Category Archives: Education

Preserving the City of Tomorrow | The New Criterion

Excellent article about
 the push to “reinvent Paris” by Steven W. Semes in The New Criterion.

Excerpt:

So what is driving this push for tall towers in a low-rise city that is universally admired as the outstanding model of what a city can be? Why this “explicit repudiation of previously successful typologies,” as the CEU report describes it? The answer lies in contemporary architectural philosophy and its demand that buildings and cities be “of their time”—that is, conform to the aesthetic fashions of the moment—whatever the consequences for the character of the place or the quality of life of the citizens. This claim presupposes that “our time” is determined by historical forces—the Zeitgeist—that cannot be denied or reversed except at the risk of being bypassed by “history.”

Reading the full article below.

Preserving the city of tomorrow by Steven W. Semes | The New Criterion

Share the knowledge!
Share

Planning Naked | December 2015

Planning Naked | December 2015
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

This issue of Planning Naked may be a little shorter than usual since my print edition of Planning Magazine hasn’t appeared in the mail in months (you might have noticed the gap in posts of Planning Naked). Is it an APA conspiracy to mute criticism of Planning Magazine by the Outlaw Urbanist? Probably not, I’m dealing with address change issues and APA is an organization that moves at a glacial pace when to comes to change. So I’m reading the digital edition of Planning Magazine, which is a pain in the a… my fingers and eyes, to say the least.

10 Strategies for Livable Communities (page 24) as part of the Livability for All article (page 21-24)
This article follows up on AARP’s creation of a Livability Index for senior citizens. You may recall from a previous edition of Planning Naked that I pointed out one of the worst ‘suburban sprawl hell’ areas of Jacksonville, Florida scored a 50 on AARP’s Livability Index, suggesting the criteria was suspect at best. What is really startling about these ’10 Strategies” is the utter lack of the word ‘design’ appearing anywhere in the list. More so, it’s difficult to find anything that could be even implied to mean design as an component of livability. Indeed, most of these strategies involve ‘consultation’ and ‘competitiveness’ (i.e. economic aka making money). Just as Carly Fiorina chides Hillary Clinton by saying “flying is a activity, not an accomplishment” so APA needs to be criticized in a similar manner. Consultation is an activity (a means to an end) and not an accomplishment in itself. Personally, I’m sick of APA members citing all manner of acronym-ed organizations they have consulted as if this was an accomplishment in itself. It is not. Poor Richard:  It isn’t the quantity of the acronyms that matter but the quality of their (letter) characters. APA members need to be careful about flying to something shiny (AARP’s Livability Index, e.g. Won’t someone please think of the old people?!?!) and applying it without thought before understanding its underlying assumptions. Count me suspicious. Based on experience, WalkScore, at the moment, seems like a more credible index than AARP’s Livability Index. Besides, AARP is composed of almost nothing but Baby Boomers these days and it’s the Baby Boomers who got us, for the most part, into this mess. Should we really trust the Baby Boomers’ interpretation of ‘livability’.

China’s Evolving Art Industry (page 35-40)
Has anyone else noticed that the most interesting and exciting developments in practice covered in Planning Magazine tend to occur in overseas countries? Does anyone think this is decidedly odd? Are Americans just not really trying when it comes to planning? Very interesting article on the emergence of creative districts in China over the last 30 years. However, the article betrays a fear of change (“commercial success prices out the pioneers”). Change is the very nature of the city. Get over it, already.

Yikes, There’s a Tourist in Town (page 41-42)
Short translation of this article for you: Planning would be so much easier if cities didn’t have people. We wouldn’t need any planning at all, or cities for that matter.

Best Practices: Using Planning Data Wisely (page 43-44)
This is a very good article by Terry Moore, Alexandra Reese and Ali Danko from ECON Northwest about the proper use of data in developing sound planning policy and regulations. The only thing that needs to be added to their list of bullet points is:

Transparency: Be clear and honest about data sources and your assumptions about that data and its collection.

I thoroughly recommend this article for everyone.

Research You Can Use: A physicist tries to solve the city by Reid Ewing (page 47-48)
I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to read Reid Ewing’s “Research You Can Use” article in this month’s issue of Planning Magazine. In it, Ewing explains why he rejected a submitted paper for a referred journal attempting to build upon Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West’s Urban Scaling Theory. I can’t really comment with authority on the validity of Ewing’s arguments since I have not read the submitted paper in question. Of course, Ewing is correct that the larger the city, the more you have of everything including crime. The aggregated population v. crime correlation is interesting at an abstract level (and should be totally expected) but not very useful for planning policy. For that, you need the sensitive street-by-street and block-by-block modeling techniques of the urban network such as space syntax. In this way, you can demonstrate the usefulness of such correlations between population, crime, location/access, and spatial vulnerability and potential proposed design changes to address the problem. There’s a lot of good research on that front. However, what is refreshing about Ewing’s article is the transparency. It is an excellent attempt to ‘unveil’ the scientific process at work. In this sense, it is very valuable. In fact, Ewing’s article makes me wonder whether there is some inherent value in all referred publications printing short summaries by referees for all rejected papers so that the entire scientific, urban planning community can benefit from seeing the process at work. Something worth thinking about as this could be ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ type of strategy.

Planners Library
Sounds like there are several, new books worth reading:

John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner by R. Bruce Stephenson. Available on Amazon here.

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Hardcover by Robert D. Putnam. Available on Amazon here.

The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-Based Planning by Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy. Available on Amazon here.

I want all three books for Christmas, please. Thank you!

Viewpoint: Planning’s Role in Social Justice by Grant Prior (page 56)
Have you ever noticed how often commentaries about ‘social justice’ are really nothing more than passionate calls for navel gazing? Justice is supposed to be blind so the concept of social justice is, in itself, an oxymoron. Mic drop.

Planning Naked is a regular feature with observations and comments about a recent issue of Planning: The Magazine of the American Planning Association.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Life, Liberty, Happiness | The Need for Heroic Planning | Blab

The Outlaw Urbanist, Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, will participate in online broadcast with Don Kostelec of Kostelec Planning this Monday, November 23, 2015 at 8:00 pm EST titled, “Life, Liberty, Happiness: the need for heroic planning,” hosted by Andy Boreau of Urbanism Speakeasy.

The content is pretty wide open though it will tend to focus on what is wrong with our current development practices. We will be able to answer your questions and, hopefully, have a pretty good debate.

You can subscribe to the broadcast on Blab here.

Share the knowledge!
Share

FROM THE VAULT | The New Architecture and the Bauhaus

FROM THE VAULT: The New Architecture and the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius
By Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

The first 97 pages of The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (MIT Press with Foreword by Frank Pick) by Walter Gropius (published in 1965 but mostly written by Gropius earlier in 1923) is a virtuoso essay on the education of the architect in the modern era, which is must-read material for anyone interested about the educating of architects, urban designers and planners in today’s world. As is often the case with Modern architects, Gropius’ arguments begins to fall apart in a rather obvious way, in hindsight, over the last 12 pages when he attempts to extend his theories to the urban level. The less said about these last 12 pages, the better. Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities has already – and better ably – tested the urban ideas of the International Style to destruction.

However, unlike many advocates of the International Style such as Le Corbusier, the writing of Gropius is clear, concise and easily understood in even layman terms; likely this is due to his German upbringing. In this book, Gropius spells out his ideas about architectural education within the context of the International Style’s preoccupation with industrialization and means of mass production. Nominally, these ideas are in reaction against the Beaux Arts academy model of architectural education during the 19th century. However, while spelling out his differences with the Beaux Arts in the promotion of the Bauhaus model, Gropius is also very careful to place the Bauhaus within the same, larger tradition of architectural education. This makes The New Architecture and the Bauhaus a very important book for the contemporary student/educator to better understand how our model of architectural education today also fits and complements the same tradition. This makes The New Architecture and the Bauhaus a richly rewarding read that is also easy to digest. The entire book can be read in one or two sittings.

About Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius, in full Walter Adolph Gropius  (born May 18, 1883, Berlin, Germany and died July 5, 1969, Boston, Massachusetts, USA), was German American architect and educator who, particularly as director of the Bauhaus (1919–28), exerted a major influence on the development of modern architecture. His works, many executed in collaboration with other architects, included the school building and faculty housing at the Bauhaus (1925–26), the Harvard University Graduate Center, and the United State Embassy in Athens, Greece.

The New Architecture and the Bauhaus
by Walter Gropius with Foreword by Frank Pick
MIT Press Paperback, 112 pages
March 15, 1965
ISBN-10: 0262570068
ISBN-13: 978-0262570060

You can purchase The New Architecture and the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius from Amazon here.

 

From the Vault is a series from the Outlaw Urbanist in which we review art, architectural and urban design texts, with an emphasis on the obscure and forgotten, found in second-hand bookstores.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Planning Naked | July 2015

Planning Naked | July 2015
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Observations on the July 2015 issue of Planning Magazine.

1. Some will be disappointed this month’s issue (“Pot Report”) did not come with any free samples; maybe for only APA-CA or APA-CO chapter members, perhaps.

2. APA appears to have suddenly realized (or, maybe, finally remembered) the importance of water in community planning (“From the Desk of APA’s Executive Director”, pp. 3). Well, that partially explains the existence of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc. in their current conglomeration. I hope APA appreciates the irony that the next APA national conference is being held in Phoenix… but hey, I hear it’s a dry heat.

3. The biggest news gets a brief mention (“News Briefs”, pp. 7) about the halting of a highway project in Wisconsin because travel forecasts failed to show the road widening was actually needed, and projects in other states are stalled for the same reason. You mean agencies are actually building highways only for the sake of building highways?!?! Eureka! Alleluia! Hosanna! However, APA’s anti-fracking agenda (what a lot of us view as “energy independence”) gets eight times the number of words on the exact, same page. Ahem.

4. Lots of scare-mongering about the Koontz decision in this month’s “Legal Lessons” (pp. 9). However, the sidebar about “climate exactions” is interesting. I would like to see this tested out in the courts to see if any such ‘climate exaction’ could really bear the burden of legal scrutiny.

5. “New-Age Central Parks” (pp. 14-23) is interesting but I’m beginning to think a lot of planners are afraid of buildings. Kyle Warren Park in Dallas is OK but is a park really needed across the street from another park? And nobody walks in a curve like the way the paths are laid out in this park. At least, not by choice… are park designers practicing some insidious form of architectural determinism?

6. The “Pot Report” (pp.24-29) is oddly disappointing, lots of questions, no answers, very little really added to the debate or issue.

7. Excellent article on Tactical Urbanism “(We Own This City”, pp. 30-34).

8. “Research You Can Use” discusses the AARP’s new Livability Index. Handle with caution. I inputted the address of one of the worst suburban sprawl areas in Jacksonville, Florida and AARP’s site gave the neighborhood an ‘average’ score of 50. No way! So, either the site is wrong or we have officially crossed the threshold into way, way too much suburban sprawl in this country so it’s skewing the percentages. It’s probably both, now that I think about it.

9. I mention planners are afraid of buildings in #5 above and Peter Gisolfi, AIA addresses this very issue in the Viewpoint editorial on the back page (“A Plea for Buildings that Fit In”). I suspect most planners will discount what he has to say because he does not have an AICP credential. A shame.

Planning Naked is a regular feature with observations and comments about a recent issue of Planning: The Magazine of the American Planning Association.

Share the knowledge!
Share