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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists (May 21st -27th)

This week’s round up of news and views for urbanists:

Great places: dense, wired, and sustainable: Part of what makes great places great is ecological sustainability. So what’s the best way to reduce our per-capita resource footprint? The answer is simple math: density. (Grist)

Opinion: Vancouver coasts on its beauty, but misses out on creating vibrant city life: Vancouver coasts on its natural assets, too rarely learning from other cities that do more with less. (Vancouver Sun)

The city gets a new lease of life: Even in this age of technology—where people can collaborate with people they barely know on the other side of the globe thanks to the internet—success depends on communities of individuals being in close physical proximity. (Future of Business)

What it takes to be a planner: So what does a planner do? Most of them are bureaucrats that shuffle paper, roll out red tape, make plans with all the best intentions that nobody will actually implement and lament the numerous things— especially the public—that are out of their control. But a few will actually improve humanity, better the human condition and make their part of the world a more spectacular place. (Strong Towns Blog)

Gentrification and Its Discontents: Manhattan never was what we think it was. Best to pick a different place to try to render fixed and solid that which inexorably melts into air. (The Atlantic)

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Phoenix’s CityScape Fails to Live Up to the Hype

Flickr Phot by Nick Bastien

A little over a year Iago, I shared my first observations on CityScape. It has been one of my most popular posts.

At the time I wasn’t impressed. People told me to give it time; wait until the businesses start opening up; attend a few events.

Well, I’ve done all three, and I’m more disappointed than ever.

The project seems to ignore key concepts of New Urbanism design, which calls for more windows and openings. In this way, CityScape is inward-looking and smacks of Arizona Center. I’m concerned that they made some of the same mistakes, and that we didn’t learn a lot since that time.

—Grady Gammage Jr. in Phoenix Magazine

Cityscape continues to represent all that is wrong with Phoenix: artificial, ignorant of its site and isolated from it’s surroundings. Despite being promoted as the centerpiece of downtowns re-re-re-revitalization, the development has yet to deliver. Hopes of residential units have been delayed—if not dashed, the anticipated grocery store (high-end or otherwise) has yet to open, high-profile local businesses have pulled out and national chains have reduced hours or laid off staff.

Where’s The City?

Not only is Cityscape blatantly anti-city and anti-urban; it doesn’t even compare well with its suburban competition. From the inside there is no there there. Patriots Square is still a concrete mess, the exterior windows are still covered and the few businesses have minimal signage, their glazed windows make it difficult to see what’s inside (particularly on the upper levels).

We are accustomed to accepting change in the name of progress without taking a questioning look backward.

—Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Living City, pg. 312.

Phoenixs CityScape Fails to Live Up to the Hype

Photo Credit: Fred M. on Yelp

Boosters of CityScape may like the convenience of the parking, the ~~sterility~~ cleanliness, the security (read homeless patrol) and the excitement that occurs during peak moments. What they don’t comment on is the emptiness that pervades the development between these rare events. They also seem to be immune to the banal architecture and it’s isolation from the rest of downtown, highlighted by the contemptuously blank walls facing large swathes of Jefferson and Washington. Sure, CityScape may be better than ‘nothing’, but do we really want to set the bar so low?

To be fair, I do like a few of the tenants especially the newly opened Arrogant Butcher and even the franchised Jimmy Johns. I’m happy that downtown finally has a pharmacy. However they are not enough. Indeed, I wish that they were the exception that proves the rule, and not the rule themselves.

These type of businesses should be the lures to get people excited and drawn downtown where they discover locally owner businesses and begin frequenting them. Instead, customers of Jimmy’s get to see a competing chain; and Arrogant Butcher diners get a panoramic view of parking lots.

I think CityScape is more of a convenience than a destination. I don’t think they’re creating any kind of unique experience for anyone that’s been in Phoenix and shopped before.

—Steve Rosenstein, co-owner of The Duce, in Phoenix Magazine

Mixed Use is Not a Panacea

To make things worse for downtown as a whole, the few business that have opened, and several of the office tower tenants could have easily found space. Instead of using public funds (which now make up about half the project’s funding) to lure business to CityScape, the city could have helped these businesses settle in downtown’s existing urban fabric.

Imagine the Arrogant Butcher and CVS on the ground floor of the incredible Luhr’s complex, or Lucky Strike reusing the under appreciated McGinnis Building across from the Duce on South Central? The remaining stores and restraints could have easily fit in the empty store fronts of the Collier Center, Cronkite Building or several other nearby buildings The office tenants could have stayed in the previous downtown locations, or moved to the Luhr’s buildingor the former Phelps Dodge offices.

By going this route we now have MORE empty offices and store fronts downtown than ever before. Indeed, CityScape is looking more and more like the Collier Center, with Lucky Strike filling the role of Hard rock; Arrogant Butcher playing Kincaid’s and Banner Health acting as Bank of America.

Phoenix needs to learn that while mixed-use is important, a mixed used mega development will never be a substitute for the authentic diversity that grows out of several smaller-scale densely organized projects.

The Paradox Remains

CityScape is a paradox. It was intended to be a bold new form of development downtown, but ended up being a lesser facsimile of the Arizona and Collier Centers. But perhaps the biggest irony is that while it’s name and marketing scream their urban ambitions, CityScape is almost without a sense of urbanism. To borrow Michael Sorkin’s appraisal of New York’s Lincoln Center, the development is

Like a giant spaceship… offering close encounters with the city, but not too close. The buildings are always adamant about their alien status.

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Good News for The Suburbs

Back in September, I posted about Canadian based rock band Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs and their creative video for The Wilderness Downtown. On Sunday, the album won a well deserved, if unexpected, Album of the Year at the 53rd Grammy Awards.

At the time I wrote:

The entire album has an urban planning theme, which makes it all the more awesome. Canadian, interactive AND urbanist, what more could I want!?!

Six months later,The Suburbs has become one of my favorites one of my most-played albums (and indeed one of the few albums I listen to in its entirety and not as random songs on iTunes). If you haven’t already listened to it, I strongly recommend you do, especially if you grew up surrounded by sprawl.

Here is the video from the album’s title track, directed by Spike Jonze. It is an excerpt from the short film: Scenes From The Suburbs that premiered last Saturday at the Berlin International Film Festival. it will also play at next month’s SxSW festival in Austin. Here’s hoping it comes to Phoenix soon!

From YouTube:

Taken from the short film: “Scenes From The Suburbs”

Director: Spike Jonze
DP: Greig Fraser
Editor: Jeff Buchanan
Additional Video Editing: Patrick Colman
Producer: Vince Landay
Producer: Arcade Fire
Production Company: MJZ
Sound Design/Mix – T. Terressa Tate @ The Royal T Room

scenes from the suburbs Good News for The Suburbs

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Rethinking Social Capital

Earlier this fall, there was a ‘Day of Civic Action’ in Phoenix. What a misnomer. What I saw wasn’t civic action, or even community building. Rather it was a ‘see and be seen’ opportunity.

The event was crawling with notable business and community leaders for the morning press release and the luncheon, but when it can time for the ‘action’ part of the day, the suits were nowhere to be seen. The vapidity of the event was succinctly summarized in the recommendation made at the dinner: “Eat dinner with your family more often.” If we need a major event to remember this, declining membership roles in the least of our problem.

Unfortunately, this type of event—and this type of recommendation—are common among most of the civic organizations that I am familiar with. Despite the stated missions of these organizations, many of their members appear less concerned about helping their community, and more concerned about social statutes and climbing career ladders. Perhaps the very term social capital itself is to blame; ‘capital’ implies, money, investment and accumulation. These are—in many ways—the antithesis of community building.

It hasn’t always been like this. Before Robert Putman and his fellow baby-boomers co-opted the concept of ‘social capital’ and narrowly defined it as joining so-called ‘civic groups’ and bowling leagues, it was a much more open concept. Indeed, in 1916, a school supervisor defined “social capital” as composed of:

“Those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individual and families who make up a social unit… if [an individual] comes into contact with his neighbor and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may mean a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community.” —Urban Tribes, by Ethan Watters (pg. 116)

Nowhere in this definition are press releases, luncheons, membership fees or sign-up sheets. Thus when I hear that our civic health is in trouble because we no longer ‘sign-up for things I get frustrated.

It is easy to pay annual membership dues and sit at the back of a meeting and be considered ‘civically engaged.’ Building real social capital is not so easy. It requires regular contact and interaction with friends and neighbors, even if it is simply sharing gossip.

By remaining in daily or weekly contact, with our friends and neighbors, we begin to build the intimacy and trust that are integral to community building. We also get caught up on the small talk that can dominate formal ‘networking’ meetings. When it comes time to help out, there is no need to build trust or get caught up; we are ready to jump right in and do what is necessary to help our friends.

Actively engaging with our neighbors and friends will build a lot more social capital than sitting in a sterile conference room listening to yet another speech by yet another talking head. Keep this in mind next time you want to ‘build community .’

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Urban Textures: The Backdrop of the City [repost]

Originally published on Sep 8, 2009

One of my favorite things about living in an urban environment are the multitude of textures than I come across on a daily basis. Often unseen and unnoticed, the textures of a city form the backdrop in front of which we conduct our lives. Textures makes a significant contribution to the expressive quality of a city. They impact how we relate to specific places, whether it be a distinct address, a neighborhood or an entire metropolitan area.

While individual cities share several common textures, such as asphalt, concrete, gravel and grass they are integrated in diverse ways. On top of this, they are combined with local species of plant and styles off architecture. Combined, this mix of common and distinct textures provides a unique stage on which a city’s story is played out.

These are some of the textures of Phoenix, that provide the backdrop for my daily life. They were taken during walks and bike rides around the downtown core and my uptown Phoenix neighborhood.

The full “Textures of Phoenix” set can be found on Flickr.

Urban Textures: The Backdrop of the City [repost]

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Public Policy for Private Profits

As in many other cities, Phoenix has politicized its development process. Almost every project of any size is reviewed in a way that stretches out the process inordinately. The time and money involved favor politically connected developers with the “deep pockets” needed to get through it.

Image from DavidDMuir on Flickr

This politicization creates a “duopoly” that links the developer’s interests with their political gatekeepers. It produces oversized and overly prepackaged projects of a scale and nature at odds with their surroundings and even with the city itself as a place with a unique character.

Prewar developers left room for democratic content in their projects. Not just in the retail mix, but also in the ways that “communal” open space was provided and used. Over the last seventy years, this ‘art’ of balancing commercial and community needs has been all but stomped out by boot grip of this duopoly.

Today, our city fails to encourage ordinary people to take part in its reshaping over time. There’s no flux, and no real life, and we are a poorer community because of it.

We are all, partly, to blame for this. We didn’t protest when the duopoly started to squeeze out the public. Instead of protesting and pushing for change, we turned our backs on the public realm; trading it for a few more square feet of private living space and a few cents savings on our tax bills. We have given up public participation so we don’t miss American Idol. Meanwhile the developers have stepped in. Not only with their money but their connections and time.

We need to return the ‘public’ to the policy process. This requires us to take the time to get involved—to write our city councillors, to attend (or at least submit comments to) public hearings, to publicly protest wrongheaded developments and to propose better uses of existing spaces.

If we don’t get involved, ‘private’ policy will continue to shape our city.

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Explore Your Own Suburban Wilderness, Courtesy of Arcade Fire

Screenshot

Canadian based rock band Arcade Fire is one of those indie bands that has buck the trend instead of selling out or watering down as they get bigger they just keeps getting better. This week they introduced a revolutionary new music video format.

The Wilderness Downtown uses a mashup of Google’s Street View, HTML5 video and some impressive overlays to create a multimedia viewing experience. All you need to do is input the address you grew up in and it will build an immersive film by director Chris Milk with Arcade Fire‘s “We Used To Wait” around it.

I recommend watching it as soon as possible. While it is not perfect (few pioneering experiments are), it is an extremely cool idea put into action.

af7 Explore Your Own Suburban Wilderness, Courtesy of Arcade Fire

Screenshot via designboom.com

The video is especially powerful for me, as the move I grew up in, is the home I watched my first music video in and this memory is only strengthened by the nostalgic atmosphere of the video.

Caveat: The clip requires Google Chrome (or a fully HTML5 Compliant browser). If you aren’t already using it, you really should be, so use this opportunity to download it! Also, for best results, close as many running programs as possible, all the interactive goodness taxes even the speediest processors.

We Used to Wait is found on Arcade Fire’s latest album, The Suburbs. The entire album has an urban planning theme, which makes it all the more awesome. Canadian, interactive AND urbanist, what more could I want!?!

Explore Your Own Suburban Wilderness, Courtesy of Arcade Fire

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The City is my Living Room

Photograph via zalgon on Flickr

When I was going to school in Vancouver I shared a series of dingy basement suites with other people, On had closet doors for walls, the other had ceilings that were so low, my friends had to stoop while inside (at 5’6” I was fine—barely). But I didn’t really care, because my I only real slept, kept my meager belongings, and had the odd meal there.

My real living space was the neighborhood around me the local park was my backyard where I could stretch my legs, get some exercise, or just relax with a good book. The local café was my living room, where I would hang out with friends. There was a repertory theater not too far away (for cheap) entertainment. The local pubs allowed me to keep up with my hockey fixation. When I was dead broke, I could always walk up and down the main drag, and be entertained by the sidewalk ballet that performed daily in front of me.

Sure you may say, but that was when you were young and single; it isn’t a practical life for families. I would say you are wrong. Sure there are practical reasons to raise kids in the suburbs (the quality of schools is a major consideration), but these can be overcome.

To this day, many of my friends have remained in the same neighborhood albeit moving ‘above ground’ to slightly larger, but still tiny by suburban standard apartments and subdivided houses. They now take the kids to the local parks and pools for entertainment and socialization. When they are school age, they are able to walk, with the other neighborhood children to and from the local school, and be baby-sat in the afternoons by the retired couple who live across the courtyard. Their kids learn to take public transit to get around, freeing themselves (and their parents) from being chauffeured in the family car.

Admittedly, this life is not for everyone. But, in an era where the we are questioning the viability of the McMansions and basing our live savings on a wood and stucco box, it is appealing to an increasing number of people. So instead of thinking about the number of square feet you will have to give up if you move from a suburban home, start thinking about the amenities that you will gain (not to mention the time you will recover). For many of you, you will find it a more than favorable trade-off.

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The Magic is in the Mix: Rethinking Mixed-Use Urbanism

Photo Credit: Nick Bastian on Flickr

‘Mixed-use’ is one of the most over-used, yet most misunderstood phrases in urban development. In recent years, ‘mixed-use buildings’ has become the new planning dogma, just like ‘specialized buildings’ was before it.

Many cities have invested a lot of money in developing mixed-use buildings, streets and neighborhoods, but haven’t achieved the urban vibrancy they want. This is often times because their underlying urban fabric remains coarse (i.e. large and monotonous).

In most new urbanist mixed-use developments the residential units are often all high-end condos and the retail is usually a series of chain stores. Moreover, little in the neighborhood is more than a few years old. Thus, although the uses may seem mixed, the culture is monolithic. At the same time, many arts districts face the same fate of attracting monolithic culture (albeit completely different from the previous example). A block of live work galleries doesn’t make for a vibrant neighborhood bur rather an artists ghetto.

Looking for a Phx

In downtown Phoenix, these two extremes are seen in the artist collectives and bars that have functioned, but never flourished along Grand Ave for the past decade or so on one hand; and the monotonous collection of upper middle-class restaurants and retail outlets being rolled out at CityScape on the other.

The reason that these types of mixed-use areas fail to live up to expectation is that they are too economically—and therefore, functionally limited—to be lively, interesting and convenient for a range of people. They lack the intermingling of class and functionality that offer the stimulation and interest essential to a vibrant urban core.

So the question remains: If mixed-use isn’t the answer, what it?

Urban Diversity

Perhaps a better way of looking at mixed use, is ‘diversity’. This was a basis tenet of Jane Jacobs in her classic tome, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Diversity, according to Jacobs, isn’t simply a mix of uses but an integration of business types:

4424212013 d470026667 z The Magic is in the Mix: Rethinking Mixed Use Urbanism

Photo Credit: UrbanGrammar on Flickr

“True diversity requires the “mingling of high yield middling yield, low yield, and no-yield enterprises” —Jane Jacobs

To me, “mixed use” means more than mixing residential and commercial. It also means proximity to other uses like schools/universities, parks, museums, courthouses, industries, meditation, train stations, etc. The reality is that not every building needs to have multiple uses or tenants but each block should and each neighborhood must.

These kinds of destinations help to define a city’s identity. They do so through the variety of uses and public spaces that highlight local assets and unique talents and skills of the community—educational, cultural, and commercial—that are all open and available to all visitors to enjoy for free.

Such neighborhoods allow residents to visit, become involved and stay awhile. They are not defined by architecture, but rather the uses that are front and center and the buildings and design elements that support them.

Replacing Mixed with Multiple

“It is fatal to specialize… the more diverse we are in what we can do the better.” —Jane Jacobs

Perhaps then it is time to move beyond the simple concept of ‘mixed use’ to a more robust style of development. The time of simply thinking of urban development as “Starbucks over condos, maybe with a train that comes every day” has passed.

Instead we need to start thinking of creating neighborhoods that build authentic places through multiple uses that are intimately related, interconnected and interdependent. After all, true urban diversity comes from the relationships between uses, tenants, and the organizations within a place.

The Magic is in the Mix: Rethinking Mixed Use Urbanism

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Social Media Makes My City Smaller

Besides cities and urbanism, my other main passion is social media: From blogging for a variety of sites, to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp and LinkedIn the list goes on and on.

While Twitter is often criticized for being narcissistic, this point of view shows a misunderstanding of what the application is really about. Indeed, if that is how you look at Twitter (or any other social media platform), then it’s no wonder you don’t like it.

I use tools like Twitter and Whrrl to reach out beyond the people I would otherwise know and go to places and events I wouldn’t otherwise attend. This helps me get to know my city better. As my social network grows, my city shrinks.

Creating Community

I went from “being lost in the urban desert” three years ago, to “finding my way through the urban desert” last year, to “creating community in the urban desert” right now. This evolution of my tagline shows how social media has provided a roadmap to navigate through the vast spawltopia that is Phoenix. Through social media, I have met others that share similar interests and similar values and built an urban ‘tribe’. I have discovered new and cool places, I have even begun repositioning my career. Would this have been possible without social media? Perhaps; but not as quickly and definitely not as deeply.

Connection Devices

The feeling of being connected, more so than the feeling of being mobile, provides the necessary context from which to be productive, both in terms of work and social life. —Eric Gordon

Part of the misunderstanding fog social media is how we define in it. First too many people put the emphasis on the MEDIA part of it, instead of the SOCIAL. To me, Social Media is all about the people, the tech are just tools to facilities the social. Indeed I view tools like Facebook and Twitter the next step in a long chain of social tools From town criers to neighborhood bulletin boards to telephone trees, the current crop of social media applications stand on their shoulders.

Another definition problem is the use of the term ‘mobile devices.’ While mobility is indeed a huge part of their functionality, their true power comes from their power to connect not only with each other, but with our surroundings. As Ezra Goldman points out:

people are likely as mobile today as they ever were. What’s different is that we’re more accessible and connected when we do move around.

Engagement Devices

Social media provides us with the ability, not simply to ‘check in,’ but to pay attention to not only where we are, but what (and who) is around us. By using location-based apps, we are pausing, if only for a moment, to engage with our social network AND physical surroundings. We are connecting where we are with what we are doing with who we know. Our experience becomes richer because of such engagement.

Sure, like any tool, connection devices are misused. They can draw us away from the immediacy of our surroundings, alienating ourselves from those who are with us physically. But their power to connect us and draw attention to things that matter around us outweighs this side effect. And instead of critiquing the devices and their users our time would be better spent developing ways to enhance our understanding of our surroundings while at the same time encouraging un-mediated interpersonal interaction.

The modern American city has never been bereft of these complications — from the hand-held camera at the end of the nineteenth century to the mobile phone at the end of the twentieth, the city has always been a mediated construct. The city enters into the cultural imaginary as a hodgepodge of disconnected signifiers, often organized by the technologies that produce them. —Eric Gordon, Urban Spectator

Conclusion

Far from isolating me somewhere in cyber-space, social media has allowed me to engage my city—and my friends—at a far deeper level than was possible before. It has made my city smaller, more interesting and more friendly and my life would be poorer without it.

NOTES

The title of this post was borrowed from a post written by Vancouver journalist and blogger Lisa Johnson. I tried to come up with my own, but couldn’t top it. I hope Lisa doesn’t mind!
For more on this concept, please refer to this excellent blog by Eric Gordon.