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Archive for the ‘Landscape Planning’ Category

There Is No Planning Here

Posted in Cities, Landscape Planning, Reflective Practice, tagged , , , , , on April 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Blogging is suffering as the intensity of the academic year reaches a peak, and most of my attention is focused on wrapping up projects. But I have also been re-reading a number of urban planning and design texts as part of a seminar class I am teaching, and I will share some noteworthy bits here. Planners are aware of the charge/risk that the plans that they work so hard to develop may end up sitting on the shelf. Lew Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of urban and regional planning and landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, wrote about the this dilemma in his 2001 book (Urban Development: The Logic of Making Plans). I was struck by the observation Hopkins makes in the first chapter.

When I am asked what I do and respond that I am a planner, people say, “Well, we can certainly use you around here. There is no planning here.” Or “Planning is not working here” (pg. 5).

Hopkins goes on to say that he has heard similar statements in locations around the world and in places that are known for planning. He then speculates about why the perception is that planning is either nonexistent or has failed in many communities, getting to the heart of what planning can and cannot accomplish. His observations are worth keeping in mind as many of us work to improve communities through planning, even in the face of its limitations.

Citizens have very high expectations of what plans can accomplish and very vague notions of what a plan is or how it actually works. If they can imagine a better living environment in their locality, there must not have been a plan. If they think that government or private developers ought to have behaved differently, there must not have been a plan. To infer that the lack of planning is the explanation of all problems of human settlements implies that plans could solve all problems of urban development. Plans, however, can only do certain things and they work imperfectly even in these situations.

Successful human settlements require much more than planning. Some of the outcomes that people often expect of plans are more likely to be achieved by democratic governance or regulation, each of which also can accomplish only certain things and works imperfectly. In simplest terms, plans provide information about interdependent decisions, governance makes collective choices, and regulations set rights. Understanding these distinctions will give people reasonable expectations with which to use all three to improve human settlements (pg. 5).

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Dreaming the Sustainable City

Posted in Cities, Landscape Planning, Reflective Practice, tagged , , , , , on March 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Seems fitting for a Sunday afternoon post – a long quote from Leonie Sandercock. These are the opening paragraphs from her chapter in Story and Sustainability (Eckstein and Throgmorton, 2003).

I look into my crystal globe, and I dream of the carnival of the multicultural city. I don’t want a city where everything stays the same and everyone is afraid of change; I don’t want a city where young African Americans have to sell drugs to make a living, or Thai women are imprisoned in sweat shops in the garment district where they work 16 hours a day 6 days a week; where boys carry guns to make them feel like men, suspicion oozes from plaster walls, and white neighborhoods call the police if they see a black or a stranger on their street. I don’t want a city where the official in charge refuses to deal with the man standing at his desk because everything about him is different; where immigrants are called “blackheads” and forced to find shelter in the industrial zone; where whites pay more and more of their private incomes to protect themselves from “strangers” and vote for officials who will spend more of everyone’s tax dollars on more law and order rather than more schools and health clinics; where political candidates run on promises of cutting off services to “illegal immigrants”; where the media teaches us to fear and hate one another and to value violence in the name of “patriotism” and “community.” I don’t want a city where the advertising men are in charge and there are no circuses for those without bread. I don’t want a city where I am afraid to go out alone at night, or to visit certain neighborhoods even in broad daylight; where pedestrians are immediately suspect, and the homeless always harassed. I don’t want a city where the elderly are irrelevant and “youth” is a problem to be solved with more control. I don’t want a city where my profession – urban planning – contributes to all of the above, acting as spatial police, regulating bodies in space.

I dream of a city of bread and festivals, where those who don’t have the bread aren’t excluded from the carnival. I dream of a city in which action grows out of knowledge and understanding; where you haven’t got it made until you can help others to get where you are or beyond; where social justice is more prized than a balanced budget; where I have a right to my surroundings, and so do all my fellow citizens; where we don’t exist for the city but are wooed by it; where only after consultation with us could decisions be made about our neighborhoods; where scarcity does not build a barbed-wire fence around our carefully guarded inequalities; where no one flaunts their authority and no one is without authority; where I don’t have to translate my “expertise” into jargon to impress officials and confuse citizens.

I want a city where the community values and rewards those who are different; where a community becomes more developed as it becomes more diverse; where “community” is caring and sharing responsibility for the physical and spiritual condition of the living space. I want a city where people can cartwheel across pedestrian crossings without being arrested for playfulness; where everyone can paint the sidewalks, and address passers-by without fear of being shot; where there are places of stimulus and places of meditation; where there is music in public squares, buskers (street entertainers) don’t have to have a portfolio and a permit, and street vendors coexist with shopkeepers. I want a city where people take pleasure in shaping and caring for their environment and are encouraged to do so; where neighbors plant bok choy and taro and broad beans in the community gardens. I want a city where my profession contributes to all of the above, where city planning is a war of liberation fought against dumb, featureless public space; against STARchitecture, speculators, and bench markers; against the multiple sources of oppression, domination, and violence; where citizens wrest from space new possibilities and immerse themselves in their cultures while respecting those of their neighbors, collectively forging new hybrid cultures and spaces. I want a city that is run differently than an accounting firm; where planners “plan” by negotiating desires and fears, mediating memories and hopes, facilitating change and transformation.

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Do-Good Design and Place-Based Knowledge

Posted in Cities, Design Practice, Landscape Planning, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

My research on the potential for design to positively affect low income communities led me to an editorial in the New York Times from May of last year. The article’s title is Hands Off Our Houses, and it was a response to a competition to design a $300 house for the world’s poor. The authors, Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, work in Dharavi, a neighborhood in Mumbia ”that has become a one-stop shop for anyone interested in ‘slums’.” They give us a glimpse into a world that outsiders, especially Westerners, do not understand. Without an understanding rooted in the uniqueness of place, and of the lives of people living in that place, designers cannot offer solutions. The $300 house, an idea with good intent, will not help the poor of Dharavi for these reasons:

To start with, space is scarce. There is almost no room for new construction or ready-made houses. Most residents are renters, paying $20 to $100 a month for small apartments.

Those who own houses have far more equity in them than $300 — a typical home is worth at least $3,000. Many families have owned their houses for two or three generations, upgrading them as their incomes increase. With additions, these homes become what we call “tool houses,” acting as workshops, manufacturing units, warehouses and shops. They facilitate trade and production, and allow homeowners to improve their living standards over time.

None of this would be possible with a $300 house, which would have to be as standardized as possible to keep costs low. No number of add-ons would be able to match the flexibility of need-based construction.

In addition, construction is an important industry in neighborhoods like Dharavi. Much of the economy consists of hardware shops, carpenters, plumbers, concrete makers, masons, even real-estate agents. Importing pre-fabricated homes would put many people out of business, undercutting the very population the $300 house is intended to help.

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Communities of Trust

Posted in Landscape Planning, tagged , , , , on February 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Summer in the Blue Ridge

Standing in front of the organic coffee display at my local co-op, considering the choice of Organic Mind, Body, and Soul or Organic Love Buzz, I was reminded that my favorite self-service food store also offered these coffees. My favorite store of all time is one that assured me that goodness prevails in the world and that we can trust each other more than we think. This magical place is the Greens Garage, located 1 mile down a dirt road in Floyd, Virginia, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was my privilege to shop there for several years, getting to know the owner, Tenley Weaver, a bit when I would occasionally see her there.

I moved from Virginia 4 1/2 years ago now, so I search online every now and then for signs that the Greens Garage is still there. My last visit was around 2 years ago. Checking today, I see a January 2012 blog post from another fan, Jes of the food blog, Eating Appalachia. Check out Jes’s blog for some great pictures of the inside of the Greens Garage – and the recipe for spaghetti squash with Brazil nut pesto!

Tenley Weaver’s business is Good Food, Good People, which says it all really. She brings local food to her region, coordinating the sale and distribution from her own farm as well as from the farms of many of her neighbors. Greens Garage is a kind of community farm store that offers much more than the common vegetable stand -like organic coffee, grass-fed beef, dairy products, and other staples for the organic household (tahini, anyone?). What sets this place apart is that it is run on the honor system. No staff is there during the day, apart from deliveries by Tenley and other miscellaneous operations. The shopper selects whatever he or she wants to buy, weighs vegetables on a scale, and then tallies the amount due on a receipt pad, with the aid of a calculator and a sales tax chart. Cash is requisite, and exact change is desirable. There is something very satisfying about this process!

Trust is obvious at the Greens Garage. But trust also drives my local co-op, the Syracuse Real Food Co-op. Since 1972, it has been serving my neighborhood. Community members can join the cooperative, and their trust (and faith) in the enterprise is what has kept it going for 40 years. These communities of trust are important. As someone concerned with community planning and neighborhood revitalization, I would like to find a way to capture the magic of these places and spread it around to other communities where trust left a long time ago. The example of the Greens Garage tells me that what I might have once called impossible perhaps isn’t so impossible after all.

Be it ever so humble, the Greens Garage

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A City That Gives Form to Desires

Posted in Design Practice, Landscape Planning, Reflective Practice, tagged , , , , , , , on January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

In Small Change, Nabeel Hamdi includes an excerpt from Italo Calvino’s Le Cita Invisibili (1972) that I find striking, especially as I consider the challenges of planning in the merging megacities of the world. It’s worth sharing, I think.

Zenobia, a city in Asia, has houses made of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and hanging belvederes, with barrels storing water, weather vanes, jutting pulleys, fish poles and cranes.

No-one remembers what need, command, or desire drove Zenobia’s founders to give their city this form, as the buildings are constructed on pilings that sit over dry terrain. But what is certain is that if a traveler asks an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines, with its piling and suspended stairways, a Zenobia perhaps aflutter with banners and ribbons, quite different from the original but always derived by combining elements of that first model.

However, it is pointless to try to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into a different two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give form to their desires and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

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Crime- and Poverty-Challenged Design

Posted in Design Practice, Landscape Planning, Reflective Practice, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Khayelitsha Township via The Guardian

How can designers improve the quality of life for residents of the poorest and most dangerous parts of cities? It is a daunting problem, and the temptation is either to say that the problem is too big or that a huge infusion of cash is needed to even get started. What if some of the problems of the poorest and dangerous places could be ameliorated, at least, by design that does not cost a fortune? The figure for total world population living in cities by 2050, cited in the Gary Hustwit film, Urbanized, is 75%! And 1/3 of those people will be living in slums. It’s time for creative thinking!

One of the many interviews with Gary Hustwit on Urbanized is found in Urban Omnibus. Hustwit describes a project in a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa that is striking in its success, both as participatory design and as a well-conceived, modestly priced solution to improving quality of life for area residents. In Hustwit’s words:

the idea of participatory design — of using the public as a design compass instead of just getting a reaction to projects that are already proposed — is not being employed as much as it might. It’s really inspiring when you see it happening and working, like the VPUU (which stands for Violence Prevention by Urban Upgrading) project in Khayelitsha in Cape Town.

And on the process:

They spent two years talking to residents before they even started thinking about their first plan. They trained volunteers to go out into the community and talk to people about the problems they face. The biggest priority turned out to be pedestrian walkways, which were where most crime was happening. Khayelitsha has a series of stormwater overflow channels that run through the settlement that were just undeveloped, garbage-strewn land. They weren’t lit, and harbored gang activity and all kinds of criminal activity. But those stormwater floodways were also the informal pedestrian route between the train station and the township. So what VPUU did was formalize the informal pedestrian paths, or desire lines, by paving and lighting the barren channels and turning them into these amazing walkways and public spaces. People are now turning their homes to face these routes because they’re so well designed, and that increases passive surveillance, puts more eyes on the spaces. The murder rate has dropped by 40%. It has become a great pilot program, which they’re now expanding into other townships and to other areas in South Africa. Also, they have trained the people who live in the area to maintain and program it. The project is still evolving. They didn’t just say, “here you go, we built a path, see you later” and step away from it.

 For more on Hustwit’s thoughts, check out Urban Omnibus - or see the film!

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Sparking the Urban Imagination

Posted in Design Practice, Landscape Planning, Landscape Urbanism, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Gary Hustwit via The Atlantic

On Thursday, I watched Gary Hustwit’s film, Urbanized. It is now available from iTunes, and I highly recommend it! There is much to comment on, but I’m limiting myself to three things.

  1. The power of imagining something differently. Hustwit’s film allows the audience to imagine cities differently, and Hustwit suggests that Candy Chung’s I Wish This Was project invited New Orleans residents to imagine their neighborhoods differently, something that urban residents are not often called to do. “The idea of imagining something differently is the kernel is what I think of as design,” Hustwit says in this Urban Omnibus interview.
  2. A balance between top-down planning and bottom-up, grassroots initiatives is possible with participatory design. In the online journal, Places, Hustwit describes the relationship in this way: ”It’s the top mining the bottom for ideas, and really using those ideas to drive development, as opposed to a top-down planning model, where planners get feedback from the people who are actually going to be living in the city, but only after the ideas are already formed.” He also says, “I don’t think DIY interventions are enough to change our cities. I think they are a great compass for governments and professionals to look at to see the types of interventions that people are coming up with on their own when government isn’t doing anything. You have citizens stepping in to try to change their cities on their own. The next step is for governments to use those projects as a model but then formalize them.”
  3. The promise of digital communication for addressing the future needs of cities is tremendous, but the exchange of ideas between mayors, designers, planners, and activists in different cities is just beginning. The film itself makes this point subtly in that we see ourselves in the vignettes from around the globe. Several quotes from interviews with Hustwit elaborate on the point. (more…)

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No Wonder Green Infrastructure Looks Good

Posted in Design Practice, Green Infrastructure, Landscape Planning, tagged , , , , , , , on November 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The economic downturn has hastened the move to stormwater green infrastructure (GI) approaches (e.g., permeable paving, vegetative swales, rain gardens, green roofs) as a way to combat combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in the United States. Federal policies that mandate water quality improvements in cities have commonly been met with arguments about how the new measures will not be financially feasible (even in the pre-Clean Water Act days when urban creeks might be called “bubbly” because of methane discharge from rotting waste). However, the financial argument carries weight even with regulators in today’s fiscal environment, and U.S. EPA is now signaling a willingness to be more flexible in the arrangements it makes with cities. EPA’s embrace of stormwater green infrastructure has been apparent for some time, and that trend appears to be set for the foreseeable future. Greenwire, a subscription service, reports on new guidance to regulators from EPA’s water chief, Nancy Stoner, and uses the following example of past agreements with major cities:

Over the past 10 years, EPA and the Department of Justice have sought to stop the overflows by suing cities and striking settlement agreements that require massive upgrades. As a result, at least 40 cities or sewer systems across the United States have entered into such agreements with EPA since 1999.

The agreements tend to require rebuilding pipelines, expanding treatment plants and digging underground tunnels big enough for subway trains. The tunnels act as storage tanks for stormwater that would normally pour into waterways and allow time for treatment plants to clean up the mess.

As part of its 2003 consent decree with the federal government, Washington, D.C., broke ground last month on a $2.6 billion tunnel-building project, the largest since construction of the metropolitan area’s subway system. The tunnel will be 23 feet wide and 100 feet deep and will extend 4.5 miles from the sewage-treatment plant along the east bank of the Potomac River, crossing under the Anacostia River and extending to RFK Stadium on the city’s east side. [Emphasis added.]

With eye-opening treatment options like that, it is no wonder that cities are interested in hosting GI experimentation. Hoping to head off even more tunnel construction, the Washington, D.C. Water General Manager is enthusiastic about contributing to the GI body of knowledge!

“No city or utility has ever done a sustained and large-scale pilot study of green roofs, trees and porous pavement to help in those areas,” D.C. Water General Manager George Hawkins said. “We hope to do just that.”

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How “Fundamental Societal Change” Might Affect Urban Land Use

Posted in Landscape Planning, Recession Watch, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The Urban Land Institute released an important report today on real estate trends to 2020, asking the question that is on everyone’s mind – what’s next? The report is tied to the 75th anniversary of ULI. Two years ago, prognosticators were looking for green shoots. Today, organizations like ULI are finally acknowledging the effects of the Great Recession/Lesser Depression as “fundamental societal change.” The major findings of ULI are summarized as:

  • Technology will reshape work places. Office tenants will decrease space per employee, and new office environments will need to promote interaction and dialogue. Offices will be transforming into meeting places more than work places, with an emphasis on conference rooms, break areas and open configurations. Developers will craft attractive environments to attract young, talented workers.
  • Major companies will value space that enables innovation. They will continue to pay more for space in a global gateway served by a major international airport, or in 24-hour urban centers. Hard-to-reach suburban work places will be less in demand.
  • The influx of Generation Y, now in their teens through early thirties, will change housing demand. They are comfortable with smaller homes and will happily trade living space for an easier commute and better lifestyle. They will drive up the number of single households and prompt a surge in demand for rentals, causing rents to escalate.
  • For most people, finances will still be constrained, leading to more shared housing and multi-generational households. Immigration will support that trend, as many immigrants come from places where it is common for extended families to share housing. This may be the one group that continues to drive demand for large, suburban homes.
  • The senior population will grow fastest, but financial constraints could limit demand for adult housing developments. Many will age in place or move in with relatives to conserve money. Developers may want to recast retirement communities into amenity-laden “age friendly” residences. Homes near hospitals and medical offices will be popular, especially if integrated into mixed-use neighborhoods with shops, restaurants and services.
  • Energy and infrastructure take on greater importance. Businesses cannot afford to have their network connections down, and more will consider self-generated power or onsite generator capacity. Developers, owners and investors are realizing that the slightly higher costs of energy- and water-saving technologies can pay for themselves quickly, creating more marketable and valuable assets. Ignoring sustainability issues speeds property obsolescence.

On Asia and Europe:

  • Nearly all Asian countries are going through a radical urban transformation, and many believe that the next decade of Asian urbanization will drive the global economy. By 2020, China alone will have 400 cities with populations over 1 million. Asia’s surging middle class is projected to reach an amazing 1.7 billion in 2020. Water availability—and the maturation of real estate capital markets—will be major issues.
  • In Europe, the global financial crisis has made investment capital increasingly hard to obtain. Resilient cities, those with a strong city government and high degree of market trust with investors and businesses, will be most attractive to investors. With companies operating in increasingly global markets and citizens expressing a desire to reduce their commute times, European cities must place an even greater emphasis on effective, state-of-the-art transportation systems.
And the effects on urban planning and design?

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Park Deserts in Chicago

Posted in Landscape Planning, Parks, tagged , , , , , , , on October 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

A new series in the Chicago Tribune is shining a spotlight on a problem found in many large cities: the uneven distribution of parkland across the city and the general absence of open space in poor neighborhoods. The first article in the series does a great job of describing the overall problem and also, very importantly, making the argument tangible by giving a detailed example of a particular neighborhood. It will be interesting to see how the series unfolds, especially because Chicago’s new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, included the park allocation issue in his transition plan and because action on the problem will be challenging in this fiscal environment. The central argument in the article:

Despite former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s much-ballyhooed push for new parks and playgrounds, one-half of Chicago’s 2.7 million people still live in community areas that fail to meet the city’s own modest standard: For every 1,000 people, there should be 2 acres of open space, an area roughly the size of Soldier Field’s entire playing surface.

Many of these areas have so little parkland that it is no exaggeration to call them “park deserts,” a name that suggests a similarity to “food deserts,” where healthy, affordable food is hard to obtain.

Indeed, the park deserts extract a comparable human toll, denying children and adults a place to exercise, cutting them off from contact with nature, and robbing them of a chance to form bonds of community.

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