The Decorated Corpse

I'd like to take a look at City Creek Center, a major project in Salt Lake City, Utah. It represents the height of contemporary thinking in urban planning. I'd like to talk about why it does not represent legitimate, healthy urban development, but instead kills the living city, if anything remains, and then decorates the corpse so that the place may look healthy on the surface. I took the title of this post, it's worth noting, from Robert Venturi's landmark study of the vernacular architecture of Las Vegas, in which he describes the difference between 'Ducks' and 'Decorated Sheds' in the world of Architecture. In the world of urban planning, a similar dichotomy exists between decisions about the living city and creative ways to decorate the urban cadaver. After discussing this concept, I'll apply it to the particular project of City Creek Center and argue why that isn't a legitimate replacement for healthy urban development, and is likely detrimental. 

The south side entrance to City Creek Center at Richards Street. The 99 West Apartments (formerly The Promontory) are seen in the distance. ( Mangoman88)

Venturi's take on the difference between 'Ducks' and 'Decorated Sheds' is that Ducks (taken from a duck-shaped roadside stand on Long Island selling eggs) are buildings that are  designed to be specifically and only what they are. Conversion to another use would be impossible or at least quite difficult. The Decorated Shed is a building that is designed in such a way that would allow it to accommodate a wide variety of uses. It may be a clothing store today, but it may very well be a coffee shop tomorrow. One need only change the sign and the interior design. Venturi makes no judgements about this, only an observation and a note to other architects to have more respect for the decorated shed than is normally shown, considering their ubiquity and usefulness in our society and economy.

I completely agree with Venturi that we should all have more respect for the decorated shed. These are the buildings that we all live our lives in. Whether we live in them as apartment buildings and condos, or work in them as office towers and retail stores; these buildings are largely what make the city. They allow the city to function economically and socially. But I am taking only the term (the Decorated _____), not the larger concept. And I am most certainly making a value judgement. What is happening in American cities right now with mega-projects like City Creek Center (this project is certainly not alone) is that space that should be reserved for a healthy urban marketplace is instead being turned over to development companies who then decide to bulldoze the living city and replace it with a per-fabricated version of a city where low value uses don't exist and (consequently) neither do low value people. If you thought urban gentrification had negative aspects, wait till they can just skip the middle man and replace the old development with a finished product that they've deemed appropriate. And it's killing the cities we live in. If you can't tell that the city is dying, that's the point. It's a decorated corpse.