Commuting: mode matters

The Badcock article pointed out an important hypocrisy in how developed nations champion the free movement of capital, whilst descrying the free movement of labor This is a major inconsistency that ends up with deficits in the long term for economic development.  Then Badcock goes on to state that the brightest and most highly educated from developing nations throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania leave home to work in leading cities, the best of those move on to global centers of learning and business invariably in Europe and North America.  While this is true, there doesn’t seem to be alternatives suggested.  Is this move of “achievers” or “learners” inevitable?  What methods could curb it or incentivize learners to return to help develop their homelands?  I thought that a lot of student visas were designed to do this very thing.  How much can we change immigration policy in our nation?  What other models for immigration exist in other developed nations?  On one hand this essay valorized cities that welcome immigrants, but on the other hand it goes on to point out that certain immigrants should return to improve their own nations.

Without job development  in the desirable areas, (what these are I am unaware) why would the highly educated return to abject poverty or uncertain economic or political futures?  Meanwhile these uber educated often end up in academia, where they can raise awareness for the issues from their homelands.  This is a worthy contribution to the cause too

Regarding the Grant article, I am concerned with the idea that New Urbanism prefers urban spaces with, “well-defined edges.”  I am hoping that one of the urpan planners/landscape people can explain this to me in class.Also they way she defines the new urbanist values, sounds more than a bit fascist.  Grant also points out that new urbanism might create car-free cores, but many people commute great distances to work in them. The issue surrounding the commute for work, is one of value.  What people value, do they chose to live closer to their workplace or work closer to their home to limit the commute?  If this is not valued highly then they will continue to commute great distances.  However, I suspect that the average commute time/distance it related to the degree to which gasoline is subsidized by the government.  This is one obvious way to impact the distance people will commute for work in single occupancy vehicles.

A gallon of gas (petrol) costs about 118.2ppl according to the AA site:
http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fue…
So.
A UK gallon of gas is 118.2 * 4.54609 = 537.34 pence per gallon, which is 447.78 pence per US gallon, which is 875.94 US cents (using Google currency conversion) or $8.76.

Meanwhile all of the census data that I can find does not distinguish between mode of transportation for commute.  If anyone out there knows if there is comparative research based on mode, please let me know.

Amanda Mae

Designed units and a (radical) whole in urban space

This week’s round of articles moves on quite smoothly from last week’s discussion of planning policy, neoliberalism, and class/ethnic enclaves. The piece from Grant is particularly good connecting tissue for looking at biases between urban and suburban areas. She suggests that “new urbanism” planners privilege a reworked traditional view of manor-type and small-scale designs and eschew suburban, more easily replicated designs.

In this connection, I recall that the premise of the shopping mall, so far as I naively understand the architectural history, was originally to concentrate commercial spaces in a kind of new type of downtown; no doubt profit accumulation was a key factor here. Monetized and homogenized as such relations came to be, it is all the more interesting to note that with the (partial) decline of big box retail and megachains now shuttering their spaces within malls, various redesigns are concentrating public agencies (DMV, libraries, police, etc) together with the old shop spaces. Do we call these repurposed spaces an alter-new urbanism? What I mean to suggest is that many aspirations for the future transform over time and become cross-pollinated with others. There is a lot of room for maneuver between diehard preservationists on the one hand, and slash-and-burn architectural patterns on the other.

In Badcock’s discussion of multinationals and the “false promises relating to the alleviation of poverty” (Badcock, 247) seems to be not so very far from Kropotkin’s emphasis on inequality in the face of enormous opportunity (Kropotkin, 2): “Truly, we are rich, far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they but applied to bringing about the well-being of all.”

Much has changed in the century between these two pieces and yet I think some major questions continue to dog the industrialized cities. I am not one to try to speculate about possible “urban futures” if I can keep from it. Rather, I would ask, Whose interests are served in processes of commodification, enclosure, exploitation, and all the rest that comes with capitalism? When do governance frameworks conflict with popular social movements, and in what novel combinations do they best work together?

Perhaps studying the history of economic change from a radically grounded view can imbue our aspirations for urban space with a thoroughly peopled – as opposed to designed – landscape. We can get into all the intersectional politics of considering race, gender, sexuality, class and the rest and I am certainly for that, but if we are to consider a collective project for urban life that truly acknowledges difference, I suspect we need a critical paradigm that deals with generative processes of collective action across these intersections as well. Then I believe design can have a very instructive (perhaps more participatory!) role in remaking urban space and reminding the whole of its many parts. That is to say that the past, as well as the future, may not be the greatest guides, but rather a critical evaluation of how we all stand at present.

Jesse McClelland

Teology corrupts, absolute teology…well, you get it.

Chris on the line.

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a young lad who was studying both geography and architecture as an undergraduate at a relentlessly liberal artsy-liberal arts college in the northeastern United States New England. He felt himself torn. On the one hand, he was drawn to geography’s critical gaze upon the world and architecture’s normative notions about what kinds of environments can help us live to be the best people we can be. In this particular version of my own creation myth, the forces of geography won and so I exist in a perpetual state of academic crankiness rather than earnestly designing spaces for the 21st century. Consequently Norman Foster’s aspirations for the future seem quaint, if not naive, and the story of Seaside is a familiar one (Christ on a bike, it was the setting for The Truman Show. What better metacommentary?).

And yet the notion that architecture and planning can help us live better lives is a sticky one. Because I can’t resist an opportunity to flaunt the achievements of  La Hexagon, let’s take a look at a fellow who, to put it mildly, took this idea and ran with it:

http://www.ina.fr/art-et-culture/architecture/video/I05290951/le-corbusier-expose-son-plan-d-urbanisme-pour-paris.fr.html

(I realize that this is in French. So kindly learn French if you don’t know it already, and then watch the video. Just kidding. Actually, you can probably get the gist just from the images. Essentially, this is a crazy, crazy man who’s trying to act he’s not).

Fortunately, Corbu’s plan to raze the Right Bank of Paris never came to fruition, but we saw basically similar things happen across the United States during the era of urban renewal. Ever been to Albany, NY? Go to Empire State Plaza, and behold its monstrosity. Many of these projects came about as a result of elite metropolitan control over planning and construction decision-making, of course. An idea about how to best order urban space was generated and then executed through a particular hierarchy with the power to realize its visions. In New York, Jane Jacobs’s intervention provided a counter-narrative that lauded the social ties of the neighborhood. New Urbanist projects tried to recapitalize on these strengths. And now Norman Foster is practicing biomimicry in the desert.

So whose normative idea of space, whose aspiration of architecture for a better life, should we follow? I find the concept of democratic participation as a mechanism to decide interesting. On the one hand, we have the version of democracy as conceived by Duany and the NUC: design in the public interest without necessary public participation. On another hand, we have democracy as conceived by radical (little “d”) democrats like the Vancouver Public Space Network, from which I shall now quote (my emphasis:

The VPSN is a grassroots collective that engages in advocacy, outreach and education on public space issues in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.

This includes challenging the increase of advertising ‘creep’ in public places, promoting creative, community-friendly urban design, monitoring private security activities in the downtown core, fostering public dialogue and democratic debate, and devising creative ways to re-green the neglected corners, alleys and forgotten spaces of the city.

We also like to devise ways to have fun in public space.

The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) was formed in early 2006. Since that time our numbers have grown from a dozen initial participants to over 1500 members. The Network continues to expand: a testament to the large number of individuals who value public space and view it as an essential feature of a vibrant, inclusive city.

Members are drawn together by both a shared concern for various issues facing public spaces and public realm amenities in Vancouver, as well as a desire to celebrate the role that public space in shaping the city.

On yet another hand (I have three, I guess), we have anarcho-democracy as envisioned by Kropotkin et al.: non-ownership of the infrastructure with full participation by all inhabitants. But as Elizabeth often points out, all of these (as well as any others one cares to think about) notions of democratic participation depend on the scale of their jurisdiction. If one doesn’t care to be governed according to common interests with someone from a different neighborhood, a problem is encountered if indeed whatever level of governance nevertheless includes you together. Anarchists and radical democrats – as well as people invested in models of community governance and participation- often handwave the notion of scale – non-hierarchical governance is often presumed to generate consensus over isotropic space. But this is a serious concern. How do we define “our” interest? How do we decisively tell another group, your interest and our interest are incompatible; we do not wish to share your political space?

Chris, in case you forgot.

The ruins of future cities

Cities of the future will still house humans, right?

While I enjoy imagining the layout and form of future cities as much as the next guy, I believe that there is also a widespread tendency to spend so much time fancifully focusing on design that the living users of spaces are overlooked. Norman Foster’s designs look so beautiful (seriously, I spent some serious time perusing his firm’s site in awe), but unless we human beings spend some time and energy working out issues of xenophobia and social inequality, every beautiful city may as well be a pile of rubble. We will continue waging wars and detonating architects’ beautiful bridges, exquisite civic centers, and LEED-certified libraries. It seems many design paradigms — New Towns, Garden Cities, Radiant Cities, New Urbanisms, Landscape Urbanisms, etc. — have great grand gestures and drawings and only a wink and a nod to the prospective social life of a space.

When you have a half hour free, have a look at this documentary, The City (1939) – part I, part II. You’ll bear witness to some wonderful city planning propaganda and perhaps appreciate how prescient designers can be when focusing on built form at the expense of humanity.

I hope everyone started out scanning Leonie Sandercock’s assigned chapter and found themselves slowing down (as I did) and taking to heart her suggestions. I’ve not read Cosmopolis II, only its prequel, but I really find her work very inspiring. If her books weren’t so damned expensive, I’d buy everyone (including myself) a copy. Sandercock radically reimagines the practice of city planning to be explicitly and directly political, therapeutic, audacious, creative, and critical. She advises city planners to quit their offices and spend some time on streets and sidewalks and with people. What kind of a mad world are we living in that this is a radical, idealistic idea? Thanks to the very fruitful conversations and readings that we’ve taken on this quarter, I’ve got designs in my head for a course titled, “Planning and the Everyday City.” It would include materials from Certeau, James Holston, Margaret Crawford, and, of course, Leonie Sandercock, and it would entail getting students of city planning out of buildings and into socially vibrant and socially inert spaces. It would demand focus on humanity and the social production of space, critically eliding discussion of formal designs and plans. The more I think of this, the more I like it.

Is the socially just, sustainable, livable city something that can be illustrated? Can it be held in mind?

Thinking again of that economist that Jesse was outraged by last week, Edward Glaeser, I wonder about the future of Cairo. I wonder about the futures of Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, New Orleans, and so on. We can keep repeating the notion that cities are and will be the great incubators of innovation and productivity, but shouldn’t we also remember the current costs of innovation and productivity — poverty, deprivation, suffering? I’m no anarchist and I can’t quite get behind Kropotkin’s call to arms, so I can only wonder: Where are justice and difference in the future city? I can’t get my head around it.

Mike

Future so bright

I was struck by how timely Kropotkin’s article felt, despite being written over 100 years ago.  His observation that technological change without a change in social relations perpetuates inequalities and weakens “social sentiment” is still relevant.  He was advocating for a revolution, a radical restructuring of society, at a time when revolutionary agendas and utopias were imaginable and served for a call to action.  This type of imaging a social utopia of equality, meaningful work and well-being for all has fallen out of favor because of historical and present examples of state run societies and the dominance of market-based ideals and individualism (neoliberalism?).

The utopias of today are technological and I think Foster’s vision of the city falls into this category.  He focuses on the technologies available to create highly efficient cities that use natural systems to minimize resource use and provide comfort to the urbanites.  I addition, he potrays the architect as a leader of making cities sustainable and livable.  I think both his technological focus and concept of a design avant-garde obscure how devoid his schemes are of any social grounding – it is like Star Trek when suddenly cities are clean and peaceful and the process of resolving all the social ills has already happended miraclously.  Technology is removed from the social fabric that gives rise to it, and at the same time it provides the basis for a new society without ever elaborating how this happens.  More of this in a week.

New urbanism gets a lot of play because it actually has a formulated explicit set of values and practices that can be critiqued.  Its impact has been limited in ways the Grant piece elaborates, because in practice there are constraints imposed by local governments, the market, and its own practitioners.  In addition new urbanism’s own nostalgia suggests a conservative approach to change and addressing inequality.

Finally, there is always the question of what is sustained in sustainability.  I can see a future that reproduces the current inequalities and power imbalances and creates two modes of “sustainability”.  One based on abundance and the use of technology to minimize the impacts of high consumption on the consumers while the other is based on scarcity and limits the ecological impact of people because they have and use very little.  These can coexist and that scares me.

Michael G.

Types of Future Cities

With more people living in cities than ever before, a new importance has been placed on what the idea of a “Future City” should entail.  Ignoring the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic views of the future for now, a couple categories of more (let’s say) optimistic visions can be categorized as Futurist, Sustainable, and the Hybrid-model.

The Futurist vision focuses on the ultra technology-based design which relates back to the concept of mechanization, where everyday life is controlled or enhanced by technology. Think of computerized controlled superhighways, high rise farming, and “Smart + Connected Communities”. This vision focuses on efficiency of the system, not necessary the qualitative aspects of an urban environment. Examples can be seen in movies and television shows: The Jetsons, Minority Report, Brasil, etc.  

The Sustainable vision looks back historically to see how cities functioned with minimal technology. These cities were compact, walkable, and had a direct connect to farming. For example, wind catchers have worked for hundreds of years in Iran’s hot climate to enhance natural ventilation. The wind catchers draw warm air through the building and up chimneys which creates convection drawing in more fresh air. Historic buildings related more to the context of the site by using passive solar design, passive heating and cooling methods, natural daylighting, and using local building materials. This was out of necessity because electric lighting and mechanical heating and cooling systems did not exist. This vision focuses on living with nature and seeks to maintain the quality of the landscape and environment.

There is also a hybrid of the Futurist and Sustainable vision which uses technology to make nature work for us. For water treatment these technologies include bioswales, and constructed wetlands. Our energy needs can be accounted for by using renewable energies:  geothermal heating, solar power collection, hydropower, tidal and wave power, wind power, and algae production for fuel. By using technology in a renewable non-environmentally destructive fashion, this model looks at both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of design.

Claire Schumacher

Future city?

The future city is a very popular topic now. In what kind of way will the future city go?

A sustainable city

I agree that “The better city will have low pollution, low energy use, the smallest carbon footprint”, but it’s a very broad statement. How to make it happen? Nowadays so many discussions are from the ecological views. Can an ecological city represent a sustainable city, I don’t think so. Most of the time we are regenerating or developing a city, and there’re lots of contexts need to be considered. What we are going to do is not only trying to term all the stuff productive, but also connecting them to the social, ecological and economic functions that a city needs them to serve. There’s a good book from Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings, “Cities as sustainable ecosystems—Principles and Practices” It explains how to pursue a path of urban sustainable development and regeneration. It used the “ten Melbourne Principles for sustainable cities” as the frame to introduce how it works.

1. Provide a long-term vision for cities based on: sustainability; intergenerational, social, economic and political equity; and their individuality.

2. Achieve long-term economic and social security

3. Recognise the intrinsic value of biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and protect and restore them.

4. Enable communities to minimise their ecological footprint.

5. Build on the characteristics of ecosystems in the development and nurturing of healthy and sustainable cities.

6. Recognise and build on the distinctive characteristics of cities, including their human and cultural values, history and natural systems.

7. Empower people and foster participation.

8. Expand and enable cooperative networks to work towards a common, sustainable future.

9. Promote sustainable production and consumption, through appropriate use of environmentally sound technologies and effective demand management.

10.Enable continual improvement, based on accountability, transparency and good governance.

 

A livable city

Last quarter our landscape architecture studio was working with a teacher from the Gel Architects. We talked a lot about how a livable city could be. Their opinion is that human is always the core of city life. Copenhagen was always used as a good example of a livable city. They mentioned density, the similar opinion compared with Newman’s. “High-density cities offer more freedom and are often more prosperous.” Regarding Newman’s Masdar city, I can’t tell building so much shading structures is ecological or not just based on several diagrams, but it does create a big chance for more public realms in order to generate a city which is pleasant for meeting, staying or walking. As Newman said, “what makes a city agreeable is actually not any one building. It is the way you get about, the public spaces, the streets, walkways, bridges, parks and squares”. “Cities, in other words, are the life and soul of the party”.

 

About high tech city, the immigrant city mentioned in “Making sense of cites”, I discover that when we are some kind stopping urban sprawling, the new virtual urban is sprawling in another way. Urbanization is not only reshaping the physical urban space, but also reshaping our social life, by both physical and virtual ways. How to shrink the gaps between people, rich and poor, is an issue which can not only be addressed in this real society, but also in a virtual society. We’ll talk more about it next week. 🙂

Tianwen

 

City Corp. Inc. LLC. etc.

This review will be of just the Middleton, Johnson and Foster readings (to limit the length of this posting). I’ll start with Johnson’s reading on “Why New Urbanism isn’t for Everyone.” I tend to agree that a huge portion of the development market is personal preference of the buyers and I’d even expand that to “New Urbanism shouldn’t be for anyone.” So while I tend to agree that there will always be a market for subdivisions with sprawling wide roads that go nowhere but to your own house, that type of development will not and cannot be continued perpetually, simple logic can tell you that. So while I agree that the demand is there by the individuals, it is the primary charge of our elected officials and policy developers by virtue of their election to office and extensive training in planning and engagement to aim for a future that benefits the majority of the community even if that is counter to this strongly individualistic paradigm.

Moving on to Foster and Middleton: (All this reading about Florida and Orlando makes me miss all the projects I worked on down there, even the ones I hated). It is interesting that the two primary examples (Masdar City and Celebration) of what a future city is both started with a grandiose master plan created in far off design studios and then constructed on virgin lands with no existing population to negotiate or to engage. As a designer I loved working on these large master plans on virgin lands because my designer brain was unfettered, with only the laws of the state, county…. and sometimes gravity, as constraints. It also alleviated any need to engage with a local population that nearly always includes the ubiquitous neighborhood curmudgeon. The downside was that I didn’t get to engage with a local population and design a place for anyone other than what my designer mind conjured.

Interestingly, both jurisdictions require little oversight (or have expedited oversight), which can be both a blessing and a curse. Masdar City is the pet project of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the hereditary ruler of Abu Dhabi of the UAE) through his personal (as he is the State) investment company, Mubadala Development Company. And Celebration was founded on Disney property in Central Florida. Back in the 1960’s when good old Walt secretly bought up thousands of acres of lands under shell companies to avoid price gouging, he ran into a problem when he presented his plans to the Counties and State. The counties clearly saw a dilemma with that much development (and dollar signs for permitting fees) and the State had issues with the development providing services (water, sewer, transportation, fire, etc.) which state law required could only be provided by a “jurisdiction.”

The solution was something unprecedented. The state allowed Walt Disney to create his own jurisdiction…… in exchange for the wonderful gift of jobs, economic development and a hundreds of miles of cheap T-shirt shops and kitschy motels. This jurisdiction is the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) which is entirely ran, financed, and governed (even if indirectly) by the Walt Disney corporate board. The RCID “approves” all development requests and allows Walt Disney World to provide the municipal services to itself and any projects that are also developed on Disney property (as expeditiously as the free market allows, I might add), without any of the local control that would normally be exercised by the counties. So while Celebration has a community board and a semblance of self rule, it is still ultimately controlled, developed, and managed by the Walt Disney Corporate Board of Directors and it’s managers… all hail Robert Iger!

Is the future of cities corporate developments because only they have the financial capital and streamlined processes that allow these “good” developments to occur? (I use quotations for on “good” because I can’t wait to give a personal critique of Celebration in class [it’s nearly a nightmare, truly]) Are our cities so decrepit and beyond redemption that they should be abandoned and we all move to the Arabian desert or virgin Florida hardwood forests and build new ones?

I should certainly hope not… that would simply require too much planning.

jd…

Looking to the future by thinking about nature

Although not a profound statement, it seems the cities of the future, no matter what century they are imagined, draw their futuristic inspirations from increasing efficiency by reimagining man’s relationship to nature.

The 1905 Kropotkin essay focuses on cultivating the land, harnessing nature for man’s benefit and human rights to property. Efficiencies in agriculture, harnessing climate, the invention of man-made infrastructure- “man renders a given space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural state.”

The 2002 Badcock article examines sustainability in cities, as well as globalization, overpopulation in urban areas, technology, and the employment and environmental issues affecting the urban poor. Badcock mentions the triple-bottom-line philosophy adopted by today’s corporations, presenting man’s relationship to nature as one of economic, social and environment stewardship. The corporations and cities of the future will adopt efficiencies in energy, ‘clean’ technologies, and waste reduction strategies. Motivated by global forces such as global warming and a reduction in resources, man is forced to reexamine its relationship with nature as a partnership, harnessing natural technologies.

The 2011 Norman Foster article describes Masdar City and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in terms of efficiency of energy and time. This city of the future examinees ancient natural technologies and systems to create sci-fi sleek designs, bringing back the bio-mimicry discussions in the Masdar design influences of camels and birds.

New urbanism strategies layer uses to decrease the ecological footprint and make the human living and working experience more efficient. Clustered developments allow for conservation of our natural resources to be preserved for human enjoyment and nostalgia of the natural past.

~Leann

Well, Thursdays are always crazy days for me and I am constantly struggling with the blog deadline, so with the articles up early, I just decided to go for it- here is the earliest blog post ever.  ~Jenn RJ
This week’s theme of future cities is of great interest to me.  I’ve spent a lot of time this quarter researching new visions of urbanism and how cities might be envisioned as sustainable and healthy places that exist in harmony with nature.  If as one of the articles reported, two thirds of the world will be urbanized by 2050 it is critical that we find a way to restructure our systems to address pressing environmental and resource challenges.  The pressing nature of these challenges has left me very interested in finding out more about other’s visions for the future city and that was something I was eagerly looking for in this week’s readings.

I loved the tone of the opening to the Cities of the Future article; I felt it summed up what I find fascinating and wonderful about cities- for me they are the life and soul of the party!  I don’t know that I agree with the author’s skyscraper vision, however, at least not as the best thing to exist as the predominant urban form.  I can see places like that having their place, no pun intended, but I found a very interesting reading from the Living Cites resource list that questions the effects of exaggerated height within the built environment and how it can detrimentally affect the human experience, sense of community, and connection to place. The link is here: http://ilbi.org/resources/competitions/livingcity/articles/DensityandSustainability_TrimTabSpring2009.pdf

I very much agree with the author that “The better city will have low pollution, low energy use, the smallest carbon footprint.”  Another attempt to create a better city is happening in the Tianjin Eco-city, modeled after the system of a termite nest- strange, but definitely interesting.  It is not the best article to highlight the green and sustainable elements envisioned for the project, but you can find out a bit about it here: http://www.archdaily.com/102887/tianjin-eco-city-surbana-urban-planning-group/

There was one thing in particular I was curious about from Have Cities a Future; they say, “ Given the validity of a job competition model, a strategy such as that employed in World War II to deliberately change the sociology of wage differentials is required.” What is the author referring to?  I am apparently not quite up on my history but am curious what kind of deliberate effort was made to address wage differentials…  Can anyone shed any light on this?