As a first post and explanation, I want to address the title of my blog and what the blog is supposed to be about. I say supposed because I cannot guarantee that I will not drift from the main topic from time to time but I do guarantee that I will at least make feeble attempts to relate the issue I'm on about that week back to the general topic at hand. That topic being: Urban Planning. More specifically, differentiating between the practice of planning as described by the late Jane Jacobs and the profession as generally practiced and epitomized by Daniel Burnham.
I came to the conclusion that there is a conflict between the two conceptions of urban planning after attending two years of schooling for a masters degree in urban planning. The thing that inspired me to try to move into the field of urban planning was mostly my undergraduate degree, which was a BA in Geography with a focus on Urban Studies.
While an undergraduate I read Jane Jacobs' landmark book on Urban Planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which is what interested me in urban studies initially. I was invigorated by Jacobs' assessment of city planning and her attack on the contemporary practice. Jacobs' view was that city planning should be based on an understanding of how cities work rather than on how they look. For me, it was a detailed, but simple argument about placing function over form.
This is why, despite her much-publicized battles with Robert Moses, Jacobs' main conflict (in my opinion) was not with Moses (her contemporary) but instead with the late 19th, early 20th century idea of planning, epitomized by Daniel Burnham. Jacobs' critique of city planning as it stood at the time, however, gave less importance to Burnham, but instead focused on Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, Lewis Mumford and others. Burnham's City Beautiful movement (if I may ascribe the movement to him) is described in Death and Life as "the other, less important line of ancestry in orthodox city planning."
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| Mrs. Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Comm. to save the West Village holds up documentary evidence at a press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson & Charles Sts., 1961 (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ-62-137838) |
Jacobs goes on to describe many of the problems facing contemporary cities when she wrote the book (1961) which, I was surprised to find, are largely the same problems which face cities and city planning today. The front lines of the battle have moved, but they are generally the same battles. And many of the lessons can easily be transplanted to other cities. To be sure, Jacobs was clear that she was a writing a book about New York, not making an attempt to write a treatise that would give instruction on the practice of city planning to all cities, for all time. And yet, in her attempt to avoid such a thing, she clearly created a work that spoke to people far beyond New York about the design-oriented origins of city planning. Jacobs' disciples, from citizen activists to professional planners, have appreciated her work and her perspective, which boils down to the simple recognition that it is more important to define what type of problem a city is than what form a city should take. Function over form.
A moment's contemplation on The City Beautiful
The City Beautiful movement, of which Daniel Burnham was the dominant figure, was the seminal movement in modern city planning in the United States. Prior to the modern age, city planning (in as much as it existed at all) was limited to designing plazas or parks or laying plats for new settlements in times of colonial and imperial expansion. Otherwise, cities largely developed without the strict controls of zoning and development codes. Attempts to control urban development began as a response to Industrial Era cities, and understandably so. By the late 19th century industrial cities in both the United States and Europe had become slums of an order never before seen (check out chapter 2 of of Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow for a chilling account of American and European cities of the period), so one can easily see why it was decided that something needed to be done about the situation. The solution was urban planning and, like most solutions of the modern era, the plan was usually to start completely from scratch. Ebenezer Howard wanted to move populations out of the city center to tightly controlled and thoroughly planned 'Garden Cities', where population densities were kept low as a solution to urban overcrowding, effectively starting from scratch outside the existing city.
An example Le Corbusier's idea of city planning was Ville Contemporaine, which was proposed in Plan Voisin to replace Paris's Right Bank with a series of modern high rises separated by (empty) greenspace, literally bulldozing the existing city and replacing it with a modern version. Le Corbusier's ideas greatly influenced American public housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, which often saw the destruction of huge swaths of the city in order to make way for (what was thought to be) the superior modern replacement.
All of these urban planning movements had one thing in common: they believed that cities could be designed into perfection, indeed that there is such a thing as the perfect city. With obvious philosophical objections to the idea of The City Perfect aside, there is also the practical reality that the existing human population of Earth already lives in existing cities, towns, villages, farming communities, and the like. Who precisely will be living in the new, perfect cities? Where will they be built, and what will be their economic reason for existing? To be sure, new cities are occasionally founded and populated, such as Brasilia, Brazil. But such cities are the exception, not the rule. The City Perfect plans either destroy the existing city or require the city to spring forth fully formed from nothing.
The City Beautiful had no such problems. It made no attempts to remake the city as a whole, but instead to inspire moral and civic virtue, as well as to improve the quality of life, through the simple expedient of beautification. Beautification could mean anything from significant greenspace (as in Coral Gables, Florida) to neoclassical architectural styles (as in the Denver Civic Center) with monuments, obelisks and fountains in between. Rarely was implementation on a large scale. Apparently, the public was supposed to achieve their improved quality of life through simply stopping by and viewing occasionally. The few large scale examples of City Beautiful implementation, such as Coral Gables, are generally inaccessible to the average citizen (even today, the average household income in Coral Gables is over $125k per year) and represent only a small portion of a sprawling metropolitan area.
But City Beautiful and City Perfect do have one important thing in common: the focus is invariably on the idea that what's important in a city is physical design. Whether it's the plat of the city or the particular design of a park, plaza, or building, the focus is solely on design, rather than an understanding of how the city works. The result of this thinking is that a city can always build its way out of it's problems. Planning, for about the past century, has been primarily focused on (construction) project-based solutions, rather than addressing the problems themselves through economic or other policy changes.
The New Urbanists
The most recent incarnation of this philosophy is New Urbanism. The movement began in the early 1980s and was solidified in the founding of the CNU (Congress for New Urbanism), an organization that advocates for New Urbanist priciples, in 1993. I should mention right off, before CNU fans fling their computers out the window at the suggestion that New Urbanism isn't the best thing since sliced bread, that my argument certainly isn't with the aesthetics of New Urbanist developments. Nor is my argument with New Urbanist principles. In fact, the CNU Charter espouses many of the values which drive me in my quest to discern the relevant details of an improved urban structure. My argument is instead with the outcomes. With the actual New Urbanist projects, to be sure, but even more so with the focus of discussion and the ideas that are most associated with New Urbanism. That focus is almost exclusively on (you guessed it) design. In this sense I see New Urbanism as the contemporary inheritor of the Burnham legacy. While they have high ideals and nothing but the best intentions, the over-focus on design means that planners do not spend their time and energy on real issues, or at least on rational solutions to those issues. Humanity's biggest problems are not going to be solved by placing street furniture or shrubberies in just the right place or by the false diversity of differing architectural styles within the same housing development. Furthermore, the enormous energies expended in focusing on these issues detracts from solving the real problems. And those problems are what I hope to focus on in this blog.
To be sure, I am not suggesting that there should be no such thing as urban design or architecture. I'm glad that there are those out there who are interested in making beautiful cities and buildings and I'm delighted that some of them are actually good at it. But when we make the mistake of believing that design and planning are one and the same, we can easily lose sight of the bigger issues. We quickly change the conversation from homelessness to street furniture or from air pollution to pedestrian mall design. Someone needs to keep those bigger issues in mind and do the hard work of facing large scale problems with long term solutions. I suggest that planners are in the position to do just that. I suggest that it's time urban planners and urban designers made a split in their practices. The actual crossover between planning and design is sparse enough that planners and designers need not work in the same offices, be educated in the same departments, or attend the same conferences (at least not in their respective professional capacities). I suggest that those who follow the interests of Burnham and the New Urbanists should be thought of as urban designers and continue forward in their interests. But those who identify more with Jane Jacobs (Has there been another true planner?) and wish to work on developing the practice of planning as a field which focuses on the evolution of the urban endeavor, rather than concerning itself with the urban form should consider themselves true urban planners. The good news is that there are plenty of people out there working on proper planning issues, separate from design. There are also planning issues intertwined with design that can be separated. Andres Duany's idea of transect-based zoning can easily be separated from the SmartCode and provides a legitimate and helpful alternative to traditional Euclidean zoning without the prescriptions on form, such as regulated setbacks and architectural elements.
Until next time...
Finally, it should be noted that, while the major focus of contemporary planning seems to be urban design, there are those at work within the field of planning, like Donald Shoup and Pamela Blaise, who are advocating for economic and transportation policy changes. And those outside the field whose work should be strongly considered by planners newly abandoning the idea of the designed city such as Robert Putnam, whose ideas about social capital could prove instructive to planners seeking to increase citizen participation and urban democratization. So if you'd care to join me in my crusade, we're not alone. There are plenty of planners, writers, and thinkers (not that those groups are mutually exclusive) working on figuring out the mechanics of the city in the hopes of making it a better place to live. But it is likely to be an uphill battle.
I honestly had a lot more to include in this introduction to this blog. However, it seems that this is a sufficient first post and, well, that's what a blog is for: to continue the discussion. If you're still uncertain as to my reasons for 'Battling Burnham' then please look for a second installment of this post in the coming weeks, as I'd like to return to the idea and drive home the importance of the design/planning divide.
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| Diagram of the Garden City concept from the 1902 edition of Garden Cities of To-morrow |
All of these urban planning movements had one thing in common: they believed that cities could be designed into perfection, indeed that there is such a thing as the perfect city. With obvious philosophical objections to the idea of The City Perfect aside, there is also the practical reality that the existing human population of Earth already lives in existing cities, towns, villages, farming communities, and the like. Who precisely will be living in the new, perfect cities? Where will they be built, and what will be their economic reason for existing? To be sure, new cities are occasionally founded and populated, such as Brasilia, Brazil. But such cities are the exception, not the rule. The City Perfect plans either destroy the existing city or require the city to spring forth fully formed from nothing.
The City Beautiful had no such problems. It made no attempts to remake the city as a whole, but instead to inspire moral and civic virtue, as well as to improve the quality of life, through the simple expedient of beautification. Beautification could mean anything from significant greenspace (as in Coral Gables, Florida) to neoclassical architectural styles (as in the Denver Civic Center) with monuments, obelisks and fountains in between. Rarely was implementation on a large scale. Apparently, the public was supposed to achieve their improved quality of life through simply stopping by and viewing occasionally. The few large scale examples of City Beautiful implementation, such as Coral Gables, are generally inaccessible to the average citizen (even today, the average household income in Coral Gables is over $125k per year) and represent only a small portion of a sprawling metropolitan area.
But City Beautiful and City Perfect do have one important thing in common: the focus is invariably on the idea that what's important in a city is physical design. Whether it's the plat of the city or the particular design of a park, plaza, or building, the focus is solely on design, rather than an understanding of how the city works. The result of this thinking is that a city can always build its way out of it's problems. Planning, for about the past century, has been primarily focused on (construction) project-based solutions, rather than addressing the problems themselves through economic or other policy changes.
The New Urbanists
The most recent incarnation of this philosophy is New Urbanism. The movement began in the early 1980s and was solidified in the founding of the CNU (Congress for New Urbanism), an organization that advocates for New Urbanist priciples, in 1993. I should mention right off, before CNU fans fling their computers out the window at the suggestion that New Urbanism isn't the best thing since sliced bread, that my argument certainly isn't with the aesthetics of New Urbanist developments. Nor is my argument with New Urbanist principles. In fact, the CNU Charter espouses many of the values which drive me in my quest to discern the relevant details of an improved urban structure. My argument is instead with the outcomes. With the actual New Urbanist projects, to be sure, but even more so with the focus of discussion and the ideas that are most associated with New Urbanism. That focus is almost exclusively on (you guessed it) design. In this sense I see New Urbanism as the contemporary inheritor of the Burnham legacy. While they have high ideals and nothing but the best intentions, the over-focus on design means that planners do not spend their time and energy on real issues, or at least on rational solutions to those issues. Humanity's biggest problems are not going to be solved by placing street furniture or shrubberies in just the right place or by the false diversity of differing architectural styles within the same housing development. Furthermore, the enormous energies expended in focusing on these issues detracts from solving the real problems. And those problems are what I hope to focus on in this blog.
To be sure, I am not suggesting that there should be no such thing as urban design or architecture. I'm glad that there are those out there who are interested in making beautiful cities and buildings and I'm delighted that some of them are actually good at it. But when we make the mistake of believing that design and planning are one and the same, we can easily lose sight of the bigger issues. We quickly change the conversation from homelessness to street furniture or from air pollution to pedestrian mall design. Someone needs to keep those bigger issues in mind and do the hard work of facing large scale problems with long term solutions. I suggest that planners are in the position to do just that. I suggest that it's time urban planners and urban designers made a split in their practices. The actual crossover between planning and design is sparse enough that planners and designers need not work in the same offices, be educated in the same departments, or attend the same conferences (at least not in their respective professional capacities). I suggest that those who follow the interests of Burnham and the New Urbanists should be thought of as urban designers and continue forward in their interests. But those who identify more with Jane Jacobs (Has there been another true planner?) and wish to work on developing the practice of planning as a field which focuses on the evolution of the urban endeavor, rather than concerning itself with the urban form should consider themselves true urban planners. The good news is that there are plenty of people out there working on proper planning issues, separate from design. There are also planning issues intertwined with design that can be separated. Andres Duany's idea of transect-based zoning can easily be separated from the SmartCode and provides a legitimate and helpful alternative to traditional Euclidean zoning without the prescriptions on form, such as regulated setbacks and architectural elements.
Until next time...
Finally, it should be noted that, while the major focus of contemporary planning seems to be urban design, there are those at work within the field of planning, like Donald Shoup and Pamela Blaise, who are advocating for economic and transportation policy changes. And those outside the field whose work should be strongly considered by planners newly abandoning the idea of the designed city such as Robert Putnam, whose ideas about social capital could prove instructive to planners seeking to increase citizen participation and urban democratization. So if you'd care to join me in my crusade, we're not alone. There are plenty of planners, writers, and thinkers (not that those groups are mutually exclusive) working on figuring out the mechanics of the city in the hopes of making it a better place to live. But it is likely to be an uphill battle.
I honestly had a lot more to include in this introduction to this blog. However, it seems that this is a sufficient first post and, well, that's what a blog is for: to continue the discussion. If you're still uncertain as to my reasons for 'Battling Burnham' then please look for a second installment of this post in the coming weeks, as I'd like to return to the idea and drive home the importance of the design/planning divide.
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