Urban Design Discussion

The New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Monday March 1, 2009 rejected the final legal challenge by homeowners and businesses to the state’s use of eminent domain for the $4.9 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project (see TimesTopics for more)  The news triggered a groundbreaking for March 11, 2009.

How much ground will be broken remains unknown to all, even the developer, Bruce Ratner is reportedly unsure.  One thing is sure, the general failure of effective criticism of the plan.  Perhaps this was in deference to the disruption of those whose lives and businesses are forever changed.  Perhaps not.   Time remains to go on the record regarding the failure of “super blocks and its architecture, or to examine the distracted inability of the MTA and the DOT to address serious public safety questions given the plan as it stands.

The other 22

New York State officials will force the last 22 families and companies to move out of the Atlantic Yards project footprint if they don’t leave voluntarily by April 3, 2010.  It began with several hundred families and businesses, but Errol Lewis summed it all up best as a reporter for the Daily News and a long time observer of New York’s uniquely imprudent politic.

“The seven-year slog leading up to today’s ribbon-cutting on the Atlantic Yards project demonstrates why New York must rethink and restructure the way it handles big land deals.

Nearly no one on either side of the debate over the planned 18,000-seat arena and 6,400 units of housing – not even the winning developer, Forest City Ratner – thinks the process was fair, balanced and rational.

There were too many lawsuits, too many unanswered questions and too many heated arguments. Worst of all, the years of bickering and delay have left behind bitterness and civic exhaustion just when we need energy, enthusiasm and public scrutiny to make Atlantic Yards a success.”

I would have readers with an interest in the urban development process in general and in this part of Brooklyn specifically, to notice Errol’s criticism in this way.  The enormously accurate criticisms of the Atlantic Yards plan from an architectural, urban planning and design point of view are ineffective.  Despite grievous errors of design, the less evident event is the obituary of architectural criticism.

As Lewis points out, the measure of success is tragically blurred and the lessons learned are painfully slow and easily forgotten.  Our society has the authority to engage in the destruction of one community as a constitutionally guaranteed process for building a new one.

Lewis is right.  We must question the current criterion that suggests we are actually making a place better or more life affirming or more environmentally sound, not just environmentally neutral.

We are currently limited to writing the postmortem.  Given the desire to correct mistakes before they are made,  what steps could be taken to give a community affected more controls over a design and development process that the law of our land as already deemed inevitable?  How can the rules of engagement for community development practices eliminate our tragic acceptance of collateral damage?

See Source to Lewis

The closure of the Urban Center at the Municipal Art Society reported in the New York Times seemed oddly similar to its report on the move of Gourmet Magazine’s library to the NYU cookbook collection.  In recognition that the most important things tend to go unsaid, both “book holders” reflect a subject of great importance to urban design.  It has the nickname “brick to click”.   

The questions regarding the importance of this subject are many, but most center on a single contradiction.  The general demand for additional “pedestrian dominated” places within every design scheme include the call for these spaces to be more reachable by walking or mass transit and less so by car.  I am compelled to offer this question. 

Will the trend toward the removal of specialized retail places as “social centers” reduce the viability of small retail business districts as destinations?  I mean there has to be more to a trip than getting a cup of coffee.      

Toward a Just Metropolis: From Crises to Possibilities Conference Call for Proposals

Hard to believe but all the above planners, designers, activists, policymakers and citizens are seeking more of the same folk to talk the future human settlements in San Francisco. 

The Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), New Village Press, Planners Network (PN), Young Planners Network, Association for Community Design (ACD) and The Center for the Living City merges there annual conferences.

Call for Proposals – Deadline March 1, 2010
Presentations, Posters and Workshops

As cities and towns around the world grapple with the impacts of multiple and concurrent crises, progressive planners, urbanists, activists, and citizens face the challenge of transforming crises into opportunities to advance profound changes in the way we plan, build, design, live in, and govern our cities. We invite submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following questions:

1. How are today’s crises impacting cities and transforming contemporary debates about justice?
   What possible futures emerge as cities and local communities respond to rapid economic, political, demographic, and environmental change?
2. What is a just distribution of local, national, and global responsibilities?
3. What possibilities and/or responsibilities will move us toward a more just metropolis?
   How do we collaborate to achieve change towards social justice, equity, better living conditions, and the right to the metropolis?
4. What innovative ideas can crises prompt in the quest for a just and inclusive metropolis? And how do we get there?

Submission could be in the form of workshops, panel discussions, paper/project presentations, and posters. We encourage the grouping of papers in pre-organized sessions but reserve the right to realign papers once proposals have been accepted. The conference will feature a special reception for posters, during which authors will display and discuss their work one-on-one. We encourage collaboration across disciplines and communities.

AGAIN THE DEADLINE:  March 1, 2010 and the following grit….

Applicants will be notified within a month of submission. Our review committee will begin work as soon as proposals are submitted, so interested participants are encouraged to submit proposals before the deadline. All participants in sessions – including local panelists – are required to register for the conference.

SESSION TYPES: We have identified four types of sessions, which are described below. If you have an idea for a different format, i.e. a film or art session, you will have the option to choose “other” on the abstract submission form. Paper/Project Presentations – These sessions are designed for people to present their research, projects, ideas, accomplishments and failures. Individual presentations should be limited to 15 minutes. Qualifying presentations will be grouped together based on subject, geography or other thematic considerations. Paper/project sessions will be between 1 and 1.5 hours, and all authors should be present for the full duration of their session, to allow for audience Q&A. Panels – Panels may be a collection of individual papers and projects or a panel facilitated by a moderator. Priority will be given to panels that reflect diversity of opinions, backgrounds and geography. Panels must have a minimum of three and a maximum of five panelists. The panel organizer must submit ONE abstract on behalf of the entire panel. The abstract should include the title, purpose, and the names of the panelists and the moderator. Qualifying panel discussions will be between 1 and 1.5 hours and should leave room for Q&A.

If you would like us to help identify an outside moderator/discussant, please indicate so in your submission. Participatory Workshops – The goal of a participatory workshop is the involvement of ALL workshop participants in a discussion or other exercise designed to learn, communicate, debate, etc.

Workshops can be led by a single person, although workshops led by a diverse range of people will receive priority. “Presenting” by the workshop leader/s should be limited. Workshop proposals should include the title and purpose of the workshop, the names of all presenters/leaders, and should indicate how leaders intend to involve others in the workshop.

Workshops will be between 1 and 1.5 hours and will take place in classroom-sized rooms, unless special arrangements are made. Please indicate if the workshop will require any special arrangements for space, scheduling, etc.

Posters – Posters emphasize the visual communication of ideas and are an excellent way to present one’s research, designs or project outside of a formal session. The conference will feature a special reception for posters, during which authors will present and discuss their work one-on-one, and the posters will be on display in the main conference site during the classroom sessions on Friday June 18th and Saturday June 19th.

Poster abstracts should include the title, purpose, names of all authors/presenters and preliminary description or design of the poster. Other – We enthusiastically invite the submission of proposals for other presentation formats, such as film, installations, project exhibitions, student work, etc. Abstracts in this category must include the title, purpose, names of presenters/authors, description of the work to be presented, and any required special arrangements (space, scheduling, etc.).

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Presenters/authors must first submit an abstract-length proposal of approximately 250-400 words. Proposals must also include: Title Purpose Key words (minimum of 1, maximum of 5) Abstract (250-400 words) Name(s) of all authors, presenters, panelists, workshop leaders, etc. Name(s) of suggested discussant(s), for pre-organized sessions and panels only Special arrangements (space requirements, scheduling, etc.) To submit an abstract, clink on the link below, which will take you to an offsite abstract submission system which we are using to manage submissions. Abstract Submission Page Please direct any questions about proposal submissions to Kate Ervin (HunterMUP at gmail.com).

Density is a central factor in creating the experience of urban intensity, but it is not the element that makes it pleasurable.   Density offers access but “ease” makes it enjoyable.  Numeric measures can point to a place of interest but they are without the elements needed to describe or judge it.

Jobs and population per acre are common measures of density, while design components such as the ratio of building mass to open space frames the quality of the experience.  Places from low- to high-density are tired to individual place finding or marking abilities that provide for a sense of position that reflects personal value within a community.

The images in “patchwork nation” illustrate the U.S. in 12 “community types” by using demographic, political and socioeconomic data.  What is not shown is how a census block groups of any major urban center will easily replicate the image of the nation by county.  That the nation has these social “densities” as similarly as a city is encouraging.

Density and community land use formulas tend to see a house always being “a house” or an office complex limited to business, but in an intensely used urban environment, these initial functions yield many new, often unexpected uses.   Density provides the opportunity for a critical mass of interaction, but it works best when combined with an open-ended set of form elements produces to produce the desire for “development intensity” that leads to a sense of confidence about dynamically changing sets of land uses.

A region with 100 jobs and 200 residents per acre may identify a comparatively dense area in the region and signify a transit-oriented mixed-use center.  Using this measure, the development intensity tier includes the number of time intervals that link to other transit-oriented centers. These areas might have lower residential/job densities jobs per acre or higher.  Each signifies an edge where the “intensity” accelerates or declines.  The density itself only remains significant as an intensifying agent within a traditional street grid, height and scale ratios.   Areas operating without this constraint tend to yield grey zones, lost landscapes and forgotten trends.   Growth without constraint is what kills them.  The death is rapid and it shames the residential community into which it was injected.

Form-Based Growth

Before heading off to University of Utah,  Arthur “Chris” Nelson, was in the Urban Affairs and Planning program at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Center.  His research indicated a doubling of the entire built environment in the Greater Washington, D.C. region could occur by 2030.  The concept of exponential growth is intoxicating in mega regions such as the northeast, but the rate of Greenfield development is by all accounts unsustainable, and that policy measures to focus (if not force) this energy into the existing built environment requires implementation.  Without new restraints, the a majority of the job growth will occur outside of the urban core areas, resulting in nothing more than a vast enlargement of the current “inner city” design process over much larger section of the metropolitan region.  Conclusions from this analysis demand a new regime of land use and building controls authored on a regional basis and of necessity across state lines.  One megaregion is contained with the Florida whose development concerns turned to a form basis.

The purpose of a “form-based code” is to yield to human creative purposes with a greater trust in performance measures and regulations affecting access to natural light, clean air, lack of noise, and other events or qualities that affect the quality of life.  When  Miami 21 was passed in October 2009, the introduction of the “transect” idea may change everything in land use management.  It is a boundary line around a land area for ecological measurements.  Injecting this idea in to land use and development decisions is not only protective of life, it contributes to the development contextual development events and conversion.  Although the “code” was involved the transition of the West Side Highway in Manhattan into a street near waterfront parkland speaks to this purpose.   Today it is not exactly the Camps-Elysee, but there are aspirations and this potential is now far greater than that offered by former existence as a limited access, elevated super-highway.

The principles of form-based code limit building heights based on the street grids.  Yet as a constraint it recognizes and support traditional neighborhood resilience.  These communities offer a vibrant series of mixed-use centers that accommodate growth and increased urban intensity.   With multiple forms of public mass transit this intensity also contributes to the growth of other mixed-use urban centers or edge cities and employment centers throughout the region

Interested in comments from Raleigh, Cabarrus County, Charlotte and Denver

Not since Milton Keynes (wiki) have we seen more “ordering up” of new cities.   The whole idea of a new city or town reflects the history of human civilization, but do these more recent orders deflect from or contribute to the challenge of dense urban living?

In the past:

Washington, DC, was a place ordered for design and development to be a city in a district separate from the states by Article I of the U.S. Constitution.  Is one enough?

Australia’s capital city Canberra was a “not Sydney or Melbourne” compromise. 

President Kubitschek ordered the construction of Brasilia in 1956.  By mid 1960 urban planner Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, defined it as a “start over” city, one that makes a clean break with coastal urbanism, divisive class divisions and lack of planning.

The new capital of Kazakhstan- Astana is a similarly ambitious restatement of what a city should represent. 

And now:

Norman Foster’s architecture and planning firm’s vision of global urban living is in the firm’s idea for Serrenia on the Red Sea.  The concept draws from the success of the Palms of Abu Dubai.  Utopian concepts are coming to life.  What is really on offer here?  Escape from rising sea levels and global climate destabilization in a cozy villa by the sea?  Is it a sense of instant mobility?  New cities or urbanized living centers are popping up all over the earth, and almost all of them continue to take a “city-as-failure” approach to development.  Are these investments likely or unlikely to yield a couple of “moon shot” breakthroughs in environmental urbanism?   Maybe.

From the mid-evil castles of Europe to the Palms on the Persian Gulf, little has changed.  One modest look at all of them reveals the ongoing destruction of the earth’s surface hidden behind the mask of green marketing and wealth.  Much of it is along the equator.  Is this not city building?  The ground breaking is on a new frontier — the ocean edge and floor.  It may appear to be an ostentatious transfer of the aristocracy’s demand to include those of media celebrities, but it is so much more.

Elevator to Space

Designers present images of the world’s urban possibilities as if they could be compatible with natural systems complexity.  They cannot.  Recall the city building ideas by designers such as Paolo Soleri or Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright.   These and many others envisioned the human capacity to build massive self-contained cities.  Writers too, such as Arthur C. Clark suggested an elevator to space that gained credibility when it proved technically feasible.   This idea happened because Clark imagined a time when getting into space might require something other than a fossil fuel.

On earth, the self-contained city-building story is quite different.  A case in point is the 61-story residential Marina City towers designed by Bertrand Goldberg in Chicago, IL have the “city within a city” label that proved to be more marketing that architecture.  Yet, in this case of vision implementation something is withdrawn, products like this became versions of multiple block “Stuyvesant Towns” – once constructed.  Our “towers in the park” have been exquisitely criticized as little more than warehouses with personal open space potential.

The lessons are uncomplicated; a successful urban environment is not one set in a park, or one laid out in neat single use plats, or self-contained and walled up.  The success of a city is a measure of how changeable it can become, how mutable and adaptable to new ideas it can be, and how it offers itself up into new kinds of space and use that are soft, pliable and connectable.

Who said “it is either a box or a duck”?

Only recently, has architecture addressed its creations as one of two things, “a box or a duck”.  As a critique, it speaks to the two main components of architecture that shape most of what we know today – Greco-Roman and Gothic.  While discovering a million new ways to decorate a box will continue joyfully (e.g. Gehry),  the architecture and engineering professions led by people such as John Todd, are steadily moving toward organic “ism” and the science of biomimicry.  Here the potential is to grow space as an alternative to building it.  There is one word for this change in outlook about the possibilities of design.  It is “fractal”.

Given the potential of a natural “as is above, as is below” architecture, a serious look at the urban form of the nation’s mega-regions could offer much instruction.  The order of it is there, but limited and flawed.   It is Newtonian (point to point) but Euclidean with two meanings.  Euclid was a mathematician well worth knowing because of the way Newton added “time” to his dimension equations and the second is Euclid vs. Ambler.  This is a landmark planning law case defining the regulation of use as a power of the state.  If it was possible to write an algorithm to counterbalance Newton’s math and land use law with quantum physics, the fractal nature of urban design might reveal the city’s sensitive dependence on initial conditions for an entirely different kind of restoration.  All things in life have a point where its parts and thus the whole, stops growing, and the outer boundaries of its form of life as a community are limited by external factors.  The question is whether cities as the prime expression of human life have similar boundaries, and if not why not.

Yielding to the vast humanity that is literally built into the bewildering mathematical model of quantum physics offers a useful pathway into the chaos of nature.  It illustrates how the smallest level of action represented by a square foot of a vacant and abandoned lot, has the capacity for creative self-renewal.  It is how leadership rises to meet a need through a community garden association and how they coalesce into creative institutions with new mandates and missions.  These exquisite forms of discrete energy vibrate at the heart of decay itself, within that square foot of soil, to the garden group formed by its promise, to the citywide and national movement it ultimately represents.  This is quantum physics.  It really is as simple as that, and it repeats as energy in millions of ways, thousands of times over.  It is about paying attention to the data, whether it is a square foot of soil or an entire continent.  In either case is about a response to energy as individuals in a community.

The online project to demystify planning/urban design jargon

We seek irreverent definitions of planning/urban design jargon.   The kind that gets at the truth that hurts so much it makes you laugh. Limit is 60 words.   Choose from a working list see: Glossary

Suggested Entry

Stakeholders (n), 1. label, defines persons who are affected materially by a physical change but also most likely to be without the equity sufficient to alter or manage the process affecting them.  See: Loosers

Suggested blog tags and categories: participation, community benefit agreements, have nots, 

Case/Example for discussion: Google: Willets Point, New York City, Urban Development

Best summary of the global urban challenge is by Bruce Katz “and rightly so” :

Image: 1963

Without a national land use policy, America’s formation of megacities in just over fifty years logically requires some kind of metro-management – a metro-megacity-corp.  Planners have been criticizing our “land-of-a-thousand micro-governments”  for decades, but something has changed that may add traction to solving the problems this presents to regional urban design.   The fear was that if such a thing did exist it would function with the same level of oversight offered to outfits like Enron, AIG or Citicorp.   The political will is to keep them at arm’s length, but preferably the short kind that hang from the sides of lobbyists. 

Then comes this change.   It is the widening availability of very large data-sets that can be used to define the nation’s 300+ mega-cities.  The nation’s 50 state image is just that – an image.   Turning the states into regional management corporations is becoming politically palatable because that is what is happening anyway.   The governors have a whole basketful of PBCs that bridge state lines — seems only thing missing is a little federal oversight — in the national interest.  It was the National Defense Highway act that put the nation on the mega-city path.  In the words of a well loved Yankee ball player Yogi Berra,  “You have to be careful if you don’t know where your going because you might not get there.” 

The states would not be in financial collapse and budgeting would be balanced to a regional interest if the principles of Smart Growth laid out nearly a decade ago by Anthony Downs (April 2001, Planning) had traction (to see click here).  Back then, too few knew that the use of mega-corporate level data was something the states already control, but did not share regionally across their boarders.  The framework existed but it did not hold a soupcon of policy clout.  Perhaps one of the reasons there are so many registered and unregistered lobbyists is to keep this a secret.  The idea that the micro-marketing wars are only launched by business every ten years is a similar misunderstanding of the changing role of data systems.

Businesses large and small are too busy protecting their interests to worry about regional planning or urban design, but they do file their tax returns.  Sharing rapidly developing megacity data is not crazy at all.   After all, the small business and the mega-corporate entity is driven on the basis of a daily consumer voting process.  The information on consumption is vast and until recently largely unused by states for regional planning.  Once consumption is linked up to the vital statistics and social characteristics of  “a region”  the sheer power of it all belongs without doubt in a public realm. 

Get a Handle

To get a handle on this see:  Good Guide , and look up ideas like “industrial ecology” for access to data streams that get beyond the “green branding” phenomena to the cold, hard facts that define who you are and where you are going by what you buy every day, not who you vote for every few years.  Wake up smell the coffee.  Then check the brand for its “earth” friendliness and act accordingly.  The idea is simple — these tools allow the consumer to shorten the caveat emptor cycle.

Resources such as these are described with terms such as “open data base connectivity”.  It is the jargon of data systems that offer things like highly detailed product ratings that align consumption choices with values (even an iPhone app).  Individual consumption data tools that account for environmental impact comparisons among consumption choices puts into action the ecology of commerce that Paul Hawkens talked about in 1993.  The cycles are getting shorter.  Something is working.

To put this consumption handle in its  ”class”  I recommend seeing the review of two books on data crunching in the  CD blog.  And, for more on the “mega-city” reference see video: here in post : “Go to Chicago”.     See for RPD on NYC see: Climate Design.  Also see, the Three Promises of progressive plannners that still need to be pursued with some urgency.

Be in Chicago on Monday, April 27 beginning at 8:30 a.m. on the UIC campus 725 W. Roosevelt Rd. It is open to the public for $25 with tickets via the Forum’s website: www.RJDUrbanForum.uic.edu. Two ways to look at it — cities are crucial to “recovery” from crisis or urbanism itself is a discursive human event that begs the question.  Needed improvements to recovery systems challenge the very foundations of American governance. On this point three useful forums in this year’s Richard J. Daley Urban Forum (UIC) will be enriched by the attention of the Vice-President Joe Biden, but hopefully the Vice President’s attention will be given to Brookings’, Bruce Katz – “We are a Metro Nation and it is time to start acting like one”. (See below)

Two of the panels are expected, however, the surprise may be embedded in the deal making third panel.

1. Economic Recovery and Urban Reinvestment, addressing the impact of national stimulus plans and regional and local initiatives on urban areas as well as key obstacles to these recovery efforts;
2. Economic Revitalization: Education and Healthcare, exploring how cities––as the center of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship––can take the imaginative steps needed to climb out of today’s world recession in a way that reaches far beyond urban areas; and
3. Global Town Meeting, where mayors from more than 30 cities will describe their programs in response to the global economic crisis.

How crucial to recovery is regional urban governance?   The Urban Forum, holds the UIC Forum at 725 W. Roosevelt Road.  It is open to the public.  Tickets can be purchased for $25 through the Forum Web site (above).   If you want to talk to someone give Ellie Abrams a call 312/573-5516 or write: ellie_abrams@jtpr.com. You can also get in touch with Bill Burton, UIC 312/996-2269 burton@uic.edu

The big picture was outlined in November 2007 by Bruce Katz in just 32 minutes.
The code does not hold for some reason

For the video presentation click here  or here

More: 

Bruce Katz  is Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
See Brookings:  Presentation and more  Recent Blueprint Articles

POP

A long time ago Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan defined sustainability both technologically and ecologically.  They pointed to the hubris embedded in the technological approach to the goal of sustainability.  Technology has proven to be deadly unless it is fully tethered in the way David W. Orr recommended in demanding careful human attention to the absolut priority of ecological principles.

• First, people are finite and fallible. The human ability to comprehend and manage scale and complexity has limits. Thinking too big can make our human limitations a liability rather than an asset.
• Second, a sustainable world can be redesigned and rebuilt only from the bottom up. Locally self-reliant and self-organized communities are the building blocks for change.
• Third, traditional knowledge that coevolves out of culture and place is a critical asset. It needs to be preserved, restored, and used.
• Fourth, the true harvest of evolution is encoded in nature’s design. Nature is more than a bank of resources to draw on: it is the best model we have for all the design problems we face.

Technology is zero-sum when placed in a priority higher than these four principles of real change.  The Urban Design committee is looking for a readings and critiques of Sustainable America by John Dernbach (et. al) and their position: Sustainable development will  make the US livable, healthy, secure, and prosperous.

The book runs through 28 areas of human behavior that need to change using 100 actions taken within five to ten years and thematically summarized in 10 points as follows:

1.   Ecological footprint system integration
2.   Greenhouse gas reduction programs
3.   Stimulate employment for unskilled persons in environmental protection and restoration
4.   Stimulate NGOs to play a major role
5.   Organize government initiatives using sustainability principles to prioritize
6.   Expand options for sustainable living choices to consumers
7.   Advance general public and formal education
8.   Strengthen environmental and natural resources law
9.   Lead international efforts on behalf of sustainable development
10. Systematically improve access to data for decision making

 It was released January 12, 2009. One can order from Island Press here or Amazon here  For more information, See the books website site Sustainable America  or Dernbach’s website:   Also see Dernbach’s 2002 book: Stumbling Towards Sustainability.