Tag Archives: The Outlaw Urbanist

Urban Patterns | Las Vegas, Nevada USA

“I wanna feel sunlight on my face. I see the dust-cloud,
Disappear without a trace. I wanna take shelter,
From the poison rain, Where the streets have no name.”
Where the Streets Have No Name, U2

Urban Patterns | Las Vegas, Nevada USA
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

There is a lot that can be said – and has been said over the years – about the “Modern Babylon’ known as Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas comes from the Spanish, who used artesian wells for water in the area, supporting green meadows (vegas in Spanish), on journeys along the Old Spanish Trail from Texas during the 19th century. Mormons were the first to settle in the area in 1855 when Brigham Young assigned missionaries from Salt Lake City to convert the local Indian population to Mormonism. They constructed a fort near the current downtown area, which served as a stopover for travelers between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The missionaries abandoned the settlement a couple of years later during the Utah War (a bloodless confrontation between Mormon settlers and the U.S. Government).

Las Vegas, Nevada in 1906 (Source: Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority).

Las Vegas became a railroad town in 1905 when it was still a crossroads hamlet and briefly prospered in the early 20th century due to mining activities in the area, and as a rail stopover between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Official incorporation of the city occurred in 1911 and the State of Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. This led to the construction of the first casino-hotels in Las Vegas, which gained success and notoriety due to organized crime figures such as Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. Siegel and Lansky were associated with the Genovese crime family (one of New York City’s Five Families of the Cosa Nostra, i.e. American Mafia). However, Mormon-owned banks fronted Siegel and Lansky, which provided legitimacy for their activities. Siegel was a driving force behind large-scale development of Las Vegas until his murder in 1947. The large casino-hotels led to an explosion of urban growth that eventually made Las Vegas one of the top entertainment and tourist destinations in the world.

Satellite view from 20 km of Las Vegas, Nevada USA (Source: Google Earth).

Having said all this, we are going to limit today’s Urban Patterns post about Las Vegas to three things. First, a large amount of green visible in the above satellite image is completely man-made (either rooftops or lawns). Las Vegas is located in an arid basin on the desert floor, surrounded by dry mountains. Much of the landscape is rocky and dusty and the environment is dominated by desert vegetation. To borrow from Baudrillard, the greenery of Las Vegas is a landscaper’s simulacrum of a natural vegetation that otherwise does not exist in the area independent of man-made irrigation systems (much like Los Angeles). Second, is the readily-apparent importance of the radial streets (including a significant portion of Las Vegas Boulevard) feeding into the CBD/historic area (offset grid at the center). Lastly, is the indelible mark that has emerged over time on the urban landscape due to the national grid system imposed by the 1785 Land Ordinance, as evidenced by the large-scale orthogonal grid pattern around the CBD/historic area. These are only three interesting things about the city’s urban pattern. Las Vegas is an endlessly fascinating city for so many different reasons.

(Updated:  May 18, 2017)

Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.

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Planning | Stopping Stupid People from Killing Themselves | AbFab

“I was just trying to do my best, trying to get from A to B, do a little shopping. I was trying to take control of my life…” – Edina Monsoon

Sunday’s Boston Globe article “The too-smart city” by Courtney Humphries reminded me of one of my favorite and funniest (implicit) critiques of urban planning: Edina Monsoon’s “Tax the Stupid People” rant from a 1994 episode (“Poor”) of Absolutely Fabulous. I thought I would post it for your amusement because sometimes we all need a reminder and laughter about the absurdities of life. The first time I saw this I was in tears from laughing so hard, especially once Patsy interjects her opinion.

No doubt the reason I found this rant so funny was, having lived in London for 8 years, the thought did cross my mind on more than one occasion that the purpose of the railings along Oxford and Regent Streets (and others) was, indeed, to prevent stupid people from running into traffic and getting killed. Of course, this is not the case. Instead, the purpose of the railings is to corral pedestrians on the sidewalk in areas with high foot traffic (like pigs in a pen) so the majority of street space is reserved for automobile traffic. London’s railings are fundamentally anti-pedestrian, pro-automobile planning measures. God forbid if pedestrians occupy more of the street space for their use to the detriment of keeping traffic moving! So, the real purpose of the railings was to prevent stupid drivers in 5-ton death machines from killing pedestrians, awarding ‘exclusivity’ of street space to these drivers when we should be slowing the traffic down in deference to pedestrians. In the late 1990s, London has begun to learn and adjust to this lesson. When I visit London (hopefully) sometime in the next 4-6 months, I’m eager to see for myself how far they have taken the lesson over the last decade. I like to think Eddie’s satirical rant played a small role in changing the dynamic.

A more complete transcript of Eddie’s rant in her audacious – but ultimately doomed – attempt to evade a parking ticket is below.

Eddie: Right – I, the proposed accused, think that, well, I mean, you know, well the day in question was not a good day for me, all right? But I put it to you that I don’t see how any day could have been good the way this bloody country’s run. Well, you know, I was just trying to do my best, trying to get from A to B, do a little shopping. I was trying to take control of my life, you know, only to find that it’s actually controlled for me by petty bureaucracy and bits of bloody paper – ignorant bloody petty rules and laws that just obstruct every tiny little action until you’ve committed a crime without even knowing it! I mean, you know, why can’t life just be made a little easier for everybody, eh? Why can’t it be more like the Continent, and then run down the street in front of charging bulls whilst letting fireworks off out of his bloody nostrils without anyone blinking an eye? Uh? Because it’s probably a local holiday and nobody’s at work because they all want to have just a little bit of fun and they’re not intimidated by some outdated work ethic. I mean, there has to be more to life than just being safe…

Judge: Is there a point to all of this?

Eddie: Yes, Yes!… Why, oh why, do we pay taxes, hmmm? I mean, just to have bloody parking restrictions- and BUGGERY-UGLY traffic wardens, and BOLLOCKY-pedestrian-BLOODY-crossings?… and those BASTARD railings outside shops windows, making it so difficult, so you can’t even get in them! I mean, I know they’re there to stop stupid people running into the street and killing themselves! But we’re not all stupid! We don’t all need nurse-maiding. I mean, why not just have a Stupidity Tax? Just tax the stupid people!

Patsy: And let them DIE!

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The Kinetic City | The City in Art

Olga Rozanova’s City (1916).

The Kinetic City | The City in Art
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Olga Rozanova has been labeled a Futurist, a Cubo-Futurist, and Suprematist (focused on geometric forms and a limited range of colors, see Piet Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism), all of which places her in the middle of the early 20th century Russian Avant Garde Movement. The number of works she completed is impressive both in terms of the quality, many of her abstracts are intricately beautiful, and quantity, given her untimely death at such a young age (see this Pinterest page). However, the quality and quantity of her work ultimately – and sadly – indicates her unfulfilled promise as an artist. Because of this, her contemporaries have largely overshadowed Rozanova.

Olga Rozanova’s City (1916) is a wonderful abstract painting, which takes the city as its subject. Her city is all kinetic energy, the canvas almost ‘alive’ with movement. Her painting builds on the Cubist tendency to compress time and space into a single glance at a subject, which conveys a plenitude of information to the viewer. This, in itself, builds on the earlier Impressionist technique, which included movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience in the painting. However, in the case of Cubism, it is not the movement of human perception that depicted in the painting but rather the movement and energy inherent in the subject itself across time and space, which is both compressed and captured in the representation. Olga Rozanova’s City is a brilliant look at all that is inherent in the city: people, buildings, movement, transportation, streets, setting, and light. The city she depicts is not an inanimate object but an animate organism worthy of our attention. I love this painting.

One of the few photographs of the Russian artist, Olga Rozanova.

About Olga Rozanova
Olga Rozanova (1886-1918) was born in 1886 in Malenki, Vladimir province in Russia. She trained at the Bolshakov Art School and the Stroganov School of Applied Art in Moscow. In 1911, she moved to St. Petersburg where she became an active member of the Union of Youth Group, exhibiting with them regularly from 1911 to 1914. She also attended the Zvantseva School of Art from 1912 to 1913. In 1912, Rozanova began illustrating books of Futurist poetry written by her husband, Aleksey Kruchonykh. She also wrote trans-rational Futurist verse (sound poetry), experimented with Cubism and Futurism in painting, produced abstract constructions, and created Suprematist embroidery and textile designs. By 1917, she had developed a completely individual abstract style of painting. After the Revolution in 1917, she supervised the reorganization of craft workshops in provincial towns. She died in Moscow on November 8, 1918, due to diphtheria at 32 years of age.

The City in Art is a series by The Outlaw Urbanist. The purpose is to present and discuss artistic depictions of the city that can help us, as professionals, learn to better see the city in ways that are invisible to others. Before the 20th century, most artistic representations of the city broadly fell into, more or less, three categories: literalism, pastoral romanticism, and impressionism, or some variation thereof. Generally, these artistic representations of the city lack a certain amount of substantive interest for the modern world. The City in Art series places particular emphasis on art and photography from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

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Urban Patterns | Salt Lake City, Utah USA

“Day is done but there’s no job to be found in Salt Lake City,
Room’s cold no one to hold so I’ll just walk around,
And think of all the times that she said that she loved me,
But that’s just a mem’ry in Salt Lake City.”
— Salt Lake City, Hank Williams, Jr.

Urban Patterns | Salt Lake City, Utah USA
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A
Originally posted on May 17, 2013

This week we are looking at the urban pattern of Salt Lake City, Utah USA in honor of where CNU21 (21st Congress for New Urbanism Conference) will be (was) held May 29-June 1, 2013. Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 in what was still Mexican Territory by Brigham Young, Isaac Morley, George Washington Bradley and several other Mormon followers, who extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley. Brigham Young claimed to have seen the area in a vision prior to their arrival. Due to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named “Great Salt Lake City” but the word “great” was dropped from the official name in 1868. Although Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), less than half of its population are Mormons today (Source: Wikipedia).

Satellite view form 10 km of Salt Lake City, Utah (Source: Google Earth).

The urban pattern of Salt Lake City is extremely interesting for an American city due to the emphasis on square blocks. This is atypical for most pre-20th century American cities, which usually and rapidly developed using a well-defined land speculation process. 19th-century American land speculators tended to elongate urban blocks into a rectangular shape (for example, in Denver and Chicago) to maximize the number of available lots for sale and, hence, their profits. However, Salt Lake City was founded by the Mormons, who were (initially) more interested in the social order of their settlement as imprinted in its physical pattern than personal economic gain. So, they laid out the settlement using a regular grid composed of square blocks. Salt Lake City is a perfect illustration of Poor Richard’s maxim that, “Compact block sizes are about community. Ample block sizes are about profit.”

(Updated:  May 18, 2017)

Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.

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Form Arranged in Light | The City in Art

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building – Night, New York (1927), oil on canvas, 48” x 30”, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Fisk University.

Form Arranged in Light | The City in Art
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Many descriptions of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building – Night, New York (1927) unduly focus on the expressed title and the (presumed) subject of the artwork itself. For example, “Towering above the viewer’s eyesight, the Radiator Building extends almost to the top of the work, illuminated in silhouette by its own lights and several spotlights that shoot into the black sky, giving it a slight red hue. Most of O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York City feature various skyscrapers of the city of the time, such as the Ritz Tower” (Source: Cultural Mechanism). Such descriptions are limited because they appear to be missing the point of O’Keeffe’s cityscape paintings. It seems likely this is not helped by O’Keeffe’s own vagueness on the subject of this painting (or her many others), saying she had “walked across 42nd Street many times at night when the black Radiator Building was new so that had to be painted, too” (Source: Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: Penguin Books, 1976).

O’Keeffe is not painting a building. She is painting light and the form of the Radiator Building and surrounding cityscape emerges solely from the arrangement of light. We can say this with some confidence because if you were to remove all of the ‘painted light’ from this painting, only a black canvas would remain. It is this ‘painted light’ that provides a subtle richness and contextual depth to the best of O’Keeffe’s cityscape paintings. Later, we will see more explicit examples in her other paintings, for example in The Shelton with Sunspots (1926). In this sense, the subject is the artifice of form emerging from the arrangement of light. The fact the words ‘Radiator Building’ and ‘New York’ are in the title of the painting is completely inconsequential and accidental to the subject of the piece. It is also misleading on O’Keeffe’s part by naming the painting in this manner. However, this is completely consistent with her tendency to be opaque when it comes to the subject matter of her own paintings. As architects and planners, O’Keeffe’s painting shows us how we can expand our perception of the city beyond the conventional (form) to see its richness in other, more subtle – and, perhaps, richer – ways (light).

Georgia O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz.

About Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. She revolutionized modern art during her time and, in the present, she was the first female artist to have a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her paintings vividly portrayed the power and emotion of objects in nature. Her charcoal drawings of silhouetted bud-like forms exhibited in 1916 first brought her fame. During the 1920s, she explored this theme in magnified paintings of flowers, which to this day enchant people amorously, although her purpose was to convey that nature in all its beauty was as powerful as the widespread industrialization of the period. After spending a summer in New Mexico, enthralled by the barren landscape and expansive skies of the desert, she would explore the subject of animal bones in her paintings during the 1930s and 1940s. Just as with the flowers, she painted the bones magnified to capture the stillness and remoteness of them, while at the same time expressing a sense of beauty within the desert. O’Keeffe was married to the pioneer photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in 1924. It was at his famed New York art gallery “291” that her charcoal drawings were first exhibited in 1916. The union lasted 22 years until Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the Gold Medal of Painting by the National Institute of Arts and Letters and Medal of Freedom (the United States’ highest civilian honor). In 1985, President Reagan presented to her the National Medal of Arts. She died March 6, 1986, at the age of 98 in Sante Fe, New Mexico (Source: Women in History).

The City in Art is a series by The Outlaw Urbanist. The purpose is to present and discuss artistic depictions of the city that can help us, as professionals, learn to better see the city in ways that are invisible to others. Before the 20th century, most artistic representations of the city broadly fell into, more or less, three categories: literalism, pastoral romanticism, and impressionism, or some variation thereof. Generally, these artistic representations of the city lack a certain amount of substantive interest for the modern world. The City in Art series places particular emphasis on art and photography from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

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