
language, leftist writer Mike Davis in a 2006 article
In the preceding sections I have attempted to narrate on Dubai called “Fear and Money in Dubai” – an
both Dubai’s and Abu Dhabi’s rise from obscurity allusion to Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear and
to internationally recognized cities on their way Loathing in Las Vegas – argues, while using the writ-
to becoming major global centers. Their economic, ings of Marxist writer Baruch Knei-Paz,24 that
cultural and urban initiatives have caught the ima “backward societies” (and he is using both Dubai
gination of writers, academics and urbanists. Yet and China as examples) adapt products in their
their rise should not be seen as being merely an final stages of development without going through
artificial and temporary growth fuelled by oil wealth a necessary evolutionary process.25 In his words
– which is the common accusation directed at “the arduous intermediate stages of commercial
rapidly urbanizing cities, particularly those in the evolution have been telescoped or short-circuited
Arab Gulf. Rather, it is part of a much larger pattern to embrace the ‘perfected’ synthesis of shopping,
witnessed within the last 25 years which has seen entertainment and architectural spectacle, on the
the rise of such cities as Mumbai and Bangalore most pharaonic scale.”
in India, or Beijing and Shanghai in China, who have According to these readings Abu Dhabi and Dubai
become major centers of trade and commerce; are “backward cities” whose entire urban develop-
their cities are gleaming with newly built skyscrapers ment is based on oil wealth, and they are thus
and shopping malls. As urbanist Joel Kotkin puts “artificial.” They have no significance aside from
it “over the past 25 years, most of the biggest rail, being merely an amusing sideshow whose destiny
road, airport and sanitation systems have been built is to be buried under the sand once the oil dries
not in Europe or America, but in East and South up. Aside from the rather pessimistic and extreme
Asia, the Middle East and Brazil.”21 tone of such predictions they are prevalent to vary-
Economists have been heralding the revival of ing degrees of explicitness among many academics,
a “new Silk Road” – the ancient trade route linking journalists and observers of developments in the
the Moslem world to China. In a forceful argument region. They hearken back to Orientalist conceptual
economist Ben Simpfendorfer (2009: 154) notes izations, casting the Moslem/Arab region as an “other”
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 493 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

that cannot seriously compete with the “advanced” 5 http://www.ameinfo.com/146056.html. Accessed

West. However, it is critical to see the Arab Gulf June 26, 2012.
in a different light to be able to develop a more 6 UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2009:
balanced view and more significantly it is crucial Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries,
to hear the voices of its citizens and residents Annex 1, Table 1, p. 229.
who are familiar with its intricacies, daily life, and 7 Khalaf, Roula (2007). “It’s Boom Time,” Gulf
its aspirations and struggles. Cities such as Dubai News, November 22, p. 22.
and Abu Dhabi, unburdened by history, and given 8 Worth, Robert F. (2010). “Saudi Border with
their unique cosmopolitan blend of cultures, are Yemen is still inviting for Al Qaeda,” The New
in a position to provide the blueprint for our urban York Times. October 26. http://www.nytimes.
future – and should thus command our attention. com/2010/10/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.
They are neither backward nor artificial but offer html. Accessed June 26, 2012.
an urban vision for the twenty-first century. Signi 9 http://www.iom.int/jahia/jsp/index.jsp.
ficantly their urban discourse moves away from Accessed June 26, 2012.
the “Islamic” perspective dominating in the past 10 Ourossoff, Nicolai (2008). “City on the Gulf:
and instead suggests a course of modernity that Koolhaas Lays Out a Grand Urban Experiment
uniquely blends the old and the new, adopts inter- in Dubai,” The New York Times, March 3. http://
national practices and offers a (temporary) home www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/arts/design/
for the world’s nomads. They have the potential 03kool.html. Accessed June 26, 2012.
to become a model for our urban future – and may 11 According to the latest estimates some 842
thus, finally, move us away from the shackles of projects valued at more than US$ 350 billion are
Orientalism. currently on hold and a further 111 projects worth
more than US$ 14 billion have been cancelled
(http://www.alkhaleej.ae/portal/366a72a4-
NOTES 42ca-4544-897a-44e05af43b67.aspx. Accessed
June 26, 2012).
1 This argument was further developed in 12 Also see Elsheshtawy (2011b).
Elsheshtawy, 2004a. 13 Architect Gordon Gill (from Smith + Gill
2 For further elaboration on this see my intro Architects) during a symposium on Abu Dhabi’s
ductory chapter in Elsheshtawy, 2008b. urban development at the Louvre Auditorium,
3 According to The Economist in a special report Paris. December, 9, 2009.
on cities, when wooing investors or companies 14 Naylor, Hugh (2010). “Desperate lives of Dubai’s
ready to move their headquarters, rival cities will car washers,” The National, May 9. http://www.
now flaunt their galleries, theaters and orchestras thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
as much as their airline connections, modern 20100510/NATIONAL/705099940/0/rss.
hospitals and fiber optic networks. (“The World Accessed June 26, 2012.
goes to Town: A special report on cities,” May 15 Also see Elsheshtawy (2011b, c and d).
5, 2007.) 16 “According to article 3 in the new law, GCC
4 For instance as Agnes Deboulet (2010) pointed citizens and legal personalities wholly owned
out, the Malek Faysal project in Damascus or by them may own properties, provided that the
the Cairo ring road. Or as Sophia Shwayri (2008) property should be located within the precinct
noted with respect to the series of highways and of investment areas. However, they shall have
underpasses linking the reconstructed central the right to dispose and arrange any original
district to the “newly expanded Beirut Inter or collateral right over any of those properties
national Airport which could be [reached] in . . . According to Article (4)-Non-UAE nationals,
seven minutes” (p. 91). As Deboulet puts it natural or legal persons, shall have the right
“such projects will dismantle once-unified neigh to own surface property in investment areas.
bourhoods. Whatever justification they offer, Surface property refers to that property built
they are destabilizing and often reinforcing or on land. Thus, the non-nationals can own the
exaggerating inequalities.” property, but not the land on which it is built
9780415668071_P4_06.indd 494 10-26-2012 3:23:08 PM

. . . This shall be done through a long-term con- Brenner, Neil and Kiel, Roger (2006). Editors’ introduc-
tract of 99 years or by virtue of long-term tion: global city theory in retrospect and prospect,
surface leasing contract of 50 years renewable in Brenner, Neil and Kiel, Roger (eds) The Global
by mutual consent.” Gulf News (2007). “Foreigners Cities Reader. London: Routledge.
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12, p. 37. and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley, CA: University
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18 Howe, M. (1972). “Abu Dhabi adapting to modern Castells, Manuel (1996). The Rise of the Network
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Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Governance among Indian Businessmen in Dubai.
Marcuse, Peter (2006). Space in the globalizing city, American Anthropologist. 113:2, pp. 306–318.
in Brenner, N. and Keil, R. (eds) The Global City Zukin, Sharon (2010). Naked City: the death and life of
Reader. London: Routledge. authentic urban places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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“The Urbanism of Ambition” and
“China Reinvents the City”
from The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution
and What it Means for the World (2008)
Thomas J. Campanella
The breakneck pace and growth of China’s cities over the last two decades is both numbing and worrisome.
It provides example of how central government ambitions can shepherd vast resources into housing, infra-
structure, services, and new consumer venues – and transform what was recently a developing country into
a global player. A booming economy, rapid urbanization, and a massive construction industry (the size of
California’s population and barely keeping up with demand) are some of the key inputs to skylines that grow
across the Chinese landscape. Although its urbanization rationales are extremely practical in function (providing
places for a growing population to live, work, travel, and consume), its urban descriptors are largely targeted
at achieving superlatives: the most housing, the biggest shopping mall, the longest freeway system, the fast-
est and most innovative train, and so on. This is the treadmill of global competition writ large. Sustaining and
continuing this pace of growth will require huge resource demands. How this will impact the rest of the global
population that will compete for these limited resources is unknown. In China’s process of expansion, cities
are also experiencing unexpected demolitions, rapid erasure of historic places, population displacement,
immense sprawl, and environmental degradation. It becomes a living example of Joseph Schumpeter’s concept
of “creative destruction.” While we look with awe at the scale and pace of this transformation, those in the
west should be cautious with respect to the portability of China’s urban lessons to other places.
These two chapters from The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the
World provide prologue and open-ended conclusion for understanding Chinese urbanization, urban design,
environmental impacts, and scale of growth. In the book’s first chapter, “The Urbanism of Ambition,” Campanella
illustrates the scale of the country’s urbanization: construction, transportation, historical contrasts, and economic
development. He compares China’s ambitions with a younger USA that was once booming similarly but is
now wising up to the negative externalities of unchecked growth. In the second chapter included here, “China
Reinvents the City,” the author selects six characteristics that define China’s growing urbanism: speed, scale,
spectacle, sprawl, segregation, and sustainability. Campanella problematizes all of these – posing questions
about the impacts these will have both locally and globally.
Thomas J. Campanella is an urbanist, landscape architect, and urban historian, as well as Associate Pro-
fessor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Fellow of the
American Academy in Rome, and has won both Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships. Campanella teaches
courses in planning, landscape history, and urban design. He has a PhD from MIT. His previous publication,
Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) won
the Spiro Kostoff Award for 2005 from the Society of Architectural Historians. It was also named one of the
ten best non-fiction books by the Boston Globe for 2003. Other Campanella publications include: Cities from
the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001); and The Resilient
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 497 10-26-2012 3:23:02 PM

498 T homas J . C ampan E L L a
City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, co-authored with Lawrence Vale (New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 2005). Important articles include: “The Roman Roots of Gotham’s London Plane,” Wall Street
Journal (July 20, 2011, D5); and “Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning,” Design Observer:
Places (April 2011). He has consulted on numerous urban design projects in Asia and the United States.
No shortage of material exists on the Chinese urban phenomenon. In a new selection for The City Reader,
5th edn. (London: Routledge 2011) Tingwei Zhang’s “Chinese Cities in a Global Society” discusses China’s
recent urbanization and its worldwide impacts. Other key texts on Chinese urbanization include: Shahid Yusuf
and Anthony Saich (eds), China Urbanizes: Consequences, Strategies and Policies (Washington, DC: World
Bank Publications, 2008); Jieming Zhu, The Transition of China’s Urban Development: From Plan-Controlled
to Market-Led (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999); John Friedman, China’s Urban Transition (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2005); and John Logan (ed.), The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market Reform
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). For texts on Chinese urban form and design, see the following: Dieter Hassenpflug,
The Urban Code of China (Cologne: Birkhäuser Architecture, 2010); and Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese
Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space 1945–2005 (London: Routledge, 2006).
THe UrBaNiSM OF AMBitiON of Chinese whose homes have been sacrificed in

the nation’s wholesale rush toward a gleaming urban
In the first few months of 2007, a remarkable story future. The woman – and her house – became
began spreading around China, largely via internet widely known as “the most stubborn nail in history”
bulletin boards, bloggers, and cell phone instant (shi shang zui niu de ding zi hu). The singular, unfor-
messaging. It involved a plucky restaurateur named gettable image of the “nail house” alone in the
Wu Ping, whose Chongqing house had been con- middle of an excavated pit is the very picture of
demned for a commercial mixed-use development. resistance and immediately calls to mind that brave
The woman refused all offers of compensation from young man who stood down a tank on Chang’an
the real estate developer and steadfastly defended Boulevard in June 1989. I relate this story because
her property even as the neighboring structures it touches on so many essential themes related to
were pulled down one by one. By mid-March, her city making and urban redevelopment in China’s
house stood alone at the center of a vast crater of post-Mao era – an age of unprecedented economic
mud and rubble. As the construction pit deepened, growth and societal transformation that has shaken
the structure slowly rose in prominence until it both China and the world.
loomed defiantly over the entire site. Though forced To write about China’s urban revolution is to
to vacate the property, Wu Ping took her case to traffic in superlatives. Over the last twenty years, the
the media; dressed in a blazing red coat, she stood People’s Republic has undergone the greatest period
in front of news crews and cameramen waving her of urban growth and transformation in history.
lease and demanding that the government make Since the 1980s, China has built more skyscrapers;
good on a groundbreaking new law, enacted only more office buildings; more shopping malls and
days before on March 16, 2007, that strengthened hotels; more housing estates and gated communities;
private property rights in China. Wu Ping’s husband more highways, bridges, subways, and tunnels; more
added to the drama by planting an oversized Chinese public parks, playgrounds, squares, and plazas; more
flag on the roof of the house and draping a banner golf courses and resorts and theme parks than any
across the front that read “A citizen’s legal property other nation on earth – indeed, than probably all
is not to be encroached upon!”1 other nations combined.
The case touched a national nerve, one rubbed The number and size of cities alone is staggering.
raw by three decades of often cataclysmic develop- There were fewer than 200 cities in China in the
ment in China’s major cities. Wu Ping’s courageous late 1970s; today there are nearly 700. Many of these
act of defiance voiced the pent-up rage of millions are simply reclassified towns and counties, but even
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“The Urbanism of Ambition” 499
the smallest among them are immense by American Indeed, in terms of speed and scale and sheer
standards. Forty-six Chinese cities have passed the audacity, China’s urban revolution is off the charts
one million mark since 1992, making for a national of Western or even global experience. China is in
total of 102 cities with more than a million residents. the midst of a wholesale reinvention of the city as
In the United States we have all of nine such cities. we know it, forcing urbanists worldwide to recali-
There are scores of Chinese cities most Americans brate their most basic tools and assumptions and
have never heard of that rank with our largest. develop a whole new vocabulary for describing and
Guiyang and Jinan, for example, are roughly the critiquing urban phenomena. In China precedents
same size as Phoenix and Philadelphia, and Hefei and practices may be borrowed willy-nilly from other
and Wuxi – middling cities in China – each exceed cultures, but they undergo a process of transmuta-
Los Angeles in population. What makes this all the tion that renders them both familiar and thoroughly
more extraordinary is that only about 38 percent Chinese at the same time. The only place remotely
of the Chinese population is currently urban, as comparable to China today is Dubai, which, thanks
opposed to 80 percent in the United States. An to our addiction to oil, has been growing by leaps
equivalent urban population in China – 80 percent and bounds in recent years. But Dubai is a tiny
of the total – would mean more than one billion city-state of just over a million people. China is a
city dwellers. hundred Dubais, with a thousand times its ambition.
In other words, China’s urban revolution is just The numbers speak for themselves. In 2003
getting under way. Bigness and supersized sprawl alone, China put up 28 billion square feet of new
may have once been American specialties, but that housing – one eighth of the housing stock of the f
monopoly has been usurped. China is now home United States.5 In the year 2004 alone, some $400 o
u
to the world’s biggest airport and largest shopping billion was spent on construction projects in the r
mall, as well as some of the planet’s tallest buildings People’s Republic, nearly the total gross domestic
and longest bridges; it boasts the world’s largest product (GDP) of sub-Saharan Africa that year.6 There
automobile showrooms and the biggest gated com- were virtually no modern highrise office towers in
munity; it has built the most expansive golf course Shanghai in 1980; today it has more than twice as
on earth and the biggest bowling alley, and even the many as New York City.7 According to the Shanghai
world’s largest skateboard park. The controversial statistics bureau, some 925 million square feet of
Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River makes new building floor space was added to the city
Boston’s Big Dig look like child’s play – a mega between 1990 and 2004, equivalent to 334 Empire
project that displaced more than one million people State Buildings. By the end of the 1990s, Shanghai
and destroyed nearly a dozen cities.2 had more than 23,000 construction sites scattered
China has indeed redefined the meaning of across the city. Nationwide, China’s construction
Joseph Schumpeter’s much-quoted phrase “creative industry employs a workforce equal to the popula-
destruction,” razing more urban fabric in its twenty- tion of California.8 Nearly half the world’s steel and
year building binge than any nation in peacetime – cement is devoured by China, a level of demand
and easily surpassing the losses, human and physical, that sends shock waves through the global building-
of urban renewal in America. In Shanghai alone, supply chain.9 Much of the world’s heavy construction
redevelopment projects in the 1990s displaced equipment is in China, and the tower crane is such
more people than thirty years of urban renewal in a ubiquitous presence on the skyline that people
the United States.3 Not even mountains can stand call it China’s national bird (a particular irony, given
in the way of China’s urban ambition. In 1997, a the esteemed place of cranes – the feathered sort –
Lanzhou entrepreneur named Zhu Qihua launched in classical Chinese painting).
a campaign to remove 900-foot Big Green Mountain, China had a mere 180 miles of modern motor-
located on the outskirts of town, so that winds way in the 1980s; today its National Trunk Highway
could flush clean the city’s heavily polluted air. As System spans nearly 30,000 miles and is second in
one city resident, cheered by Zhu’s bold scheme, length only to America’s interstate system. By 2020,
put it, “If removing that mountain can do the trick, China will likely have 53,000 miles of national-level
then get rid of the mountain. Get rid of them all.” highway, surpassing the United States as the most
In the summit’s stead would be built a 500-acre freeway-laced nation on earth.10 Even Mt. Everest
industrial park.4 is being scaled by the hydra of Chinese asphalt. In
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June 2007, plans were announced for a 67 mile, no private automobiles in the People’s Republic as
$20 million highway winding up from the foot of late as the 1970s.
the mountain to a base camp at 17,000 feet. The The motorization trend has profound implica-
finished road will be part of the 2008 Olympic torch tions for the form and structure of China’s cities.
relay (itself the longest in Olympic history, encom- It is helping drive a complex process of land con-
passing five continents and 85,000 miles), but is version on the urban fringe that yields a uniquely
also designed to make it easier for “tourists and Chinese kind of urban sprawl. Sprawl in China is
mountaineers” to consume the once-remote peak.11 very different from its American cousin, but no less
Other roads have been hammered through some land hungry. Between about 1980 and 2004, nearly
of the most dense and populous urban neighbor- 44,000 square miles of agricultural land were lost
hoods in the world, forcing the relocation of tens to development in China – equivalent to the com-
of thousands of families. Again, the American urban bined area of all of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
experience is quickly exceeded here. In Shanghai, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and half
the construction of a single section of the Inner Ring of Maine.16 Due to such losses, the People’s Republic
Road, through the Luwan and Huangpu districts – a is no longer self sufficient in agricultural production;
mere two-mile run – displaced an estimated 12,000 for the first time in its history, China has become
people – many more than were displaced along the a net importer of food.17 The situation is more than
entire route of the much lamented Cross Bronx a little reminiscent of The Good Earth, in which the
Expressway in New York, the first major American land Wang Lung worked all his life – that nurtured
highway built through dense urban terrain.12 How and enriched his family – is pawned off by his
unsettling to see the most egregious, much-studied profligate sons. The extent of Chinese sprawl is
monuments of Western planning practice suddenly readily evident from space, much the way the Great
rendered insignificant! Robert Moses at his mega- Wall was long rumored to be.
lomaniacal max is tame in comparison to China. In LANDSAT images of China’s coastal cities from
his entire master-builder career, Moses constructed the early 1980s and today reveal an outward expan-
some 415 miles of highway in the New York metro sion of urban matter reminiscent of a colossal stellar
politan region; Shanghai officials built well over explosion. While the Chinese suburban landscape
three times that amount in the 1990s alone.13 is very different from that of the United States,
Given all these new roads, it’s hardly surprising it is no less catalytic in enabling a car-dependent
that China is the most rapidly motorizing society lifestyle of commuting and big-box consumerism.
in the world today. The People’s Republic was long Most housing on the urban fringe consists of mid-
a nation of bicycles, but now the two-wheelers are and high-rise condominium estates – much denser
in decline: the number of bicyclists in China’s cities than anything in suburban America. Yet their outly-
dropped 26 percent between 2001 and 2006, and ing location and the lack of public transportation
they are now even banned outright on many city has encouraged high rates of automobile ownership
streets. The domestic motor vehicle market, on the among residents. Mixed among these housing estates
other hand, is booming, and second in size now are also tracts of single-family homes virtually iden-
only to that of the United States. Industry analysts tical in spirit – and often in architectural appoint-
forecast that China may well be the world’s largest ment – to “McMansion”-style gated communities
producer and consumer of cars by 2020, with total in the United States. Other artifacts of American
car ownership exceeding even that of the United sprawl and “strip” culture have also appeared, albeit
States.14 The number of cars in Shanghai jumped tailored to local (or at least Chinese) needs and tastes.
from a mere 212,000 to 1.2 million between 1990 These include drive-through fast-food restaurants
and 2003; and Beijing swept past the million-car like KFC and McDonald’s; big-box retail giants
mark in the spring of 2002, when more than 1,000 such as Lotus and Wal-Mart, IKEA, Costco, and
new cars were being added to the city’s streets and an Anglo-Chinese Home Depot knockoff called
highways each day.15 Today there are more auto- B&Q; shopping malls with expansive parking lots
mobile brands in China than in the United States, out front; colossal supermarkets; even budget motel
and while the total number of cars is still small in chains and that vintage icon of American suburbia,
comparison, keep in mind that there were virtually the drive-in cinema.
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What makes these and other facets of the new free enterprise at home – unleashing “a tidal wave
Chinese landscape so extraordinary is their sharp of long suppressed entrepreneurial energy and
contrast with what came before. Scarcely a gener ambition,” as Li Conghua has written – but his
ation has passed between the Cultural Revolution “open-door” campaign brought a flood tide of money
and the present, yet what epochal change those from foreign investors hungry for a piece of the
three decades have wrought! The shopping malls Chinese pie.18 Foreign direct investment flowed first
and subdivisions, the cars and color TVs, the theme to China via a series of special economic zones
parks and golf courses – all unthinkable a short established for that purpose, initially from Hong
time ago. The dull blue-gray world of Mao suits Kong and the Chinese diaspora communities across
and rationed goods is long gone; China today is a Southeast Asia. But before long, investors from the
24/7 frenzy of consumerism and construction. The United States, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom,
birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party is now Australia, and Europe were also pouring millions
part of an exclusive shopping district in Shanghai, into joint-venture projects in the People’s Republic.
only steps from a Starbucks and upscale martini China’s economic engine stirred to life in the early
bars. Golf is a required course for business students 1980s, and then launched into the longest period
at Xiamen University; and even the celebrated com- of sustained economic growth in modern times.
mune in Shanxi Province that cadres were implored Between 1980 and 1990 the Chinese economy grew
to study in the 1960s – “ln agriculture, learn from faster than even the vaunted “East Asian Tigers”
Dazhai!” – has struck out on the capitalist road, (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea)
turning its famous name into a lucrative (and copy- during their exuberant early years in the 1970s and f
righted) brand. 1980s. By 1994, the People’s Republic accounted o
u
The saga of transition from Maoist scarcity to for fully 40 percent of the world’s GDP growth; r
full-blown consumerism was driven home for me today its GDP represents 13 percent of global out-
in 1999 by a television advertisement, of all things, put, making it second in productivity only to the
for an upscale housing estate in the Pearl River Delta. United States. China’s economy has been expand-
I was at a restaurant in Zhongshan with Wallace ing an average 9 percent per annum since the start
Chang, as guests of a team of local planning offi- of the reform era, a rate three times the growth of
cials for whom we were doing some consulting the American economy over the much-ballyhooed
work. The television was playing silently in our dot.com boom of the late 1990s.
private dining room, and a program came on that Nor is it showing any signs of slowing: China
I took at first to be a historical drama about the overtook the United Kingdom in 2005 to become
hardships of life during the Cultural Revolution. the third-largest economy in the world, and it may
The film was shot in black and white, and showed well soon eclipse Germany. In 2006, China’s GDP
a young peasant working the fields and struggling increased by nearly 11 percent, the fastest growth
to feed his family. The same man was then depicted rate in more than a decade. And as economist
as a foreman in a village factory, bicycling off now Pam Woodall has pointed out, China’s growth is
in the morning with an attaché case. Finally, the “real” – the result of real productivity growth rather
film turned full color, and the former peasant was than the funny-money gains of overvalued stock
now a well-groomed executive stepping confidently or inflated real estate. (As Woodall puts it, “rising
out of a suburban villa (at the advertised develop- house prices do not represent an increase in wealth
ment, of course), waving goodbye to an adoring for a country as a whole. They merely redistribute
family before heading to the office in his late-model wealth to home-owners from non-home-owners
BMW. Here was, in effect, the creation story of who may hope to buy in the future.”)19 China is
post-Mao China, a rags-to-riches fable celebrating also now history’s greatest exporter and churns
the economic miracle unleashed by Deng Xiaoping out most of the world’s televisions, stereos, DVD
in the early 1980s. players, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, com-
The primary motive force behind China’s urban puter equipment, cameras, photocopiers, laser
revolution is, of course, the explosive growth of the printers, telephones, tools, home furnishings, shoes,
Chinese economy over the last three decades. Not motors, and toys. Of course, just how long China
only did Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms stimulate can sustain this breakneck pace of growth is anyone’s
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 501 10-26-2012 3:23:02 PM

guess, and a subject of intense debate among villages put up the posh malls and glittering sky-
economists. Unchecked environmental degradation, scrapers and six-lane expressways, while their
rising unemployment, a growing dependence on sisters and daughters work the mills and assembly
foreign oil and other resources, and a swollen prop- lines that have made China the workshop of the
erty market are just some of the many issues that world. But even though they turn the gears of
threaten to derail the growth locomotive. None, China’s economic engine, migrant workers are an
however, is more menacing to China’s internal unappreciated lot. They have little or no access
stability and continued growth than the widening to health care, educational opportunities, or good
gap between haves and have-nots, both within cities housing; they are blamed for nearly every social ill
and between regions. and literally live on the margins of society.
Capitalism in the People’s Republic is in a bru- Far at the other end of fate’s spectrum is the
tally efficient early stage, largely unfettered by unions, self-made millionaire, the folk hero of the new
workmen’s compensation laws, well-enforced envir China. This one-time land of Red Guards and little
onmental regulations, and other inconveniences red books is churning out more new millionaires
to capital accumulation. The economic juggernaut than any country in the world. In a nation where
has crushed many a soul. While an estimated 300 a bicycle will set you back all of $15, a millionaire
million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty by has the spending power of a billionaire in the United
economic growth in the last quarter century, such States. The legendary exhortation often attributed
blessings have not been spread evenly throughout to Deng Xiaoping – “to get rich is glorious” – has
the nation. China’s coastal cities and provinces have rehabilitated wealth and affluence in China. Cap
been the chief beneficiaries of the surging economy, italists were once excoriated as “running dogs” of
a coastal swath not unlike the Boston-to-Washington, Western imperialism; now they are heaped with
or “BosWash,” corridor along the Atlantic seaboard. encomiums and can even join the Communist
Official residents of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Party. On May Day 2005, several such self-made
Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, and other cities millionaires were feted as “model workers” by the
enjoy an average income significantly higher than Chinese Communist Party (so was Houston Rockets
the national average. star Yao Ming, who first thought such awards were
In their midst, however, is a vast “floating for “ordinary people who worked tirelessly . . . with-
population” (liudong renkou) of migrant workers out asking for anything in return,” but then allowed
who receive few of the perks and privileges of that perhaps he was “a special kind of migrant
full urban citizenship. The disequilibrium between worker”).21
booming coastal cities and poor inland provinces Like the Hearsts, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers
has prompted as many as 225 million peasants – before them, China’s merchant elite has a penchant
roughly the population of the United States – to for arriviste extravagance. Beijing property mogul
flock to China’s cities in recent years in search of Zhang Yuchen, who made a fortune in the 1990s
jobs and a better life. In 1998 alone, 27 million rural building single-family suburban homes, celebrated
migrants made their way to China’s major metro- his arrival by replicating the Château de Maisons-
politan centers. That equals the sum total of all Laffitte on a windswept site north of the Chinese
European emigration to the United States between capital. The nouveau chateau was crafted using
1820 and 1920. Even the “Great Migration” of African François Mansart’s original drawings from 1650 and
Americans from the rural South to northern cities constructed with the same Chantilly stone, this time
after the Second World War – a demographic shift shipped halfway across the globe. Unfortunately,
that helped shape contemporary American culture some 800 peasants raising wheat on the land had
– pales in comparison to internal Chinese migration to be forcibly evicted to make way for the trophy
in recent years. Migrant workers in Beijing alone house – a particular irony given Zhang’s member-
outnumber all the African Americans who migrated ship in the Communist Party.22
to the urban north between 1940 and 1970.20 Other magnates have built simulacra of Beverly
How ironic that China’s urban revolution is so Hills mansions or even the architectural land
deeply indebted to the countryside. Chinese cities marks of American democracy. On the outskirts of
are built by farmers. Men from impoverished rural Hangzhou, Chinese tourism tycoon Huang Qiaoling
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 502 10-26-2012 3:23:02 PM

built a $10 million full-scale replica of the White fall all over themselves for a piece of the action,
House, complete with a portrait gallery of American and for good reason: the great Chinese building
presidents, an Oval Office, and a Blue Room. Out boom has made the skills and expertise of design
side is a miniature Washington Monument, along professionals in demand as never before. There are
with a one-third scale version of Mount Rushmore architects and planners from Virginia to California
(quarters for his employees are neatly tucked whose previous contact with the Chinese world
behind). What inspired Huang’s building spree was was limited to the local take-out, who now have
a glossy New Year calendar of American land half a dozen projects on the boards in Shenzhen,
marks that his peasant parents received when he Beijing, and Shanghai. This is not the first time
was a child.23 In 2002 Huang was surprised with foreign professionals have helped shape China’s
a visit from none other than George W. Bush, who future, of course; Americans and Europeans left
was himself delighted to see a knockoff of the a rich legacy of architecture and urban design in
White House in China. Another tycoon, Li Qinfu, China in the first half of the twentieth century. But
took the Washington trope a step further by erecting that early work was often related to missionary
a mini U.S. Capitol in the Shanghai suburbs, the or philanthropic endeavors, or commissioned by
headquarters of his textile and manufacturing con- foreign companies busily exploiting China. Today,
glomerate. The building is topped with a three-ton foreign architects build in China at China’s pleasure,
statue of Li himself, a former Red Guard, and now and save for a handful of global superstars –
one of China’s richest men.24 Koolhaas, Foster, Herzog & de Meuron, and the
China’s roaring economy has also enriched pro- like – they may well soon find themselves displaced f
fessionals in the building, design, and development by twenty-something Chinese kids. o
u
fields – from quantity surveyors and construction There is a bewitching consonance between the r
managers to real estate brokers, architects, engineers, American urban experience and the transfiguration
and urban planners. Architects have been especially of China’s cities today. China’s drive, energy, and
nimble in riding the zeitgeist of the building boom, ambition – its hunger to be powerful and prosper-
and many have become fabulously rich in the ous, to be a player on the global stage – is more
process. Young architects still in their twenties than a little reminiscent of America in its youth.
often have several built projects in their portfolios, Henry James’s descriptions of lower Manhattan in
and not just a summer house for mom and dad. 1904 – of the “multitudinous sky-scrapers standing
Architecture students in Shenzhen in the 1980s up to the view, from the water, like extravagant
helped build that overnight city, working on real pins in a cushion already overplanted” – could
commissions alongside their studio assignments. well describe Shanghai’s Pudong District today.26
By the 1990s Chinese architects had five times the We gazed in wonder at promise filled miniature
volume of work of their American colleagues, who metropoles like Norman Bel Geddes’s Futurama
outnumbered them nonetheless by a factor of ten.25 exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, just as
This relative scarcity has made Chinese architects Chinese today pore over spectacular models of the
the most influential in the world, if influence be Shanghai- or Beijing-to-be. We were China once,
measured by bricks and mortar. The great demand and Europe was us. In spirit at least, China is like
for skilled designers led to a surge in the number the United States of a century ago – punch-drunk
of architecture students in the last decade. Today, with possibility, pumped and reckless and on the
architecture ranks with computer science and eco- move. Americans invented the modern metropolis,
nomics as one of the most competitive fields of study and the world looked to us with wonder. It was
in China; admission to a top-flight architecture on the blustery shores of Lake Michigan that the
program, say at Tsinghua or Nanjing universities, modern office tower was born, in the wake of
is statistically equivalent to getting into Harvard the Great Chicago Fire, and in New York that the
or Yale, and architects in China enjoy considerably skyscraper city achieved its finest early form. We
higher occupational prestige than do their counter- wrote poems once to our bridges and roads. We
parts in the United States. dreamed, like Moses King or Hugh Ferriss, of cities
To architects overseas, China is nothing short studded with impossible towers and airborne streets.
of the Holy Grail. Foreign design and planning firms Given wheels by Henry Ford, we scattered across
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 503 10-26-2012 3:23:02 PM

the landscape and created a new kind of semicity urban fabric been razed and reconstructed with
in places like Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and such haste. In a single extraordinary generation,
Phoenix. China has undergone a process of urban growth
Of course, much of this ended badly. We got and transformation that took a century to unfold
urban renewal and lost our past; we got the Cross in the United States – itself a nation whose speed
Bronx Expressway and lost our homes. But the once awed the world. Chicago, after all, was the
West End and the South Bronx did not die in vain. Shenzhen of the nineteenth century. Chicago’s
We are older and wiser now, more responsible, spectacular growth, especially after the Great Fire
aware of the problems of building for automobiles of 1871, made it the fastest-growing city in America,
rather than human beings – or of simply building just as Shenzhen became the hasty pacesetter of
too big. A new emphasis on sustainability impels post-Mao China. All through the 1980s and 1990s,
us to rethink the way we make architecture and Chinese cities strained to meet or beat “Shenzhen
assemble cities. In short, our values have changed. tempo” – a pace set by workers on the International
But with wisdom has also come timidity. We are Foreign Trade Center and defined as a finished build
a suburban nation in tweedy middle age, cautious ing floor every three days. Appropriately enough,
and conservative, no longer smitten with audacity. that mark was shattered a decade later by workers
Our architecture and urbanism is retrospective, on another Shenzhen tower, who knocked a full
measured, and sane. We build new towns that look half-day off the previous record.
old, shop at Restoration Hardware and bury – like Today, most of China moves at warp speed.
the Central Artery – the very icons of modernity In the hours it took to read this book, probably
we once celebrated. In America today, the notion another thousand apartments units were readied
of penning verse to a piece of infrastructure is a for occupancy across the People’s Republic; a dozen
little laughable. Just as it once crossed the Atlantic, new shopping centers were likely opened; a score
the urbanism of ambition has crossed the Pacific; more office towers and housing estates topped off.
Hart Crane has gone to China. Sinopec, the Chinese oil conglomerate, will likely
open another 500 gas stations this year on China’s
roads and highways, as it has done for several years
CHiNa ReiNVeNtS tHe CitY now. In 2007 alone, McDonald’s opened 100 new
restaurants in Chinese cities, many equipped for
To summarize a revolution-in-progress is a fool’s drive-through service.27
errand. Rather than attempt such a task, I have In China, whole new towns are conceived,
instead sketched out here six defining aspects or planned, and constructed in the time it takes to get
characteristics of contemporary Chinese urbanism a small subdivision through the permitting process
and the evolving Chinese cityscape. These include in the United States. China built its first Maglev
speed, scale, spectacle, sprawl, segregation, and rail system in Shanghai in just two years. It took
– on a final, hopeful note – sustainability. While, a decade to build a similar line in Germany, and in
individually, many of these attributes are not wholly the United States we still only dream of such space-
new in the annals of urban development, taken age stuff. In England, once ruler of the seven seas,
together they yield a pattern and process of city it took thirteen years for Heathrow Airport’s new
making that is largely without precedent. They are Terminal Five to see the light of day. The new
the hallmarks of an urban transformation unlike terminal at Beijing Capital International Airport,
anything the world has seen before; a wholesale the largest in the world, was built in thirty-six
reinvention of the city as we know it. months.
Of course, speed is stunning, but it can also be
stupid. Haste makes waste and tends to come at
Speed the cost of quality, longevity, and even safety. The
frenetic pace with which Chinese cities are being
China is the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the built and rebuilt has struck many observers, foreign
world, and perhaps in history. Never have so many and Chinese, as reckless and chaotic. At least one
urban settlements grown so fast, nor has more critic, a geographer at the Chinese Academy of
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“China Reinvents the City” 505
Science, compared the present cyclone of creative While there have been significant improvements
destruction to the excesses of the Great Leap in recent years, construction quality is still often
Forward, a period of political turmoil and misguided abysmal, even on tony commercial projects. Binge
policy that led to, among other things, the worst building yields a high quotient of urban junk. A
famine in human history.28 It is for good reason, Beijing realtor to whom I was praising the spare,
usually, that it takes a month of Sundays to build elegant architecture of a trendy housing estate in
anything in the United States. We have a vast sys- the central business district shook her head and
tem of checks and balances meant to slow things advised me not to look too closely at how it was
down, to rule out binge building and architectural all put together. Up-market housing on the outskirts
excess. Colossal urban renewal and expressway of Nanjing, built in late 2000, looks today as if it
projects in the 1960s pushed one too many citizens had been built in the 1960s: crumbling staircases,
around and led to a backlash against “master plans” facades streaked and stained. Even Paul Andreu’s
and the “physical planners” who concocted them. signature Pudong International Airport, opened in
The planning profession in turn rejected urban 1999, was visibly aging when I was there in 2006.
design and snuggled closer to the social sciences. Shoddy construction, a lack of code enforcement,
New theories of advocacy planning, community and poor building maintenance is not only wasteful,
development, and public participation helped make but has killed many people – such as the dozen
developers and municipalities accountable for their shoppers who lost their lives when a Dongguan
actions. shopping mall collapsed in December 2000.
This is just now beginning to make its way to f
China, where urban planning is mostly still about o
u
spiffy drawings and spectacular visions. There are Scale r
few, if any, mechanisms to assure public participa-
tion in the development process. The Maoist dictum Bigness is another defining aspect of China’s con-
that the individual should be subordinate to the temporary urban landscape – and of Chinese
collective will has been handily exploited to excuse ambition generally. Like speed, scale too was once
all sorts of abuses in the name of national progress. an American specialty. A century ago, visitors from
In mid-1990s Shanghai, residents who protested their England and the Continent were enraptured – or
eviction for the Inner Ring Road were excoriated dismayed – by the sky-piercing loft of American
for selfishly impeding China’s development and commercial architecture, or by the vast power
modernization. But with the exception of occasional embodied in American industrial landscapes.
(and increasingly common) “stubborn nails” like Europeans were awed by the steel works of Pitts-
Wu Ping, the refusenik of Chongqing, the develop- burgh, Gary, or, earlier, the sprawling textile mills
ment juggernaut faces little opposition. In the United of Lowell or Lawrence. The Chicago stockyards,
States, democratic institutions at the state and local a stygian merger of pastoralism and industry, held
levels act like a giant sea-anchor on development. the greatest concentration of livestock on earth
The resulting torpor can be frustrating, and the and was also as much a stop on the tourist circuit
community input process is all too often hijacked as Niagara Falls. From the Columbian Exposition
by ignorance, fear, and not-in-my-backyard self- to the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building to
interest. But, just as often, going slow yields a better the Interstate Highway System, the United States
project. Unchecked, speed is costly and can even has long been the sultan of size. Its overreaching
kill. Countless Chinese buildings, thrown up in haste, ambition was never more aptly summarized than
have already outlived their usefulness. The life span by Daniel Burnham’s famous dictum: “Make no
of architecture in China is measured in dog’s years. little plans.”
In 2006 I counted half a dozen office towers in The pinnacle of American achievement in this
center-city Nanjing that were scheduled for demo- regard – the Apollo Program and the first few moon
lition or in the process of being razed; all had been landings – came, poetically enough, just before
built in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In most the fall. By the early 1970s, the cultural tide had
places, a building of such recent vintage would still turned against bigness and ambition – a turn greatly
be considered new. expedited by the American misadventure in Vietnam.
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Suddenly, small was beautiful, and so were small center-city neighborhoods in China has displaced
plans; Burnham, purged by followers of Jane Jacobs, more urban residents than anything else in the
went down with Robert Moses and Edward J. Logue peacetime history of the world. The number of
and the rest of the Great White planners. We still people who have migrated to China’s cities in the
do things in a big way in the United States; we last twenty-five years is greater than the entire
invented the internet, after all, and have hardly population of the United States, and China’s middle
checked our global scale of military adventuring. class alone could well be as big as the entire cur-
But when it comes to large-scale urban projects, rent population of Europe by 2020.
China has largely displaced the United States and As Burnham understood, bigness has a life force
the West in general. and spirit all its own. Jovian architectural and
There is hardly any category of building type, urban interventions are deterministic by virtue
infrastructure, or amenity that China has not built of scale alone; they create their own weather, if
in its largest incarnation. China is home to three you will. The enormous political and financial
of the five largest shopping malls on earth, two of muscle necessary to get a big project rolling also
the three longest bridges, five of the world’s ten gives it almost unstoppable forward momentum,
tallest buildings, and the world’s new largest urban while the simple act of clearing so vast a site
plaza (even Tiananmen Square has been displaced). fundamentally changes the context of a big project;
It has built the largest dam and the biggest gated “big schemes overrun the territory they require,”
community and is well on its way to having the writes Dana Cuff, “leaving no trace of the former
world’s most extensive national highway network, land use.”30
greater in extent than even the American interstate Such tabula rasa city making has particular
system. China has the world’s highest rail line and appeal to an authoritarian regime, and to developers
the world’s longest, largest bus (half as wide as a keen on turning a quick profit. Bigness is also
football field, with room for 300 passengers). It has seductive from a theoretical perspective. In an in-
the biggest airport terminal and the largest bowling fluential 1994 interview in Artforum, Rem Koolhaas
alley, the biggest tennis complex and the most claimed that urban-architectural bigness was an
expansive golf course, the largest skateboard park, antidote to the chaos and disorder of the fin de siècle
and even the world’s largest lamp. China has built metropolis, and that only very large architectural
the biggest Buddha on earth and, in Henan Province, works could sustain in a single urban container the
even the world’s largest dragon: a thirteen-mile “promiscuous proliferation of events” that make
tourist colossus meant also to protect the city of a city what it is. “In a landscape of disarray, dis
Zhengzhou from windblown sand. For a time, China assembly, dissociation, disclamation,” he argued,
even boasted the world’s largest McDonald’s rest “the attraction of Bigness is its potential to recon-
aurant. But, appropriately enough, the behemoth struct the Whole, resurrect the Real, reinvent the
– which opened in 1990 just off Chang’an Avenue collective, reclaim maximum possibility.” The big
in Beijing – was itself rubbed out to make way for project might be destructive at the outset – the
something bigger still: Oriental Plaza Shopping thousands of families dislodged for colossal projects
Center, also one of Asia’s largest. in Beijing or Shanghai would wholeheartedly
China has also built more housing in the last agree – but it also seems to promise greater things
twenty-five years than any nation in history, indeed, still; “it can reassemble,” noted Koolhaas, “what
more than most nations’ total housing stock – more it breaks.”31 Though it’s unlikely that very many
than 70 billion square feet nationwide between 1981 developers or government officials in the People’s
and 2001 (equivalent to some 30 million average- Republic have read Koolhaas, they might well
sized American houses).29 Shanghai alone created be comforted to know their big plans could be so
208 million square feet of new housing between eloquently justified. And so, too, those from the
1990 and 2004. The human dimension of China’s West who come East to satisfy their inner Daniel
urban transformation is also immense in scale. Since Burnhams. For China is the last refuge of architectural
1992, some forty-six Chinese cities have joined audacity, the last place on earth (tiny Dubai aside)
the million-plus population club; there are but nine where ego, scale, and ambition can still be indulged
American members. Wholesale redevelopment of in brick and mortar. In China the sky can still be
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pricked and poked far from the zoning officials and in 2003 and designed by French architect Emmanuel
community activists and the picky planning boards Delarue.
that govern what gets built in America. In Xi’an, city officials built a spectacular new
plaza to showcase the Tang Dynasty Big Goose
Pagoda. But what really makes the scene is a vast
Spectacle fountain complex whose hundreds of shooting
water jets, synchronized to music and illuminated
The issue of scale is closely linked to that of spect at night by lasers and floodlights, is a sight not soon
acle. The contemporary Chinese city is spectacular forgotten (nor is the incongruity, sharply noted by
in the literal sense of the word; it is meant to local residents, of such aqueous indulgence in an
dazzle and awe, and to do so both internally and to arid region and in a city challenged with perennial
a larger world audience. Spectacle in city making water shortages).
is nothing new, and the use of architecture and One of the most dazzling examples of grand
urban design to create a sense of wonder or fear public works in China is Dongguan’s new admin-
can be traced back to the earliest urban settlements. istrative center, built about a 230-acre, mile-long
Doing so was often related to faith or politics or, in terraced plaza anchored at one end by a monu-
the case of colonial regimes, to make an indelible mental City Hall and at the other by a trapezoidal
statement of power and control to a subject people. Youth and Children’s Center – a relationship that
In modern capitalist societies, architectural spec- says perhaps more about China’s keen commitment
tacle is typically a function of the marketplace. The to education than it does about its obsession with f
flashy corporate office tower is, of course, the most political order. Also on the axis, on the north side o
u
obvious example; the staggered skylines of Chicago of the Children’s Center, is a lake – nothing extra r
or New York or Los Angeles are, in this sense, ordinary, perhaps, until it is revealed to also be the
bar graphs of competing corporate ego. In China, roof of a vast parking garage. Deployed on either
urbanistic spectacle results from a more complex side of the axis is a remarkable ensemble of sign
set of ego inputs, one that certainly involves private ature buildings – the kind of architectural trophy
real estate developers, but is also driven by party collection that every city mayor dreams about.
cadres and local officials eager to make their mark Among the larger buildings is the Yulan Theater,
on the skyline. Cities flush with money from land Dongguan Science and Technology Museum, a con
leasing, taxes, and development fees have embarked ference center grand enough to serve as a national
on a range of civic improvement projects, many capitol, and the well-appointed Dongguan Public
of extraordinary scale, luxury, and extent. Many Library – the latter as much a bibliotechnic state-
visitors to Chinese cities have been deeply impressed ment of arrival as was McKim, Mead & White’s
by all this – by airports and opera houses; museums Boston Public Library more than a century ago.
and convention centers and exposition halls; public Dongguan is certainly not alone in building a glo-
recreation facilities, extensive new parks, waterfront rious administrative headquarters for itself; equally
promenades, and vast urban plazas studded with spectacular districts have been built or are being
fountains and public art. developed by municipalities throughout the Pearl
At Xinghai, a booming part of Dalian just south- River Delta and coastal China.
west of the city center, municipal officials have There are also public works of relatively more
created the largest public plaza in the world; a modest scale in China’s cities that are dazzling
spectacular oval-shaped space slashed by axes nonetheless as public improvements. Hangzhou
with a star at the center and embroidered all about officials, for example, transformed that city’s once
with arabesque parterres that can only be fully derelict, swampy lakefront into a splendid example
appreciated from the air. The open space is at least of urban design, with miles of boardwalk pro
two times larger than Tiananmen Square, and three menades, teahouses, and gardens strung along the
Pentagons could easily fit within it with room to shore. Nanjing recently completed an extensive
spare. Xinghai Square is enframed by luxury housing complex of new parks and pedestrian trails on
towers and anchored on one side by the sprawling Purple Mountain in the vicinity of Pipa Lake and
Dalian World Expo and Convention Center, begun the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum.
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All these public works spectacles appear to be the shaped American space for decades to come. That
fruits of municipal largesse (not to say affluence) Shanghai should host this event is also poetically
unlike anything seen in the United States since the appropriate; Shanghai today is just as adrenaline-
New Deal. But caution is needed in assessing these pumped as Chicago was a century ago – a harbinger
projects, or at least the intentions of the respon- of things to come that visitors will gaze upon with
sible officials. Despite real and measurable benefits an unsettling mix of fear and wonder.
to the people, grand public works in China are often
conceived with more self-serving interests in mind.
They are typically undertaken by city and provincial Sprawl
officials to impress Party superiors and, especially,
the leadership in Beijing. In China, officials have Cities in China are spreading out rapidly upon
no democratic constituencies to please; they are the landscape, undergoing a process of rapid
rewarded and promoted based largely on what they centrifugal expansion. As explored in Chapter 7,
do, and nothing brings rewards faster than having “Suburbanization and the Mechanics of Sprawl,”
a spectacular new opera house or convention center China-style sprawl differs in key ways from its
to show a visiting VIP from the central government. American cousin. For one, Chinese suburbs are far
For this reason, costly public works of the kind more dense than anything in the suburban United
described above are commonly referred to in China States; even single-family “villa” developments
as “face” or “image” projects (xing xiang gong chen). are, on average, much more thickly laid upon the
This yearning for “face” plays out on a larger, land than most American McMansion subdivisions.
global stage as well. China is a nation on the rise, Chinese suburbs also lack the political and admin-
keen on making its mark on the world and erasing istrative autonomy that characterizes American
the legacy of its past humiliation at the hands of suburban communities; they are, by and large,
the West and Japan. Like the self-made parvenu, no more than outlying districts of a city whose
China is striving to outbuild and outshine those who administrative boundaries typically reach far into
long kept her on her knees. This is, of course, the the hinterland (Chongqing, for example, encom-
prime motive force behind China’s fervent prepara- passes 31,815 square miles – the largest city in the
tions for the 2008 Olympic Games. It is also clearly world in terms of land area).
at work in the preparations for World Expo 2010 While many affluent people are moving to the
in Shanghai. The money and effort being poured suburbs in China, they are accompanied on the urban
into this event are more than a little reminiscent fringe by those of lesser means – including workers
of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The whose places of employment have relocated to the
Columbian Expo, which nominally marked the 400th edge of town and low-income urban residents dis-
anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the New placed by wholesale redevelopment of the center
World, was really a coming-out party for the United city. Between 1990 and 2000 in Beijing, the city
States, thrown to celebrate the triumph of American center lost 222,000 people while suburban districts
industrialization, the closing of the frontier West, gained some three million people, including many
and the phoenix-like rebirth of Chicago after the residents of hutong neighborhoods forced out by
Great Fire. In effect, it marked the start of the urban renewa1.32 Chinese suburbanization is also
“American Century.” largely devoid of the underlying cultural ambiva-
Shanghai’s World Expo 2010 is just as ambitious, lence toward cities that helped drive urban flight
and it is expected to draw the largest number in America, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In
of visitors of any world’s fair in history. Just as China, cities are hot. But they are also increasingly
Pullman’s coaches served the Chicago fair on their expensive places to live, and this factor alone has
very own rail spur, Shanghai is building its second driven millions of former city dwellers to seek less
high-speed Maglev rail line to shuttle regional visitors costly accommodations on the urban periphery.
to the Expo site. Even the theme of the Shanghai The homes they choose are also very different from
fair, “Better City – Better Life,” is reminiscent of those in the suburban United States. The single-
the Chicago event, whose “White City” set new family residence on a spacious lot is still only for
standards for architecture and urban design that the superrich in China. Much more common is the
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gated mid- to high-rise housing estate – the standard haves and have-nots, are increasing rapidly and
unit of Chinese suburban sprawl. seem to promise that kind of bifurcated society
But there are also key commonalities between that has long typified Latin America or India. China
Chinese and American sprawl. As in the United today is a brutally competitive, almost Darwinistic
States, sprawl in China has consumed an immense place; the weak, feeble, unintelligent, or unskilled
amount of productive agricultural land. Chinese are quickly crushed and cast aside. Migrant workers
sprawl is also a function of rising car ownership, for especially are ruthlessly exploited by the machinery
the People’s Republic is going mobile with abandon. of wealth production – the very men and women
China is the fastest-growing automobile market whose labors make the factories hum and the sky-
in the world, and by 2020 may well be both the scrapers rise. China’s migrant workers, idled by
largest producer and consumer of cars in the world, an agricultural economy made more efficient by
with total ownership exceeding even that of the market reforms, come to the cities in search of a
United States. This means a surfeit of highway better life and to escape the crushing poverty of
asphalt, and it is also yielding a whole new exurban the rural countryside. This “floating population”
landscape oriented to motorists, one in which has streamed into China’s urban regions by the tens
many of the forms and spaces of American-style of millions in recent years, and may number as
suburban sprawl – from big-box retail stores and much as 140 million people nationwide. Migrant
drive-through restaurants to motels and mega workers typically have no health care or insurance,
malls – have been reproduced, now with Chinese let alone any sort of social-service net to fall back
characteristics. upon or unions to take up their case. f
Expanding class and economic disparities are o
u
increasingly mirrored in the built environment. The r
Segregation city of the rising elite is one of bright lights and big
ambition, of gated, guarded housing estates and glitzy
Chinese urban space is fast segregating along new shopping malls. But in the midst of such privilege
lines of income, class, and social status. Maoism, is often another urban world, one inhabited by the
for all its numerous shortcomings, did succeed in poor and disenfranchised; the densely packed
creating a society in which all people were equal, “urban villages” trapped in the middle of Shenzhen,
at least in theory. Today the tycoon has replaced Guangzhou, and other cities are only the most
the worker or soldier – or Chairman Mao – as the visible example.
new cult hero in China. Chinese bookstores over-
flow with “How I Earned My Fortune” titles by
self-made millionaires like Pan Shiyi of SOHO Sustainability
China or Wang Shi, the former People’s Liberation
Army soldier who founded Vanke. China may still In December 2006 it was widely reported in the
be nominally a socialist nation, a republic of the global media that the Chinese river dolphin, the
people still led by a communist regime, but in real- baiji, was extinct. The species, once abundant in
ity China has become one of the most stridently the lower Yangtze River, had come under severe
ambitious capitalistic societies on earth, a nation stress in recent years as a result of increasingly
on the make, hungry to get rich. I often joke with heavy ship traffic, dam construction, runoff, and
my students that progressive cities like Chapel Hill pollution. Only a handful of the animals had been
or Cambridge are far more socialistic today than sighted in the previous decade, none since 2004.
the People’s Republic of China. The dolphin, once known as “the goddess of the
In the last thirty years economic reform and Yangtze,” was the first large aquatic mammal to go
rising affluence in China have lifted hundreds of extinct since the 1950s. The passing of this odd-
millions of people out of poverty, more perhaps looking creature, news of which barely caused a
than in any nation in history. Yet at the same time ripple in the People’s Republic, is symbolic none
the ideals of social justice and equality that China theless of China’s looming environmental crisis –
has long purported to uphold have all but vaporized. a problem of truly global proportions. China’s
Disparities between rich and poor, between the environmental problems are legion. Nearly all of
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the most terribly polluted cities in the world are in blinding speed. As recently as 2001, for example,
China, and vital air and water resources are fast China’s total greenhouse gas emissions were only
becoming toxic. Nanjing, renowned for its street trees, 42 percent of what the United States was produc-
parks, and universities, is practically smothered ing at the time; just five years later that number
most evenings by an acrid-smelling smog blown in was up to 97 percent.35 China’s usual response to
by nocturnal winds from chemical plants on the such criticism is to claim exemption as a develop-
outskirts of town. In Xi’an, a combination of Gobi ing country, and to point out the hypocrisy of
Desert dust and smoke from farmers burning wheat Western – and especially American – pots calling
fields in the surrounding countryside makes for the Chinese kettle black. China’s per capita energy
near zero visibility at certain times of the year. consumption, after all, is a mere fraction of
Beijing on the best of days struggles with some of America’s. Why should China hobble its growth,
the highest levels of motor-vehicle-borne carbon people ask, when the West got rich plundering the
emissions in Asia. planet?
China is also consuming natural resources at The answer, of course, is that China has no
a ferocious clip and scouring the planet in search choice. Even if Beijing cares not a whit about the
of raw materials. It is now the second largest con- well-being of other peoples and nations, it cares
sumer of oil in the world and burns through more greatly about keeping its own economy on an
fossil fuel than Russia and India combined. As upward trend, and it has increasingly come to see
Thomas L. Friedman has pointed out, this hunger that doing so will require taking positive steps to
for oil has led China into making deals with some of protect the environment and reduce its galloping
the least savory regimes on earth, in Sudan, Zimbabwe, pace of resource consumption. For China, “going
Angola, and elsewhere.33 Although Chinese money green” is not the lifestyle option it is often con-
pouring into sub-Saharan Africa has awakened the strued to be in the United States. Spoiled by its
region’s long-dormant economies and stimulated enormous wealth, land, and resources, America has
growth unseen in decades, China’s Africa play is long been a wasteful and inefficient nation; only
wholly absent of humanitarian impulse and is driven recently has it begun to take seriously the nexus
exclusively by rising demand for oil, coal, copper, between environmental health and future economic
iron, timber, and other natural resources. viability. For China, reducing resource consumption
From South America to Central Asia, China is an even more urgent matter. China is trying to
is literally consuming the world. All this comes at run a marathon at a sprinter’s pace. The nation’s
the very moment when the United States, Japan, current course of fast growth and expanding
and Western Europe – long the chief polluters of resource use is utterly unsustainable. Moreover,
Spaceship Earth – have finally begun to end their its increasing dependence on foreign commodities
decades of bad environmental behavior. Yet scien- exposes China to the uncertainties of global geo-
tists have argued that even if all greenhouse gas politics and the whims of other countries. With the
emissions were to stop tomorrow, it would take possible exception of social instability from the
centuries to reverse the damage already done. This growing gap between rich and poor, nothing more
daunting prospect is made more so by the like fully threatens the future of the People’s Republic
lihood, according to statistics from the Chinese than the prospect of catastrophic environmental
government itself, that by 2008 China will eclipse collapse or the economic meltdown that would
the United States as the world’s leading producer result from a sudden lack of oil. As George Perkins
of greenhouse gases – an Olympian achievement Marsh demonstrated in his book Man and Nature
indeed. “Today’s global warming problem has (1864), mighty civilizations have ground to a halt
been caused mainly by us in the West,” observes for less.
David Fridley of the Lawrence Berkeley National There are indeed encouraging signs that China
Laboratory’s China Energy Group, “but China has begun to take environmental matters seriously.
is contributing to the global warming problem of And it need only look back to its own past for
tomorrow.”34 inspiration. China is a civilization with a long and
When it comes to the environment, China and rich history of harmonious and often sublime
the West are moving in opposite directions, and at coexistence with the natural environment, perhaps
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best exemplified by the ancient gardens of Hangzhou goals for environmental protection, its “ecological
or Suzhou. Vernacular architecture in nearly every modernization” lagging far behind economic and
region of China embodies centuries of environmental other achievements.37 One of the most promising
wisdom and includes some of the best examples pieces of legislation is the Renewable Energy
of sustainable design and “green building” any- Promotion Law, passed in 2005 and implemented
where in the world.36 One is the yao dong courtyard a year later. As conveyed by Article I, the law
house of the loess plateau regions of Shaanxi, Henan, was intended “to promote the development and
Shanxi, and Gansu provinces, among the oldest utilization of renewable energy . . . diversify energy
form of human habitation on earth. The cave-like supplies, safeguard energy security, protect the
hillside dwellings, landscape architecture in the environment, and realize the sustainable develop-
truest sense, are set about excavated courtyards and ment of the economy and society.” Especially
provide a surprisingly comfortable living environ emphasized were renewable energy sources –
ment in all seasons; the houses are cool in summer wind, solar, tidal and hydroelectric, geothermal and
and warm in winter. China’s grassroots-level sus- biomass. The central government has further set
tainability can also be seen on nearly every city itself a target of 12 percent of total power capacity
street, in the old woman collecting empty water from renewable energy sources by 2020.38
bottles or the rural migrants pedaling unbelievably Indeed, despite the fact that a new coal-fired
overloaded tricycles full of recycled cardboard power plant opens every ten days in China, the
or Styrofoam. Every building demolition site in nation may yet show the world how to go green.
China is also a massive recycling operation. For all the automobiles crowding onto its city f
Anything that can be reused is set in neat piles to streets, China is also building more miles of subway o
u
be carted off for new life – bricks, wiring, pipes, and light-rail public transportation than any nation r
doors, window frames, scraps of structural timber, on earth. China already has the world’s largest
even mangled jumbles of reinforcement bar. Most biofuels plant and the world’s largest solar plant, a
such materials would end up in a landfill in the 100-megawatt facility in Dunhuang, Gansu Province,
United States. that dwarfs its closest rivals – a 12-megawatt plant
Of course, these and other examples of street- in Germany and an 11-megawatt facility under
level sustainability in China are more a function construction in Portugal. In February 2007 China
of poverty than a strong ethic of environmental announced plans to earmark some 200 million
stewardship. As such, unfortunately, they are both acres of woodland for biomass production and to
stigmatized and bound to decline as China becomes plant trees on more than 600,000 acres of land in
increasingly affluent. Bicycle use has been falling Yunnan and Sichuan provinces for similar purposes.
in most cities for these very reasons; bikes are China’s installed wind-power capacity has been
seen as a poor-person’s transport option and are growing exponentially, and the Global Wind Energy
quickly thrown aside as families make their way up Council has predicted that by 2020 China could be
the socioeconomic ladder. In Henan and Shaanxi drawing 150 million kilowatts of energy from the
provinces, rural families who have lived in yao dong wind, surpassing Germany, Spain, and the United
dwellings for generations yearn to move to fancy States to become the world’s leading producer of
new high-rise flats with air conditioning and a wind power.39
modern kitchen. Architects in the region, such as China already boasts some 60 percent of the
Xia Yun and Liu Jia Ping of Xi’an University of world’s installed solar water heater capacity, and
Architecture and Technology, have been working an estimated 30 million households nationwide use
to prevent this by developing a workable prototype solar power in one form or another. Ready-to-install
of an updated, modern yao dong house. A-frame solar units come complete with a water
In similar spirit, China’s central government it- tank and are sold at any major home-improvement
self has launched a string of promising reforms in store, displayed out front the way garden sheds are
recent years aimed at reducing China’s collective at American stores. Needless to say, no such ready-
environmental impact. In a rare example of self- built solar equipment is available in the United
criticism in January 2007, the central government States, where low-voltage garden lights are about
even admitted that China failed to meet its own the only solar-powered thing readily available at
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home-improvement stores. In September 2005, low-polluting, high-tech industry. In its first phase,
Shanghai officials approved a measure to install Dongtang will accommodate 25,000 people, but it
more than one million square feet of solar panels is expected to eventually be home to as many as
on rooftops across the city, in addition to several 500,000 by 2040.42 The project is, of course, not
solar power plants.40 In the early morning, from my without its critics and potential problems. It could
twelfth-floor office window in Nanjing, I could see well end up just a green theme park for eco-curious
the sunlight glinting off hundreds of solar water- tourists from Shanghai. But the very fact that
heating units on the rooftops of the city below – a China has chosen to invest in such an ambitious
comforting sight indeed. experiment is much to its credit, and even if it fails
The same economies of scale that have rockbot- to achieve every goal, Dongtang could well serve
tomed the cost of everything from air conditioners as a laboratory for green urbanism elsewhere.
to Christmas ornaments may well also produce Though environmental stewardship has a long
photovoltaic arrays affordable enough to make solar and rich history in China, it is, as yet, surely not
electricity a viable option for homeowners around characteristic of contemporary Chinese urbanism.
the world. As architect William McDonough has At present, sustainability in Chinese cities is no
put it, “When China comes on line with solar more than a faint spark against a vast, dark field.
collectors that are cheaper than coal, it will be one But again, the sheer scale of Chinese ambition
of the greatest gifts to the United States” – and to potentially makes even this, a beacon for the world;
the world. Making solar power more cost-effective “a glimmer in China,” as McDonough put it to me
than burning coal is, McDonough argues, “the recently, “is a bright light in the world indeed.”43
assignment of our species at this moment in history. So I end this exploration of the new Chinese land-
And China is the only place where this can hap- scape on a somewhat hopeful note: that, whatever
pen.”41 It is a promising sign indeed that one of its motivations, China will reinvent the city as a
China’s richest men, Shi Zhengrong of Suntech more sustainable entity, and thus perhaps show the
Power, a graduate of the School of Photovoltaic rest of this fast-urbanizing planet a new and greener
and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University approach to urban settlement and urban life. The
of New South Wales, made a fortune manufactur- continued growth of the Chinese economy – indeed
ing photovoltaic cells for solar panels. the very viability of the People’s Republic – surely
China may well also show the world how to depends upon it. And so do we all.
build a truly sustainable city. One of the most
ambitious – and promising – urban development
projects in the world today is planned for Chongming NOTES
Island, a fifty-mile-long spit of land in the middle
of the Yangtze River near Shanghai. Chongming is 1 See Howard W. French, “Homeowner Stares
a largely rural landscape, but in coming decades Down Wreckers, at Least for a While,” New York
it is to be transformed into a self-sufficient green Times, March 27, 2007; Joseph Kahn, “China
city known as Dongtang. Powered by energy from Backs Property Law, Buoying Middle Class,”
wind turbines and biofuels derived from farm waste, New York Times, March 16, 2007. Eventually
Dongtang is meant to source 30 percent of its the building was pulled down, but not before
energy from renewables by 2020 and eventually its owner won generous compensation from the
achieve an overall carbon emission level of zero. developers.
No fossil-fueled cars or trucks will be permitted on 2 Photographer Edward Burtynsky captures the
the island, where transportation will be handled awesome scale of the Three Gorges project and
instead by solar-powered water taxis and buses the landscapes it doomed. See http://www.
running on hydrogen fuel cell technology. The edwardburtynsky.com.
urbanized portion of Dongtang will be compacted 3 Piper Gaubatz, “China’s Urban Transformation,”
into three “villages” built with energy efficient green Urban Studies 36, no. 9 (1999): 1515.
building technology. Large portions of the island 4 Ian Johnson, “Moving a Mountain to Clear the
will be forested or used for organic farming. The Bad Air in Lanzhou, China,” Wall Street Journal,
local economy will be sustained by ecotourism and August 7, 1997.
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 512 10-26-2012 3:23:03 PM

5 The total housing stock in the United States University, Faculty of Architecture and Planning,
in 2005 was 218,654,766,000 square feet; from May 2005), 54; “Beijing’s Private Autos Top One
U.S. Census Bureau, Current Housing Reports, Million,” Xinhua News, May 22, 2002.
Series H150/05, American Housing Survey for 16 Between 1978 and 1995, approximately 11 million
the United States, http://www.census.gov/ acres (17,375 square miles) of cultivated land
hhes/www/housing/ahs/nationaldata.html. in China were lost to development; another
Also see Shruti Gupta, “China: Building a Strong 17 million acres (26,562 square miles) vanished
Foundation,” Frost & Sullivan Market Insight, between then and 2004. See Jonathan Watts,
September 16, 2004. “China’s Farmers Cannot Feed Hungry Cities,”
6 In 2004, GDP of sub-Saharan Africa at market Guardian Unlimited, August 26, 2004. Also see
prices was approximately $529 billion; see “Sub- Chengri Ding and Gerrit Knaap, “Urban Land
Saharan Africa Data Profile,” World Development Policy Reform in China,” Land Lines (Lincoln
Indicators Database (World Bank Group, April Institute of Land Policy) 15, no. 2 (April 2003).
2006), http://devdata.worldbank.org. 17 Watts, “China’s Farmers Cannot Feed Hungry
7 David Barboza, “China Builds its Dreams, and Cities,” August 26, 2004.
Some Fear a Bubble,” New York Times, October 18 Li Conghua, China: The Consumer Revolution
18, 2005. (New York: Wiley, 1998), 5.
8 In 2004 China’s construction industry employed 19 GDP measured at purchasing-power parity; Pam
about 24 million people; China Statistical Yearbook Woodall, “The Dragon and the Eagle,” Economist,
(Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2004). September 30, 2004. See also “The Real Great f
9 See Daniel B. Wood, “Cement Shortage Hits Leap Forward,” Economist, September 30, 2004. o
u
US Housing Boom,” Christian Science Monitor, 20 Approximately 29 million people emigrated r
August 17, 2004; Sandra Fleishman, “China’s from Europe to the United States between
Expansion Squeezes Cement Supply,” Washington 1820 and 1920, while about five million African
Post, September 18, 2004. Americans moved out of the rural South between
10 For an introduction to the subject of Chinese 1940 and 1970. Approximately 6.5 million
highways, see the three-volume compilation High Americans moved from farms and rural areas
ways in China (Beijing: Ministry of Communication, to cities between 1920 and 1930.
1990, 1995, 2000). For an American perspective, 21 As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, Yao’s
see Rob Gifford, China Road (New York: Random NBA salary alone makes him “one of China’s
House, 2007). most profitable exports to the United States.”
11 “China Plans Everest Highway for Olympics ChingChing Ni, “Working-Class Hero? NBA Star
Event,” CNN News, June 19, 2007. Nets China’s Proletarian Award,” Los Angeles
12 Accurate data on urban-renewal displacement Times, April 28, 2005.
in China is difficult to find. I based this estimate 22 Joseph Kahn, “China’s Elite Learn to Flaunt It
on measurements of the actual road channel While the New Landless Weep,” New York Times,
using aerial photographs, combined with December 25, 2004.
population density data from the Wendell Cox 23 Hannah Beech, “Wretched Excess,” TIME Asia
Consultancy (http://www.demographia.com). Magazine 160, no. 11 (September 23, 2002).
13 Chinese Academy of Engineering, National 24 The bronze likeness shows Li gesturing toward
Research Council, et al., Personal Cars and China the horizon with his palm facing down, as if
(Washington, DC: National Academies Press, hailing a far-off friend. As Li explained in a
2003), 228. 2002 interview, to have cast himself with
14 “China Stands as World’s 2nd Largest Auto palm raised up and outward would have been
Market,” People’s Daily, January 13, 2006; Eric politically provocative; it is still a gesture
Baculinao, “China’s Auto Industry Takes Off,” reserved for likenesses of Mao Zedong. Craig
NBC News, January 12, 2007. S. Smith, “For China’s Wealthy, All but Fruited
15 Chia-Liang Tai, “Transforming Shanghai: The Plain,” New York Times, May 15, 2002. See also
Redevelopment Context of the Pudong New Rupert Hoogewerf, “Li Qinfu, Size XL,” Forbes.
Area” (unpublished masters thesis, Columbia com, November 11, 2002.
9780415668071_P4_07.indd 513 10-26-2012 3:23:03 PM

25 Daniel Abramson, “‘Marketization’ and Institu 32 Yixing Zhou and Laurence J.C. Ma, “Economic
tions in Chinese Inner-city Redevelopment,” Restructuring and Suburbanization in China,”
Cities 14, no. 2 (1997): 71n; Nancy Lin cites Urban Geography 21, no. 3 (2000): 223.
similar statistics (1:30, 400 in China; 1:3, 120 in 33 Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief
the United States) in “Architecture Shenzhen,” History of the Twenty-First Century (New York:
in Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), 409.
Koolhaas, Sze Tsung, et al., eds, Great Leap 34 Robert Collier, “A Warming World: China About
Forward (Kiiln: Taschen, 2001), 158–61. to Pass U.S. as World’s Top Generator of Green
26 James, who wrote The American Scene upon house Gases,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 5,
his return from a twenty-year hiatus in Europe, 2007.
understood the ephemerality and impermanence 35 Ibid.
of the skyscraper city: “They never begin to 36 Ronald G. Knapp has written extensively on
speak to you, in the manner of the builded the subject of Chinese vernacular housing. See,
majesties of the world as we have heretofore for example, China’s Vernacular Architecture:
known such – towers or temples or fortresses House Form and Culture (Honolulu: University
or palaces – with the authority of things of of Hawaii Press, 1989) and Knapp and Kai-Yin
permanence or even of things of long duration. Lo, eds, House Home Family: Living and Being
One story is good ingenuity only till another Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
is told, and sky-scrapers are the last word 2005).
of economic ingenuity only till another word 37 “China Admits Failure to Make Environmental
be written.” Henry James, The American Scene Progress,” Reuters, January 29, 2007.
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1907), 76–77. 38 People’s Republic of China, “Renewable Energy
27 “McDonald’s Opens Drive-thru in Beijing,” Law” (unofficial version) from the Renewable
International Business Times, January 19, 2007. Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership.
28 This was reported in Nan Feng, July 13, 2006. 39 Alex Pasternack, “China Could Be World’s Biggest
29 Yang Jianxiang, “Building Dreams in Bricks and Wind Power by 2020,” Treehugger: Science and
Mortar,” China Daily, September 14, 2004. The Technology, January 26, 2007, http://www.
housing stock in the United States in 2005 was treehugger.com/files/2007/01/china_could_be.
about 219 billion square feet; see U.S. Census php.
Bureau, Current Housing Reports, Series H150/05, 40 “Shanghai to Install Solar Panels on Building
American Housing Survey for the United States, Roofs,” Shanghai Daily News, September 15,
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ 2005.
ahs/nationaldata.html. 41 “Q&A with William A. McDonough,” Urban
30 Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los Angeles Land, January 2007, 119.
Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, 42 “Visions of Ecopolis,” Economist, September 21,
MA: MIT Press, 2002), 4–5. 2006.
31 John Rajchman, “Thinking Big – Dutch Architect 43 William A. McDonough, phone interview by
Rem Koolhaas – Interview,” Artforum, December author, April 11, 2007.
1994.
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Part five
Addressing
Environmental
Challenges
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Plate 6 The Southeast False Creek Development in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada was consciously
designed to become one of the greenest communities of the early twenty-first century. Initially designated as the
Olympic Village for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, the development is now a mixed-use community of residences,
retail, and cultural amenities. This is one of a handful of megaprojects developed over the last two decades in
downtown Vancouver that seeks to improve the quality of life and urban environment for city dwellers. Providing
a continuous waterfront public realm allows residents access to recreation, biking, beaches, and open space. This is
the compensatory exterior space for dense urban living that makes in-town living possible and attractive. The Southeast
False Creek Development offers a scale of building, residential density, walkability, transit access, innovative utility
infrastructure, and green building principles that help to conserve land, water, and energy resources that might have
been spent on less sustainable projects. (Photo: E. Macdonald)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART FIVE
The world is currently facing immense environmental challenges: global warming, climate change, sea
level rise, lack of fresh water, over population, resource depletion, air and water pollution, loss of habitat,
widespread species extinction – the list of problems and their mind-boggling complexity and scale goes
on and on. These environmental problems loom large for the built environment professions as more and
more voices around the world are calling for addressing them and moving toward greater sustainability.
This section of the Reader explores key environmental challenges being faced in cities around the
world and the built environment professions’ responses. We begin with two older writings that laid the
ground work for a recent spate of ecologically driven design thought and practice. Ian McHarg’s piece,
“An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture,” describes the method of regional landscape analy
sis that he invented in the late 1960s, which instantly became standard practice in the landscape
architecture and regional planning professions. His method, which involved overlay mapping on trans-
parencies, sought to identify areas of sensitive ecological resources so that development could be
appropriately sited to complement natural systems and do the least possible harm to them.
Two decades later, Michael Hough furthered McHarg’s concerns by focusing on issues of regional
identity in relation to natural factors. He argued that placelessness has become ubiquitous in part be-
cause designers lack awareness of and appreciation for regional environmental differences and thus do
not design in ways to enhance and emphasize local place. In “Principles for Regional Design,” a chapter
taken from his book Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape, he eloquently analyzes
the forces influencing the degradation of regional environmental quality and advocates simple approaches
that designers might take to gain more awareness and respect for regional difference and so better
contribute to regional place-making.
The next two readings focus on Landscape Urbanism, a recently developed theoretical design ap-
proach for addressing ecological issues that has taken hold in university design programs and has
begun to influence urban design practice, including some recent high-profile design and planning
projects. Charles Waldheim’s piece “Landscape as Urbanism,” which comes from The Landscape
Urbanism Reader, an anthology that he edited, is the classic articulation of the concerns of the Landscape
Urbanism movement and its approach to design. Following this, several pieces from Alan Berger’s book
Drosscape look closely at one type of space identified by Landscape Urbanists as a key locus for
design action, namely wasted landscapes and interstitial spaces left over from the processes of urban
de-industrialization that have been going on around the world since the 1970s. Berger challenges
urban designers to take on these often contaminated “brownfield” sites as places for design intervention
and innovation, even in the face of no paying client and no design program.
The last two readings in this section focus on practical strategies that cities can take to address environ
mental problems and to strive for greater sustainability at the local level. Timothy Beatley’s piece “Planning
for Sustainability in European Cities: A Review of Practice in Leading Cities,” first published in The Sustain
able Urban Development Reader which is part of this reader series, reviews innovative sustainability
approaches being taken by a number of European cities, including prioritization of low-energy-consuming
forms of transportation, urban greening, and waste-fed district heating systems. The final piece, “Urban
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518 INTRODUCTION TO PART FIVE
Resilience: Cities of Fear and Hope,” from Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer’s recent
book Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, identifies climate change and
resource depletion as the most critical environmental problems that must be faced. It argues for the
importance of creating resilient cities and urban forms, which can adapt to the changes that will inevitably
come and recover from the shocks of all kinds that might need to be absorbed in the uncertain future.
As well, strategies that cities can take to achieve greater resilience are discussed.
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“An Ecological Method for
Landscape Architecture”
from Landscape Architecture Magazine (1967)
Ian McHarg
Conservation of natural areas has been a public concern since the turn of the twentieth century. In the United
States, early efforts focused on the preservation of natural areas of great beauty, such as Yosemite Valley
and Yellowstone, turning them into National Parks. Larger environmental concerns leapt to the forefront of
public consciousness in the early 1960s spurred by a host of environmental ills, including air pollution, water
pollution, pesticide poisoning, and dwindling energy sources. Books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(New York: Fawcett Crest, 1962) and Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle (New York: Knopf, 1971) elo-
quently called attention to these matters. Members of the design professions responded by shifting their atten
tion to environmental issues. Architects explored passive solar and energy efficient building designs, urban
planners became environmental advocates and began focusing on regional-scale environmental planning,
landscape architects dug deeper into the ecological issues of landscape design, and urban designers began
exploring the dimensions of environmental perception. In practice, designers and the communities they worked
for grappled with how to address environmental concerns in projects of large and small scale. The tool they
turned to was the new “ecological method” articulated by landscape architect Ian McHarg (1920–2001) in
his seminal book Design with Nature (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1969), which became an instant
classic. McHarg critiques the effects of urban sprawl and advocates plan-making based on natural processes.
He calls for landscape architects to act within design processes as “interpreters” of the land and its resources
by engaging in comprehensive analysis of the study area’s geology, climate, slope, exposure, water regimens,
soils, plants, animals, and land use. Such analysis, he argues, reveals appropriate sites for human land-using
activities of various kinds as well as areas of particular environmental sensitivity or value that should be left
untouched. Key to McHarg’s method is the use of layered transparency mapping which creates a graphic
matrix that identifies compatibilities and incompatibilities between various human uses and between those
uses and the aggregated ecological contexts. Going beyond matters of functionality, McHarg argues that
design inspiration should derive from the perception of natural form that comes from this analysis.
McHarg’s ecological method was widely adopted in landscape architecture and regional planning practice,
and remains standard practice today. Today, the method is generally applied using spatial mapping techniques
conducted using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. This new technology has the advantage
of being able to link spatial maps with comprehensive databases covering not only ecological factors but also
any number of physical, social, and economic factors.
In retrospect, McHarg can be criticized for being overly optimistic that ecological science could shape
urban development in an ecologically responsible direction in the face of powerful social and economic forces
promoting unsustainable development. As well, his emphasis on regional-scale ecological analysis and land
use decision-making is at odds with how land use planning decisions are actually made in most places in
America because few places have effective regional governance. Nonetheless, McHarg’s exhortation that
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520 I an M c H arg
landscape architects and urban planners should take addressing environmental issues as a central charge
still resonates across the design fields. His ecological method laid the groundwork for how designers and
planners might begin the hard work of understanding complex environmental systems and learning to design
from an ecological perspective.
The paper “An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture” from Landscape Architecture Magazine
(1967) is two years older than Design with Nature, but it provides a good summary of McHarg’s seminal
analytical method because it focuses on the actual processes illustrated in the more famous book.
Growing up in a small town near Glasgow, Scotland, McHarg was exposed to both the harshness of an
industrial city and the beauty of natural countryside, and he attributed his lifelong concern with nature and
development to that experience. After earning master’s degrees in landscape architecture and city planning
from Harvard, in 1954 he founded the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
and taught there as a professor for many years, creating one of the most interdisciplinary programs in the
United States. He was a founding member of the landscape architecture firm Wallace, McHarg, Roberts &
Todd, through which he worked on many professional projects and garnered numerous awards. He was a
Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the recipient of many honors including
the ASLA Medal and the LaGasse Medal.
Design with Nature has been reprinted several times, most recently by John Wiley (1992). McHarg’s two
other books are To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg (Washington, DC: Island Press,
1998), co-edited with Frederick R. Steiner, and A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (New York: John Wiley,
1996). A book that stands alongside McHarg’s Design with Nature in terms of influencing designers’ early
awareness of urban ecology issues is Anne Whiston Spirn’s The Granite Garden (New York: Basic Books,
1984), which articulates the natural contexts and ecological processes to be found in cities. At the time of
its publication, this book was radical in its insistence that cities are a part of nature and that nature is to be
found everywhere within them. It continues to inspire today’s designers with its simple ideas for how to design
urban places in concert with natural systems rather than in opposition to them.
Classic works that anticipated the later twentieth-century concern with ecological systems are Patrick
Geddes, Cities in Evolution (London: Williams & Norgate, 1915) and Benton MacKaye’s The New Explor
ation: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928). A classic work that set the
stage for the ecological consciousness that began in the 1960s is Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac
(1949), reprinted in many later editions including most recently by Oxford University Press (2001).
Recent works on ecological planning and design abound. A recently reprinted classic text on ecological
design principles is Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan’s Ecological Design (Washington, DC: Island Press,
2007), which encourages design across spatial scales and collaboration across design professions in the
pursuit of low environmental impact development. More recent works include Robert G. Bailey’s Ecoregion-Based
Design for Sustainability (New York: Springer, 2002); Forster Ndubisi’s Ecological Planning: A Historical and
Comparative Synthesis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); and Wenche E. Dramstad et al.’s
Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Landuse Planning (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 1996). Edited anthologies of essays include Issues and Perspectives in Landscape Ecology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), edited by John A. Wiens and Michael R. Moss, and Ecological Design
and Planning (New York: John Wiley, 1997), edited by George F. Thompson and Frederick R. Steiner.
Randy Hester’s Design for Ecological Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006) is a powerful book
that outlines principles for urban design that allow communities to both connect with the natural environment
and enhance a sense of community.
Recent architecturally oriented books that address ecological drivers for design include Douglas Farr’s
Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2008) and Ken Yeang’s Design
ing with Nature: The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995).
Works that address GIS applications in ecological analysis include Carol A. Johnston’s Geographic Informa
tion Systems in Ecology (Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2001) and Mohammed A. Kalkhan’s Spatial Statistics:
GeoSpatial Information Modeling and Thematic Mapping (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2011).
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“ A n E cological M ethod for L andscape A rchitecture ” 521
In many cases a qualified statement is, if not the physical and biological evolution. Written on the
most propitious, at least the most prudent. In this place and upon its inhabitants lies mute all physical,
case it would only be gratuitous. I believe that biological and cultural history awaiting to be
ecology provides the single indispensible basis for understood by those who can read it. It is thus
landscape architecture and regional planning. I necessary to begin at the beginning if we are to
would state in addition that it has now, and will understand the place, the man, or his co-tenants
increasingly have, a profound relevance for both of this phenomenal universe. This is the prerequi
city planning and architecture. sitie [sic] for intelligent intervention and adaptation.
Where the landscape architect commands eco So let us begin at the beginning. We start with
logy he is the only bridge between the natural sci historical geology. The place, any place, can only
ences and the planning and design professions, the be understood through its physical evolution. What
proprietor of the most perceptive view of the history of mountain building and ancient seas, up
natural world which science or art has provided. lifting, folding, sinking, erosion and glaciation have
This can be at once his unique attribute, his pass passed here and left their marks? These explain its
port to relevance and productive social utility. With present form. Yet the effects of climate and later
the acquisition of this competence the sad image of plants and animals have interacted upon geo
of ornamental horticulture, handmaiden to archi logical processes and these too lie mute in the
tecture after the fact, the caprice and arbitrariness record of the rocks. Both climate and geology can
of “clever” designs can be dismissed forever. In be invoked to interpret physiography, the current
short, ecology offers emancipation to landscape configuration of the place. Arctic differs from
architecture. tropics, desert from delta, the Himalayas from the
This is not the place for a scholarly article on Gangetic Plain. The Appalachian Plateau differs
ecology. We are interested in it selfishly, as those from the Ridge and Valley Province and all of these
who can and must apply it. Our concern is for a from the Piedmont and the Coastal Plain. If one
method which has the power to reveal nature as now knows historical geology, climate and physio f
process, containing intrinsic form. graphy then the water regimen becomes compre i
v
Ecology is generally described as the study of hensible – the pattern of rivers and aquifers, their e
the interactions of organisms and environment physical properties and relative abundance, oscil
which includes other organisms. The particular in lation between flood and drought. Rivers are young
terests of landscape architecture are focussed only or old, they vary by orders; their pattern and dis
upon a part of this great, synoptic concern. This tribution, as for aquifers, is directly consequential
might better be defined as the study of physical upon geology, climate and physiography.
and biological processes, as dynamic and interact Knowing the foregoing and the prior history of
ing, responsive to laws, having limiting factors and plant evolution, we can now comprehend the nature
exhibiting certain opportunities and constraints, and pattern of soils. As plants are highly selective
employed in planning and design for human use. to environmental factors, by identifying physio
At this juncture two possibilities present them graphic, climatic zones and soils we can perceive
selves. The first is to attempt to present a general order and predictability in the distribution of con
theory of ecology and the planning processes. This stituent plant communities. Indeed, the plant com
is a venture which I long to undertake, but this is munities are more perceptive to environmental
not the time nor place to attempt it. The other variables than we can be with available data, and
alternative is to present a method which has been we can thus infer environmental factors from the
tested empirically at many scales from a continent, presence of plants. Animals are fundamentally
a major region, a river basin, physiographic regions, plant-related so that given the preceding informa
sub-regional areas and a metropolitan region town tion, with the addition of the stage of succession
to a single city. In every case, I submit, it has been of the plant communities and their age, it is pos
triumphantly revelatory.1 sible both to understand and to predict the species,
First, it is necessary to submit a proposition to abundance or scarcity of wild animal populations.
this effect: that the place, the plants, animals and If there are no acorns there will be no squirrels;
men upon it are only comprehensible in terms of an old forest will have few deer; an early succession
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522 I an M c H arg
can support many. Resources also exist where they function; it can be managed for wildlife and hunting,
do for good and sufficient reasons – coal, iron, recreation, and for villages and hamlets. Here we
limestone, productive soils, water in relative abun have not land use in the normal sense but com
dance, transportation routes, fall lines and the ter munities of land uses. The end product would be
mini of water transport. And so the land use map a map of present and prospective land uses, in
becomes comprehensible when viewed through this communities of compatibilities, with dominants,
perspective. co-dominants and subordinates derived from an
The information so acquired is a gross ecolog understanding of nature as process responsive to
ical inventory and contains the data bank for all laws, having limiting factors, constituting a value
further investigations. The next task is the inter system and exhibiting opportunities and constraints
pretation of these data to analyze existing and to human use.
propose future human land use and management. Now this is not a plan. It does not contain any
The first objective is the inventory of unique information of demand. This last is the province
or scarce phenomena, the technique for which of the regional scientist, the econometrician, the eco
Philip Lewis2 is renowned. In this all sites of unique nomic planner. The work is thus divided between
scenic, geological, ecological or historical import the natural scientist, regional planner-landscape
ance are located. Enlarging this category we can architect who interprets the land and its resources,
interpret the geological data to locate economic and the economics-based planner who determines
minerals. Geology, climate and physiography will demand, locational preferences, investment and
locate dependable water resources. Physiography fiscal policies. If demand information is available,
will reveal slope and exposure which, with soil and then the formulation of a plan is possible, and the
water, can be used to locate areas suitable for ag demand components can be allocated for urban
riculture by types; the foregoing, with the addition growth, for the nature and form of the metropolis,
of plant communities will reveal intrinsic suitabil for the pattern of regional growth.
ities for both forestry and recreation. The entire So what has our method revealed? First, it allows
body of data can be examined to reveal sites for us to understand nature as process insofar as the
urbanization, industry, transportation routes, indeed natural sciences permit. Second, it reveals causal
any human land-using activity. This interpretive ity. The place is because. Next it permits us to
sequence would produce a body of analytical mater interpret natural processes as resources, to pre
ial but the end product for a region would include scribe and even to predict for prospective land uses,
a map of unique sites, the location of economic not singly but in compatible communities. Finally,
minerals, the location of water resources, a slope given information on demand and investment, we
and exposure map, a map of agricultural suitabil are enabled to produce a plan for a continent or a
ities by types, a similar map for forestry, one each few hundred acres based upon natural process. That
for recreation and urbanization. is not a small accomplishment.
These maps of intrinsic suitability would indicate You might well agree that this is a valuable and
highest and best uses for the entire study area. But perhaps even indispensible method for regional
this is not enough. These are single uses ascribed planning but is it as valuable for landscape archi
to discrete areas. In the forest there are likely to tecture? I say that any project, save a small garden
be dominant or co-dominant trees and other sub or the raddled heart of a city where nature has long
ordinate species. We must seek to prescribe all gone, which is undertaken without a full compre
coexistent, compatible uses which may occupy each hension and employment of natural process as form-
area. To this end it is necessary to develop a matrix giver is suspect at best and capriciously irrelevant
in which all possible land uses are shown on each at worst. I submit that the ecological method is the
coordinate. Each is then examined against all sine qua non for all landscape architecture.
others to determine the degree of compatibility or Yet, I hear you say, those who doubt, that the
incompatibility. As an example, a single area of method may be extremely valuable for regional
forest may be managed for forestry, either hard rural problems, but can it enter the city and reveal
wood or pulp; it may be utilized for water manage a comparable utility? Yes, indeed it can but in cross
ment objectives; it may fulfill an erosion control ing this threshold the method changes. When used
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“ A n E cological M ethod for L andscape A rchitecture ” 523
to examine metropolitan growth the data remains palisades, hill and valleys, woodlands and parkland.
the same but the interpretation is focused upon the When will it confront slums and overcrowding,
overwhelming demand for urban land uses and it congestion and pollution, anarchy and ugliness?
is oriented to the prohibitions and permissiveness Indeed the method can enter into the very heart
exhibited by natural process to urbanization on of the city and by so doing may save us from the
the one hand and the presence of locational and melancholy criteria of economic determinism which
resource factors which one would select for satis have proven so disappointing to the orthodoxy of
factory urban environments on the other. But city planning or the alternative of unbridled “de
the litany remains the same: historical geology, cli sign” which haunts architecture. But here again we
mate, physiography, the water regimen, soils, plants, must be selective as we return to the source in
animals and land use. This is the source from which ecology. We will find little that is applicable in en
the interpretation is made although the grain ergy system ecology, analysis of food pyramids,
becomes finer. relations defined in terms of predator–prey, com
Yet you say, the method has not entered the city petition, or those other analytical devices so effica
proper; you feel that it is still a device for protect cious for plant and animal ecology. But we can well
ing natural process against the blind despoliation turn to an ecological model which contains multi-
of ignorance and Philistinism. But the method can faceted criteria for measuring ecosystems and we
enter the city and we can proceed with our now can select health as an encompassing criterion. The
familiar body of information to examine the city model is my own and as such it is suspect for I am
in an ecological way. We have explained that the place not an ecologist, but each of the parts is the prod
was “because” and to explain “because,” all of phys uct of a distinguished ecologist.3 Let us hope that
ical and biological evolution was invoked. So too the assembly of the constituents does not diminish
with the city. But to explain “because” we invoke their veracity, for they have compelling value.
not only natural evolution but cultural evolution as The most obvious example is life and death. Life
well. To do this we make a distinction between the is the evolution of a single egg into the complexity f
“given” and the “made” forms. The former is the of the organism. Death is the retrogression of a i
v
natural landscape identity, the latter is the accumu complex organism into a few simple elements. If e
lation of the adaptations to the given form which this model is true, it allows us to examine a city,
constitute the present city. Rio is different from neighborhood, community institution, family, city
New Orleans, Kansas from Lima, Amsterdam from plan, architectural or landscape design in these terms.
San Francisco, because. By employing the ecological This model suggests that any system moving to
method we can discern the reason for the location wards simplicity, uniformity, instability with a low
of the city, comprehend its natural form, discern number of species and high entropy is retrogress
those elements of identity which are critical and ing; any system moving in that direction is moving
expressive both those of physiography and vegeta towards ill health.
tion, and develop a program for the preservation and Conversely, complexity, diversity, stability (steady
enhancement of that identity. The method is equally state), with a high number of species and low en
applicable when one confronts the made form. The tropy are indicators of health and systems moving
successive stages of urbanization are examined as in this direction are evolving. As a simple applica
adaptations to the environment, some of which are tion let us map, in tones on transparencies, statistics
successful, some not. Some enter the inventory of of all physical disease, all mental disease and all
resources and contribute to the genius loci. As for social disease. If we also map income, age of popula
the given form, this method allows us to perceive tion, density, ethnicity and quality of the physical
the elements of identity in a scale of values. One environment we have on the one hand discerned
can then prepare a comprehensive landscape plan the environment of health, the environment of patho
for a city and feed the elements of identity, natural logy and we have accumulated the data which
process and the palette for formal expression into allow interpretation of the social and physical en
the comprehensive planning process. vironmental components of health and pathology.
You still demur. The method has not yet entered Moreover, we have the other criteria of the model
into the putrid parts of the city. It needs rivers and which permit examination from different directions.
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524 I an M c H arg
If this model is true and the method good, it may the given form, implication for the made form which
be the greatest contribution of the ecological is to say design, and this, for landscape architects,
method to diagnosis and prescription for the city. may be its greatest gift.
But, you say, all this may be very fine but land
scape architects are finally designers – when will
you speak to ecology and design? I will. Lou Kahn, NOTES
the most perceptive of men, foresaw the ecological
method even through these intractable, inert mater 1 Australia; Rhodesia; the United Kingdom; the
ials which he infuses with life when he spoke of Gangetic Plain; the Potomac River Basin; Allegheny
“existence will,” the will to be. The place is because. Plateau; Ridge and Valley Province; Great Valley
It is and is in the process of becoming. This we Province; Piedmont; Coastal Plain; the Green
must be able to read, and ecology provides the Spring and Worthington Valleys, Philadelphia
language. By being, the place or the creature has Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area; and the
form. Form and process are indivisible aspects of City of Washington. [See “Plan for the Valleys
a single phenomenon. The ecological method vs. Spectre of Uncontrolled Growth,” by Ian L.
allows one to understand form as an explicit point McHarg and David A. Wallace, Landscape Architec
in evolutionary process. Again, Lou Kahn has made ture, April, 1965. Ed.]
clear to us the distinction between form and design. 2 See “Quality Corridors for Wisconsin,” by Philip
Cup is form and begins from the cupped hand. H. Lewis Jr., Landscape Architecture, January,
Design is the creation of the cup, transmuted by 1964.
the artist, but never denying its formal origins. As 3 “Simplicity, complexity; uniformity, diversity;
a profession, landscape architecture has exploited independence, interdependence; instability, sta
a pliant earth, tractable and docile plants to make bility,” thesis by Dr. Robert McArthur. “Stability,
much that is arbitrary, capricious and inconsequen instability,” thesis by Dr. Luna Leopold. “Low
tial. We could not see the cupped hand as giving and high number of species,” thesis by Dr. Ruth
form to the cup, the earth and its processes as Patrick. “Low and high entropy,” thesis by
giving form to our works. The ecological method Dr. Harold F. Blum. “Ill-health, health,” thesis by
is then also the perception of form, an insight to Dr. Ruth Patrick.
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“Principles for Regional Design”
from Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional
Landscape (1990)
Michael Hough
The idea that regional identity is a fundamental component of sense of place has gained prominence over the
last several decades, hand in hand with the increasing advance of landscape homogenization. As the landscape
architecture profession has steadily grown to encompass ecological concerns as well as aesthetic concerns,
people concerned with issues of regional identity have come to understand that it is not only important for
place-making, but also critical for sustainability because it is associated with biodiversity.
Michael Hough has been a leading voice in associating regional landscape identity with both sense of
place and ecological responsibility. In Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape, he asks
why modern landscapes tend to look alike despite their different regional settings and determines that the causes
include the rise of consumerism, the loss of rootedness and rise of transience that have come with the infor-
mation society, and the rise of bureaucratic standardization. Having established the main contributing factors
to placelessness, he outlines a regionally based approach to place-making in the final chapter of his book.
In “Principles for Regional Design,” reprinted here, Hough, critical of most environmental design theory
because of the emphasis on ideal forms and complete design, offers instead a design philosophy based on
notions of restraint, minimal intervention, and respect for what is local. Instead of rigid design guidelines, he sets
out principles for action, which include learning about places through direct experience of them, maintaining
a sense of history, promoting environmental education, doing as little as possible, and starting where it’s
easiest. While all the principles are well articulated and useful, the latter two are particularly important for
urban designers to pay attention to because they encourage modest design attitudes of a kind not generally
prevalent within the design fields.
Hough’s focus on regional eco-systems harkens back to ideas developed by Patrick Geddes over one
hundred years ago. Geddes emphasized regional diversity and advocated extensive ecological surveys prior
to undertaking any design or planning work. His innovative Valley Section, which cut a transect through a
metropolitan region, identified the intricate ties between central cities and their rural hinterlands. A good
discussion of Geddes’ ideas can be found in Walter Stephen et al.’s Think Global Act Local: The Life and
Legacy of Patrick Geddes (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2004). Hough’s ideas also relate to landscape architect
Ian McHarg’s work from the 1960s and 1970s (see p. 519). Concerned with ecological planning and repre-
senting an early attempt to integrate emerging green design concepts at the regional level, McHarg developed
a method for analyzing landscapes through mapped overlays of soil, hydrology, slope, geology, viewshed, and
vegetation. The idea was that this process would then indicate the best areas for development, and help
designers avoid the least desirable locations.
Michael Hough trained as a landscape architect at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1963,
he founded the University of Toronto’s undergraduate degree program in landscape architecture and later
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526 M ichael H O ugh
joined the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at York University, where he established the Environmental
Landscape Design program, in 1971, and was a Professor for many years. He was a principal and founding
partner in the Landscape Architecture firm of Hough Woodland Naylor Dance Leinster (HWNDL) in Toronto,
and currently practices through Envision-The Hough Group. Both firms are widely recognized for their work
in ecological design. In 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Society of
Landscape Architects, that organization’s highest honor.
Michael Hough’s other writings include City Form and Natural Processes: Towards an Urban Vernacular
(London: Croom Helm, 1984), which is considered a classic of the environmental design field. It has been
published in updated versions under the titles Cities and Natural Process (London: Routledge, 1995) and
Cities and Natural Processes: A Basis for Sustainability (London: Routledge, 2004).
Writings by others on regional landscapes include Paul Gobster’s Restoring Nature: Perspectives from
the Social Sciences and Humanities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000); Robert L. Thayer Jr.’s LifePlace:
Bioregional Thought and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Tony Hiss’ The Experience
of Place: A New Way of Looking at and Dealing with Our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside (New
York: Random House, 1990); and Regional Planning in America: Practice and Prospect (Cambridge, MA:
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011), edited by Ethan Seltzer and Armando Carbonell.
What role does design play in the development of this new landscape as it is to expect people to give
a contemporary regional landscape? A historical up cars, washing machines, and television in the
perspective suggests that the differences between interest of a better environment. We are locked into
one place and another have arisen, not from efforts our times and ways of doing things.
to create long-range visions and grand designs, but Yet, there is a dilemma for designers in the
from vernacular responses to the practical problems new and evolving landscape. The determinants that
of everyday life. Indeed, it can be argued that pur- shaped the settlements and countryside of pre
poseful design has done more to generate place industrial society and that gave rise to the physical
lessness than to promote a sense of place. The new forms which we now admire are now no longer
forces shaping the landscape are no longer small those of environmental limitation but of choice.
and local in scope but are great in scale and con- Creating a sense of place involves a conscious deci
sequence. The technological and economic impact sion to do so. At the same time, the need to invest
of these forces on the environment has never before in the protection of nature has never been so urgent.
had such profound potential for the destruction The connections between regional identity and the
of life systems. As a discipline dedicated to fitting sustainability of the land are essential and funda-
man to the land and to giving it form, contemporary mental. A valid design philosophy, therefore, is tied
design is faced with solving problems that have to ecological values and principles; to the notions
traditionally not been a part of the agenda in the of environmental and social health; to the essential
creation of vernacular places. bond of people to nature, and to the biological
In the past, there were limits to what one was sustainability of life itself. This is the new necessity
able to do and the extent to which one could modify that will counter-balance and bring some sanity
the natural environment. The constraints of environ to a world whose goals are focused on helping us
ment and society created an undisputed sense of “live in a society of abundance and leisure.”1 Yet
being rooted to the place, but they were, nonethe- values that espouse a truly sustainable future will
less, limitations to be overcome, not inherent motiv only emerge when it is perceived that there are no
ations to be at one with nature. In today’s landscape alternatives. It is possible that over time the fragil-
the heterogeneity of the past is giving way to a more ity of earth’s life systems will create an imperative
homogeneous, information-based society. In design for survival on which a new ethic can flourish. The
terms, therefore, it becomes as much romantic international agreement to protect the earth’s ozone
nonsense to force the old regional differences upon layer, signed in 1987, may be one indication of this
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“ P rinciples f O r R egi O nal D esign ” 527
trend. And it is only on this basis that regionalism In effect, he was saying that modifications to city
can become an imperative – a fundamental plat- plans, and for that matter modifications to any
form for understanding and shaping the future landscape, are based on thought processes that
landscape. begin and end with paper, not the environmental
In the preceding chapters I examined the various and social realities of the place.
factors affecting regional identity in order to establish Underlying every urban or urbanizing environ-
a framework for a design philosophy for the con- ment that has developed an image of increasing
temporary landscape. This chapter suggests the prin- sameness are unique natural or cultural attributes
ciples that seem most appropriate to this objective. waiting to be revealed. A place’s identity is rarely
completely destroyed. There, are always elements
of the original landscape that remain, sometimes
KNOWING THE PLACE deeply buried beneath the new. Landform, remnant
native plant communities, an old hedge, a barn, old
Recognizing how people use different places to paving stones speak to natural and cultural origins
fulfill the practical needs of living is one of the and changing uses. The task is to build an identity
building blocks on which a distinctive sense of based on these remnants.
place can be enhanced in the urban landscape. Re- The hidden elements of a place affect our senses,
gional identity is connected with the peculiar char- albeit unconsciously. Tony Hiss describes this in
acteristics of a location that tell us something about his analysis of experiencing places:
its physical and social environment. It is what a
place has when it somehow belongs to its location Small, unnoticed changes in level play a larger
and nowhere else. It has to do, therefore, with two organizing role in our activities than we suspect:
fundamental criteria: first, with the natural pro- in Manhattan, the right-angle street grid, which
cesses of the region or locality – what nature has keeps people’s eyes focused straight ahead, and
put there; second, with social processes – what the uniform paving of streets and sidewalks, f
people have put there. It has to do with the way together with the solid blocks of buildings on i
v
people adapt to their living environment; how they both sides, tend to keep New Yorkers from notic- e
change it to suit their needs in the process of living; ing the natural contours – or what’s left of
how they make it their own. In effect, regional the natural contours – beneath their feet. The
identity is the collective reaction of people to the nineteenth-century Manhattan developers who
environment over time. covered midtown fields and meadows with
At the turn of the century Patrick Geddes taught brownstones did such a good job of lopping
that before attempting to change a place, one must off the tops of hills and filling in valleys that a
seek out its essential character on foot in order to hundred years or so later . . . no one really knows
understand its patterns of movement, its social what the original topography was . . . Nevertheless,
dynamics, history and traditions, its environmental almost every block has some rise or dip to it,
possibilities. He commented on the way planners and these hints of elevation do help people
dictated form and solutions to problems with little define certain districts.3
reference to the reality. In his design studies for
Madura in the Madras Presidency he wrote: Several other examples of natural and cultural attri
butes will illustrate how these affect our sense of
One of the poor quarters is at present threatened a place’s identity.
with “relief from congestion” and we are shown
a rough plan in which the usual gridiron of new
thoroughfares is hacked through its old-world Identity through the landscape
village life . . . the sanitary improvements begin
by destroying an excellent house for the sole The deep, densely wooded ravines of Toronto that
purpose of inclining the present lane from the were cut from tableland by streams following the
position slightly oblique to the edge of the draw- last ice age are part of a major system of rivers
ing board to one strictly parallel to it.2 draining south to Lake Ontario. Twenty-one meters
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below the flat, urbanizing plateau of the growing landscape is also based on “hard” urban spaces:
city, they formed a unique system of remnant busy plazas and markets; noisy and quiet places;
southern hardwood forest and streams, a habitat cultivated landscapes and formal gardens; funfairs
for animals and birds within an urban area, a place and cultural events. In multi-cultural cities, there
where the original forest and the natural history of are also many social needs that should be ad-
the land could still be experienced. It was where dressed by public spaces that reflect the cultural
sounds of traffic were no longer heard, where smells and physical identity of these groups. The elderly
and tactile feelings were enhanced by the utter – an increasingly large group in North American
contrast of enclosing woods, suddenly experienced cities – garden, cycle, bowl, take photographs, play
as one reached the valley floor from the level of cards and board games, watch the world go by.
the street. As the city expanded, many ravines were Ethnic groups, many of whom are moving out to
obliterated by encroaching development, and by the suburbs of large cities, take with them traditions
the 1950s, 840 acres (340 hectares) of the 1,900 of productive urban farming, festivals, family gather
acres (770 hectares) of original ravine land in the ings for picnics and intensive use of small spaces
city had been given over to houses, factories, and that are transforming hitherto conventionally land-
roads.4 The unique character of Toronto’s landscape scaped suburban places. Over time, changing com-
– the city’s structure and identity – rapidly gave munity structure in many suburban areas will create
way to featureless urban growth. Others were left a new kind of environment, one that fits the people
alone, not as a consequence of planning but be- who live and work there. Thus by-laws and restric-
cause they were simply a nuisance, or difficult, to tions on what may or may not be done on private
fill in. Today they are recognized for their significance property, which have previously dominated the
to the environmental and social well-being of the social and physical character of many suburbs, will
city. Within the urbanized environment they have need to be modified to reflect new communities’
become one of the key elements that make Toronto values.
different from other places, both as identifiable The socially disadvantaged, the bag ladies, the
landscape form and for the uniquely adapted rec- homeless, and transients use parks and waste places
reational activity they have generated. Protected in the city night and day and often year round. As
by dense woodland below the level of the city that a group, these people use the established parks more
eliminates winter winds and provides a markedly permanently and with more basic need than the
cool summer climate, they are ideal places for winter people for whom the parks were actually intended.
skiing, walking, birdwatching, and nature study. They Yet these are the people who are not welcome in
have become Toronto’s stamp of individuality. the parks system. The use of streets as community
spaces by adults and children in healthy neighbor-
hoods establishes an essential vitality, social char-
Different places for different people acter, and commitment to place that comes from
common use. They are the spontaneous result of
Many of our urban parks have developed as cookie- people using the street as a natural meeting place
cutter patterns of grass and trees, models imposed that the standard park cannot fulfill.
on the city by a tradition of standard landscapes Randy Hester has shown how the daily ritual
for standard people. These values have dominated of people exchanging gossip, meeting friends, and
design thinking and helped create a landscape that negotiating business is place specific. The places
does little to reflect the inherent social diversity of that have significance for people, such as the local
neighborhoods. The quality of urban life today has post office, corner store, community park, or park-
to do, among other things, with the recognition that ing lot, are those that “have become so essential
diverse social groups need diverse landscapes, that to the lives of the residents through use or symbol-
choices between one place and another must be ism that the community collectively identifies with
available. A city that has places for foxes and urban these places.”5 Most of these may have no appeal
woodland, regenerating fields and urban wilderness, to the designer’s eye as being “beautiful” or worthy
is more interesting and pleasant to live in than those of preservation, but they are nonetheless a basis
that lack such places. The identity of the urban for healthy communities.6
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MAINTAINING A SENSE OF HISTORY considerably from place to place. This is particularly

apparent in countries of intense regional differences
Rarely does the designer have the luxury, or more such as Canada. In the western prairies, for in-
appropriately, the misfortune, to create a place from stance, the flatness of the land and great distances
scratch. Something is always there before he begins: from the mountains to the sea have produced
a history, a peculiar character, a meeting place. shallow, winding, erosion, and flood-prone river
Design inevitably involves building on what’s there landscapes that were unsuitable as major modes
in the process of change. of transportation. Patterns of urban development
The protection of natural and cultural history evolved in response to these environments. The
– the reuse and integration of the old into the new rivers, essential as a water supply, have nonetheless
without fanfare while avoiding the temptation to been historically neglected, or used as convenient
turn everything into a museum because it is old dumping grounds or for water-dependent industry.
– lies at the heart of maintaining a continuing They were not integrated with the cities that grew
link with the past and with a place’s identity. Our around them until their potential for recreational
overwhelming desire to eliminate our past is no- use was realized. One exception is the city of
where more evident than in the destruction of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which has had a long
nature that we find in every corner of the globe in tradition of preserving open space. The temperance
large or small measure. Similarly, the tendency for colonizers who settled this prairie city in 1884
the new in urban development to destroy the old dedicated the river banks as public land and set
in the interests of economics is one of the major the pattern of connected linear open spaces along
reasons for placelessness in the changing urban the river for the future.7 Today, western rivers pro
landscape. There are no longer any historical refer- ject the distinct and immediate image of a prairie
ence points by which one understands where one link between city and farmland. Their identity
has come from in the process of building the new. as places lies in their intrinsic “naturalness” in the
The remnant native plant communities that still sur way they have evolved into “green valleys” that f
vive in protected parts of the city – in cemeteries, wind through urban environments seemingly keep- i
v
valley lands, older residential areas – also link us ing the fabric of streets and buildings at bay. In e
with the past, with the pre-development landscape, contrast, the industrial cities of eastern Canada,
and with the historic interactions of man and en- such as Montreal or Toronto, which grew on the
vironment. Evolving and fortuitous naturalizing shores of the deep, wide-flowing rivers and water-
plant communities in the city’s forgotten places – ways of the Great Lakes system, have provided the
railway corridors, abandoned lands, industrial prop- essential water transportation from which has grown
erties, the corner spaces found in every city lot tell the commercial and industrial base of Canada.
us more about the dynamics of natural processes It is the environment of work – the vast scale
and the sustainability of nature in urban areas than and drama of large cargo boats and cranes, quays,
those that have been imposed, in aesthetic, or railways, and storage sheds – that makes these water
horticultural terms, on the environment. fronts so exciting and gives them a special presence.
The same is true of new urban developments They symbolize the oceans, travel to strange and
that have ignored cultural history. The absence exotic lands, and international trade. All great
of fine or significant architecture has often been a waterfronts have this quality; Istanbul, Halifax, and
red herring in arguments about the worthiness of Stockholm are among them. For many cities, how-
preserving and reusing old buildings. The basic ever, the old functions of the working port have
purpose of maintaining old parts of town is to link given way to recreational ones. Redevelopment,
us with the past – to enhance one’s knowledge of too, frequently leads to the total destruction of the
a place’s cultural roots. An example is the redevel- previous landscape of industry, grain silos, and rail
opment of urban waterfronts that since the 1970’s ways that used to provide their economic base and
has become one of the most important develop- their reason for being. The observer of many new
ment trends in North America. developments may be excused the temptation of
The way in which cities have developed and wondering why the previous landscape of industry,
have been modified by their waterways has varied often carefully preserved in old photographs, looks
9780415668071_P5_02.indd 529 10-26-2012 3:22:54 PM

so much more interesting than the new commercial Through its entertainment and cultural facilities,
developments that have replaced it. In 1987 the it can capitalize on key subjects and issues of
city of Toronto rejected a proposal to retain the old the region, such as the international implications
grain silos on its waterfront as historic landmarks. of pollution that begin here, its history of sailing
A letter to the local newspaper on this issue made vessels, trade, and discovery, the aquatic ecosystem,
the following point: local plant and animal communities, and the inter-
relationships between people and environment. But
the marine aquaria, tropical fish tanks, captive por-
These silos are a vital part of the history of
poises, and killer whales that leap through hoops
Canada in the same way as the brooding castles
and kiss the girl in the bikini for our entertainment
of Europe reflect the past. Both structures were
that have become the prime attractions of many
born out of the needs of their time and have
waterfronts tell us nothing about the place and are
become symbols of an era and a country . . . we
environmentally and ethically bankrupt. They con-
would today take a rather dim view of a council
tribute instead to environmental ignorance, to a
in Europe that had condemned their castles to
lack of context and identity. It is possible, though,
demolition because they had become useless.
to reinforce a sense of place through educational
The silos are not useless in the memory of a
exhibits that are at once instructive and fun. An
collective Canadian consciousness.8
example was the headquarters building of the now-
defunct Greater London Council. Two large fish
The making of memorable places is linked to tanks lined the entrance foyer to the building. One
history. showed what the Thames used to be like in the
days of the river’s worst pollution – a lifeless murky
underwater environment. The other showed the
ENVIRONMENTAL LEARNING AND rehabilitated Thames as it is today with the dozens
DIRECT EXPERIENCE of species of fish that now live in its much im-
proved waters. It told one a great deal about the
Environmental literacy lies at the heart of under- river on which London depends and about some
standing the places with which we are familiar, of the environmental concerns of government at
and thus at the heart of the issue of identity. It is the time.
necessary for people who live in and use urban Knowledge through education of a place’s environ
places, indeed places of any kind, to know the mental or cultural significance changes our attitudes
environment around them. An awareness of place and the way we experience it. Public reaction to a
can only be enhanced when it becomes a part of highway “no-mow” experimental program in North
people’s everyday lives. Formal school programs, Dakota, for instance, was initially negative. In a
like the once-a-year visit to the country to “edu- survey of motorists about the program along the
cate” urban children in nature lore, do little to right-of-way, 82 percent of those interviewed said
engender or deepen knowledge of the environment, that if they had to make a choice, they preferred
or more importantly, to encourage environmental the mown plots to those that had been left unmown.
values. These are more likely to come from under- However, when they were informed that the un-
standing the places that are close to home. The mown plots provided waterfowl nesting habitats,
same principle applies to the interpretive programs many wished to change their answer.9
provided for the enlightenment of adult campers Giving meaning and significance to ordinary
in provincial parks, that explain the workings of and largely unnoticed places, whether this happens
unspoiled nature out in the woods, but totally ignore to be a suburban street, a few square feet of prairie,
the problems of water pollution, deterioration of or a representative forest landscape is the basis of
vegetation, garbage dumps, and disruption to wild- regional identity. The task of design is to encourage
life from human presence that occurs in the camp- an understanding and enjoyment of the landscape
grounds themselves. that comes from both emotional experience and
An urban waterfront on the Great Lakes, for scientific knowledge. In this way, normally over-
example, can speak to its place within the system. looked landscapes can become memorable.
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DOING AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE At another scale, it has long been an article

of faith that the designers of public landscapes
Kevin Lynch remarks, “A hunger for the control of should be able to predict human behavior, on the
large-scale form is all the more dangerous because basis, first, that behavior is indeed predictable and
it coincides with strong contemporary trends to- controllable; second, that it will not change; and third,
wards large-scale investment.”10 The pressures (that that it is a necessary measure of a designer’s com-
come from educational conditioning) to do as much petence. The isolated benches that no one sits on,
as possible in making changes to places often ap- the playgrounds that children avoid, the pathways
pears endemic to the land design disciplines. In the and pedestrian routes that no one follows, and the
absence of a basic ecological foundation on which gathering places without people bear witness to
design can rest, this is to be expected. Doing as the emptiness of that claim. William Whyte’s care-
little as possible, or economy of means, involves ful observations about what people in New York
the idea that from minimum resources and energy, actually do in city spaces has demonstrated the key
maximum environmental and social benefits are elements of design: understanding the psychology
available. The greatest diversity and identity in a of behavior (how people actually behave, what they
place, whether a regenerating field or urban wet- actually do) and how to bring in those elements
land, or a cohesive neighborhood community, often that enhance the diverse use of public space.11
comes from minimum, not maximum interference. People need to control how they use the environ
This does not mean that planning and design are ment around them, and in the process of doing so
irrelevant or unnecessary to a world that if left the designed landscape becomes a vernacular one,
alone would take care of itself. It implies, rather, responding to practical needs. As Whyte has shown,
that change can be brought about by giving direc- dynamic and interesting places can be created simply
tion, by capitalizing on the opportunities that site by locating a food-vending stand in a place where
or social trends reveal, or by setting a framework passersby can see it from the sidewalk, or by provid
from which people can create their own social and ing seats that can be moved around at will.12 Similarly, f
physical environments and where landscapes can the experience of a natural place can be enhanced i
v
flourish with health, diversity, and beauty. beyond measure by uncovering a clogged stream e
Urban street systems, for instance, provide the so that its sound can be heard, or by removing trash
overall physical framework within which neigh from a pond so that its natural beauty is revealed.
borhoods flourish and diversify. Local by-laws and In City Form and Natural Process I argued that
design requirements may enhance or inhibit the the horticultural tradition has long been the basis
social and physical complexity of a community. In for getting the least results for the most effort in
[a previous chapter] I discussed those situations money, energy, and manpower.13 Yet it is not horti
where political power seeks to impose control on culture per se that is at the root of the problem.
nature or humanity, thereby obliterating the inher- It is the lack of an ecological perspective that
ent diversity of places. The over-regulation of what permits doctrine, or expediency, or both to impose
can be done to private property has an inherent similar environments on differing places. The desire
potential to generate tedium. Compare the planned for universal solutions is strong and lends credence
shopping arcades of many new developments, to the adage that design style – those characteris-
where regulations and design dictate the style tics of a designer’s work that identify him – is in
and positioning of signs and setbacks, with the fact a series of never questioned mistakes repeated
shopping streets that have grown up in response over and over again. For instance, there is no doubt
to the needs of individual store owners. The former that the move toward natural landscapes is based
somehow lack the vitality, life, and interest of the on a genuine concern for greater variety and sus-
latter. Similarly, the formal landscaped avenues, tainability in our cities. Yet from the point of view
parks, and gardens that grace the institutional of regional identity, the inspiration for naturalization
centers of many cities and speak to their sense of can be tarred with the same brush as that which
civic pride lose their special identity as places when inspired our current “pedigree” urban landscape. It
they become universal expressions of the city’s becomes another doctrine. The designer, determined
landscape. to create alternative landscapes, finds himself tied
9780415668071_P5_02.indd 531 10-26-2012 3:22:54 PM

to “wildflower seed mixes” that are, for the most mankind.” Such a notion would seem practically
part, drawn from plants found from the prairies to to be unattainable. However, Maurice Strong, the
the east coast. The result is an international natu- Canadian member of the commission, has com-
ralized meadow replacing the international green mented on the need for countries to shed their
carpet. Inspired by the native flora and roadside narrow concepts of self interest, parochialism and,
wildflower program in Texas, commercial seed mixes in the economic field, protectionism.14 Although he
are often selected for the color and spectacle of recognizes the odds against the emergence of such
their flowers. But they are often alien to the local a world view, he sees no alternative: “The principle
region and are, consequently, taken over by native basis for optimism that the kind of changes I fore-
flora after a couple of years, which defeats the see as necessary will occur is, very simply, that
original, sustainable, low-cost objective. Only the they are necessary and therefore must occur.”15
local setting can create the kind of regional land- Irrespective of such a world view, however, the
scape that we are concerned with, and it is from principle of investment in nature, where change
here that one must draw inspiration. The natural and technological development are seen as positive
communities that are indigenous or adapted to the forces to sustain and enhance the environment,
place are those that occur with the least effort and must be the basis for an environmental design philo
with the greatest sustainability and variety. sophy. Its principles of energy and nutrient flows,
As a design principle, doing as little as possible common to all ecosystems when applied to the
implies, first, an understanding of the processes design of the human environment, provide the only
that make things work; second, providing the struc- ethical and pragmatic alternative to the future
ture that will encourage the development of diverse health of the emerging regional landscape. And this
and relevant natural or social environments; third, leads naturally to the last principle.
knowing where to intervene to create the conditions
for them to occur; and fourth, having the humility to
let natural diversity evolve on its own where it will. STARTING WHERE IT’S EASIEST
This principle, borrowed from Jane Jacobs,16 is

SUSTAINABILITY fundamental to achieving anything in a world
where the statistics of global environmental disaster
Sustainable landscapes are central to the regional are at once horrifying and numbing. Through the
imperative. Sustainability involves, among other media, the visibility of environmental issues every-
things, the notion that human activity and tech where in the world is immediate, vivid, and emo-
nological systems can contribute to the health of tionally involving. At the same time, these media
the environments and natural systems from which reports have two things in common. First, they are
they draw benefit. This involves a fundamental ac- almost inevitably out of town. They are somewhere
ceptance of investment in the productivity and else: in the diminishing rain forests of Brazil; in the
diversity of natural systems. Conflicting points of burgeoning population and desperate poverty of
view over the priorities of development versus the Africa; in the dying northern lakes of Canada and
preservation of natural wealth have been the focus Sweden that are succumbing to acid rain generated
of discussion and argument for a very long time, by polluting industries a thousand miles away. We
particularly as it affects the Third World. The World have the paradox that in a world increasingly con-
Commission on Environment and Development, cerned with deteriorating environments and explo-
established by the United Nations in 1983, and sive urban growth, there is a marked propensity to
whose report appeared in 1987, has examined and ignore the very places where most people live.
proposed ways in which economic development Second, the issues are so enormously complicated
initiatives and environmental conservation might and of such magnitude that most concerned people
be reconciled. For this to be workable would require feel helpless to do much about them.
the development of an environmental ethic far Beginning where it’s easiest, therefore, has to do
different from current attitudes and perceptions with where most people are and where one can be
that see nature as “resources for the benefit of reasonably certain of a measure of success from
9780415668071_P5_02.indd 532 10-26-2012 3:22:54 PM

efforts made, no matter how small. Successes in allowed to become part of an organic as opposed
small things can be used to make connections to to a fixed view of the planning process, the op-
other larger and more significant ones. This is, con- portunities for regional identity are enhanced. Both
sequently, an encouraging environmental principle human and nonhuman nature are fueled by similar
to follow in bringing about change. It is, in fact, the underlying processes and motivating forces. The
only practical basis for doing so. In design terms, true nature of the regional imperative has little to
the regional imperative is about the need for envir do with mega-projects or utopian dreams. It has to
onmental ideals that are firmly rooted in pragmatic do with what is, with understanding the forces that
reality. It is about focusing on things that work and make change and making the most of opportunities
that are achievable at any one point in time. It is wherever and in whatever form they may arise.
about a concerned and environmentally literate Eutopia (good place) not Utopia (no place) is the
community prepared to insure that the health and goal toward which we must strive.
quality of the places where they live are made a
reality; where the role of technology is integrated
with people, urbanism, and nature in ways that are NOTES
biologically and socially self-sustaining and mutu-
ally supportive of life systems. These are the goals 1 Cordell, Arthur J. “The Uneasy Eighties: The
for shaping a new landscape based on fundamental Transition to an Information Society,” Alterna
environmental values. tives 14, no. 3–4 (1987): 4 –7.
[ . . . ] 2 Boardman, Philip. The Worlds of Patrick Geddes.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
3 Hiss, Tony. “Experiencing Places I,” New Yorker,
SOME FINAL REFLECTIONS June 22, 1987: 45–68.
4 City of Toronto Planning Board. Natural Park
Armed with a broad environmental perspective on lands. Toronto: City of Toronto Planning Board, f
the nature of the regional imperative, design can June 1960. i
v
begin to make a contribution to establishing a 5 Hester, Randolph T. Jr. “Subconscious Landscapes e
viable contemporary landscape. It is a perspective of the Heart,” Places 2, no. 3 (1985): 10–22.
that is rooted in ecological and cultural diversity. 6 Ibid.
If we look for it, the inherent potential for diversity 7 Kerr, Don and Hanson, Stan. Saskatoon: The First
shines like a beacon through the placeless dreari- Half-Century. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1982.
ness of much contemporary urbanization. The 8 Zeidler, E.H. Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept. 5, 1987.
making of memorable places involves principles of 9 Scott, Richard. “Ecological and Cultural Process
evolving natural process and change over time. It as a Basis for Rural Freeway Right-of-Way
involves economy of means where often the less Management.” Toronto: Major Paper in Envir
one does to make purposeful change the better. It onmental Studies. York University (Dec. 1987).
involves variety and choice that evolve naturally 10 Lynch, Kevin. Managing the Sense of a Region.
through countless interactions between people and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976.
nature, providing a secure basis for ecological and 11 Whyte, William H. The Social Life of Small Urban
social health. It also has to do with understanding Spaces. Washington, D.C.: The Conservation
the nature of places as a precursor to making pur- Foundation, 1980.
poseful change, which is a far more significant act 12 Ibid.
of creativity than imposing pre-packaged solutions 13 Hough, Michael. City Form and Natural Process.
on the land. The familiar and overworked analogy New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984.
of the Eskimo carver who, staring at the stone in 14 Toronto Globe and Mail, April 18, 1987.
his hand, wonders what it is within that wants to 15 Ibid.
come out, serves to encapsulate the underlying 16 Jacobs, Jane. “Guiding Principles for Streets
philosophy of what place is about. When the carver that Work.” Energy Probe Symposium. The
recognizes what it is, he simply carves the stone Streetscape: Planning and Retrofitting as if People
to release it. Where the processes of nature are Mattered. Toronto (June 1986).
9780415668071_P5_02.indd 533 10-26-2012 3:22:54 PM

“Landscape as Urbanism”
from The Landscape Urbanism Reader (2006)
Charles Waldheim
Our current times are fraught with realities of large-scale crises occurring or looming in many environmental
realms – global warming, climate change, sea level rise, loss of animal and plant habitat, species extinction,
water scarcity, air and water pollution, waste accumulation, desertification, loss of agricultural lands, massive
human population increases. The list seems endless and the consequences of allowing these trends to con-
tinue into even the near future are predicted by many to be dire. Identifying solutions and putting them into
practice is incredibly complicated given the interconnected global scope of environmental problems and the
growth-oriented human socio-economic systems in which most people today live, which are the root cause
of the problems.
In the face of the enormous environmental crisis, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have
been rife with debate about how the design and physical planning fields can best address the ecological
issues that attend urbanization. A central debate concerns what built forms most contribute to environmental
health: compact, densely built cities or more dispersed settlement. Another debate concerns what designers’
roles can and should be in addressing environmental problems, given that their role in development processes
is somewhat limited and circumscribed because other actors in those processes, particularly developers and
investors, hold the purse strings and wield much greater decision-making power.
These debates, and others like them, have spurred the emergence of a new design approach called
Landscape Urbanism, which first crystalized into a distinct intellectual and disciplinary strategy at the 1997
Landscape Urbanism symposium and exhibition held in Chicago that was organized by Charles Waldheim,
who coined the term. The Landscape Urbanism Reader (2006), which is edited by Charles Waldheim and
grew out of the symposium, is a collection of essays by the movement’s leading theorists and practitioners.
Waldheim’s seminal essay “Landscape as Urbanism,” reprinted here, defines the rationales, interests, purposes,
methods, and scope of the Landscape Urbanism movement.
Landscape Urbanism identifies the contemporary city as decentralized, horizontal urbanism (meaning low
scale and low density), characterized by rapid change and successive abandonment of developed land, in
other words urban sprawl. Adherents view the urbanization processes that are creating such cities as embed-
ded in natural processes, and so focus on identifying opportunities for ecologically responsive design within
the urbanized places that result rather than seeking to shape a different kind of urbanization. The first premise
is that landscape, often vast in scale, rather than densely built architectural form is the new organizing element
of the contemporary city, hence the joining of the seemingly opposite terms “landscape” and “urbanism.”
Whereas for many, “landscape” conjures images of bucolic, natural or natural-looking open spaces and “urban”
evokes images of tightly built places and bustling human activity, Landscape Urbanists use the term “land-
scape” to mean places shaped by human occupation. The focus of interest is on abandoned “brownfield”
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 534 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

“ L a N D S ca P E a S U R B a N i S M ” 535
sites in inner cities and city peripheries, often former industrial areas, on interstitial spaces between buildings,
and on pieces of infrastructure, such as freeways, highways and rail corridors. The method for design begins
with a McHargian regional-scale ecological analysis (p. 519) combined with an analysis of human interven-
tions, such as infrastructure and habitation. This layered analysis then forms the basis for re-design and re-use
proposals aimed at transforming despoiled and fragmented spaces into something new. Citing ecological
theory, design responses stress open-endedness, indeterminacy, and flexibility. Rather than creating master
plans where design and use is fixed Landscape Urbanists create structuring framework plans that set key
public realm and development criteria but allow the fleshing out of design specifics over time by multiple
development actors responding to changing economic conditions.
Critics of Landscape Urbanism argue that it shies away from addressing the most difficult environmental
issues, such as whether or not urbanization should happen in particular places. As well, the emphasis on built
landscape infrastructure is faulted because of its reliance on technological rather than natural fixes for envir
onmental problems.
A new idea called Ecological Urbanism is currently coalescing as both an extension of Landscape Urban-
ism and a critique of it. The key principles of Ecological Urbanism were framed at the 2009 Ecological Urbanism
conference at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. It is postulated as a broader conceptual design approach
that sheds the dependence on landscape and the disciplinary baggage that goes with the term, and focuses
on the city as an ecological construct whose sustainability can be addressed through design and architectural
proposals at a range of scales.
Charles Waldheim is Professor and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate
School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University. He was formerly Associate Dean and Director of the Landscape
Architecture program at the University of Toronto, and prior to that taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago
and the University of Michigan. He earned a Master of Architecture (1989) from the University of Pennsylvania
and he has practiced architecture and landscape architecture for over 25 years, most recently as a principal
of the firm Urban Agency. f
Waldheim’s other books include three edited anthologies: Chicago Architecture and Urbanism: Histories, i
v
Revisions, Alternatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), co-edited with Katerina Rūedi Ray; e
Lafayette Park Detroit (Cambridge/Munich: Harvard University/Prestel, 2004) and Stalking Detroit (Barcelona:
ACTR, 2001) co-edited with Georgia Daskalakis and Jason Young; and two monographs: Post-Fordist Pub-
lic Works: Landscape Urbanism Strategies for Milwaukee’s Tower Automotive Site (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Graduate School of Design, 2006) and Constructed Ground: The Millennium Garden Design
Competition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press/Chicago Cultural Center, 2001). Waldheim has
also authored several chapters in books, including “Motor City” in Shaping the City: Case Studies in Urban
History, Theory and Design, ed. Rodolphe el-Khoury and Edward Robbins (London: Routledge, 2003) and
“Aerial Representation and the Recovery of Landscape” in Recovering Landscape, ed. James Corner (New
York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999).
Waldheim credits the work of Ian McHarg, James Corner, Kenneth Frampton, Peter Rowe, and Rem Kool-
haas as providing inspiration for Landscape Urbanism. The most relevant writings of these theorists are Ian
McHarg (p. 544); Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); James
Corner’s Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1999); Kenneth Frampton’s “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architec-
ture of Resistance,” in The Anti-Aesthetic (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1983) edited by Hal Foster, and “Toward
an Urban Landscape” in Columbia Documents (New York: Columbia University, 1995); and Peter Rowe,
Making a Middle Landscape (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
The other essays contained in The Landscape Urbanism Reader flesh out the initial thinking about the
movement’s concerns, scope, and practice applications. Key essays include James Corner’s “Terra Fluxus,”
which describes the intellectual and practice underpinnings of Landscape Urbanism, and Alan Berger’s
“Drosscape” which conceptualizes strategies for addressing the abandoned landscapes that result from de-
industrialization processes (see pp. 544–557). Other contemporaneous books that address emerging Landscape
Urbanism ideas include David Grahame Shane’s Recombinant Urbanism (London: John Wiley, 2005) and
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 535 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

536 C ha R l E S W al D h E i M
Mohsen Mostafavi and Najle Ciro’s Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (London:
Architectural Association, 2003).
The recently published text Ecological Urbanism (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2010), edited by Mohsen
Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty, contains a series of essays developed from the 2009 Ecological Urbanism
conference that describe the dimensions of this new school of thought.
Over the past decade landscape has emerged as a activate space and produce urban effects without
model for contemporary urbanism, one uniquely the weighty apparatus of traditional space making.1
capable of describing the conditions for radically
decentralized urbanization, especially in the context This efficiency – the ability to produce urban effects
of complex natural environments. Over that same traditionally achieved through the construction
decade the landscape discipline has enjoyed a of buildings simply through the organization of
period of intellectual and cultural renewal. While horizontal surfaces – recommends the landscape
much of the landscape discipline’s renewed rele- medium for use in contemporary urban conditions
vance to discussions of the city may be attributed increasingly characterized by horizontal sprawl
to this renewal or to increased environmental aware and rapid change. In the context of decentralization
ness more generally, landscape has improbably and decreasing density, the “weighty apparatus” of
emerged as the most relevant disciplinary locus traditional urban design proves costly, slow, and
for discussions historically housed in architecture, inflexible in relation to the rapidly transforming
urban design, or planning. conditions of contemporary urban culture.
Many of the conceptual categories and projec- The idea of landscape as a model for urbanism
tive practices embodied in landscape urbanism and has also been articulated by landscape architect
documented in this publication arise from outside James Corner, who argues that only through a syn-
those disciplines traditionally responsible for de- thetic and imaginative reordering of categories in
scribing the city. As such, landscape urbanism offers the built environment might we escape our present
an implicit critique of architecture and urban design’s predicament in the cul-de-sac of post-industrial
inability to offer coherent, competent, and convinc- modernity, and “the bureaucratic and uninspired
ing explanations of contemporary urban conditions. failings” of the planning profession.2 His work
In this context, the discourse surrounding landscape critiques much of what landscape architecture has
urbanism can be read as a disciplinary realignment become as a professional concern in recent years
in which landscape supplants architecture’s his- – especially its tendency to provide scenographic
torical role as the basic building block of urban screening for environments engineered and instru-
design. Across a range of disciplines, many authors mentalized by other disciplines.3 For Corner, the
have articulated this newfound relevance of land- narrow agenda of ecological advocacy that many
scape in describing the temporal mutability and landscape architects profess to is nothing more
horizontal extensivity of the contemporary city. than a rear-guard defense of a supposedly auto
Among the authors making claims for the potential nomous “nature” conceived to exist a priori, outside
of landscape in this regard is architect and educa- of human agency or cultural construction. In this
tor Stan Allen, Dean of the School of Architecture context, current-day environmentalism and past
at Princeton University: oral ideas of landscape appear to Corner, and many
others, as naïve or irrelevant in the face of global
Increasingly, landscape is emerging as a model urbanization.4
for urbanism. Landscape has traditionally been Landscape urbanism benefits from the canonical
defined as the art of organizing horizontal sur- texts of regional environmental planning, from the
faces . . . By paying close attention to these work of Patrick Geddes and Benton MacKaye to
surface conditions – not only configuration, but Lewis Mumford to Ian McHarg, yet it also remains
also materiality and performance – designers can distinct from that tradition.5 Corner acknowledges
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 536 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

the historical importance of McHarg’s influential multiple audiences or to commodify architectural

Design with Nature yet, himself a student and images for diversifying consumer markets. But
faculty colleague of McHarg’s at the University of this dependence upon sympathetically styled and
Pennsylvania, rejects the opposition of nature and spatially sequenced architectural objects could
city implied in McHarg’s regionally scaled environ- not be sustained, given the rise of mobile capital,
mental planning practice.6 automobile culture, and decentralization. And yet the
The origins of landscape urbanism can be traced very indeterminacy and flux of the contemporary
to postmodern critiques of modernist architecture city, the bane of traditional European citymaking,
and planning.7 These critiques, put forth by Charles are precisely those qualities explored in emergent
Jencks and other proponents of postmodern archi- works of landscape urbanism. This point is perhaps
tectural culture, indicted modernism for its inability best exemplified in Barcelona’s program of public
to produce a “meaningful” or “livable” public realm,8 space and building projects in the 1980s and early
for its failure to come to terms with the city as an ’90s, which focused primarily on the traditional
historical construction of collective consciousness,9 center of the Catalan capital. Today the push in
and for its inability to communicate with multiple Barcelona to redevelop the airport, logistical zone,
audiences.10 In fact, the “death of modern architec industrial waterfront, metropolitan riverways, and
ture,” as proclaimed by Jencks in 1977, coincided water-treatment facilities has less to do with build-
with a crisis of industrial economy in the United ings and plazas than with large-scale infrastructural
States, marking a shift toward the diversification landscapes. These examples, along with recent
of consumer markets.11 What postmodern archi- work in the Netherlands, reveal the role of large-
tecture’s scenographic approach did not, in fact scale landscape as an element of urban infra
could not, address were the structural conditions structure. Of course many traditional examples of
of industrialized modernity that tended toward the nineteenth century urban landscape architecture
decentralization of urban form. This decentraliza- integrate landscape with infrastructure – Olmsted’s
tion continues apace today in North America, remark Central Park in New York and Back Bay Fens in f
ably indifferent to the superficial stylistic oscillations Boston serve as canonical examples. Contrasting i
v
of architectural culture. this tradition, contemporary practices of landscape e
In the wake of the social and environmental urbanism reject the camouflaging of ecological
disasters of industrialization, postmodern architec- systems within pastoral images of “nature.” Rather,
ture retreated to the comforting forms of nostalgia contemporary landscape urbanism practices recom-
and seemingly stable, secure, and more perman mend the use of infrastructural systems and the
ent forms of urban arrangement. Citing European public landscapes they engender as the very order-
precedents for traditional city form, postmodern ing mechanisms of the urban field itself, shaping
architects practiced a kind of preemptive cultural and shifting the organization of urban settlement and
regression, designing individual buildings to invoke its inevitably indeterminate economic, political, and
an absent context, as if neighborly architectural social futures.
character could contravene a century of industrial Landscape is a medium, it has been recalled
economy. The rise of the urban design discipline by Corner, Allen, and others, uniquely capable of
in the 1970s and ’80s extended interest in the ag- responding to temporal change, transformation,
gregation of architectural elements into ensembles adaptation, and succession. These qualities recom-
of nostalgic urban consumption. During this same mend landscape as an analog to contemporary
time, the discipline of city planning abdicated al- processes of urbanization and as a medium uniquely
together, seeking refuge in the relatively ineffectual suited to the open-endedness, indeterminacy, and
enclaves of policy, procedure, and public therapy.12 change demanded by contemporary urban con
The postmodern rappelle a l’ordre indicted ditions. As Allen puts it, “landscape is not only a
modernism for devaluing the traditional urban val- formal model for urbanism today, but perhaps more
ues of pedestrian scale, street grid continuity, and importantly, a model for process.”13
contextual architectural character. As has been well Tellingly, the first projects to reveal this potential
documented, the post modern impulse can be equ for landscape to operate as a model for urban pro-
ally understood as a desire to communicate with cess were produced not in North America but rather
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in Europe. Among the first projects to orchestrate did any properly address the fact that the organ
urban program as a landscape process was the 1982 ization of functions and events was as much
Competition for Parc de la Villette. In 1982, la an architectural concern as the elaboration of
Villette invited submissions for an “Urban Park forms or styles.15
for the 21st Century” over a 125-acre site, once
the site of Paris’s largest slaughterhouse. The de- Equally significant was the influence of the second-
molition of the Parisian abattoir and its replacement prize entry submitted by the Office at Metropolitan
with intensively programmed public activities is Architecture and Rem Koolhaas. The unbuilt
precisely the kind of project increasingly under- scheme explored the juxtaposition of unplanned
taken in post-industrial cities across the globe. relationships between various park programs. Kool-
Just as more recent design competitions in North haas’s organizational conceit of parallel strips of
America such as Downsview and Fresh Kills, la landscape, itself having become something of a
Villette proposed landscape as the basic framework canonical cliché, radically juxtaposed irreconcilable
for an urban transformation of what had been a contents, invoking the vertical juxtaposition of various
part of the working city, left derelict by shifts in programs on adjacent floors of Manhattan sky-
economies of production and consumption. The scrapers as described in Koolhaas’s Delirious New
competition for la Villette began a trajectory of York.16 As conceived by Koolhaas/OMA, the infra-
postmodern urban park, in which landscape was structure of the park would be strategically organ
itself conceived as a complex medium capable of ized to support an indeterminate and unknowable
articulating relations between urban infrastruc range of future uses over time:
ture, public events, and indeterminate urban futures
for large post-industrial sites, rather than simply [I]t is safe to predict that during the life of the
as healthful exceptions to the unhealthy city that park, the program will undergo constant change
surrounded them.14 and adjustment. The more the park works, the
Four hundred and seventy entries from over 70 more it will be in a perpetual state of revi-
countries were submitted for la Villette, the vast sion. . . . The underlying principle of program-
majority of which retraced familiar profiles for matic indeterminacy as a basis of the formal
public parks and typologies for the recovery of the concept allows any shift, modification, replace-
traditional city, while two submissions clearly sig- ment, or substitutions to occur without damag-
naled a paradigm shift still underway in the recon- ing the initial hypothesis.17
ception of contemporary urbanism. The winning
scheme, by the office of Bernard Tschumi, repre- Through their deployment of postmodern ideas of
sented a conceptual leap in the development of open-endedness and indeterminacy, Tschumi’s and
landscape urbanism; it formulated landscape as the Koolhaas’s projects for Parc de la Villette signaled
most suitable medium through which to order pro- the role that landscape would come to play as a
grammatic and social change over time, especially medium through which to articulate a postmodern
complex evolving arrangements of urban activities. urbanism: layered, non-hierarchical, flexible, and
This continued Tschumi’s longstanding interest in strategic. Both schemes offered a nascent form
reconstituting event and program as a legitimate of landscape urbanism, constructing a horizontal
architectural concern in lieu of the stylistic issues field of infrastructure that might accommodate all
dominating architectural discourse in the post sorts of urban activities, planned and unplanned,
modern era, as he stated in his competition entry: imagined and unimagined, over time.
In the wake of la Villette’s influence, architec-
The ’70s witnessed a period of renewed interest tural culture has become increasingly aware of
in the formal constitution of the city, its typo landscape’s role as a viable framework for the
logies and its morphologies. While developing contemporary city. Across a diverse spectrum of
analyses focused on the history of the city, this cultural positions landscape has emerged as the most
attention was largely devoid of programmatic relevant medium through which to construct a
justification. No analysis addressed the issue of meaningful and viable public realm in North American
the activities that were to occur in the city. Nor cities. Consider how the thinking of architectural
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 538 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

historian and theorist Kenneth Frampton has shifted come to occupy curiously convergent positions,
in recent years. In the 1980s, Frampton lamented concurring on the fact that landscape had sup-
the impediments to making meaningful urban form planted architecture’s role as the medium most
given the power of speculative capital and the rise capable of ordering contemporary urbanism. As
of automobile culture: Koolhaas put it in 1998: “Architecture is no longer
the primary element of urban order, increasingly
Modern building is now so universally condi- urban order is given by a thin horizontal vegetal
tioned by optimized technology that the possibil- plane, increasingly landscape is the primary
ity of creating significant urban form has become element of urban order.”20
extremely limited. The restrictions jointly im- Arguably a third significant cultural position, a
posed by automotive distribution and the realpolitik of laissez faire economic development
volatile play of land speculation serve to limit and public-private partnerships in planning pro-
the scope of urban design to such a degree that cesses, is articulated by Peter Rowe in Making a
any intervention tends to be reduced either to Middle Landscape.21 Interestingly, Rowe’s conclu-
the manipulation of elements predetermined by sions are not dissimilar; he advocates a critical
the imperatives of production, or to a kind of role for the design disciplines in the making of a
superficial masking which modern development meaningful public realm in the exurban “middle”
requires for the facilitation of marketing and the between traditional city center and greenfield
maintenance of social control.18 suburb beyond. Rowe’s position is summarized
by Frampton, who identifies two salient points:
Against the forces of “optimized technology,” Framp “first, that priority should now be accorded to land-
ton argued for an architecture of “resistance.” Dur- scape, rather than to freestanding built form and
ing the following decade, however, Frampton’s call second, that there is a pressing need to transform
for architecture as an instrument of local resistance certain megalopolitan types such as shopping malls,
to global culture gave way to a more subtly shaded parking lots, and office parks into landscaped built f
position that concedes the unique role of landscape forms.”22 i
v
in providing a modicum of market-based urban If landscape urbanism offers strategies for de- e
order. In this later formulation, landscape rather sign, it also provides a cultural category – a lens
than object formalism affords the greater (albeit through which to see and describe the contemp
still slim) prospect of constructing meaningful rela- orary city, many of which, absent intervention by
tions within the detritus of market production: designers and without the benefit of planning, have
been found to emulate natural systems. Again, the
The dystopia of the megalopolis is already work of Koolhaas is notable, but not exceptional.23
an irreversible historical fact: it has long since The clearest example of this tendency can be found
installed a new way of life, not to say a new in Koolhaas’s essay on Atlanta:
nature . . . I would submit that instead we need
to conceive of a remedial landscape that is cap Atlanta does not have the classical symptoms
able of playing a critical and compensatory role of the city; it is not dense; it is a sparse, thin
in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodifi carpet of habitation, a kind of suprematist com-
cation of the man-made world.19 position of little fields. Its strongest contextual
givens are vegetal and infrastructural: forests
To invoke Frampton and Koolhaas together is and roads. Atlanta is not a city; it is a landscape.24
perhaps curious, for Frampton’s interest in local cul
tural resistance to globalization could not be further The tendency to view the contemporary city
afield from Koolhaas’s project of engagement with through the lens of landscape is most evident in
the very mechanisms of global capital. Indeed projects and texts which appropriate the terms,
Koolhaas’s practice of spinning a neo-avant gardist conceptual categories, and operating methodologies
position from the working of global brands is by of field ecology: that is, the study of species as
now familiar. Despite their divergent cultural poli- they relate to their natural environments.25 This
tics, by the mid ’90s, Koolhaas and Frampton had reveals one of the implicit advantages of landscape
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 539 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

urbanism: the conflation, integration, and fluid The efficacy of landscape as a remediating practice
exchange between (natural) environmental and – a salve for the wounds of the industrial age – is
(engineered) infrastructural systems. evident in the work of many contemporary land-
While this newfound relevance for landscape scape architects. Projects by Peter Latz at Duisburg
in conceptions of urbanism first manifested itself Nord Steelworks Park in Germany and Richard
in the work of architects, it has been quickly cor- Haag at Gas Works Park in Seattle, are useful illus
roborated from within the profession of landscape trations of this tendency. Many landscape architects
architecture itself. Though still largely marginalized have taken up this work for brownfield sites in
by the dominant culture of mainstream landscape North America as the body of technical knowledge,
architecture, it is increasingly seen as a viable as- modes of practice, and availability of funding have
pect of the profession’s future in much of the increased in recent years. Projects by Hargreaves
academy and for a variety of progressive profes- Associates, Corner/Field Operations, and Julie
sional practices. This is possible in part given the Bargmann’s DIRT Studio are representative here,
critical reassessment that landscape architecture among others. Another key strategy of landscape
is presently enjoying, in many ways analogous to urbanism is the integration of transportation infra-
the transformations within architectural culture with structure into public space. This is exemplified by
the rise of postmodernism. In fact, it is perfectly Barcelona’s program of public space and peripheral
reasonable to understand the recent renaissance road improvements, including projects such as
of landscape discourse as the impact of postmodern Trinitat Cloverleaf Park by Enric Batlle and Joan
thought on the field. Roig, among others. While this genre of work – the
As the discipline of landscape architecture use of landscape in the stitching of infrastructure
is examining its own historical and theoretical into urban fabrics – has well-established precedents,
underpinnings, the general public is increasingly the Barcelona peripheral roadwork is distinct. It
conscious of environmental issues, and thus more offers public parks conceived and constructed
aware of landscape as a cultural category. Simul simultaneously with the public conveyance of the
taneously many landscape architecture practices highway, subtly inflecting its design away from an
in North America have become proficient in profes- optimized artifact of civil engineering toward a
sional activities that were once the domain of urban more complex synthesis of requirements, in which
planners. This has allowed landscape architects to neither civil engineering nor landscape dominate.
fill a professional void, as planning has largely opted One of the more outspoken proponents of land-
out of responsibility for proposing physical designs. scape as urbanism is Adriaan Geuze, principal of
Landscape architects have also been increasingly West 8 Landscape Architects, based in Rotterdam.
involved in work for both post-industrial sites and West 8 has worked on projects at various scales,
the easements of various infrastructural systems such articulating multiple roles for landscape in the shap-
as electrical, water, and highway systems. As Austra ing of contemporary urbanism.27 Several of these
lian landscape architect Richard Weller describes have imaginatively reordered relationships between
the landscape profession’s newfound relevance: ecology and infrastructure, deemphasizing the middle
scale of decorative or architectural work and favor-
Postmodern landscape architecture has done a ing instead the large-scale infrastructural diagram
boom trade in cleaning up after modern infra- and the small-scale material condition.
structure as societies – in the first world at least West 8’s Shell Project, for instance, organizes dark
– shift from primary industry to post industrial, and light mussel shells and the corresponding flocks
information societies. In common landscape of similarly shaded dark and light birds naturally
practice, work is more often than not conducted adapted to feed from them. These surfaces form
in the shadow of the infrastructural object, which parallel strips of shoulders along the highway con-
is given priority over the field into which it is to necting the constructed islands of the East Scheldt
be inserted. However, as any landscape architect stormtide barrier. This project organizes an ecology
knows, the landscape itself is a medium through of natural selection and renders it for public per-
which all ecological transactions must pass: it is ception via the automobile. By contrast, historical
the infrastructure of the future.26 precedents for urban parkways typically reproduce
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 540 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

a pastoral image of “nature” without intervening Allen) and Fresh Kills are exemplary in this regard,
in their ecological surroundings in any substantial illustrating mature works of landscape urbanism
way. Likewise, West 8’s ambitious scheme for the through their accumulation and orchestration of
Schiphol Amsterdam Airport Landscape abandons absolutely diverse and potentially incongruous con-
the professional tradition of specifically detailed tents. Typical of this work, and by now standard
planting plans, deploying instead a general botan- fare for projects of this type, are detailed diagrams
ical strategy of sunflowers, clover, and beehives. of phasing, animal habitats, succession planting,
This work, by avoiding intricate compositional de- and hydrological systems, as well as programmatic
signs and precise planting arrangements, allows the and planning regimes. While these diagrams initially
project to respond to future programmatic and overwhelm with information, they present an under
political changes in Schiphol’s planning, positioning standing of the enormous complexities confronting
landscape as a strategic partner in the complex any work at this scale. Particularly compelling is
process of airport planning rather than (as is the complex interweaving of natural ecologies with
usually the case) simply an unfortunate victim of the social, cultural, and infrastructural layers of the
it. Another example of landscape urbanism as a contemporary city.
professional framework is West 8’s redevelopment While both Koolhaas/OMA (in partnership
plan for Borneo and Sporenburg in Amsterdam with designer Bruce Mau) and Tschumi submitted
Harbor. The planning and design of this large-scale entries as finalists at Downsview, they found their
redevelopment is conceived as an enormous land- historical fortunes reversed, more or less precisely.
scape urbanism project, orchestrated by West 8, The imageable and media friendly Mau and Koolhaas/
into which the work of numerous other architects OMA scheme “Tree City” was awarded first prize
and designers is inserted. The project suggests the and the commission; while the more sublime,
potential diversity of landscape urbanist strategies layered, and intellectually challenging scheme of
through the insertion of numerous small landscaped the office of Bernard Tschumi will doubtless enjoy
courts and yards, and the commissioning of numer- greater influence within architectural culture, f
ous designers for individual housing units. Taken particularly as the information age transforms our i
v
together, the range of West 8’s recent production understandings and limits of the “natural.” Tschumi’s e
illustrates the potential for landscape architec “The Digital and the Coyote” project for Downsview
ture to supplant architecture, urban design, and presented an electronic analog to his longstanding
urban planning as design disciplines responsible for interest in urban event, with richly detailed dia-
reordering post-industrial urban sites. grams of succession planting and the seeding of
Several recent international design competitions ambient urbanity in the midst of seemingly desolate
for the reuse of enormously scaled industrial sites prairies. Tschumi’s position at Downsview is sym-
in North American cities have used landscape as metrical with his original thesis for la Villette. Both
their primary medium. Downsview Park, located projects were based on a fundamental indictment
on the site of an underutilized military airbase in of the nineteenth-century Olmstedian model, offer
Toronto, and Fresh Kills, on the site of the world’s ing in its place an understanding of landscape
largest landfill on Staten Island, New York, are rep- conflated with a pervasive and ubiquitous urbanism.
resentative of these trends and offer the most fully As Tschumi put it in his project statement for
formed examples of landscape urbanism practices Downsview:
to date applied to the detritus of the industrial city.28
While significant distinctions exist between these Neither theme park or wildlife preserve, Downs
two commissions, as do questions regarding their view does not seek to renew using the conven-
eventual realization, the body of work produced tions of traditional park compositions such as
for Downsview and Fresh Kills represents an emerg- those of Vaux or Olmsted. The combination of
ing consensus that designers of the built environ- advanced military technologies with water courses
ment, across disciplines, would do well to examine and flows and downstreams suggests another
landscape as the medium through which to con- fluid, liquid, digital sensibility. Airstrips, informa-
ceive the renovation of the post-industrial city. tion centers, public performance spaces, internet
James Corner’s projects for Downsview (with Stan and worldwide web access all point to a redefinition
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 541 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

of received ideas about parks, nature, and 3 Corner, Recovering Landscape, 1–26.
recreation, in a 21st century setting where 4 One marker of a generational divide between
everything is “urban,” even in the middle of advocacy and instrumentalization has been the
the wilderness.29 recent emergence of complex and culturally
derived understanding of natural systems. An
The Downsview and Fresh Kills projects are no- example of this can be found in the shift from
table for the presence of landscape architects on pictorial to operational in landscape discourse
interdisciplinary teams of consultants, whereas the that has been the subject of much recent work.
la Villette competition named a single lead architect See for example James Corner, “Eidetic Oper
to orchestrate the entire project. Striking and con- ations and New Landscapes,” in Recovering
sistent in this regard are the central involvement Landscape, 153–69. Also useful on this topic
of ecologists as well as information or communica- is Julia Czerniak, “Challenging the Pictorial:
tion designers on virtually all teams. This is clearly Recent Landscape Practice,” in Assemblage
distinct from the overarching role of architects in 34 (December 1997): 110–20.
previous regimes of urban design and planning, 5 Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City,
where these concerns were either absent altogether N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1969). For an overview
(ecology) or simply subsumed within the profes- of Mumford’s work, see Mark Luccarelli, Lewis
sional practice of the architect (information design). Mumford and the Ecological Region: The Politics
While it remains unclear if either of the winning of Planning (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).
schemes by Mau and Koolhaas/OMA for Downs 6 See Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” in Charles Wald-
view and Corner and Allen/Field Operations for heim, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader
Fresh Kills will be fully realized, we must see this (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006).
as a challenge of political imagination and cultural 7 Early critiques of modernist architecture and
leadership rather than as a failure of the competition urban planning ranged from the populist Jane
processes or the projects they premiated. These Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities
projects and the work of their competitors, taken (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), to the profes-
collectively, point to transformations currently under sional Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contra
way which are profoundly changing the disciplinary diction in Architecture (New York: Museum of
and professional assumptions behind the design of Modern Art, 1966).
the built environment. Particularly evident is the fact 8 Kevin Lynch, A Theory of Good City Form
that projects of this scale and significance demand (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981). Also see
professional expertise at the intersections of ecology Lynch’s earlier empirical research in Image of
and engineering, social policy and political process. the City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960).
The synthesis of this range of knowledge and its 9 The most significant of these critiques was Aldo
embodiment in public design processes recommend Rossi. See Rossi, The Architecture of the City
landscape urbanism as a disciplinary framework for (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982).
reconceiving the contemporary urban field. 10 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown’s work
is indicative of these interests. See Venturi,
Scott-Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning From
NOTES Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architec
tural Form (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977).
1 Stan Allen, “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D,” in 11 Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern
Hashim Sarkis, ed., CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977). On Ford-
Hospital (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 124. ism and its relation to postmodern architecture:
2 See James Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” in Charles see Patrik Schumacher and Christian Rogner,
Waldheim, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, “After Ford,” in Georgia Daskalakis, Charles
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). Waldheim, and Jason Young, eds., Stalking
See also James Corner, ed., Recovering Land Detroit (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2001), 48–56.
scape (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 12 Harvard University’s Urban Design Program
1999). began in 1960, and the discipline grew in
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 542 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

popularity with increased enrollments, increased 24 Rem Koolhaas, “Atlanta,” S, M, L, XL (New York:
numbers of degrees conferred and the addition of Monacelli, 1999), 835.
new degree programs during the 1970s and ’80s. 25 Among the sources of this material of interest
13 Allen, “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D,” 125. to architects and landscape architects is field
14 For contemporaneous critical commentary on ecologist Richard T.T. Forman. See Wenche E.
la Villette, see Anthony Vidler, “Trick-Track,” Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T.
La Case Vide: La Villette (London: Architectural Forman, Landscape Ecology Principles in Land
Association, 1985), and Jacques Derrida, “Point scape Architecture and Land-use Planning (Cam-
de Folie-Maintenant l’architecture,” AA Files bridge, Mass. and Washington, D.C.: Harvard
12 (Summer 1986): 65–75. University and Island Press, 1996).
15 Bernard Tschumi, La Villette Competition 26 Richard Weller, “Landscape Architecture and
Entry, “The La Villette Competition,” Princeton the City Now,” unpublished manuscript based
Journal vol. 2, “On Landscape” (1985): 200–10. on “Toward an Art of Infrastructure in the
16 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Theory and Practice of Contemporary Land-
Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Oxford scape Architecture,” keynote address, MESH
University Press, 1978). Conference, Royal Melbourne Institute of Tech-
17 Rem Koolhaas, “Congestion without Matter,” nology, Melbourne, Australia, July 9, 2001.
S, M, L, XL (New York: Monacelli, 1999), 921. 27 On the work of Adriaan Geuze/West 8 see,
18 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Region- “West 8 Landscape Architects,” in Het Land
alism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resist schap/The Landscape: Four International Land
ance,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic scape Designers (Antwerpen: deSingel, 1995),
(Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 17. 215–53, and Luca Molinari, ed., West 8 (Milan:
19 Kenneth Frampton, “Toward an Urban Land- Skira, 2000).
scape,” Columbia Documents (New York: Columbia 28 Downsview and Fresh Kills have been the
University, 1995), 89, 92. subject of extensive documentation, including f
20 Rem Koolhaas, “IIT Student Center Competi- essays in Praxis, no. 4, Landscapes (2002). For i
v
tion Address,” Illinois Institute of Technology, additional information see Julia Czerniak, ed., e
College of Architecture, Chicago, March 5, 1998. CASE: Downsview Park Toronto (Cambridge,
21 Peter Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape Mass./Munich: Harvard/Prestel, 2001), and
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). Charles Waldheim, “Park=City? The Downs-
22 Kenneth Frampton, “Toward an Urban Land- view Park Competition,” in Landscape Architec
scape,” 83–93. ture Magazine vol. 91, no. 3 (March 2001):
23 Among these see, for example, Lars Lerup, 80–85, 98–99.
“Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metropolis,” 29 Bernard Tschumi, “Downsview Park: The Digital
After the City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, and the Coyote,” in Czerniak, ed., CASE: Downs
2000), 47–61. view Park Toronto, 82–89.
9780415668071_P5_03.indd 543 10-26-2012 3:22:48 PM

“Discourses for Landscape and
Urbanization,” “The Production
of Waste Landscape,” and
“Drosscape Explained”
from Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (2006)
Alan Berger
As global restructuring continues, what gets left behind are deindustrialized wastelands: brownfields, unpur-
posed interstitial spaces, demographic contraction, detritus/pollution/contamination, and by-passed places. In
his manifesto-like book Drosscape, Alan Berger suggests these wasted places accumulate as once-thriving
industrial areas begin to hollow out with the evolution of manufacturing processes and the changing loca-
tions of production. In some instances “dross” is the result of companies and institutions that leave behind
their obsolete facilities; or perhaps they undertook cost-cutting/profit-maximization by abandoning the country,
their sites, and employees for less expensive labor and resources overseas. At other times, dross can be
caused by leapfrogged interstitial space as a result of horizontal urbanization and sprawl. The scale of these
wastelands is immense, becoming a norm in some regions by-passed by the global or local economy – or
conversely as a result of poor physical planning oversight. They can be found both within the inner-core of
deindustrializing cities and on the periphery of sprawling megapolitan areas. One need think only of the vast
expanses of decline in rustbelt places like Detroit, Philadelphia, or Cleveland to understand what Berger is onto
here (not to mention the industrial wastelands of Europe, or the post-colonial traces of industry in the global
south). Photographs of abandoned military facilities and decaying factories in the book help us to understand
the huge scale and “common” condition of these wastelands we pass on an everyday basis – but rarely see.
Early in the writing, Berger problematizes the term “post-industrial” by suggesting that sites of production
are never static in urban areas, but always changing. Abandoning use of the term might be a first step in
appreciating the realities of constant economic dynamism; but might also help in reconceptualizing dross sites
and valuing them differently. As such, dross becomes a naturally occurring phenomenon of most industrial
evolution and a signpost of capitalist creative destruction, as suggested by Schumpeter. Waste becomes an
expected by-product of industrial process – waste sites happen. The question becomes: what to do with
them?
Drosscape helps to identify the problematics of wasteland reclamation and proposes a way forward for
planners and designers to begin repurposing, reusing, and infilling these waste landscapes – or conversely
“landscraping” that might help in speeding up their return to what might be perceived as nature. The term
“drosscape” (coined by Berger himself) becomes an attitude about redesign and repurposing – which requires
a physical resurfacing (a “scaping”) of the waste site. At the end of the book he begins to define the term as
“a design pedagogy that emphasizes the productive integration and reuse of waste landscapes throughout
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 544 10-26-2012 3:22:44 PM

E dito R s ’ I N t R od U ctio N 545
the urban world.” Methodological and operational implications that might convert “dross” into “drosscape” are
offered by Berger as new theory and practice in landscape analysis and design. What becomes difficult for
the reader is the open-endedness and scale of undertaking in these wasteland conversions. What become
the challenge in practice for planners and designers are the lack of paying clients, lack of strategic design
program, and snail’s pace of the evolutionary time frame. In “drosscape” production then, planners and de-
signers take on new roles as facilitators, collaborators, spokespersons, and mid-wives. Interestingly, this
open-ended lack of program is the modus operandi of many design studios in academia – forcing young
designers into hypothetical propositions that at times can be infuriating for their lack of real-world application
– and at other times can provide the opportunity for design innovation beyond pragmatic expectation. Match-
ing real-world solutions and innovation to these wastelands is the next challenge for a task that seems so
unbelievably overwhelming.
This text was published contemporaneously as a shorter essay of the same name that appeared in the
The Landscape Urbanism Reader edited by Charles Waldheim and published by Princeton Architectural Press
in 2006. Many tendencies of the Landscape Urbanism movement can be found in Drosscape, including: the
temporal nature of landscape and ecological processes, new methods of practice, the possibility of imagined
futures, and design as resistance. What becomes refreshing about this piece is its understanding of the role
of land and economy in urbanization and ecology. However at the same time, it avoids any substantive pre-
scription about how landscape urbanism (or the “big four” – architecture, landscape architecture, planning,
urban design) might begin reconciling their shortcomings in dross response. In his shorter essay version of
Drosscape, Berger begins to suggest ways of doing this: by designers shifting attention from small-scale site
design projects to larger regional landscape concerns; by de-prioritizing traditional place-making because of
its inability to address big picture challenges; and by finding new ground for landscape urbanism that is not
already claimed by the “big four.” While few would disagree with these recommendations (there are plenty
of challenges for everyone, after all), some traditionalists find them to be a direct attack on their values and
priorities. f
Alan Berger is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at the Massachusetts i
v
Institute of Technology and Director of P-REX (the Project for Reclamation Excellence), a multi-disciplinary e
research effort focusing on the design and reuse of waste landscapes worldwide. His work emphasizes the
link between our consumption of natural resources and the waste and destruction of landscape, to help instruct
people in reusing waste landscapes for productive use. His other books include: Reclaiming the American
West (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002); Nansha Coastal City: Landscape and Urbanism in
the Pearl River Delta (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University GSD, 2006); Designing the Reclaimed Landscape
(Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2008); and Systemic Design Can Change the World (Amsterdam/San Francisco:
Sun Architecture, 2009). Prior to teaching at MIT, he taught at the University of Colorado and Harvard’s GSD.
He has lectured and taught studios around the world.
For further reading on landscapes of deindustrialization and wasteland reclamation see: Jefferson Cowie
and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2003); Ann O’M. Bowman and Michael A. Pagano. Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban
Strategies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001); Niall Kirkwood, ed., Manufactured Sites:
Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2001); and Steven High and David
W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press,
2007). For literature on the destructive impacts of urbanism on the landscape, see the following: William
Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (New York: Norton, 1992) and Mark Reisner, Cadillac Desert (New York:
Penguin, 1993).
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546 A la N B e R ge R
DISCOURSES FOR LANDSCAPE AND smaller in aggregate size, increasingly marginalized

URBANIZATION in-between architectural objects in the urban fabric.2
This reduction may be attributed to many factors,
What is place in this new “in-between” world? such as the planning and zoning codes that restrict
Nigel Thrift – Writing the Rural the ways landscape can be incorporated into
development. It may also be the result of the new
Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan transportation or manufacturing trends (such as
Axis. agglomerations), or land’s economic value.3 In gen-
William Gibson – Neuromancer eral, urban land with income-generating structures
is worth more to taxing authorities and private
developers than vacant lands. At the same time,
The horizontal city and the in-between public or private entities speculate and may leave
land strategically vacant until market conditions
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as well warrant sale or development. The outcome then is
as in Gibson’s prognosticated future, the American another kind of aggregated patchwork.
city is characterized by rapid horizontal growth, The external frontier of the American landscape
having a dispersed and sparsely populated surface was once collectively considered the vast continen-
of activities.1 The resultant landscape is difficult tal stretch of open land outside the largest central-
to describe in words. Everyone who dwelled in or ized cities – the city’s other. This frontier evolved
traveled through and around urbanized areas in into what we experience today as a fragmented
America, however, is familiar with this landscape. entity, best described as the landscape existing
It may be vacant strips alongside roadways, seas between nodes of urbanization. Today’s external
of parking lots, unused land, surfaces awaiting de- frontier exhibits a closer proximity of each urbanized
velopment, dumping grounds, warehouse districts, area to its neighboring one, or what geographers
a seemingly endless stretch of setbacks and peri Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin describe as
meters framing housing communities. Seen at the the more totally urbanized world.4 The external
local scale, (e.g. walking or driving through one’s frontier is neither here nor there. Some three
neighborhood or shopping district) the landscape decades ago, realizing that urban growth and land
of the horizontal city may appear diminished and use changes are much more than visual problems,
wasteful. It appears poorly planned, designed, and geographer Pierce Lewis identified the disappear-
unmaintained and as irregular and indiscreet left- ance of clear boundaries between city and country.
overs from other, more dominant forms of develop- Lewis writes, “The boundary that has separated
ment like buildings or highways. Viewed at the city from country throughout American history is
metropolitan, or regional, scale (e.g. from the top now almost gone, and that is true whether one talks
of a tall building or airplane) the landscape of the about physical boundaries or about more subtle
horizontal city often appears as extensive and plenti forms of intellectual or psychological boundaries.
ful – open space and vegetation – such as large To some degree, in most parts of America’s inhab-
agricultural tracts surrounded by new development ited domain the metropolis is almost everywhere.”5
or forests with office parks nestled in their interior. Lewis’s contention is that today’s city is so diffuse
The “building out” of the horizontal city has that it has become a “galactic metropolis,” a city-
formed a new frontier across the American landform resembling a galaxy of stars and planets, with
scape. This frontier embodies characteristics both large empty areas in-between, held together with
internal (within the built-out zone) and external something akin to gravitational attraction.6 These
(beyond the leading edge of development) to the “large empty areas” are what he terms new metro
horizontal city. The internal frontier emerges from politan tissue, or areas that do not lay directly
the composite of many landscape fragments within adjacent to existing nucleated cities but often lie
the local urbanized area: strips, lots, and unbuilt or great distances from city centers. Lewis asks the
unbuildable properties. With the exception of large reader to accept the fact that this tissue is here to
public parks and protected open space, the unbuilt stay as the result of the horizontal urbanization,
portions of the urbanized landscape have become and he provokes readers to rethink its use. Lewis’s
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“Discourses for Landscape and Urbanization” 547
“tissue” of course, hauntingly fits the description and uses, successional phases, and (dis)investment
of the external frontier. cycles. The term in-between describes a state of
Internal and external frontiers should not all be liminality, something that lives in transition and
salvaged by society. Landscape attributes of these eludes classification, something that resists new
frontiers are indistinct: they are regarded as either stability and reincorporation. The in-between land-
too small and fragmented at the local scale or scapes of the horizontal city are liminal because
aggregated into isolation at the regional scale. It they remain at the margins (or limen, which means
is difficult for society to identify and value them. “threshold” in Latin), awaiting a societal desire to
The traditional way to value urban landscapes is inscribe them with value and status.8
by using landscape as a place-making medium [ . . . ]
(such as a small-scale public park or plaza). Today, The homogenizing effects of the horizontal city
this idea is blurred. The landscape of the contem- (cookie-cutter planning and zoning codes, standard-
porary horizontal city is no longer a place-making ized engineering practices, master planning, etc.)
or condensing medium. Instead it is fragmented and new communication technologies have led to
and chaotically spread throughout the city in small novel forms of social activities because people do
bits and pieces. Because it is so difficult to see not want to spend twenty-four hours a day in the
in its entirety, the contemporary city’s landscape same type of designed environment. It is easy to
escapes wholeness and public consciousness, once understand how these activities take advantage
poignantly referred to as “terra incognita.”7 of a city’s landscape leftovers because urban open
But since it plays a necessary role in urban space is increasingly becoming privatized. In the
evolution, why is the in-between undervalued? urbanized world, the in-between landscape should
Because it is the exact opposite of a vertical sight be valued because it provides a threshold, or plat-
for sore eyes (such as a deteriorating building), the form, for liminal cultural phenomena to play out.
in-between landscape lies flat around such objects Thus communitas is cultivated.
and is thus likely to dissuade close inspection. [ . . . ] f
Publicity campaigns for cities always depict institu- i
v
tional build ings, cultural centers, airports, even e
sports stadia as the most valuable cultural attrac- From in-between to freedom and waste
tions. A city’s landscape assets – public parks,
golf courses, water bodies, tree-lined promenades, The problem that is usually being visualized is how capitalism
pedestrian malls, and conservation greenways – administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem
typically serve as the stage supporting these is how it creates and destroys them.
attractions. Missing are the unsightly but crucial Joseph Schumpeter – Capitalism,
transitional landscapes such as railroad yards, Socialism and Democracy
vacant lots, derelict buildings, contaminated fields,
smokestacks, industrial manufacturing, and park Future urban infill and growth depend on salvaging
ing lots. Or, as stated above, these transitional land- and re-imagining the collective body of in-between
scapes are simply ignored. landscapes. For many American cities, as landscape
surfaces accumulate through horizontal urbaniza-
tion, it becomes paramount to locate waste and
A liminal landscape identify potential problems and opportunities for
reusing it.
Liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, As revealed in recent history, public perception
to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, can be manipulated and manufactured (to create
and to an eclipse of the sun or moon. and pass referenda and balloting measures) to fund
Victor W. Turner – The Ritual Process public and private urban infill projects like sporting-
event facilities, libraries, museums, etc., with public
Much of the landscape surface left in the wake of tax revenues.9 Voters consistently approve new
rapid horizontal urbanization is not a clearly defined, funding mechanisms for infrastructural improve-
stable, and fixed entity. It is between occupancies ments such as buildings, roadway widening, school
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 547 10-26-2012 3:22:44 PM

construction, and flood-control/sewer projects. Today, of course, there are requirements for appro
Conversely, they often disapprove of tax increases priate fill materials and most solid municipal wastes
earmarked for urban landscape improvements.10 are dumped in landfills outside populated areas.
These are typically left to the workings of the private- Water is treated in specialized sewage-treatment
sector or existing city department budgets (such plants. After World War II, the production of waste
as Parks and Recreation) or piggybacked on engi- became associated with social processes of free-
neering projects. dom, power, and convenience.12 According to
This points to the fact that there is resistance historian Susan Strasser, “Disposable products, food
surrounding the legitimacy of publicly funded im- packaging, and the convenience, cleanliness, and
provements to the in-between landscape. Pro- and labor savings they represented were understood to
anti-sprawl, as well as conservation advocates, may distinguish the freedom of modernity from the
serve as examples of this phenomenon. Both con- drudgery of old-fashioned life.”13
stituencies try to extinguish the existence of the Travel to any American urbanized area, and
in-between landscape. The mission of pro-sprawl you will find “wastefulness” in many forms. Might
constituencies is to develop as much land as this reveal the values of the people who live and
possible (or as much as the market demands). Con govern there? Just like physical waste, what is
versely, the mission of anti-sprawl constituencies considered “wasteful” is deeply embedded in a cul-
is to conserve as much land and open space as pos ture’s value system. Americans carefully choose the
sible. Both groups use private funding to achieve ways they weave wastefulness, inefficiencies, and
their landscape missions. excesses – or the opposites – into their lives. As
In terms of the urban landscape a consensus a result, cultural preferences and environmental
on what one considers in-between is improbable. ethics play larger and larger roles in the structuring
This is because the definition of waste is at issue. of cities.14 The recent ascension of the politically
Americans consciously choose the types of waste correct slogan “sustainability,” or more precisely,
landscape they value. This decision is highly per- “sustainable development” is an example. How one
sonal. The issue evokes arguments of individual determines that a condition is sustainable has every
freedom and liberty. The International Society for thing to do with local values and context. Someone
Individual Liberty (lSL), for example, developed the living in a developing country, for example, would
world’s largest libertarian portal to the Internet to not define sustainability on the same ethical grounds
discuss, in part, environmental topics. One of the as someone living in a highly industrialized nation.
ISL’s services is Free-Market.net, which contains Moreover, it has been argued that sustainable de-
free-market analyses and literature on urban sprawl. velopment is nothing more than an excuse created
It is largely produced by independent, con by rich, developed countries to further impoverish
servative research institutes and other think tanks. poorer nations.15 Regardless of one’s moral or
One can find a variety of libertarian arguments that ethical position on sustainability, it is clear that
link issues of waste, landscape, city form, and indi issues of consumption and waste are not based on
vidual liberties. These groups support market-oriented homogeneous value systems, but rather on local,
alternatives to conventional urban-development contextual doxa, and praxis. The result is that mul-
and planning policy in contrast to traditional forms titudes of “waste” spread unevenly in numerous
of government intervention and controls. Any leg- ways throughout the landscape.
islation controlling urban growth, in the libertarian With regards to “waste,” it is impossible to
view, compromises individual freedom as well as isolate re-characterizations of the city from its
the values that formed and galvanized America’s socioeconomic milieu. Horizontal urbanization
founding principles. results in part from what, in 1942, Harvard Univer
Waste was long regarded as part of urbanization. sity eco nomist Joseph Schumpeter called “The
For example, cities as diverse as ancient Rome and Process of Creative Destruction.”16 Schumpeter
Manhattan dumped garbage, bones, and all matter believed that innovations made by entrepreneurs
of debris from daily life into the streets as a means began with this process, which relegated old inven-
of disposing trash while physically elevating the city. tories, technologies, equipment, and even craftsmen’s
In older cities, people live on top of their waste.11 skills to obsolescence.17 From this one can derive
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“Discourses for Landscape and Urbanization” 549
a contemporary reading of the horizontal city’s graphy in such a way as to reveal their strikingly
in-between landscape, Lars Lerup’s dross, as a organism-like aspects. The city is ultimately a natural
palimpsest of waste leftover from creative destruc- process whose unperceived complexity cannot be
tion. Lerup’s stim and dross is the physical cognate completely controlled and planned.23
for creative destruction.18 These terms acknow The situation is not unlike that of living organ-
ledge the totality of the consumption-waste cycle isms, whose hard parts, from the bones and shells
and the organic integration of waste into the urban of terrestrial vertebrates and marine invertebrates,
world as the result of socioeconomic processes. to the iron and other elements and compounds
Other theories have been posited over the past precipitated by cells, originated in the expelling
century concerning relationships between waste and/or managing of wastes. Calcium, for example,
and economic production. The key to economic used for that living infrastructure of the human
achievement is to spend and consume.19 So stated body, the skeleton, is routinely extruded by cells in
J. George Frederick, president of the Business the marine environment; this striking example is
Bourse publishing house, and his wife, Christine not an analogy, but arguably a homology for how
Frederick, a prominent home economist and ad- waste becomes incorporated into landscape struc-
vertising consultant more than a decade prior to ture and function. The economies that provide
Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” thesis. They the energy and materials for the growth of cities,
coined the phrases “progressive obsolescence” and such as manufacturing output and housing starts,
“creative waste.” Progressive obsolescence essen- are not so much things as processes. And, as is
tially means that the new business of industrializa- true for organisms, the faster they grow the more
tion is founded on the principle of wasting things (potentially hazardous) waste they produce. This is
before they are completely used or worn out. A a natural process that can be ignored, maligned, or
similar idea was promoted by President George embraced, but never stopped. “What is now emerg-
W. Bush, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks under the ing is an ‘intermediate’ description (of reality) that
guise of creating economic stimulus: “We need to lies somewhere between the two alienating images f
stimulate the economy through boosting consumer of a deterministic world and an arbitrary world of i
v
confidence with some kind of money in the hands pure chance,” wrote Nobel Laureate lIya Prigogine.24 e
of consumers.”20 Strasser notes that economically These words, regarding the unpredictability of
driven accumulation creates waste whether through complex systems, apply perfectly to the realm of
consumer goods (raw consumption) or by the ways landscapes in urbanization. Cities are not static
we choose to live (freedom): “Trash and trash-making structures, but active arenas marked by continuous
became integral to the economy in a wholly new energy flows and transformations of which land-
way: the growth of markets for new products came scapes and physical buildings and other parts are
to depend in part on the continuous disposal of old not permanent but transitional structures. Like a
things.”21 Today an entire field of study is devoted biological organism, the urbanized landscape is an
to understanding the social and environmental open system, whose planned complexity always
implications of waste and the industrial past. Two entails unplanned dross. To expect a planned city
such organizations are the Society for Industrial to function without waste (such as in a cradle to
Archeology, with some 1,800 members worldwide, cradle approach), which represents the in situ or
and the University of Arizona’s Garbage Project, exported excess not only of its growth but of its
which, over the past several decades, has been study- maintenance, is as naïve as expecting an animal to
ing the archaeology of garbage by using data, digging thrive in a sensory deprivation tank. The challenge
through landfills, and analyzing solid-waste streams.22 for designers is thus not to achieve drossless
urbanization, but to integrate inevitable dross into
more flexible aesthetic and design strategies.
Coda: urban landscape is a natural thing With these ideas in the conceptual background,
to waste my goal is to link together the practical and theo-
retical issues concerning urbanization and dross to
Films such as Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka image the make associations among industrial, economic, and
city from aerial overviews and via time-lapse photo consumption activity and the landscapes created
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 549 10-26-2012 3:22:44 PM

as a result of these processes. Contemporary modes faster than at any other time in modern history.
of industrial production, driven by economical and What then are the links between urbanization,
consumerist influences, contribute to urbanization deindustrialization and the production of waste
and the formation of “waste landscapes” – meaning landscape in American cities?
actual waste (such as municipal solid waste, sewage, Designers often paint a black-and-white picture
scrap metal, etc.), wasted places (such as abandoned of complex industrial processes. The most com-
and/or contaminated sites), or wasteful places (such monly used term, postindustrial, has been used both
as huge parking lots, retail malls, etc.). The term spatially and formalistically to describe everyth
urban sprawl and the rhetorics of pro- and anti-urban ing from polluted industrial landscapes to former
sprawl advocates all but obsolesce under the real- factory buildings, usually found in older, declining
ization that there is no growth without waste and sections of a city.27 The term itself, postindustrial,
that urban growth and dross go hand in hand, and arguably creates as many (or more) problems than
always have, not because of anything human, or solutions in rethinking landscapes leftover from
indeed even pertaining to life, but due to physics previous industrial eras. The reason for this may
itself. Complex processes must export waste to their be that the concept of the postindustrial narrowly
boundaries in order to maintain and grow. This is isolates and objectifies the landscape as being the
the lesson that designers of the built environment result of very specific processes that no longer
should learn from non-equilibrium thermody operate upon a given site (residual pollution aside).
namics; and it is one we need to belabor, but which This outlook reifies the site as essentially static and
must be incorporated as an assumption into our in isolation and defines it in terms of a pre-industrial
understanding of landscape in urbanization. past rather than as an ongoing industrial process
that forms other parts of the city. There are many
examples of this outlook that manifest in the rede-
THE PRODUCTION OF WASTE signing of industrial production sites for reuse.28 I
LANDSCAPE suggest that it would be strategically helpful in the
short term to suspend the term postindustrial and
We are shifting not out of industry into services, but from one its value system when discussing the city.
kind of industrial economy to another. [ . . . ]
Stephen Cohen and John Zysman – For much of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth
Manufacturing Matters centuries the American city landscape was designed
and built to represent a view opposite to those
developed by industrialization. The professions of
Deindustrialization: waste landscape landscape architecture and urban planning were
through attrition influenced by anti-industrialization offerings. Three
seminal designers of the late-nineteenth and twen-
America is deindustrializing. Since 1990 more than tieth centuries promoted the use of landscape as
600,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites a means to counter the environmentally and socially
have been identified within American cities.25 How destructive impact of the industrialized city. Their
did this waste landscape come to be? What will we landscapes were designed and invested in as a
do with it? How will it affect urbanizing areas in respite from urban congestion and the pollution
the future? Who is best qualified to deal with the created by industrialization. Ebenezer Howard’s
abundance of waste landscape? Controversial ques- “garden cities” of the late nineteenth century were
tions like these are difficult to answer. This subject planned with integrated road and railway networks.
has produced some of the late twentieth century’s They were intended to promote and sustain decen-
most debated bodies of scholarship.26 A book such tralization of older cities and the creation of garden
as this cannot definitively answer these questions. cities on the perimeter of congested production zones.
It can and does, however, address the topic of deindu Frank Lloyd Wright’s plan for Broadacre City, de-
strialization in the context of the relationships be- signed in the 1920s, envisioned universal car owner
tween landscape and urbanization. As America rapidly ship as inevitable. The plan, therefore, provided for an
deindustrializes, it is simultaneously urbanizing ever-extending grid of public highways to support
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“The Production of Waste Landscape” 551
a shift toward decentralization, sustainability, and ways, some of which are positive. Deindustrialization
progressive abandonment of the big, “obsolete” creates new employment opportunities; the plight
industrial city. Le Corbusier’s plan for the Radiant of industrial workers has been an economic boon
City proposed to replace the old, chaotic industrial to other businesses. Mike Davis describes the de
city with a “rationalized urban landscape.” It was industrialization of Los Angeles in Dead Cities:
to be composed of clean, modern interconnec
tions and land-use separations. The quintessential Unlike Detroit or Youngstown, LA’s derelict indus-
example of this line of thinking evolved during trial core was not simply abandoned. Almost as fast
the City Beautiful movement (1900–10), as middle as Fortune 500 corporations shut down their LA
class citizens attempted to transform their cities branch plants, local capitalists rushed in to take
into beautiful, functional places after the Industrial advantage of the Southeast’s cheap leases, tax incen-
Revolution. tives, and burgeoning supply of immigrant Mexican
Arguably, the result of such approaches is a net labor. . . . Within the dead shell of heavy manufac-
increase in the amount of waste landscape in cities. turing, a new sweatshop economy emerged.
Many of the landscapes found throughout older
urbanized areas are manifestations of previous anti- The old Firestone Rubber and American Can plants,
urban attitudes associated with industrialization. for instance, have been converted into nonunion
Urban populations continue to decentralize and the furniture factories, while the great Bethlehem Steel
dense city is no longer the hub of industrial activ- Works on Slauson Avenue has been replaced by a
ity. As the result of fewer constituents, “respite” hot-dog distributor, a Chinese food-products com-
landscapes in many inner cities are now in severe pany, and a maker of rattan patio furniture. Chrysler
decline and disinvestment. Thirty states in 2004 Maywood is now a bank “back office,” while US
operated with frozen or reduced Parks and Recrea Steel has metamorphosed into a warehouse complex,
tion budgets. Currently hundreds of state parks are and the “Assyrian” wall of Uniroyal Tire has become
closed or operate for fewer hours with reduced a facade for a designer-label outlet center.33 f
services, such as maintenance, in order to remain i
v
fiscally solvent.29 In 2003 California’s Department All deindustrialized sites are not equal. Some find e
of Parks and Recreation, the Nation’s largest with new life immediately by filling an economic niche,
274 parks, raised entrance fees to compensate for such as the immigrant labor force in Los Angeles,
a $35 million budget cut. Roughly $600 million is or by filling a cultural niche, such as the California
still needed for deferred maintenance projects.30 Speedway in Fontana. Others are immediately
The U.S. National Park Service also seeks private- cordoned off due to severe contamination. Many
sector support for park maintenance in the face of others are left abandoned for decades until market
staffing shortages and budget cutbacks of billions forces or technological innovation produce resources
of dollars.31 for their rehabilitation. Imperatively, deindustrial-
For the past four decades American industrial ized sites are all transitional places. They await
production has been undergoing an imperceptible some form of reclamation prior to reprogramming
relocation from traditional downtown cores to the and reuse. Another characteristic they have in com-
urban periphery, and even to other countries. This mon is their pedigree: they were previously active
mass exodus from older urban, industrialized areas industrial sites, located in close proximity to densely
changes the physical appearance of cities. It creates populated urban areas. Optimistically, it could be
a serious economic impact for cities now forced argued that as deindustrialization proliferates and
to compete with newer urbanizing areas for the as industry relocates from central cities to peri
public funding needed to maintain deteriorating pheral areas, America’s cities will enjoy a net gain
inner-city landscapes and infrastructures. Together in the total landscapes (and buildings) available for
deindustrialization, decentralization, and horizontal other uses.34 Changes in manufacturing and produc-
urbanization are the largest factor for land vacancy tion and modes of communication and transporta-
in large American cities during the 1990s.32 tion have resulted in the dispersal and relocation of
Deindustrialization is not homogeneous: it has industrial production to outlying areas and beyond.
affected every major city in the U.S. in varying Deindustrialization creates waste landscape through
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 551 10-26-2012 3:22:44 PM

the attrition of industrial landscapes and build The term drosscape implies that dross, or waste,
ings in the older parts of the traditional central city. is scaped, or resurfaced, and reprogrammed by
Adaptively reusing this waste landscape figures to human intentions. Moreover, the ideas of dross and
be one of the twenty-first century’s great infrastruc- scape have individual attributes.36 The use of the
tural design challenges as these sites are potentially term dross in this chapter builds on Lars Lerup’s
transformable into new productive uses such as use of the term, but departs from Lerupian origin
permanent open landscapes or infill developments. in scope and value. The suggestive etymology of
[ . . . ] the word includes shared origins with the words
waste and vast, two terms frequently used to de-
scribe the contemporary nature of horizontal
DROSSCAPE EXPLAINED urbanization, as well as connections to the words
vanity, vain, vanish, and vacant, all of which relate
All world’s glory is but dross unclean. to waste through the form of empty gestures.37
Edmund Spenser (1595) Both dross and scape are created and destroyed
by processes and values derived from, or because
of cultural tastes and actions. Drosscape is the
Drosscape defined creation of a new condition in which vast, wasted,
or wasteful land surfaces are modeled in accor-
Thus far, we have focused on the waste landscapes dance with new programs or new sets of values
of urban America, along with the processes that that remove or replace real or perceived wasteful
are contributing to their formation. This last section aspects of geographical space (i.e., redevelopment,
introduces drosscape, a term created to describe a toxic waste removal, tax revenues, etc.). Drosscaping,
design pedagogy that emphasizes the productive as a verb, is the placement upon the landscape of
integration and reuse of waste landscapes through- new social programs that transform waste (real or
out the urban world. perceived) into more productive urbanized land-
Planning and design cannot solve all problems scapes to some degree.
associated with the vast amount of urban waste Drosscape demands a strategically phased im-
landscape. However, the alarm has sounded to plementation of design that other “clean” or “green”
those who cope with the increased pessimism and types of urbanization lack because they are not
cynicism spawned by the inefficacy of the “big four” immediately wholly occupiable.38 Sites formerly
design disciplines (landscape architecture, urban containing industrial or manufacturing facilities, for
design, planning, and architecture) in the face of instance, have soil, water, and building contamina-
unfettered, market-driven development. The recent tion problems left over from chemicals and hazard-
emergence of landscape urbanism may be a reac- ous materials. This condition, and all of the others
tion to the frustration shared by many people in described herein, presents a novel set of challenges
the landscape, planning, and architectural design for the landscape, infrastructure, and building design
arenas.35 The polarizing rhetorical arguments of the professions, which must face the spatio-temporary
pro- and anti-urbanization contingencies, as well dimensions of redevelopment as a site is decon-
as dynamic economic processes make traditional taminated, re-regulated, or otherwise transformed
master planning approaches for future cities seem for reuse over time.
absurd. But advocating a revolutionary form of
urban landscape study and practice, such as land-
scape urbanism, is not exclusive of the big four Drosscape proposed
design disciplines. There is no need to develop an
entirely new design discipline in order to rethink Drosscapes are dependent on the production of
landscape’s relationship to urbanization. Drosscape waste landscapes from other types of development
has the potential to coexist with the big four design in order to survive. In this rubric one may describe
disciplines. By working within current educational drosscaping as a sort of scavenging on the urban-
and professional practices, designers can still pro- ized surface for interstitial landscape remains.
mote a radically different outcome. The designer, presumably before finding his or her
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“Drosscape Explained” 553
client(s), works in a bottom-up manner conducting affected by countless unconventional adjacencies

fieldwork while collecting and interpreting large- and unforeseen complex reclamations.
scale trends, data, and other phenomena in search With drosscape, a new paradigm is cast. It asks
of underutilized, or wasted, urban land.39 Once these designers to consider working in the margins rather
landscapes are identified, the designer proposes than at the center and to shift the paradigm of what
a strategy to productively integrate them. As de- is considered urban design and what landscape
graded and interstitial entities, drosscapes have means to urbanism and urbanization processes. It
few stakeholders, caretakers, guardians, or spokes- requires designers to think strategically of them-
persons. This requires the designer to search for, selves as charged with identifying the undervalued
identify, and educate the stakeholder or group and overlooked potentials of the urban region
most likely to realize the need for change. within which they live and work. It further suggests
The future of any given drosscape, or any entity a move away from the heroic, modernist master
that is undervalued, lies profoundly in the interac- planner toward the advocacy designer who engen-
tion of human agency and the sharing of explicit ders inventiveness, entrepreneurialism, and vision-
knowledge. The designer, as the strategist conducting. These qualities are neither taught sufficiently
ing this advocacy process, understands the future in design school nor represented on professional
as being under perpetual construction. Drosscapes registration examinations.
require design to be implemented as an activity
that is capable of adapting to changing circum-
stances while at the same time avoiding being so Strategies for designing with drosscapes
open-ended as to succumb to future schemes that
are better organized.40 ONE: Dross is understood as a natural compon
Processes of deindustrialization, post-Fordism, ent of every dynamically evolving city.
and technological innovation will continue in the As such it is an indicator of healthy urban
foreseeable future to saturate urbanized regions growth. f
with waste landscape. Subsequent to these pro- TWO: Drosscapes accumulate in the wake of i
v
cesses, designers will need to rethink their roles in socio- and spatio-economic processes e
creating built environments. Urbanization will no of deindustrialization, post-Fordism, and
doubt be controlled by a wider array of factors in technological innovation.
the future. As post-Fordism illustrates, analyzing THREE: Drosscapes require the designer to shift
cities can no longer be done by one source, nor by thinking from tacit and explicit knowledge
one body of knowledge, nor by one bureaucracy. (designer as sole expert and authority)
Designers must identify opportunities within the to complex interactive and responsive
production modes of their time to enable new ways processing (designer as collaborator and
of thinking about the city and its landscape (what- negotiator).
ever form it may take). Landscape architects, FOUR: The designer does not rely on the client–
architects, and urban planners often follow too far consultant relationship or the contractual
behind these processes, scavenging commissions agreement to begin work. In many cases
from their jetsam as they change course. It is time a client may not even exist but will need
for designers to find opportunities within these to be searched out and custom-fit in order
processes by advocating more culturally ambitious to match the designer’s research dis
ways of challenging urbanization. coveries. In this way the designer is the
As a strategy, drosscape provides an avenue consummate spokesperson for the pro-
for rethinking the role of the designer in the urban ductive integration of waste landscape in
world. Given a constriction of natural and other the urban world.42
resources, politicians and developers will shift FIVE: Drosscapes are interstitial. The designer
attention to infill and reuse development.41 None integrates waste landscapes left over from
of the work will require a single disciplinary design any form or type of development.
approach nor will the sites operate under univalent SIX: The adaptability and occupation of dross-
environmental conditions. All, however, will be capes depend upon qualities associated
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 553 10-26-2012 3:22:44 PM

with decontamination, health, safety, and the stagnant in-between realm, thus going back like
reprogramming. The designer must act, an artist to touch up the rough parts of an otherwise
at times, as the conductor and at times elegant production. Humanity’s fantastic growth has
the agent of these effects in order to slow inevitably confronted us with commensurate waste-
down or speed them up.43 lands. Drosscape, far from marking failure, testifies
SEVEN: Drosscapes may be unsightly.44 There is to previous urban successes and establishes a
little concern for contextual precedence, design challenge for its continuance. Analyzing how
and resources are scarce for the complete urbanization elegantly co-opts dross and reincor-
scenic amelioration of drosscapes that are porates it in the service of efficiency, aesthetics,
located in the declining, neglected, and and functionality should shift the evaluation of
deindustrializing areas of cities. wastes from the repressed edges of landscape
EIGHT: Drosscapes may be visually pleasing. architecture more toward the center, which is, one
Wasteful landscapes are purposefully built need hardly emphasize, increasingly where we find
within all types of new development drosscape in the real urban world.
located on the leading, peripheral edges
of urbanization. The designer must discern
which types of “waste” may be produc- NOTES
tively reintegrated for higher social,
cultural, and environmental benefits. 1 One of the earliest examples of this character-
ization was published in 1958 by the editors of
In his criticism of the scientific world Bruno Latour Fortune magazine. Originally appearing as a
states that “soon nothing, absolutely nothing, will series of articles in 1957, The Exploding Metro
be left of [a] top-down model of scientific influence. polis is one of the early post-World War II
The matter of fact of science becomes matters of volumes to document urban growth as chaotic,
concern of politics. As a result, contemporary sci- disorderly, unnatural, and problematic. See The
entific controversies are emerging in what have Exploding Metropolis (New York: Doubleday,
been called hybrid forums. We used to have two 1958). See especially William H. Whyte’s essay
types of representations and two types of forums: “Urban Sprawl,” 133–56.
one, science . . . and another politics . . . A simple 2 This does not mean that urbanization is good
way to characterize our times is to say that the two or bad, but that it could be a more sustainable
meanings of representation have now merged into endeavor if landscape were incorporated in a
one, around the key figure of the spokesperson.”45 more substantial way. See Chris Berdik, “Give
Latour’s brilliant elucidation leads one out of the me Land, Lots of Land . . .” Boston Globe, June
lab to discover the city anew. Its composition is 12, 2005, H1, 4. And Richard T. T. Forman,
part economics, part science, part politics, and part Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and
speculation. This new city is reconceptualized from Regions (Cambridge: Cambridge University
drosscape. As such, it will serve as the stage for Press, 1995). This book views landscapes left
the performance of Latour’s hybrid forum. over from urban development practices as hav-
Such ripe conscious design attention mirrors the ing potential ecological benefits. I argue that
unconscious refashioning of natural environments his type of landscape sustainability is a form
that are inescapably marked by waste. The con- of reclamation, since it appears after develop-
tinuous material transformation of the environment ment and market capitalism run their course.
produces dross and this waste is most profound in 3 For an understanding of manufacturing trends
the areas of the highly successful growing civiliza- see: Sukkoo Kim, “Expansion of Markets and
tions. Thus dross will always accompany growth, the Geographic Distribution of Economic Activ
and responsible design protocols will always flag ities: The Trends in U.S. Regional Manufacturing
such dross as the expanding margin of the designed Structure, 1860–1987,” The Quarterly Journal
environment. The energy that goes into rapid growth, of Economics, 110, no. 4 (Cambridge: MIT Press,
after populations and civilization reach temporary 1995), 881–908; Glaeser and Kohlhase, “Cities,
limits, can then be used to refashion and organize Regions and the Decline of Transport Costs,” 2003.
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 554 10-26-2012 3:22:45 PM

4 Graham and Marvin, Telecommunications and 13 Ibid., 268.

the City (New York: Routledge, 1996), 378. 14 Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume 1:
5 Pierce Lewis, “The Galactic Metropolis,” Beyond Consumption, trans. Robert Hurley (reprint
the Urban Fringe: Land Use Issues of Nonmetro- ed., New York: Zone Books, 1991). Bataille
politan America, ed. Rutherford Platt and George develops the idea of a “general economy” based
Macinko (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota on waste and excess energy from the sun rather
Press, 1983), 23. than having and hoarding. Also see Mira Engler,
6 Ibid., 34. Designing America’s Waste Landscapes (Balti-
7 Ann O’M. Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strate- 2004).
gies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University 15 Wilfred Beckerman, A Poverty of Reason:
Press, 2004). Sustainable Development and Economic Growth
8 Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process (New York: (Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute,
Aldine De Gruyter, 1969), 94. 2003), 64–66.
9 Raymond Keating, “Sports Pork: The Costly 16 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and
Relationship between Major League Sports and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row
Government,” Cato Policy Analysis, no. 339 Publishers, 1950), 81–110. See also Sharon
(Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1999). Since Zukin, Landscapes of Power (Berkeley, CA: Uni-
the early 1990s, fourteen new Major League versity of California Press, 1991), 41. Zukin
Baseball stadia have been built with at least describes Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”
three more under construction. Upon comple- as a “liminal” landscape, thus bringing my dis-
tion, seventeen of the thirty Major League cussion of a liminal landscape full circle.
Baseball teams will be playing in stadia built 17 Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,
since 1992. The National Football League has 84.
seventeen of thirty-two teams playing in stadia 18 Lars Lerup, “Stim & Dross: Rethinking the Metro f
built since 1992, once those currently under polis,” Assemblage 25 (Cambridge: MIT Press, i
v
construction are completed. It is estimated that 1995). To Lerup, stim refers to the buildings, e
approximately $10 billion of public money has objects, programs, and events people identify
gone to thirty-eight all new sports stadia since as being developed for human use, while dross
the mid 1980s. Also see Kevin J. Delaney and refers to the landscape leftovers or waste land-
Rick Eckstein, Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: scapes, typically found in-between the stims.
The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums (Pisca- 19 George Frederick, A Philosophy of Production
taway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). (New York: The Business Bourse, 1930), 227.
10 Valerie Alvord, “State Parks Squeezed, Shut by See Also Roland Marchand, Advertising the
Budget Woes,” USA Today, July 24, 2002; Kristen American Dream (Berkeley, CA: University of
Mack, “Police, Fire Departments New Budget’s California Press, 1986), 156; Susan Strasser,
Bid Winners,” Houston Chronicle, May 21, 2004; Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New
Ralph Ranalli, “Funding Urged to Preserve York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 198.
Ecology,” Boston Globe, March 31, 2005, B1, 20 White House Office of the Press Secretary,
B6; Stephan Lovgren, “U.S. National Parks Told “President Works on Economic Recovery
to Quietly Cut Services,” National Geographic During NY Trip,” press release, October 3, 2001
News, March 19, 2004, http://news.national at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
geographic.com/news/2004/03/0319_040319_ 2001/10/20011003-4.html (accessed Decem-
parks.html (accessed May 10, 2005). ber 9, 2004).
11 William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish: 21 Strasser, Waste and Want, 15.
The Archeology of Garbage (Tuscon, AZ: Univer 22 Rathje and Murphy, Rubbish.
sity of Arizona Press, 2001), 34–35. 23 Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is an inde-
12 Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History pendent film by Francis Ford Coppola, Godfrey
of Trash (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Reggio, and The Institute for Regional Educa-
1999), 9, 266–68. tion. Created between 1975 and 1982, the film
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 555 10-26-2012 3:22:45 PM

is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of urban Angela Townsend, “Budget Assumes Flat
life and technology with the natural environ- Economy,” The Plain Dealer, January 28, 2004,
ment. Baraka (1992) directed by Ron Fricke, http://www.cleveland.com/budgetcrisis/index.
uses breathtaking shots from around the world ssf ?/budgetcrisis/more/1075285840190290.
to show the beauty and destruction of nature html (accessed June 14, 2005).
and humans. 30 Ibid. Also see Joy Lanzendorfer, “Parks and
24 llya Prigogine, The End of Certainty (New York: Wreck,” North Bay Bohemian, July 3–9, 2003.
The Free Press, 1996), 189. The Project for Public Spaces is an organiza
25 “$76.7 Million in Brownfield Grants Announced,’’ tion that campaigns against landscape budget,
May 10, 2005, and “EPA Announces $73.1 Million http://www.pps.org. A much different picture
in National Brownfields Grants in 37 States and of open space funding is depicted by the Trust
Seven Tribal Communities,’’ June 20, 2003, U.S. for Public Land. See their LandVote Database,
EPA Brownfield official web site http://www. http://www.tpl.org/tier2_kad.cfm?content_
epa.gov/brownfields/archive/pilot_arch.htm item_id=0&folder_id=2607 (accessed June 14,
(accessed May 21, 2005); Niall Kirkwood, “Why 2005), which reveals that the majority of the
is There So Little Residential Redevelopment ballot measures for the “conservation” of open
on Brownfields? Framing Issues for Discussion,’’ space have passed over the last decade.
paper WO1-3, Joint Center for Housing Studies 31 For national parks, see Stephan Lovgren,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, January National Geographic News; Geoffrey Cantrell,
2001), 3–4. “Critics Fear Park Service Headed Down Wrong
26 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society Path,” Boston Globe, March 10, 2005.
(New York: Basic Books, 1999); Barry Bluestone 32 Bowman and Pagano, Terra Incognita, 12.
and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization 33 Davis, Dead Cities, 193.
of America (New York: Basic Books, 1982); 34 For example, see Philadelphia Neighborhood
Stephen Cohen and John Zysman, Manufacturing Transformation Initiative (NTI), http://www.
Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy phila.gov/nti/pressrelease05.htm (accessed June
(New York: Basic Books, 1987); Michael J. Piore 14, 2005). Philadelphia reports: “In April 2001,
and Charles F. Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide The City of Philadelphia officially launched the
(New York: Basic Books, 1984). Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI),
27 My use of this term postindustrial here and in a multi-faceted, $300 million+ effort to improve
other publications, does not imply that indus- the quality of life in all neighborhoods. Since
trial production and/or industrial-induced land then, under NTI the City has amassed a wide
alteration has stopped. I suggest that a new array of successes: more than 224,000 aban-
condition exists, which shifts industrial produc- doned cars removed from its streets and 44,000
tion toward technology and away from mechanics, tons of debris cleared from 31,000 vacant lots;
leaving vacant and contaminated mechanical- 23,000 dead trees cut down; 6,000 dangerous
industrial sites in its wake. There is no break buildings demolished; and, at last count, more
from “industrial” to “post-industrial” landscape than 21,000 units of new housing, (either com-
formation, only a shift in industrial-landscape pleted, planned or underway), to serve buyers
types. or renters at all income levels – at affordable,
28 See various contemporary examples of this low income and market rates.”
approach and outlook in Kirkwood, Manufac- 35 Charles Waldheim, ed., Landscape Urbanism:
tured Sites. A Reference Manifesto (New York: Princeton
29 Alvord, USA Today; Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe. Architectural Press, 2006); Dean J. Almy III
Also see “2004 Chicago Park District Budget and Michael Benedikt, eds., CENTER 14:
Crisis, Park Advocates Requests” at Chicago’s Landscape Urbanism (Austin, TX: Center for
Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference American Architecture and Design, 2006).
Parks Committee (HPKCC) web site, http:// 36 I discuss a similar position for the term reclaim-
www.hydepark.org/parks/04budcrisisreqs.htm ing landscape, of “land” and “scape” in Reclaiming
(accessed June 14, 2005); Mike Tobin and the American West.
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 556 10-26-2012 3:22:45 PM

37 American Heritage Dictionary. more people can see the benefit of working
38 Sandra Alker, Victoria Joy, Peter Roberts, together in managing the environment.
Nathan Smith, “The Definition of Brownfield,” 40 See James Corner, “Not Unlike Life Itself: Land-
Journal of Environmental Planning and Manage- scape Strategy Now,” Harvard Design Magazine
ment, 43, no. 11, (London: Routledge, January 21, Fall 2003/Winter 2004, 32–34. Also see
2000), 49–69. Note the temporal aspects of the Ralph D. Stacy, Complex Responsive Processes in
definition of a brownfield by this academic Organizations (London: Routledge, 2001).
journal: “A Brownfield site is any land or pre 41 This is already underway. A recent search of
mises which has previously been used or devel the Avery Index to Architecture Periodicals turned
oped and is not currently fully in use, although up more than 6,100 entries for the words adap-
it may be partially occupied or utilized. It tive reuse.
may also be vacant, derelict or contaminated. 42 A “design studio” education is an ideal laboratory
Therefore a Brownfield site is not necessarily to begin this process. See Alan Berger, Linda
available for immediate use without interven- Corkery, and Kathryn Moore, “Researching the
tion.” Also see Niall Kirkwood, “Here Come the Studio,” Landscape Review, 8, no. 1, (Canterbury,
Hyperaccumulators!” Harvard Design Magazine New Zealand: Lincoln University Press, 2002), 1–2.
17, Fall 2002/Winter 2003, 52–56. 43 Ibid.
39 Jared Diamond, Collapse (New York: Viking 44 One usage of the term ugliness related to
Press, 2005), 277–88. Diamond suggests that the topics presented in this book can be read
different societies of the world use a bottom-up “Seventy-five Percent: The Next Big Architec-
approach to deal with environmental problem- tural Project,” Ellen Dunham Jones, Harvard
solving. The successful bottom-up approaches Design Magazine 12, Fall 2000, 5.
tend to be in small societies with small amounts 45 Bruno Latour, “The World Wide Lab,” Wired,
of land (such as local neighborhoods) because June 2003, 147.
f
i
v
e
9780415668071_P5_04.indd 557 10-26-2012 3:22:45 PM

“Planning for Sustainability in
European Cities: A Review of
Practice in Leading Cities”
from The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (2008)
Timothy Beatley
The vast scope of the environmental challenges the world is currently facing is daunting. Global warming,
energy depletion, waste accumulation, and a host of related problems loom large around the world. The inter-
connected global scale of environmental problems can make them seem intractable. How can designers and
communities respond and make a difference? In the face of the current challenge, the popular 1960s adage
“think globally, act locally” seems all the more apt.
Many European cities, mindful that the ecological footprint of western societies has been unsustainably
large for too long and spurred by governmental incentives, have recently embraced urban design strategies
aimed at reducing carbon emissions. New “zero-carbon” neighborhoods are being built and low-carbon trans-
portation systems are being inserted into old and new areas of cities alike. Sprawl is being limited, regional
green networks are being preserved and enhanced, and nature is being brought into the city. There are lessons
to be learned from the efforts of European cities, both in terms of understanding what policies have enabled
and encouraged the development of low-carbon-producing urban areas, and gaining knowledge of the prac-
tical on-the-ground design approaches that are being used and which seem to be successful.
In his essay “Planning for Sustainability in European Cities: A Review of Practice in Leading Cities” from
The Sustainable Urban Development Reader, Timothy Beatley surveys and brings together the key sustain-
ability ideas, policies, and urban design strategies found in 30 European cities that he has studied. The
practices reviewed in this selection are discussed in greater detail in Beatley, Green Urbanism: Learning from
European Cities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000). The overall goal common to these cities is the main-
tenance of the compact city forms that they were originally built with, which means urban limits, high density,
infill development, and strategically planned areas, all of which is undertaken with an eye to maintaining urban
livability and quality design. Another goal is urban greening, which means the creation of ecological corridors
and the enhancement of urban forests. A major design strategy involves the prioritization of low-carbon forms
of transportation, including public transit, walking, and biking. As well, many cities are experimenting with
creating local renewable energy sources, focusing particularly on solar panel and wind farm installations. Most
ambitiously, some cities are putting in place neighborhood-scale designs directed at creating closed-loop
energy systems, where human and industrial wastes are recycled to provide the energy source for district
heating systems.
Timothy Beatley is the Theresa Heinz Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville. He does research in the areas of environmental planning and policy, with special emphasis on
coastal and natural hazards planning, environmental values and ethics, and biodiversity conservation. Professor
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 558 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

“ P lanning F O r S ustainabilit Y in E ur O pean C ities : A R eview O F P ractice in L eading C ities ” 559
Beatley’s other books include Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age (Wash-
ington, DC: Island Press, 2005); Natural Hazard Mitigation with David Godschalk and others (Washington,
DC: Island Press, 1998); The Ecology of Place with Kristy Manning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997); After
the Hurricane: Linking Recovery To Sustainable Development in the Caribbean with Philip Berke (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management, 2nd edn. (Wash-
ington, DC: Island Press, 1994); Ethical Land Use: Principles of Policy and Planning (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994); Habitat Conservation Planning: Endangered Species and Urban Growth
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
Key classic and contemporary writings on sustainable urban development and green urbanism are contained
in The Sustainable Urban Development Reader, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 2008), which Beatley co-edited
with Stephen Wheeler. Stephen Wheeler’s Planning for Sustainability: Creating Livable, Equitable and Eco-
logical Communities (London: Routledge, 2004) presents a systematic analysis of how more sustainable
cities can be achieved and illustrates how sustainability initiatives at different scales of planning – international,
national, regional, municipal, neighborhood, site, and building – are interrelated.
Important writings on sustainable urban development include Sustainable and Resilient Communities: A
Comprehensive Action Plan for Towns, Cities, and Regions (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011) edited by Stephen
Coyle, Peter Newman, and Isabella Jennings; Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008); Douglas Farr, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007); Richard Register, EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature Revised
edition (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006); Mike Jencks and Nicola Dempsey, Future Forms
and Design for Sustainable Cities (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2005).
Jeffrey Tumlin’s Sustainable Transportation Planning: Tools for Creating Vibrant, Healthy, and Resilient
Communities (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) offers a comprehensive look at fresh ways of thinking
about transportation systems and real-world strategies for creating more sustainable transportation options
in cities. f
For more on green politics in Europe see Michael Dobson, Green Political Thoughts, 4th edn. (London: i
v
Routledge, 2007); Andrew Dobson and Robyn Eckersley (eds) Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge e
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); John S. Dryzek (ed.), Green States and Social Movements:
Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Norway (London: Oxford University
Press, 2002); and Michael O’Neill, Green Parties and Political Change in Contemporary Europe: New
Politics, Old Predicaments (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). For green politics in America, see John Rensenbrink,
Against All Odds: The Green Transformation of American Politics (Raymond: Leopold Press, 1999).
A number of websites devoted to issues of sustainable cities maintain repositories of resources on
sustainable urban design practices around the world. Notable sites include: http://www.sustainablecities.net,
http://www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org, and http://www.sustainable-cities.eu.
INTRODUCTION: LEARNING FROM presented in the book Green Urbanism: Learning

EUROPEAN CITIES from European Cities (Island Press, 2000). What
follows is a summary of some of the key themes
In few other parts of the world is there as much and most promising ideas and strategies found
interest in sustainability as in Europe, especially in the 30 or so cities, in 11 countries, described in
northern and northwestern Europe, and as much this book, as well as more recent case studies and
tangible evidence of applying this concept to cities field work.
and urban development. For approximately the last An initial observation from this work is just how
six years this author has been researching innova important sustainability is at the municipal level in
tive urban sustainability practice in European cities. Europe, especially evident in the cities chosen. “Sus
The findings from the first phase of this work are tainable cities” resonates well and has important
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 559 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

560 T im O th Y B eatle Y
political meaning and significance in these cities, Amsterdam and Paris have substantially higher
and on the European urban scene generally. One densities, as measured in persons per hectare, than
measure of this is the success of the Sustainable typical American cities. Overall or whole-city den
Cities and Towns campaign, an EU-funded informal sities for European cities are typically in the 40–60
network of communities pursuing sustainability persons per hectare range; American cities are
begun in 1994. Participating cities have signed the much lower, commonly under 20 persons per hect
so-called Aalborg Charter (from Aalborg, Denmark, are (Newman and Kenworthy 2000). Even American
the site of the first campaign conference), and more cities that we tend to think of as particularly dense,
than 1800 cities and towns have done so. Among for example New York, are comparatively less dense
the activities of this organization are the publica when the entire metropolitan wide pattern is con
tion of a newsletter, networking between cities, sidered. Density and compactness directly translate
and initiation of conferences and workshops. The into much lower energy use, per capita, and lower
organization has also created the annual European carbon emissions, air and water pollution, and other
Sustainable City award (with the first of these resource demands compared with less dense, less
awards issued in 1996), and it is clear that they compact cities.
have been coveted and highly valued by politicians Many of these European examples, moreover,
and city officials. show that compactness and density need not trans
Many European cities have also gone through, late to skyscrapers and excessive high-rise. Density
or are currently going through, some form of local and compactness in cities like Amsterdam hap
Agenda 21 process (including many of the same pens through a building pattern of predominately
cities that have signed the Aalborg charter), and low-rise structures. While many sustainability pro
this is another important indicator of the relev ponents advocate the need for the green high-
ance of local sustainability. Indeed, in the countries rise development (e.g. see Ken Yeang’s designs for
studied, high percentages of municipal govern bio-climatic skyscrapers), these European cities
ments are participating (for instance, in Sweden demonstrate convincingly that tremendous com
100 percent of all local governments are at some pactness and density can be accomplished at
stage in the local Agenda 21 process). Often these a clearly human scale. The European model is
programs represent tremendous local efforts to appealing to many precisely because of its more
engage the community in a dialogue about sustain traditional form of density and compactness, and
ability, and typically involve the creation of a local many believe its more human scale.
sustainability forum, sustainability indicators, local These characteristics of urban form make many
state-of-the-environment reports, and the prepara other dimensions of local sustainability more fea
tion of comprehensive local sustainability action sible, of course (e.g. public transit, walkable places,
plans. European cities and towns demonstrate seri energy efficiency). There are many factors that ex
ous commitment to environmental and sustainabil plain this urban form, including an historic pattern
ity values and what follows are a few of the more of compact villages and cities, a limited land base
important ways in which these concerns are being in many countries, and different cultural attitudes
addressed. about land. Nevertheless in the cities studied there
are conscious policies aimed at strengthening a
tight urban core. Indeed, the major new growth
COMPACT CITIES AND REGIONS areas in almost every city studied are situated in
locations within or adjacent to existing developed
Urban form and land use patterns are primary deter areas, and are designed generally at relatively high
minants of urban sustainability. While European densities.
cities have been experiencing considerable decen Exemplary and for the most part effective efforts
tralization pressures, they are typically much more at maintaining the traditional tight urban form
compact and dense than American cities. Peter can be seen in many cities. Cities like Amsterdam
Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy have monitored are actively promoting urban redevelopment and
and tracked average density in a number of cities industrial reuse (e.g. through its eastern docklands
throughout the world. Western European cities like redevelopment). Berlin’s plan calls for most future
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 560 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

growth to be accommodated with its urbanized center. Homes and buildings will meet a low-energy
area through a variety of infill and re-urbanization standard and only certified sustainably harvested
strategies. Freiburg, Germany, has been able to effec wood will be allowed.
tively steer relatively compact, high-density new European cities also provide excellent and gen
growth along the main corridors of its tram system, erally successful examples of redevelopment and
as well as to protect existing housing supply in the adaptive reuse of older, deteriorated areas within
center (there is now a prohibition on the conversion the center-city. Good examples include Amsterdam’s
of housing to offices and other uses). eastern docklands, where 8000 new homes have
European cities are utilizing a variety of planning been accommodated on recycled land. In Java-
strategies to promote compactness and to maintain eiland, one major piece of this project, an overall
a tight urban form. These include strict limits on plan (prepared by urban designer Sjoerd Soeters)
building outside of designated development areas, lays out broad density, massing, and circulation for
a strong role for municipal governments in design the district. Diversity and distinctiveness in actual
ing and developing new growth areas, extensive design of the buildings, however, was encouraged
public acquisition and ownership of land (especially through a restriction on the number of buildings
in Scandinavian cities like Stockholm), and a will that could be designed by a single architect. The
ingness to make significant transportation and other result is a stimulating community where buildings
infrastructure investments that facilitate and sup have been created by scores of different designers.
port compactness. This island district successfully balances connection
to the past (a series of canals and building scale
reminiscent of historic Amsterdam) with unique
GREEN URBANISM: COMPACT AND modern design (each of the pedestrian bridges
ECOLOGICAL URBAN FORM crossing the canals offers a distinctive look and
design). Java-eiland demonstrates that city building
Growth areas and redevelopment districts in these can occur in ways that create interesting and organ f
European cities are incorporating a wide range of ically evolved places, and which also acknow i
v
ecological design and planning concepts, from solar ledge and respect history and context, overcoming e
energy to natural drainage to community gardens, sameness.
and effectively demonstrate that ecological and urban European cities on the whole (and especially the
can go together. Good examples of this compact cities examined in this study) have been able to
green growth can be seen in the new development maintain and strengthen their center cities and
districts planned for or recently completed in Utrecht urban cores. In no small part this is a function of
(Leidsche Rijn), Frieburg (Rieselfeld), Amsterdam historic density and compactness, they are also the
(e.g. IJburg), Copenhagen (Orestad), Helsinki (Viikki), result of numerous efforts to maintain and enhance
and Stockholm (Hammerby Sjostad). the quality and attractiveness of the city-center. In
Leidsche Rijn, for example, is an innovative new the cities studied, the center has remained a mixed-
growth district in the Dutch city of Utrecht. In ad use zone, with a significant residential population.
dition to incorporating a mixed-use design, and a Groningen, for instance, has undertaken a host of
balance of jobs and housing (30,000 dwelling units actions to improve its center including the creation
and 30,000 new jobs), it will include a number of of new pedestrian-only shopping areas (creating a
ecological design features. Much of the area will system of two linked circles of pedestrian areas),
be heated through district heating supplied from and installation of (yellow) brick surfaces and
the waste energy of a nearby power plant, a double- new street furniture in walking areas, among other
water system which will provide recycled water actions. Committed to a policy of compact urban
for non-potable uses, and storm water manage form, Groningen has also made strong effort to
ment through a system of natural swales (what the keep all major new public buildings and public at
Dutch call “wadies”). Higher-density uses will be tractions close-in. As one example, a new modern
clustered around several new train stations and art museum has been sited and designed to provide
bicycle-only and bicycle/pedestrian only bridges an important pedestrian link between the city’s
will provide fast, direct connections to the city main train station and the town center.
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SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY plans are on the books to double the length of

dedicated high-speed rail track in Europe over the
Achieving a more sustainable mix of mobility options next eight years. And, the newest generation of trains
is a major challenge, and in almost all of the cities will travel faster – on average 300 kph or higher.
studied in Green Urbanism a very high level of priority Importantly, investments in transit comple
is given to building and maintaining a relatively fast, ment, and are coordinated with, important land use
comfortable, and reliable system of public transport. decisions. Virtually all the major new growth areas
There are impressive examples of cities that have identified in this study have good public transit
been working hard to expand and enhance transit, service as a basic, underlying design assumption.
in the face of rising auto use in many areas. Zurich The cities studied here do not wait until after the
implements an aggressive set of measures to give housing is built, but rather the lines and investments
priority to its transit on streets. Trams and buses travel occur contemporaneously with the projects. The
on protected, dedicated lanes. A traffic control system new community growth area Rieselfeld in Freiburg,
gives trams and buses green lights at intersections for instance, has a new tram line even before the
and numerous changes and improvements have been project has been fully built. In Amsterdam, as a
made to reduce the interference of autos with transit further example, at the new neighborhood of Nieuw
movement (e.g. bans on left turns on tram line roads; Sloten, tram service began when the first homes
prohibiting stopping or parking in certain areas; were built. In the new ecological housing district
building pedestrian islands; etc.). A single ticket is Kronsberg, in Hannover, three new tram stops
good for all modes of transit in the city (including ensure that no resident is further than 600 meters
buses, trams, and a new underground regional metro away from a station. There is a recognition in these
system). The frequency of service is high and there cities of the importance of providing new residents
are few areas in the canton that are not within a with options, and establishing mobility patterns early.
few hundred meters of a station or stop. Cities like Car sharing has become a viable and increasingly
Freiburg and Copenhagen have made similar strides. popular option in Europe cities. Here, by joining a
In these European cities transit modes are inte car sharing company or organization residents have
grated to an impressive degree. This means coor access to neighborhood-based cars, on an hourly
dination of investments and routes so that transit or per-kilometer cost. There are now some 100,000
modes complement each other. In most of the cities members served by car sharing companies or
studied, for instance, regional and national trains organizations in 500 European cities. Some of the
systems are fully integrated with local routes. It is newest car sharing companies, such as GreenWheels
easy, as well, to shift from one mode to another. in the Netherlands, are also pursuing creative strat
Local transit centers are viewed in these cities as egies for enticing new customers. This company
multi-modal, mixed-use centers of activity. Arnhem’s has been developing strategic alliances, for ex
new central train station in the Netherlands is a ample with the national train company, to provide
case in point. It integrates in a single location high- packages of benefits at reduced prices. One of the
speed and conventional train service, local transit, key issues for the success of car sharing is the
bicycle parking, rental, and repair, as well as shops, availability of convenient spaces, and a number of
offices, and housing. These uses are all within a cities, including Amsterdam and Utrecht, have been
few hundred meters of the city center. setting aside spaces for this purpose. In cities such
The ease of traveling throughout Europe is aided as Hannover, Germany, the car sharing organization
tremendously by the commitment on this continent there (a non-profit called Okostadt) has strategically
to high-speed rail. Cross-national movement by placed cars at the stations of the Stadtbahn, or city
high-speed train is increasingly comfortable and tram, furthering enhancing their accessibility.
easy, and investments in dedicated tracks and in
frastructure reflect impressive forward thinking on
this issue. And increasingly it is not just the north THINKING BEYOND THE AUTOMOBILE
ern and northwestern European nations leading the
way. Major new high-speed rail systems are under Many of these cities are in the vanguard of new
construction in Italy and Spain for instance. Overall, mobility ideas and concepts and are working hard
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to incorporate them into new development areas. have gone as far, of course, as the Dutch cities,
Amsterdam, for example, has taken an important with cities like Groningen, where more than half
strategy in developing Jjburg. It is working to of the daily trips are made on bicycles. In virtually
develop a comprehensive mobility package that all all new growth areas in the Dutch cities, as well
new residents will be offered and which includes, as many Scandinavian and German cities, bicycle
among other things, a free transit pass (for certain mobility is an essential design feature, including
specified period) and discounted membership in providing important connections to existing city
local car sharing companies. Minimizing from the bicycle networks.
beginning the reliance on automobiles, and giving A number of actions have been taken by these
residents more mobility options, are the goals. cities to promote bicycle use. These include sepa
Eventually this new area will be served both by an rated bike lanes with separate signaling, separate
extension of the city’s underground metro and signaling and priority at intersections, signage and
fast tram. provision of extensive bicycle parking facilities (e.g.
An increasing number of carfree housing estates especially at train stations, public buildings), and
are also being developed in these cities, as a further minimum bicycle storage and parking standards for
reflection of the commitment to minimizing auto- new development. Many cities are gradually convert
dependence. The GWL-Terrein project, also in ing spaces for auto parking to spaces for bicycles.
Amsterdam, built on the city’s old waterworks site, Utrecht has discovered that it can fit 6–10 bicycles
incorporates only very limited peripheral parking. in the same space it takes to park one automobile.
An on-site car sharing company, in combination Tilburg, in the Netherlands, has recently built an
with good tram service, are part of what makes underground valet bicycle parking facility in the
this concept work there. The interior of the project heart of that city’s shopping district. Freiburg’s
incorporates extensive gardens (and 120 commu mobility center combines two levels of bicycle park
nity gardens available to residents) and pedestrian ing, with car-sharing cars on the ground level, a
environment, with key-lock access for fire and café, travel agency, and office of the Deutsche Bahn f
emergency vehicles. (and the structure has a green roof and a photo i
v
Another carfree experiment is the new ecolog voltaic array generating electricity!). e
ical district Vauban, in Freiburg. Built on the former These cities are also innovating in the area
site of an army barracks, this project is unique of public bikes. The most impressive program is
because it gives new residents the opportunity Copenhagen’s “City Bikes,” which now makes avail
to declare their intentions to be carfree, and re able more than 2000 public bicycles throughout the
wards them financially for doing so. Specifically, if center of the city. The bikes are brightly painted
residents choose to have a car, they must pay (companies sponsor and purchase the bikes in ex
approximately $13,000 for the cost of a space in change for the chance to advertise on their wheels
the nearby parking garage (a bit less than one-tenth and frames), and can be used by simply inserting a
the cost of the housing units). In this way there is coin as a deposit. The bikes are geared in such a way
a strong financial incentive to choose to be carfree that the pedaling is difficult enough to discourage
and so far about half the residents have taken the their theft. The program has been a success, and the
carfree path. Projects like Vauban challenge new number of bikes has been expanding. These sustain
residents to think and act more sustainably and able European cities have discovered that bicycles
reward them for doing so. are an important and legitimate alternative mode of
Bicycles are an impressive mobility option in transport to the car and with modest planning and
almost all of the cities studied in Green Urbanism, investments substantial ridership can be achieved.
and many of these cities have taken tremendous
efforts to expand bicycle facilities and to promote
bicycle use. Berlin has 800 km of bike lanes, and BUILDING PEDESTRIAN CITIES;
Vienna has more than doubled its bicycle network EXPANDING THE PUBLIC REALM
since the late 1980s. Copenhagen now has a policy
of installing bike lanes along all major streets, and European cities represent, as well, exemplary efforts
bicycle use in that city has risen substantially. Few at creating walkable, pedestrian urban environments.
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Relatively compact, dense, and mixed-use urban like Leiden, emphasis has been given to installing
environments make cities much more walkable, of new pedestrian bridges over canals connecting major
course. And most European cities and regions bene streets, and every new residential area is designed
fit from having a compact historic core, designed to include a grocery, post office, and other shops
and evolved around walking and face-to-face com within an easy walk. The greater mixing of uses
merce. The vitality, beauty, and attraction of Euro means that residents of these cities typically have
pean cities is in no small part a function of the many shops, services, cafés within a walkable range.
impressive public and pedestrian spaces. Cities like The experience of these European cities in pe
Barcelona and Venice remain positive and compel destrianizing much of their urban centers has been
ling models of pedestrian urban society. The uses a positive one, both economically and in terms of
of these spaces are varied and many: they are quality of life. The spaces created commonly con
outdoor stages, the “living rooms” in which citizens tain fountains, sculptures and public art, extensive
socialize, interact, and come together, places where seating and, of course, many reasons for being
political events occur and democracy plays itself there – restaurants, cafés, shops. Each city has its
out. These areas are now the social heart of these own unique history and features that can be used
communities – places where children play, casual to strengthen the unique character of its pedestrian
conversations and unexpected meetings take place, environment. Freiburg’s “backle,” or urban streams
and people come to watch and be seen. that run through the streets of its old center, as
The overall land use pattern in these cities, and well as its pebble mosaics are delightful and special
the priority given to maintaining their compact and this city has done an excellent job expanding
form, certainly make a walking culture more fea and adding on to these unique qualities of place.
sible. What is especially impressive, however, is Good public transit appears a major factor
the continued attention given to this issue and the strengthening the pedestrian realm in these cities,
continued expanding of pedestrian areas and the as well as commitments to bicycles, as in the case
strengthening of the public and pedestrian realm. of Copenhagen (Hass-Klau, et al. 1999). Extensive
Cities like Copenhagen have set the stage, begin efforts to calm urban traffic, to restrict auto access,
ning in the early 1960s, gradually taking back their and to raise the cost of parking and auto mobility
urban centers from cars. That city pedestrianized are also important elements. A number of European
the Stroget, one of its main downtown streets, in cities have experimented with or are anticipating
1962. Copenhagen continues this pedestrianizing some form of road pricing. The City of London is
in a gradual way each year. The city has adopted the most recent notable example, now charging a
the policy of converting 2–3 percent of its down fee of five pounds for cars wishing to enter central
town parking to pedestrian space each year, to London (and already resulting in a significant reduc
dramatic effect over a 20–40 year period. Today tion in car traffic there). These European experiences
the amount of pedestrian space is tremendous. support that a pedestrian culture and community
Eighteen pedestrian squares have been created in life is indeed possible, even where the climate may
Copenhagen where there was once auto parking be harsh, and that these spaces serve an incredible
– some 100,000 square meters in all. Had propon range of social, cultural, and economic functions.
ents of public space in Copenhagen attempted to
convert this amount of space all at once it would
have been very politically difficult to do so. GREENING THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Many other cities have followed suit, especially
Dutch and German cities, but examples can be Ensuring that compact cities are also green cities
found throughout Europe. Cities like Vienna and is a major challenge, and there are a number of
Groningen have pedestrianized much of their cen impressive greening initiatives among the study
ters, creating delightful, highly functional public cities. First, in many of these cities there is an
spaces. Groningen’s compact city policy ensures extensive greenbelt and regional open space struc
that major new public buildings and facilities are ture, with a considerable amount of natural land
kept in the center, and accessible through walking actually owned by the cities. Extensive tracts of
– it is a compact city of “short distances.” In cities forest and open lands are owned by cities such as
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Vienna, Berlin, and Graz, among others. Cities such now some 300 green roofs scattered around the
as Helsinki and Copenhagen are spatially structured city. They have been incorporated into many
so that large wedges of green nearly penetrate the different types of buildings including a hospital, a
center for these cities. Helsinki’s large Keskuspuisto kindergarten, a hotel, a school, a concert hall, and
central park extends in an almost unbroken wedge even the roof of a gas station. Green roofs have
from the center to an area of old growth forest been shown to provide a number of important
to the north of the city. It is 1000 hectares in size environmental benefits, and to accommodate a
and 11 km long. surprising amount of biological diversity. Many
In Hannover an extensive system of protected other innovative urban greening strategies can be
greenspaces exists, including the Eilenriede, a found in these cities from green streets, to green
650 hectare dense forest located in the center of bridges, to urban stream daylighting.
the city. Hannover has also recently completed a
80-kilometre long green ring (der grune ring) which
circles the city, providing a continuous hiking and RENEWABLE ENERGY AND CLOSED-
biking route, and exposing residents to a variety LOOP CITIES
of landscape types, from hilly Borde to the river
valleys of the Leineaue river. A number of the cities have taken action to pro
There is a trend in the direction of creating and mote more closed-loop urban metabolism, in which,
strengthening ecological networks within and be as in nature, wastes represent inputs or “food,” for
tween urban centers. This is perhaps most clearly other urban processes (e.g. Girardet, 1999). The
evident in Dutch cities, where extensive attention city of Stockholm has made some of the most
to ecological networks has occurred at the national impressive progress in this area, and has even
and provincial levels. Under the national govern administratively reorganized its governmental struc
ment’s innovative Nature Policy Plan, a national ture so that the departments of waste, water, and
ecological network has been established consisting energy are grouped within an eco-cycles division. f
of core areas, nature development areas, and cor A number of actions in support of ecocycle balanc i
v
ridors, which must be more specifically elaborated ing have already occurred. These include, for in e
and delineated at the provincial level. Cities in turn stance: the conversion of sewage sludge to fertilizer
are attempting to tie into this network and build and its use in food production, and the generation
upon it. At a municipal level, such networks can of biogas from sludge. The biogas is used to fuel
consist of ecological waterways (e.g. canals), tree public vehicles in the city, and to fuel a combined
corridors, and green connections between parks heat and power plant. In this way, wastes are re
and open space systems. Dutch cities like Groningen, turned to residents in the form of district heating.
Amsterdam, and Utrecht have full time urban ecology Another powerful example of the closed-loop
staff, and are working to create and restore these concept can be seen in Rotterdam, in the Roca3
important ecological connections and corridors. power plant, which supplies district heating and
Many examples exist of efforts to mandate or carbon dioxide to 120 greenhouses in the area.
subsidize the greening of existing urban areas. There A waste product becomes a useful input, and in
is a continuing trend, for instance, towards instal this case prevents some 130,000 metric tonnes of
lation of ecological or green rooftops, especially in carbon emissions annually.
German, Austrian, and Dutch cities. Linz, Austria, Energy is very much on the planning agenda,
for instance, has one of the most extensive green and these exemplary cities are taking a host of
roof programs in Europe. Under this program, the serious measures to conserve energy and to pro
city frequently requires building plans to compen mote renewable sources. The heavy use of com
sate for the loss of green space taken by a building. bined heat and power (CHP) generation, and district
Creation of green roofs has frequently been the heating, especially in northern European cities, is
response. Also since the late 1980s the city has one reason for typically lower per capita levels of
subsidized the installation of green roofs – specific CO2 production here. Helsinki, for instance, has
ally, it will pay up to 35 percent of the costs. The one of the most extensive district heating systems:
program has been quite successful and there are more than 91 percent of the city’s buildings are
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 565 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

connected to it. The result is a substantial increase for renewable energy developments is truly impres
in fuel efficiency, and significant reductions in pol sive. Reflecting a generally overall level of concern
lution emissions. District heating and decentralized for global warming issues and energy self-sufficiency,
combined heat and power plants are now com significant production subsidies and consumer sub
monly integrated into new housing districts in sidies have both been given. The degree of creativ
these cities. In Kronsberg, in Hannover, for instance, ity in incorporating renewable energy ideas and
heat is provided by two CHP plants, one of which, technologies in many of these cities is also quite
serving about 600 housing units and a small school, impressive. Oslo’s new international airport, for
is actually located in the basement of a building example, provides heating through a bark/wood
of flats. bio-energy district heating system. This system
Many cities, including Heidelberg and Freiburg, provides heat for buildings through 8 km of pipes,
have set ambitious maximum energy consumption as well as the airport’s de-icing system. The moist
standards for new construction projects. Heidelberg bark fuel is a local product, and costs only one-third
has recently sponsored a low-energy social housing as much as fuel oil. In Sundsvall, Sweden, snow is
project, to demonstrate the feasibility of very low- collected, stored, and used as a major cooling
energy designs (specifically a standard of 47 kwh/m2 source for the city’s main hospital. In Copenhagen,
per year). The Dutch are promoting the concept twenty 2 MW wind turbines have been installed
of energy-balanced housing – housing that will over offshore which will together generate enough
the course of a year produce as much energy as it energy for about 30,000 homes.
uses – and the first two of these units have been
completed in the Nieuwland district in Amersfoort.
Many cities such as Heidelberg have undertaken GREEN CITIES, GREEN GOVERNANCE
programs to evaluate and reduce energy consump
tion in schools and other public buildings. Incentive Many of these cities are taking a hard look at ways
programs have been established which allow schools their own operations and management can become
to keep a certain percentage of the savings from more environmentally responsible. As a first step,
energy conservation and retrofitting investments. many local governments have undertaken some
Heidelberg has engaged in an innovative system form of internal environmental audit. Variously
of performance contracts, in which private retrofit called green audits or environmental audits, they
ting companies get to keep a certain share of the represent attempts to study comprehensively the
conservation benefits. environmental implications of a city’s policies and
There is an explosion of interest in solar and governance structure. A number of local govern
other renewable energy sources in these cities (and ments are now going through the process of becom
countries). Cities like Freiburg and Berlin have been ing certified (the London borough of Sutton being
competing for the label “solar city,” with each pro the first) under the EU’s Eco-Management and
viding significant subsidies for solar installations. Audit Scheme (EMAS), an environmental manage
In the Netherlands, major new development areas, ment system more commonly applied to private
such as Nieuwland in Amersfoort and Nieuw Sloten companies. Several German cities are preparing
in Amsterdam, are incorporating solar energy, both environmental budgets, under a pilot program. The
passive and active, into their designs. In Nieuwland, cities of Den Haag and London have calculated
described as a “solar suburb,” there are more than their ecological footprints and are using these meas
900 homes with rooftop photovoltaics, 1100 homes ures as policy guideposts (e.g. see Best Foot Forward
with thermal solar units, and a number of major Ltd, 2002). Albertslund, Denmark, has developed
public buildings producing power from solar (includ an innovative system of “green accounts,” used to
ing several schools, a major sports hall, and a childcare track and evaluate key environmental trends at city
facility). What is particularly exciting is to see the and district levels, and many of the study cities have
effective integration of solar into the architectural developed sustainability indicators (e.g. Leicester,
design of homes, schools, and other buildings. London, and Den Haag). Cities like Lahti, Helsinki,
The degree of public and governmental support and Bologna have gone through extensive in-house
in these European cities, financial and technical, education and involvement of city personnel, often
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 566 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

as part of the local Agenda 21 process, in examin exert a tremendous ecological footprint on the
ing environmental impacts and in identifying ways world. Yet, these most exemplary cities provide both
that personnel and city departments can reduce tangible examples of sustainable practice, and
waste, energy, and environmental impacts. inspiration that progress can be made in the face
Municipal governments have taken a variety of of these difficult pressures.
measures to reduce the environmental impacts The lessons are several. These cities demon
of their actions. A number of communities have strate the critical role that municipalities can and
adopted environmental purchasing and procure must play in addressing serious global environment
ment policies. Cities like Alberstlund have adopted problems, including reliance on fossil-fuels and
policies mandating that only organic food can be global climate change. Innovations in the urban
served in schools and child care facilities, and rest environment offer tremendous potential for dra
ricting use of pesticides in public parks and grounds. matically reducing our ecological impacts (European
Other cities are aggressively promoting the develop cities produce about half the per-capita carbon
ment of environmental vehicles. Stockholm’s environ emissions of American cities), while at the same
mental vehicles program is one of the largest (a time enhancing our quality of life (e.g. by expand
pilot program under the EU-funded initiative ZEUS), ing personal mobility options with bicycles and
with over 300 vehicles. A number of cities have sought transit).
to modify the mobility patterns of employees, for Many, indeed most, of the ideas, initiatives, strat
instance by creating financial incentives for the use egies undertaken in these innovative cities serve,
of transit or bicycles. Cities like Saarbrucken, Germany, in addition to reducing ecological footprints, to
have made great strides in reducing energy, waste, enhance livability and quality of life. Taking back
and resource consumption in public buildings. space from the auto and converting it to pedestrian
Communities have also engaged in extensive and public space does much to enhance the desir
public involvement and outreach on sustainability ability of these cities. Investments in public transit
matters. A variety of creative approaches have been reduce dramatically energy consumption, CO2 f
taken. Leicester [UK], for instance, has developed emissions, and urban air quality problems, but at i
v
alliances with the local media and has sponsored the same time provide tremendous levels of inde e
a series of educational campaigns on particular pendence and mobility to the youngest and oldest
community issues. As a further example, it has est members of society. Making bicycle riding safer
ablished (with its NGO partner Environ) an envir and easier helps the environment, but also provides
onmental center and cyber-café called the Ark, as a badly needed form of physical exercise.
well as a demonstration ecological home. Officials These experiences demonstrate clearly that it is
in these exemplary cities often express the belief possible to apply virtually every green or ecological
that it is essential to set a positive example for the strategy or technique, from solar and wind energy
community and that before they could ask citizens to greywater recycling, in very urban, very compact
to change their behaviors and lifestyles, the muni settings. Green Urbanism is not an oxymoron. More
cipal government must have its environmental over, the lesson of these European cities is that
house in order. municipal governments can do much to help bring
these ideas about, from making parking spaces
available for car sharing companies to providing
UNDERSTANDING EUROPEAN CITIES: density bonuses for green rooftops, to producing
SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS or purchasing green power.
There are also process lessons here. Key among
To be sure, many European cities are facing some them is an understanding of the great power of
serious problems and trends working against sus partnerships and collaboration between different
tainability, in particular a dramatic rise in auto parties with an interest in sustainability. While not
mobile ownership and use, and a continuing pattern always easy, success at achieving sustainability will
of de-concentration of people and commerce. And, depend on them. This means getting different depart
with their relatively affluent populations consuming ments to talk to each other and to work together
substantial amounts of resources, European cities (as in Stockholm), and getting different public and
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 567 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

private actors to join together in common initiatives further explain good practice. Prevailing European
that demonstrate that green urban ideas are pos views of land are less imbued with a sense of
sible and desirable. personal use and freedom, and there is little expect
It is important to recognize, to be sure, the dif ation, for instance, on the part of a rural landowner
ferences in governmental structure. The economic or farmer that his or her land will eventually be
and planning frameworks in place in these countries convertible to urban development.
(compared with, say, the United States) often faci There are also a number of more regionally
litate many of the exemplary urban sustainability unique cultural values and differences, each with
projects described here. The role of economic in significant planning and land use shaping implica
centives and the economic incentive structures is tions. A stronger desire to live within a city or town
critical and undeniable. High prices at the gas pump center clearly exists throughout much of Europe,
(typically $4–5 per gallon in Western Europe) have borne undoubtedly from an older, more developed
been a conscious policy decision in European coun urban culture. Importance given to strolling, spend
tries, and in countries like Germany, have provided ing time in public places, and to the values of the
essential funding for public transit. Such high prices, public realm more generally, in countries like Spain
relative to countries like the United States, undoubt and Italy, certainly help explain the success of
edly help to encourage more compact land use pedestrian spaces in these countries. Pace of life,
and personal choices in favor of more sustainable cultural organization of the day, and the number
modes of mobility. Also, carbon taxes in countries of hours in the work week are also clearly import
like Denmark help to substantially level the eco ant. In Italy, public and pedestrian spaces are used
nomic playing field between conventional fossil-fuel in part because there is time to use them – the
energy and more sustainable, renewable forms of culture organizes its day so as to support the early
energy. Higher energy prices generally help to evening stroll, after the shops close but before the
promote greater conservation and energy efficiency evening meal. To many observers of the European
improvements. The important role of adjusting scene there are also lessons to emulate – sugges
incentives and economic signals is itself a key lesson tions and ideas for humanizing cities and strength
from the European scene. Rather than seen as a ening their livability and sociability, as well as their
pre-existing background condition, raising gasoline sustainability. The lessons are many and profound
and energy taxes can be seen as an example of an on many levels.
important strategic societal and political choice.
There are other political, social, and cultural
conditions, to be sure, that favor many of the exem REFERENCES
plary ideas discussed here. Parliamentary govern
mental structures that give relative voice and Beatley, Timothy. (2000) Green Urbanism: Learning from
power to green party and other social and environ European Cities, Washington, DC: Island Press.
mental views (with local representation of these Best Foot Forward, Ltd. (2002) City Limits, London:
views as well) have been important. Historically Best Foot Forward Ltd.
stronger planning and land use control systems are Gehl, Jan and Lars Gemzoe. (2000) New City Spaces,
helpful also, as well as generally stronger and more Copenhagen: The Danish Architectural Press.
proactive roles afforded to government. Many of Girardet, Herbert. (1999) Creating Sustainable Cities,
the important (more activist) urban sustainability Devon, UK: Green Books.
activities undertaken in these European cities – as Hass-Klau, Carmen, Graham Crampton, Clare Dowland,
market stimulators, promoters of innovation, and and Inge Nold. (1999) Streets as Living Space:
financial underwriters for innovative urban sustain Helping Public Places Play Their Proper Role, London:
ability practices and projects – are common and Lander Publishing Ltd.
accepted roles for local governments to play. Newman, Peter and Jeffrey Kenworthy. (1999) Sus
But there are also certainly many underlying tainable Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence,
value differences (compared with the US) that Washington, DC: Island Press.
9780415668071_P5_05.indd 568 10-26-2012 3:22:40 PM

“Urban Resilience: Cities of
Fear and Hope”
from Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil
and Climate Change (2009)
Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer
Two of the greatest challenges to our collective future are the negative impacts of resource depletion and the
uncertainties of climate change. Each of these threats is addressed in the following selection by Newman,
Beatley and Boyer. The Hubbert Peak (Oil) Theory hypothesizes that global petroleum extraction will peak
and begin a period of decline, causing major negative economic, social, and transportation shocks that will
stress global relations and force societies to change their way of life. The model was first created by M. King
Hubbert in 1956 to predict US oil production declines beginning in the late-1960s. On the world stage, many
Peak Oil adherents suggest this production decline will begin sometime after 2020 (this estimate having been
adjusted many times previously). Though continuing price shocks, scientific research, and production crises
provide evidence for Peak Oil proponents, new fossil fuel discoveries, innovative extraction technologies, and
alternative energy possibilities diminish these concerns for Peak Oil opponents. On whichever side of the
debate one falls, oil price instability is already awakening some cities to the need for urban form, development,
and infrastructure evolution; with the smarter places already beginning to make fundamental changes (many
of these places are in Europe, Latin America, the Gulf States, and Asia).
Compounding these energy challenges are the impacts of impending climate change. Al Gore’s 2006
documentary film (and companion book) An Inconvenient Truth helped to advance the climate change posi-
tion by educating the public about the risks of global warming. Gore’s exhaustive slide presentation linked
aggregate human activity and population growth with negative global climate warming impacts. While a small
minority questions the global warming thesis, growing weather unpredictability and increasing natural disaster
frequency suggest to most observers that a longer-term climate change is coalescing. A number of authors
are now addressing how the design professions can respond.
While a call-to-action has picked up speed over the last half century through the sustainability movement,
many advocates suggest the bandwagon of policy and design response is too slow moving. Where progres-
sives in many places are able to invest in long-term resilience, other places facing economic difficulty continue
to focus on short-term concerns. This is becoming a classic socio-political differentiation between those who
champion the long view of resiliency, versus those who champion the consumer/job needs of continuing
everyday life as currently lived, albeit with blinders. In contrast, most design schools now accept the sustain-
ability imperative to change status quo development patterns – and are actively drinking the “koolaid” through
innovative studio topics, research seminars, and community-based engagement. Professional design and
development practice on the other hand has been much slower on the uptake. Focusing primarily on oil deple-
tion, this selection provides a set of arguments for urban resilience and how we might evolve our cities to
reduce the economic and resource shocks of the potential crisis. Resilience here is defined as the ability to
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570 P eter N ewman , T imoth Y B eatle Y , an D H eather B o Y er
absorb disturbances and weather crises; to bounce back after disaster, to dispel fear in the face of challenge,
and to strengthen both built environment and infrastructure systems. Through the writing, the authors suggest
how cities might change, what resilient cities might look like, and how we might move our cities toward
resiliency. They outline several strategies for achieving urban resiliency: renewable energy, carbon neutrality,
more localized infrastructure, place-making, transit advocacy, green infrastructure, and eco-efficiency. In pre-
senting this palette of change, they offer a vision of hope for cities and their citizens.
Peter Newman is widely known for his expertise in automobile dependence, transit-oriented development,
urban transport, and sustainability advocacy. He is an environmental scientist and Professor at Curtin Univer-
sity in Perth, Australia; and continues to consult for a number of international sustainability organizations and
governments. His works include: Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence, with Jeffrey
Kenworthy (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999); An International Sourcebook on Automobile Dependence
in Cities 1960–1990, with J. Kenworthy and F. Laube (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1999);
and Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices, with Isabella Jennings (Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2008).
Timothy Beatley is an environmental planner and the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities
at the University of Virginia. He coined the term Green Urbanism, and is a widely published researcher in natural
hazard planning, environmental ethics, and environmental conservation. His most recent texts include: The
Principles of Green Urbanism (London: Earthscan, 2010); Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design
and Planning (2010); Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times (2009); Native
to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age (2004); Green Urbanism: Learning from European
Cities (2000); and The Ecology of Place: Planning for Environment, Economy, and Community, with Kristy
Manning (1997) (all published by Island Press in Washington DC). With Professor Stephen Wheeler of UC
Davis, he is the co-editor of The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (London: Routledge, 2nd edn. 2008).
Heather Boyer is a senior editor at Island Press in Washington DC. She was a 2005 Loeb Fellow at the
Harvard Graduate School of Design. Island Press has become one of the leading environmental policy and
sustainability publishers.
The topic of urban resilience has become a key aspect of sustainability theory. Jared Diamond’s book
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005) is notable for its historical
analysis of civilization demise as a result of resource depletion. Other books on the impacts of resilience and
resource depletion include: Brian Walker, David Salt, and Walter Reid, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Eco-
systems and People in a Changing World (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006); J. Howard Kunstler, The
Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes
of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005); and Douglass Farr, Sustainable Urban-
ism: Urban Design with Nature (New York: Wiley, 2007).
For more on the challenges of climate change and urban design response, see: Peter Calthorpe, Urbanism
in the Age of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010); Stephen M. Wheeler, Climate Change
and Social Ecology: A New Perspective on the Climate Challenge (London: Routledge, 2012); and Peter
Droege, Climate Design: Design and Planning for the Age of Climate Change (Novato, CA: ORO Editions,
2010). For primers in the science of climate change see: David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf, The Climate
Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Michael
Mann and Lee Kump, Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming – The Illustrated Guide to the Findings
of the International Panel on Climate Change (London: DK Publishing, 2008); and not surprisingly, Al Gore,
An Inconvenient Truth: the Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
(Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 2006).
Acknowledging that both the peak oil crisis and climate change are highly debated topics, see: Andrew
Dessler and Edward A. Parson, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Stephen M. Gorelick, Oil Panic and the Global Crisis:
Predictions and Myths (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
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“ U rban R esilience : C ities of F ear an D H ope ” 571
Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immov- Some cities exude hope as they grow and confront
able, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in the future, others reek of fear as the processes of
just the right place – it can be tipped. decline set in and the pain of change causes distrust
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point and despair. Most cities have a combination of the
two. For example, Atlanta is a city with some of
Resilience in our personal lives is about lasting, the nation’s worst traffic congestion (sixty hours of
about making it through crisis, about inner strength delay annually per traveler in 2005) and rapidly
and strong physical constitution. Resilience is de growing urban sprawl. While it is experiencing areas
stroyed by fear, which causes us to panic, reduces of abandonment as a result of the subprime mort
our inner resolve, and eventually debilitates our gage meltdown, its inner city continues to grow,
bodies. Resilience is built on hope, which gives us reclaiming old areas once abandoned and reversing
confidence and strength. Hope is not blind to the the decline of generations.1
possibility of everything getting worse, but it is a Atlanta has been dubbed a little Los Angeles
choice we make when faced with challenges. Hope for its similar sprawling highways and automobile
brings health to our souls and bodies. dependence, but Los Angeles was ranked second
Resilience can be applied to cities. They too lowest in carbon emissions (from transportation
need to last, to respond to crises and adapt in a and residential buildings) per capita, while Atlanta
way that may cause them to change and grow dif ranks sixty-seventh.2 However, cities of hope will
ferently; cities require an inner strength, a resolve, use considerably less fuel and produce much less
as well as a strong physical infrastructure and built carbon than both of these in an age of carbon
environment. constraint. Cities of fear make decisions based on
Fear undermines the resilience of cities. The short-term, even panicked, responses; cities of hope
near or total collapse of many cities has been plan for the long term, with each decision building
rooted in fear: health threats like the plague or toward that vision, hopeful that some of the steps
yellow fever have struck cities and emptied them will be tipping points that lead to fundamental change. f
of those with the resources to escape, leaving only Cities of fear engage in competition as their only i
v
the poor behind. Invading armies have destroyed driving force, while cities of hope build consensus e
cities by sowing fear before an arrow or shot was around cooperation and partnership. Cities of fear
fired. The racial fears of a generation in American see threats everywhere while cities of hope see
cities decanted millions to the suburbs and beyond. opportunities to improve in every crisis.
Perhaps the biggest fear today in many cities is This book focuses on the challenges our metro
terrorism. In New York after 9/11, fear stopped politan areas face in responding to their increasing
people from congregating on streets or using the carbon footprint, dependence on fossil fuels, and
subway and sent many urban dwellers scurrying impact on our irreplaceable natural resources. Jared
for the suburbs, but the city proved to be resilient Diamond’s book Collapse looks at how some settle
and resisted collapse. After the terrorist bombings ments and regions have collapsed due to the in
in London, the city immediately steeled itself to be ability to adapt, leading to an undermining of the
normal, to resolve to go to work and to use the natural resource base on which they depend. A
subway; signs appeared everywhere “7 million characteristic of those societies appears to be that
Londoners, 1 London.” they became fixated by their fear of the future and
A danger that few think about with such im were unable to adapt. On the other hand, Diamond
mediacy is the threat of the collapse of our metro outlines examples of societies facing the same pres
politan regions in the face of resource depletion sures that were able to adapt – they turned their
– namely, the reduction in the availability of oil and hope into resilience.3
the necessary reduction in all fossil fuel use to Diamond speculates that climate change and
reduce human impact on climate change. This book resource degradation are threatening our cities and
is not about introducing a new fear, but of under regions today. These are slow-moving phenomena
standing the implications of our actions and finding that can undermine the continued growth of cities.
hope in the steps that can be taken to create resili Our book takes this potential of urban collapse
ent cities in the face of peak oil and climate change. seriously but is focused on how we can adapt to
9780415668071_P5_06.indd 571 10-26-2012 3:22:36 PM

our present crises, how we can make our cities ments. The unlocking of human ingenuity to work
more resilient to the future in ways that are socially on technology, trade, and urban culture has created
and economically acceptable and feasible. ever-expanding opportunities in cities. However,
The book takes the dual issues of peak oil and while some cities took advantage of these new
climate change as the key focus and rationale for opportunities, many remained a little more than
our need to change. It describes how the production rural trading posts. Urban opportunities accelerated
peak in global oil may already have occurred, or with the Industrial Revolution and more recently
is very close at hand due to a combination of phys with the globalization of the economy. But again not
ical shortages and political control in vulnerable every city has taken advantage of these opportuni
regions. For all practical purposes we must adapt ties. Some cities, such as Liverpool, Philadelphia,
our cities to lessen our dependence on petroleum. and Pittsburgh, have struggled to adapt to the new
This is no small task as oil use in every city in the opportunities and have relied for too long on out
world has grown each year for most of the twen moded methods of industrial production as the basis
tieth century; yet turning this trend around is within for their cities. Yet other cities, such as Manchester
our reach. Global governance is recognizing the and New York, have made the transition and are
implications of climate change and the impact of thriving.
cities, and there is a movement to require all cities Peter Hall, who has examined why some cities
to use less and less fossil fuels each year. This is adapt more rapidly than others, suggests that the
no longer a speculative plea to cities, but is becom desire to experiment and innovate is found in the
ing a political and legal necessity. heart of the city’s culture. Robert Friedel calls it
Few would suggest that creating resilient cities the “culture of improvement,” Lewis Mumford
is possible with technological advances alone, and refers to this instinct in a city as a “collective work
agree that it must involve change in our cultures, of art,” and Tim Gorringe as “creative spirituality.”6
our economies, and our lifestyles. It is the human Whatever it is called, the ability to experiment
capacity of our cities that is ultimately being tested and innovate is the tissue of hope and the core
by these challenges. of resilience.
While understanding the implications of our Overcoming the fear of change today must in
current lifestyle is important, the response should volve new experiments in green urbanism, as cities
not be driven by fear of collapse, but by the hope seek to improve themselves in ways that fit their
ful vision of the livable, equitable, resilient places culture. Which cities will respond to the new set
our cities can become. We want to show that there of opportunities opening up around this global sus
is hope in our cities. tainability issue? Rethinking how we create our built
environment is critical in lessening our dependence
on oil and minimizing our carbon footprint. Buildings
WHY CONCENTRATE ON CITIES? produce 43 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide
emissions and consume 48 percent of the energy
Cities have grown rapidly in the age of cheap oil produced. It is projected that by shifting 60 percent
and now consume 75 percent of the world’s energy of new growth to compact patterns the United States
and emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse will save 85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
gases.4 Cities are presently growing globally at 2 annually by 2030.7 We believe that the change when
percent per year (over 3 percent in less developed dealing with global issues like peak oil and climate
regions and 0.7 percent in more developed regions), change, needs to come from the cities. Nations can
while rural areas have leveled out and are in many do a lot to help or hinder these efforts, but the
places declining. For the first time, half of human really important initiatives have to begin at the city
ity lives in cities, and it is estimated that by 2030 level because there is great variation in how cities
the number of city dwellers will reach five billion, cope with issues within any nation. Great leadership
or 60 percent, of the world’s population.5 and innovation can be found in cities. For example,
Urbanization has been happening since the while the United States has yet to ratify the Kyoto
Neolithic revolution when agriculture enabled food Protocol, over 825 mayors of U.S. cities signed onto
surpluses to create a division of labor in settle the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement to
9780415668071_P5_06.indd 572 10-26-2012 3:22:36 PM

commit their city to reaching the goals of the ecosystems like coral reefs or farming systems and
Protocol. The initiative, which was spearheaded by other complex social-economic-ecological systems.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, strives to meet these Their principles of resilience are applicable to
goals through leadership and action advanced by cities. They write, “Resilience is the capacity of a
a network of forward-thinking cities large and small. system to absorb disturbance and still retain its
Similarly, the Clinton Foundation has coordinated basic function and structure.” Tabitha Wallington,
an approach to reducing greenhouse gases for the Richard Hobbes, and Sue Moore say that ecological
big cities in the world through its C40 Large Cities resilience “may be measured by the magnitude of
Climate Leadership Group, an association of large disturbance the system can tolerate and still persist.”
global cities dedicated to tackling climate change.8 This book attempts to apply this concept to the com
Our book tells many of these stories of hope in plex social-economic-ecological systems of cities.11
cities across the globe, which show there is leader In New Orleans the resilience of the city to with
ship coming from government, industry, univer stand winds and waves from Katrina was reduced
sities, and community groups. Although the focus is by the loss of wetlands and mangroves around the
on American cities where so much more is needed, Gulf shores, and by the inadequate infrastructure
many of the examples will come from elsewhere provided by the levees. But the main human dis
in the world. aster came about because the transit system was
so inadequate that people who did not own a car
(around a third of the population) could not evacu
WHAT ARE RESILIENT CITIES? ate, and the freeways were at capacity due to the
number of individuals in cars. No plan for using
Since the devastation of many Gulf Coast cities school buses and other transit vehicles was in place,
from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Indian Ocean so those resources were all washed away with the
tsunami of 2004 that impacted eleven countries, first floods. The transport system was not resilient
and the Burmese Cyclone of 2008, resilient cities and it undermined the rest of the urban system, f
have most often been discussed in relation to the which turned rapidly into social chaos. i
v
city’s ability to respond to a natural disaster. Here In a resilient city every step of development e
we use an expanded definition to include a city’s and redevelopment of the city will make it more
ability to respond to a natural resource shortage sustainable: it will reduce its ecological footprint
and respond to the recognition of the human im (consumption of land, water, materials, and energy,
pact on climate change. There is debate about the especially the oil so critical to their economies and
link between climate change and natural disasters, the output of waste and emissions) while simultan
which has been renewed as scientists try to under eously improving its quality of life (environment,
stand the increasing incidence of devastating natural health, housing, employment, community) so that
disasters, such as the super cyclones that devas it can better fit within the capacities of local, re
tated New Orleans and Myanmar.9 gional, and global ecosystems. Resilience needs to
We have focused on the idea of resilient cities be applied to all the natural resources on which
as those that can substantially reduce their depen cities rely.12
dence on petroleum fuels in ways that are socially In resilience thinking, the more sustainable a
and economically acceptable and feasible. But city, the more it will be able to cope with reduction
whether the impetus for pursuing resiliency is to in the resources that are used to make the city
respond to natural or to human made disasters, the work. Sustainability recognizes there are limits in
outcome is similar. Resilient cities have built-in the local, regional, and global systems within which
systems that can adapt to change, such as a diver cities fit, and that when those limits are breached
sity of transport and land-use systems and multiple the city can rapidly decline. The more a city can
sources of renewable power that will allow a city minimize its dependence on resources such as
to survive shortages in fuel supplies.10 fossil fuels in a period when there are global con
Brian Walker, David Salt, and Walter Reid have straints on supply and global demand is increasing,
summarized the academic area of “resilience think the more resilient it will be. Atlanta needs 782 gallons
ing,” which has emerged as a way of managing of gasoline per person each year for its urban
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system to work, but in Barcelona it is just 64 change. Studies show that people in proximity
gallons. With oil supply cuts and carbon taxes to natural daylight are more productive and
the decline in availability of oil will seriously con healthier. Workers in green buildings report
front Atlanta, yet Barcelona is likely to cope with fewer sick days and are more productive. When
ease. Both cities will still need to have plans in schools have gone green, test scores have
place that help their citizenry cope with such a improved.16 Green buildings are attracting devel
disturbance.13 opers now not just because they can reduce
their ongoing costs but because their tenants
and purchasers want a more healthy and produc
WHY SHOULD CITIES MOVE TOWARD tive building in which to live, learn, and work.
RESILIENCY? The urban heat island effect from the waste
heat generated has also been problematic. For
Resilience in cities can be rationalized by simply example, this has been a motivation for Mayor
understanding why we need to reduce oil depen Daley in Chicago to green his city after an
dence in urban regions. extreme summer heat wave proved to be fatal.
■■ Reducing oil use will result in greater equity and
■■ Reducing oil use is a political necessity. The waning economic gain. The inequities of heavily car de
of petroleum resources and the global climate pendent cities for the elderly, the young, and the
change imperatives discussed in this book re poor, will be reduced by greater walkability and
quire all cities to act; if they don’t their citizenry transit access; the social issues such as noise,
will suffer from the inevitable increase in prices neighborhood severance, road rage, and loss of
as we are seeing in the U.S. right now. The public safety will be reduced; the economic costs
$100-a-barrel oil has been broken and some from loss of productive agricultural land to sprawl
analysts are saying that it could go over $300 and bitumen, the cost of accidents, pollution,
within five years.14 and congestion, all will be reduced.17
■■ Reducing oil use will reduce impacts on the environ- ■■ Reducing our dependence on petroleum fuels will
ment. Oil use is responsible for approximately make us less economically vulnerable. The next
one-third of greenhouse gases. Transport green agenda for the global economy, sometimes called
house is seen as the most worrying part of the the Sixth Wave [ . . . ], is about responding with
climate change agenda as it continues to grow technology and services for a new and more
during a period when more renewable or efficient clever kind of resource use. Cities will compete
options are available. within this economic framework, and those cities
■■ Reducing oil use and investing in green building will that get in first will likely do best. But the same
reduce impacts on human health. Improvements economic competition is facing households,
in urban air quality from technological advances depending on which city they live in and where
are being washed out by the growing use of they live in those cities. In U.S. cities the propor
vehicles. Thirty-nine different air quality districts tion of household expenditure on transportation
are over the required standards (this is 40 per increased from 10 percent in the 1960s to 19
cent of the United States). Developing cities percent in 2005, before the 2006 oil price in
desperately need to lower air emissions as they crease (which only reduced the percentage to
are often well above WHO recommended health 18 percent), with very car dependent cities like
limits.15 Other health issues, such as obesity Houston and Detroit having even higher percent
due to lack of activity, as well as stress and ages. A more detailed study by the Center for
depression could be reduced by minimizing auto Housing Policy shows working families with
dependence. household incomes between $20,000 and $50,000
In the United States buildings account for 36 spend almost 30 percent of their income on
percent of energy use and 30 percent of green transportation. In Atlanta within this income
house gas emissions. The immediate benefits of range the percentage is 32 and for families who
natural sunlight, however, go beyond energy have found cheap housing on the fringe, trans
savings and reducing our impact on climate portation can account for over 40 percent of
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their expenses. In Australia surveys show that and a growing number of cities have sustainability
40 percent of household income goes to trans plans to handle this growth in an environmentally
portation in some urban fringe areas. Almost all sound manner. All Australian cities, for example,
of this is for car travel. Households on the have recently had strategic planning studies done
fringes of car-dependent cities are more vulner for the next thirty years of development. Although
able as the cost of transport escalates, especially the studies have recognized that there is a need
after oil reached one hundred dollars a barrel to reduce automobile dependence and save on oil,
in late 2007 (at one hundred and thirty-nine the government has not intervened in any radical
dollars a barrel as we go to press). This increase way to curb oil-consumption behavior, even with
in oil prices coincides with the sub-prime mort the recognition that urbanization is likely to con
gage crisis, hitting many with a double whammy tinue and tax already strained resources. New York
of increased transportation costs and a balloon City is a similar example. On Earth Day 2007 Mayor
ing mortgage payment. Cities, and parts of cities, Bloomberg released an ambitious twenty-five-year
are now economically vulnerable to oil as it plan for a greener city, which goes as far as com
increases in cost.18 mitting to a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse
■■ Reducing dependence on foreign oil is likely to result gases by 2030. But it is not clear how the city plans
in more resilient, peaceful cities. Cities that are able to achieve this reduction, though there is pressure
to successfully reduce their dependence on im from urban design groups to require developers to
ported oil, especially from politically sensitive analyze and disclose their impacts on climate change
areas, will have greater energy security. Terrorism before having their projects approved (79 percent
and war have many causes, but one deep and under of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions are
lying issue is the need by high-oil-consuming produced by buildings).20
countries to secure access to oil in foreign areas, Few cities anywhere have focused on the trans
whether they are friendly or not. As oil becomes portation implications of reducing their oil depend
more and more valuable, the security of supply ence. San Francisco passed a resolution recognizing f
will become a more and more central part of peak oil in April 2006 and fourteen other U.S. cities i
v
geopolitics. Fear can drive us to make security have followed suit, but none of these cities have e
decisions that are not going to help create resilient a detailed plan for reducing their oil use. Austin,
cities. Thus underneath all these arguments is Texas, approved a Climate Protection Plan in 2008,
the fact that reducing our oil dependence – could which has many innovative features but almost no
result in less war. reference to transportation. Many cities do have
plans for reducing their dependence on oil for
Most importantly we are convinced that resilient energy use. For example, the city of Hamilton in
cities will be better places to live. The many benefits Ontario, Canada has developed an energy strategy,
of a resilient city include greater overall physical which includes the promotion of clean, renewable
and emotional health; ease of movement in higher electricity such as wind, solar, and water power,
density, mixed-use communities that are walkable but energy rarely is taken to mean gasoline.21
and have accessible transit options; better food that Cities of course cannot be separated from their
is produced locally and is therefore fresher; efficiency hinterlands or bioregions. Although rural regions
of energy resources, greater affordability, healthier have generally been declining or are at least static
indoor environments; easier access to natural en (apart from the movement of people to the coasts
vironment; and more awareness of the local urban in wealthy countries), they also have increased in
area and bioregion enabling us to have a greater their oil dependence. Rural economic productivity
sense of place and identity. Some of these factors based on agriculture, tourism, and mining has been
are challenging to quantify – but are nevertheless growing based on cheap oil. These activities have a
real opportunities that will emerge from this book.19 large component of oil for travel in the case of tourism,
No models are readily available to illustrate this and both agriculture and mining use diesel for trans
positive approach to cities in the age of reduced port, machinery, and processing, and also depend
oil availability. Most cities have strategic plans based on chemicals (especially fertilizer in agriculture’s
on coping with anticipated growth in population, case) made from oil. Food is now transported huge
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distances, with an average U.S. meal taking between to grasp this new agenda and have moved (often
1,300 and 2,000 “food miles” to reach the plate.22 timidly) down the track toward change. There are only
While the focus of this book is on cities, it will a few cities around the world showing such leader
also look at questions facing rural regions around ship, as most are watching tentatively. It is our belief
cities as they relate to resiliency. What will happen that those cities that begin this transition first will man
to this rural productivity in the age of declining oil age better socially and economically in a world where
availability? How will cities and their associated the constraints on petroleum fuels will be pressing.24
rural regions cope? Where do you start in respond Although no one can predict the future of cities,
ing to this issue? we are able to visualize where we use gasoline, diesel,
While environmentalists are quite able to point heating oil, and natural gas, and then try to imag
out the limitations of current resource consumption ine home, neighborhood, and region without them.
trends, they are often criticized for their inability to How might they look and feel if these resources
set forth a positive and compelling alternative vision. were not available, or at least were in decline, so
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus have called that each next step in development or redevelop
this the “death of environmentalism.” There is a ment had to show how it would help to wean us
certain amount of truth to this claim as it is always off these resources? Can we imagine a city where
easier to criticize than to suggest the next step. And we radically reduce the amount of driving we do?
when it comes to these global issues it can become This is not simply a set of abstract arguments about
hard to focus constructively. But this book will show the fate of the planet, but something that has rele
us how we can respond to these twin crises.23 vance and is potentially understandable to everyone
in terms of the places in which we all live. A future
can then be imagined that involves alternative energy
WHAT DO RESILIENT CITIES LOOK LIKE? sources as well as funding for the design of transit
and bicycling systems and the creation or re
What could happen to the world’s cities if we ignore development of buildings, communities, cities, and
the need to reduce oil? What will our cities actually regions around the need for less petroleum fuel.
look like if we do seriously reduce our dependence [ . . . ]
on oil? Not much can be projected from recent
experience as it is described as a point of “sing
ularity” (a term from science fiction about what A VISION FOR RESILIENT CITIES:
is beyond black holes). Trends cannot just be THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
extended to see the future when we are dealing with
discontinuities. Nor can we just turn history back What does a resilient city look like? Bike paths and
to cities as they were. Few people could see what virtually car-free streets that lead from solar homes
industrialization would do to cities; few could anti to grocery stores, recreation areas, parks, or a free
cipate the global knowledge economy and what tram to reach places too far to walk or bike. A solar
cheap oil would do to cities. But there are lessons office block filled with new Sixth Wave businesses.
to be learned from history and the fate of cities that Schools with parents lined up on bikes to pick up
have not been able or willing to adapt. So we have kids instead of waiting in idling cars. A local farmers’
some speculation about collapse and how some market for buying bioregional produce.
cities are adapting and others are not adapting. We This is a common scene in Vauban, a develop
are more interested in what we can do to change ment of five thousand households on a former
our cities so they start to become more resilient. military base in Freiburg, Germany. Vauban is con
According to urban critic Jane Jacobs, cities sidered a model ecological community that is being
throughout history have competed by examining studied with increasing interest as the economic,
innovations in other cities and building upon them. health, and environmental costs of car dependence
This, she believed, is the basis of wealth creation. We come into focus.25 Residents are offered numerous
see the response to climate change and peak oil as incentives (such as free tram passes and options
the impetus for the next burst of innovation. This book for carpooling) and disincentives (extremely pricey
looks at those innovative cities that are beginning parking only available on the edge of town) to live
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car free. (There is already a strong disincentive to past five years. There are few such scenarios for
driving with gas over U.S. eight dollars per gallon.) dealing with oil and carbon vulnerability (or even
The car ownership rate in Vauban is 150 vehicles for responding to natural disasters, in spite of recent
per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to the U.S. average extreme weather catastrophes).
of 640 vehicles per 1,000 residents.26 The scenario we envision is that some cities will
How does a city achieve resiliency? The positive respond to the peak oil crisis in time and will adapt
examples that illuminate the steps toward resiliency to avoid collapse. These cities will respond by cut
have been achieved by a mixture of visionary grass ting back substantially in demand for oil and any
roots initiatives demanding more options for sus other transport fuel through a combination of city
tainable living and transport, innovative business, form and lifestyle change. This will be facilitated
and strong political leadership offering incentives by sustainable transport modes, higher density,
or regulating for more livable, sustainable environ walkable, mixed-use communities, and community-
ments from the regional to the building level. based localism, together with new technologies for
[ . . . ] buildings including renewable energy, which will
Below we specify the seven key elements of a also be integrated into electric vehicles for transit
resilient city in the built environment that flow from through a Smart Grid. Other alternative fuels will
these themes. fill some of the gap left by conventional oil decline.
And some unconventional oil will be developed in
1 Renewable Energy City. Urban areas will be pow deeper and remote areas. It will be inside our cities
ered by renewable energy technologies from the that the most change will happen as we respond
region to the building level. to the new demands of peak oil and climate change.
2 Carbon Neutral City. Every home, neighborhood, This is only a sketch of the kind of future we
and business will be carbon neutral. could make. But it is a city of hope as it is imagin
3 Distributed City. Cities will shift from large able with a series of steps we can take to get us
centralized power, water, and waste systems to underway, though none will be easy. f
small-scale and neighborhood-based systems. The first step is to create a clear plan. We need i
v
4 Photosynthetic City. The potential to harness renew all our strategic analysts to take oil depletion and e
able energy and provide food and fiber locally climate change seriously, to see what must be done
will become part of urban green infrastructure. in short-, medium-, and long-term scenarios for
5 Eco-Efficient City. Cities and regions will move reductions in oil supplies. We need to see how we
from linear to circular or closed-loop systems, can reach the future of resiliency in a series of
where substantial amounts of their energy and steps. If we cannot take the next steps we never
material needs are provided from waste streams. reach the goal, fear takes over, and the paralysis
6 Place-Based City. Cities and regions will under begins to set in.
stand renewable energy more generally as a way Some cities will not make the transition. They
to build the local economy and nurture a unique will be left waiting for the magic technology or the
and special sense of place. mystical market to sweep in with the solutions. As
7 Sustainable Transport City. Cities, neighborhoods, they push on with their present consumption pat
and regions will be designed to use energy spar terns they will be hit by a series of shocks that are
ingly by offering walkable, transit-oriented op not hard to predict as the fuel begins to dry up.
tions for all supplemented by electric vehicles. Those cities that are prepared with short-term con
tingencies, alternative transport availability, alterna
[ . . . ] tive fuel programs, household awareness programs,
will be resilient. Those cities that are not ready will
begin to crumble and fall apart, looking for some
CONCLUSIONS: CITIES OF FEAR OR one to blame without looking in the mirror. People
CITIES OF HOPE? will leave and the problems of decline will set in.
Finances to deal with the change will be limited
Most advanced countries have developed highly and options will become less and less available as
complex scenarios for dealing with terrorism in the the processes of fear take hold of the financial
9780415668071_P5_06.indd 577 10-26-2012 3:22:36 PM

institutions and the personal creativity of its citizens. and Social Resilience (London: Earthscan Pub
The cities of fear can be scoffed at now by those lications, 2003); Larry Vale and Tom Cam
who sit in comfort in the dying days of cheap oil. panella, The Resilient City: How Modern Cities
But they will not be good places in which to live Recover from Disaster (Oxford: Oxford University
when the lights of hope begin to go out. Press, 2005).
11 Brian Walker, David Salt, and Walter Reid,
Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and
NOTES People in a Changing World (Washington, D.C.:
Island Press, 2006), 13; T. Wallington, R. Hobbes,
1 Atlanta was ranked eleventh in the nation in and S. Moore, “Implications of Current Think
percentage of foreclosures. RealtyTrac.com, ing for Biodiversity Conservation: A Review
February 13, 2008; data on growth of inner of Salient Issues,” Ecology and Society 10(1):
city from William Lucy, University of Virginia, 15 (2005).
unpublished data. 12 This definition of sustainability for cities is from
2 Andrea Sarzynski, Marilyn A. Brown, Frank Peter Newman and Jeffery Kenworthy, Sustain-
Southworth, “Shrinking the Carbon Footprint ability and Cities (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,
of Metropolitan America,” Brookings Institu 1999); in other books we have looked at the
tion, May 29, 2008. ecosystems and biodiversity that are part of
3 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose city functions – see Peter Newman and Isabella
to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking Books, Jennings, Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems (Wash
2005). ington, D.C.: Island Press, 2008); Timothy Beatley
4 Caroline Ash, Barbara R. Jasny, Leslie Roberts, and Kristy Manning, The Ecology of Place
Richard Stone, and Andrew M. Sugden, “Rei (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997).
magining Cities” Science special issue 319(5864): 13 Data on fuel use in cities are from J. Kenworthy,
739 (February 8, 2008). F. Laube, P. Newman, P. Barter, T. Raad, C. Poboon,
5 Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2007: and B. Guia, An International Sourcebook of Auto
Our Urban Future (New York: W.W. Norton, mobile Dependence in Cities, 1960–1990 (Boulder:
2007), www.citymayors.com/society/urban- University Press of Colorado, 1999); Peter
population.html. Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, “Greening Urban
6 Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization: Culture, Innova- Transport,” State of the World 2007: Our Urban
tion and the Urban Order (London: Wiedenfeld Future, Worldwatch Institute (New York: W.W.
and Nicolson, 1998); Robert Friedel, A Culture Norton, 2007); Reid Ewing, Growing Cooler: The
of Improvement: Technology and the Western Evidence on Urban Development and Climate
Millennium (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Change (Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Insti
Lewis Mumford, The City in History (Harmond tute, 2007).
sworth: Penguin Press, 1991); T.J. Gorringe, A 14 M. Simmons in www.ArabianBusiness.com,
Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Em- February 28, 2008.
powerment, Redemption (Cambridge: Cambridge 15 World Health Organizations fact sheet, “Use of
University Press, 2002), 140. the Air Quality Guidelines in Protecting Public
7 Ed Mazria, Urban Land, November/December Health: A Global Update.” See www.who.int/
2007, 35. mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/index.html.
8 Office of the Mayor, City of Seattle, seattle. 16 Gregory Kats, “Greening America’s Schools:
gov/mayor/climate (February 15, 2008); www. Costs and Benefits,” A Capital E Report, October,
clintonfoundation.org 2006.
9 “Climate Link with Killer Cyclones Spurs Fierce 17 See Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, Sustain-
Scientific Debate,” Agence France-Presse ability and Cities (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,
(AFP), May 6, 2008. 1999); Howard Frumkin et al., Urban Sprawl
10 On resilience to natural disasters see Mark Fell and Public Health (Washington, D.C.: Island
ing, The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters Press, 2002).
9780415668071_P5_06.indd 578 10-26-2012 3:22:36 PM

18 Mayer Hillman, The Impact of Transport Policy on 21 Press release, The New Democratic Party (NDP)
Children’s Development (London: Policy Studies September 30, 2007. See www.ontariondp.com/
Institute, 1999); G. C. Gee and D. T. Takeuchi, hampton-proposes-clean-green-energy-plan
“Traffic Stress, Vehicular Burden and Well- 22 Timothy Beatley, “Envisioning Solar Cities: Urban
Being: A Multi-Level Analysis,” Social Science Futures Powered By Sustainable Energy,” Journal
and Medicine 59(2): 404–414 (2004); www.usgbc. of Urban Technology 14(2): 31–46 (2006).
org (Green Building Research) accessed Febru 23 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus, “The
ary 2008. Surface Transportation Policy Project, Death of Environmentalism,” 2004, available at
“Driven to Spend: The Impact of Sprawl on House www.changethis.com
hold Transportation Expenses,” 2005. Barbara 24 Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations
Lipman, A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and (Harmondsworth: Penguin Press, 1984).
Transportation Burdens on Working Families (Wash 25 Jan Scheurer, Car Free Housing, PhD Thesis
ington, D.C.: Center for Housing Policy, 2006). ISTP, Murdoch University, www.sustainability.
19 On issues of place see Tim Beatley, Native to murdoch.edu.au; Jan Scheurer and Peter New
Nowhere (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005) man, “Vauban: Integrating the Green and Brown
and Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings, Agenda,” UN Global Review of Human Settle
Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems (Washington, ments, 2008, www.unep.org
D.C.: Island Press, 2008). 26 Isabelle de Pommereau, “New German Com
20 Municipal Arts Society, www.mas.org/climate munity Models Car-Free Living,” Christian Science
change, accessed February 2008. Monitor, December 20, 2006.
f
i
v
e
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9780415668071_P5_06.indd 580 10-26-2012 3:22:37 PM
Part six
Urban Design
Practice Now and
Tomorrow
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Plate 7 The Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois invites concert-goers to relax on
the lawn before the performance. As one of the most successful park projects in recent history, Millennium Park is the
result of a multi-stakeholder and collaborative design process that brought together city officials, numerous designers,
corporate sponsors, and innovative implementation techniques. It is an example of finding “lost space” in the city,
by building over railroad tracks and an immense parking garage that helps pay for the park’s development and
management. The recently expanded High Line Park in New York City is another example of this trend in finding
lost space. The Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry, is an outdoor performance space that allows concert-
goers choice in seating (in fixed theater seating or spreading out on the lawn). It is but one element in a park that
has several areas created by different designers, including: the Crown Fountain, the Cloud-Gate interactive sculpture
(aka the “bean”), the Lurie Garden, Wrigley Square, the McDonald’s Cycle Center, and the BP Pedestrian Bridge.
The park is the result of creative project implementation and new urban design practices that broaden the base of
funding, ownership, design, and use. The resulting park is one of the most popular and loved spaces in the City of
Chicago. (Photo: M. Larice)
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INTRODUCTION TO PART SIX
In the final part of this reader, we turn to professional practice. The world of urban design practice is
complex. Professional work encompasses a wide range of project types and the whole array of urban
scales. As well, urban designers practice within widely varying urban contexts and may operate from
either public or private sector places of employment, and so have different design mandates. It is not
possible here to present examples of all the many scales and types of urban design projects regularly
undertaken on behalf of both public agencies and private clients: city-wide urban design plans, neigh-
borhood design plans, large or small project area designs, street designs, urban system designs, and
even regional development strategies. There are many practice-oriented publications and manuals that
offer guidance on the best practices/approaches associated with each of these project types. As well,
detailed substantive information about recent innovative urban design projects can be found in the
documentation of actual plans and projects, which can often be accessed from project websites or the
websites of city planning or regional planning agencies.
Presented in Part Six is a group of writings that speak to over-arching issues related to urban design
practice, including the scopes and types of practice, the teaching of urban design, public sector design
guidance, and seminal critiques and opportunities for the field. We start by delving into the multiple
conceptualizations of the urban design discipline that inform urban designers’ action in practice. Alex
Krieger’s piece “Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?” reviews the definitions of the nascent
urban design discipline that were advanced in the mid-1950s and identifies the many spheres of “urban
istic action” that urban designers have since assumed as their professional domain. The discussion both
traces the historical progression of thought about the discipline and articulates how urban design think-
ing has differed among practitioners depending upon whether they approach it from urban planning,
architecture, or landscape architecture perspectives. The narrative helps make sense of the often disparate
ways that the urban design enterprise is conceptualized and offers the optimistic view that given the
complexities of urbanism, vastly different responses are needed for different issues and spatial environ-
ments, and so the many different ways urban designers approach practice is appropriate.
We turn next to urban design education. Elizabeth Macdonald’s piece “Designing the Urban Design
Studio,” written for this edition of The Urban Design Reader, argues for the importance of studio-based
learning for urban design students. Drawing on a wealth of experience teaching design studios, she
offers insights about the opportunities presented by studio learning and about how to structure a studio
so that students will learn the methods and tools used in urban design practice, how to work in teams
as they will have to do in real world practice, and how to communicate effectively. Following this, we
consider the topic of public sector design guidance, one of the main products of planning-based urban
design practice. In the conclusion to his book, Design Guidelines in American Cities: A Review of
Design Policies and Guidance in Five West Coast Cities, John Punter lays out a framework for how
urban design guidance and design review processes should best be structured to be legally valid,
effective, well-received by developers, and encompassing of community goals and aspirations.
The final two selections in this chapter present opposing views of contemporary urban design prac-
tice and its future opportunities. Michael Sorkin’s piece “The End(s) of Urban Design,” first printed in
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584 INTRODUCTION TO PART SIX
Harvard Design Magazine, provocatively asserts that the field of urban design has not only reached a
dead-end in terms of its ability to meet today’s pressing environmental and social challenges but also
fails to inspire because it has become boring. An architecture professor and the creator of many un-built
“paper” projects, Sorkin laments the limits on creativity that he feels have come with the mainstreaming
of urban design practice, and is particularly critical of design approaches that in any way look to the
past, such as neo-traditional design and other approaches that are informed by typological or mor
phological study. Kenneth Greenberg’s piece “A Third Way for Urban Design,” which was published as
a chapter in a recent edited anthology of current perspectives on the field, offers a much more optimistic
view of where urban design practice currently stands and the possibilities for how it may transform
in the future. A practicing professional with many, many built projects under his belt, Greenberg has
also taught in urban design programs in prestigious universities in the United States and Canada. His
positive view of practice springs from his own experience of the rich creativity that creative professionals
bring to their projects. In particular, he highlights how most practitioners are unbounded by the confines
of any single academic discourse, melding the best ideas to suit particular contexts and projects, and
calls for new creative collaborations and alliances between urban designers and other professionals,
particularly environmental scientists.
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“Where and How Does Urban
Design Happen?”
from Urban Design (2008)
Alex Krieger
Practice in urban design takes many forms. Because it is a hybrid field drawing the expertise of disciplines
across the built environment professions, we find urban designers practicing in the private, public, and institu-
tional sectors. From the foundation of the field in the late 1950s, tension has existed within the field between
the disciplines that consider urban design its particular territory. While architecture and planning both have
legitimate historic claims to the field, we increasingly see landscape architects, real estate developers, civil
engineers, and politicians assuming larger roles in urban design practice. As such, practice in the field is
increasingly collaborative: teams of professionals work together on large contracted projects that no single
firm could possibly staff itself – design professionals by default are forced to work with developers, commu-
nities, public works departments, and government officials to get projects implemented. Despite the various
antipathies and pre-dispositions found in design schools (where the disciplines often find difficulty working
together), those in practice are finding ways to work together.
This message is implicit in this comprehensive chapter from Urban Design, edited by Alex Krieger and
William S. Saunders (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). In the selection, Harvard Profes-
sor Alex Krieger maps the territory of urban design into ten “spheres of urbanistic action” where urban design-
ers most naturally find their professional roles. These ten roles describe a rough chronology of the field’s
development and evolution over time, in addition to the field’s key substantive interests in response to specific
urban challenges. Starting with the intention of collaboration between planners and architects, who were
deemed to be partners in a joint project – the field has devolved into professionals whose differing values
are not always in sync. Planners champion some notion of the public interest through regulatory form-making
policy – formulating plans and guidelines for others to follow. Designers, on the other hand, often see archi-
tecture and landscape architecture as some type of urban salvation. Having to translate the work of planners
into built form, the values of designers are often at odds with their planning brethren. Other generations of
urban designers instead focus on specific urban/suburban/exurban challenges: stemming suburban sprawl,
restoring urbanism after decline, imageability and place reinforcement, or remaking urban infrastructure. At
the end of the essay, Krieger suggests a variety of roles that offer hope for the future of cities, and perhaps
new foundations for a more collaborative urban design. These include visionary urbanism, community advocacy,
and an urban mindset, similar to the call for an urban attitude suggested by Rem Koolhaas in his earlier selec-
tion. Overcoming the territorial infighting of the disciplines will require a true joint project which is bigger than
the professions themselves – an agreed challenge, a renewed focus on the future, and finding common
purpose in improving livability, making urban places, and ensuring sustainability. Krieger’s mapping of these
territories is a necessary start in understanding contemporary urban design practice.
This chapter appeared previously as an essay and lecture by Alex Krieger titled: “The Territories of Urban
Design.” Alex Krieger is a professor of urban design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, as
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586 A L ex K rieger
well as previous Director of the Urban Design Program and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and
Design. He continues to teach an urban design proseminar and a number of studios, most recently focusing
on Vienna and the Danube. He is an architect, urban designer, and founding principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has won numerous urban design awards for the following projects: the
Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan; A Balanced Vision Plan for the Trinity River Corridor in Dallas, Texas;
Reinventing the Riverfront Crescent, New Orleans, Louisiana; and the Shanghai Bund Waterfront Urban
Design Concept. Chan Krieger recently merged with NBBJ, a multi-office design firm headquartered in Seattle,
Washington. Krieger continues to consult for a number of organizations and municipalities.
He has edited two editions of the Harvard Design Magazine, and, as well as Urban Design, the books Mapping
Boston, co-edited with David Cobb (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); and Past Futures: Two Centuries of
Imagining Boston, with Lisa J. Green (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University GSD, 1985). His essays and chapters
have appeared in a number of journals and books, including: “Reinventing Public Space,” Architectural Record
(June 1995); “The Virtues of Cities,” Places (September 1995); “Whose Urbanism?” Architecture (November
1998); “Beyond the Rhetoric of Smart Growth,” Architecture (May 1999); “Chapter Two: The Unique Charac
teristics of Urban Waterfront Development,” Remaking the Urban Waterfront (Washington DC: Urban Land
Institute Press, 2003); and Towns and Town Making Principles (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), which he co-authored.
Apart from a significant literature on theory and advocacy already existing from the early days of the field
(and represented elsewhere in this volume), the literature on urban design practice has steadily grown over
the last decade. Since the last edition of The Urban Design Reader, a significant amount of material has been
written that describes the practice of urban designers. For general texts on urban design and its chronology
see the following: Paul Knox and Peter Ozolins (eds), Design Professionals and the Built Environment: An
Introduction (Fletcher, NC: Academy Press, 2001); Lance Jay Brown, David Dixon, and Oliver Gillham, Urban
Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People (New York: Wiley, 2009); Matthew Carmona, Steve
Tiesdell, Tim Heath, and Taner Oc, Public Places – Urban Spaces, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Elsevier/Architectural
Press, 2010); David Grahame Shane, Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (New York: Wiley,
2011); Ron Kasprisin, Urban Design: The Composition of Complexity (London: Routledge, 2011); and Paul
L. Knox, Cities and Design (London: Routledge, 2011).
Critical works in the practice of urban design include: Ian Bentley, “What is Urban Design? Towards a
Definition,” Urban Design Forum (vol. 1: 1976); R. Dagenhart and D. Sawicki, “If Urban Design is Everything,
Maybe It’s Nothing,” Journal of Planning Education and Research (vol. 13, no. 2, 1994); Ian Bentley, “Urban
Design as an Anti-Profession,” Urban Design Quarterly (vol. 65, no. 15, 1998); and Malcolm Moor and Jon
Rowland (eds), Urban Design Futures (London: Routledge, 2006).
For compilation readers and references see: Donald Watson (ed.), Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design
(New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003); and Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (eds),
Companion to Urban Design (London: Routledge, 2011).
A separate literature on urban design process and method has also burgeoned over the past few years:
Hamid Shirvani, Urban Design Process (New York: Von Nostrand Reinhold, 1997); Mike Biddulph and John
Punter (eds), “Urban Design Strategies in Practice,” Built Environment (vol. 25, no. 4, 1999); Urban Design
Associates and Ray Gindroz, The Urban Design Handbook: Techniques and Working Methods (New York:
W.W. Norton, 2003); Jon Lang, Urban Design – A Typology of Procedures and Products (Oxford: Elsevier/
Architectural Press, 2005); Cliff Moughtin, Rafael Cuesta, Christine Sarris, and Paola Signoretta (eds), Urban
Design: Method and Techniques, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Elsevier/Architectural Press, 2005); and Alexander Cuthbert,
Understanding Cities: Method in Urban Design (London: Routledge, 2011).
A few authors have tackled urban design from an American perspective, including ideas on what makes
American urban design process different from other places in the world: Jon Lang, Urban Design: The
American Experience (New York: Von Nostrand Reinhold, 1994); John Punter, Design Guidelines in Ameri-
can Cities (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999); and David Gosling, The Evolution of American Urban
Design: A Chronological Anthology (Fletcher, NC: Academy Press, 2002).
For disciplinary perspective on urban design practice, see the following texts: (Landscape Architecture
and Environmental Planning): Charles Waldheim (ed.), The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York:
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“ W here and H ow D oes U rban D esign H appen ? ” 587
Princeton Architectural Press, 2006); Tim Waterman and Ed Wall, Basics Landscape Architecture: Urban
Design (Brighton: Ava Publishing, 2009); Timothy Beatley, Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban
Design and Planning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010); and Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty
(eds), Ecological Urbanism (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010). (City Planning): Jonathan Barnett, Urban
Design as Public Policy (New York: Architectural Record, 1974); Daniel G. Parolek, Karen Parolek, and Paul
C. Crawford, Form-Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008); Antti Ahlava and Harry Edelman (eds) Urban Design Management: A Guide to
Good Practice (London: Taylor & Francis, 2009); and Stephen Marshall (ed.), Urban Coding and Planning
(London: Routledge, 2011). (Real Estate Development): Steve Tiesdell and David Adams, Urban Design
in the Real Estate Development Process (New York/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); and Shaping Places:
Urban Planning, Design and Development (London: Routledge, 2012).
In 1956, José Luis Sert convened an international lated by Sert, who organized and presided over the
conference at the Harvard University Graduate conference. Urban design, he stated at one point,
School of Design with a determination to assemble “is that part of city planning which deals with the
evidence on behalf of a desired discipline he called physical form of the city.” Here is the idea of urban
urban design. An impressive number of people then design as a subset of planning, a specialization that
engaged in thinking about the future of cities par- he described as “the most creative phase of city
ticipated. Among them were a not-yet-famous Jane planning, in which imagination and artistic capac-
Jacobs, an already prominent Edmund Bacon, the ities play the important part.” At the beginning of
Olympian figure of Lewis Mumford, several leaders the conference he identified a yet more ambitious
of the soon-to-be formed Team 10, prominent land- goal: “to find the common basis for the joint work
scape architects such as Hideo Sasaki and Garrett of the Architect, the Landscape Architect, and the
Eckbo, urban renewal-empowered mayors such as City Planner . . . Urban Design [being] wider than
David Lawrence of Pittsburgh, and innovators such the scope of these three professions.” Here is the
as Victor Gruen, “the creator of the shopping mall.” notion of a new overarching design discipline to
The participants seemed to concur that the wid- be practiced by all those who were, in Sert’s phrase, s
ening midcentury intellectual split between the “art “urban-minded.” i
of building” and the “systemic nature of planning” Half a century later, these two conceptualizations x
was not helpful to city building or the rebuilding are still very much in play, and a precise definition
that the post-World War II era still demanded. for urban design has not been broadly accepted.
Hopes and ideas for a new discipline dedicated to Whether urban design has become a distinct profes-
city design were in the air, both in the United States sional specialization or a general outlook that can
and in Europe, with CIAM (Congrès Internationaux be embodied in the work of several of the design
d’Architecture Moderne), since the early 1940s, disciplines dedicated to city making remains un-
focusing more attention on urbanization. Conference settled. Nevertheless, few argue about the need for
participants were determined to share and further something called urban design.
such thinking, hopeful that a new discipline could In a world producing unprecedented kinds, num-
stem this perceived split between design and plan- bers, and sizes of settlements, urban design is an
ning. Indeed, within several years Harvard would increasingly sought-after (though not always well-
begin one of the first formal degree-granting curricula recognized) expertise. Expectations are many and
focused on urban design, and, through that institu- myriad for those presuming to know how to design
tion’s prestige, lend weight to the idea that educating cities, yet there is skepticism about how much such
a design professional to become an urban designer know-how exists. At the same time, it seems pre-
was essential for a rapidly urbanizing world. sumptuous for any one person to claim overarching
The proceedings of the 1956 conference reveal knowledge of something as immensely complex
two working definitions for urban design, both articu as urbanism. It therefore seems prudent to track
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588 A L ex K rieger
several territories – spatial and conceptual – in and unanimity about the list overall. The list begins with
through which urban designers operate. Indeed, a foundational idea of urban design, at least as
scanning the definitions of the word territory in a identified at the 1956 Harvard conference: urban
dictionary eventually gets you past geography to design occupies a hypothetical intersection between
“sphere of action.” This I find a particularly useful planning and architecture and thus fills any perceived
way of thinking about urban design – as spheres of gaps between them. Urban design, many continue
urbanistic action to promote the vitality, livability, to believe, is necessarily and unavoidably:
and physical character of cities. There are several
such spheres of action rather than a singular, over-
arching way to describe what constitutes the urban The BridGe ConnectinG PlanninG
design enterprise. and Architecture
While urban design is a phrase first popularized
during the twentieth century, cities have, of course, The most frequent answer to “What do urban de-
been the subject of design theory and action for signers do?” is that they mediate between plans and
centuries. It is the notion of urban design as an projects. Their role is to somehow translate the
activity distinct from architecture, planning, or even objectives of planning for space, settlement patterns,
military and civil engineering that is relatively new and even the allocation of resources into (mostly)
– as is the label urban designer. physical strategies to guide the work of architects,
Though Pope Sixtus V’s impact on the physical- developers, and other implementers. For example,
ity of sixteenth century Rome was profound, con- many public planning agencies now incorporate
temporaries would not have thought of him as an one or more staffers titled urban designers, whose
urban designer. Spain’s Philip II, who promulgated role is to establish design criteria for development
one of the most precise codes for laying out cities projects beyond basic zoning and then help review,
– the Laws of the Indies – was, well, king. Baron evaluate, and approve the work of project propon
Haussmann was Napoleon Ill’s Prefect of the Seine, ents as they advance their projects through design
an administrator, closer in point of view and re- and into construction. Such a design review process
sponsibilities to Robert Moses, an engineer and is an increasingly common component of regulatory
civil servant, than to Raymond Unwin or Daniel frameworks especially in larger cities and facilitates
Burnham, both architects acting as city planners. discussion of traditionally controversial issues like
Ebenezer Howard, who truly had a new theory for aesthetics. It is the urban designer’s presumed in-
urbanism, was an economist. Camillo Sitte was an sights about good or appropriate urban form that
art historian. Frederick Law Olmsted, who influ- are seen as crucial to translate public policy or pro
enced American cities more than anyone in the grammatic objectives into architectural concepts,
nineteenth century, was a landscape architect and or to recognize the urban potential in an emerging
earlier still a social activist. Lewis Mumford was architectural design and advocate for its realization.
an urban historian and social critic. The foremost However, a subtlety within this process is often
Renaissance urban theorists were architects and misunderstood. The translation of general or frame-
artists, as was Le Corbusier. During much of the work plans into designs is not meant to be a se-
history of city making, an architect’s expertise was quential process – always emanating from planning
assumed to extend to matters of town layout, and to affect design – but instead an interactive one.
popes, prefects, and Utopian economists quite natur The urban designer’s own expertise in architectural
ally turned to architects to realize their urban visions. thinking should inform the formulation of plan
Many of the 1956 conference participants were ning concepts so that these are not fixed prior
also architects, and an architectural point of view to consideration of physical implications. This de-
has tended to prevail in most efforts to describe sign version of shuttle diplomacy between planner-
what urban design is – prevail but not encapsulate. formulators and design-translators is important,
So I will describe ten spheres of urbanistic action to be sure, but it cannot rely only on mediation or
that people calling themselves “urban designers” persuasion to be effective. Urban designers must
have assumed to be their professional domain, help others see the desired effects of planning. This
though obviously not all at once nor even with requires various visualization and programmatic
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narrative techniques by which goals and policies open space) can be agreed upon by a community,
are converted into useful design guidelines and these should be legislated. And the natural cham-
sometimes specific design ideas. It leads to the pions for this are those individuals identified as
idea of urban design as a special category of pub- urban designers. The appeal behind this interpreta-
lic policy, an improvement on traditional land-use tion of urban design is twofold. It maintains lofty
regulations that shy away from qualitative assess- ideals by arguing on behalf of codifiable design
ments of form. So urban design should then be qualities, while operating at the pragmatic level of
considered: the real estate industry, facilitating better develop-
ment. New York’s Battery Park project is generally
acknowledged as a successful example.
A ForM-Based CateGorY of This may all be well and good, but such mediat-
Public PolicY ing and regulating are not sufficiently rewarding for
those who believe that less creativity is involved in
Jonathan Barnett’s 1974 Urban Design as Public establishing guidelines for others to interpret then
Policy argued this very point and became highly to design oneself. It seems too administrative and
influential. If one could agree on specific attributes passive a role for urban design. Is not urban design
of good urbanism (at least in a particular setting, about giving shape to urbanism? Is it not about:
as Barnett tried to with New York City), then one
should be able to mandate or encourage these
through regulatory requirements. The radicalism The Architecture of the CitY
embedded in this self-described pragmatic approach
was to incorporate many more formal and aesthetic This conception of urban design is at once more
judgments – indeed much more judgment, period ambitious yet narrower than the idea of urban
– into a standard zoning ordinance, and especially design as public policy. The roots of this view may
into the permitting and evaluative process. Restric- be traced earlier in the twentieth century to the
tions on height or massing that in pioneering zon- American City Beautiful movement, and further into
ing codes (such as New York’s own landmark 1916 the nineteenth century to the European Beaux Arts
code) were ostensibly determined through measur- tradition. Its proponents seek above all to control
able criteria, such as access to sunlight, could now the shaping of those areas of the city that are public
be introduced as commonly held good form-based and, therefore, of common concern. It is a sphere s
values. The mandating of continuous block-length populated by mainly architect-urbanists, but it makes i
cornice heights, for example, gained the status of kindred spirits of diverse figures such as Colin x
a lot-coverage restriction, though the former could Rowe, Camillo Sitte, and William H. Whyte.
not as easily be considered a matter of “health, Shaping public space is considered the first order
safety and public welfare” as the latter. of urbanism by the architect/urbanist. Thus, the
But why shouldn’t public policy as it pertains to primary role of urban design is to develop methods
the settled environment not aspire to quality and and mechanisms for doing this. Done with author-
even beauty? More recently, a New York disciple ity and artistry (and proper programming and fur-
of Barnett, Michael Kwartler, expressed this via nishings – Whyte’s contribution), it allows the rest
the poetic notion of “regulating the good that you of the city, all that is private, to distribute itself
can’t think of,” or, one may infer, seeking to achieve logically and properly in relationship to this public
through regulation what is not normally provided realm. During the 1970s and 1980s, particularly
by conventional real estate practices. Since Ameri in Europe, a related theory of the “Urban Project”
can planning is often accused of being reactive to emerged. This entailed the programming, financing,
real estate interests, interests that do not always and design of a catalytic development, often a joint
prioritize public benefit, here would be a way to public/private venture, that would stimulate or re-
push developer-initiated projects to higher qualita- vive an urban district. This notion of urban design
tive standards. So again, given the presumption that is best embodied by a stable and stabilizing form,
what constitutes good urban form (or desirable one that anchors its part of the city with unique
uses, or amenities such as ground-level retail, or characteristics that are expected to endure and
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590 A L ex K rieger
influence future neighbors. The 1980s “Grand Though we may demand the conveniences of mod-
Projects” of Paris are generally regarded as such ern kitchens and attached garages, many prefer to
valuable catalysts for urban reinvestment. package these in shapes and facades reminiscent
The idea of urban design as the architecture of of earlier (assumed to be) slower and pleasanter
the city is often conceptualized in terms of the paces of life. Many a New Urbanist endeavor from
ideality of Rome as portrayed in the Nolli map, or Seaside to Kentlands to Crocker Park, Ohio, exhibits
in Piranesi’s more fantastical description of imperial such a hybridization of modern lifestyles in tradi-
Rome in his Compo Marzio engraving. Or it is sim- tional building forms.
ply absorbed via our touristic encounters with the The walkable city, the city of public streets
preindustrial portions of the European city in which and public squares, the low-rise, high-density city,
the emphasis on the public realm – at least in the the city of defined neighborhoods gathered around
places we regularly visit – seems so clear. It is a valued institutions, the city of intricate layers of uses
small conceptual leap from this formulation of urban free of auto-induced congestion – of course these
design to the idea of: remain appealing. Americans are not alone in pin
ing for such qualities. In today’s Berlin, to refer to
one European example, the city planning adminis-
Urban DesiGn as RestoratiVe tration’s highly conservative architectural design
UrbanisM guidelines for the reunified center are but another
manifestation of this instinct to slow the pace of
The form of the preindustrial western city – com- change – at least as it pertains to the physical, if
pact, dense, layered, and slow-changing – holds not the social or political, environment. Many urban
immense power over city dreaming among both designers believe that it is their discipline’s respon-
urbanists and the public. The traditional city seems sibility to slow excess change, resist unwarranted
at once clearly organized, humanely sized, manage- newness, or at least advocate for such old-fashioned
able, and beautiful. Such virtues seem absent in notions as “human scale” and “place-making.” Then
the modern metropolis. Why not mobilize to regain we should think of:
these? At present the New Urbanists are most
closely associated with this effort but are part of
a long tradition of those guarding or extolling the Urban DesiGn as an Art of
advantages of traditional urban typologies. As did “Place-MaKinG”
the polemicists of the City Beautiful movement in
America a century earlier and Christopher Alexander A corollary to restorative urbanism is an increasing
in his 1977 A Pattern Language, the New Urbanists commitment to “place-making,” the provision of
advocate a return to what they consider time tested distinctive, lively, appealing centers for congrega-
principles of urbanism, now as appealing to a dis- tion to alleviate the perceived homogeneity of many
illusioned suburban culture as to those still facing and large contemporary urban areas. There are
the onslaught of urban modernization. architecture and urban design firms in the United
Americans today seem particularly sympathetic States that advertise themselves as “placemakers,”
to restorative urbanism for two reasons. They hunger as the ads in any issue of the Urban Land illustrate.
for a “taste” of urbanity, preassembled and sanitized It is easy to succumb to cynicism. So many ordinary
perhaps – “lite urbanism” in Rem Koolhaas’s wry developments advertise their placeless character
phrase – having for several generations disengaged with catchy names ending in “place” (among the
from (and still unsure about) the real thing. Assaulted most common of these being “Center Place,” a
by the new, they seek comfort in the familiar. Tradi moniker promising precisely what is missing in new
tionally, homes and neighborhoods have offered subdivisions).
respite from the anxieties of change. Thus, it is Yet, creating exceptional places to serve human
understandable how an era of seemingly unending purposes has always been central to the design
innovation in business, technology, and lifestyle professions. We have just never called ourselves
marketing engenders sentimental nostalgia for the place-makers before or have been so self-conscious
places we used to (or think we used to) live in. about the task. Economists often remind society
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that it is the rare commodity that gains value over As social observers have long pointed out, suburban
time. As more contemporary urban development and exurban areas, where most Americans live,
acquires generic qualities or is merely repetitive, are not nonurban, merely providing different, cer-
the distinctive urban place, old or new, is harder tainly less traditional degrees of urban experience
to find. This alone will continue to fuel preservation or intensity.
movements across the urban world. But in a world That the twenty-first century will be more
that adds sixty million people to urban populations conservation-minded is not in doubt. That the world
each year, preservation and restoration cannot be overall must be smarter about managing resources
the answers to place-making. More urban designers and land is also clear. Therefore, the traditional
should devote their attention to making new places close allegiance of urban design to an architectural
as worthy as those made by their time-honored and development perspective must be broadened.
predecessors. Again, it is the American New Urbanists Exposure to the natural sciences, to ecology, to
who have articulated this goal most clearly but with energy management, to systems analysis, to the
mixed results. Their rhetoric extols intimate scale, economics of land development, to land-use law,
texture, the mixing of uses, connectivity, continuity, and to issues of public health has not been but
the privileging of what is shared, and other such should become fundamental to an urbanist’s train-
characteristics of great urban places, but their de- ing. Urban designers advocating a “smart growth”
signs tend to employ familiar old forms and tradi- agenda today generally do so out of an ideological
tional aesthetic detailing that usually seem forced conviction that sprawl abatement or open-space
and phony, out of key with how we now live. conservation are necessary. But as they enter
The obvious merits of preserving venerable old this territory, they quickly realize that acquiring
urban places or the wisdom of treading lightly in additional skills and partners in planning is equally
the midst of historic districts aside, doubts remain necessary.
about how successfully we might organize and clothe To actually manage metropolitan growth requires
the complexities of modern life in traditional ico- dealing with needs – like land conservation, water
nography. What if we place less faith in dressing management, and transportation – that cut across
up new development with emblems of urbanity and jurisdictional boundaries. Therefore, and increas-
devote more effort to wiser distribution of resources ingly for many, urban design must be about:
or better land management? We then call for:
s
The Infrastructure of the CitY i
Urban DesiGn as SMart Growth x
The arrangement of streets and blocks, the distribu
While there has been a strong association of urban tion of open and public spaces, the alignment of
design with “downtowns,” demand for suburban transit and highway corridors, and the provision of
growth management and reinvestment strategies municipal services certainly constitute essential
for the older rings around city centers has gathered components of city design. Indeed, to focus on just
many advocates. Indeed, to protect urbanism, not one category of urban infrastructure, few things
to mention minimize environmental harm and need- are more important to cities or virtually any form
less land consumption, it is imperative, many argue, of contemporary settlement than well-functioning
to control sprawl and make environmental steward- transportation systems. Yet, the optimization of
ship a more overt part of urban thinking. Expressed mobility pursued as an independent variable, separate
opportunistically, it is also where the action is. Since from the complex and overlapping web of other urban
90 percent of development takes place at the peri systems, ultimately works against healthy commu-
phery of existing urbanization, the urban designer nities. Engineering criteria, we have learned, are
should be operating there and, if present, advocating not by themselves sufficient city-producing tools.
“smarter” planning and design. Conversely, ignoring Apart from the occasional efforts to “architectural
the metropolitan periphery as if it were unworthy ize” infrastructure, as in the various megastructure
of a true urbanist or limiting one’s efforts to urban proposals of the 1960s (a source of fascination
“infill” may simply be forms of problem avoidance. today), neither planners nor designers have played
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592 A L ex K rieger
a significant role in transportation or other urban To return to the 1956 conference for a moment:
infrastructure planning. Thus, it has become an- it produced a good deal of rhetoric about how land
other sphere for an urban designer to attempt to scape architecture was to be an integral part of urban
address at both the pragmatic level of calibrating design. But this aspect was quickly subsumed under
demands for mobility with other social needs and the architecture/planning spectrum in which urban
in advancing new (or reviving old) ways in which design would occupy the mediating middle. Momen
city form and transportation systems may be inte- tarily there was no conceptual space left for land-
grated. At a fairly mundane yet significant level, this scape architecture. Ironically, more areas of settlement
is what fuels the current fascination with Transit- in North America have been designed by landscape
Oriented Development in newer areas of urbanization, architects than any other professionals. However,
and with dense mixed-use, often joint public-private an accusation (sometimes accurate) has persisted
development adjacent to multimodal transportation that landscape architect-directed urban design
centers in larger cities. favors low densities, exhibits little formal sensibility,
The twentieth-century love affair with the car – and contains too much open space – in other words,
still considered the ideal personal mobility system it produces sub- or non-urban environments.
– has diminished the range of conceptualizing Proponents of landscape urbanism, such as
about urban form and transportation. We were too James Corner, challenge such a cliché, instead
mesmerized by the magic of Sant’Elia’s Italian insisting that the conception of the solid, “man-
Futurist renderings and those of Le Corbusier’s Ville made” city of historic imagination perpetuates the
Radieuse. An entire century later we are rediscover- no longer pertinent view that nature and human
ing that integrating urban form and mobility depends artifice are opposites. Landscape urbanism projects
on more sophisticated umbilical cords than open purport to overcome this opposition, holding neither
roads. This is especially so since the engineering a narrow ecological agenda nor mainstream (read
world is shifting emphasis from hardware to systems architectural) city-making techniques as primary.
design, from adding lanes, for example, to traffic Valuable urban design, landscape urbanists insist,
management technology. It is their acknowledg- is to be found at the intersection of ecology, engi-
ment that factors such as livability, sustainability, neering, design, careful programming, and social
and economic and cultural growth – in other words policy. Largely a set of values rather than a mature
good urban design – are the real goals of infra- practice to date, landscape urbanism may prove its
structure optimization. utility as endeavors such as the Fresh Kills landfill
Agreeing with such a sensibility, some leaders reuse project on Staten Island proceed.
of landscape architecture, a field that has generally In one regard the movement may be a reaction
pursued a humanistic perspective on planning, have to the Nolli map view of urbanism, the binary con-
recently advanced another perspective on urban- ception of cities as made up of buildings and the
istic action that they are calling: absence of buildings, where the white of the map
– the voids – is the result of built form, the black
of the map. Maybe this was a useful interpretation
Urban DesiGn as “Landscape of the preindustrial city – of the Italian piazza as
UrbanisM” space carved out of the solidity of built fabric.
Outside the preindustrial walled city were certainly
In the past few years a new school of thought about landscapes and undesignated space, but within the
cities has emerged: “landscape urbanism.” Its pro- city, space resulted from built form. But any care-
ponents seek to incorporate ecology, landscape ful perusal of a preindustrial-era city map proves
architecture, and infrastructure into the discourse this assertion false: surely the “white” of the Nolli
of urbanism. The movement’s intellectual lineage plan comes in many hues and nuances of meaning.
includes Ian McHarg, Patrick Geddes, and even Besides, the landscape urbanist asks, isn’t the land-
Frederick Law Olmsted, though its polemical point scape the glue that now holds the contemporary,
of departure seems to be that landscape space, not low-density, sprawling metropolis together?
architecture any longer, is the generative force in The radicalism inherent in thinking of the land-
the modern metropolis. scape as determining or organizing urban patterns,
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a radicalism in which Nolli’s white, today colored with the “real world.” Maybe, after all, urban design
green, becomes the central component of urban is about direct community engagement:
design, brings us at last to the territory of:
Urban DesiGn as CoMMunitY

Urban DesiGn as VisionarY AdVocacY (or DoinG No HarM)
UrbanisM
Mostly since 1956 and in academia largely still,
I have saved, nearly for the end, this long-standing “urban design” connotes large-scale thinking –
expectation of urban design: that its practitioners either the consideration of substantial areas of
– or rather, in this instance, its theorists – provide settlement or theorizing at a grand scale about
insight and models about the way we ought to the nature of urbanism. But among contemporary
organize spatially in communities and not simply dwellers of urban neighborhoods – the ostensive
accept the ways we do. The prospect of hypothesiz- beneficiaries of this broad thinking – “urban design”
ing about the future of urbanism surely attracts is increasingly coming to be associated with local,
more students to urban design programs than any immediate concerns such as improving neighbor-
other lure. Being engaged in transforming urban hoods, calming traffic, minimizing negative impacts
ism is a sphere of action associated with the great of new development, expanding housing choices
figures of modern urban change, from Baron Hauss- while keeping housing affordable, maintaining open
mann to Daniel Burnham, Ebenezer Howard, Ray- space, improving streetscapes, and creating more
mond Unwin, Le Corbusier, and maybe even Rem humane environments in general.
Koolhaas and Andres Duany. But such deliverers In this newer, almost colloquial use of the term,
of bold saber strokes (to borrow a phrase from urban design approximates what used to be called
Giedion) are rarer today than they were at the turn “community planning.” A young Jane Jacobs’s
of the twentieth century, or we act on their visions prescient comment during the 1956 conference
less often. A new generation of visionary designers comes to mind. “A store is also a storekeeper,” she
may emerge out of China or other parts of the said then, with the implication that her designer
world rapidly urbanizing today, but they have yet colleagues at the conference better remember that
to do so. a storekeeper is also a citizen, and that citizens
In the relative absence of contemporary vision- have a stake in decisions being made about their s
aries, others have stepped forward to explore the environment. Not much follow-up of her point was i
nature of urban culture today. The urban sociolo- recorded in the proceedings. It would take another x
gist/theorist – from Louis Wirth earlier in the twen- generation to bring this view to the foreground.
tieth century to Henri Lefebvre, Richard Sennett, The association of urban design and citizen
Edward Soja, and David Harvey – is not normally participation was finally the result of the gradual
considered an urban designer but in a sense has bureaucratization of the planning profession itself.
become so, having supplanted in our own time the Sometime following the social unrest of the 1960s
great urban transformers of the past, not in deeds and a growing consensus about the failures of
but in understandings of urban culture. urban renewal, the focus of planning began to shift
The heroic form-giving tradition may be in dramatically from physical planning to process
decline. After all, the twentieth century witnessed and policy formulation. If the architect and urban
immense urban harm caused by those who offered designer were hell-bent on producing visions of a
a singular or universal idea of what a city is, or better tomorrow, the theory went, then the role of
what urbanization should produce. But our cultural the planner must be to determine need and rational
observers remind us that pragmatism and technique process, not to pursue (the often illusive and some-
cannot be a sufficient substitute, nor can design times dubious) vision. Indeed, a fear of producing
professionals be mere absorbers of public opinion more top-down, failed plans before an increasingly
waiting for consensus to build. One must offer new demanding, less patient public led the planning
ideas as well. Still, there is the perennial conundrum profession to embrace broad participatory tech-
about how directly engaged urban design must be niques and community advocacy. But ironically the
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594 A L ex K rieger
concurrent disengagement from spatial concerns the point of identifying – even caricaturing – the
on the part of the planner began to distance the above spheres of urban design to lay claim to vast
activities of planning from the stuff the beneficia- jurisdictional territory for the discipline. On the
ries of planning wish for most: nicer neighborhoods, contrary, it is to strongly suggest that instead of
access to better places of work and commerce, and moving toward professional specificity, urban design
special environments to periodically escape every- has come to represent – and its varied practitioners
day pressures. have come to be aligned with – distinct avenues for
As the planning profession continues to operate engaging and facilitating urbanity. Rodolfo Machado,
in the broader spheres of policy formulation, the my colleague at Harvard, offers an appealing (if
focus of planning increasingly appears to the public somewhat rhetorical) definition for urban design:
as abstract, even indifferent to immediate concerns the process of design (or planning, I would add)
or daily needs. The urban design-minded planner that produces or enhances urbanity. Is this but an
who addresses immediate, often spatially related “amiable generality”?
concerns has come to be seen as the professional Perhaps Sert would be disappointed that half a
most attuned to tangible urban problem-solving, century after his first conference no more precise
not as the agent of bold urban transformation. In definition for urban design has emerged. Around
citizens’ minds, those who practice urban design the third or fourth of the near-annual urban design
are not the “shapers of cities” – in large part conferences that he hosted at Harvard throughout
because such shapers, if they exist, are mistrusted. the 1960s and early 1970s, he expressed concern
They are instead custodians of the qualities valued about the “fog of amiable generalities” that the
by a community, qualities that the urban designer conversations had so far produced. He hoped to
is asked to protect and foster. Today, it is the urban move past them, but they have persisted.
designer, not the planner, who has emerged as the Following a quarter of a century of practicing
place-centered professional, with “urban design” and teaching urban design, my own conclusion
often assuming a friendlier, more accessible popu- is the following. Urban design is less a technical
lar connotation than “planning.” discipline than a mind-set among those of vary
ing disciplinary foundations seeking, sharing, and
advocating insights about forms of community.
Urban DesiGn as a FraMe of Mind What binds urban designers is their commitment
to improving the livability of cities, to facilitating
The above list is not intended to be exhaustive; urban reinvestment and maintenance, and indeed
other urban design activities could surely be added. to enhancing urbanity. The need for a narrow defini
In rapidly modernizing parts of the world, urban tion for such a constellation of interests is not
design has emerged as an important component self-evident. Because of this commitment to cities,
of managing this modernization. An example is urban designers distinguish among mandates: they
the BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) transportation realize that to renew the centers of cities, build
and related mixed-use projects common in both new cities, restore the parts of old cities worthy
South American and Asian countries. (BOT is a of preservation, and construct equitable growth
form of project financing in which a private entity management programs on the periphery requires
receives a franchise from the public sector to vastly different strategies, theories, and design
finance, design, construct, and operate a facility actions. Indeed, one may rejoice that there are
for a specified period, after which ownership is many spheres of urbanistic action for those who
transferred back to the public sector.) Nor is are passionate lovers of cities.
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“Designing the Urban Design
Studio”
Elizabeth Macdonald
Urban design is a professionally oriented field and it is the norm for most students who study urban design to
have the goal of becoming professional practitioners. Within urban design study programs, they learn by gaining
new knowledge and by applying that knowledge to problem-solving; by self-criticism and that of their teachers
and colleagues; by trying out their creative ideas and getting responses to them from professors, professionals,
community activists, and others. Anticipating graduation, they want to know what might be expected of them
as professionals and they want to have the skills necessary to get a job in either public agencies or private
consulting firms. Studios have long been a part of urban design education because they incorporate these
types of learning. In studio, students bring together all they are learning in their other courses and grapple
with how to make use of that knowledge as a professional. The best studios take qualitative and quantita-
tive learning and direct it to the activity of making urban design proposals for specific places, responding
to complex existing conditions and community needs, with the goal of creating good urban environments as
defined through the considered weighing of competing values. As well, they encourage both collaborative
and individual creative work. This experience approximates best urban design practice. Studios let students
know what might be expected of them as professionals and gives them some experience of professional work.
Elizabeth Macdonald’s piece “Designing the Urban Design Studio” explores how an introductory studio
for an urban design concentration within a city planning program can be structured for multiple learning objec-
tives: knowledge-building about good urbanism, team work skills, methods of visual thinking, design creativity,
expertise about urban physical form, an introduction to the urban design tools and techniques, and effective
communication. She speaks to the importance of selecting studio study areas and subject matters as well as
the appropriate scale of possible undertakings. Field research and first-hand data gathering are advocated,
as is the relevance of researching precedents. The importance of knowing citizen concerns and at the same
time understanding the inherent limits of community participation in a studio project are discussed, as is the
importance of teaching students how to create clear graphic and verbal presentations. Effective communica-
tion between urban designers and others involved in building cities – the public, local officials, developers,
and other professionals – is no small issue. The complex world of urban design includes many participants
and decision-makers with different perspectives, and often takes place over extended time periods. Beyond
listening to and understanding the perspectives of their many clients, urban designers must be able to com-
municate their own understandings of places and urbanism, and clearly articulate design ideas in ways that
are comprehensible to non-designers. The studio is an effective place for students to develop these skills.
The issue of studio-based education for urban design education is of critical importance to the future of
professional practice. The studio teaching method has long been at the heart of planning education, but in
recent years studio courses have become less and less emphasized in many curricula, giving way to planning
policy subjects taught, often with some abstraction, in seminar classes. Macdonald’s writing reaffirms the
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596 E L i Z abet H M a C d O N a L d
importance of studios for urban design education planning programs and offers a roadmap for how such
studios might be designed.
Elizabeth Macdonald is Associate Professor of Urban Design at the University of California’s College of
Environmental Design, where she holds appointments in both the Department of City and Regional Planning
and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. She is also a faculty member of
the Urban Design Graduate Group which sponsors a Masters of Urban Design program. She practices urban
design through her firm Cityworks.
Macdonald’s research and design practice focuses on streets. Her works include The Boulevard Book:
History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2003), co-authored with Allan
B. Jacobs and Yodan Rofé; and Pleasure Drives and Promenades: A History of Olmsted’s Brooklyn Parkways
(Chicago, IL: Center for American Places, forthcoming). As well, she has written numerous book chapters
and journal articles including “Streets and the Public Realm: Growing Opportunities/Emerging Designs,”
in Urban Design: Roots, Influences, and Trends: The Routledge Companion to Urban Design (London:
Routledge, 2011); “The Efficacy of Long-Range Physical Planning: The Case of Vancouver,” Journal of Plan
ning History (vol. 7, no. 3, 175–213, 2008); “Urban Waterfront Promenades and Physical Activity by Older
Adults: The Case of Vancouver,” Journal of Architecture and Planning Research (vol. 24, no. 3, 181–198,
2007); “Wasted Space/Potential Place: Reconsidering Urban Streets,” Places: Forum of Design for the
Public Realm (vol. 19, no. 1, 22–27, 2007); “Suburban Vision to Urban Reality: The Evolution of Olmsted
and Vaux’s Brooklyn Parkway Neighborhoods,” Journal of Planning History (vol. 4, no. 4, 295–321, 2005);
“Street-Facing Dwelling Units and Livability: The Impacts of Emerging Building Types in Vancouver’s New
High-Density Residential Neighborhoods,” Journal of Urban Design (vol. 10, no. 1, 13–38, 2005); and “Struc-
turing a Landscape/Structuring a Sense of Place: The Enduring Complexity of Olmsted and Vaux’s Brooklyn
Parkways,” Journal of Urban Design (vol. 7, no. 2, 117–143, 2002).
An early comprehensive assessment of urban design education in the United States is found in Education
for Urban Design: Proceedings of the Urban Design Educators’ Retreat (Purchase, NY: Institute for Urban
Designers, 1982). This compilation includes several writings that address the importance of studio education
including Jon Lang’s piece “For the Studio Method,” and Allan B. Jacobs’ piece “Education for Successful
Practice.” More recently, Kathryn H. Anthony’s piece “Design Studios,” contained in the anthology Compan
ion to Urban Design (Oxford: Routledge, 2011), edited by Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris,
explores the evolution of design studio culture, highlighting its usefulness as a vehicle for teaching urban
design but also the pitfalls that can happen if the studio experience is not well planned and executed.
Several recent books provide excellent overviews of the urban design field and touch on issues related to
urban design communication. These include Jon Lang’s Urban Design: A Typology of Procedures and Pro
ducts (Oxford: Elsevier, Architectural Press, 2005) and Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Taner Oc, and Steve
Tiesdell’s Public Places – Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2010).
In particular, the chapter “The Communication Process” in Public Places – Urban Spaces, contains perhaps
the best description of the types of typical communication problems urban designers may encounter and
offers approaches to dealing with them. The problems include “communication gaps,” between professionals
and laypeople, designers and non-designers, the powerful and the powerless, and designers and users, as
well as between reality and representations of reality. Issues related to communication problems that occur
because of the limitations of graphic representation methods used by urban designers are analyzed at length
in Peter Bosselmann’s well-illustrated book Representation of Places: Reality and Realism in City Design
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).
In universities today, urban design may be taught students different paths to achieve an urban design
within city planning programs, architecture programs, education. Design pedagogy and theoretical ideas
or landscape architecture programs. Sometimes, underlying advocated design approaches may vary
different programs within the same university offer widely depending on what program the teaching is
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“ D esig N i N g t H e U rba N D esig N S tudi O ” 597
situated in. However, for most programs that teach A MIX OF STUDENTS AND TEAMWORK
urban design, whatever discipline they might be situ
ated in, studio courses are central to the curriculum. Having a mix of students from many backgrounds
Studios are the venue where teachers and and with diverse interests is important to a planning-
students collaborate on learning about places and based urban design studio. It means many different
exploring their possibilities, and create and articu perspectives, skills, and ways of thinking about
late planning and design proposals that draw on urbanism are brought to the “drawing board.” This
the discovered knowledge, usually through engaged mix is very fruitful and creates an environment
teamwork. Studio projects are collaborative end similar to that found on the best real-world profes
eavors that explore urban physical areas with the sional urban design projects, where design efforts
objective of arriving at a proposal or set of proposals are conducted via multi-disciplinary teams.
about how that area might be transformed, in Teamwork is an important part of the urban
large or small ways, to meet community needs and design studio. The studio experience is not about
aspirations and take best advantage of develop fostering individual, stand alone “star-architect”
ment opportunities. The studio environment, where work. Rather, it provides an environment where
a group works together for extended periods in a burgeoning young urban designers experience the
dedicated work space, fosters joint learning at the complex and rich creativity that can come from
same time that it allows and encourages individual working as a part of a multi-disciplinary team. At
creative development and expression. Students the same time, they develop their individual abil
learn from each other as well as from their profes ities, knowing that these relate to the larger effort.
sors, especially if there is room for creative efforts To be sure, there is no guarantee that a studio class
to be pinned up on studio walls so that everyone will draw a mix of students with the whole range
can learn from them, respond to them, and be of interests one might wish. No matter. In such
inspired in their own creative efforts by them. cases students can be asked to take on whatever
I have taught graduate urban design studios for “discipline” or subject analysis studies that are
twelve years, mostly at the University of California deemed necessary. And so they do, for a period,
at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design learning along the way, and then returning to their
but also at the University of Toronto and the Univer central interests.
sity of British Columbia. The students I teach are
mostly pursuing Master of City Planning, Master s
of Landscape Architecture or Master of Urban STUDIO SUBJECT MATTERS i
Design degrees, and some are in Master of Architec x
ture programs. Those pursuing city planning de Ready access and topicality are the two most im
grees have a wide range of backgrounds and many portant criteria for selecting the place the studio
have no previous design experience. Some are will focus on. Places that can be easily accessed
focusing on urban design, while others are con are best because that allows students to immerse
centrating in transportation planning, land use themselves in the study area and encourages them
planning, environmental planning, or community to use their own senses for direct knowledge-
development. building rather than an over-reliance on second-
The paper specifically addresses studio teaching hand data collected by others. Students tend to get
for urban design concentrations situated within city most engaged with a place if there are real, urgent
planning programs, but the ideas discussed are also issues related to it because this helps focus where
relevant for urban design teaching in other types their attention might be directed and also offers
of programs. For planning-based programs, studio the possibility that their work can play a role in
projects and processes can be designed to mirror real world planning and design processes. With this
a significant part of what the staff of urban design in mind, it is good to choose places facing strong
groups within city planning departments or the staff development pressures, where major public infra
of private urban design firms working for local structure projects are being contemplated, or where
government agencies, actually do, helping students a pressing ecological concern, such as sea-level
learn to be professionals. rise, can be addressed.
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For introductory studios, focusing on one area first impressions of the study area in graphic form.
for the whole semester allows deep exploration and When these are pinned up together in the studio
consideration of the place. It also gives time for and discussed it leads to an understanding of the
students to develop graphic presentation skills, be many different lenses through which people view
cause many enter the class not knowing how to urban places and their experience of them. Some
draw or use any of the digital graphics programs. common observations always emerge and so do
I typically select either a neighborhood scale area unique ones. These initial gleanings form a starting
or a major corridor that cuts across or lies between point for more systematic knowledge-building.
multiple neighborhoods. In the real world, these
are two of the main types of projects for which
urban design plans are typically prepared. I like to Discovering contexts and opportunities
pick areas where community activists are working,
so that community voices and concerns can be One of the key opportunities afforded by the Uni
easily connected with. versity studio environment is that there is time to
The issue of community participation in univer explore in some depth all the many contexts in
sity urban design studio classes can be a tricky one. which the neighborhood or corridor being studied
Aside from the reality that teaching objectives and is situated. Students divide into two or three person
studio schedules may not always coincide with im teams focused on gaining knowledge about par
mediate neighborhood concerns or real world plan ticular contexts: the area’s history, physical form,
ning process schedules, it is important to remember natural factors, social and economic factors, and
not to promise the community anything that can’t how movement and access work. As a class, we
be delivered upon. Usually, when the studio is over, brainstorm the questions we want each group to
the work is over, except, perhaps, if there is a center address, and possible data gathering approaches.
at the university, or a group of locally engaged At least some of the data gathering must come
professors, dedicated to fostering on-going relation from the students’ own fieldwork – observations,
ships with local communities and keeping con measurements, counts, surveys, and interviews –
nections going from year to year, bridging different because spending time in a place leads to different
student cohorts. Students may present their work insights than simply analyzing abstract datasets
to community groups or local decision-makers after prepared by others. Each team of students prepares
the studio is finished, and some may follow-through a graphic presentation of their findings. Rather than
on a studio project through individual efforts taken presenting a “data dump” of everything they have
on as a capstone thesis or professional report project. discovered, they are asked to thoughtfully sift
Certainly, studio products can be made available through the knowledge they have gathered to deter
to communities and planning departments for use mine what the key “stories” are that they have
in real world planning processes. uncovered.
As students begin working on knowledge-
gathering, they are taught how to communicate
KNOWLEDGE-BUILDING their ideas, to their team mates and faculty, through
visual thinking. Early on, students are asked to
Knowledge-building about a place precedes design. develop thumbnail sketches of the presentation
The first thing students should do is to explore the boards they will create to articulate their findings.
study area on their own, on foot, without a camera The thumbnail sketches help make the analysis
but with a sketchbook, for at least half a day. Being process concrete and grounded, and keep students
without companions or a camera is conducive to from getting stuck in an abstract realm of endless
a deeper kind of observation than otherwise, a closer “analysis paralysis.” Talking over these thumbnail
looking. They may be given guidance on the kinds sketches, we work together to identify key finds
of things they might want to pay attention to, but and clear ways to show them and their relationships
mostly it should be left up to them to explore as they with other findings via clear graphics and succinct
will. A good first assignment involves the prepara text. Students are asked to keep refining their
tion of a reconnaissance map that articulates their thumbnail sketches at the same time that they are
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“ D esig N i N g t H e U rba N D esig N S tudi O ” 599
preparing individual presentation boards so that the planning and design proposals should derive.
they keep the whole picture in mind. Succinctly articulating main concepts and gaining
While doing research on the study area, students team agreement on them replicates, in abbreviated
should be encouraged to think about design pos form, how successful decision-making processes
sibilities. Design ideas can help inform the type of work in real world planning processes. Once the
research that should be done. Students can be asked high-level criteria are set, students have a bench
to keep a sketchbook and some studio time can be mark to strive for and to test ideas against. Every
spent on quick design charettes where students can design decision should form and reinforce the guid
explore emerging design ideas in graphic form. The ing vision and goals.
products of these exploratory design exercises can Visions for changes become most imageable and
be pinned up on the wall for others to contemplate. memorable when they are articulated with a clear
graphic, or set of graphics, that encapsulates the idea.
For instance, the vision developed for the Saint Paul
Learning from precedents on the Mississippi Downtown Revitalization Plan was
“Downtown Saint Paul will be a system of intercon
While existing contexts certainly should form the nected urban villages nestled in a reforested river
foundation upon which urban design ideas are based, valley.” This compelling idea was illustrated with a
for beginning students, inspiration and innovation freehand drawn, watercolor, aerial view of the Missis
are often best unlocked by looking at precedents. sippi River flowing through the center of the city,
Even at the graduate level, many students have limited with tree-lined banks and neighborhoods spilling
personal experience of cities and may be lacking in down to the water. This is an image meant to capture
knowledge of innovative approaches to city-building. the community’s aspirations for its future, aspirations
As a class, it is helpful to spend an intensive period that were worked out during a highly participatory
of time, a week or so, gathering visual images and planning process, and to inspire a long term com
supporting data about a whole range of precedents mitment to realizing those aspirations.
that have something to teach that is relevant for
our study area. The class can first collectively brain
storm issues relevant to the studio subject matter Urban design framework plans
that it wants to know more about and also identify
specific places or projects where these issues have In the past, urban design plans were often conceived s
been addressed, both in tried and true ways and as masterplans. Today, recognizing that economic i
with the latest innovations. By casting a wide net and other circumstances might change over the course x
and pooling collective knowledge and creative re of implementing an urban design development, which
sources, the class ends up with many design ideas can take many years or even decades, the key ele
to contemplate and, hopefully, be inspired by. ment of urban design plans are urban structure
framework plans. These framework plans set the
basic built form and use parameters for an area. For
FORMULATING AND ARTICULATING most projects, a series of framework plans are pre
URBAN DESIGN PROPOSALS pared. The focus of each framework plan and how
many of them there are is determined by the specifics
The design proposal phase of studio work is where of the urban design project. Typically, each frame
students learn key methods used in real-world work plan describes a single system or pattern. They
urban design practice. address things like the patterns of street types, the
spatial locations of different movement flows, open
space patterns, hydrological systems, land use pat
Guiding vision and principles terns, locations of activity nodes and special land
marks, built form intensity, and so on. They are
The best urban design plans articulate a clear typically plan drawings, all covering the same area
design vision supported by a handful of key goals. and drawn to the same scale so that the ways various
These function as the high-order criteria from which frameworks fitted together can be easily understood.
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Re-envisioning the public realm if the author is not present to explain them. A clear
visual display of information depends upon organ
A key focus of creative effort in urban design stu ization. Rarely can urban design analyses or design
dios, as in urban design practice, is on the urban proposals be presented on a single drawing. A basic
public realm. Contemporary urban design projects strategy for creating easily accessible visual pre
often involve strategies for enhanced public realm sentations is to establish coordinated graphic formats
systems and networks. Such strategies might focus that link across multiple sheets. In other words, a
on sustainable infrastructure, such as green streets visual language should be created and used con
or district heating and cooling systems, or on creating sistently throughout a presentation. Viewers should
more pedestrian-oriented or multi-modal-oriented not be asked to learn multiple visual languages,
streets. The studio provides the opportunity to because they may become lost or frustrated. If this
encourage students to explore innovative street happens, attention will deteriorate and communica
designs that meet other purposes than those pro tion will become ineffective.
mulgated by traffic engineers, such as maximizing
vehicle capacity. All too often in the real world,
street standards are allowed to dictate urban street Verbal presentations
design. And very often, these standards result in wider
than necessary roadways, narrower than necessary The urban design studio offers an opportunity for
sidewalks, little in the way of bicycle facilities, and, students to learn good verbal presentation techniques,
quite often, few trees or permeable surfaces. a very important skill for professional practice. They
learn basic things, like the importance of facing the
audience and not the graphics. As might be expected,
Shaping private development without students become immersed in their group processes,
designing buildings but for presentations they must focus on findings and
proposals rather than a rehash of the group delibera
The urban structure framework plans set an area’s tions that went before. Students might very well not
overall form and use patterns and may also set accomplish all they had hoped they might, but it does
criteria for building height and bulk. In the real no good to tell the audience the things they didn’t
world, most urban design plans go further in shap do. Presentation time constraints help students under
ing built form through the use of design guidelines. stand the importance of succinct verbal presenta
The studio provides the opportunity to explore how tions, an important skill for professionals. Interruptions
design guidance should be articulated to shape from someone in the audience to ask a question
development that will contribute to the community always seem to happen. It is important to learn how
vision. Particular attention is paid to the interface to gracefully let the questioner know that the answer
zone between the private realm and the public realm. will be forthcoming, or to answer the question quickly
and then continue with the presentation, not giving
the questioner time to keep his or her personal
URBAN DESIGN COMMUNICATION concern going. Reviews of the students’ work by
a group of professionals and lay people is important
Graphic presentations because it exposes students to the reality that pro
fessional work elicits many responses, some of
The point of urban design graphic presentations is which conflict with each other. Professionals must
to communicate clearly with a wide range of people: learn to both listen to and weigh multiple responses.
other planners and designers, engineers, public Practice, practice, practice. Presentation of re
decision-makers such as mayors and members of search and planning and design proposals in verbal
city councils, and, most important, community mem and graphic form is different than the type of work
bers. As such, graphics should be designed to be students do in other classes. Presenting before a
easily to read and comprehended. They should not live, sometimes critical audience is a road to profes
be designed to dazzle through mystification. sional practice that studios offer budding profes
Ideally, visual graphics should “speak for them sionals. More than one such presentation over the
selves,” conveying key findings and proposals even course of a studio is important.
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“Design Guidelines in American
Cities: Conclusions”
from Design Guidelines in American Cities:
A Review of Design Policies and Guidance
in Five West Coast Cities (1999)
John Punter
What constitutes best practice urban design policy? What are ways of doing urban design and making it
effective within different political and regulatory contexts? Substantively and process-wise, what has worked
over periods of time and what hasn’t? What can urban designers in one city or country learn from those
practicing elsewhere? On the one hand, each city is different from every other one, particularly in regards to
governance, bureaucratic structure, economic bases, physical, climatic, social, and cultural contexts, and the
roles of citizens in decision-making, so it seems difficult to gain meaningful lessons from how one city does
things that apply to another. On the other hand, detailed knowledge about how urban design initiatives are
practically accomplished in different cities, particularly when their physical, social, economic, and governmental
contexts are well explained, can inspire practitioners to transcend entrenched ways of doing things and ex-
plore new possibilities.
In this regard, John Punter’s extensive comparative research on design policy is very important, not least
because he is very thorough at explaining how things work in different cities in relation to their contexts. Here,
in the conclusion to his book Design Guidelines in American Cities: A Review of Design Policies and Guid-
ance in Five West Coast Cities, Punter summarizes and synthesizes the findings that come from analyzing
the urban design public policy of five cities on the west coast of the United States – Seattle, Portland, San
Francisco, Irvine, and San Diego – cities that he posits are generally understood to have put in place best
practice urban design guidance. From the analysis, which includes a review of legal issues related to planning
regulatory controls, Punter distills a framework for how design guidance should be structured that he argues
is applicable to cities elsewhere, including in different countries. He finds that design policies should be based
on careful study of the locality and full consultation with the community. Design review should be part of a
comprehensive coordinated effort at design regulation and integrated into the planning process. The design
review process should be efficient, fair, and effective, and design guidelines should be precise but not overly
prescriptive, underpinned by design principles, and backed by implementation advice.
John Punter’s other writings on design policy include the edited anthology Urban Design and the British
Urban Renaissance (London: Routledge, 2010); The Design Dimension of Practice: Theory, Content, and
Best Practice for Design Policies, co-authored with Matthew Carmona (London: E & FN Spon, 1997), which
describes and analyzes British design policy; From Design Policy to Design Quality: The Treatment of Design
in Community Strategies, Local Development Frameworks and Action Plans, co-authored with Matthew
Carmona and David Chapman (London: Thomas Telford, 2002); and The Vancouver Achievement: Urban
Planning and Design (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2003). This last is a detailed look at Vancouver’s unique
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602 J ohn P unter
discretionary zoning system and approach to design regulation, including the use of urban design framework
plans that shape building types and set the form and character of public spaces, resulting in what some
consider one of the best examples of recent city-building. Vancouver has built new high-density residential
neighborhoods on former industrial lands in and around its downtown core while at the same time building a
vibrant, pedestrian-oriented public realm and whole communities. The unique building type that has emerged
from Vancouver’s design guidance is what has come to be known as a “point-tower-over-podium-base,” where
the base contains townhouses with individual entries facing onto streets and pedestrian walkways. Elizabeth
Macdonald’s article “Street-Facing Dwelling Units and Livability: The Impacts of Emerging Building Types
in Vancouver’s New High-Density Residential Neighborhoods,” Journal of Urban Design (vol 10, no. 1,
pp. 13–38, 2005) provides a look at on-the-ground impacts of these new buildings.
One of the best ways for students and practitioners to learn how to be effective design regulators and to
write well-articulated guidelines is to look directly at examples of design guidelines and design review systems.
This is becoming easier and easier to do because many cities are starting to post their urban design and
planning policies on websites in easily downloadable form. The cities of Portland, Oregon (http://www.port-
landonline.com/planning/) and Vancouver, British Columbia (http://www.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/)
both have highly sophisticated design guidance systems and their planning departments have well-structured
websites that make their design guidance documents easily accessible.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION comparisons were made with Canadian, British and

French planning systems to illustrate where com
The task of this monograph was to illustrate and monalities exist. It was seen that there are more
explain ‘best practice’ American design review to similarities between American planning and con
an international audience, providing as many illus tinental European systems than there are between
trations, plan excerpts, and samples of guidance American and British systems; the latter have no
as possible in the belief that this would stimulate zoning controls and no clear development entitle
thought and encourage innovation in design guide ments. Instead, the latter’s design controls on all
lines and review processes in countries beyond the planning applications operated with a very large
USA. West coast cities of the USA were selected measure of professional and political discretion
to illustrate this ‘best practice’, four of them major (notwithstanding Central Government’s strong
metropolitan areas and two of them suburban policy constraints). For the British reader the key
municipalities. Collectively these were considered observation is that while many of the American
to display a long-standing commitment to design design documents look familiar in terms of their
quality; a full range of design visions, strategies, goals, objectives, principles, policies and guidelines,
goals, objectives and policies at different scales it must never be forgotten that these are backed
from city-wide to the neighbourhood; a sophisti by detailed control on bulk and use that in them
cated review process; a high degree of public selves exert a major impact on built form. For the
consulta tion and public ownership of policies; continental European, the zoning controls will be
and a wide range of implementation devices and familiar, as will the issues about how to make such
investment programmes. controls more flexible, more responsive to develop
The evolution of the respective planning and ment interests, and more qualitatively sophisticated.
design policies has been discussed and their strengths However, the question as to how new guidelines,
and weaknesses assessed. Their outcomes have documents or review processes might be built into
been assessed to a much lesser extent, and it has a more plan-led system will loom large for the
rarely been possible to assess the effectiveness of British reader.
policies in any depth. In the opening chapter design Some time was spent explaining the key criticisms
review was carefully located in the planning and of design review in the USA in a bid to provide a
permit-granting process in the largest cities, and conceptual framework with which to review each
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“ D esi G n Guidelines in A merican C ities : C onclusions ” 603
city’s endeavours. It was seen that there were prob as politics; public participation; the review process;
lems with the process, its efficiency and effective policy hierarchy, policy generation and the levels
ness; with the competence of planners, politicians of prescription; implementation; and comprehen
and review boards; with the abuse of power, going sive co-ordination. These are not mutually exclusive
beyond legal powers to impose additional con issues – politics, participation and policy generation
straints and obligations on developers; with issues are particularly closely related – and some aspects
of freedom in terms of rights to self-expression and could be explored under several of these categories,
cultural identity, and of justice in terms of treating but these issues can help structure the general
all applicants fairly and reasonably; and finally of conclusions of the study.
aesthetics in terms of the subjectivity of design
judgment (Scheer and Preiser 1994, pp. 1–10). Legal
observers focused their criticisms on the process THE POLITICS OF URBAN DESIGN
of control and the rules/principles/policies that
are applied. Blaesser, in particular, focused on the The west coast cities clearly demonstrate that urban
legality of design review within state planning law; design in its broadest sense is a politically contested
the need to derive policy from analysis of area char arena. This is most evident in the citizen revolts
acter, the need to ensure that guidelines remain against the 1984 Downtown Seattle Plan and the
non-mandatory and non-prescriptive, but detailed 1985 Downtown San Francisco Plan where there
and precise rather than vague or visionary; the need was strong opposition to further large-scale, high-
to underpin guidelines with both design principles rise commercial development on the basis of its
and implementation advice, and to explain the weight impact on the character of downtown, and its broader
to be attached to each (Blaesser 1994, pp. 49–50). effects on congestion, transportation and housing.
Lai took a broader and more general view, on the In San Diego the concern was suburban sprawl and
one hand looking at general weaknesses of American the spread of new communities up the coast and
planning and zoning, and on the other arguing that into the arid interior; a balanced growth strategy
design review must be part of a ‘comprehensive soon disintegrated when existing suburban com
coordinated effort’ to promote design quality in munities began to experience intensification, con
which other public and private agencies participate gestion and higher demands on existing services.
(Lai 1988). Portland provides the most positive example of
how urban design goals and strategies have won s
powerful political support that has ensured their i
A FRAMEWORK FOR SYNTHESIS continuous implementation over 25 years. Carl x
Abbott has detailed the connection between what
These criticisms provided the framework for draw the city has accomplished in design terms and how
ing together the findings of the study in terms of it has accomplished this through its politics. He
the comprehensiveness of the pursuit of design emphasises Portland’s traditions of conservatism,
quality; how policies were derived (particularly the conservation, and consensus politics (non-partisan
analytical studies and consultation that underpin government) developed through extensive public-
them); their level of precision; their basis in design private partnerships and thoroughgoing community
theory; the extent to which they prescribe solutions; planning as the platform for a long-term urban
and finally the efficiency and effectiveness of the growth management and downtown development
review process. Particular attention was devoted to strategy (Abbott 1997). Others see support for these
the policy hierarchy, to the relationship between strategies being built through economic self-interest
urban design at the citywide scale and the level of in higher property values and more stable neigh
the individual plot, and to the relationship between bourhoods, in more profitable development oppor
goals, objectives, principles, policies and guidelines. tunities and more affordable housing, and through
In these conclusions the findings of the study widely shared interests in the commercial and cul
will be assembled around six issues which can help tural vitality of the compact city, and the protection
to organise the key arguments that have arisen in of valuable agricultural land and natural landscapes
the analysis. The key issues may be encapsulated (Richmond 1997).
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604 J ohn P unter
The same kind of political consensus building levels of participation is evident in west coast cities,
was evident in Seattle with the 1994 Comprehensive from extremely limited public involvement in sub-
Plan and its urban villages strategy, which tried to division development and planning in Irvine (land
accommodate growth and maintain housing afford owner planning through market research) to an
ability at the same time as improving neighbourhood extremely high level of involvement and devolved
amenities, increasing accessibility and reducing resources in Portland.
congestion, and increasing neighbourhood design Portland is the exemplar in terms of its neigh
control while nonetheless allowing intensification. bourhood participation programme which funds
It remains to be seen if Seattle will succeed where neighbourhood associations, trains activists, gives
San Diego failed, but certainly the Comprehensive associations early notification of impending devel
Plan provides the basis for accommodating the growth opment, and allows them to participate in develop
that San Diego’s mature suburbs have resisted. ment briefing. The 1988 Center City Plan was led
Another example of the importance of politics by a voluntary citizen steering committee, and both
is provided by San Diego’s failure to build a polit this and the 1993 Albina plan had huge budgets
ical consensus for design-led planning downtown, to ensure high levels of public participation. It is
in the face of powerful development interests and noticeable that there were no citizen revolts over
a powerful City Center Development Corporation the 1988 Downtown Plan in Portland as there were
driven by the tax increments provided through in Seattle and San Francisco, although there was
redevelopment. A further problem was a political some modification of its content (a refocus on land-
leadership that, at least until recently, regarded use issues) when the Planning Bureau took over
design control as arbitrary, expensive and off- from the citizens’ committee to complete it.
putting to developers. Other cities have been much less ambitious with
The political complexion of the city, the extent their participation initiatives, but there are some
to which it can pick and choose between devel interesting experiments in the devolution of both
opers and developments (particularly the level of guidance production and design control to the local
economic competition between developers), the level in both San Francisco and Seattle. In San
mutuality of interest between developers and resi Francisco, at least in part, this has been a product
dents, between business and environmental groups of financial exigencies constraining planning
are all critical to the effective implementation department initiatives, so that communities wishing
of long-term design strategies and enhancement to undertake closer control have had to write their
programmes. It is remarkably easy for policy to get own guidance or finance its production themselves.
out of step with public aspirations, particularly In Seattle, it is part of a pact that will allow the
in periods of rapid growth (as in Seattle and San city to intensify development in a series of urban
Francisco). One of the best ways of preventing this villages, while allowing the neighbourhoods to con
is to develop a very high level of public participa trol the detailed design of new development, and
tion and neighborhood/community input into plan to participate in pre-development discussions with
making and design development/regulation, but prospective developers with a firm prospect of hav
even this is not an absolute guarantee of harmony. ing their views incorporated into the final design.
There is a clear trend not just towards public
consultation in design matters, but towards the
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN public defining the principles of control and con
FORMULATING DESIGN POLICY tributing to the administration of the control
process itself. Such ventures provide a mechanism
Issues of the politics of urban design are inseparable for managing disputes between the community
from issues of public participation in planning and and development interests, and for giving the
design regulation. However, the level and extent community far greater ‘ownership’ of the control
of this participation constitutes, at one extreme, mechanism. The Seattle experiment in empowering
mere publicity for a plan or guidelines, and at the neighbourhood groups will be especially interest
other extreme genuine empowerment of the com ing as the intensification process generated by
munity (Arnstein 1969). A wider range of different zoning changes in the 1994 plan gathers pace. It will
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provide an interesting comparison with San Diego’s process might be made efficient, fair and effective
experiences. (Lai 1988). A number of these relate to the way
The management or neighbourhood change guidelines are developed, their basis in the nature
through elected neighbourhood associations and of the locality and public values, their relationship
codes, covenants and restrictions [CC&Rs] is another to established principles of design, and their level
form of empowerment, often dismissed as a purely of prescription, all of which will be discussed
negative and exclusionary process by those who in subsequent sections. Some of their suggestions
see design control as a purely public activity. Baab relate specifically to the administrative procedures
argues that these can be devices for subordinating and the need for written opinions, principles derived
individual property rights to community values, and from precedents, tests of the reasonableness of the
is very positive about both their effectiveness in decision and the right of appeal.
maintaining environmental quality and their ability Abbott noted how in Portland the city routinised
to translate community goals into action (Baab and depoliticised design review early on by estab
1994). Taking the example of Woodbridge in Irvine, lishing clear guidelines, trained officers, treating
it is difficult to see anything but enforced con each case on its merits, and appointing design and
formity and claustrophobia, but a more positive landmark commissions to give decisions (Abbott
role is evidenced in Westwood Park, San Francisco, 1997). The review process itself has written reports,
where a less rigid set of CC&Rs has been supple hearings (on more complex developments) and
mented by tailored guidelines to ensure the reten appeal procedures all with strict timetables that will
tion of neighbourhood qualities. yield a decision in 11 or 17 weeks depending on
With the obvious exception of Irvine, west coast the size and complexity of the proposal, even after
cities have made an especial effort to consult the appeal. A key aspect of Portland’s system is that
public on design matters, and a number are now state legislation demands that decisions be based
going a stage further to devolve both the production on demonstrable findings, hence the emphasis on
of guidance and first stage design controls to the clear and precise guidelines and checklists against
local community. However, these efforts are at odds which an application can be assessed and can be seen
with the general trend identified by Southworth to be systematically evaluated. This same approach
(1989, p. 345) to allow less participation, and to is evident in Seattle’s neighbourhood design review
concentrate upon elite business and professional where it is extended to emphasize pre-application
interests to capture key decision-makers and to negotiations and community agreement on what s
save money. They are also at odds with Habe’s the decisive issues are, so that these can be used i
research findings which found that only one-quarter in a broader evaluation of the eventual planning x
of the communities surveyed promoted ‘active’ parti application. Due process was seen to be lacking
cipation in design matters (Habe 1989, pp. 204–6). in San Francisco where discretionary review could
This is one of the reasons why these west coast be initiated even where a developer had met all the
cities continue to be exemplars of enlightened requirements of the zoning ordinance, and where
design control. politicians used the review mechanism to respond
to citizen pressures against particular developments.
The evidence from Seattle, Bellevue, Portland
THE PROCESS OF DESIGN REVIEW and San Francisco is that design review has been
fully integrated into the planning process, and it
Opponents of design review, particularly devel has been systematised, made transparent, democ
opers and architects, focus upon the nature of the ratised and professionalised, the latter by virtue
processes of design review and the extent to which of planning officers’ advice and expert design or
they are subject to professional and political landmarks commissions’ judgments. In San Diego
discretion. Lawyers are especially concerned about design review has yet to be fully established, but
the abuse of discretionary power (see Blaesser communities have set out their design requirements
1994) and the tendency of applicants to succumb in their zoning ordinances and community plans.
to its requirements rather than to challenge it. They Meanwhile Irvine demonstrates the power of land
have made a variety of suggestions about how the owner control that can be exercised on developers
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when there is a high demand for development, and studies were among the most participative – involv
how these controls can be perpetuated through the ing various architectural and conservation groups,
imposition of CC&Rs on the title deeds. using Kevin Lynch methodologies in the former
and identifying all potential landmark buildings in
the latter. Portland has been proceeding area by
THE POLICY HIERARCHY AND THE area with detailed analyses of design character
WRITING OF GUIDELINES through all downtown, inner city and historic dis
tricts, developing detailed guidelines from each
At the heart of the examination of the design guide appraisal (City of Portland 1993). The analyses
lines used in west coast cities has been the question make particular use of axonometrics and maps at
of how to write policies or guidelines that are clear, the large scale to distil and communicate ideas,
meaningful and easy for lay people to understand, moving on to detailed analysis of architectural and
and easily applicable to the control of development. street character at the micro-scale.
Throughout the case studies the relationship be Southworth’s research reveals that such thorough
tween community goals, design objectives and design going appraisals are now much less common
guidelines has been repeatedly discussed, compared than they used to be in the period 1960 –73, and
and contrasted one to another in the search for further reveals that 20 percent of the newer
well-articulated, concise and comprehensive policy design plans surveyed have no such analytical base
frameworks. To re-emphasise the importance of (Southworth 1989). Furthermore, he is critical of
the task, a recent court case in Washington State many professional field surveys which he regards
overturned permit refusals which stated that devel as vague and unstructured. His prescription for a
opment proposals were ‘incompatible’ and ‘non- good survey is that it sets ‘clear goals and catego
harmonious’, because such judgments were not ries of analysis, and establishes a system for cover
based on properly researched and explained policies ing the survey area so that all areas receive equal
and guidelines. The court in the case of Anderson attention [and] provides for multiple opinions in
v. Issaquah ruled that the use of such adjectives in subjective analyses to reduce personal biases’
zoning ordinances was not acceptable, that property (Southworth 1989, p. 376). His research reveals
owners must know what they are expected to do a rich array of analytical techniques that provide
in advance, and that decision-making cannot just a good basis for area appraisals anywhere, but em
be turned over to a board or committee without phasises that significant public consultation remains
clear guidelines being established to support their a vital component in order to establish public, as
decisions (Hinshaw 1994, p. 288). opposed to professional, values.
[ . . . ] Residents’ views were an important component
of the San Francisco Urban Design Study in 1970.
In Portland since 1974 the Office of Downtown
The value of design appraisal Neighborhood Associations has ensured major
public inputs into all planning, zoning and guideline
One of the key characteristics of the best American reviews, including most notably the 1988 Center
urban design planning is that they are based upon City Plan which was largely prepared under the
thoroughgoing analysis of the character of the auspices of a citizen steering committee with its
locality. The best example anywhere is provided by own budget. Current initiatives in Seattle attempt
San Francisco where the 1968–70 design studies to kill two birds with one stone by encouraging
undertaken by the City Planning Department est communities to conduct their own area appraisals,
ablished the character of the city, the key qualities and thereafter to develop their own objectives and
that needed to be protected, and the principles and guidelines, thereby ensuring that it is their values
policies that could help achieve this. Other cities which are expressed in the controls rather than
undertook similar appraisals, but not on the same those of the professionals or specialised amenity
scale – the Lynch and Appleyard study of San Diego or development interests. It has already been seen
being one of the most interesting and comprehen that quite ordinary communities are capable of
sible (Lynch and Appleyard 1974). The Portland writing their own design guidelines, and that these
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can be quite original, unprescriptive and refresh because they can identify which broad but widely
ingly neutral about matters of elevational treatment supported principles, collectively, will be critical to
and architectural style (e.g. Bernal Heights in San design quality.
Francisco). Certainly Seattle’s manual, Preparing
Your Own Design Guidelines, will be of value to many
small communities worldwide as they contemplate Urbanistic principles
the task of expressing what it is about the physical
character of their settlement or neighbourhood they One of the features of the best design principles
wish to maintain. is the emphasis they place upon the proposed
building’s relationship to the public realm and the
pedestrian experience. In the most progressive
Objectives and principles authorities these urbanistic criteria receive more
attention than architectural or townscape factors.
The appropriate development of goals, objectives, Payton, relating an experience in Virginia, draws a
principles, policies and guidelines is problematic clear line between these two kinds of factors and
in the sense that many of these terms are used makes an important recommendation:
interchangeably, and loosely, by different designers
and indeed different critics and planners. In the Urbanistic criteria relate to the relationship
west coast cities the three best examples seem to of buildings to other buildings (vis-à-vis height
rely on a few key objectives each split into a num relative to street width and other buildings),
ber of design principles. The 1972 San Francisco to set back lines, to parks etc. In essence all of
Master Plan relies on four design objectives, each those characteristics that determine the walls
with nine to twelve policies (design principles); of the urban room. Architectural criteria are
the 1985 Downtown Plan is similar but with nine those that relate to the buildings themselves,
objectives each split into two to five policies (also or objects within the urban milieu. In an ideal
essentially principles). In the latter, further guid world buildings would be successful urbanistic
ance is offered in a couple of paragraphs on each, ally and architecturally. However, if only one
with much more detailed guidelines and standards were possible, the greatest effort should be
for open space and for pedestrian improvement applied to the former, consistently throughout
standards. the entire locale. s
Portland’s 1988 Downtown Plan has three objec Payton 1992, p. 238 i
tives and 26 principles (called guidelines). They are x
very broad and general – reinforce the pedestrian Portland’s design guidelines clearly illustrate
system, protect the pedestrian, bridge pedestrian some resolution of these architectural (townscape)
obstacles, provide pedestrian stopping places, make and urbanistic (public realm) criteria, seeking to
open spaces successful – and are barely elaborated ensure first that a project is consistent with the
in the four sentences which accompany each guide city’s character, and the broad urban design frame
line. They are brought together in a checklist so work; secondly that it makes a contribution to the
that planners can determine whether or not the pedestrian environment; and finally that the detailed
guideline is applicable to the proposed develop design is sensitive to the character of the locality
ment or not, and whether it complies or not. A very and creates appropriate amenities. All these ex
similar approach has been adopted in Seattle with amples illustrate the important broadening of the
27 principles (also called guidelines) for site plan concept of design beyond visual-architectural con
ning, bulk, architectural treatment, pedestrian rela siderations. They emphasise the importance, stressed
tionship and landscaping. These are described as by Buchanan, Habe, and other design critics, of
guidelines and the checklist is used to establish employing definitions of context that embrace
which are the priority considerations from the neigh patterns of use, activity and movement in an area.
bourhood’s viewpoint. Both checklists provide valu However, as recent American research demon
able ways of briefing developers, or articulating strates, such perspectives tend to be more excep
community wishes, or of evaluating proposals, tions than the general rule (Southworth 1989).
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Guidelines and their elaboration: the proposal can be evaluated. Most of the guide
appropriate levels of prescription lines are similarly sophisticated. The Albina plan in
Portland offers developers the alternatives of meet
How then should guidelines elaborate these basic ing a set of prescriptive supplemental compatibility
principles? Guidelines can be divided into two kinds standards or of submitting the project to a design
– those that are prescriptive in terms of prescribing review process in which the community will play
the form of the development scheme; and those an important role.
that are performance related, which seek to ensure The level of prescription in design policies re
that the development ‘performs’ in a certain way mains a fundamental issue that greatly exercises
by responding to a particular issue. A good ex architects, designers and often clients. Most com
ample of the two approaches is provided by the mentators favour policies and guidelines which do
San Francisco Zoning Code, which is very prescrip not prescribe solutions or particular built forms, but
tive, and the San Francisco Residential Guidelines which set out principles or performance criteria
(1989) which try hard to be performance related. leaving the designer to be free to use his or her
The Zoning Code specifies the provision of bay creativity to resolve the design problem. They
windows, their angles and overhangs, the maximum recognise that without full use of the designer’s
spacing of pedestrian entrances, the maximum skills there will be no quality, and even those who
proportion of garage doors vis-a-vis the facade, wish to write detailed codes to control the form of
and detailed setback and landscaping provisions. development still try not to propose architectural
The Residential Design Guidelines (1989) articulate solutions.
a series of detailed design principles and how these In the United States it is still quite common for
might be applied, with key questions that the con both local government and landowners/developers
troller/applicant can ask themselves, and analytical to become obsessed with matters of style and
devices to establish appropriate responses. There design detail, rather like the community of Golden
is no doubt that the application of these prin Hill in San Diego. Habe’s research reveals that
ciples places significant constraints on the client architectural considerations are the key focus of
and designer; it is obviously the intention of the control in 98 per cent of all authorities surveyed
guide to ensure that new development responds (Habe 1989, p. 202), while nearly a third of all
to the quality of townscape that it is placed in, authorities specify certain architectural styles;
and the less uniform the context the less binding others are preoccupied with architectural details
the principles. These guidelines do not prescribe often without reference to specific contexts. The
solutions, rather they encourage full considera west coast cities illustrate a much broader and
tion of the design issues at stake and demonstrate less prescriptive approach in which architectural
clearly to applicants what their designs are expected issues are integrated with urbanistic and landscape
to achieve. Compatibility, not conformity, is the isssues to achieve a holistic approach to urban
watchword. environmental quality. Careful study of the context
The same is true of Seattle’s multi-family hous (broadly interpreted) is required of every applicant,
ing guidelines (1993). Here, compatibility was defined but design principles rather than design solutions
more broadly to embrace aspects of landscape as still allow the developer and designer the opportu
well as architecture and urban form. The guidelines nity to respond creatively to the carefully defined
directly embrace the relationship to the public constraints.
realm and seek to retain existing qualities of visibil Legal experts concerned with the potential and
ity, surveillance and private/public space, promot actual abuse of discretionary powers have particu
ing both pedestrian safety and a rich pedestrian larly emphasised the need for a clear division
experience. In Seattle a concept like human scale between mandatory controls (which are limited to
is not just interpreted as an aspect of elevational judicially accepted parameters like height, bulk,
treatment or building size. It embraces the social density, building line, setback) and design guide
and functional aspects of the relationship between lines (Blaesser 1994). Portland and Seattle provide
buildings and space, and in this sense it operates two good examples where this has been achieved
more like a performance standard against which successfully.
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Visions and strategies – conveying One might criticise Seattle for not clearly pre
the desired future form senting this vision with the kinds of maps, diagrams,
sketches and axonometrics that make such ideas
One of the most striking features of the American accessible to a wide constituency, but no such
experience is the way that design thinking has criticism can be made of Portland’s design strategy
recently come back to permeate planning at the for its downtown. Established in 1972 and refined
metropolitan, district and neighbourhood levels. in 1988, this design strategy is expressed largely
Mark Hinshaw (1994, pp. 287–8) has argued that through maps and axonometric line drawings, start
through most of the 1970s and 1980s urban design ing with a concept plan emphasising the areas of
fell into severe disfavour as planners moved into intensive development and infrastructure invest
policy planning. Other relevant factors are likely to ment. Then it expresses each planning policy in a
have been the deep economic recessions of the spatial way on a map – economic development,
1970s and 1980s, public disenchantment with the riverfront, historic preservation and, finally, urban
results of urban renewal and redevelopment, while design. The latter then attempts to integrate these
increasing competition between cities in the 1990s different aspects into an overall design framework.
has tended to revive design concerns. Hinshaw The key concepts employed, and the notation for
notes that urban design is now making a strong the strategy have been the subject of much thought
comeback in the United States as community and refinement, but they are still not entirely sat
image, community design and environmental quality isfactory in the way that they integrate aspects of
become more widely discussed, and as its potential built form, public space, and activities, both current
to express desired qualities in built form and envir and projected. They are, however, more complete
onmental regulation is realised. He considers urban and more sophisticated than other known examples.
design to be particularly relevant as growth man These detailed spatial strategies are backed up
agement is developed in the United States and the by a set of action proposals, and supplemented
reshaping of suburban development becomes an by a set of programmes with timings and relevant
urgent necessity. implementation agencies identified. The whole
In the west coast cities, most notably perhaps provides a clear framework for private develop
in Portland and most recently in Seattle, the im ment decisions and acts as a corporate document
portance of thinking strategically in urban design to guide public investment and initiative. Like
terms is palpable in the attempts to convey city the Seattle plan, it sets out a vision for the future s
wide future urban form. This embraces the areas of the central city developed in conjunction with i
for major intensification and concentration of com business and resident groups. What is striking x
mercial development; the patterns of infrastructure about the strategy is that the 1988 version, while
investment especially transportation; the accessible extended, elaborated and more detailed than its
areas for residential intensification; the townscapes 1972 forebear, is still essentially promulgating the
to be conserved and the agricultural and natural same vision and approach, and it is this continuity
areas to be protected. Seattle’s new urban villages which is a testament to the robustness of the ori
strategy set out in the 1994 Comprehensive Plan ginal concept and a key to the sustained positive
is a fine example of how a generalised urban design impacts upon downtown itself.
concept can express a city-wide vision of the future Of course, design strategies necessarily precede
that is comprehensible to the public and the devel the writing of design policies and guidelines, and
opment industry. Developed through two years of should emerge from the whole process of visioning
debate with broadly-based discussion groups and and goal setting citywide, at the district or neigh
community forums, the vision expresses with great bourhood levels. They are a key element in ensur
simplicity what Seattleites want for their city in ing that urban design thought plays a much more
terms of reduced congestion and improved transit, prominent role in the coordination, integration and
protection of the environment and neighbourhood modification of systematic planning policies. They
quality, living compactly but ensuring housing af provide a spatial framework for developing en
fordability, improving suburban services and ensur hancement programmes and other forms of direct
ing economic vitality and employment growth. public action to ensure that the various initiatives
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are mutually reinforcing. While, inevitably, many ment to the sophistication of the control system,
strategies will be developed to aid regeneration and to the city planners’ determination to make it
initiatives or major urban restructurings from time comprehensible and accessible to the development
to time, the revision of a comprehensive or neigh industry, the community and business interests.
bourhood plan provides the ideal opportunity to inject Among the other documents that are exemplary in
strategic thinking into the design review process. terms of accessibility and presentational quality are
Seattle’s Design Review: Guidelines for Multi-family
Residential and Commercial Buildings with its excel
Presenting policies and guidelines in lent line drawings, explanations and examples of
accessible ways how to apply the principles, its Preparing Your Own
Design Guidelines Manual for Neighbourhoods, and
Finally, there is the question of how policy is San Francisco’s Residential Design Guidelines (1989)
presented to make it attractive to the designers where line drawings and minimal, but very carefully
and public and easy to absorb and use. Many plans, selected, text sets out the key considerations.
zoning codes and guideline documents are notable
for their impenetrability, inaccessibility and lack of
appeal to all but the most dedicated professional. IMPLEMENTATION
Portland has done most work on this issue, with
concise, highly illustrated and imaginatively pre Much has been written about visions, goals, objec
sented plans that do not get bogged down in detail, tives, principles and guidelines, but very little has
but allow the reader to grasp the essentials and been said about implementation. In the opening
keep in mind both the ‘vision’ and the overall policy chapter the nature of development control in west
framework. The presentational quality of Portland’s coast cities was explored in outline, and compari
City Center Plan has already been mentioned, but sons were drawn with more discretionary systems
this is now supplemented by a Developer’s Handbook of control and systems with less overt design
(1992), very much a state-of-the-art document which review. It is important to remember that design
assembles the various plans, policies, legal require review operates selectively, not universally, as it is
ments and review processes which control de by definition focused upon proposals which are
velopment. The presentation is outstanding, with likely to have a major impact upon the local envir
a minimal use of text and maximum use of maps, onment, by virtue of their size, the activities they
checklists, matrices, and flow diagrams that help generate or the sensitivity of the site and location.
make the various regulatory procedures compre It also operates alongside zoning controls which
hensible, and which encourage an imaginative help to fix issues such as floor space, car parking,
approach to project development. The same kind open space, land-use mix and the like. Design review
of innovative thinking went into the presentation may have been designed to overcome a number
of the 1993 Albina Community Plan. of the shortcomings of zoning, but it still relies
These and other plans will impress any planner on it to provide strong controls on the amount of
or designer with the sheer wealth of technical development. The zoning system itself has been
material for establishing uses and densities, massing made more flexible and more effective (and more
and site coverage, building heights, landscape and complex) in a variety of ways. In some instances
parking, and even some aspects of architecture it has been closely specified and detailed to extend
and ‘pedestrian standards’. They are supplemented its dimensional controls into the details of archi
by a bonus system for residential, retail, theatres, tectural form (e.g. San Francisco in 1979), but per
rooftop gardens, day-care facilities and public art/ haps the most important innovation from a design
fountains, all of which are now evident in Portland’s perspective was the introduction of bonus systems
city centre. Regrettably, the city would not have the which reward the provision of amenities, facilities,
resources to produce such a document again, and affordable housing and the like. Bonus systems
few other cities would be able to finance the pro were invented to improve the urban design of cities
duction of guidance of such comprehensiveness, and to create more public amenities in the form
clarity and imagination. The document is a testa of plazas, pocket parks, accessible atria, retail and
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catering facilities, as well as more mixed uses. the ultimate in design control. Their increasing
However, they seem to cause as many problems popularity in affluent suburbia is a testament to the
as they solve, as exemplified by the Washington public desire to protect property values and to
Mutual Building in Seattle, which produced ex maintain the environmental quality of their neigh
tremes of overdevelopment in the pursuit, if not bourhood. CC&Rs are of course relatively unprob
the achievement, of design quality. Public disaffec lematic in the short term, but in the longer term
tion with such overdevelopment was very clearly they pose major questions about the ability of the
expressed in Seattle, as it was in New York (Whyte neighbourhood to change and respond to new
1988). Nonetheless, bonus systems remain an patterns of life and accessibility, and thus the ability
important feature of downtown planning in Seattle to reshape urban form at large to new social and
and Portland, and an important determinant of economic realities.
design outcomes.
Alongside bonus systems there are sometimes
linkage requirements. San Francisco’s linkage require A COMPREHENSIVE CO-ORDINATED
ments include contributions to affordable housing, EFFORT
child care, education, parks and transportation,
but they also prescribe the required amounts of There is a general agreement amongst cities that
open space in the commercial development at a design review needs to be part of a ‘comprehensive
floor space ratio of 1:50. This requirement produces coordinated effort’ to raise design standards and
pedestrian amenities downtown and gives the promote environmental quality. This phrase used
necessary impetus to the extensive guidelines and in Supreme Court Justice Brennan’s judgment in
standards for pedestrian improvement and open two cases in San Diego in the early 1980s (Lai 1994,
space provision. Mention should also be made of pp. 39–41) emphasizes the need for local govern
Transferred Development Rights to ensure land ment to demonstrate a comprehensive plan and
mark preservation which can be critical to quality programme to provide a framework for design review.
townscape and mixed-use in a project.
Design review works with all these ‘incentives’ it is only reasonable that a prerequisite for design
are powerful forces for over-development, as well regulation and review be adoption of a public
as positive encouragements to the provision of policy and plan that specify in advance the pre
amenities. This tension creates interesting design cise urban design objectives and the standards s
challenges in terms of creating pedestrian-friendly that the community is committed to enforce and i
and permeable ground floor frontages, a building against which the design of private development x
bulk that can be accommodated in the streetscene, can be gauged without prejudice or arbitrariness.
and a three-dimensional form that will not detract Lai 1988, p. 319
from the city’s skyline or overshadow open spaces.
These incentives give planners something to offer These notions might be extended to the observation
in their design negotiations, ways of encouraging that cities need to be advancing the cause of urban
improved design and the provision of facilities and design and sustainable environmental quality in all
amenities, in exchange for the allowance of extra spheres of regulation and intervention, so that higher
floorspace. A well-designed bonus system remains quality design is a clear corporate objective.
an asset to design quality, but its impacts need to One of the key lessons of west coast American
be carefully and regularly reviewed. Seattle’s bonus experience is the need for good design to be a
system, revised downwards in 1989, was revised long-term corporate goal permeating all aspects of
again in 1994 to reduce the level of bonuses. In municipal enterprise, and capturing the support of
Portland the bonus system has been limited to a both the community and business / development
maximum of 3.1 FAR, and is mainly directed at interests. The best example of this in the United
housing provision. States is again provided by Portland, where a co
Finally, as was seen in Irvine, land ownership incidence of factors has placed good design high
controls through development agreements and sub on the political agenda since 1970 – some would
sequently through the imposition of CC&Rs provide argue long before. These factors include a century
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of positive planning initiatives, a non-partisan form agenda to address the city’s problems of homeless
of government, a stable and thriving local business ness, unemployment and economic activity. Design
community, a less cyclical pattern of urban devel initiatives are no longer a high priority. In Seattle
opment, a tradition of public-private partnerships, the urban villages strategy in the Comprehensive
a strong community/participative planning em Plan with its associated experiments in transit
phasis since the 1960s, the retention of strong provision, rezoning and devolved neighbourhood
middle-class neighbourhoods in the inner city, and design control, sets an ambitious corporate agenda
a succession of design-enlightened city officials in for all manner of public investments to create a more
a variety of roles including estates, planning and sustainable city. Finally, it is important to record
transport. that the Irvine Company as large-scale private
It is the coming together of all these factors and developers are only too aware of design quality
related initiatives that makes downtown Portland and its relationship to economic attractiveness and
such an attractive and civilised city. While the long-term development profitability. Would that all
design guidelines provide the framework for all developers took a similar view.
new development, and ensure that it is visually and
functionally consistent with the form of the city, it
is the municipal investment in the public realm THE LESSONS FROM WEST COAST
(sometimes greatly supplemented by development CITIES
contributions), which sets the standards for the
private sector, and raises the tone and quality of The general lessons for design control from the
the neighbourhood. It is this that provides both experience of west coast cities of the USA lie in a
the confidence for investment and the standard for set of interconnected propositions/recommenda
design quality. tions that can provide a framework for design con
The decisions a city takes – about the architect trol in a wide range of different planning systems.
and budget for its City Hall, about the design team These recommendations are predicated upon a set
for its LRT system, about the landscape architect of assumptions about the importance of thinking
for its parks, about whether to put a multi-storey car about design as a process rather than a product,
park underground and create public space, about building a hierarchy of guidance that works in
the design, location and facilities of its performing two ways: from goals through objectives, principles,
arts centres, about the design and landscaping of guidelines and on to quantitative standards on the
its transit mall – are critical to set the standards of one hand and from the sub-regional to the city-
development which it expects the private sector wide, district and neighbourhood levels to the
to achieve. Portland, of course, has turned each individual site. They are also predicated upon the
of these instances into a design triumph and assumption that those wishing to practise design
given developers a clear signal about the stand control are obliged to set out clearly what broad
ards required. Elsewhere there are many ex forms and qualities of development they wish to
amples of corporate decisions which have produced see in different localities, and what the criteria
the bland, mediocre or just plain cheap and ugly are by which applications for building permits or
solutions. planning permission will be assessed. This latter
In other cities the experience is not so clearcut, ‘assumption’ is, of course, firmly insisted upon by
and corporate commitment to design quality is the courts and the legal profession who represent
more intermittent. In San Diego, for example, de development interests. They argue that losses of
sign was downgraded in importance for years under development rights, or even the loss of the right
a previous mayor, partly as a result of the lobbying to freedom of expression in architecture or land
of the development industry, which undermined scaping or to deal with property as the individual
any interventionist role by city planners. In San sees fit, must be based upon clear rules that have
Francisco, where much innovative design thinking been democratically and reasonably established,
occurred in the late 1960s, there is evidence of and whose application can be challenged in the
both the impoverishment of planning as a result event of policy contravention or inadequacies in
of the city’s budgetary crisis, and a change in its decision-making processes.
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The recommendations require: Lessons for other countries
■■ design policies (see below) to be a direct expres In the latter respect particularly, European experi
sion of publicly surveyed or expressed goals ence probably has a great deal to teach American
and objectives for the community; towns and cities in terms of transit-oriented devel
■■ design policies to be derived from a careful opment, sustainable densities and mixed uses, the
analysis of character of the locality that em conservation of critical environmental capital, the
braces visual, social, functional and environ maintenance of biodiversity, and the minimisation
mental aspects, all interpolated through public of energy expenditure and pollution. However,
values; looking at continental Europe, there are a variety
■■ design policies to consist essentially of a set of ways in which they might learn from the west
of design principles that are directly linked to key coast cities. For example, Sweden seeks to inject
design objectives, and which do not unneces more design advice and guidelines into its compre
sarily prescribe design solutions, leaving as much hensive plans to take advantage of its traditions of
scope as possible for the skilled designer; consensus decision-making, but also to make sure
■■ such principles to have more emphasis on that developers are fully aware of what is expected
urbanistic qualities than on visual architectural of them when they develop in a community (Nyström
factors; 1994, pp. 122–6). In the Netherlands the existence
■■ such principles to be clearly communicated to of design control committees to provide advice on
citizens and the development industry; design control might similarly benefit from the ex
■■ such principles to be applied in as systematic perience of the west coast cities through develop
and transparent a system of review as is feasible ing appropriate review processes and guidelines to
in terms of development efficiency, with ade assist such committees and limiting their freedom
quate public hearings and appeal procedures, of judgment to key design issues (Nelissen and de
including appeals against the grant of a permit Vocht 1994, pp. 147–51). In France there is much
on the grounds of infringement of principles or debate about zoning controls and the accompany
lack of due process; ing regulations which can closely govern the build
■■ design policies to be developed at the sub- ing envelope and associated car parking, open
regional scale down to the level of the site scale space and landscaping. There is a major trend to
through a variety of plans and advice documents, conduct much more rigorous area appraisals, mor s
but particularly to be expressed in a city-wide phological and historic analyses in order to derive i
design strategy that can be subsequently elabo new rules and regulations that are more responsive x
rated in a series of design frameworks to guide to place and locality (Samuels 1993; Kropf 1996).
policy, direct environmental action, and initia There are also interesting developments in the
tives in other policy areas; formulation of design strategies that follow in the
■■ design policies to embrace clearly principles of footsteps of the grands projets, and which attempt
environmental sustainability as an urgent neces to provide direction for the largescale restructuring
sity for growth management, large-scale subur of provincial cities. While these have a stronger
ban design, retrofitting suburbs and subcentres, public sector lead than American cities the com
and urban regeneration. parative development of design ideas and notations
can be revealing.
Portland’s experience with the compact city, flexible Beyond European examples any zoning-based
rezoning and a commitment to affordable housing, system is likely to find the American experience
Seattle’s attempt to create a polynucleated urban valuable. For example, Urban Design in Australia
structure with its villages and hub centres, and San (Government of Australia 1994), the report by the
Diego’s progress with nature conservation as a Prime Minister’s Urban Design Task Force, con
guiding consideration in suburban expansion all sidered the whole issue of the hierarchy of policy
contribute parts of the sustainability agendas for from visions through strategies, through briefs,
urban design. They do not constitute a coherent performance codes, prescriptive codes and guide
model for wider application. lines, and the value of ‘future character statements’
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614 J ohn P unter
(pp. 46–52). Similarly the intention was to provide of valuable research projects and experiments which
constructive guidance to numerous local authorities have raised the level of debate and knowledge.
across the country struggling to come to grips with This is not the point at which to explain in
the problems of effectively managing urban change any detail recent developments in British practice,
and ensuring environmental quality. Meanwhile in though it is important to know that urban design
cities in Asia, there are concerted attempts to inject has undergone a major revival in the 1990s, just
design guidelines into zoning systems which have as it has in the USA, due to a complex of changes
hitherto largely failed to deliver an acceptable level in environmental consciousness (sustainability),
of environmental quality and activity (Cheng Wu European competitiveness, a desire to counter
forthcoming). standardization / globalization in urban forms and
retain local distinctiveness in town and country.
Having miraculously survived the deregulatory
The relevance to British practice tide of the 1980s, design control and urban design
were revived by the campaigns of the Prince of Wales
To conclude, however, the author feels duty bound and the previous Secretary of State, and eagerly
to consider how these ‘best practice’ ideas might exploited by local planning authorities, design con
be translated into the British system. Since this sultants and the Urban Design Group, and now enjoy
issue has been very much the sub-text of the re a position of considerable prominence in the plan
search undertaken, and indeed was in many senses ning agenda. Whether they can retain that promin
its raison d’être, it would be remiss to ignore the ence, particularly under a new Labour Government,
opportunity to comment (see Punter 1996). As has is a moot point, and it depends in no little measure
been stressed at numerous points in the foregoing, upon the ability of the profession to articulate the
the British system, based as it is upon a discretion kinds of visions, strategies, clear objectives and prin
ary system of decision-making, at both the techni ciples that we have discussed in this book, and to
cal advice and political decision-making stages, is win public support for them. These visions embrace
the exception rather than rule in the world system, quite different scales of planning from the national
so the applicability of British experience to other questions of where new housing should be located
countries is severely limited. Nonetheless, looking (4.4 m new houses in England by 2015), to the sub-
at the issue the other way round, it is clear that the regional questions of suburban expansion and new
American system of design review has much to settlements, down to the local level in terms of inten
teach the British system of design control. sification, inner-city regeneration and revitalisation.
Many of these lessons are embedded in the Unlike most other developed planning systems,
critiques of and responses to design control, that Central Government maintains tight control on local
have already been reviewed. They embrace the initiative in British planning, especially in the area
need for clear principles, the need for guidelines of design where, interestingly, it has maintained a
to be based on study of the locality, the problems critical eye on ‘overprescriptive policies’, rooting
of high levels of subjectivity, lack of appropriate them out of plans and dismissing them when they
review skills and discrimination against the new, have led to an appeal by a developer. Until very
different and minority taste. The British system recently it has discouraged local authorities from
has attempted to respond to these issues over the preventing all but the very worst designs (‘out
last twenty years. Many local planning authorities, rages’), and told them to concentrate upon basic
especially some of the London Boroughs, larger issues of height, bulk, massing, scale, layout, access
provincial cities as well as a number of historic cities, and landscape. In 1997, however, three new ideas
have developed a sophisticated range of policies were added to Government advice, at least partly
and guidance, other advisory agencies and design in response to studies of US experience (Delafons
initiatives to respond to these difficulties. Since 1990; Punter 1996):
1994 Central Government has taken a much more
positive attitude to design, and the personal inter ■■ the importance of urbanistic criteria;
ests of the then Secretary of State, the Rt. Hon. ■■ the importance of design appraisal;
John Gummer, led to the sponsorship of a number ■■ the public’s role in guidance preparation.
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In his ‘Quality in Town and Country’ initiative the has recognised, resources and funding, and Central
previous Secretary of State provoked a national Government support for the lead role of the local
debate about how design quality might be promoted authority, lie at the heart of more innovative and
through the planning system. The main outcome more strategic design interventions in British cities
was an urban design campaign which has led to (Cowan 1997, p. 23).
a wide range of design brief/framework/strategy To return to the relevance of American models
experiments in towns and cities across the country, to British practice design guidelines, or design ob
and which has particularly encouraged others to jectives and principles as we have come to perceive
think more ambitiously about city-wide design strat them, is to enter the complex debate about the
egies and frameworks as additional documents to nature of British development plans and develop
the development plan (Cowan 1997). ment control (Booth 1996). In 1990 the Government
Whether these initiatives are going to continue introduced a new system of district-wide develop
depends essentially, as we have seen, on whether ment plans which would be given greater weight
local government is prepared, and has the resources, than hitherto in the determination of planning
to undertake a sustained effort to put design at the applications. References to a plan-led system are
heart of its planning efforts, and to take it beyond somewhat misleading because the plan remains
into other spheres of corporate activity. That in only one, albeit important, consideration in devel
turn depends on establishing a constituency for opment control decisions in the British discretion
good design, political will and a process by which ary system. Comprehensive plan coverage has yet
local authorities can continually involve significant to emerge – after seven years only half the English
numbers of people in the planning process, and local authorities have completed the long and cum
win the confidence of local business and the devel bersome process of analysis, drafting, government
opment industry. Local government continues to review, consultation, redrafting, objection, public
struggle with minimal resources and often absurd inquiry, (Government) inspector’s report, redrafting
boundaries, factors which work against the kind of and adoption. There are plenty of opportunities
initiatives that are necessary to take forward large- for public involvement in this process, but limited
scale sustainable urban design initiatives. (Perhaps resources for focus groups, ‘planning for real’ and
this is a task for the new integrated Government other activities that might generate a true sense of
Regional Offices.) plan ownership.
The lessons from America about resources in The design policies in British development plans s
dicate that major design policy initiatives, thorough have two major difficulties from an American i
analysis, plan and guideline preparation, are very perspective. First of all they have to respond to all x
expensive activities. The breadth and depth of developments, not just the major schemes – 80
Portland’s consultation was explained in large part percent of planning applications are house exten
by the huge proportion of the planning budget sions, minor residential developments, and small
allocated to plan preparation, neighbourhood group alterations and extensions to commercial premises.
support and the like. Seattle’s recent planning efforts Second the policies are the only controls available
have been underwritten by a grant of $500,000 to a planning authority, and there are no zoning
from the Federal Government, while San Francisco’s maps, use or dimensional controls to reinforce the
urban design plan was paid for by the Federal Govern design dimension. Density and plot ratio controls
ment out of the urban renewal budget. Limited have largely disappeared from plans, driven out
planning budgets mean limited initiatives. Neigh by deregulatory tendencies to give more freedom
bourhood groups can be encouraged to undertake to house builders and developers, and by dissatis
appraisals and develop and operate guidelines, but faction with their design outcomes which often
design initiatives demand money, whether they be frustrate sensitive design. (By 1998 density policies
staff resources, consultants’ expertise, or budgets were being readvocated by Central Government to
for environmental enhancement. It is a sign of the support more sustainable forms of development.)
times that Portland can no longer afford to produce Both these ‘difficulties’ place serious constraints
its Developer’s Handbook or to update it. As a recent on design policies and invest them with a much
symposium on The New Agenda for Urban Design weightier and more comprehensive role. This must
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616 J ohn P unter
embrace aspects of density, use, open space, and car development plans with comprehensive, district-
parking, etc., as well as issues of site and context, wide coverage should not be abandoned without
architectural character and relationships with the a proper trial and evaluation of its effectiveness.
public realm. Perhaps inevitably it makes the policies Perhaps new design documents are already emerg
more cautious, negative, contested and legalistic, ing alongside statutory plans to achieve some of
and much more difficult to absorb as a whole. those things achieved by American guidelines-
Neither of these factors should prevent policies quarters studies, design frameworks, city-wide
from being clearly related to vision statements, strategy documents, character assessments (for
design objectives and plan strategy, and from being conservation areas) and landscape character assess
very well structured and organised with checklists ments on the urban fringes, urban nature con
of criteria and considerations against which appli servation strategies, and legibility studies. In the
cations can be evaluated. Nor should it prevent meantime design appraisal, thoroughgoing public
these policies being supplemented by valuable consultation, clear goals, objectives and design
design guidance on common problems such as the principles, supported by a wide range of design
design of residential layout, shop fronts or car park guidance that is accessible and comprehensible to
ing. Some plans particularly those of the London the average applicant, all consolidated into a clear
Boroughs which have had twenty years to perfect policy hierarchy, will offer important advances to
them, are models of a well-organised and discip many local planning authorities. However, the ex
lined approach to policy making, but many others, perience of the most design-progressive American
prepared for the first time, are quite the opposite. and European cities (Portland, Seattle, Barcelona,
Almost all the policies suffer from the problems of Berlin, etc.), also demonstrates that the public
being inaccessible and unassimilable by the lay sector has to lead by example in investing in design
person; being too long, too complex, and too poorly quality whenever it builds facilities or infrastructure,
presented, so that it becomes better not to con and whenever it modifies streets and public spaces.
template whether anyone (including the control
officer) actually reads and uses them (Punter and
Carmona 1997). REFERENCES
One of the major questions American practice
raises for British planning is whether it should Abbott, C., “The Portland Region: Where City and
persist with its attempts to offer detailed design Suburbs Talk to Each Other – and Often Agree”,
control on the minutiae of development. Lewis Housing Policy Debate, 8(1), 1997, pp. 11–52.
Keeble once remarked that British planning ‘often Arnstein, S., “A Ladder of Citizen Participation”,
swallowed the camels and strained at the gnats’, American Institute of Planners Journal, July, 1969,
by which he meant that it was preoccupied with pp. 216–24.
minor development issues at the expense of major, Baab, D.G., “Private Design Review in Edge City”
and often strategic, decisions. Could planners devise in B.C. Scheer and W. Preiser, eds, op. cit., 1994,
‘supplemental compatibility rules’ (Portland) to allow pp. 187–96.
minor development to be largely self-regulating? Banerjee, T. and Southworth, M., eds, City Sense and
Could they go a stage further and abandon house City Design: Writing and Projects of Kevin Lynch,
holder control to neighbourhood agreements? Would Cambridge Mass, MIT Press, 1990.
the more selective and strategic approach to design Blaesser, B.W., “The Abuse of Discretionary Power”
intervention and control practised in America be in B.C. Scheer and W. Preiser, eds, op. cit., 1994,
more successful and more effective? Or is design pp. 42–55.
control at this level a vital part of the public expect Booth, P., Controlling Development, Certainty and Discre-
ations of planning as a neighbourhood protection tion in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong, London,
service, and would the myriad of less regulated UCL Press, 1996.
developments seriously erode the quality of the City of Portland, Adopted Albina Community Plan,
British built environment? Portland, OR, Bureau of Planning, 1993.
Thinking the unthinkable is one of the benefits Cowan, R., “The New Urban Design Agenda”, Urban
of cross-comparative work, but the new system of Design Quarterly, 63, 1997, pp. 18–37.
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Delafons, J., Aesthetic Control: A Report on Methods used Nelissen, N. and de Vocht, C.L.F.M., “Design Control
in the USA to Control the Design of Buildings, Berke- in the Netherlands”, Built Environment, 20(2), 1994,
ley, University of California, Institute of Urban and pp. 142–57.
Regional Development, Monograph 41, 1990. Nyström, L., “Design Control in Planning: The
Government of Australia, Urban Design in Australia, Swedish Case”, Built Environment, 20(2), 1994,
Report by the Prime Minister’s Urban Design Task pp. 113–26.
Force, Canberra, Government of Australia, 1994. Payton, N.I., “Corrupting the Masses with Good
Habe, R., “Public Design Control in American Taste” in B.C. Lightner and W. Preiser, eds,
Communities”, Town Planning Review, 60(3), 1989, op. cit., 1992, pp. 235–42.
pp. 195 –219. Punter, J.V., “Developments in the Urban Design
Hinshaw, M., “The New Legal Dimensions of Review: The Lessons of West Coast Cities of the
Urban Design” in A.V. Moudon, ed., op. cit., 1994, United States for British Practice”, Journal of
pp. 287– 9. Urban Design, 1(1), 1996, pp. 23–45.
Kropf, K., “An Alternative Approach to Zoning Punter, J.V. and Carmona, M., The Design Dimension
in France: Typology, Historical Character and of Local Plans: Theory, Content and Best Practice,
Development Control”, European Planning Studies, London, Chapman & Hall, 1997.
4(6), 1996, pp. 717–38. Richmond, H.R., “Comment . . . on the Portland
Lai, R.T-Y., Law in Urban Design and Planning: The Region . . .”, Housing Policy Debate, 8(1), 1997,
Invisible Web, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 53–64.
1988. Samuels, I., “The Plan d’Occupation des Sol for
Lai, R.T-Y., “Can the Process of Architecture Review Asnièressur Oise: a Morphological Design Guide”
Withstand Legal Scrutiny?” in B.C. Scheer and in R. Hayward and S. McGlynn, eds, Making Better
W. Preiser, eds, op. cit., 1994, pp. 31–40. Places: Urban Design Now, Oxford, Butterworth,
Lightner, B.C. and Preiser, W., eds, Proceedings of 1993, pp. 113–21.
the International Symposium on Design Review, Scheer, B.C. and Preiser, W., eds, Design Review:
Cincinnati, University of Cincinnati, 1992. Challenging Urban Aesthetic Control, New York,
Lynch, K. and Appleyard, D. “Temporary Paradise? A Chapman & Hall, 1994.
Look at the Special Landscape of the San Diego Southworth, M., “Theory and Practice of Contem
Region” in T. Banerjee and M. Southworth, eds, porary Urban Design – a Review of Urban Design
op. cit., 1974, pp. 720–63. Plans in the United States”, Town Planning Review, s
Moudon, A.V., ed., Urban Design: Reshaping our City, 60(4), 1989, pp. 369–402. i
Seattle, University of Washington (Conference Whyte, W.H., City: Rediscovering the Center, New York, x
Proceedings), 1994. Doubleday, 1988.
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“The End(s) of Urban Design”
from Harvard Design Magazine (2006)
Michael Sorkin
In “The End(s) of Urban Design,” Michael Sorkin provides an unrelenting and much debated critique of
the urban design field and its associated “mainstream” practice. He contends that the field has reached a
“dead end” with respect to its ability to either inspire passion or answer the deep challenges of sustainability,
population, equity, and diversity. Positioned somewhere in the theoretical middle between the nostalgic tradi-
tionalism of the New Urbanism and the fragmented, self-aggrandizing dystopia of Post Urbanism, urban design
has failed to produce the type of city that Sorkin desires: an urbanism and architecture of creative disruption
that responds to social equity challenges; the open urbanism of the rock concert; the science-fiction polemic
of paper architect provocateurs, who present visions with little hope of implementation (a claim leveled by
some against Sorkin himself). More to the point, he thinks contemporary urban design is too “restrictive” and
“boring”; perhaps the greatest critique of all. Sorkin suggests urban design needs to confront a new reality
that helps in retrofitting and reconfiguring the planet to address exponential population growth, resource
limits, and environmental demands. The task of reconceptualizing the field is made more difficult by growing
complexity (stakeholder, economic, environmental, legal, resource, infrastructural) and an impending sense of
urgency that we may be running out of time. Sorkin’s critique can be divided into three parts: 1. failure of
field consolidation and collaboration in the design academies; 2. the mainstreaming of the field through
regulation and backward-looking methods; and 3. the rise of neo-traditional urbanism, primarily through the
Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).
The critique begins with an examination of the birth of the urban design field at the Harvard Urban Design
Conference of 1956, which set for its task the definition of the field and a strategic direction for practice.
Sorkin identifies the contradictions and conflicts of this urban design task, including: opposition to City
Beautiful-oriented formalism (without acknowledging a similar formalism within modernist circles); the prob-
lematic turn of the planning field to “scientific” methods, thus abandoning its physical planning and artistic
origins; differential values and disrespect between the built environment professions; and importantly, the desire
for any prescriptive scheme that would recommend a singular best urbanism. Not surprisingly the Harvard
“urban design project” met with some degree of failure and the eventual relegation/banishment of the planning
field (both voluntarily and forcefully to the policy domain of the Kennedy School). For Sorkin, the troubled
birth of the field plays into his current critique.
A second phase of critique begins in 1961 with the contributions of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, Jean
Gottman, and Kevin Lynch; and later environmental amendments by Rachel Carson and Ian McHarg. While
much of this is lauded, Sorkin regrets the failure of Kevin Lynch to transform urban design into a collaborative
multi-disciplinary practice that recognizes the city’s ecological complexity – beyond the reductive nature of
architecture projects. The implied result is the mainstreaming of the field by urban design advocates, the
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“ T he E nd ( s ) O f U rban D esign ” 619
development community, powerful urban interests, business improvement districts, and the growing influence
of design regulators. Sorkin’s critique begins to be understood here: limits on creativity that reinforce status
quo design politics are unacceptable.
The last part of the critique is leveled directly at neo-traditional design practice, the CNU, and at backward-
looking design methods (typology, pattern, archetypes, precedents, etc.). Sorkin disdains both the imagery
and content of postmodern traditionalism found both at Disneyland and in the greenfield new towns championed
by the New Urbanists. The arguments he uses in this critique range from claims of neo-liberalism, romantic
nostalgia, “family values,” and “Starbucks urbanism.” Few are left unscathed in these paragraphs, including:
architecture sellouts, the cities of Seattle/Portland/Vancouver, quality of life advocates, suburbanites, and the
Clinton-Era Hope VI program.
It’s this last section of Sorkin’s essay that’s received the most pushback from the defenders of the New
Urbanism, including Professor Emily Talen of Arizona State University, whose retort essay in the same volume,
“Bad Parenting,” takes on Sorkin’s critiques directly. She begins with the statement: “It is time to wrestle
urban design away from the bad parenting of architects.” Architectural thinking, Talen suggests, is focused
more on the cliché of originality than allowing consumer friendly design values (which, not surprisingly, have
been vetted through market popularity of the New Urbanism). Talen may be onto something here. Although
Sorkin is not uncritical of architectural collusion with neo-traditional design (even suggesting it may be a means
of regaining “lost credibility and continu[ing] its own traditional role as an instrument of power”), he is not
happy with it.
Missing in this essay is a fundamental critique of architectural practice and values, which might be a more
powerful argument for the failure of the larger “urban design project” in toto. From the incessant need for
design authorship, professional arrogance, the lust for innovation and “edge” (at the expense of familiarity
and comfort), language obfuscation, and the belief of universal design knowledge – architecture might settle
down to the agreed-upon challenges facing cities. Thankfully Sorkin gets to this at the end of his essay. To
his credit, a certain degree of critical balance is provided in the writing, with various appreciations dropped
at points to Jacobs, Mumford, advocacy planning, Everyday Urbanism, and even the CNU Charter itself. Much
like Rem Koolhaas’ writing in this volume, Michael Sorkin’s writing is lively, colorful, and thought provoking.
The essay remains one of the more compelling challenges to the urban design field and its component
professions.
Michael Sorkin is a Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at s
City College of New York. He is a practicing architect and founder of the Michael Sorkin Studio, and chairs i
the New York-based Institute for Urban Design. He is widely published and has written many pieces on x
New York urbanism and the design of cities in general: Exquisite Corpse: Writing on Building (New York:
Verso, 1991); Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42 Degrees North Latitude (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1996); Michael Sorkin Studio: Wiggle (New York: Springer, 1998); Some Assembly
Required (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Starting from Zero: Reconstructing Downtown
New York (London: Routledge, 2003); and All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities (New York:
Verso, 2011).
Other critiques of the urban design field can be found in the following compilation texts: Alex Krieger and
William S. Saunders (eds), Urban Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) (in particular
see the selections therein by Richard Marshall and Jonathan Barnett); Malcolm Moor and Jon Rowland (eds),
Urban Design Futures (London: Routledge, 2008) (within this edited volume Mardie Townsend provides a
gendered critique of the field and advocates for increased contributions by women; and Adriaan Geuze pro-
vides commentary on street design).
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620 M ichael S O rkin
Urban design has reached a dead end. Estranged “superficial” City Beautiful approach, which, he
both from substantial theoretical debate and from the argued, ignored the “roots of the problems and
living reality of the exponential and transformative attempted only window-dressing effects,” presum-
growth of the world’s cities, it finds itself pinioned ably both by failing to observe the “functional city”
between nostalgia and inevitabilism, increasingly strictures of the Athens Charter and through its
unable to inventively confront the morphological, nostalgic forms of expression. The second hemming
functional, and human needs of cities and citizens. discourse was that of city planning itself, which,
While the task grows in urgency and complexity, Sert suggested, had evolved to a point where the
the disciplinary mainstreaming of urban design has “scientific phase has been more emphasized than
transformed it from a potentially broad and hope- the artistic one.” Urban design, by contrast, was
ful conceptual category into an increasingly rigid, to be “that part of city planning which deals with
restrictive, and boring set of orthodoxies. the physical part of the city . . . the most creative
In many ways, the enterprise was misbegotten phase of city planning and that in which imagination
from the get-go. The much marked conference at and artistic capacities can play a more important
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) in April part.”
1956 both is a useful origin point for the discipline The delicacy of this criticism surely reflected the
and reveals the embedded conflicts and contradic- dilemma of Modernist urbanism, with its growing
tions that have brought urban design to its current conflict between a proclaimed social mission and
state of intellectual and imaginative inertia. For a dogmatic formalism less and less able to make
José Luis Sert – Dean of the GSD, convener of the the connection. Nonetheless, Sert’s contention that
gathering, and president of CIAM (Congrès Inter academic planning had become preoccupied with
nationaux d’Architecture Moderne) since 1947 – the economic, social, policy, and other “non-architectural”
conference was surely part of a last gasp at recuper issues was certainly true, and fifty years of sub
ating the increasingly schismatic CIAM project, sequent experience – marked by intramural indif-
which finally collapsed at the CIAM 10 meeting in ference and open hostility – only reinforced the
Dubrovnik the following year, largely because of conceptual estrangement. The other pole, the
the growing dissent of the younger Team 10 group, assault on the Beaux Arts formalism of the City
one of whose mainstays, Aldo van Eyck, had groused Beautiful movement – a weirdly anachronistic straw
that since CIAM 8 in 1951 the organization had man in 1956 – was to prove more contradictory,
been “virtually ‘governed’ from Harvard.” if unexpectedly prescient. Sert, after all, was argu-
Sert’s project was both a strategy for including ing that it was necessary to create a discipline that
U.S. cities in the expat ambit of the Euro-Modernist would restore an artistic sense to urban architec-
urban fantasies of the Charter of Athens and a ture, but he clearly had issues of taste with the City
bid to recover the lost influence of architecture – Beautiful, whatever his affinities might have been
erstwhile mother of the arts – from its dissolution for its scale of operation, its protofunctionalist zoning,
in an urban field dominated by planners. In his and its foregrounded formalism. The charge of
introductory remarks, Sert observed, “Our American superficiality, however, was not simply an orthodox
cities, after a period of rapid growth and suburban Modernist riposte to historicist architecture; it
sprawl, have come of age and acquired respon was meant to resonate with the social problem
sibilities that the boom towns of the past never embedded in CIAM’s discourse on the sputtering
knew.” This trope of maturity, suggesting that effort to globalize European styles of rationality in
American cities were reaching a point where their its putative project of amelioration – and to con-
undisciplined native morphologies needed to be cretely realize insights shared with planners who
brought under the umbrella of some greater idea lacked the inclination and the means to produce
of order, has proved durable (as has the repeated architectural responses.
appropriation of the Harvard imprimatur for the This constellation of arguments – that cities were
personal ideological projects of imported celebrities important to civilization, that abandoning centers
from Sert to Gropius to Koolhaas). for sprawling suburbs was no answer, that design
Sert identified two hostile forces at which could reify, for better or worse, social arrangements,
urban design was to be directed. The first was the and that “correct” and deep architectural projects
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that commanded all the physical components of the forms and assumptions that comprised the
city building could solve their problems – has pedigree of virtually every aspect of contemporary
dominated the field of urbanism from the early urbanism came hot and heavy from various quar-
nineteenth century to the present. And the critique ters. The civil rights movement exposed the racist
of this discourse has also had a consistent focus: we agenda behind much urban renewal and highway
must be wary of all totalizing schemes, especially construction. The women’s movement revealed the
those that propose universal formal solutions to sexist assumptions underlying the organization of
complex social and environmental problems, that suburban and other forms of domestic space. The
obliterate human, cultural, and natural differences, environmental and consumer movements showed
and that usurp individual rights through top-down, the toxic inefficiencies of the automotive system
command application. and the selfish, world-dooming wastefulness of U.S.
Many of those gathered at the conference clearly hyper-consumption. The counterculture protested
felt some disquiet not simply at the 1950s America the anemic expressive styles of Modernist archi-
of conspicuous consumption and sprawl but also tecture and the homogeneous spatial pattern of
at the America of urban renewal, then in the years American conformity. Preservationism celebrated
of its raging glory. Strikingly, the nondesigners the value of historic urban textures, structures, and
in attendance – including Charles Abrams, Jane relationships. Advocacy planning and the close
Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and Lloyd Rodwin – were investigation of indigenous “self-help” solutions to
those to voice the claims of the intricate social city, building for the poor espoused user empowerment,
to decry the racist agendas of urban renewal, to democratic decision making, low-tech, and private
argue for the importance of small-scale commerce, expressive variety. And the assault on functionalist
and to denounce the “tyranny” of large-scale, orthodoxy fomented by both rebellious visionaries
market-driven solutions. Indeed, the presence of and liberated historicists within the architectural
this group – none of whom was a member of either profession made the CIAM writ seem both sinister
the architect-dominated CIAM or Team 10 – and ridiculous.
represented the seeds of doom for the constricted All of this called into question the form the new
urbanism promoted by CIAM, the inescapably con- urban design would take as well as what urban
taminating other that continues to haunt the narrow ideology it would defend – its response to the com-
project of urban design. plex of social, political, and environmental crises
This critique of the CIAM project was scarcely everywhere exposed and exploding. New York City s
news. In his indispensable volume on CIAM, Eric was to be the most visible battleground, and 1961 i
Mumford quotes a letter from Lewis Mumford that opened the decade with a clarifying statement x
sets out his reasons for declining Sert’s invitation of thesis and antithesis: the simultaneous publica-
in 1940 to write an introduction to what was tion of Death and Life and the passage of a revised
eventually published as the remarkably flakey Can bulk-zoning law that overturned the pioneering
Our Cities Survive? in 1942. As with the demurral regulations of 1916 – with their codification of
of the nonarchitect conferees of 1956, Mumford’s street walls and setbacks – in favor of the paradigm
disagreement was with a reading of the city that of the slab in the plaza, the official enshrinement, at
seemed to exclude politics and culture, to reduce last, of the Ville Radieuse. This was controversial from
the urban function to the schema of housing, recre the outset – such planning had already dominated
ation, transportation, and industry. “The organs of public housing construction and urban renewal for
political and cultural association,” wrote Mumford years – and the atmosphere in the city was roiling.
about an especially conspicuous lacuna in Sert’s The tide was turning against Robert Moses – Le
polemic, “are the distinguishing marks of the city; Corbusier’s most idiomatic legatee – who, thanks
without them, there is only an urban mass.” to Jacobs among others, was soon to suffer his
In 1961 – a year after Harvard formally established Waterloo downtown with the defeat of a planned
its degree program in urban design – Jane Jacobs urban renewal massacre for Greenwich Village and
published The Death and Life of Great American of the outrageous Lower Manhattan Expressway,
Cities, still the definitive critique of functionalist intended to wipe out what is now SoHo to speed
urbanism. As the 1960s progressed, this attack on traffic across the island.
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This triumphant resistance – galvanized too by as the result of his boorish and myopic treatment
the contemporaneous loss of Penn Station – helped of Jacobs). Mumford was an unparalleled reader
both to create an enduring culture of opposition of the forms and meanings of the historic city,
and to revalue the fine grain of the city’s historic direct heir of the regionalist ecology descending
textures and mores, asserting the rights of citizens from Patrick Geddes, and an unabashed fan of the
to remain in their homes and neighborhoods. Garden City so reviled by Jacobs: the omega point
Jacobs’s nuanced conflation of neighborhood form of Mumford’s urban teleology was the movement
and human ecology was – and continues to be – for new towns, incarnate in a history spanning
precisely the right theoretical construct to animate Letchworth, Radburn, and Vallingby. Mumford was
the practice of urban design. Unfortunately, although utopian in the received Modernist sense, a believer
her example continues to be tonic for neighborhood both in the therapeutic value of thoughtful order
organization and defense, her legacy has been and in the importance of formal principles, qualities
deracinated by its selective uptake by the far nar- he actually shared with Jacobs. But Mumford also
rower, formally fixated concerns of preservationism, understood the depth of his oppositional role and
by an ongoing strain of behaviorist crime fighters saw with clarity the way that the “pentagon of
(from Oscar Newman to the Giuliani “zero toler- power” inscribed itself in the tissue of the city. For
ance” crowd), and by the spreading mine field of Mumford, the city was infused with the political,
institutionalized urban design, narrowly attached and he understood its future as a field of struggle
to its Disney version of urbanity and its fierce for an equitable and just society. Alas, this principled
suppression of accident and mess, the wellsprings insight only seemed to reinforce his unyielding
of public participation and the core of Jacobs’s formal partisanship.
argument about urban vitality. And Jacobs’s focus Within the academy, skepticism about urban
on a circumscribed set of U.S. environments and design’s narrowness as a discipline paralleled its
disdain for the idea of new towns unfortunately consolidation and growth. In 1966, Kevin Lynch
helped retard the investigation of how her unargu- published the first of an increasingly critical series
able ideas about the good city might inform other of articles in which he sought to distinguish urban
realizations. design from a more expansive idea of “city design.”
Nineteen sixty-one was an urbanistic annus Lynch’s critique was – and is – fundamental.
mirabilis, bringing publication not only of Jacobs’s Objecting to urban design’s fixation on essentially
text but also of Jean Gottman’s Megalopolis and architectural projects and its reliance on a limited
Lewis Mumford’s The City in History. This astonish- set of formal typologies, Lynch argued throughout
ing trifecta – to which I would add Rachel Carson’s his work for an urban discipline more attuned to
Silent Spring of 1963 and Ian McHarg’s Design with the city’s complex ecologies, its contending inter-
Nature of 1969 – are the headwaters of a critique ests and actors, its elusive and layered sites, and
that urban design shares with virtually all thought- for complex readings, unavailable within the dis
ful students of the city. Together they reinstated cipline of architecture, that would allow the city to
the conceptual centrality of ecology – first system- achieve its primary social objective as the setting
atically introduced by the Chicago School decades for variegated and often unpredictable human
earlier – in the production of urban models. But activities, behaviors that had to be understood from
ecology is not a fixed construct and is comprehen- the mingled perspectives of many individuals, not
sible only in its specific inflections. On the one hand, simply from the enduring Modernist search for a
an ecological understanding of urban dynamics can universal subjectivity, however “egalitarian.”
promote stewardship, community, and responsibil- But Lynch’s was clearly a minority view, and
ity. On the other, it can support a fish-gotta-swim urban design as practice rapidly developed along
determinism that implies that the urban pattern is the lines he feared. In 1966 – the year of Lynch’s
as genetic as male pattern baldness and that urban initial sally (and of Robert Venturi’s Complexity and
design is equivalent to intelligent design, revealing Contradiction in Architecture) – John Lindsay set up
only the inevitable. his Mayor’s Task Force on Urban Design, which
In this debate, Mumford retains special import soon morphed into the Urban Design Group (UDG),
ance (although his reputation is often submerged inserted as a special, semiautonomous branch within
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the City Planning Department and intended to Lincoln Center, where it sought to create hospitable,
make an end run around its lumbering bureaucracy. reinforcing environments for already concentrated
The Planning Department was itself then in the but weakened economic uses.
throes of producing a new master plan for the city, The operational conundrum in the approach
the last such to be attempted. Despite the inherent lay in finding the means for finessing and financing
dangers of giant, single-sourced plans, this ongoing the formal improvements intended to engender
willed incapacity to think comprehensively now the turnaround, and the search for implementation
haunts the city with a counterproductive imagina- strategies produced two problematic offspring
tive boundary, a suspicion of big plans that refuses, that remain central to the city’s planning efforts:
however provisionally, to sum up its parts. the bonus and the Business Improvement District
The department’s plan – ambitious, outdated, (BID). The importance of these instruments has
and strangely reticent about formal specifics – was only grown as government has become increasingly
ignominiously turned down by the City Council in enthralled by the model of the “public-private part-
1969, victim both of its own unpersuasive vision nership,” the ongoing re-description of the public
and of a then-boiling suspicion of master planning interest as the facilitation of private economic
in general. Urban design represented a clear alter- activity-government intervention to prime the
native to the overweening command style of such pump of trickle-down. The bonus system, which
big, infrastructure-fixated, one-size-fits-all, urban exchanges some specified form of urban good
renewal-tainted plans. Reflecting the reborn interest behavior for additional bulk or for direct subsidy
in neighborhood character and the relevance of in the form of tax relief or low-rate financing, is
historic urban forms, the UDG’s main m.o. [modus founded on a fundamental contradiction: one public
operandi ] was to designate special districts, each benefit must be surrendered to obtain another. In
subject to customized regulatory controls intended the case of increased bulk, access to light and air
to preserve and enhance (and sometimes invent) and limitations of scale are traded for an “amenity,”
their singular character. This districting – and its for a plaza, an arcade, or simply a shift in location
zoning and coding strategies – was later extended to some putatively underdeveloped area. With
politically by the devolution of a degree of planning financial subsidy, the city sacrifices its own income
authority to local community boards, part of a larger stream – with whatever consequences for the hiring
wave of administrative decentralization that included, of teachers or police – in favor of the allegedly
catastrophically, the school system. The move to greater good of business “retention” or a projected s
neighborhood planning, however, has proved a rise in property “values” and downstream taxation. i
generally positive development, if seriously under- Of course, both systems are rife with opportunities x
cut in practice by the restricted budgets and limited for blackmail and corruption, and these continue
statutory authority of the boards themselves and to be exploited fulsomely.
by a continuing failure to balance local initiative While BIDs do not involve the same levels of
with a more comprehensive vision. public subsidy, they collude in creating a culture
The work of the UDG was very much the product of exception in which the benefits of urban design
of its time, weighted toward the reestablishment (and maintenance) are directed to commercially
of traditional streetscapes threatened by Modernist driven players operating outside normal public
zoning formulations and visual sensibilities; the frameworks, disproportionately benefiting the rich
group’s recommendations were an amalgam of pre neighborhoods able to pony up for the improve-
scribed setbacks, materials, arcades, signage, view ments. This nexus of special districts and overlays,
corridors, and other formal devices for consolidat- bulk bonuses, tax subsidies, BIDs, preservation,
ing visual character. These prescriptions defined, and gentrification has now coalesced to form the
at a stroke, the formal repertoire of American urban primary apparatus for planning in New York and
design and fixed its more limited social agenda on most other cities in the United States. This outcome
supporting the centrality of the street (whose life is yet another triumph for neoliberal economics,
was the focus of Jacobs’s urbanism) and efforts to the now virtually unquestioned idea that the role
reinforce the “character” of local identities in areas of government is to assure prosperity at the top,
like the Theater District, the Financial District, and an idea that has produced both the most obscene
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national income gap in history as well as the unfor looking at the city as a series of interacting
abated froth of development that is rapidly turning fragments, a promising strategy dissipated – like
Manhattan – where the average apartment price so much subsequent urban design – by inattention
now exceeds one million dollars – into the world’s to the contemporary capacity for assuming mean-
largest gated community. ings derived from the formal arrangements of
Urban design has acted as enabler in this pre- imperial or seventeenth-century Rome. Battery Park
cisely because of its ostensible divorce from the City, by translating the UDG’s historicist ethos of
social engineering of planning, nominally expressed urban design as a contextual operator into an agent
in its circumspect scales of intervention and resensit for something entirely new and literally disengaged
ized approach to the physical aspects of urbanism. from the existing city, was the crucial bridge to
In New York – a city where our municipal leader- the emerging New Urbanism and its universalizing
ship evaluates all development by the single metric polemics of “tradition.”
of real estate prices – the Planning Department has Like many subsequent New Urbanist formula-
largely refashioned itself as the Bureau of Urban tions – not to mention the original cities from which
Design, executor of policies emanating from the its forms were derived – Battery Park City has
Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, the its virtues. Its scale is reasonable, and its look
city’s actual director of planning, the man who conventionally orderly. Its waterfront promenade
would be Moses. While attention to the quality and is comfortably dimensioned, beautifully maintained,
texture of the city’s architecture and spaces – both and blessed with one of the most spectacular pro
new and historic – is of vital importance, the role spects on the planet. Vehicular traffic is a negligible
of design as the expression of privilege has never obstacle to circulation on foot (although there is
been clearer. Whether in the wave of celebrity almost no life on the street to get in its way). The
architects designing condos for the superrich, the deficit is the unrelieved dullness of its bone-dry
preservation of historic buildings and districts at the architecture, the homogeneity of its population and
ultimate expense of their inhabitants, the sacrifice use, the repression of alternatives under the banner
of industrial space in favor of more remunerative of urban correctness, the weird isolation, the sense
residential developments, or the everyday cruelties of generic simulacrum, and the political failure
of the exodus driven by the exponential rise in real to leverage its economic success to help citizens
estate prices, the city seems to everywhere sacrifice whose incomes are inadequate to live there.
its rich ecology of social possibilities for simply By the time of the construction of Battery Park
looking good. City, the assault on Modernist urbanism and the
The most important physical legacy of the UDG spirited defense of the fabric and culture of the
approach is the 1979 plan for Battery Park City by historic city had long been paralleled by a wither-
Alexander Cooper (a former member of the UDG) ing interrogation of life in the suburbs. These were
and Stanton Eckstut, which – because of its success not simply the most rapidly growing component
ful execution and succinct embodiment of the new of the metropolis but were – largely under the
traditionalist lexicon of urban design – has achieved analytical radar – increasingly taking over center-
a conceptual potency unmatched since the Plan city roles en route to becoming the dominating
Voisin. This project, created ex nihilo on a spec- edge city of today. The difficult reciprocities of city
tacular landfill site, was controlled by a specially and suburb were longstanding as both facts and
created state authority with a raft of special con- tropes. Indeed, the city itself was first recognized
demnation, bonding, and other powers, including as a “problem” at the moment its boundaries ex-
relief from virtually all local codes and reviews ploded to produce the idea of the suburban during
(another Moses legacy and an ever-increasing ele- its industrialization-driven expansion in the nine-
ment in the collusive style of large-scale development teenth century. At that moment were realized the
in the city), and attempted to channel the spirit political, economic, social, technical, and imaginative
and character of the historic city in a completely forces that created the repertoire of forms of the
invented environment. It was surely also heavily modern city – the factory zone, the slum, and the
influenced by the seminal Collage City of Colin Rowe suburb – as well as the array of formal antidotes
and Fred Koetter, published in 1978, an argument that constitute the lineage of urban design. More,
9780415668071_P6_04.indd 624 10-26-2012 3:22:20 PM

the invention of the city as the primal scene of to Pete Seeger – of suburban forms, and by social
class struggle, of self-invention, of a great efflores- commentators – like Vance Packard, Herbert Gans,
cence of new ways of pleasure and deviance, of and Betty Friedan – who analyzed their patterns
habit and ritual, and of possibility and foreclosure, of consumption, conformity, and exclusion. And
had immediate and deep implications for the the boomer generation – invigorated by rebellion
creation and valuation of fresh form. and fresh from its intensive introduction to the
The mainstreaming of urban design in the 1960s newly accessible cities of Europe – confronted
and 1970s was, in part, a product of the diminished its own oedipal crisis and increasingly drew the
appeal of the suburbs, contingent on a parallel conclusion that it could never go home again to
revaluing of the city as the site of desirable middle- the pat certainties of its parents’ uptight lifestyles.
class lifestyles, the happinesses that a previous As it had for centuries, the city represented an
generation had understood itself obliged to flee alternative.
the city to achieve. The widespread critical revisit- But comfort and consumption had been too
ing of suburbia – which was showing strong signs thoroughly embedded, and the vision of the city that
of dysfunction and fatigue – gave urban design’s emerged as the model for urban design was highly
project both relevance and register by establish suburbanized – suburban conformities reformatted
ing it as an instrument of a broader critique of the for urban densities and habits. The incrementalism
sprawling spatiality of the postwar city. Like the of urban design, although conceptually indebted to
threat to city life posed by the obliteration of neigh- the generation of activists that had risen in defense
borhood character, the attack on suburbanism of the fragile balance of neighborhood ecologies,
was both formal and social. Strip development was had none of their rebellious edge: urban design
reviled for its chaotic visuality and its licentious became urban renewal with a human face. While
consumption of the natural environment. Highways it took a little longer for the “this will kill that”
were defended from obtrusive billboards and honky- antinomies of suburb and city to become theo-
tonk businesses via “beautification.” Suburban living retically reconsolidated in the neither here nor there
was criticized for its alienating, “conformist” life- formats of New Urbanism, a consistent disciplinary
styles. Racist and sexist underpinnings were assailed. discourse was quickly consolidated under the rubric
Tract houses were denigrated for being made out of “traditional urbanism.” This formulation provided
of ticky-tacky and looking all just the same. Cars – at least initially – what seemed a very big tent,
were unsafe at any speed. Even the nuclear family capacious enough to shelter neighborhood and s
was becoming fissile, chafing at life in its split-level preservation activists, Modernists looking for a i
castle. reinvigorated schema for total design, defenders x
However, like Modernist urbanism, suburbia of the natural environment, critics of suburban
was not simply the automatic outcome of market profligacy, and cultural warriors in pursuit of trans-
forces and its hidden persuaders but had a strong formative lifestyles of various stripes.
utopian tinge. Heavily ideological realizations of Collisions were inevitable, and urban design’s
the American dream of freestanding property, new prejudice for the formulaic, for a reductive “as of
frontiers, and unlimited consumption, the suburbs right” approach to planning based on the translation
felt, to millions, like manifest destiny. However, as of general principles (formal variety, mixed use, etc.)
they leapfrogged one another farther and farther into legal constraints, was necessarily imperfect.
into the “virgin” landscape, their destruction of the And each of the positions that urban design sought
very qualities that had defined them became an to amalgamate into its increasingly homogeneous
increasingly untenable contradiction. The critique practice came with its own evolving history and
of the one-dimensionality of suburban sprawl that arguments about the bases of correct urban form,
arose as a result was both social and environ replete with potential incompatibilities and often
mental, and it reciprocated on both levels with driven – like the city itself – by a refusal to be fixed.
the development of more deeply ecological views Questions of the relationship of city and country,
of city and region. This was advanced by such of the rights of citizens to space and access, of the
observers of the meta-scale as Jean Gottman, by limits on their power to transform their environ-
a series of mordant observers – from Peter Blake ments, of zoning and mix, of the role of the street,
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of the meaning of density, of the appropriateness also for its reductive and oppressive universalism
of various architectures, of the nature of neighbor- and staggering degree of constraint.
hoods, of the relations of cities and health, and of But what exactly – beyond its stylistic peccadil-
the epistemological and practical limits of the very loes – does urban design presume to preserve, and
knowability of the city, have formed the matrix how does it know it when it sees it? In the already
of urban theory from its origins, and its constant existing city, the recognition of living social systems
evolution is not easily repressed. and accumulated compacts about the value of place
This continuous remodeling of paradigms for are necessary points of departure for any inter
the form and elements of the modern good city is vention. The formal medium for generalizing from
also – and necessarily – an architectural enterprise. such situations is the identification and analysis of
Models of the city – from those of Pierre L’Enfant pattern, the translation of some specific observa
to those of Joseph Fourier, Ebenezer Howard, tion about the experience of people in space
Arturo Soria y Mata, Le Corbusier, Victor Gruen, into a broader assertion about the desirable. This
and Paolo Soleri – remain indispensable conceptual mode of inquiry – whether practiced by Aristotle,
drivers for urban progress, for making urban life Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, William H. Whyte,
better by refreshing choice and by holding up one or Christopher Alexander – mediates between the
pole of the indispensable dialectic of permanence limits and capacities of the body, a rich sense of
and provisionality that describes the city. Unfortun individual psychology, and a set of assumptions
ately, such concrete visions have become thoroughly about the social and cultural relations immanent
suspect – victims of the failed experiences of to a specific place and time. Each of these is
Modernist urbanism – tarred with the brush of susceptible to great variation, and as a result, any
authoritarian totalization, by the willful insistence pattern produced by their conjunction will inevitably
that every utopia is a dystopia, that certain scales shift, however slowly.
of imagining can only come to bad ends. The Architecture can respond to the dynamism of
theoretical underpinnings of urban design seek to social patterns by closely accommodating well-
deflect – and correct – this problem by claiming observed particulars, by creating spaces of usefully
to find principles situationally, via the sympathetic loose fit, or by proposing arrangements that attempt
understanding and extension of styles and habits to conduce or facilitate specific behaviors outside
already indigenous to the sites of its operations. the conventions of the present and familiar. The
The imputation is not simply that urban design last of these possibilities – which can include both
is respectful in some general sense but that its amusement parks and prison camps – always under
formal preferences – because they are “traditional” stands architecture as an agent of transformation
– embody consent. because, by being inventive, it brings something
In staking this claim, urban design operates as experientially new to a situation. And because it
a kind of prospective preservationism. As a result, changes the situation, it begs the question of the
it becomes radically anticontextual by assuming terms of participation, of the means by which a
that the meaning of space, once produced, is fixed, user or inhabitant is persuaded to take part, of the
that an arcade is an arcade is an arcade is an difference between coercion and consent. Here is
arcade. By extension, it remains an item of faith for the central dilemma for utopia, for master planning,
urban design that – however far removed from its for any architecture that proposes to make things
originating contexts of meaning – an architectural better: what exactly is meant by “better”? and better
object retains the power to re-create the values for whom?
and relationships that first gave it form. This is a The language of pattern seeks to deal with this
remarkably utopian position in the very worst way. problem either by the quasi-statistical suggestion
Urban design’s project to reconfigure America’s towns that the durability, “timelessness,” and cross-cultural
and cities along largely imaginary eighteenth- and reproduction of certain forms are markers of agree-
nineteenth-century lines, enabled and buttressed ment or by more direct psychological or ethnographic
by rigorously restrictive codes, is chilling not simply observations and measurements of contentment
for its blinkered and fantasmatic sense of history but and utility. Urban design borrows the aura of such
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techniques of corroboration to validate the grafting park is the critical and synthetic pivot on which
of a particular system of taste onto a limited set both the ideological and formal character of urban
of organizational ideas. This entails a giant – and design continues to turn.
absurd – conceptual leap. As framed by the Congress Disneyland – fascinating not just to a broad
for the New Urbanism (CNU) – the Opus Dei of public but also to a gamut of professional observers
urban design – pattern is not understood in the including Reyner Banham, Charles Moore, Louis
manner of Levi Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques but rather Marin (who memorably described it in a 1990 book
that of The American Builder’s Companion. These as a “degenerate” utopia), and even Kevin Lynch – is
patterns do not emerge from the patient parsing urban design’s archetype, sharing its successes and
of the networks of social behavior in some specific failures and grounded in a common methodology
community but from pure millenarianism – from of paring experience to its outline. Disneyland
the idea of the utter singularity of the “truth” – that favors pedestrianism and “public” transport. It is
produces tools not for analyzing patterns but for physically delimited. It is designed to the last detail.
imposing them. The validity of these patterns – It is segmented into “neighborhoods” of evocative
promulgated in insane specificity – is established historical character. It is scrupulously maintained.
tautologically. Because obedience produces a dis- Its pleasures are all G-rated. It is safe. Grounded in
tinct uniformity, one to which particular values have the sanctification of an imaginary idea of the his-
already been imputed, urban design argues that its toric American town, each park enrolls its visitors
codes are merely heuristic devices for recovering in its animating fantasy with an initiating stroll down
traditional values and meanings already encoded a Hollywoodized “Main Street” that acculturates its
in the heart of every real American, faith-based diversity of guests to a globally uniform architec-
design. tural inflection of good city form.
Urban design has successfully dominated physical But what is most relevant about Disneyland –
planning both because of this resonant fundamen- like all simulacra – is the power of its displacement.
talism and because it has, from its inception, been Disneyland is a concentration camp for pleasure,
able to appropriate a number of well-established the project of an ideologue of great power and
reconfigurings of “traditional” architecture. Urban imagination, the entertainment industry’s version
design’s remarkable timing allowed it both to claim of Robert Moses. Disneyland is not a city, but it
to embody the meanings of the historic city and selectively extracts many of the media of urbanity
to fit into a space already replete with a range of to create a city-like construct that radically cir s
tractable and demanding prototypes – or patterns cumscribes choice, that heavily polices behavior, i
– produced by the market without direct benefit of that commercializes every aspect of participation, x
academic theory and prejudice. The current urban that understands subjectivity entirely in terms of
design default is, for the most part, a recombinant consumption and spectatorship, and that sees
form of various developer-driven formats for sub- architecture and space as a territory of fixed and
urban building that themselves became prominent inflexible meanings. Like shopping malls or New
in the 1960s and 1970s. The extensive emergence Urbanist town centers, Disneyland provides evane
of greenfield “town house” developments (often as scent moments of street-style sociability within a
a means of realizing the appreciated value of inner- larger system entirely dependent on cars. And, of
ring suburban land), the transformation of shopping course, no one lives in Disneyland, and employment
centers to “street”-based malls, the proliferation of there is limited to “cast members” working to
“autonomous” gated communities, the rehabilitation produce the scene of someone else’s enjoyment.
of exclusionary zoning to restore traditional styles Girded against all accident, Disneyland produces
of segregation, and the uninterrupted semiotic refine no new experiences, only the opportunity for the
ment of the appliquéd historicity of virtually all the compulsive repetition in its rigorously programmed
architecture involved, had, by the 1960s, already repertoire of magic moments.
become ubiquitous. And behind it all loomed America’s greatest export is entertainment:
the synthesizing figure of America’s preeminent hedonism has become our national project. But
twentieth-century utopia: Disneyland. The theme our cultural mullahs – from Michael Eisner to Pat
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Robertson – want to tell people exactly how to Indeed, the social and political priorities of a large
have fun, to force our product on them, just as we cadre of baby boomer architectural graduates led,
force democracy on Iraq or “Love Boat” reruns on for quite a few, to a suspicion of architecture itself,
Indonesia. Urban design, with its single, inflexible which – seen as an inevitable coalescence of power
formula, is also produced for customers – or and established regimes of authority – became an
worshippers rather than citizens. This fetish for the impossible instrument. The focus on “alternative”
correct betrays to the core the urbanity evoked by architectures, on small-scale, self-help solutions,
Jane Jacobs, the vital links between sociability, self- and on repair rather than reconstruction – all fore-
determination, and pleasure. The 1960s – which grounded notions of service and consent, disdaining
Jacobs did so much to help found – were constantly grand visions of any sort as incapable of embody-
engaged in sorting through the meanings and ing the shifting, diverse, and plural character of a
relationships of pleasure and justice. Crystallizing democratic polity. Such arguments were only rein-
slogans – like “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out” and forced as the decade wore on by the easy connection
“Beneath the Pavement, the Beach” – were post- between DDT and urban renewal at home with
Freudian assaults on an enduringly Puritan style of Agent Orange and carpet bombing in Vietnam. The
repression and saw free expression and the pursuit consequences were both inspiring and crippling,
of pleasure as instruments of cooperation and discouraging a large cohort of fresh-minted archi-
equity, a way of making a connection between the tects and planners from establishing themselves
personal and the political, insubordinate fun. One in mainstream practice either permanently or tem
of the singularities of postwar American culture porarily, turning many to communalism, self-reliance,
was surely the degree to which the terms and lifestyle experiment, and various modes of righ-
proprietorship of enjoyment became both central teous exile. Seeking gentler solutions and warmed
to the character of the national economy and the by a soft, Thoreauvian glow, youth culture created
object of struggle and critique. The movements for a profusion of alternative communities in the form
racial, gender, and sexual equality, the spread of of urban communes squatting abandoned tenements,
environmentalism, the revaluing of urban life, and rural settlements under karmic domes, or nomadic
the assault on colonialism and its wars were all enclaves cruising in psychedelic school buses, even
filtered through the perquisites of prosperity, which if such places were more envied than engaged by
insistently argued that the fight was never simply the majority, who, for their part, pursued altered
for bread but always also for roses. consciousness through other means.
Urban design, from its origins, was a way into Because of their anti-authoritarian foundation,
the system, a means for architecture to recover these styles of settlement never received – never
its lost credibility and continue its own traditional could receive – a formal manifesto that strategically
role as an instrument of power. The perfect storm summed them up, despite a profuse, if diffuse,
of urban design’s invention was a miraculous con- literature ranging from The Whole Earth Catalog to
vergence of the overthrow of the old Modernist Eros and Civilization to Ecotopia. Nevertheless, this
formal and social model, a broad reappreciation collection of forms and actions was clearly a cogent
of urban life, a freshly legitimated historicism with urbanism, one that continues to inform contem
a new sophistication in the formal reading of the porary debates, if only because the boomers who
structure and conventions of urban environments, were their authors are now in their years of peak
an expanded system of consumption that parti social authority, dragging their lingering consciences
cularly glamorized European lifestyles (we were behind them. Without doubt, the environmental
suddenly eating yogurt), and the scary emptiness ethos of a light lie on the land and of self-sufficient
of available late-Modern alternatives like the styles of consumption, the fascinations of the nomad
megastructure. Its success was also immeasurably as an urban subject, the ideal of a democratic
aided by the defection of many architects from architecture expressively yoked to new and co
the field, a desertion that continues to mark a operative lifestyles, the antipathy to big plans, the
political split in the profession, reinforced by the prejudice for the participatory, and the fetishization
inexorable drift to the right of the CNU and its of the natural are the direct progenitors of today’s
fellow travelers. green architecture and urbanism.
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The debilitating paradox of these positions lay a stream of intoxicating forms, their project was at
in seeing the meaning of assembly – and citizenship once hugely influential formally and almost com-
– as increasingly displaced from fixed sites and pletely ineffectual politically. Not exactly an unusual
patterns. The ideas of the “instant” city and global fate for countercultural product.
village were seductive constructs for a generation However, the most important attempt to create
for which the authority of permanence seemed both an alternative style of formal urban practice at the
suspect and dangerous. The ephemeral utopia of point of emergence of urban design was advocacy
the rock festival was, perhaps, the most coherent planning, which – given the nature of the times –
expression of an urbanism that sought to operate arose as explicitly oppositional, dedicated to stop-
as a perfect outlaw and suggested an architecture ping community destruction by highways, urban
of pure and invisible distribution, a stingless infra- renewal, and gentrification. In its specifically physical
structural rhizome that established a planetary operations, the focus was on restoration and self-
operational parity, a ubiquitous set of potentials defense, on the delivery of municipal services to
accessible anywhere as a successor to the city. The disadvantaged communities, on the repair of the
idea of the oak tree with an electrical outlet and frayed fabric of poor neighborhoods, on tenement
a world grid of caravan hookups was the ultimate renovations, community gardens, and playgrounds
fantasy of a post-consumption nomadology, resis- in abandoned lots. The redistributive logic of advo
tant to The Man’s styles of order, a “place” in which cacy work looked on architecture and planning
possessions were to be minimal, nature at once with suspicion as an instrument of destruction or
wired and undisturbed, and money no longer an privilege. The problem – an analysis descending
issue. The vision was warm, silly, and prescient, from Engels – was not a lack of architecture, but
virtuality before the fact. Like the rock festival, this the fact that too much of it was in the wrong hands.
was a clear proposition for organizing a world While this was both a logical and a consistent
in which location has been radically destabilized, position, its morphological modesty was a hard
and it anticipated one of the great drivers of urban sell for anyone eager to build and offered no clear
morphology today with its Web-enabled anything- proposition for greenfield sites, certainly no strong
anywhere orders. insights for transforming the suburbs, which were
One group – Archigram – was particularly also viewed with suspicion as enemies of diversity
successful in formalizing all of this, tapping, with and as economic threats, sucking the inner city dry
insight and wit, into the tensions between the con- of resources. Advocacy’s visual culture, such as it s
testing technological and Arcadian visions of the was, was very much fixed on community expres- i
era. Operating on the level of pure but architectur- sion, on self-built parks, inner-city murals, and the x
ally precise polemic, Archigram was a master of improvisational workings of the favela, its own
détournement, of playing with goaded migrations over-romanced utopia. These preferences were
of meaning and at embedding critique in the infused by an old dream of a political aesthetic,
carnivalesque. From their initial fascinations with but advocacy’s taste was reductive, looking for the
the high-tech transformation of nineteenth-century artistic reproduction of social content only when
mechanics into the “degenerate” utopias of the it was presumed direct, when it was authored (not
megastructuralists, Metabolists, and other megalo- simply authorized) by “the people.” This position,
maniac schemers, they moved quickly to describe which looks to produce design as midwifery, con-
a range of nomadic structures: moving cities, aerial tinues to enjoy substantial currency in a range of
circuses floating from place to place by balloon, community-based design practices and has found
self-sufficient wanderers wearing their collapsible coherent ideological backing both from the school
“Suitaloons.” They proposed the infiltration of of “Everyday Urbanism” as well as from the pro-
small towns and suburbs by a variety of subversive gressive wing of planners and geographers –
pleasure-parasites and sought, during the produc- for whom equity and social justice are the gold
tively unsettled post-McLuhan, pre-Internet inter- standard – which is still the most lucid voice on
regnum, to reconfigure the landscape as a new kind urban issues in the academy.
of commons, a global fun fair. Operating within the These multiple strains remain the dialectical
bounds of the physically possible and producing substrate of urban design today. A matrix of
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traditionalism, environmentalism, Modernism, and the Puritan-inspired vision of a “shining city on a

self-help configures the practices – and ideological hill” that ascendant neocon intellectuals and the
accountancy – for virtually all contemporary design burgeoning religious Right thought to so embody
that purports to build the city. Although every cur- the values of a “traditional” America, and the
rent tendency embodies some degree of conceptual New Urbanist idea of a single set of correct urban
hybridity, the basic terms of the argument about principles is surely balm to those upset with the
urbanism have remained remarkably consistent from dissipation of real Americanism under the assault
the nineteenth century to the present. What has of an excess of difference, the threatening plural
shifted – and continues to shift – are the political ism of an America no longer dominated by WASP
and ideological valences associated not simply culture, a place of too many languages, too many
with each formation but also their rapid pace of suspect lifestyles, too much uncontrollable choice.
conceptual and ideological reconfiguration, and the As Paul Weyrich, founding president of the reaction
promiscuity of meaning and representation that ary Heritage Foundation, recently remarked, “New
attach and slip away from each. These migrations Urbanism needs to be part of the next conservatism.”
of meaning are crucial: the way we make cities marks Of course, this oversimplifies both origins and
our politics and possibilities, and the struggle over outcomes. The broad acquiescence to the neo
their form is, as it has ever been, deeply enmeshed traditional approach that characterizes American
with the future of our polity. urban design is also the result of its proclaimed
Today, U.S.-style urban design – global exemplar embodiment – sometimes tenuous and occlusive,
from Ho Chi Minh City to Dubai – has arrived at sometimes genuine and persuasive – of many of
a set of concerns and strategies, as well as a formal the elements of more progressive approaches to the
repertoire, that is as limited as those of CIAM, environment that provided much of the amniotic
though with an ultimately even more chilling social fluid for its gestation. Indeed, the powerful attrac-
message. The current default is essentially a splicing tion of neotraditional urbanism must be seen not
of Modernist universalist dogmatism, City Beautiful only in its neoliberal, end-of-history arguments,
taste, and the cultural presumptions of neoliberalism, in which historicism stands in for capitalism and
producing its urbanist double spawn: gentrification “Modernism” for the various forms of vanquished
and the neotraditional suburb. Not since the collectivism, but also in its claims on the inescap-
Modernism of the 1920s has a visual system so ably relevant politics and practices of environment
successfully (and spuriously) identified itself with alism, a genuine universalism with a very broad
a particular set of social values: the elision of an consensus. Self-proclaimed as the nemeses of
architecture of stripped traditionalism (a pediment sprawl, as friends to the idea of neighborhood, as
on every Shell station and 7-Eleven) with the imag- advocates for public transportation, and as priests
ined happinesses of a bygone golden age has been of participation, the New Urbanism and much of
breathtaking. the current urban design default would seem to
It was surely no coincidence that this specificity be a logical outgrowth of many of the progressive
grew out of a more general turn to the right, the tendencies so lively at their origins. A number of
new Republican majority that took to historicist the tendency’s nominal proponents – Peter Calthorpe,
expression as a means of instant authentication and Doug Kelbaugh, Jonathan Barnett (a UDG stalwart),
prestige, all with a redemptive gloss derived from and others – tilt to these positions as priorities,
a thin idea of the social authority of convention designing with greater tolerance, modesty, and
that culminated in the mendacity, indifference, and depth. More, the CNU cannot be faulted for seeking
sumptuary Hollywood taste of Reaganism. New solutions consonant with the scale of the problem:
Urbanism was the perfect theory of settlement for the idea of the creation of new towns and cities is
the Age of Reagan, the urbanistic embodiment crucial not simply to the control of sprawl but also
of “family values,” forcefully enshrined at the very to housing the exponential growth of the planet,
moment that American culture was moving in urbanizing at the rate of a million people a week.
the direction of transformative diversity. The New In fact, nothing in the charter of the Congress
Urbanists’ success is surely the result of making for New Urbanism, with its spirited defense of both
common cause with a right-tinged social theory, urban and natural environments and its call for
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reinvigorating both local and regional perspectives, held to conduce a fixed set of urban pleasures.
is likely to be opposed by any sensible urbanist. Such pleasures are encoded in stylistic expression
The controversy, rather, is over the dreary and and heavily protected against deviancy, in a privi-
uniform translation of principles to practice, the leged typology in which the single-family house
weirdly religious insistence on “traditional” archi- is the invariable alpha form, in highly static and
tectural form, the dubious bedfellows, and, most ritualized physical infrastructures of sociability –
especially, the weakness of most New Urbanist pro the porch, the main street, the band shell – in com-
duct, almost invariably car-focused, class-uniform, paction and the careful disposition of cars, and
exclusively residential, and without environmental in an idea of sociability rooted in homogeneity and
innovation. At this point the clarion principles seem discipline. These are model environments for a
so much cover, much as the CNU’s vaunted instru- leisured class, and they do produce both a dull
ment of community participation – the charrette serenity and a set of spaces for “public” activity with
(one of advocacy planning’s more successful tools) clear advantages over the thoughtlessly cul-de-saced
– seems most often used not to produce new ideas McMansions whose pattern they interrupt.
or to give citizens entrée to the process of design, Seaside is the Battery Park City of the New
but to manufacture consent for New Urbanist pre- Urbanism, its first comprehensive codification and
dilections. No matter what the input, the outcome expression, and a clear expression of its possibil
always seems the same. ities and limits. A small, upper-middle-class holiday
Such remorseless formal orthodoxy is what community, it is modeled on the indisputable charms
killed Modernism, and it is not exactly surprising of Martha’s Vineyard, Fire Island, and Portmeirion,
that the New Urbanist charter and congress are environments whose beautiful settings, consistent
structural vamps of the Charter of Athens and architectures, and common programs of relaxation
its organizational vanguard, CIAM, nor that New support that special amiable subjectivity of people
Urbanism relies on charismatic, evangelizing leader on holiday. These atmospheres are both delightful
ship, the star power that is such a uniform object and artificial, and their viability as precedents for
of CNU derision. This is the very definition of more general town making is limited precisely
old-fashioned utopianism. The net effect is a vision by the inevitability of their exclusions, the things
that reproduces the self-certain, universalizing mood that one takes a vacation to escape: work, mess,
of CIAM both formally and ideologically, but that encounters with the nonvacationing other, unavoid-
offers a new, if equally restricted, lexicon of formal able inequalities, demanding formal variety, schools, s
behaviors. The ideological convergence of Modern mass transit, unsightly infrastructure, nonconform- i
ist and “New” Urbanism is striking. Both are invested ing behaviors, and so on. x
in an idea of a universal, “correct” architecture. Celebration, an actual project of the Disney
Both are hostile to anomaly and deviance. Both have Corporation, is slightly closer to the idea of a town.
an extremely constrained relationship to human It is larger, its residents work, it has a bit more
subjectivity and little patience for the exercise social and economic infrastructure and a slightly
of difference. Both claim to have solutions for the wider spread of price points for the buy-in, but – like
urban crisis, which is identified largely with formal most New Urbanist work – is mainly a repatterning
issues. Both purport to have an agenda that embraces of the suburbs. Celebration’s sole economic sector
an idea of social justice, but neither has a theory is consumption, and its residents are no less
adequate to the issues involved. Finally, both are dependent on the automobile to get to work than
persuaded that architecture can independently suburbanites anyplace else. Like Seaside, its order-
leverage social transformation, become the conduit liness is assured by strict covenants that conspire
for good behavior, the factory grinding out happy to produce both hygienic conformity and the vaguely
workers or consumers. classical architecture that is of such bizarre import
It is not surprising that the two most celebrated ance to the New Urbanist leadership. The home-
formal accomplishments of the New Urbanism – owners’ associations that provide the necessary
Seaside and Celebration – are both figuratively and instruments of governance and constraint are, as
literally Disneyesque. That is, both are programmed organizations, something between co-op boards and
and designed to produce a specific visual character BIDs, with similar agendas to maintain property
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values, to police levels of otherness, to secure the disruption, and in its standard-issue pattern book
physical character of the place, and to supplement of formal moves, from its little plazas to its pro-
and evade normal democratic legality. scriptions on nonconforming signage. The image
Although New Urbanists’ work has been pri of the plan conveyed in a series of winsome render
marily suburban, their rhetoric derives much of its ings was a perfect rendition of urban design’s
authority from the example of the city, and there certifying palette of amenities – the wee shops and
has been much reciprocation between the New artistic signage, the Georgian squares, the bowered
Urbanist project and the broader workings of streets – all depicted in an apparently perpetual
American urban design in the richer and more summer.
resistant environment of actual cities. Both tend The Calgary plan was Starbucks urbanism, a suit
encies understand their performative tasks as the able home for forms and traditions already trans-
provision of “urban” amenity, and the good city is lated into generic versions of themselves. With its
primarily associated with the ability of its physical derivation from the idea of the isolated district in
spaces to support a rich and intricate visuality that its descent from the tabula rasa of urban renewal
promotes what is, in practice, the pleasures of the though the special districting and BIDs that suc-
yuppie lifestyle and its program of shopping and ceeded it, the plan was more inflected by ideology
dining, of fitness, of stylishness and mobility, and than by place, by urban design’s Platonic city
of a certain level of associative urban connoisseur- increasingly identified with the Seattle/Portland/
ship, based on the recognizability of their programs Vancouver prototype. Of course, these are cities
and architectures. To the degree that they embody that have achieved many successes, and as a default
a social or political affect, it revolves around old- for urbanism, one could surely choose a lot worse.
fashioned forms of bourgeois decorum and the The issue is not the many good formal ideas
deployment of a limited set of signifiers of sus embodied in the urban design – or the New Urbanist
tainability. Over the past twenty-five years many – paradigm but rather in their roles in dumbing
American cities have seen dramatic – if restricted – urbanism down to create a culture of generic urban
transformations in form and habit, and virtually no “niceness” intolerant of disorder or exception, in
town of any size now seems to lack zones replete stifling the continued transformation and elabora-
with sidewalk cafes, street trees and furnishings, tion of urban morphologies under the influence
contextually scaled architectures, artistic shop of new technical, social, conceptual, and formal
fronts, loft living, bike paths, and other attractive developments, and in disallowing the influence of
elements from the urban design pattern book. This communities of difference. Urban design and the
collusion of pleasant infrastructures has, in fact, New Urbanism are the house styles of gentrifica-
emerged as the salient professional measure of tion, urban renewal with a human face.
urban quality. The problem with this is not with the pursuit of
I had the opportunity, not long ago, to look over the subtle visualities and comfortable infrastruc-
plans for a major extension to the core of Calgary, tures of humanely dimensioned neighborhoods,
a succinct encapsulation of the progress of urban it is rather with gentrification’s parasitic economy,
design since Battery Park City. The plan had many feeding on the homes of the poor, on precisely the
fine features, including light-rail, mixed-use build- order of mix central to the arguments of Jane
ings, variegated scale, attention to solar orientation, Jacobs. Today’s dominant urban design is all life-
a well-manicured streetscape with a wealth of pre- style and no heart, and has nothing to say to the
scribed detail and a strong rhetoric of urbanity. But planet’s immiserated majority, whether Americans
the net effect was formidably dull, and its gridiron victimized by our obscenely widening income gap
plan and fastidious coding insufficiently respon or the billion and half people housed in the part
sive to the possibility of exception, a foreclosure of the world’s cities undergoing the most explosive
visible in the plan’s unnuanced response to the very growth: slums. Modernist urbanism, for all its
divergent conditions around it (river, park, rail ultimate failings, was the extension of social move-
yard, and downtown core), in its limited ability to ments for the reform of the squalid inequalities of
accommodate architectures (such as a proposed the urbanism of the nineteenth century, and the
university complex) that might be sources of creative clear subject of its address was slum dwellers, men
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and women victimized by oppressive economic was surely consistent in recognizing Jacobs’s posi-
arrangements and by the urban environments that tion as an affront to his own ethical ambivalence
grew out of them, the workers’ houses of Manchester, and corporatist cultural proclivities. And it was
the Mietkasernen of Berlin, and the tenements of surely an enjoyably naughty performance to stage
New York. If the sun, space, and greenery of the in front of New Yorkers for whom Jacobs is widely
Radiant City and its identical architectures appear thought a saint. Koolhaas has a fine aptitude for
alienating and vapid today, it is crucial to think irony, for blurring the line between critique and
about what they were meant to replace: the dark, apology, accepting the market-knows-best inevit
disease-ridden, dangerous hypercrowding of the ability of what he appears to disdain, and then,
industrial city. self-inoculated, designing it. For him, critical inter-
The New Urbanism substitutes sprawl for slum rogations of the megascale and its received formats
as its polemical target and its ideal subjects are are simply doomed, and any attempt to redirect
members of the suburban upper-middle class whose the forms of the generic global city is hopeless
problem is a mismatch between existing economic naïveté.
privilege and inappropriate spatial organization. The “New” Urbanism and Koolhaasian “Post”-
difficulty here is of having too much, rather than Urbanism represent a Hobson’s choice, a Manichean
too little, and if this is a rational observation from dystopianism that leaves us trapped between The
the perspective of the environment, it is a radically Truman Show and Blade Runner. There is some
different issue from the perspective of what is to thing both infuriating and tragic in the division of
be done. What is missing is an idea of justice, the urban imaginary into faux and fab, and the
a theory that addresses not simply the reconfigura- tenacious identification of the project of coming
tion of space but also the redistribution of wealth. to grips with what is genuinely a crisis with the
The reduction of urbanism to a battle of styles is cookie-cutter conformities of the former and the
a formula for ignoring its most crucial issues. For solipsistic, retro avant-gardism of the latter. Cities
example, there is no doubt that the neotraditional- are becoming inhuman in both old and new ways,
ist row houses that have replaced the penitential in the prodigious growth of slums, in the endless-
public housing towers being demolished in so many ness of megalopolitan sprawl, in the homogenizing
American cities represent a far more livable alter- routines of globalization, and in the alienating
native. But it is equally clear that the net effect of effects of disempowerment. But the scale has so
the Hope VI program behind this transformation is shifted that the future of cities is now implicated s
the cruel displacement of 90 percent of the former with an inescapable immediacy in the fate of the i
population and that arguments about architecture earth itself. x
obscure the larger political agendas at work. Like Urban design needs to grow beyond its narrowly
wise the continued, virtually unquestioned asso- described fixation on the “quality” of life to include
ciation of Modernist architecture with progressive its very possibility. This will require a dramatically
politics has long since been insupportable, given broadened discourse of effects that does not estab
the lie by the real meaning of urban renewal, by its lish its authority simply analogically or artistically
expressive congeniality for multinational corporat- but that is inculcated with the project of enhancing
ism, by the ease with which it becomes the ready equity and diversity and of making a genuine con-
emblem of the Chinese ministry of propaganda, by tribution to the survival of the planet. Our cities
the abandonment of politics by most of the leading must undergo continuous retrofit and reconfigura-
lights of the architectural avant-garde. tion, their growth rigorously managed, and we must
At a conference in New York last year convened build hundreds of new towns and cities along
by the Cities Programme at the London School radically sustainable lines as a matter of utmost
of Economics, Rem Koolhaas began his presenta- urgency. It also means that Sert’s call for an urban
tion with a slide of Jane Jacobs, whom he snidely discipline that narrows the field of its intelligence to
denounced as an anachronism and an ideological formal matters has become a dangerous anachron
drag. As a leading advocate of a robust, top-down ism, that the aesthetics of the urban must recapture
idea of bigness and as one of globalization’s most the idea of their inseparability from the social and
sophisticated and visible model citizens, Koolhaas the environmental: as an academic matter, this will
9780415668071_P6_04.indd 633 10-26-2012 3:22:20 PM

entail more than another repositioning of urban prac without prejudice to the survival of others’. This
tices within the trivium of architecture, planning, calls for the recovery of the “utopian” idea of
and landscape. Finally, urban theory must renounce, heroic measures and a rigorous defense of the most
for once and for all, the teleological fantasy of a widely empowered ideas of consent.
convergence on a singular form for the good city. Which brings us back to those two model New
The thwarting configuration of the traditionally Yorkers, Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford. Both loved
isolated disciplines must now yield to the broader cities passionately, and both dedicated their lives
relational understandings of environmentalism and to understanding their character and possibilities.
take up the challenges of finitude and equity. This Both fought tirelessly to help give shape to the
refreshment of design’s epistemology is a neces inevitability of urban transformation based on the
sary and inevitable outcome of our ability to read desire for social justice and a deep connection to
both global and local ecologies as complex, com- an urban history that inhered in intersecting forms,
prehensive, and contingent, and to see our own habits, and rights. Neither argued for the stifling
instrumental and haphazard roles in their workings imaginary fixities of a golden age, but each saw
and meanings. It is simply no longer possible to the good city as an evolving project, informed
understand the city and its morphology as isolated by the unfolding possibilities of new knowledge
from the life and welfare of the planet as a whole and experience. Jacobs celebrated her centuries-old
or to shirk the necessary investigation of dramatic neighborhood but happily rode the subway that ran
ally new paradigms at every scale to secure happy beneath it. Mumford lived in the suburban fringes
and fair futures. Cities – bounded and responsible – but never learned to drive. Each found happiness
must help rebalance a world of growing polarities in a different relationship to the city, and both based
between overdevelopment and underdevelopment, their advocacy on preferences they actually lived.
offer hospitality to styles of difference that global- A future for urban designing must not dictate the
izing culture does not require, and rigorously account good life but instead endlessly explore the ethics
for and provide the means of their own respiration and expression of consent and diversity.
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“A Third Way for Urban Design”
from Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders (eds),
Urban Design (2009)
Kenneth Greenberg
Today’s urban design field has an abundance of theory to draw on, both seminal theories that helped establish
the field and more recent theories directed at establishing new directions. Key theoretical ideas and debates
have been presented throughout The Urban Design Reader. The older theories helped shape the evolution
of the field, but it is important to recognize that successive ideas did not completely supplant earlier ones.
Late nineteenth and early twentieth century ideas about urban form – the parks movement, the garden city
movement, neighborhood units, modernism – continue to inspire urban designers today. It is likewise with mid-
twentieth-century theories: ideas about the importance of place-making, imageability, and regional ecological
analyses remain central to the field. In recent times, there has been a proliferation of theories claiming to be
the important new approach to urbanism – New Urbanism, Post Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism, Landscape
Urbanism, Ecological Urbanism. Within academia, proponents of each theory claim its intellectual and practical
basis to be the most compelling. What is an urban design practitioner to do?
In practice, many urban designers don’t align themselves solely with a single academic theory of urban
design. Rather, when crafting design solutions for given projects, they draw on the relevant ideas from what-
ever theoretical ideas seem to resonate most strongly for the project at hand. The real world of practice is,
in many ways, more flexible and adaptive than academic theory allows for, and the results can be very inter-
esting. As Kenneth Greenberg states in his important recent essay “A Third Way for Urban Design,” in
practice “a great deal is happening” that lies between the extremes of theory. Addressing particularly the
seemingly polar opposite positions taken by New Urbanism and Post Urbanism, he argues that a “third way”
is emerging in real world practice that is not limited by the strictures of academic discourse. This “unbounded”
way is propelled by environmental imperatives, the demands of communities for real participation in city-
building decision-making which has spawned more creative participation approaches, and a better understanding
of how cities evolve and adapt over time.
Greenberg references a number of recent development projects that have in common the overarching goal
of creating more sustainable places, different design aspects of which can be seen as being informed by
different theories. Common to many of the projects is the approach of creating flexible design frameworks,
an idea associated with Landscape Urbanism, rather than fixed masterplans, an idea associated with modernism,
or form-based codes, an idea associated with New Urbanism. By creating as design products flexible frame-
work plans that can be fleshed out by multiple development actors over time as economic and social conditions
change and evolve, Greenberg argues that “urban design becomes more like improvisational jazz.”
Along with highlighting the creative theoretical merging that characterizes urban design practice, Greenberg’s
seminal contribution in this selection is his call for a new collaboration between the various environmental
design professions and new alliances with those working in other allied applied fields, such as the environmental
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636 K ennet H G reenberg
sciences and engineering. Cities are complex evolving organisms, and a truly interdisciplinary design approach,
he argues, better reflects this understanding and results in more adaptive city-building.
Kenneth Greenberg is an architect and urban designer based in Toronto. A former Director of Urban
Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, and interim Chief Planner for the Boston Redevelopment
Agency, he currently practices through his firm Greenberg Consultants. His projects throughout North America
and Europe, many of them award winning, have involved a range of scales and design issues including down-
town rejuvenation, waterfront revitalization, campus master planning, and regional growth management. A vision
he brings to his design and planning work is to restore “the vitality, relevance and sustainability of the public
realm in urban life.” His approach involves strategic consensus-building, often using innovative processes that
encourage active and diverse public participation. Design projects he has collaborated on include the Cross-
roads Initiative for the Big Dig, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development
Framework Plan.
Kenneth Greenberg’s recent book Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder (Toronto:
Random House, 2011) argues for the importance and possibilities of rejuvenating neglected cities and
offers accessibly written guidance on how to achieve transformative city-building. Books that have inspired
Greenberg’s thinking include James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Random House, 2004),
which is helpful for understanding how creative change can occur in democratic settings; and Chris Turner’s
The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2011),
which speaks to how the paradigm shift away from unsustainable ways of life to sustainable ones can be
made, a “leap” critically necessary for our survival in cities.
Other writings on adaptive urbanism include Andrew Scott and Eran Ben-Joseph’s ReNew Town (London:
Routledge, 2011); Peter Calthorpe’s Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 2011); and Stephen J. Coyle’s Sustainable and Resilient Communities (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, 2011).
Jon Lang’s Urban Design: The American Experience (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994) discusses the
evolution of the urban design field, its knowledge, and the practical roles played by urban designers in the
public and private sectors. He highlights in particular emerging roles in the field involved with place-making,
ecological responsibility, community activism, participatory design, and creative leadership. Like Greenberg, he
suggests that the future of the field requires a more integrative profession where designers act more as midwives
and collaborators, utilizing a broader base of knowledge than is used in the narrow traditional roles of practice.
Michael Sorkin asserts in “The End(s) of Urban pieces by Edward W. Soja, Richard Sommer, and
Design” that we have reached a dead end where Timothy Love, and is conclusively nailed by Michelle
“ ‘New’ Urbanism and Koohaasian ‘Post’-Urbanism Provoost and Wouter Vanstiphout in “Facts on the
represent a Hobson’s choice, a Manichean dysto- Ground”: “The post-Katrina urban design experi-
pianism that leaves us trapped between The Truman ences present us with a tragic divide between the
Show and Blade Runner, . . . [a] division of the urban self-conscious heirs to Modernist and experimental
imaginary into faux and fab . . . with the cookie- urban design and the apostates of Modernism
cutter conformities of the former and solipsistic, who have the ear of policy makers, business people,
retro avant-gardism of the latter.” and the general populace. The first group rightly
The pinpointing of this no-win dichotomy accuses the second of being conservative and
between New Urbanism and posturbanism has opportunistic; the second rightly accuses the first
surfaced over and over in different forms in recent of being irrelevant, elitist, and naive.”
years in talks, articles, and symposia. It permeates The critique of these bifurcated positions is
this book, arising in the discussion, “Urban Design valid and the frustration palpable. Yet between the
Now,” as well as the wide-ranging and provocative extremes represented by this dichotomy a great
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“ A T H ird W ay for U rban D esign ” 637
deal is happening, as the real and unbridled world a common ecocycle model designed to ensure
of urban design continues to evolve in myriad recycling of organic material.
positive ways. It can be argued in fact that a “third Malmo, Sweden, designated its docklands “Bo01”
way” has begun to emerge, one not bounded by site as an ecological quarter with strict environ-
the strictures of this double dead end. The new mental codes for developers on formerly industrial
way is increasingly propelled by the environmental land with significant contamination challenges. For
imperative, informed by the need to integrate this education, research, housing, culture, and recreation,
perspective with competing social, economic, and an ecological approach to planning was key in the
cultural forces and by closer observation of how creation of this district. Oriented to the sea, canals,
cities actually behave and evolve. and parks, this community has maximized bio-
Numerous examples, including some cited in diversity by building up a range of biotopes.
this book, have been built or are in planning stages In British Columbia residents have begun moving
around the world in which urban districts and neigh- into Dockside Green in Victoria, a former industrial
borhoods explore new more self-sustaining models, wasteland that will house twenty-five hundred
making advances in generating their own energy, people and includes provisions for income mix,
processing their own waste, and reducing auto LEED platinum certification, and employment and
dependence with a greater mix of uses and more local businesses. In Vancouver, Southeast False
mobility alternatives. With support from national Creek will be a model sustainable community built
and local governments, these new communities on the last remaining large tract of undeveloped
that showcase the design and integration of new waterfront land near downtown. When Vancouver
technologies and approaches are being monitored was awarded the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic
with an eye to changing standards and norms and Winter Games, this development site of eighty
developing knowledge-based industries that can acres was chosen as the future site of the Olympic
export these innovations. Village. It is being planned as a model sustainable
In Freiburg, Germany, Vauban, a derelict military development based on environmental, social, and
zone, has become a Sustainable Model City District. economic principles with a focus on mixed-use and
After an intensive planning process and awareness housing for families. This complete community of
campaign in the mid-1990s, implementation targeted up to sixteen thousand people will ensure goods
the issues of mobility, energy, housing, and social and services within walking distance and housing
life. The outcome was presented as a German that is linked by transit and close to local jobs. s
model of urban development to the HABITAT II In Toronto, WATERFRONToronto (a joint federal, i
conference in 1996 because of its inclusion of provincial, and city revitalization corporation) has x
environmentally supportive elements and the close selected the winner of the Lower Don Lands Design
cooperation it fostered between the municipality, Competition (a team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh
public utilities, project management, and local of which I am a member). The winning design
residents. proposes an innovative approach to naturalizing
In Finland, a few kilometers from downtown the mouth of the Don River, transforming a long
Helsinki in a university district, the Vikki residential neglected area into sustainable new parks and com-
and work zone has been developed as a living munities through an integrated approach to urban
laboratory for green design that integrates gardens design, transportation, naturalization of the river
and pathways, composting, recycling, solar panels, edges by expanding habitats, sustainability, and other
a 30 percent reduction in water consumption, and ecological focuses. The area will become a “green”
25 percent less fossil fuel. city district where city, lake, and river interact in
In the live-work Hammarby Sjostad area in a dynamic and balanced relationship.
Stockholm, Sweden, tough environmental require- So, perhaps more rapidly than we realize, we
ments were imposed on buildings, municipal infra- are witnessing a major dissolution of the false
structure, and the traffic environment. The Stockholm professional and conceptual dichotomy that divided
Water Company, Fortum, and the Stockholm Waste the city from the natural world. Like many power-
Management Administration jointly developed ful and timely impulses, this reconciliation has had
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638 K ennet H G reenberg
many sources, scientific, cultural, and aesthetic. It A number of extremely powerful corollaries
is a striking example of simultaneous discovery to this increased environmental and ecological
motivated by a sense of crisis, as the scientific consciousness exist. A better understanding of the
community calls attention to appalling degradation, complexities of succession and interdependence in
dangerous consequences, and the undeniable fragil- nature can be linked directly to a greater awareness
ity of human life on the planet. of the dynamic and evolving character of sustainable
This change in consciousness was anticipated cities and to diverse and evolving environments
and fostered by inspired practitioners and writers with greater mix and complexity of land use and
including Ian McHarg in Design with Nature (1971), a broader demographic of people served by full
Ann Spirn in The Granite Garden (1984), and Michael life-cycle housing options. A second and related
Hough in City Form and Natural Process (1984). Their corollary is that the need to cope with this increased
ideas opened possibilities for a new way of thinking complexity clearly demands new and expanded
beyond conventional mitigation of impacts on professional alliances.
nature to one based on new possibilities for creative Once we accept cities as complex, multigener
synthesis working with natural process and on the ational and never-finished artifacts, we are forced
acknowledgment that humans are part of nature to confront our limitations as urban designers.
and that to some extent nature everywhere on Experience is teaching that prescriptive templates
the planet has become a built environment deeply do not hold up well when market forces, changing
altered by human interaction with it. programs, and new needs come into play. What
As the imperative to modify our self-destructive are needed instead are flexible frameworks that
practices begins to suggest forms of development allow for innovation, hybridization, organic growth,
inherently more environmentally sustainable, cities change, and surprise. While this shift is challenging
(now our dominant place of living) are the crucibles to planning that aspires to an illusionary end-state
where solutions are found to problems that are predictability, its inherent pragmatism has the
otherwise intractable. The environmental thrust is potential to liberate design and harness many kinds
gaining traction and broad popular appeal as a of creativity coming from others. Urban design
common ground that cuts across class, cultural, and becomes more like improvisational jazz. In Stuart
political lines and is rapidly pushing urban design Brand’s terminology, we are learning “how cities
into new areas of investigation. In ways both learn.” Rather than producing finite products, urban
superficial and profound, this desire for greener design is increasingly about the anticipation and
solutions is giving birth to lower-impact lifestyles guidance of long-term transformations without
and new design approaches for city districts as well fixed destinations, mediating between values, goals,
as individual buildings and landscapes. It augurs a and actual outcomes.
greater mix and proximity of daily life activities – The true test for urban design then becomes to
living, working, shopping, culture, recreation, and achieve coherence and build relationships but at
leisure – increased walkability, cycling, and transit the same time leave ample room for the emergence
and less car dependency; lower energy consump- of new ideas, market and social innovations, and
tion and alternative energy sources; improved waste an expanded creative space for the handoff to the
management and treatment; and new approaches whole array of design disciplines (including archi-
to storm- and wastewater management. tecture, landscape, industrial design, graphic design,
This seismic shift in goals and priorities is also and lighting design) that will help materialize the
producing a cultural predisposition to a new form plan.
of coexistence, the intertwining of city and nature By its very nature, successful urban design for
in a new sense of place. Renewed places reflecting complex and evolving environments cannot be the
these approaches will be more rooted and specific, hegemony of a single profession. The preoccupa-
with the underlying layers of natural setting revealed tion of the Harvard University Graduate School of
and better appreciated. In the words of Betsy Barlow Design’s (GSD’s) First Urban Design Conference with
Rogers, the former executive director of the Central the integration of the work of architects, planners,
Park Conservancy, “As the city becomes more park- and landscape architects has effectively been sub-
like, the park becomes more city-like.” sumed within a much larger dynamic enterprise
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“ A T H ird W ay for U rban D esign ” 639
with fluid boundaries and the sharing of leadership. A critical issue raised by the nondesigners like
Necessity has created new alliances with colleagues Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford at the 1956 GSD
in engineering, economics, environmental sciences, Conference was insufficient acknowledgment of
and the arts, among others. This broad fusion of politics. There can no longer be any doubt that the
expertise and knowledge is not compromising – it practice of urban design is inextricably bound by
enables richer and better outcomes. the political environment in which it operates. The
The nature of such teamwork demands an shift to the right in recent years and the correspond-
extended dialogue in real time. Methodologies and ing withdrawal of traditional funding have created
working styles are emerging that are much less a crisis for cities and profoundly challenged the
hierarchical, supported by an explosion in com- capacity of the public sector to deliver services
munications technology that permits and facilitates and undertake major initiatives. This has meant a
rapid information sharing and the layering in of shift in the locus of urban design leadership to the
many complex variables. And in a North American private and nonprofit sectors.
and European context this work must increasingly The need to chart a responsible course under
be done in a highly public and contested environ- these circumstances has forced another breaching
ment with an acknowledged right and need for of traditional adversarial dichotomies – left/right,
affected communities to be at the table. community/developer, haves/have-nots – to seek
It is now clear that shared and overlapping leader a third way in more explicitly political terms. Urban
ship needs to extend well beyond the creation of design in this context requires a continual balancing
a design into its implementation and the stewardship of the roles and expectations of the private sector,
of the evolving places created. This stewardship drawing on its entrepreneurial talent and enterprise
occurs over periods that extend over several admin while defending the public realm, public interests,
istrations and project leaders. Credit for urban and a broader set of social goals. One of the con-
design must now be spread broadly, and this frus- tributions of urban design to the working out of
trates the media’s desire to fixate on design “stars.” now inevitable public-private partnerships is to seek
It will now be teams that earn the glory. and articulate opportunities for mutually reinforcing
Coinciding with these new ways of approaching wins that straddle this divide.
urban design is the opening up of remarkable new All this reinforces some of the definitions of urban
opportunities to forge relationships of cities to design offered in this book, in particular Richard
nature. Waterfronts of oceans, lakes, and rivers have Marshall’s in “The Elusiveness of Urban Design”: s
become a new frontier for many cities with the “Urban design . . . is a ‘way of thinking.’ It is not i
potential for reuse of vast tracts of obsolescent about separation and simplification but rather about x
port, industrial, railway, and warehousing lands. synthesis. It attempts . . . to deal with the full reality
Another related systemic opportunity arises as the of the urban situation, not the narrow slices seen
aging mid-20th century highway infrastructure through disciplinary lenses.” This open-ended, non-
nears the end of its useful life and demands repair hierarchical stance should make urban design a
and renewal. leading part of impending environmental work.
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9780415668071_P6_05.indd 640 10-26-2012 3:22:16 PM
EPILOGUE
The urban design field has grown substantially over the last two decades and the pace of growth seems
poised to keep accelerating. Many university-based urban design programs and concentrations have been
created or are expanding. A growing number of practitioners call themselves urban designers and more and
more professional firms – large and small; planning-based, architecture-based, or landscape architecture-based
– advertise that they provide urban design services. The many forces and pressures that are compelling the
expansion of the urban design field, which have been explored in the readings contained in this Reader and
the editors’ introductions to them, are at the same time contributing to its splintering. It remains to be seen
whether the many strains of the contemporary field of urban design that have been introduced in the Reader
will continue to diverge or if they will coalesce under some new definition of urban design.
The strongest over-arching force driving both the growth of the urban design field and its stratification is
the pervasive sense of urgency that accompanies three central realities of our times: the escalation of wide-
scale environmental crises that are already with us but which loom catastrophically larger in the near future;
the accelerating pace of change in every dimension of life, propelled by the constant proliferation of new
technologies, which requires constant adaptation; and the constantly increasing interconnectedness of
the world – resulting from new communications and social-networking technologies, the worldwide flow of
resources, goods, services, and capital, and the border-crossing impacts of environmental degradation – which,
among other things, heightens competition and again requires constant adaptation. The ever-changing
and often intensifying opportunities and problems that these realities have unleashed, and will continue to
unleash, means that we live in an age of extreme uncertainty. The urban design field is increasingly perceived
as having an important role to play in addressing the accelerating pace of change and the uncertainties that
accompany it.
On the environmental uncertainty front, we know that in the not too distant future cities around the world
and the people that live in them will have to face problems stemming from climate change, which we know
will take different forms in different areas but we don’t know exactly what forms. The experts tell us, however,
that along with general warming and sea-level rise we are likely to witness an increase in extreme weather
events. We know that cities and people will have to adapt but there is little consensus on what to do to
prepare for this need to adapt. On the socio-economic front, the economic downturn that began in western
countries five years ago and shows little sign of ending soon has made real estate development markets very
uncertain, which means that many urban design projects have been put on hold, private and public sector
projects alike. Boom conditions still prevail in parts of Asia and the Middle East, but there is considerable
nervousness about what the future may hold. Meanwhile, the human population keeps expanding exponentially
and many people around the world are scrambling to find good places to live and raise their families, often
being challenged by difficult environmental circumstances. It is clear that more sustainable forms of develop-
ment must be created across the globe.
Individuals and communities face uncertainties related to their abilities to survive and prosper. The world
is trending in the direction of greater wealth inequality, more widely divergent spatial concentrations of poverty
and affluence, a growing underclass facing little opportunity for improving their lot, and increasing racial,
ethnic, class, and religious hostilities. Achieving long-term sustainable development is only possible if these
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642 EPILOGUE
difficult human conditions are addressed. Otherwise, along with the inhumanity of not addressing these issues,
the best sustainability approaches will be over-run by sheer human need.
There is growing consensus that today’s and tomorrow’s challenges must be met with innovative ideas
and strong responses – to do nothing is not an option – but accomplishing everything that needs to be done,
including the urban form and human behavior paradigms that are required, is a daunting task. The growth of
the urban design field in recent years has been driven by increasing awareness that the design of cities has
enormous impacts on both environmental quality and the quality of people’s everyday lives, and growing under
standing that an urbanistic approach to city-building is necessary because of the complexity involved.
Accompanying the growth of the urban design field has been a proliferation of divergent theories about
how urban design practice should respond to current and projected future conditions. People now talk in
terms of multiple urbanisms: new urbanism, everyday urbanism, landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, to
name just the most dominant. Within the academy, this outpouring of theory has led to the emergence of
radically different ideological camps, wars over rights to academic territory, and a hardening of divisions be-
tween planning, architecture, and landscape architecture approaches to urban design. Within professional
practice, however, something very different seems to be going on, as Ken Greenberg so eloquently articulates
in the last piece in this Reader. Because practitioners are on the front line of actually confronting pressing
environmental and socio-economic issues on a project-by-project basis, they must make practical choices
about how best to proceed, and this usually means flexibility. Rather than adopting a singular theoretical
ideology, many practitioners take what is helpful from multiple theories and meld it together into an approach
that is tailored to the circumstances of a particular project. In general, urban design practice is becoming
more collaborative, participatory, and open-ended. Urban design products reflect this new flexibility: instead of
pre-determined and fixed masterplans the emphasis is now on urban structure framework plans that identify
and encapsulate over-arching design and planning goals for nurture over the long term, but whose specifics
can be adapted to changing socio-economic conditions as necessary. This is an approach that makes infinite
sense for the current times and will help maintain the relevance of the urban design field.
From the wealth of readings assembled here, it is clear that there is a copious and diverse literature relat-
ing to the urban design field. This book has focused on the most salient of what is considered the best and
most thought-provoking literature. Rather than assembling readings that bolster a particular approach to urban
design, we have sought to present a wide range of ideas, some of which complement or build upon each
other and some of which are at distinct odds with each other. The dissonance reflects the nature of the
contemporary urban design field. The reader should remember that each of the readings comes from larger
contexts, discourses, and debates that bear further exploration. The selections in this Reader are just samples.
Serious students will want to engage with the wider literature; to read the whole of Jane Jacobs and Kevin
Lynch, and, if for nothing else than to realize how wrongly focused design fields can become, the whole of
Le Corbusier. We hope that the further readings suggested with each selection provide a good roadmap for
how to engage with the larger literature. As well, there is a wealth of information about what urban design
practitioners around the world are actually designing – projects, plans, design guidance, and visually based
design decision-making processes – that is available in print and on-line.
As we observed in the first edition of The Urban Design Reader and still firmly believe, for urban design-
ers, learning from observed reality is just as important as being grounded in the literature. Directly looking at
and experiencing cities is perhaps the best way to learn about the relationship between urban form and human
activity in all of its beautiful complexity. Experience of cities, their elements, and their peoples allows an urban
designer to build up a repertoire of precedents and urban form possibilities that are not abstract but directly
known. Immersed in the experience of the city, the urban connoisseur more deeply understands the success
and limitations of what has come before and what is possible. As well, valuable knowledge about form dimensions
and relationships comes from experiencing spatial forms in relation to one’s own bodily capacities and one’s
own perceptions. In other words, it is important to get out there and experience cities—the more the better.
9780415668071_Z01.indd 642 10-26-2012 3:22:13 PM

Illustration credits
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint illustrations in this
book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and
will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. Following is copyright informa-
tion for the plates and illustrations that appear in this book.
PART ONE: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS IN URBAN DESIGN
BACON. Figure 1: Florence. Illustration by Alois K. Strobl, from Design of Cities by Edmund Bacon. Copyright
© 1967, 1974 by Edmund N. Bacon. Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA)
Inc. Figure 2: The Capitoline Hill before reconstruction by Michelangelo; and Figure 3: The Campidoglio by
Michelangelo. Illustrations by Joseph Aronson, from Design of Cities by Edmund Bacon. Copyright ©
1967, 1974 by Edmund N. Bacon. Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
HOWARD. All images from Garden Cities of To-morrow by Ebenezer Howard (1902). Public domain.
PERRY. All images from “The Neighborhood Unit,” from Neighborhood and Community Planning: Regional
Survey Volume VII – Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, by Clarence A. Perry (New York: Russell
Sage Foundation, 1929). Reprinted by permission of the Russell Sage Foundation.
PART TWO: FOUNDATIONS OF THE FIELD
CULLEN. Serial Vision from The Concise Townscape, by Gordon Cullen (London: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1961). Copyright © 1961 by Elsevier. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis.
LYNCH. All images from Image of the City, by Kevin Lynch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960, pp. 1–13,
46–49, 83–90). Copyright © 1960 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of the MIT Press.
ALEXANDER. All images from “A City Is Not a Tree,” Architectural Forum (vol. 122, no. 1, pp. 58–61, April
1965). Architectural Forum ceased publication in 1974. Every effort was made to get reprint permission
through subsequent copyright holders of Architectural Forum and Christopher Alexander. Unfortunately
we were unsuccessful in locating either copyright holder.
ROWE and KOETTER. All images from Collage City, by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter (1978). Public domain.
WHYTE. Typical Sighting Map. From The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William H. Whyte (New
York: Project for Public Spaces, 2001; original 1980). Copyright © 1980 by William H. Whyte. Reprinted
by permission of the estate of William H. Whyte and The Project for Public Spaces.
PART THREE: GROWTH OF A PLACE AGENDA
KELBAUGH. Illustration from “Critical Regionalism: An Architecture of Place,” from Repairing the American
Metropolis: Common Place Revisited, by Douglas Kelbaugh (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press,
2002). Copyright © 2002 by the University of Washington Press. Reprinted by permission of the University
of Washington Press.
9780415668071_Z02.indd 643 10-26-2012 3:22:10 PM

644 Illustration credits
SCHEER. All images from The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for Planners and Architects, by Brenda
Case Scheer (Chicago: Planners Press, 2010). Copyright © 2010 by The American Planning Association
and Brenda Case Scheer. Reprinted by permission of Brenda Case Scheer.
ELLIN. The Axes of Postmodern Urbanism, from Postmodern Urbanism, by Nan Ellin (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1999). Copyright © 1999 by Princeton Architectural Press Inc. Reprinted by permission
of Princeton Architectural Press through the Copyright Clearance Center.
PART FOUR: DESIGN ISSUES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT
FRANK, ENGELKE, SCHMID: Image from Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment
on Physical Activity, by Lawrence Frank, Peter Engelke, and Thomas Schmid (Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 2003). Copyright © 2003 by Lawrence D. Frank and Peter O. Engelke. Reprinted by permission
of Island Press.
BENTLEY. The Capital Accumulation Cycle, from “Profit and Place,” from Urban Transformations – Power,
People and Urban Design, by Ian Bentley (London: Routledge, 1999). Copyright © 1999 Routledge.
Reprinted by permission of Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
ELSHESHTAWY. Figure 1: 1962 Master Plan of Dubai. Copyright © Harris Architects. Reprinted by permis-
sion of the author Yasser Elsheshtawy. Figures 2–7 reprinted by permission of the author/photographer
Yasser Elsheshtawy.
9780415668071_Z02.indd 644 10-26-2012 3:22:10 PM

EDITORIAL CREDITS
MICHAEL LARICE was responsible for writing the following sections of the Urban Design Reader, Second
Edition: Prologue; Introductions to Parts Two, Three and Four; Selection Introductions for the following authors:
(Part One) Bacon, Abu-Lughod; (Part Two) Marshall, Lynch-Image of the City, Alexander, Venturi and Scott
Brown, Rowe and Koetter, Whyte, Lynch-Dimensions of Performance; (Part Three) Norberg-Schulz, Oldenburg,
Kelbaugh, Ellin, Koolhaas; (Part Four) Gillham, Lozano, Bentley, Elsheshtawy, Campanella; (Part Five) Berger,
Newman et al.; and (Part Six) Kreiger, Sorkin.
ELIZABETH MACDONALD was responsible for writing the following sections of the Urban Design Reader,
Second Edition: Epilogue; Introductions to Parts One, Five, and Six; Selection Introductions for the following
authors: (Part One) Berman, Olmsted, Sitte, Howard, Wilson, Perry, Le Corbusier; (Part Two) Cullen, J. Jacobs,
A. Jacobs, Jacobs and Appleyard, Vernez Moudon; (Part Three) Relph, Case Scheer, CNU, Crawford; (Part
Four) Frank et al., Madanipour; (Part Five) McHarg, Hough, Waldheim, Beatley; and (Part Six) Macdonald,
Punter, Greenburg.
9780415668071_Z03.indd 645 10-26-2012 5:16:04 PM

9780415668071_Z03.indd 646 10-26-2012 3:22:06 PM
Copyright Information
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint selections in this book.
The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will
undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. Following is copyright information.
PART ONE: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS IN URBAN DESIGN
BACON Bacon, Edmund N., “Upsurge of the Renaissance,” from Design of Cities (New York: Penguin, 1974,
pp. 111–112, 115–118, 123, 126). Copyright © 1967, 1974 by Edmund N. Bacon. Used by permission
of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ABU-LUGHOD Abu-Lughod, Janet, “The Islamic City: Historic Myths, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary
Relevance,” Journal of Middle East Studies (vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 155–157, 160–165, 167–173, 1987).
Copyright © 1987 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University
Press and the author Janet Abu-Lughod.
BERMAN Berman, Marshall, “The Family of Eyes” and “Mire of the Macadam,” from All That is Solid Melts
into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin Group (USA), 1982, pp. 148–164). Copyright
© 1982 by Marshall Berman. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author
(North America). Reprinted by permission of Verso, an imprint of New Left Books Ltd (UK, Commonwealth
and World English language).
OLMSTED Olmsted, Frederick Law, “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns,” American Social Science
Association (1870). Public domain.
SITTE Sitte, Camillo, “The Meager and Unimaginative Character of Modern City Plans” and “Artistic Limitations
of Modern City Planning,” from City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889). Public domain.
HOWARD Howard, Ebenezer, “Author’s Introduction” and “The Town-Country Magnet” from Garden Cities
of Tomorrow (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965, edited by F.J. Osborn, introduction by Lewis Mumford,
pp. 41–57). Copyright © 1965 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission of
The MIT Press. Original 1902 text now in the public domain.
WILSON Wilson, William H., “Ideology and Aesthetics” from The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 75–95). Copyright © 1989 Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.
PERRY Perry, Clarence A., “The Neighborhood Unit” from Volume VII: Neighborhood and Community Plan-
ning. Regional Survey of New York and Its Environs (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1929, pp.
22–60). Copyright © 1929 by the Russell Sage Foundation. Reprinted by permission of the Russell Sage
Foundation.
LE CORBUSIER Le Corbusier, “The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way” and “A Contemporary City,”
from The City of To-morrow and Its Planning (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987, original 1929,
pp. 41–50, 53–90, 93–105, 107–110). Copyright © 1987 by Dover Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permis
sion of Dover Publications, Inc.
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648 Copyright Information
PART TWO: FOUNDATIONS OF THE FIELD
MARSHALL Marshall, Richard, “Josep Lluís Sert’s Urban Design Legacy,” from Josep Lluís Sert: The Archi-
tect of Urban Design, 1953–1969 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 130–142), edited
by Eric Mumford and Hashim Sar. Copyright © 2008 by the Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission
of the Yale University Press.
CULLEN Cullen, Gordon, “Introduction,” from The Concise Townscape (London: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1961, pp. 7–17). Copyright © 1961 by Elsevier. Reprinted by permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.
LYNCH Lynch, Kevin, “The Image of the Environment” and “The City Image and Its Elements,” from The Image
of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960, pp. 1–13, 46–49, 83–90). Copyright © 1960 by the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission of The MIT Press.
JACOBS Jacobs, Jane, “Author’s Introduction” and “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact,” from The Death And
Life Of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Copyright © 1961,
1989 by Jane Jacobs. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
ALEXANDER Alexander, Christopher, “A City is Not a Tree” Architectural Forum (vol. 122, no. 1, pp. 58–61
April 1965). Architectural Forum ceased publication in 1974. Every effort was made to get reprint permis-
sion through subsequent copyright holders of Architectural Forum and Christopher Alexander. Unfortunately
we were unsuccessful in locating either copyright holder.
VENTURI AND SCOTT BROWN Venturi, Robert and Scott Brown, Denise, “The Significance for A & P Park-
ing Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas,” from Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972,
pp. 310–321). Copyright © 1972 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission
of The MIT Press.
ROWE AND KOETTER Rowe, Colin and Koetter, Fred, “Collage City,” from The Architectural Review (vol.
158, no. 942, pp. 66–91, August 1975). Copyright © 1975 by The Architectural Review. Reprinted by
permission of The Architectural Review.
WHYTE Whyte, William H., “Introduction,” “The Life of Plazas,” and “Sitting Space,” from The Social Life of Small
Urban Spaces (New York: Project for Public Spaces, 2001; original 1980). Copyright © 1980 by William
H. Whyte. Reprinted by permission of the estate of William H. Whyte and The Project for Public Spaces.
JACOBS Jacobs, Allan B., “Conclusion: Great Streets and City Planning,” from Great Streets (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 311–314). Copyright © 1993 by the MIT Press. Reprinted by permission of
the MIT Press.
JACOBS AND APPLEYARD Jacobs, Allan B. and Appleyard, Donald, “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto,”
from Journal of the American Planning Association (vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 112–120, Winter 1987). Copyright
© 1987 by the American Planning Association. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis, Ltd (http://
www.tandf.co.uk/journals) and on behalf of the American Planning Association.
LYNCH Lynch, Kevin, “Dimensions of Performance,” from Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1988, pp. 111–120). Copyright © 1984 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission
of the MIT Press.
MOUDON Moudon, Anne Vernez, “A Catholic Approach to Organizing What Urban Designers Should
Know,” from Journal of Planning Literature (vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 331–349, 1992). Copyright © 1992 by Sage
Publications Inc. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc.
PART THREE: GROWTH OF A PLACE AGENDA
RELPH Relph, Edward, “Prospects for Places,” from Place and Placelessness (London: Pion Limited, 1976,
pp. 141–147). Copyright © 1976 by Pion Limited, London. Reprinted by permission of the Taylor &
Francis Group.
NORBERG-SCHULZ Norberg-Schulz, Christian, “The Phenomenon of Place,” from Architectural Association
Quarterly (vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 3–10, 1976). First published by Architectural Association Quarterly and
9780415668071_Z04.indd 648 10-26-2012 3:22:02 PM

Copyright Information 649
reprinted by permission of the Architectural Association in London, UK. Every effort was made to get reprint
permission through the estate of Christian Norberg-Schulz, who passed away in April, 2000. Unfortunately
we were unsuccessful in locating the estate.
OLDENBURG Oldenburg, Ray, “The Problem of Place in America,” from The Great Good Place: Cafes,
Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (New
York: Marlowe & Co. / Avalon Publishing, 1999). Copyright © 1989, 1997, 1999 by Ray Oldenburg.
Appears by permission of Perseus Books Group and Avalon Publishing Group.
KELBAUGH Kelbaugh, Douglas S., “Critical Regionalism: An Architecture of Place,” from Repairing the American
Metropolis: Common Place Revisited (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002). Copyright © 2002
by the University of Washington Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Washington Press.
SCHEER Brenda Case Scheer “A Crisis in the Urban Landscape,” and “The Origins and Theory of Type”
and “Legitimacy and Control” from The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for Planners and Architects
(Chicago: Planners Press, 2010, pp. 1–25, 64–74). Copyright © 2010 by The American Planning Associ
ation. Reprinted by permission of the American Planning Association.
CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM Congress for the New Urbanism, Charter of the New Urbanism.
Copyright © 1993 by the Congress for the New Urbanism. Reprinted by permission of the Congress for
the New Urbanism.
ELLIN Ellin, Nan, “Themes of Postmodern Urbanism,” from Postmodern Urbanism (New York: Princeton Archi
tectural Press, 1999, pp. 154–193). Copyright © 1999 by Princeton Architectural Press Inc. Reprinted
by permission of Princeton Architectural Press.
CRAWFORD Crawford, Margaret, “Introduction,” “Preface: The Current State of Everyday Urbanism,” and
“Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Public Life” from Everyday Urbanism, Expanded Edition (New
York: The Monacelli Press, 2008). Copyright © 1999, 2008 by The Monacelli Press. Reprinted by permis-
sion of The Monacelli Press.
KOOLHAAS Koolhaas, Rem, “The Generic City” and “Whatever Happened to Urbanism” reprinted from S,
M, L, XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (New York: Monacelli Press, 1991). Copyright © 1995 by
Rem Koolhaas and the Monacelli Press Inc. Published by kind permission of the author Rem Koolhaas and
the publisher Monacelli Press, Inc.
PART FOUR: DESIGN ISSUES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT
GILLHAM, Gillham, Oliver, “What is Sprawl?” from The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002, pp. 3–17, 23). Copyright © 2002 by Oliver Gillham. Reprinted with
the permission of Island Press.
LOZANO Lozano, Eduardo, “Density in Communities, or the Most Important Factor in Building Urbanity,” from
Community Design and the Culture of Cities: The Crossroad and the Wall (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1990, pp. 154–184). Copyright © 1990 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with the
permission of Cambridge University Press.
FRANK, ENGELKE, AND SCHMID Frank, Lawrence, Engelke, Peter, and Schmid, Thomas, “Introduction,”
“Physical Activity and Public Health,” and “Urban Design Characteristics” from Health and Community
Design (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003). Copyright © Lawrence D. Frank and Peter O. Engelke.
Reprinted by permission of Island Press.
MADANIPOUR Madanipour, Ali, “Introduction,” “The Changing Nature of Public Space in City Centres,” and
“Whose Public Space?” from Whose Public Space? International Case Studies in Urban Design and
Development (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010, pp. 1–15, 17–19, 237–242). Copyright © 2010 by Ali
Madanipour. Reprinted by permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.
BENTLEY Bentley, Ian, “Profit and Place” from Urban Transformations: Power, People, and Urban Design
(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1999, pp. 69–94). Copyright © 1999 by Routledge. Reprinted by permission
of the Taylor & Francis Group.
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650 Copyright Information
ELSHESHTAWY Elsheshtawy, Yasser, Urban Dualities in the Arab World. Selection written for The Urban
Design Reader, 2nd edition. Copyright © 2012 by Yasser Elsheshtawy. Printed by permission of Yasser
Elsheshtawy.
CAMPANELLA Campanella, Thomas, “The Urbanism of Ambition” and “China Reinvents the City” from The
Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2008, pp. 13–25, 281–301). Copyright © 2008 by Princeton Architectural Press Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Princeton Architectural Press.
PART FIVE: ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
MCHARG McHarg, Ian, “An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Architecture Magazine
(vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 105–107, 1967). Copyright © 1967 by the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Reprinted by permission of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
HOUGH Hough, Michael, “Principles for Regional Design,” from Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the
Regional Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 179–181, 183, 186–194, 195,
210–211). Copyright © 1990 by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.
WALDHEIM Waldheim, Charles, “Landscape as Urbanism” from The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New
York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006, pp. 37–53). Copyright © 1990 by Princeton Architectural Press.
BERGER Berger, Alan, “Discourses for Landscape and Urbanization,” “The Production of Waste Landscapes,”
and “Drosscape Explained” from Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (New York: Princeton Archi
tectural Press, 2006, pp. 26–31, 39–53, 236–241). Copyright © 1990 by Princeton Architectural Press.
BEATLEY Beatley, Timothy, “Planning for Sustainability in European Cities: A Review of Practice in Leading
Cities” from Stephen M. Wheeler and Timothy Beatley (eds), The Sustainable Urban Development Reader
(London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 249–258). Copyright © 2003 by Timothy Beatley. Reprinted by permission
of the Taylor & Francis Group.
NEWMAN, BEATLEY AND BOYER Newman, Peter, Beatley, Timothy, and Boyer, Heather, “Urban Resilience:
Cities of Fear and Hope” from Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change (Washing-
ton, DC: Island Press, 2009, pp. 1–14, 55–85, 147–148). Copyright © 2009 by Island Press. Reprinted
by permission of Island Press.
PART SIX: URBAN DESIGN PRACTICE NOW AND TOMORROW
KRIEGER Krieger, Alex, “Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?” from Alex Krieger and William S.
Saunders (eds), Urban Design (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 113–130).
Copyright © 2012 President and Fellows of Harvard College/Alex Krieger. Reprinted by permission of the
University of Minnesota Press, the Harvard Design Magazine and Alex Krieger. This essay originally ap-
peared in Harvard Design Magazine, no. 24, “The Origins and Evolution of ‘Urban Design,’ 1956–2006.”
MACDONALD Macdonald, Elizabeth, “Designing the Urban Design Studio.” Selection written for The Urban
Design Reader, 2nd edition. Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Macdonald. Printed with permission of Eliza-
beth Macdonald.
PUNTER Punter, John, “Conclusions,” from Design Guidelines in American Cities: A Review of Design
Policies and Guidance in Five West Coast Cities (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999, pp.
195–215). Copyright © 1999 by Liverpool University Press. Reprinted by permission of Liverpool Univer-
sity Press.
SORKIN Sorkin, Michael, “The End(s) of Urban Design,” from Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders (eds),
Urban Design (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 155–182). Copyright © 2012
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Copyright Information 651
President and Fellows of Harvard College/Michael Sorkin. Reprinted by permission of the University of
Minnesota Press, the Harvard Design Magazine, and Michael Sorkin. This essay originally appeared in
Harvard Design Magazine, no. 25, “Urban Design Now.”
GREENBERG Greenberg, Kenneth, “A Third Way for Urban Design,” from Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders
(eds), Urban Design (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 201–207). Copyright ©
2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota and Copyright © 2012 by Kenneth Greenberg.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Minnesota Press, the Harvard Design Magazine, and Kenneth
Greenberg.
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INDEX
Page numbers in BOLD represent Figures.
Abbott, C. 603, 605 apparency 131 Barnett, J. 589

Abrams, C.: and Kepes, G. 111 Appleyard, D. 244; biography 218; and Baroque design 12
Abu Dhabi 377, 475–6, 482–3, 488–94; Jacobs, A.B. 105, 215, 218–28; and Baroque planning 47
Central Market 490–3, 491, 492; Lynch, K. 606; writings 219 Barr, A. 196
development 488–9; government 488; Arab city 13–15, 19, 377, 477–94; Barre, F. 339
islands 489; Masdar City 489; museum characterizations 477; framing 478–9; Barth, J. 336
designers 489; population 490; income differences 482; inequality Bartlett, F. 164
skyline 490 479–81; labor mobility 482; migration Barzun, J. 299
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) 482; oil wealth 481–2; uneven Battery Park City 624
488 urbanization 481–2, see also Baudelaire 26–34
Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC) Islamic city Baumeister, R. 46, 47, 48
488 Arab Spring 479 Beasley, L. 26, 488
Abu-Lughod, J. 3–4, 13–24, 478; biography archetype 308 Beatley, T. 517, 558–68; biography 558–9,
14; writings 14 Archigram 629 570; books 559; Boyer, H. and
advertising 291 architects 169–70, 319–20; artists 466; Newman, P. 569–78
aesthetic pleasure 301–2 Chinese 503; experts 466; key figure beauty 66, 69, 75
Africa 16, 17 189; landscape 250; planner 109–10 Beaux-Arts 298
African Americans 353 Architectural Review 108, 154, 220 Behavorial Risk Factor Surveillance System
Ahrendt, H. 193 architecture 283, 298; conventional 301; (BRFSS) 425
Ahwahnee Principles 264, 328 crisis 180, 184–8; elements 50–1; Beirut 23
air 40 modern 169–70, 195; persuasion 171; Benjamin, W. 30
Akbar, J.: and Al-Hathloul, S. 478 traditional 301 Benn, S.I.: and Gaus, G.F. 450
Aladdin Casino 174 Arendt, H. 448 Bennett, E. 63
Alexander, C. 104, 152–66, 248–9, 270; Ariès, P. 289 Bentley, I. 376, 459–74; biography 460
background 152; biography 153; design Aristotle 447 Berger, A. 517, 544–54; biography 545;
process 152–3; et al 238; writings Aronson, J.H. 8, 9, 10, 11 books 545
152–4 art 47, 195; relationship 119 Bergson, H. 176
All That is Solid Melts into Air (Berman) 4 Athenian democracy 351–2 Berlin, I. 185–6, 188
Allen, S. 536, 537 Atlanta 539 Berman, M. 4, 25–34; biography 26;
Amalfi 51 attractions 55 writings 26
Ambrose, P. 462 Atwood, C.B. 73 Bianca, S. 14–15
American Association of State and Australian cities 575 bicycle use 563
Highway Transportation Officials automobiles 142, 431–5 biofuels 511
(AASHTO) 430 Aymonino, C.: et al 247 biogas 565
American Dream 384–5 Blaesser, B.W. 603
American Heart Association 425 Baab, D.G. 605 Boardman, P. 527
American Institute of Architects 108 backyard industry 162 Bollnow, O.F. 281
American Park and Outdoor Art Bacon, E.N. 3, 5–12; biography 6 Boston 39–40, 66, 404
Association (APOAA) 69 Bailey, L.H. 66 BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) 594
American Parks Movement 36, 37 Bakhtin, M. 347, 349–50 Boyer, H.: biography 570; Newman, P. and
American Renaissance 73 Balfour, A. 304 Beatley, T. 569–78
American Social Science Association 38 Balmori, D. 339 Boyer, P. 67
Ammanati, B. 8 Balzac 28–9 Bradley, J.: and Katz, B. 393
Amsterdam 560, 561–3; GWL-Terrein 563 Banfield, E. 162 Brand, S. 302
ancient arcades 47–8 Barcelona 537 Brenner, N.: and Keill, R. 480
Angélil, M.: and Graham, S. 340 Barker, R.G. 407 bricolage 191–4, 196
apartments 404–5 Barnes, P.: and Schoenborn, C. 419 British development plans 615–16
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654 index
British government 615 Chermayeff, S.: and Soltan, J. 106, 115 City Planning According to Artistic Principles
British home-owners 471 Chicago 71, 504 (Sitte) 4
British practice 614–16 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition city rebuilding 141; economics 141
Broadacre City 176 (1893) 62 The City of To-morrow and its Planning
Broadbent, G. 239 China’s cities 377, 497–512; ambition (Le Corbusier) 90–1
Brooklyn Park 43 498–504; architects 503; biofuels 511; cityscape 52
Brower, D. 269, 270 capitalism 502; central government Cityscape (2008) exhibition 487
Brown, C. 340 511; Chongming Island 512; civility 400–1
Brown, W. 132 construction industry 499–501; Clarke, P.W. 336; and Dutton, T.A. 337
Brunelleschi, F. 6–8 consumerism 501; contemporary climate 521–2
Brunner, A. 69 urbanism 504; Dongtang 512; economy codes: form-based 323–6
van Brunt, H. 472 501; environmental impact 510–11; codes, covenants and restrictions (CC&Rs)
budgets 615 expansion 497, 501; grand public 605, 611
Buffalo fair 74 works 507; housing 499, 506; Codman, H. 37
building lots: high price 50; irregularly- landscape 501; migration 502; motor Cohen, S.: and Zysman, J. 550
shaped 48; rectangular 48 vehicle market 500; natural resources collage 195–6
buildings 184, 220, 226–7, 471–3; green consumption 510; pollution 509–10; Collage City (Rowe and Koetter) 178–9, 634
574; layout 472; purchasing 472–3; post-Mao 501; poverty 502; private Collapse (Diamond) 571–2
specialization and resale 471–2; type property rights 498; rags-to-riches colonialism 477, 478
310–12, 313, 320, 474 fable 501; rail system 504; river dolphin combined heat and power (CHP) 565–6
built form 415 509; roads 499–500; scale 505–6; Communist Manifesto 30
Burke, E. 295 segregation 509; self-made millionaires community 223–4, 228, 287, 290; design
Burnham, D.H. 63, 69, 72, 75, 506 502–3; Shanghai 499–500; Shenzhen 417; gated 480–1
Bush, G.W. 549 504; spectacle 507–8; speed 504–5; Concise Townscape (Cullen) 118, 243
Business Improvement District (BID) 623 sprawl 500, 508–9; suburbs 508–9; Conghua, L. 501
sustainability 509–12; urban revolution Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)
Caesar’s Palace 174–5 377, 498–501 328–31, 627, 630–1
Caffin, C.H. 74 Choay, F. 239 contemporary city 90–9, 481; open spaces
Calgary 632 Chongming Island 512 97; plan 96–7; population 94, 97; site
California’s Department of Parks and CIAM (Congrès Internationaux 94; station 96; straight line 93; street
Recreation 551 d’Architecture Moderne) 219–21, 95; traffic 95–6
Calthorpe, P. 54, 329, 437 620–1, 631 contextualism 336–7
Cambridge 161, 162 Ciolek, M. 204 Conzen, M.R.G. 248, 319–20
Cambridge University 161 cities 119, 142, 152, 217, 221–2, 447, 453, Copenhagen 563–4; City Bikes 563
Campanella, T.J. 377, 497–512; 572, 638; artificial 154–5, 157–8, 166; Cordell, A.J. 526
biography 497 building 142, 179; contemporary Cornacchia, J. 144
Campidoglio 8, 10, 11 see contemporary city; design 142; Corner, J. 536–7, 592
Can Our Cities Survive? (Sert) 108–9 dwellers 572; good 105, 228, 229–34; corridors 330
Canada 529, 637; Calgary 632; Saskatoon, infrastructure 591–2; magnet 55; country life 55
Saskatchewan 529; Toronto 527–8; natural 154–5, 159, 161; semi-lattices country magnet 56
Vancouver 602, 637 155–7, 157, 158–63, 159, 164; country vs. town 55–61
Caniggia, G. 248, 319 systems 155–6; trees 155–8, 157, Cowan, S.: and Van der Ryn, S. 520
capital accumulation 459, 462–3; cycle 463 159, 163–6, 164 Cox, H. 268, 269–70
capitalism 462–74, 502; by-product quality citizenship 352 Crawford, M. 264, 344–56; biography 345;
470–1; deskilling 467, 469; economies City Beautiful Movement 4, 62–77, 428–9, writings 345
of scale 465, 468; labor costs 465–8; 620; activists 64; advocates 64–9, 77; Crisis (GSD) 180
land availability 464–5; marketplace aesthetics 71; battles 65; beauty and Critical Regionalism 262, 296–306; attitude
464; material choice 468–9; richest 464 utility 69; civic centres 74–5; class 70; 298; criticism 303–6; definition 296,
Capitoline Hill 8, 9 criticism 63; dismissed 62; efficiency 298, 299; literature 297; sense of craft
Carson, R. 622 69; endorsers 67; environmentalism 67; 302–3; sense of history 301–2; sense
cathedrals 315 experts 69–70; ideology 62–3, 64, of limits 303; sense of nature 300–1,
A Catholic Approach to Organizing What 65–71; laymen 70; leaders 66, 69; living 300; sense of place 299–300
Urban Designers Should Know (Moudon) organism 65–6; natural beauty 71–2; Cuff, D. 506
235 optimism 70; planners 72; programs Cullen, G. 103–4, 118–24, 243, 270
Cavallo, D. 67 64; projects 62, 65; proponents 65;
Celebration 631 reformers 66; solution 65; women 64 d’Agnolo, B. 7
Center for Disease Control and Prevention The City Beautiful Movement (Wilson) 63 Darwin, C. 67, 181, 182
(CDC) 423, 425 City Bikes 563 Davis, M. 350, 351, 493, 551
Center for Urban Form and Land Use City Form and Natural Process (Hough) 531 Davis, R. 302
Studies 248 city performance dimensions 231–4; access The Death and Life of Great American Cities
De Certeau, M. 346, 348–50 234; control 234; costs and benefits (Jacobs) 139, 621
Chandigarh 91 234; durability 231; efficiency 234; Debord, G. 346–7, 348
Charter of Athens 215, 219–20, 337 justice 234; sense 234; vitality 234 Defensible Space (Newman) 22–3
Charter of the New Urbanism 263–4, 328 city planning 46–7, 106, 141–2; decay 141, density 399–412; balance strategy 409–10;
Chase, J.L.: et al 344 142; limitations 51; new science 111; cultural values 412; daylight and
Chatham Village (Pittsburgh) 146–7 residential 147; technical 47 sunlight 408; dwelling types 412;
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index 655
European cities 401; high 399; interaction Emirates Airline 487 Garnier, T. 162
403; low 403; measures 399; New empiricism 240 Garreau, J. 392
York 401; overcrowding 399, 405–9; employment 402 Gauldie, S. 270
regulation 410–12; residential 401; enclaves 471 Gaus, G.F.: and Benn, S.I. 450
social and psychological effects 405–8; energy: renewable 565–6; strategy 575 Geddes, P. 394, 525, 527
spatial restriction 406; structure 401–2; Engelke, P.O.: biography 416; Schmid, T.L. Geddes, R. 114
thresholds 404; transportation 403–4; and Frank, L.D. 376, 415–38 Gehl, J. 204
US cities 401, 402, 403 engineer 191 Generic City 358, 361–72; airport 363;
Descartes, R. 452 Enlightenment 316–17, 318, 325 architecture 367–8; atrium 368;
Design of Cities (Bacon) 3, 5 environment 526; imageability 127, 129; buildings 367–8; climate 368–9; culture
Design for Ecological Democracy (Hester) 520 problems 517–19, 534, 558; 369; free style 364; geography 368–9;
Design with Nature (McHarg) 519–20 psychology 125–6 history 369; hotels 367; housing 364;
design review 605–11; implementation environment-behaviour studies 244–6; identity 361, 369; infrastructure 369;
610–11 influential figures 245 Lipservice 366; offices 367; pedestrians
designers 467; craft 467 Environmental Design Research 365; politics 365; population 363;
determinism 64–5 Association (EDRA) 245 program 367; quarters 366–7; roads
Developer’s Handbook 610 environmentalism 67 365; sociology 365–6; statistics 362;
dialization 347 epidemiological studies 422–3 urbanism 363–5, 370–2; waterfront
Diamond, J. 571–2 European cities 70–1, 558–68; density 401 366
discrimination 150 everyday life 346 genius loci (guardian spirit) 280
Disneyland 627 Everyday Urbanism 264, 344–56, 359, 375; Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 519
dissociation 166 concept 349; criticism 344; current geographies of exclusion 479
districts 330 state 349–50; definition 345–6; geology 521–2
Dober, R. 113 goal 347 Georgetown 150
Dongtang 512 Everyday Urbanism (Chase et al) 344–5 German cities 71
Downing, A.J. 36 The Evolution of Urban Form (Scheer) 308 German government 434
Downsview Park 541–2 Ewing, R. 381, 391 German words 282
dross 544, 545, 549 Explorations into Urban Structure (Webber) Geuze, A. 540
drosscape 535, 544, 545, 552–4; definition 249 Gibbon, E. 180–1
552; strategies 553–4 The Eyes of the Poor (Paris Spleen #26) Gibson, W. 546
Drosscape (Berger) 544, 545 Baudelaire 26–9, 31 Giedion, S. 110, 114, 277
Duany, A. 391 Gill, G. 487
Dubai 377, 475–6, 482–8, 493–4; buildings factories 469 Gillham, O. 376, 378–95; biography 378
484–5; expansion 484; Jumeirah family 290 Gimblett, B.K. 337
Gardens 487; masterplan 483–4, 483; Fernea, E.W. 21 Gladwell, M. 571
primitive 483; Satwa 486–8; Sheikh figure-ground drawings 178, 186–7, 307 Glass, R. 159–60
Zayed Road 485–6, 485, 486 Fitch, J.M. 211 Glassie, H. 247
Dubai Structural Plan 484 Florence 6–12, 7 Gleye, P.H. 337
Dubailand’s Bawadi development 484 Foege, W.: and McGinnis, J.M. 423 global city discourse 477–8, 479–80
Dubaization 482–3 form-production process 460 globalization 468, 475–7
Dunham-Jones, E.: and Williamson, J. 309 Foster Architects 490 von Goethe, J.W. 280, 493
Durand, J.N.L. 317–18; system 318 Foster, H. 338 Goffman, E. 202
Durrell, L. 280 Foster, N. 489 Good City Form (Lynch) 229
Dutton, T.A.: and Clarke, P.W. 337 Frampton, K. 167, 262, 296, 299, 539 Good, J. 69
dwelling 282 Frank, L.D.: biography 416; Engelke, P.O. Goodhart-Rendel, H.S. 470
and Schmid, T.L. 376, 415–38 Goodwin, R.N. 289, 291
East Harlem 147–9 Fraser, N. 351–2, 353 Gore, A. 569
Eckbo, G. 111 Frederick, J.G. 549 Gorky, M. 368
École Polytechnique 317 Free-Market.net 548 Gorringe, T. 572
Ecological Design (Van der Ryn and Cowan) Fresh Kills 541–2 Gorst, J. 57
520 Friedel, R. 572 Gothic style 170, 183–4
ecological resilience 573 Friedman, T.L. 510 Gottman, J. 622
Ecological Urbanism 535 Fuccaro, N. 478–9 Graham, S.: and Angélil, M. 340; and
ecology 232–3, 521–3; definition 521; Futurism 182 Marvin, S. 481
learning 233 Grand Central Station 155
economy: commodity 33 Galbraith, J.K. 221 Grant, G. 269
ecosystem 232–3 Garden Cities 4, 53–61, 97–8; agriculture Great Streets (Jacobs) 214
Eisenman, P. 305 60; building lots 58; Central Park 57–8; Greek architecture 317
elecronic media 305 centre 59; charitable/philanthropic Greek civilization 448
Eliot, C. 37 institutions 61; commodities 60; Crystal Green Book (AASHTO) 430; guidelines 430
Ellin, N. 264, 332–40; biography 333 Palace 57–8; Grand Avenue 59; growth green buildings 574
Elliott, D. 200 60; idea 53–4; ideal 53; movement green urbanism 564–7
Ellis, J. 309 215, 220; outer ring 59; park 59; Green Urbanism (Beatley) 558, 559–60
Ellul, J. 269 population 58; rents 57; rural belt 58; Greenberg, K. 584, 635–42; biography 636
Elsheshtawy, Y. 14, 377, 475–94; six parts 57; trade 60 GreenWheels 562
biography 476 garden suburbs 78 Greenwich Village 149
9780415668071_Z05.indd 655 10-26-2012 3:21:57 PM

656 index
Groningen 561, 565 Human Development Index 481 Jordy, W. 188

Groth, P. 153 Humphrey, N. 301–2 Journal of the American Planning
ground plans 48 Hunter, A. 19 Association 218
Gruen, V. 288 Hurricane Katrina 573 Journal of the Medical Association 427
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 481–2 Husserl, E. 272 Jumeirah Gardens 487
Gummer, J. 614 Huxtable, A.L. 335–6
Kahn, L. 280, 524
Habe, R. 605, 608 identification 281–2 Kallmann, G. 281
Habermas, J. 351, 448 The Image of the City (Lynch) 125–6, 244 Kaplan, A.: and Ross, K. 348
Hadrian’s Villa 189 image studies 244 Katz, B.: and Bradley, J. 393
Hakim, B.S. 15 imageability 125–37; definition 125; Keeble, L. 616
Hall, E.T. 406 districts 133; edges 133; elements 125, Keill, R.: and Brenner, N. 480
Hall, P. 416, 572 132–5; environment 127, 129; Kelbaugh, D.S. 262, 296–306, 349;
Hall, S. 461 landmarks 134; nodes 133–4, 135; biography 297
Hannover 565 paths 133, 135; quality 136–7; shifting Kelsey, A. 74
Hardy, S.: and Rosenzweig, R. 64 135–6; structure 130–1, 137 Van Kempen, R.: and Marcuse, H. 480
Harlin, L. 353 An Inconvenient Truth (Gore) 569 Kentlands 328
Harris, C. 115 India 17; Chandigarh 91; Rashtrapathi Kenworthy, J.: and Newman, P. 560
Harris, J. 483–4 Bhawan 122 Kepes, G.: and Abrams, C. 111
Harris, K. 287–8 individualism 447 Ibn-Khaldun 16
Harrisburg League for Municipal industrialization 294 Kilbridge, M. 115
Improvements 69 Ingersoll, R. 336 Kilpatrick, F.P. 132
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) innovation 466–7 King, R. 353
106–7, 108, 110, 113–16, 180, 620; insta-city 475 Kirkham, G. 66
conference 587–8, 638–9; Urban Design Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Koetter, F. 179; biography 179; and
course 110, 115–16 433; guidelines 433 Rowe, C. 104, 178–97, 624
Harvey, D. 262, 479, 492 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 482 Koolhaas, R.L. 168, 264–5, 358–72, 484,
Al-Hathloul, S.: and Akbar, J. 478 International Organization for Migration 506, 538–9, 541, 590, 633; biography
Haussmann, G.E. 4, 25–8, 36 (IOM) 482 359; texts 359
Hayden, D. 289 International Society for Individual Liberty Kostof, S. 242
health 415–38; conceptual model 419–21, (ISL) 548 Kostritsky, P. 146
420; cycling 427–8; elderly 425; investors 472–3 Krieger, A. 339, 583, 585–94; biography
experts 416; longevity 421; medical Islam 15 585–6
costs 425; physical activity 418–28; Islamic city 13–24, 478; Africa 16, 17; Krier brothers 247, 319
problems 417; public agencies 419, boys’ gangs 23; conditions 24; Krier, L. 307
424; walking 427 definition 16; dress 21; elements 24; Kuhne, E. 493
Health and Community Design (Frank et al ) family 21; gender segregation 14, 18, Kujala, U.: et al 423
415 20–2; harah (dead-end street) 21–2; Kurtz, S. 268
Heckscher, A. 176 India 17; isnad (chain) 15; law 19–20; Kwartler, M. 589
Heidegger, M. 274–9, 282 market/bazaar 16; mosque 16; nadorgi
Heidelberg 566 (watchman) 22; neighborhood 18, Lai, R.T.-Y. 603, 611
Hesse, H. 281 22–3; physical distance 19; planners land 384; use 309, 312, 321–3; value 402
Hester, R. 520, 528 24; property laws 18; residential Landis, J.D.: and Sawicki, D.S. 230
high-speed rail 562 segregation 20; social distance 19, landscape 276, 278, 311, 525–33, 534;
Hilberseimer, L. 158 see also Arab city in-between 547–9; internal/external
Hillier, B. 249 Island Press 570 546–7; liminal 547; modern 525, 533;
Hindu areas 17 isolation 288–9 post-industrial 550; regional identity
Hinshaw, M. 609 Italian architects 319 525–7; sustainable 532; US 546
Hiss, T. 527 Izenour, S. 168–9 landscape urbanism 534–42, 545, 592;
historicism 337 critics 535; origins 537
Hobbes, R.: Moore, S. and Wallington, T. Jackson, J.B. 153 The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Waldheim)
573 Jackson, K.T. 384 534
Hobbs, B. 149 Jacobs, A.B. 105, 214–17, 218; and Langer, S. 132, 283
Hölderlin, F. 282 Appleyard, D. 105, 215, 218–28; Larson, M.S. 306
Hollywood 151 biography 218–19; writings 214 Las Vegas 104, 167–8, 172; casinos 173,
Holston, J. 356 Jacobs, J. 63, 104, 139–51, 155, 162, 429, 174–6; desert 175; Fremont Street 173,
Hough, M. 517, 525–33; biography 525; 532, 576, 593, 621–2, 633, 634; 174; gambling room 175; hotel 175;
writings 526 biography 139, 140; and Mumford, L. lighting 175; map 173; styles 174–5
house 316; town 404 111; writings 139, 140 Las Vegas Strip 169, 173–4; architecture
housing 219–21 Japanese architects 303 173–4; highway system 173; signs 174
Howard, E. 4, 53–61, 103, 220, 550; Jeanneret, C.-E. see Le Corbusier Latour, B. 554
biography 53 Jefferson, T. 216 layered transparency mapping 519
Hubbert, M.K. 569 Jencks, C. 537 Le Corbusier 4, 38, 45, 90–9, 113, 169,
Hubbert Peak (Oil) Theory 569 Johnson Fain and Pereira Associates 340 188, 196; biography 90; figure-ground
Hudnut, J. 110 Johnson, H. 268 drawing 186–7; ideas 91; streets 431;
human development 233 Johnson, P. 206 writings 91
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index 657
Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi and Scott megaprojects 480, 484–6 housing scheme 85; industrial unit 83,
Brown) 167 Metropolitan Museum of Art 209 83, 84, 85; locality 87–8; model 146–7;
Ledrut, R. 347 metropolitan regions 330, 393–4 open spaces 86–7; playground 86–7;
Lefaivre, L.: and Tzonis, A. 262, 296 Michelangelo 8–10, 11 principles 80; recreation space 83, 85;
Leferbvre, H. 346–7, 348–50, 353, 463 Michelozzo, B. 7 residential environment 80; schools 85;
Lerner, M. 287 Middle East 476; bazaar 171 shopping districts 85; street system 86
Lerup, L. 549, 552 Middle Eastern city see Arab city neo-liberal urbanization 480
Letchworth Garden City 54 Middlesborough 159–61; neighborhoods neoclassicism 72–6, 298
Levi-Strauss, C. 191–2, 195–6 160; Waterloo neighborhood 160, 160 Neptune 8
Lewis, P. 546–7 Millennium 183–4 Netherlands 613
Ley, D.: and Mills, C. 338 Miller, M. 124 Neubauer, P. 116
lifestyle 426–7, 428; interventions 426–7 Mills, C.: and Ley, D. 338 Neutra, R. 111, 114
The Limitless City (Gillham) 378 Mitchell, W.J. 388 New Communities Project 115
Lindsay, J. 622 mobility 592 New Urbanism 263–4, 328–9, 633;
L’Islamisme et la vie urbaine (Marçais) 15–16 model 308 criticism 264, 328; practitioners 328;
Lofland, L. 292 modern city life 31–2 writings 329
Logue, E. 26 modern city planning 45–52; artistic New York 198–200, 209; Central Park 36,
Lone Mountain Compact 264 limitations 49–52; opinions 47 38, 41–2; density 401; play areas 199;
Los Angeles 340, 352–6, 551; businessman modern city-builder 46 project 147; public space 198–9
151; garage sales 354–5; immigrants modern conditions 52 New York City Planning Commission 200
353; riots 353; social fabric 353; modern living 52 New York Fine Arts Federation 74
street vendors 355 Modern Movement 307 Newman, O. 22–3
Loss of a Halo (Paris Spleen #46) modern rationalist philosophy 452 Newman, P. 518; Beatley, T. and Boyer, H.
Baudelaire 29–32 modern urban design problems 218, 569–78; biography 570; and
Louis XIV 92 221–2; centrifugal fragmentation 221; Kenworthy, J. 560
Lozano, E. 376, 399–412; biography 400 destruction of valued places 222; The Next American Metropolis (Calthorpe)
L’urbanisme musulman (Marçais) 16 giantism 221; injustice 222; 329
Lurie, E. 147 placelessness 222; poor environment Nicholson, S. 165–6, 165
Lynch, K. 19, 104, 125–38, 229–34, 237, 221; rootless professionalism 222 Nicholson-Smith, D. 261
238, 241, 244, 277, 280–1, 531; and modernism 104, 298, 300–1, 303, 304, 306, Nisbet, R. 287
Appleyard, D. 606; biography 126; 318, 334–5, 370, 446–7, 625–6 Nolli, G. 178
and Rodwin, L. 249; works 229; modernist urban design 178 Norberg-Schulz, C. 237, 261, 272–83;
writings 126 modernization 32–4, 45; anti 33; language biography 272–3; work 272
32 Norhaus, T.: and Shellenberger, M. 576
Macadam 31–4 Molavi, A. 493 Nuremberg 50
McAdam, J. 32 Montgomery, R. 115
Macdonald, E. 583, 595–600; biography monumentality 176 obesity 421, 424, 428; childhood 424;
596; research 596 Moore, S. 305–6; Wallington, T. and increase 424
McDonough, W. 512 Hobbes, R. 573 obesity epidemic 376
MacFarland, J.H. 65–6, 67, 69, 71 Moore, T.: and Thorsnes, P. 386 Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
McGinnis, J.M.: and Foege, W. 423 Morningside Heights 141 358, 359, 538, 541
Machado, R. 594 morphology 262, 307, 320; elements 462; oil decline 577
McHarg, I. 517, 519–24, 525, 535, 537, practice 263 Oldenburg, R. 261, 285–95; biography
622; biography 520 Morrish, W. 340 286
McKim, C.F. 72 Moses, R. 26, 27, 500, 588 Olmstead, F.L. 4, 36–44, 62, 63, 67, 69,
McKinsey 481–2 Motel Monticello 171 588; biography 36, 37; writings 38
McLuhan, M. 305 Moudon, A.V. 105, 235–51; biography 235; Olmstead, J.C. 37
Madanipour, A. 376, 443–57; biography recent work 236 Olmsted Brothers 37
444; books 444 Mumford, E. 107, 621 Olsen, D. 339
Makhlouf, A.R. 490 Mumford, L. 13, 572, 622; and Olympic Village 637
maps 136 Jacobs, J. 111 organic urbanism 13
Marçais, G. 16 Mumford, W. 63 The Organization Man (Whyte) 198
Marçais, W. 15–16 Muratori, S. 248, 319 Orientalism 478
March, L.: and Martin, L. 248–9 orientation 280–2
Marcus Aurelius 10 Nadim, N. 21–2 Out of Place (Hough) 525
Marcuse, H.: and van Kempen, R. 480 Nasar, J.L. 126 overweight 424, 428
marketization 447 National Medical Expenditure Survey 425 Oxford Business Group 488
Marshall, R. 103, 106–16, 639 natural disasters 573 Oxman, R. 243
Martin, L.: and March, L. 248–9 nature-ecology studies 250
Martindale, D. 448 neighborhood unit 4, 78–89, 81, 143–4, Padilla, E. 144
Marvin, S.: and Graham, S. 481 294–5, 330–1; apartment house unit Page, W.H. 74
Marx, K. 30, 32–3, 181, 182 85–9, 86, 86, 87, 88; building height Palace of Versailles 190
Masdar City 489 89; business district 83; communities Paley Park 210, 213
material culture studies 247 79; community center 85, 87; economic Parallèle (Durand) 317
Matoré, G. 269 aspects 85; environment 86; families Parc de la Villette 538
Meeks, C.L.V. 72 89; ground plan 88–9; housing 83; Paris 25–34, 404; sidewalks 28, 31
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658 index
Parisian boulevards 25–34; class divisions Portland Downtown Plan 607, 609 Renaissance 5–12; artistic 45; designs 5
29; lovers 29; mobility 32; moving Portland METRO 434 Renan, J.E. 15, 16
chaos 31, 33; neighborhoods 28; poor Portoghesi, P. 277 Renewable Energy Promotion Law (2005) 511
26–9; population 31; roads 31; traffic positivism 239 resilience 569–78; cities of fear 571;
31, 33; urban planning 27; urban Post Urbanism 263, 360; literature 360, cities of hope 571; ecological 573;
space 27 see also postmodernism elements 577; reducing oil use 574–5;
Parker, G.A. 66, 75 postmodern design theory 167–8 thinking 573
parking lot 171, 172–3 postmodern social movements 332 Richardson, W.J. 279
Parsons, B.Q.: et al 437 Postmodern Urbanism (Ellin) 332 Riesman, D. 288
Payton, N.I. 607 postmodernism 298, 303, 306, 332–40, Rilke, R.M. 273, 278
Pedestrian Environment Factor (PEF) 437 368, 375, 537, 540; axes 335; criticism Rittel, H. 240
pedestrians 161, 563–4 333; definition 333; texts 334, see also River Thames 530
Perry, C. 4, 78–89, 103; writings 79 Post Urbanism Robinson, C.M. 63, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75
phenomenology 272–4; environmental power bloc 461 Rockerfeller, J.D. (Jr.) 87
272–3 Précis (Durand) 318 Rodwin, L. 111; and Lynch, K. 249
Physical Activity and Health (USDHHS) Prigogine, I. 549 Rogers, B.B. 638
422–4 principle of the second man 7 Romanesque buildings 72
physiography 522 privacy 144, 406, 407; window 144 Rome 92–3, 172, 193–4; Imperial 193–4,
piazza 172 private sector 460–2; developers 460–2 194; towns 158
Piazza della Santissima Annunziata 6–8, 7 Process of Creative Destruction 548 Rosenzweig, R.: and Hardy, S. 64
Piazza della Signoria 8 profit 459–74; cost cutting 459–60 Ross, E.A. 67, 68
Picasso, P. 195, 196 prophecy 184 Ross, K.: and Kaplan, A. 348
picturesque beauties 51–2 prototype 308, 316 Rossi, A. 240–1, 247–8
picturesque details 51 Proust, M. 268 row house 313–14
picturesque street corners 50 psychology: modern 163 Rowe, C. 179; biography 179; and
picturesque studies 242–3 public health see health Koetter, F. 104, 178–97, 624
Ping, W. 498 public life (absence) 290–2 Rowe, P. 539
Pisanello, A. 12 public parks 36–44; natural 36–7; Russell, J.S. 388
place 261, 267–8, 273–4, 285–95, 307; neighborly festivals 43; picturesque 38; Ryan, K.-L.: and Winterich, J.A. 339
boundary 277; character 277–8; purpose 43
experience 267–8; geography 267; Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns S, M, L, XL (Koolhaas) 358
insideness 267–8; man-made 279; (Olmstead) 38 Sachs, C. 132
meaningful 262; natural 274; rating public place: commercial 351 Said, E. 478
material 230; spirit 280–3; structure public space 45, 198–9, 443–57, 465, Salinger, P. 293
276–80; studies 246, 261; technique 470–1; accessibility 449–51; behaviour Salt, D.: Reid, W. and Walker, B. 573
268–9 448; changing nature 447–9; definition Salt Lake City 324
Place and Placelessness (Relph) 266 449–50; development process 452–3; San Diego 604
placelessness 266, 268–71, 308; inclusive processes 451–3; less San Francisco 156, 214, 226, 605
inevitability 268–9 enclosed 473; liability 446; nature 474; San Francisco Downtown Plan 607
Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 (UPC) 488–9, 489 neglect 454; network 471; privatize San Francisco Zoning Code 608
play 161 443, 446–7, 449; role 448; texts 444; da Sangallo, A. 7–8
Playground Association of America 68 universality 453 sanitation 51
playground movement 68 public sphere 352–3; bourgeois 352 Sargent, I. 76
plazas 46, 47–50, 199–204, 210–13; public squares 49 Sarkis, H. 107
conversations 203; girl watchers 202; public transport systems 562 Sasaki, H. 111–12
irregularity 48; male-female ratio 202; Punter, J. 583, 601–16; research 601; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 529
most-used 201–2; office workers 201; writings 601–2 Sassen, S 479–80
peak/off-peak hours 202; people’s purist architecture 170 Satwa 486–8
movements 204; rhythms 202; Savoye, V. 90
self-congestion 203–4; sighting Qiaoling, H. 502–3 Sawicki, D.S.: and Landis, J.D. 230
map 201; square 205; strip 205; sun Qihua, Z. 499 Scheer, B.C. 263, 307–26; biography 308–9
210–11; trees 212; Trieste 48; warmth Qinfu, L. 503 Schiphol Amsterdam Airport Landscape
211; water 212–13; wheelchair users de Quincy, Q. 317, 318 541
207; wind 211–12; women 202; zoning Schlereth, T. 247
200, 206, 212 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) 339 Schmid, T.L.: biography 416; Frank, L.D.
plazas sitting space 204–10; amount 205, Rapoport, A. 241, 268, 432 and Engelke, P.O. 376, 415–38
209–10; benches 207–8; chairs 208–9; Rashtrapathi Bhawan 122 Schoenborn, C.: and Barnes, P. 419
choice 205; corners 207; height 206–7; real estate development 459, 461 Schumpeter, J. 497, 499, 547, 548
integral 205–6; ledges 205–7 recreation 37, 41; exertive 37, 41; science 181, 191, 192
Poirer, R. 169, 176–7 gregarious 42; receptive 37, 41 Scott Brown, D.: biography 168;
A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways Reed, H.H. (Jr.) 71 and Venturi, R. 104, 167–77;
and Streets (AASHTO) 430 Regional Planning Association of America writings 168
Pollan, M. 393 (RPAA) 78 sculptures 8
Poole, S.L. 20 regionalism 296, 297–9, 304 Seagram plaza 200, 202–5, 206, 210
Popper, K. 184–5, 188, 191 Reid, W.: Walker, B. and Salt, D. 573 Seamon, D. 240
Portland 437–8, 603–4, 606, 612 Relph, E. 261, 266–71, 337; writings 266 Seaside 631
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index 659
Seattle 604, 606–9, 611; multi-family state agencies 461 transportation: density 403–4
housing guidelines 608 Stein, A.B. 340 trees 40–1
Sennett, R. 288, 289, 290, 338–9, 351 Stein, C. 78 Trieste plazas 48
serial vision 118, 120, 121 Stern, P. 131, 336 Tschumi, B. 538, 541
Sert, J.L. 106–16, 587, 594, 620; ambition Strasser, S. 548, 549 Tumlin, J. 559
111; GSD 110; professional life 108; Street Life Project 198, 199 Tunnard, C. 72
writings 108–10 street paving 66 Turner, L. 467
sets 155–6; subsets 156 streets 47–8, 49, 139–40, 214–17; Turner, V.W. 547
settlement 233 automobiles 431–5; definition 429–30; types 308, 310–12, 314–16; building
Shanghai 499–500 design 216–17, 429–35; furniture 433; 310–12, 313, 320; formal 313–14;
Shaw, A. 70–1 living yard 434; modern, functional view house 316; innovation 315–16;
Sheetrock 302 431; pedestrians 431–5; purpose 430; origin 316; retail 314–15; studies 314;
Sheikh Zayed 488 safety 433; socializing 431; system 531 theories 312; use-type 314–15
Shellenberger, M.: and Norhaus, T. 576 strip mall 310 typology 307, 308–9, 316, 320, 462;
Shenzhen 504 Strong, M. 532 change 310; observation 312;
Shipton, E.E. 132 suburban development 80, 82, 82; practice 263, 307; project 319
Shuey, E.L. 67 community center 82; open spaces 82; typomorphology 247–8, 262, 307
Shurtleff, A.A. 76 shopping districts 82; street systems 82 Tyrwhitt, J. 113
sidewalks 142–51; accidental social life suburbanization 402; employment 402 Tzonis, A.: and Lefaivre, L. 262, 296
146; casual public contact 143, 150; suburbs 37, 38, 287–9, 339, 392–3, 395,
casual public trust 143–5; friends 402; definition 392 UN-HABITAT 481
147–8; public characters 148–50; Sue, E. 29 United Arab Emirates (UAE) 475
safety 142, 150; social researcher sustainability 558–68; mobility 562 United States (US) 510, 546, 590–1; 1950s
report 143–4, 147–8; social structure Sustainable Cities and Towns campaign 560 108; cars 291–2; city planners 139;
148; store-keepers 145; togetherness Sustainable Transportation Planning (Tumlin) deindustrialization 550–2; discovery
146–8, 151 559 of Europe 70; GNP 291; history 73;
deSilva, H.R. 132 Suttles, G. 23 industrial production 551; landscape
Sinopec 504 Sweden 613 546; life 287; life-style 291–2;
site design 435–7 symbolism 170–2, 279 middle-class women 352; parks 66;
Sitte, C. 4, 45–52, 118, 470–1; ideas 45–6 Synthesis 113 planners/developers 294–5; problem
skyscrapers 90, 96–7 of place 287–9; reals estate markets
slums 140, 141 Talen, E. 619 385; row house 313–14; suburban
SmartCode 324 tax 411 development 37; west coast cities
Smith, A. 485 taxicab system 161 612–13
Smith, E. 339–40 Team-10 587 United States (US) cities 66, 111, 167, 221,
social control 67–8 technology 305, 453 417–18, 601–16; density 401, 402, 403
social religion 67 telecommunications technology 388–90 United States (US) Department of Health
social structure 159 Tempo-30 programs 434 and Human Services (USDHHS) 422
social system 159; nodes 159 third places 285–6, 292–5 United States (US) industry 290;
society 224; mechanism 181; organism 181 third way 637 stress-related problems 290
Solomon, D. 303, 329 Thomas, A.J. 87 United States (US) National Park Service 551
Soltan, J.: and Chermayeff, S. 106, 115 Thomson, B. 115 universities 596
Sommers, R. 407 Thorsnes, P.: and Moore, T. 386 urban decline 285
Sorkin, M. 350, 583–4, 618–34, 636; thought 163 urban density 376
biography 619 The Three Magnets 56, 56 urban design 3, 103, 109–12, 235, 236,
Southworth, M. 605, 606 Thrift, N. 546 310; birth 103; catholic approach 235,
space 261, 276–7, 352–4; concrete 277; de Tocqueville, A. 269 236, 250–1; characteristics 428–38;
definition 277; everyday 346, 352–4; Tolstoy, L. 188 citizen participation 593–4, 604–5;
properties 277; uses 277 Toronto 527–8 conferences 106–8, 110–16; education
space-morphology studies 248–50; Toronto Globe and Mail 532 107, 583, 595; emergence 236; field
independent researchers 249 Toward an Urban Design Manifesto (Jacobs 105, 106; guidelines 322; history 3, 6;
Spenser, E. 552 and Appleyard) 218 important works 237; literary approach
sprawl 378–95; characteristics 380–3; town 39–40; advantages 119; house 314; 239; phenomenological approach 239;
commercial strip development 381; life 55; magnet 56; planner 46, 109; vs. place-making 590–1; politics 603–4;
definition 380–1, 383–4, 395; density country 55–61 practice 583–4, 585; problem 113; quality
381, 382; floor area ratio (FAR) 382; town-country magnet 56–61 459–60; smart growth 591; strategy 310
land cost 385–6; land ownership/use Townscape 123 Urban Design course 110, 115–16
384–6; leapfrog development 381; townscape 118–24; content 122–3; urban design dead end 618–34; critique
poor accessibility 383; public open legibility 127–9; place 120–2 618–19
space 383; real estate markets 385; Traditional Neighborhood Design 328 Urban Design Group (UDG) 622–3
regulations/standards 390–2; traffic 430–1; calming 434 urban design manifesto 218–28; density of
single-use development 382; Trakl, G. 274–5 people 225–6; dwelling units per acre
suburbanization 384, 395; transformations 463–74; cost-effectiveness 225–6; essential characteristics 224–8;
transportation patterns 386–8 463; production and processes 469–70; integration of activities 226; livibility
stage scenery 51 sales 470–3 224–5; pedestrians 227; publicness
staircases 50 transit 562 227; transit 225
9780415668071_Z05.indd 659 10-26-2012 3:21:57 PM

660 index
Urban Design as Public Policy (Barnett) 589 urbanity 400, 403 West 510
urban design research 237–51; empirical- urbanization 572 West-8 Landscape Architects 540–1
inductive mode 240; etic and emic Utopia 182, 184–5, 197 Weyrich, P. 630
ethos 241; historical-descriptive mode Utrecht 561 Whose Public Space? (Madanipour) 443
240; knowledge 238; normative- Whyte, W.H. 105, 198–213, 531; biography
prescriptive knowledge 237–8; object Van der Rohe, M. 206, 367 198; books 198
orientation 240; subject orientation Van der Ryn, S.: and Cowan, S. 520 Williamson, J.: and Dunham-Jones, E. 309
240; substantive-descriptive knowledge Van Eyck, A. 620 Wilson, W.H. 4, 62–77; biography 63;
237–8; theoretical-deductive mode 240 Vancouver 602, 637 books 63
Urban Design Round Table 112 Vauban (Freiburg) 563, 576, 637 A Winter Evening (Trakl) 274–5
urban design studio 595–600; environment Vaux, C. 36, 37 Winterich, J.A.: and Ryan, K.-L. 339
597–8; experience 597; knowledge- Venturi, R. 278, 280, 336; biography 168; Wirth, L. 345, 447
building 598–9; presentations 600; and Scott Brown, D. 104, 167–77; Wolfe, T. 174
teamwork 597; thumbnail sketches 598 works 168 Wong, H. 485
urban design theory 338, 635; user-based Vidler, A. 316 Woodall, P. 501
344 da Vinci, L. 300 World Expo (2010) 508
urban designers 309–10; role 588 von Grunebaum, G. 16–17 World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) 508
urban environment 223 Von Moltke, W. 115 Wright, H. 78
urban fabric 224–8
urban greening 558 Wal-Mart 302 Xiaoping, D. 501, 502
urban growth: rapid 45 Waldheim, C. 517, 534–42; biography 535;
urban history studies 242–3; classical books 535 Yates, F. 183–4
work 2 Walker, B.: Salt, D. and Reid, W. 573 Yuchen, Z. 502
urban landscape crisis 309–12 Wallington, T.: Hobbes, R. and Moore, S.
urban life: conditions 139 573 Zedong, M. 509
urban life goals 222–4; identity and control Wallis, C. 290 Zeidler, E.H. 530
222–3; livibility 222; self-reliance 224 Warner, J.D. 74 zero-carbon neighbourhoods 558
Urban Morphology Research Group 248 wastelands 544–54; post-industrial 544; Zhengrong, S. 512
urban sprawl see sprawl production 550–2 zoning 309, 320–1, 325, 390–1, 408,
Urban Transformations (Bentley) 459 waterfronts 366, 530 411–12, 613; goals 321; laws 320–1;
urbanism 265, 309, 345, 363–5, 370–2; Webber, M.M. 249 purpose 321; template 321; tool 323;
post 375; restorative 590; Weber, M. 447 traditional 323
visionary 593 Weller, R. 540 Zueblin, C. 75
Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change Welles, O. 151 Zurich 562
(Calthorpe) 328 Welwyn Garden City 54 Zysman, J.: and Cohen, S. 550
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TheUrbanDesignReader (The Phenomenon of Place, Part 3)

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TheUrbanDesignReader (The Phenomenon of Place, Part 3)

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THE URBAN DESIGN READER

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Each reader contains:

The series consists of the following titles:

The City Reader

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TOPICAL URBAN ANTHOLOGIES

INTERDISCIPLINARY ANCHOR TITLE TOPICAL URBAN READERS

URBAN DISCIPLINARY READERS The Cybercities Reader

The Urban Sociology Reader, second edition

Andrew Mould Richard T. LeGates Frederic Stout

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ISBN: 978-0-415-66807-1 (hbk)

Typeset in Amasis and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk

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List of plates xiii

PART ONE: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS IN URBAN DESIGN 1

Introduction to Part One 3

“Upsurge of the Renaissance” 5

“The Islamic City: Historic Myths, Islamic Essence,

“The Family of Eyes” and “The Mire of the Macadam” 25

“Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns” 36

“The Meager and Unimaginative Character of Modern City Plans” and

“Author’s Introduction” and “The Town–Country Magnet” 53

“Ideology and Aesthetics” 62

“The Neighborhood Unit” 78

“The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way” and “A Contemporary City” 90

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PART TWO: FOUNDATIONS OF THE FIELD 101

Introduction to Part Two 103

“Josep Lluís Sert’s Urban Design Legacy” 106

“Introduction to The Concise Townscape” 118

“Author’s Introduction” and “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact” 139

“A City is Not a Tree” 152

“Collage City” 178

“Introduction,” “The Life of Plazas,” “Sitting Space,” and, “Sun, Wind,

“Conclusion: Great Streets and City Planning” 214

“Toward an Urban Design Manifesto” 218

“Dimensions of Performance” 229

“A Catholic Approach to Organizing What Urban Designers Should Know” 235

PART THREE: GROWTH OF A PLACE AGENDA 259

Introduction to Part Three 261

“Prospects for Places” 266

“The Phenomenon of Place” 272

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“The Problem of Place in America” 285

“Critical Regionalism: An Architecture of Place” 296

“Charter of the New Urbanism” 328

“Themes of Postmodern Urbanism” 332

“Introduction,” “Preface: The Current State of Everyday Urbanism,” and

“The Generic City” and “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” 358

PART FOUR: DESIGN ISSUES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT 373

Introduction to Part Four 375

“What is Sprawl?” 378

“Density in Communities, or the Most Important Factor in Building Urbanity” 399

“Introduction,” “Physical Activity and Public Health,” and “Urban Design