Contributor Blog

I was reading the New York Times Magazine special architecture issue a few weeks ago when something jumped out at me. On the intro page to the issue of the “Mega-Megalopolis” one of the by-line says “How does an architect plan for a city with no history? Or a city that just keeps growing?” Interesting questions particularly given the fact that to charge architects with the task of planning our cities is affording too much power to a profession that simply doesn’t have it.

We’ve all been subject to them – the endless powerpoint presentations that extol the worst aspects of animated text and mind-numbing bullet points. While Edward Tufte has written about the horrors of powerpoint, I see it as just a tool and like any tool it can be used wisely or poorly. After all, David Byrne, the former Talking Heads front man, makes art with powerpoint so it can’t be all bad. But one thing struck me at the American Planning Association’s (APA) conference two weeks ago: some sessions would have been much better if the powerpoint presentation (or abuse thereof) didn’t get in the way. In actuality, some of the best presentations I attended didn’t use powerpoint at all.

I think many planners, in principle, agree that public involvement and grass-roots approaches to planning are necessary. The emphasis on the sheer numbers of people a plan "includes" is only one recent example of our profession’s emphasis on public involvement. But I think deep down, many colleagues see a distinctive split between involving the public and empowering them to implement. Involving is necessary and important to get any plan endorsed. But once that plan is complete, the public (residents, business owners, local stakeholders) is many times not regarded as an implementation partner except perhaps in roles of advocacy.

Often times I’m struck by the advances we’ve made in mapping, modeling and depicting our cities.  What was once the purview of mapmakers, surveyors or architects is now a democratized, engaging process that brings unexpected results.  And the more advanced the technology, the more transparent our cities seem to become. 

Journalists and bloggers love to argue over city rankings which tend to multiply faster than the tribbles on star trek.  Which city is the friendliest?  What cities have the nicest parks?  What cities are the best places to live for mildly overweight divorcees between the ages of 32 and 34?  The data is scrutinized and then how it was interpreted lambasted as ridiculous.  And of course rankings are ridiculous.  Cities are too complex to boil down to a few numbers.

I had the opportunity to spend a day at the Vacant Properties conference late last month which, if you’re not familiar with the “movement,” you should be.  Granted it’s not for everyone.  At the opening plenary session, the moderator asked “who is here from a weak market city?”  A room full of hands went up with a collective giggle.  It felt like an AA meeting for cities.  Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward addressing it.   

Since making the switch from architecture to planning / urban design, I’ve been fascinated by the continuing dialogue that surrounds what we do to explain… what we do. There is less emphasis on this dialogue in architecture of course as the tacit assumption is that architects build. (I would say not all great architects need to build but this is a debate for a different setting.) What did often emerge in architecture was the common concern that “design” is not valued to the degree that it should. And why not? Architects spend anywhere from 5-6 years in school the majority of which is spent in studio learning how to design. Who wants to then enter the profession feeling like their education mis-led them?

Most people use the Summer months to re-connect with pastimes forgotten during winter months. It is this time of the year that sales soar both at the box office and in bookstores. Most normal people I know take trashy novels with them to the beach or submerge themselves in an entire season of 24 (which thanks to Netflix can be accomplished in a few intense evenings). I tend to lean toward the other extreme (although I have indulged in bad TV from time to time). My wife calls me a design geek because my bedside table is always full of design magazines, books and theory.

I’m not basing this quick observation on any specific historical research or book, so bear with me. Cities grow and shrink; in effect they change rapidly (although sometimes it doesn’t seem rapidly enough and at other times all too rapidly). Where we operate in that continuum I think shapes much of how we see our role as professionals. Planning to address either shrinking cities or growing ones can seem, at times, like totally different professions. A colleague of mine remarked that planning for shrinking cities is definitely a niche market. With so much discussion surrounding growth and how we grow, there is much less dialog that defines the opposite.

I would like to think that the overwhelming response to the question posed in the title would be a resounding, "No!"  I never gave the issue much thought before last week because frankly, I didn't really need to.  Working in a city like Philadelphia where the overwhelming percentage of proposed projects requires a zoning variance, we've trained ourselves to work within an imperfect system and make the best of what's at hand.  (It should be noted that Philadelphia is about to embark upon a process to re-vamp the zoning code, but that is for another post in the future).  More importantly, the issues faced by some neighborhoods go a lot deeper than zoning.  So why this post?

This post is a few weeks after the fact but the recent APA conference only solidified my resolution to say something.  In early April Teddy Cruz gave a lecture here in Philly at the School of Design.  For those of you not familiar with his work, he has a unique and thoughtful perspective on the relationships between culture, planning and design. 

I'm glad this blog to date has provided fertile ground both to challenge planning as a profession as well as to compliment planning when it happens to do something worthy.  In this spirit, I'd like to irritate many of my colleagues out there and definitively say that starchitects are not the problem. 

I wish I could play the role of Stephen Colbert and ridiculously declare the end to this debate, but alas, I do not have the television airtime (or wit) to make this point as effectively as I would like.  This forum will have to do.

A long time ago in a previous design office, I made the mistake of engaging a light rail fanatic in a debate about whether Peachtree Street in Atlanta should be adorned with a light rail line. The debate turned into a protracted email diatribe about the pros and cons of light rail and whether this specific idea made any sense.

The surging housing market and development pressure in Philadelphia has resurrected what was once an all but dormant profession - planning. Meeting after meeting is being held with community leaders, politicians, developers and others to discuss the current lack of planning in the City in the wake of this widespread change. The concensus of each meeting is that the City needs a Master Plan. Further, there also appears to be a major call to finally empower the planning commission which has, for years, been cast aside as a step-child of City governance.

There's been an increasing number of urban projects breaking out the paint brushes as a low-cost means of improving cities. As stated by Jaime Lerner, former Mayor of Curitiba, for every zero that is removed from a city budget, the more creative solutions become. It seems these examples represent areas with extremely limited budgets. Object Orange is a public art project in Detroit that is calling attention to blighted structures through the use of bright orange paint. It seems their efforts have resulted in their desired outcome - increased demolition of unsafe structures.

Building on the Google thread here started by Chris, this Geo-Tracing site was brought to my attention that links google mapping with individually uploaded content. Its, as I see it, the next iteration of Found City and other geo-tagging sites. Very interesting combination of technology to provide a sense of experience and place in cities that is often hard to capture on screen. As stated from the site:

"The main concept is depicted above.

This came through the telecom-cities listserv by Anthony Townsend. He very succinctly summarizes the issues with municipal wireless networks. The quote below I find particularly interesting:

"Discussions about the design of today's municipal wireless networking efforts have not yet addressed the way community-created content can be solicited and integrated in the splash pages and portal sites where wireless users are greeted when they connect. We do know that cities such as Long Beach, California and business improvement districts in New York City have experimented with local content.

From Pew / Internet: "A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 45% of online American adults have taken virtual tours of another location online. That represents 54 million adults who have used the internet to venture somewhere else. On a typical day, more than two million people are using the internet to take a virtual tour."

The need to represent urban areas on-line is greater than ever, especially when we consider the impact a movie can have on a City (The Sixth Sense is Philadelphia's best example of a tourist 'push' after release).

I'm finding this a bit late but i really like some of the projects and their potential for further exploration. "Spectropolis Mobile Media, Art and the City is a three-day event (October 1-3, 2004) in Lower Manhattan that highlights the diverse ways artists, technical innovators and activists are using communication technologies to generate urban experiences and public voice. The increasing presence of mobile communication technologies is transforming the ways we live, construct and move through our built environment.

After Adam's last two thoughtful posts, I thought I should weigh in here being the resident urban design on Tech Talk. In general, I sometimes share others concerns with marquee architecture but usually when its seen as a way of boosting economic development or the status of a city. I think in those cases, there are far better ways to boost the livability and physical appearance of a place. Thinking of what an "icon" for say, Fort Wayne, would be is an uninteresting question as that city faces other underlying issues that a marquee project simply can't address.