Jane Jacobs 100. Delft, May 2016

Thanks so much Roberto Rocco for hosting a very significant conference on the work of Jane Jacobs and its influence on recent urban theory and practice. I was delighted to lead the track on Streets as Public Spaces. The papers presented in our sessions were:

Jane Jacobs and the Theory of Placemaking in Heritage Context, by Azadeh Arjomand Kermani

Mémoire en route: Jerusalem’s Route No. 1 ­a study in motion, by Maier Yagod

Hussien Al-Mimar Street, The tale of a restricted space, by  Bedour Hemeid, Ph.D.

Shared Space: Traffic engineers finally entering the Post-Modern era, by Dick van Veen M.Sc. Eng, M.Sc. Arch.

Exploration into the role and relevance of public spaces within the modern city fabric, by Ailish Killilea

(Un)Natural Proprietors in San Francisco’s Alleyways, by Antje Steinmuller

Hidden Monuments of Everyday Life. Conquering street life in São Paulo,  Sarah Hartmann

Thanks to the presenters for great evocative, challenging and striking papers and also thanks to guests for the lively discussions. I hope we can continue this discussion further.

all the best

Agustina

AIARG 2016 Session 7 - Walking the city: Streets vs Motorways

A series of very good abstracts were sent to the session, but only 4 papers could be accepted. Thanks to all those who submitted their proposals and congratulations to Adam D'Arcy, Tony Duggan, Máirtín D’Alton and Kate Buckley. 

Looking forward to seeing you in Cork in January.

www.aiarg2016conference.com/

Many thanks to those who participated in the reading group last Wednesday! It was a really great experience to hear the comments and questions of people with very different backgrounds and experiences. Looking forward to our next meeting on November 4th!

We would like to invite you to participate in the reading group:

Street Space - Redefining the analysis of streets as public spaces for their critical transformation

Streets are key elements of urban space; they are in essence public spaces and connect diverse areas of the city, weaving the urban fabric. How do we analyse street space? How do we communicate this analysis? Can we use a language that different disciplines will understand? How can we use these methods to change/improve street spaces?

This reading group will explore different approaches to the analysis of streets as public spaces. We invite students, academics and professionals of architecture, planning, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, film, media, arts and any other discipline interested in the analysis of public space.

The reading group will take place in 15 Chlorine Gardens. The next three meetings will be on October 7, November 4 and December 2.

If you are interested in participating, please send an email to A.Martire@qub.ac.uk

Mapping North Street - Now!

The workshop is taking place and we are all busy analysing North Street.
Different disciplines: history, geography, planning, urban design, sociology, sound and architecture.
The results will be shown tomorrow at 4.30 in the Old Museum Building.

Looking forward to another day of mapping!

The Quote of the week. Mikoleit/Pürckhauer 2011

Today, a simple but fascinating study of Soho in New York shows a long series of statements that describe streets and their uses locally, but could be applied to infinite street spaces around the world.

"88 - Good walkways have a good range of destinations along them. Promenades are the spatial expression of human needs and purposefulness. Strolling, walking up and down, seeing and being seen: these embody needs ranging from sensual perception to social contact and consumption."

Mikoleit, Anne, Moritz Pürckhauer, Urban Code, 100 lessons for understanding the city, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachussets, 2011, p98

With a limited bibliography, but one that is rich in concepts of public space, this study opens the doors of a phenomenological analysis of streets. The 100 lessons are straightforward and have no pretensions, but describe and analyse streets in Soho in a way that makes you feel like you are actually walking them. This lesson, 88, is one of my favourites for it is so graphic and unquestionable. No matter what the destinations are or what the context of the street is, they will be full of life if there are destinations, and practically empty if they are not.

The quote of the week. M.Christine Boyer. 1990

Christine Boyer writes a chapter in the book Philosophical Streets, by Dennis Crow.
"...fragmented elements of the city whole are planned or redeveloped as autonomous elements, with little relationship to the whole and with direct concern only for adjacent elements. Fragments of the city are regulated, for example, by special district or contextual zoning, or historic preservation controls, but say nothing about the city as a whole.(...) To play on the analogy futher, this recursive mentality is serial. Mass production is serial so that it is not surprising to find the mass production of city spaces in late capitalism taking on a serial appearance, producing already known patterns or molds of places almost identical from city to city."

Boyer, M Christine, 'The Return of Aesthetics to City Planning', in Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, edited by Dennis Crow, Urbs et Orbi: The Urban Project, volume 1, Maisonneuve Press, 1990, p96

In the context of a book that appears too far from practice to be of much value outside academia, due to a heavily philosophical language, Boyer speaks in a language that can be understood by a broader audience.
The repetition of urban patterns became ubiquitous since the 1960s, but it did especially in urban projects of the 1980s and 1990s. Waterfronts, boulevards, squares, plazas, urban regeneration in general, follows patterns that create urban spaces that appear and feel disconnected from the place and culture they belong to. This applies to streets to a certain extent, but streets are better at keeping a memory of place, for it is hard to erase their identity unless they are partially or completely demolished.

The quote of the week. Jane Jacobs.1961

Today: a classic Jane Jacobs on sidewalks.

"Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pops on stoops, and have passed a judgement, the gist of which is: 'This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they would't be on the street!'
This judgement represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home."

Jacobs, Jane, The death and life of American cities, The Modern Library, New York, 1993, 1961. p72

Jane Jacobs writes one of the most simple and straightforward comments on public space. Jacobs is famous for her analysis of cities and their economies, but more so for her rivalry with Robert Moses and her critique of his plans for New York. Her book has had repercussions in planning, architecture and education throughout the world, but has been ignored repeatedly by the practice of planning through the last five decades. The use of sidewalks is inherent to the street and varies through each city's cultural context, but the active use of the sidewalk is a pattern that appears throughout different cultures. An empty sidewalk normally equates with a city that is more dependent on the car, where functions are spread in different zones of the city. A sidewalk that is populated, whatever the activities are, corresponds with a city that caters for different functions at walkable distance, encouraging people to not only go from A to B but to also gather, meet and stay on the street.

The Quote of the week. Bernard Rudofsky

From an academic erudite as Vidler to a more down to earth Rudofsky. Streets for People

"...for the street is not an area but a volume. It cannot exist in the vacuum; it is inseparable from its environment. In other words, it is no better than the company of houses it keeps. The street is the matrix: urban chamber, fertile soil, and breeding ground. Its viability depends as much on the right kind of architecture as on the right kind of humanity."

Rudofsky, Bernard, Streets for People: a primer for Americans, van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1982,1969, p20

Perhaps not as well known as his contemporaries Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch, Rudofsky is as ruthless a critic of American and British post war urbanism as them. Better known for his groundbreaking: Architecture without Architects, he is also an insightful observer of the public realm. He uses streets as his weapon of choice and confronts American examples with European ones, mainly Italian.  Through his experience,  living in both Europe and North America, he can speak as an insider and outsider. There is a balance in his observations between the formal and the social, which bridges a gap that still needs more analysis. Rudofsky's observations are valid now, and should be a useful source for practitioners in architecture and urban disciplines.

The quote of the week. Tony Vidler

This is the first of a series on streets. Each week I will introduce one author and one quote, to continue the discussion on streets as the link, bound and connection between buildings and the urban landscape.
I will start with Tony Vidler's last collection of essays.

"To confine architecture to the role of designing a single building in a context that is largely defined by the interplay of economic development and urban policy leaves the question of the form of the public realm unanswered.  In this period of global urbanization, the single building has become increasingly isolated as an icon of progress rising amid a sea of urban blight, a designer accessory masking the rampant spoliaton of traditional urban fabric and the unsustainable expansion of urban areas."

Vidler, Anthony, The Scenes of the Street and Other Essays, The Monacelli Press, New York, 2011, p6

Vidler is one of the most insightful scholars in the field of architecture and urbanism. His last collection of essays might not be an overarching analysis of streets in history, as the title may suggest, but it gives a thorough and deep view on certain moments of city streets in history. Paris is the protagonist, from 19th century urban development, through Tony Garnier and Le Corbusier to Guy Debord's psychogeographies. However, the collection does cover other gems like urban photography, museums, libraries and the obelisk.
Vidler's style is impecable and his observations shed light on the main driver of the book: the tight relationship between city planning, urban design, urbanism and architecture. This includes the distiction between all of these concepts. The focus of the book may be on certain times and spaces in history, but the ideas behind it are as current and useful for understanding urban spaces as they can ever be.
This approach should help us understand the need to analyse architecture not as buildings within a context, but urbanism and architecture as integral parts of a whole.

NYC. Sweden. Traffic. Belfast should learn

More on road safety. New York City follows the Swedish example of aiming to zero deaths by traffic. Something to learn from Belfast?

Http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/nyregion/de-blasio-looks-toward-sweden-for-road-safety.html?hp&_r=2

Cars vs people. Finally Jacobs is being considered by the mainstream

For more than half a century now the car has reigned over the streets of cities, not allowing them to be public spaces. Slowly some examples appear of the demolition of motorways to replace them with pedestrian areas. This one in Seoul is one of them.
http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/04/tearing-down-urban-highway-can-give-rise-whole-new-city/8924/

Hamburg 20 year plan

It is happening, and Hamburg will be a pioneer. Reducing car use might be the solution to congestion and CO2 emissions, whilr providing more liveable urban spaces.
http://www.archdaily.com/464394/hamburg-s-plan-to-eliminate-cars-in-20-years/#more-464394

Urbanising tha suburbs

Housing and park replace parking lot in suburban Seattle. I still wander wether the sidewalks are walkable. In any case it seems like a good example of densification and reduction of car use. Hoping to see more of such developments.

http://m.fastcoexist.com/3023360/how-a-giant-mall-parking-lot-turned-into-a-park-and-a-walkable-community?partner=rss

Urban vs suburban

Breaking the myth of the lower cost of suburban development. Worth a read. Even though it is only based in Canada, many of the observations are comparable to other European or American cases.
http://thecostofsprawl.com/

Mexico city claims rights for pedestrians

Alejandro Hernandez comments on the minority (car drivers) that occupy the majority of public space in Mexico City. New plans for prioritising the pedestrian.
http://www.arquine.com/blog/la-ciudad-tomada/

Fred Kent in The New York Times in 1993

The influence of William H Whyte saw some popularity in the 1990s
It is a shame that these type of position towards public space is still not more generalised in urban planning internationally.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/28/weekinreview/conversations-fred-kent-one-who-would-like-to-see-most-architects-hit-the-road.html?src=pm

New streets old streets

Rome's fabric is full of surprises. One street one building, and one street one building that once was. This is Testaccio. Tevere 100 meters away.

Getting ready for Polyport!

Why streets should have trees

This is a very clear study on the basic function of urban trees
http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/the-effect-of-trees-in-paving-on-stormwater-runoff

The end of the suburbs

Today, a book I would like to take a look at. Interesting to see the view of a North American journalist on the issue of housing and dwelling in the US. On my list

The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving , by Leigh Gallagher

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-End-Suburbs-American-Moving/dp/1591845254