Hyper, prefix, meaning high-strung (very nervous or easily upset), excitable, highly excited or extremely active; over, beyond, above, or exceeding the normal. Segregation, noun, meaning the act or practice of segregating; a setting apart or separation of places, people or things – either enforced or voluntary – from others or from the main body or group of places, people or things, by barriers to social intercourse; the separation for special treatment or observation of individuals or items from another group: the institutional separation of an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group from the dominant majority; the state or condition of being segregated, set apart, separated, or restricted to one group. Origin of hyper is short for hyperactive (First Known Use: circa 1942) from Greek huper ‘over, beyond.’ Origin of segregation is 1545-55 from the Late Latin sēgregātiōn– (stem of sēgregātiō), equivalent to sēgregāt (us) (see segregate) + –iōn– –ion. Synonyms include extreme loneliness and excessive isolation to the point of being unhealthy for individuals or society.
Seven Deadly Sins for Cities is a feature of The Outlaw Urbanist. Starting soon: Seven Godly Virtues for Cities.
Purchase your copy of Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) today!
Available in print from Amazon, CreateSpace, and other online retailers.
Planning Naked | March 2015
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor
Observations on the March 2015 issue of Planning Magazine.
1. The absence of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) in this month’s op-ed, “Developing Partnerships”, by APA Executive Director James M. Drinan, JD is a conspicuous omission.
2. Informative “Legal Lessons” column by former New Jersey Supreme Court judge, Peter Buchsbaum, on brevity in land use law: 1) speak plain English; 2) avoid invective (e.g. abusive or “purple prose”) language; 3) be concise; 4) the record is king (i.e. proof); and, 5) planning is visual (e.g. show, don’t tell). Judges “want facts and reasoned arguments” (pp. 11).
3. Excellent article on “Putting Berlin Back Together” by Katherine Burgess, AICP with informative maps of spatial information and research & design-oriented approaches in planning policy in the city after re-unification. The article provides a stark contrast to the predecessor articles in this issue on immigration (‘more resources”) and super TIFs (“capture state taxes”), which, once you drill down, are really about feeding on the public purse.
4. Which is immediately followed by an article romancing Sea Ranch, California, “From Romance to Reality” by Christine Kreyling, celebrating the “sublime” supposed environmental sensitivity of a prototypical far-flung mid-twentieth century “utopia” sprawl development with “an average density of one dwelling unit per acre” composed of a 10-mile long maze of cul-de-sacs two hours north of San Francisco along the coastal highway.
5. APA apparently doesn’t like gambling much judging by “When Casinos Are Too Much of a Good Thing” by Jake Blumgart, unless it’s gambling with the public’s money, of course. The benefits of casinos are “uncertain and uneven” but can you name any business or industry where the benefits are certain and even?
6. “Recycling to the Max: Earthship structures cause conundrums for planning departments” by Kristen Pope is a perfect example of a 1st world problem where the industry is ahead of a profession too focused enforcing the rules instead of creating solutions. “Planning departments may have to develop guidelines as various situations arise” as “other communities do not have clear standards for Earthship building” (pp. 46). Jeez.
7. “Golden age of street design” by Reid Ewing in the Research You Can Use section is short and sweet. This should have been given priority over the Sea Ranch, California article.
8. Kimberly Burton’s Viewpoint article, “Planning from Scratch” on travel etiquette on Ghana’s streets is an implicit endorsement of the shared space concept for streets.
Planning Naked is an article with observations and comments about a recent issue of Planning: The Magazine of the American Planning Association.
It has been said that ‘Savannah is all about its squares.’ This is inaccurate. The spatial logic of Savannah is all about the historical loading of front doors along east-west streets in the ward plan. This generates a spatial hierarchy in the plan between ‘outsiders’ (i.e. visitors) principally using north-south streets to enter the town (historically from the port, later via vehicular traffic) before assimilating along the east-west streets primarily used by ‘insiders’ (i.e. residents) (Anderson, 1986 and 1993; Kostof, 1991; Major, 2001 and 2014).
John Reps’ famous 1959 drawing of the historical growth of the Savannah, Georgia ward plan from 1733-1856 (Reps, 1965; 201).View southeast down West River Street: an east-west street in Savannah (Photograph: Mark David Major).View southwest from West River Street to Williamson Street showing the dramatic change in elevation from the bank of the Savannah River (Photograph: Mark David Major).View northwest across Oglethorpe Square (Photograph: Mark David Major).View northeast from Johnson Square down Bull Street to Savannah City Hall (Photograph: Mark David Major).North-south streets, mostly barren of trees or front doors, bear the weight of moving high-speed (in relative terms) traffic through Savannah’s ward plan (Photograph: Mark David Major).(Photograph: Mark David Major)
The spatial logic of the ward plan is imminently serviceable for managing moving traffic, treating most squares as enlarged roundabouts and filtering through traffic mostly along north-south streets such as this one. Over time, constitution (i.e. dwelling entrances) has emerged in a spotty fashion along these north-south streets but not enough (to date) to deteriorate the logic of loading front doors along east-west streets.
(Photograph: Mark David Major)
Despite this, Savannah’s ward plan is suffering under the weight of storing parked vehicles. There are parking garages located on at least four of the squares and two sides of Orleans Square is constituted by surface parking for the convention center. The wall constructed to ‘hide’ this surface parking does nothing to support the functioning of the ward plan or Orleans Square itself. This photo shows the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission offices occupying a ground level retail space (not a bad idea but poorly designed frontage) on Oglethorpe Square at the base of a seven-story parking garage (metaphorically-speaking, being crushed under the weight of parked vehicles).
Loading of front doors along an east-west street in Savannah’s ward plan (Photograph: Mark David Major).Loading of front doors (including double-loading at ground level and second-floor entries) on an east-west street defining the northern edge of Oglethorpe Square in Savannah (Photograph: Mark David Major).(Photograph: Mark David Major)
Some modern in-fill development adheres to the nuances of how Savannah’s ward plan was historically designed to function (front doors loaded on this east-west street in the development in the background) whereas some actively retards that functioning (garages loaded on east-west street in the development in the foreground, turning this portion of the space into an alleyway with trash cans).
References
Anderson, Stanford. 1993. “Savannah and the Issue of Precedent: City Plan as Resource”, Settlements in the Americas: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Ed. Ralph Bennett). Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Anderson Stanford. 1986. “Studies towards an Ecological Model of Urban Environment”, On Streets (Ed. Stanford Anderson). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Kostof, Spiro. 1991. The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meaning Through History. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.
Major, Mark David. 2015. Relentless Magnificence: The American Urban Grid. Ph.D. Thesis. Copies available from University College London.
Major, Mark David. 2001. “When is a door more than a door? The role of constitution in strongly geometric configurations”, Third International Space Syntax Symposium Proceedings (Eds. J. Peponis, J. Wineman, S. Bafna), 37.1-37.14.
Reps, John W. 1965. The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
My ‘Secret’ Life as an Anonymous Source by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor
Sorry, this post is quirky and not nearly as salacious as the title might suggest otherwise. However, enough time has passed (15 years) that I can now reveal one of the more interesting episodes in my professional career. This is my ‘secret’ life as an anonymous source for the free-wheeling British press involving a story about London Transport, the Metropolitan Police and, ultimately, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his still-young-at-the-time Labour government.
On November 23, 1998, London’s Evening Standard printed a front-page article by Martin Delgado with the screaming headline “SHUT THE TUBE FOR MILLENNIUM.” The story was about London Transport’s public claims that they would operate between 70% and 80% of the London Underground services for the Millennium New Year’s Eve celebration on December 31, 1999. However, as part of the crowds study group, London Transport was privately reporting they would be lucky to run services at 50% capacity on the night. At the time, there was a three-year crowds study group tasked with preparing Central London for the large number of people expected to attend the celebrations consisting of the Metropolitan Police, London Transport, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, City of Westminster, and their consultants Risk Management Consultants and Space Syntax Ltd.
Front cover of the 23 November 1998 issue of the Evening Standard.
The London Metropolitan Police was extremely concerned about London Transport’s plans to operate at only 50% capacity on the night and leaked the story to the Evening Standard. Delgado’s story quoted an anonymous source in Space Syntax Ltd. to support the position of the Metropolitan Police.
I was the anonymous source.
As I recall, a crowds study group member of the Metropolitan Police referred Mr. Delgado to me to support their position by providing some background information about the study. It was only years later that learned my mistake was asking for an “off the record” conversation ; not realizing this meant I could still be quoted as an anonymous source. In hindsight, I should have asked for a conversation “on background.” Oh well, live and learn. Initially, I took some grief inside Space Syntax for my role in this story but less than you might think because what I said was accurate and correct. The reaction inside Space Syntax about my role later evolved into bewildered amusement because of what next happened.
The story briefly caused a firestorm, which required Tony Blair to respond to Ministers of Parliament during Prime Minister’s Question Time. The story eventually led to the Labour government making wholesale changes to government preparations by refocusing the Millennium celebrations on the River Thames. This was not our idea but it was a darn good one in hindsight because it helped to spread the expected crowds over a much larger area of central London. A change that also required London Underground to operate nearer to full capacity on the night since people would be arriving and leaving via more underground stations. At the time, the concern of crowds study group about this change was our crowd observations were focused around Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus on New Year’s Eve in 1996, 1997 and 1998.
1:00 am, January 1, 1999 outside Canada House in Trafalgar Square after (very cold) New Year’s Eve crowd observations (from left to right): Beatriz Campos, François Dufaux, Mark David Major, and Tim Stonor.
We worried about missing something since we could not observe crowd movement and space use under the same circumstances before the actual night. However, the Millennium celebrations were a great success, going off without a hitch other than some minor incidents involving stupidity and chance, with no serious injuries due to overcrowding on the streets of central London. I like to think Space Syntax’s role as a consultant on the crowds study – and mine, in particular, as the Space Syntax project manager and anonymous source to this Evening Standard story – helped to ensure public safety on December 31, 1999.
If you are interested in more details about our crowds study, you can read about it here:
Major MD, A. Penn , G. Spiliopoulou, N. Spende, M. Doxa, and P. Fong, 2000, ‘Following the Crowd: Spatial Layout and Crowd Behaviour’, arq Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 4, Number 3, Cambridge University Press, pp. 257-264, ISBN 0-521-79412-9.
Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George, the Prince Regent (later George IV) and was built under the direction of the architect John Nash. The street runs from Waterloo Place in St James’s at the southern end, through Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, to All Souls Church. From there Langham Place and Portland Place continue the route to Regent’s Park. The street was completed in 1825 and was an early example of town planning in England, replacing a number of earlier roads including Swallow Street. Nash’s street layout has survived, although all the original buildings except All Souls Church have been replaced following reconstruction in the late 19th century. The street is known for its flagship retail stores, including Liberty, Hamleys, Jaeger and the Apple Store. The Royal Polytechnic Institution, now the University of Westminster, has been based on Regent Street since 1838 (Source: Wikipedia).
Regent Street proposal, published 1813, titled “PLAN, presented to the House of Commons, of a STREET proposed from CHARING CROSS to PORTLAND PLACE, leading to the Crown Estate in Marylebone Park” (Source: Wikipedia).
Upper Regent Street, London (Image: Mark David Major).Upper Regent Street, London (Image: Mark David Major).Oxford Circus, intersection of Oxford Street and Regent Street, London (Image: Mark David Major).Lower Regent Street, London. Carnaby Street is located two blocks to the east (left) of this intersection (Image: Mark David Major).Lower Regent Street, London (Image: Mark David Major).Lower Regent Street, London (Image: Mark David Major).Lower Regent Street looking toward Piccadilly Circus (right around the bend), London (Image: Mark David Major).Piccadilly Circus, London (Image: Mark David Major).
Share the knowledge!
Blogging about architecture, urbanism, and culture…
observation of individuals or items from another group: the institutional separation of an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group from the dominant majority; the state or condition of being segregated, set apart, separated, or restricted to one group. Origin of hyper is short for hyperactive (First Known Use: circa 1942) from Greek huper ‘over, beyond.’ Origin of segregation is 1545-55 from the Late Latin sēgregātiōn– (stem of sēgregātiō), equivalent to sēgregāt (us) (see segregate) + –iōn– –ion. Synonyms include extreme loneliness and excessive isolation to the point of being unhealthy for individuals or society.
Purchase your copy of Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) today!
Planning Naked | March 2015
