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Urban Patterns

Urban Patterns | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

“There’s a tent in the center of town,
Where the people can gather around.”
— Tent in the Center of Town, Sara Groves

Urban Patterns | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Satellite view from 15 km of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (Image: DigitalGlobe © 2013, Courtesy of Google Earth).

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is a fascinating settlement for a variety of reasons. The city was founded in 1639 as a movable (i.e. nomadic) Buddhist monastic center. In 1778, it settled permanently in its present location at the junction of the Tuul and Selbe rivers. Before that, it changed location 28 times with each site selected for ceremonial reasons (Source: City of Ulaanbaatar). At first glance from 60,000 feet (see above), the urban pattern appears to be strongly characterized by a predominantly linear structure oriented to the Tuul River, the Trans-Siberian railway line, and Peace Avenue, all of which (more or less) runs parallel to each other in an east-to-west direction. However, this is somewhat misleading due to radical differences in building scale between (mainly) residential areas in the periphery and the non-residential areas of the settlement in the city center. This is clearer in a view of the settlement from 20,000 feet (see below), which reveals the street network is actually a deformed grid layout, very characteristic of European towns. The difference in the scale of building construction in the city center (large buildings and blocks) compared to the surrounding residential areas (small buildings in elongated blocks) is quite distinctive.

Satelitte view from 5 km of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (Image: DigitalGlobe © 2013, Courtesy of Google Earth).

Closer examination of a residential area reveals a reason for the radical differences in building scale in the settlement (see below view from 6,000 feet). The residential area is characterized by walled compounds, many of which have a yurt (circular structure generally in white in the below image). A yurt is a portable, bent dwelling structure traditionally used in nomadic cultures from the steppes of Central Asia. The structure comprises a crown or compression wheel usually steam bent, supported by roof ribs which are bent down at the end where they meet the lattice wall (again steam bent). The top of the wall is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs. The structure is usually covered by layers of fabric and sheep’s wool felt for insulation and weatherproofing (Source: Wikipedia). Many of the compounds also have a permanent structure, which tends to have colorful roofs. All of these physical features, combined with the nomadic origins of the settlement, makes Ulannbaatar one of the most fascinating urban patterns on our planet.

Satellite view from 500m of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (Image: DigitalGlobe © 2013, Courtesy of Google Earth).

(Updated:  May 12, 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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Art, Essay, The City in Art

All That Floats | The City in Art

Rene Magritte’s Golconda (1953), oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA.

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

The Social Logic of Space (1984) by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson.

The selection of Rene Magritte’s Golconda (1953) for The City in Art series is a direct homage to Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson’s The Social Logic of Space (1984), which famously used Magritte’s Golconda for its cover (see right). The piece depicts a scene of nearly identical men dressed in dark overcoats and bowler hats, who seem to be drops of heavy rain against a backdrop of buildings and blue sky (or to be floating like helium balloons, though there is no actual indication of motion). The latter is our preferred interpretation: hot air rises. These men are full of hot air because of their conformist nature, which causes them to float. The men are spaced in hexagonal grids facing the viewpoint and receding back in grid layers. Charly Herscovici, who was bequeathed copyright to the artist’s works, commented on Golconda: “Magritte was fascinated by the seductiveness of images. Ordinarily, you see a picture of something and you believe in it, you are seduced by it; you take its honesty for granted. But Magritte knew that representations of things can lie. These images of men aren’t men, just pictures of them, so they don’t have to follow any rules. This painting is fun, but it also makes us aware of the falsity of representation.” Another interpretation is Magritte is demonstrating the line between individuality and group association, and how it is blurred. All of these men are dressed the same, with the same bodily features and all are floating/falling. This leaves us to look at the men as a group (Source: Wikipedia).

Mm, why might this be important when it comes to the subject of city planning, we pointedly ask? The use of Magritte’s Golconda for the cover of The Social Logic of Space is reminiscent of Jean Baudrillard’s quote in America (1982) that “space is what prevents everything from being in the same place.” However, it seems unlikely this was Magritte’s original intention since the buildings appear to be firmly anchored to the (unseen) ground outside the plane of the canvas. It is also interesting that the architecture in the painting can be characterized as equally conformist like the men in bowler hats. In any case, it is somewhat whimsical to take both Magritte and Baudrillard in tandem to suggest rather, it is gravity (of Nature, of the person, etc.) that keeps everything from floating away. Magritte’s Golconda is a wonderful painting precisely because of the obscurity of its real meaning about people and architecture.

About Rene Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte (November 21, 1898–August 15, 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist best known for witty, thought-provoking images and the use of simple graphics and everyday objects, thereby giving new meanings to familiar things. Magritte studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918. Before finding success as an artist, Magritte designed wallpaper and advertisements. After a poorly received solo show in 1927, he moved to Paris and became involved with the surrealist movement. His surrealist style is mysterious and full of magic, created by combining realistic depictions of everyday objects in discrepancy with the known in perceiving everyday life. Magritte diverges proportions and changes the image’s texture. He combines real objects with abstract figurations. His most famous painting “La trahison des images” (Betrayal of the Images) (1929) shows a pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe) next to it. René Magritte died in Brussels on August 15, 1967 (Source: Wikipedia/Art Directory).

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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Art, Essay, The City in Art

Buildings in Motion | The City in Art

Rejcel Harbert’s The Blue City (2012), 22″ x 28″, acrylic on stretched canvas, private collection.

Buildings in Motion | The City in Art
By Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

The city is always in motion. Generally, this statement is understood by professionals to refer to movement through urban space at street level (pedestrians, automobiles, and so forth) and/or the outward physical growth of the city in plan. However, the city is also – and always – in motion at its vertical dimension. It is not merely the movement of people and things vertically across interior elevations (such as elevators) but the buildings themselves move and, metaphorically speaking, grow. A structural engineer understands the need to account for wind shear in building structures, especially the taller the building. Anyone who has worked in and/or visited a skyscraper will have probably experienced the phenomenon of wind shear motion in that building, if only on a barely perceptible level. However, in a metaphorical sense, the buildings of the city are also ‘growing’ as new and higher buildings are erected over time. Harbert paints the buildings much like trees bending against a strong wind, providing a counter-motion horizontally, but also sprouting ever-upwards in a counter-motion against gravity associated with the plane of the ground. In The Blue City (2012), the ground plane is not represented by the solidity of terra firma but the fluidity of a nurturing water, which anchors the buildings much like water feeding the roots of trees. This gives the abstraction a dynamic and organic quality not normally associated with the vertical dimension of the city.

There is an eternal attribute about the city that Harbert captures in depicting a waterfront city at dusk. The onset of dusk is indicated both by the colors of the painting’s background and the use of white in representing the internal lights of the buildings, much in the same way as Georgia O’Keefe’s Radiator Building-Night, New York (1927). In The Blue City, the lights of the city buildings are abstractly reflected in the water at the base of the painting. There is a vibrancy of color contrasted between the upper (reds, browns, and greens) and lower portions (blues, whites, and greens) of the painting. The Blue City reminds us in an abstracted form that the city is always in motion in every dimension (length, width, breadth – the horizontal and vertical – and time itself). In this sense, Harbert captures something about the eternal dynamic of motion in the city. When it comes to the existential being of the city, we may not see it from afar – for example, as we gaze at the skyline of a city – but motion is an essential fact of the thing itself.

BIAS ALERT: I own this painting. I love it so much that I bought it for my private collection. Rejcel usually writes a short description of her paintings on www.rejcel.com but she has not done so for The Blue City. However, when I purchased the painting in 2012, I do recall her telling me the image for The Blue City came to her after a dream.

About Rejcel Harbert
Rejcel Harbert has over eight years of experience as the owner of Art by Rejcel, where she sells photographic services, paintings, and abstract and expressionistic acrylic arts. She received her bachelor of arts in business, economics, and Spanish from Jacksonville University in 2001. She is a member of the Business Fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, the Honor Society Phi Kappa Phi, and received an award from the Women’s Business Organization for Achievement. Ms. Harbert does religious volunteer work including construction and repair work for community members in need. For more information on Art by Rejcel, visit www.rejcel.com.

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

Urban Patterns | Hashima, Japan

“Islands in the stream, that is what we are, no one in between…”
— Islands in the Stream, Bee Gees

Urban Patterns | Hashima, Japan
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Many people will be familiar with popular and fantastic ‘dystopian’ photographs of the abandoned urbanscape and buildings on Hashima (or Gunkanjima, meaning “battleship island”), Japan. Otherwise, people have probably seen the latest James Bond film (Skyfall, 2012) where several scenes were filmed on the island as the ‘secret lair” of villain Silva (played with relish by Javier Bardem). An excellent review of the island’s history, “Hashima: The Ghost Island”, by Brian Burke-Gaffney is available online from Cabinet Magazine here. However, satellite images of the island are rarely provided. A Google image search in April 2013 only produced one aerial photograph taken from a few hundred feet.

Satellite view from 600m of Hashima Island, Japan (Source: Google Earth).

In 1959, Hashima was the most densely populated city on Earth, with 5,259 inhabitants on the small, rocky outcropping, or 216,264 people per square mile (Source: Wikipedia). The layout and terrain of the island represents something of a microcosm of urban form processes condensed into an extremely very small area. Based on historical photographs, Hashima was enlarged using embankments to ‘regularize’ the shape of the island. The original shoreline appears, more or less, reflected in the irregular shape of the central strip of green colors viewable from above on the island. There is a small-scale deformed grid in the south-central portion of the island whereas there is a regular grid layout in its north-westerly portion. The layout offsets to these plan elements in order to oriented buildings along the western shoreline: on a larger scale, in the central west area using deformation; and, in two linear building strips immediately adjacent to the western shoreline. There are two large open spaces: one along the eastern shoreline, used as the ‘marshaling’ ground for embarking on and departing from the island; and, a second at the northern tip of the island, which was primarily used for recreational space. There is also an enclosed square in the north central area of the island. Hashima is fascinating not only for a dystopian nature arising from its abandonment since 1974 but also because its layout contains an urban ‘universe’ of formal articulation on only 16 acres.

(Updated: April 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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Editorial, Mark David Major, News

We the People… are not ready | COMMENT | A World Without Trash Cans | Atlantic Cities

We the People… are not ready

by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

I have been waiting for the appropriate time and place to ask a question. I wrote a tweet asking this question on the afternoon of the Boston Marathon bombing. However, I deleted the tweet without posting because 140 characters seemed woefully inadequate for any context to this question. I was also worried about prematurely discussing the implications before people had time to process Monday’s events. I wrote a slightly longer status update (about 40 words) for my personal Facebook page later that evening. I thought I could ask my friends this question. They know me and would willingly forgive any awkwardness arising from brevity. However, again, it seemed both premature and insufficient. I deleted the status update without posting. Thanks to the Amanda Erickson’s April 16th article, “A World Without Trash Cans?”, for Atlantic Cities (a link to her article is available below), I feel as if I have found the right venue to express something that has been bothering me… literally, for years. I ask this question and write this article with the disclaimer I am not a security expert. I am only a concerned citizen.

Here is the question: why didn’t anyone notice?

I lived in London from 1992-2000. During this time, like many Londoners, I had my fair share of close calls with Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings. My friends and I partied in a Soho pub called the Sussex Arms on a Saturday night. The next Saturday night, the IRA set off a nail bomb, killing one person, in the men’s room of the same pub. My aunt and uncle visited me in London. I eagerly showed them around the city on a beautiful spring day. The personal tour included visiting historical sites in the City of London. During this tour, we passed the Baltic Exchange on a couple of occasions. The next day, the IRA set off the bomb that destroyed the Baltic Exchange. The IRA set off three bombs on a Thursday along the same stretch of road my ex-wife and I walked every Saturday on the way to and from the grocery store. Of course, I was aware of new learned behaviors on my part while living in a city under siege by the IRA. This included being naturally suspicious of unattended bags and packages on the London Underground and elsewhere. After I returned home, I became aware of other learned behaviors. To this day, if I am walking along a street and see an unmarked parked van, I have to restrain myself from crossing the street to distance myself from a possible threat. The first time I realized I was doing this was in Palm Coast, Florida. I laughed at myself for subconsciously thinking the IRA might want to bomb Palm Coast. More importantly, it represented learned behavior from living in London for nearly a decade.

There were others. I once had the unfortunate experience of watching a young woman throw herself under a London Underground train in a suicide attempt. It happened right in front of me. The young woman was standing a couple of feet to my right before she ran pass me and threw herself from the platform under the train. Fortunately, she survived with minor injuries. Afterwards, I realized she had been alone on the platform, coatless, and not carrying a bag. In the 1990s, almost everybody on the London Underground seemed to be carrying some sort of bag (briefcase, computer bag, backpack, shopping bag, and so on). They probably still do. From that point forward, when I was on the London Underground and I saw someone alone without a bag, I would casually stand near and in front of them, putting myself between them and the tracks, in an attempt to avoid repeating the experience. The probability this act made a difference was infinitely small. However, there was always the off-chance it might make a difference. It did not cost me anything to do and I seriously doubt anyone noticed a reason for my strategic positioning on the platform. I had developed a new learned behavior.

In the weeks after September 11, 2001, I visited English friends living in Atlanta, Georgia. Naturally, we discussed the events of September 11th within the context of our shared experience living in London with the constant threat of IRA terrorism. Make no mistake: the IRA were terrorists. They engaged in indiscriminate bombings designed to murder innocent civilians. This is the very definition of terrorism. In any case, my friends and I looked out the window of their downtown apartment in Atlanta, marveled about the neat row of trash cans spaced every 20 feet along the street, and wondered why they had not been removed. We talked about our travel experiences in the aftermath of September 11th. I admitted the presence of the National Guard armed with machine guns in American airports was comforting; not so much because of fear in the aftermath of September 11th but because it was more consistent with my European experience over the previous decade. My friends and I agreed that the United States was not ready if Al Qaeda decided to adopt IRA tactics. In the subsequent 12 years, this has been a source of occasional worry for me. I wondered, when is Al Qaeda (or any other terrorist group, foreign or domestic, organized or the proverbial ‘lone wolf’ fruitcake) going to realize how much damage they could really do by following the lead of the IRA? In 12 years, I have seen precious little to indicate we the people are ready for a sustained assault on thousands of the ‘soft targets’ across this country, designed to truly terrorize the general population on an everyday basis. Luckily, Al Qaeda and everyone else remained fixated of ‘spectacle terrorism’, designed to drive international news coverage into a feeding frenzy (terrorism by media proxy)… until Monday.

We have constructed a mammoth security bureaucracy to learn about and intercept terrorism threats before they cross our border and/or implement their plans. For the most part, it has been successful. However, I wonder how much of that success is due to terrorists’ unchanging focus on the uniquely spectacular instead of the ordinarily possible. It is true. We are an open society; in ideal, if not always in practice. And it is a good thing to aspire to this ideal, however imperfectly. But it does not mean we have to forgo common sense. Foolishness is not an inherent attribute of openness. At the same time, we do not want our home to become an armed military camp. Our approach to terrorism requires balance between freedom and caution, openness and common sense. After 12 years, we still do not seem to be striking the right balance. It is too top-heavy. Our government bureaucracies are well prepared, perhaps overly so, and (seemingly) paranoid. Our citizens are under-prepared and (seemingly) nonchalant. It is puzzling how two unattended bags can escape the notice of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in Boston. All it took to avert this event was one or two people, ordinary citizens, flagging down a police officer or event organizer after noticing a suspicious package along the marathon route. Why did this not happen? It is time ordinary citizens became more vigilant, to develop learned behaviors that, in themselves, might prove equally effective in guarding against acts of terrorism. After all, as big as the government is, there are still more of us citizens than government bureaucrats. The most effective act against terrorism on September 11, 2001 was not a presidential decision, government policy, or military action. It was an act of vigilance and bravery by ordinary citizens on United Flight 93. Ordinary citizens appear to have learned this lesson in the air. Isn’t about time we learned the same lesson on the ground?

In asking who did this and why, I think we are missing an equally important question, which is: why didn’t anyone notice? I am worried that we are still not ready for this kind of terrorism… and, by now, we really should be.

A World Without Trash Cans? | Amanda Erickson | The Atlantic Cities.

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