Tag Archives: Architecture

Photo Essay | Central West End in Saint Louis

Large swathes of St. Louis that are downright depressing from the point of view of vibrant urbanism. By now, most everyone has heard about the racial problems in Ferguson, one of the earliest examples of post-war, white flight suburban sprawl in the city now populated by economically vulnerable populations; most likely heralding the start of the ‘ghettoization’ period for sprawl’s reputation in the United States. However, Federal, State and local redevelopment, planning, and housing policy has relentlessly decimated once-vibrant North St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois since World War II to the point where one might mistakenly think these areas were long-ago victims of a Soviet nuclear strike (no, these are self-inflicted wounds). Unfortunately, the same scenario is playing out for large areas of South St. Louis as well over the last twenty years.

However, there are still some pockets of vibrant urbanism on display in St. Louis, which gives the city something to build upon if leaders, professionals and others will only pause to look at those places as models for a sustainable future. One of these vibrant neighborhoods is the Central West End, which stretches from Midtown’s western edge to Union Boulevard, bordering on Forest Park, north to Delmar Blvd. and south to Clayton Ave. The Central West End includes an array of cultural institutions including the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis associated with St. Louis University. The commercial district is located mainly along Euclid Avenue and a lot of the urban activity in the area is supported by faculty, medical staff, and students of Washington University and St. Louis University. Playwright Tennessee Williams, beat writer William S. Burroughs, and poet T.S. Elliot grew up/lived in the neighborhood. The Central West End is often mistaken for the setting of the classic 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis starring Judy Garland.

Central West End in St. Louis from 1000m (Source: Google Earth).
Detail of sidewalk cafe in Maryland Plaza at the corner of North Euclid Ave. and Maryland Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Maryland Plaza at the corner of North Euclid Ave. and Maryland Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Active sidewalks along Euclid Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Sidewalk cafes about an hour before lunchtime during the weekday along Maryland Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Active sidewalks along North Euclid Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Interesting (aka bizarre) use of bathroom tiles on exterior facade of historic commercial building along North. Euclid Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Quiet residential streets as you turn the corner off Euclid Ave. in the Central West End (Photograph: Mark David Major).

Share the knowledge!
Share

FROM THE VAULT | The Ideal Communist City

“The physical planning of the new city reflects the harmony and integrated nature of its social structure. A unified planning approach assigns to each element a role in the formation of human environments.”
– The Ideal Communist City

The Ideal Communist City by Alexei Gutnov, A. Baburov, G. Djumenton, S. Kharitonova, I. Lezava, and S. Sadovskij (Moscow University), Translated by Renee Neu Watkins, Preface by Giancarlo de Carlo

 

First written during the 1950s and translated from Italian to English in 1968, The Ideal Communist City (1968) is very much a product of its time. This does not only mean the ideological struggles of the Cold War (Capitalism vs. Communism… SPOILER ALERT! Capitalism won). It also means the symbolic height of propagating and implementing the principles of Modernist architecture and planning around the world. The principles discussed in The Ideal Communist City are merely a reformulation, repackaging and, yes, redistribution of these same ideas found in the new towns model (referred to here as the “New Unit of Settlement or NUS”) of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow, housing models of Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), and Harris and Ullman’s multi-nuclei theory in collusion with Euclidean zoning/modern transportation planning, which conveniently tells us almost any urban function can be randomly inserted almost anywhere in the city as long as ‘incompatible’ land uses are segregated.

Of course, the key difference is the authors’ explicitly state the failure of these ideas to “reach their full potential” in Western societies is due to the corrupting influence of capitalism as a political and economic system. This is a conceit that has been badly exposed with time. If anything, capitalism more ruthlessly exploited the economic potentials of Modern ideas by taking them to their logical and, ultimately, extreme conclusion; probably more so than even most devoted CIAM architect ever imagined. The real danger about The Ideal Communist City is that younger readers (Millennials and generations thereafter) without any first-hand experience of the Cold War might make the mistake of thinking they are reading something original and entirely different because it’s wearing Soviet-era clothing. However, it is the same, tired planning paradigm we have been hearing about and (unfortunately) living with over the last 80+ years. To be fair, another key difference in this book is the desire of Soviet-era planners to adopt a model that segregates land uses from one another while still actively promoting manufacturing, mass production, and industrialization. Younger readers might also think this represents a somewhat unique perspective from the point of view of architecture and planning. However, it is really only evidence of Soviet preoccupation – even obsession – with Western societies’ manufacturing prowess at the time. In this sense, Soviet failure to compete with the success of Western capitalistic societies contradicted the ‘means of production’ arguments underpinning Karl Marx and Frederick Engel’s The Communist Manifesto and Marx’s Das Capital; that is, direct evidence that communism was a flawed political and economic system based on totalitarianism masquerading as a false ideology

Having said all that, The Ideal Communist City is an important historical document that anyone interested in town planning should probably be exposed at some point, as long as the book is placed within its proper context for readers, especially post-Cold War ones. There are, in fact, relatively few flights of fancy in this book; the most amusing one being the common idea in science fiction that cities will eventually be covered by climate-controlled plastic domes (see Featured Image of this post at the top). The authors’ statistical projections of urban populations are way off, hilariously so. Early in the book, the authors project that 75% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by the year 2000 when it fact we only passed the 50% threshold in the last decade (due to the corrupting influence of capitalism, no doubt). The model of the NUS stretches believability despite the authors’ best – though somewhat halfhearted – efforts to address accommodating population growth during the transition period between one NUS being occupied and the next one being constructed. This is because these Soviet-era planners ultimately have a static view of the city. In hindsight, one might fairly argue the communist NUS model has already been better implemented and realized in cities such as Milton Keynes in England, the Pilot Plan of Brasilia in Brazil, or perhaps even some areas of America Suburbia, despite the problematic nature of such places as extensively discussed elsewhere in the literature. In the end, the Ideal Communist City is perhaps best at asking some interesting questions about cities but the answers provided are all too familiar and depressing to seriously contemplate. As Christopher Alexander famously said, “a city is not a tree.” It seems the same is as true for communist cities as it ever was for capitalistic ones. In the end, human nature is always more pervasive than any political ideology.

The Ideal Communist City by Alexei Gutnov, A. Baburov, G. Djumenton, S. Kharitonova, I. Lezava, and S. Sadovskij (Moscow University), Translated by Renee Neu Watkins, Preface by Giancarlo de Carlo
Hardback, 166 pages
1968, Boston: George Braziller, Inc.

You can download a PDF of the full book for free 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

NOW AVAILABLE | The Generic City and its Origins

The Generic City and its Origins covers the inherent constraints placed on the physical form and design of built environments by human nature and our basic need for shelter, water, movement, food and other specialized urban functions such as barter and defense in the founding and locating of cities. This course covers knowledge that is rarely taught or even spoken about but which we are expected to bring along with us and already intuitively understand based on our everyday experience of built environments. These generic aspects of form and function play a profound, continuous role in limiting the possibilities for shaping our buildings and settlements (1.0 hour course).

Key concepts: human genotypes, generic function, economy of building, topographical constraints, principles of centrality,  linearity, and self-similarity.

Instructor: Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Check here to purchase this course ($9.99), which includes an one-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course notes and slide handout.

Note: We are beta-testing with these initial course offerings so if you have any issues accessing the course material, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. Thank you!

Share the knowledge!
Share

COMING SOON | Continuing Education Courses

COMING SOON!

The Outlaw Urbanist
Professional Development and Training Courses

The Outlaw Urbanist will soon be launching an online series of professional development, training and continuing education courses about urbanism and the built environment for professionals, students, and other interested parties.

The courses are specifically tailored for architects, urban designers and planners requiring continuing education credits with the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), American Planning Association (APA), American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU-A). However, many courses will be accessible to anyone who is interested in the architecture, design, planning, real estate development, ecology, geography, sociology, and history of cities. The courses will be available for a small, competitive fee ($9.99 for one hour courses, $12.99 for courses for one-and-half-hour or longer) payable by debit/credit card through PayPal.

In keeping with the manifesto of The Outlaw Urbanist, our courses are firmly anchored in the ‘first principles’ of physical form and design. From this foundation, the courses will make the link to a variety of functional, social, and economic factors that are relevant for anyone interested in the built environment and urbanism. As such, students and those with specialist degrees and backgrounds in architecture, planning, and other fields may encounter unfamiliar – yet essential – principles and concepts about the art and science of buildings and settlements.

A sample of our initial course offerings include:

The Generic City and its Origins
This course covers the inherent, often unspoken constraints placed on the physical form and design of built environments by human nature and our basic needs for shelter, water, movement, food and specialized urban functions such as barter and defense in the founding and locating of cities (1.0 hour course).

The City’s Essential DNA and its Pattern
This course covers the most essential aspects of physical form at work in the design of all cities around the world from older, highly-localized urban grids in the Middle East/Africa to deformed grids in Europe to regular grids in the United States/Americas. The purpose is to provide an understanding of the basic typologies and geometries that can be found underlying all settlements, to one degree or another (1.0 hour course).

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe in 1972 (Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Unmasking Pruitt-Igoe: A Failure of Modernism
This course examines how (seemingly minor) design flaws in the architecture and planning of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in St. Louis, Missouri established the preconditions – in combination with Federal, State, and local policy failures and institutional racism – for its rapid decline as a community. This eventually led to the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe only twenty years after it was heralded as a masterpiece of Modernist architecture and a planning model for urban housing in the 20th century (1.0 hour course).

The Hidden Corruptions of American Regular Grids: why space syntax doesn’t work in the United States when it looks like it should
This is a specialist course of those interested in space syntax (e.g. configurational modeling of urban networks based on lines of sights) and its lack of application in the United States. Undue emphasis on the economics of profit in American real estate development and planning in combination with the failure of space syntax to monetize its methodology creates a barrier for widespread implementation in the United States despite its track record of widespread success in many other parts of the world (1.5 hour course).

Watch a 30 second video preview below:

Each course includes a prerecorded slide presentation with narration by The Outlaw Urbanist himself, Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A. A brief course synopsis and biography is also provided for self-reporting purposes to your professional organization, employer, and/or academic institution. Slide handouts PDFs can be downloaded for each course. For now, we are asking participants to take advantage of opportunities to self-report continuing education credits. As we develop courses and the functionality of our online learning management system, we hope to eventually provide pre-approved credit opportunities for users, especially AICP planners. In the future, we also intend to supplement courses with written narratives of the presentation with additional opportunities for learning about the topic, e.g. bibliography, videos, exhibits, etc.

We hope you decide to take advantage of The Outlaw Urbanist professional development, training, and continuing courses! If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic to be covered in a future course, email courses@outlaw-urbanist-com.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Planning Naked | April 2016

Planning Naked | April 2016
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

1. What is this? An actual plan on the cover of Planning Magazine! Well, that is promising. However, it would be wise to not hold our breath. Some things in this issue should illicit anger.

2. The first 12 pages are advertisements. I guess it could be worse, see Cosmopolitan or GQ Magazine.

3. “Granny Flats Gaining Ground” by Brian Barth (pp. 16-17) is an important article. You can tell because the editors of Planning Magazine barely contain their disgust by using lukewarm, halting language, especially in comparison to the urgent, positive word choices in the “U.S. Broadband Lags Behind” article on pp. 17. The title of this article should probably be “Granny Flats Recover Stolen Ground.”

4. “‘CEQA in Reverse’ Curtailed” by Ron Bass in the Legal Lessons section (pp. 19) tries to downplay what could prove to be a truly monumental court ruling for future land development in California.

5. “Welcome to Black Rock City” by Dr. Thomas Sullivan (pp. 20-27) tries to conflate the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada into something it is not by tying the festival layout to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow plan model (see images below). It doesn’t have anything to do with Howard’s Utopian ideals. The festival layout is based on an Ancient Greek amphitheater, which crystallizes what the Burning Man festival is really all about: theater. It doesn’t undercut what is interesting about people participating in the festival, how they conduct themselves or they are managed (they are, it’s buried in Sullivan’s text and reeks of the kind of authoritarianism associated with the political left, see political correctness, safe space, muting opposition, etc.). However, the reality of layout does ably illustrate the fallacy of Sullivan’s argument. Get real, man.

6. “Future Plans” by William Atkinson (pp. 28-31) is disturbing. There is nothing wrong with the aspirations of the content, e.g. involving young people in the planning process. It is the utter condescension on display in the article. There is not one high school student quoted in the article. As far as I can tell, there is not one Millennial quoted in the article. This is Baby Boomers/GenXers talking about how they are involving youth in the planning process. How magnanimous of you! However, the article does not allow any young person to be heard. Any young person who happens to read the article should be angry. It made me angry. The message could not be clearer: young people are to be involved (check that off the list) but not actually listened to or allowed to be heard.

7. “Flipping the Strip” by Randall Arendt for the Planning Practice section (pp. 32-35) is, by far, the most important article in this month’s issue. Naturally, it is an editorial/layout nightmare as the editors of Planning Magazine almost seem to be going out of their way to undercut the content, which transforms a relatively straightforward, clear, and concise argument into a confusing presentation for the readers to follow. Mr. Arendt should be upset about how his content was butchered by the editors.

8. 2016 National Planning Awards section (pp. 37-48)… Well, let’s see: an award for a comprehensive plan, which is not shown; the most interesting thing shown about Resilient New Orleans is on the cover; photo for Grand Rapids Downtown Market appears to be architecture, not planning; an urban design award for a Landscape Urbanism project in Chicago; and a JAPA award for a climate change article. This entire section only raises a lot of questions about what is the American Planning Association really hiding from us? Then, depression set in…

9. “Use Story Mapping for Better Reports” by Emily Pasi in The Commissioner section (pp. 49-50) was published 20 years too late. “Infrastructure Planning” in Carolyn Thomas in the same section (pp. 51-52) was published 60 years too late.

10. “The ‘Gayborhood’ Solution?” by Cade Hobbick in the Viewpoint section (pp.  60) is a perfect example about how identity politics almost inevitably leads to the wrong conclusion, especially in urban planning. Read the article once as is, then read the article again but generalize the identity politics terminology (so “LGBTQ community” becomes ‘community’, “gayborhood” becomes ‘neighborhood’, “homeless LGBTQ youth” becomes ‘homeless youth’, etc.). This is pretty easy to do for the entire article except for the 7th paragraph, which is specifically about the AIDS crisis during the 1980s/1990s. When you do this, you’ll see Hobbick’s proposed solution (we need to build more community centers, i.e. a public, architectural solution) is not only wrong but he discounts the actual solution. If you generalize the language, then it comes down to this: we do need to build better neighborhoods; identity politics is irrelevant because common problems demand common solutions for everyone (see “Universal Design” in last month’s issue of Planning Magazine).

Note: this month’s cover photo honors the title of this running series, i.e. Planning Naked.

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