The Kind of Problem a City isn't: Why Battle Burnham, Part II

The last chapter of Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities is entitled 'The kind of problem a city is'. In that chapter she describes the three kinds of problems science has learned to address, in chronological order: problems of (1) simplicity, (2) disorganized complexity, and (3) organized complexity. Problems of simplicity are problems with two variables. Disorganized complexity refers to a number of variables too large to track individual relationships, for which statistical methods have been developed. The last problem, science is just beginning to deal with. They are problems of systems, which I wrote about in last week's post, though the idea of systems theory was not to be developed for a few more years. Jacobs is essentially talking about understanding cities as systems of human beings. She references the fact that systems theory began its popularization in the fields of biology because modern biology could not have progressed by trying to understand an organism through statistical analysis alone anymore than they could have progressed by simply analyzing the individual chemical reactions at the cellular level. The organism, as well as ecosystems, must be examined as an interconnected system of parts in order to understand the functioning and purpose of any individual part. Cities too, must be understood as a complex system of interconnected parts if we are to understand them in any useful way. Jacobs goes on to describe cities as being part of nature just as their creators,  human being, are. Since cities are the creations of human beings, they are part of, if not erupting directly from, nature. This is why the same methods of analysis that are used for biological systems are useful in examining cities. 

Daniel Burnham circa 1890s

Which brings me to my focus for this blog. While Jacobs argues for understanding cities through a lens we now call systems thinking, my focus is somewhat more narrow: separating out what kind of problem the city isn't. To be precise: it isn't a design problem. One of the main obstacles to solving the problems of the city in the twentieth century was the ongoing assumption that urban problems were problems of architecture and/or design. In my opinion, this sort of thinking (in the United States, anyway) can be traced back to Daniel Burnham, the turn-of-the-century architect who popularized the City Beautiful movement. If the choice of Burnham seems arbitrary (there are plenty of architect-planners to choose from), it is the lack of any concern for his work's connection to urban ills that truly sets Burnham apart. Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright all had visions of how their future societies would work, although they all shared the misconception that rebuilding was the path to social reform. Burnham was distinct from these others (if not completely unique) in the idea that it was the architecture and urban design itself  that was sure to cause the improvement in society. The battle, though, to be sure, is against the idea of design as planning, and not against Burnham specifically, or any of his contemporaries or the inheritors of the Burnham legacy. I am using Burnham as a makeshift metonym for this conception of planning.



Burnham famously said "Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." President Obama even used the quote when announcing plans for America's High Speed Rail system several years ago. This philosophy is not only Burnham's, but has been adopted by the planning profession in general. It has been the basis of planning (disasters) over the whole of the 20th century. It is the philosophy by which urban cores have been diminished over the past ~40 years and the reason that the 'revitalization' solutions range from large scale urban shopping malls to convention centers and stadiums, but none to improve the lives of citizens. It is also the reason that urban areas are in a state of constant failure. The functioning of the city is ignored and the planners rely on the certainty that they can build their way out of a non-functioning city. Jane Jacobs provides a counterpoint to this philosophy. Death and Life is itself an examination of the minutia of city life. Jacobs talks about the urban street ballet: the individual intentions and aspirations of all the denizens of the city working individually and cooperatively in order to compose and comprise the city itself. In a sense, Jacobs was saying "Make small plans." They are the brick and mortar which build the living city. This strong conceptual difference is why I believe that those of us who wish to follow Jacobs' admonition to understand the city before trying to remake it should view the design-oriented viewpoint of Burnham and his fellows as her antithesis.

Court of Honor and Grand Basin of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago, Illinois)

This then, is intended to be the focus of this blog. I hope that I'll be able to stick (at least loosely) to this main topic, though I should say here at the outset that any urban planning topic is fair game, as I see this general attitude toward 'design as planning' to run generally throughout the profession anyway. So why, you may still ask yourself, do I find this to be an important topic to address? Besides my general interest in urban planning and urban places, I also find that these issues are at the heart of the decline of American communities, and thereby, its democracy. It seems that this focus on design has rendered the human relationships on which communities are based unnecessary (to the planners) and those relationships have been unceremoniously swept into the dustbin as sentimental and superfluous. While urban planners may not have disdain for those relationships, by avoiding the real issues of society, they've effectively allowed those relationships and the systems that support living cities to decay behind a facade of grandeur. The photograph above depicts exactly this. Designed by Daniel Burnham, it is a metaphor being played out in real life: a beautifully designed World's Fair, with all the trappings of the City Beautiful movement, all aesthetics and no substance. Most of these buildings weren't intended to last, just facades over a temporary exhibit to complete the illusion. 

And that is what our society has become. Temporary homes in temporary communities while we work at temporary jobs until we reach the conclusion of our temporary lives. Without some sense of consistency and continuity, we lack an emotional connection to place, as well as people. Without that connection we fail to involve ourselves in our communities and participate in the democratic process, and without that involvement, our cities are left to undemocratic influences. We see this played out on the national stage as money has progressively more influence in our politics every election, but this plays itself out in local politics and policies as well. I feel passionate about bringing to light the true issues of planning as much as differentiating between urban design and urban planning because it touches so many aspects of our lives, from emotional to social and political. The real issues of urban planning are those that touch our everyday lives, not the grand ideals that architecture and design are supposed to 'inspire' in us lesser people. Real urban planning should be about creating a city that the citizens are a part of, care about, and ultimately run themselves, not about creating a facade, no matter how attractive that facade may be.