Science of Pedestrian Movements

 An interesting article from the Economist on 'The Wisdom of Crowds' echoes much of the seminal research of William Whyte (City), Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension), and others that have closely studied the behavior of pedestrians and other users of public spaces. The interplay of cultural habits that tells us to step right or left to avoid collisions on a busy street can lead to a certain inherent poetic 'choreography' when viewed. There are different theories on how these actions are coordinated, and the article focuses on new scientific methods for predicting and studying pedestrian movements. 

:: image via The Economist

 As Jane Jacobs mentioned in The Death and Life of Great American Cities this urban realm is likened to a ballet:

"It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”

It was interesting, in this context, to remember my recent travels to Europe, namely London, where traffic on the roads occupies the left lane, but as mentioned in the article, there is not a correlation between this and pedestrian movement. While they mention that London follows pedestrians on the right, that is an oversimplification, as it doesn't necessarily follow, at least in my experience. Many people follow the walking to the left, which is culturally learned in the UK, mirroring the driving, but the influx on many non-locals that have their own rules often leads this to degenerate into chaos. Thus there is not a typical rule of thumb - and you are therefore required to be much more actively engaged in the surroundings to navigate successfully.

London Pavement Parkings - (image by Jason King)

As mentioned in the originally referenced article, culture is less important in this process as is habit and repetition: "Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other’s intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it’s right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority."

The importance of this sort of study (sorry thought, as mentioned, this not a 'youngish field') has long been known in urban realms. It is being rediscovered by other sciences and disciplines (seems like everyone wants to study the city now!) such as physics, who are using modeling in the context of crowd safety, particularly in a more multi-cultural world, to better understand what has long been studied the old-fashioned way - by watching people in person or through video.

While thinking of people in similar terms of particles may be helpful, as people are governed by many rules - there is somewhat of a wildcard element in human behavoir as people act as "particles with a 'will'", doing sometimes unpredictable things and non-linear behaviors. The issues with modeling are obvious, when you take into account the sheer number of variables at play even in the most simple pedestrian-to-pedestrian interaction. The article mentions this in the context of a study between Indian and German pedestrians, where the direction is also complicated by cultural spatial rules as well:

"Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. An experiment in 2009 tested the walking speeds of Germans and Indians by getting volunteers in each country to walk in single file around an elliptical, makeshift corridor of ropes and chairs. At low densities the speeds of each nationality are similar; but once the numbers increase, Indians walk faster than Germans. This won’t be news to anyone familiar with Munich and Mumbai, but Indians are just less bothered about bumping into other people."

It would be interesting to do a lit review of cultural spatial studies, building on the work of Hall, to see if these have been updated, and if we have learned anything new in the past 20 years, since The Hidden Dimension was published in 1990. The world has changed dramatically and is much more global, thus it makes sense that even this sort of revolutionary study, while still somewhat applicable, will have changed due to a changed world. This goes as well to updating Whyte's classic video studies of public spaces (i.e. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces), which are great but extremely dated and not reflective of a much more culturally rich society. A screen shot of one of the videos shows a different environment than what exists even 20 to 30 years later. This doesn't mean his data are any less relevant, but that we must continue to engage in further study to learn more.



A research agenda that looks at these phenomena, how we use spaces, how we react and incorporate multiple cultural viewpoints, and more is vital to our continual understanding of proxemics, pedestrian movement, crowd dynamics, and more. This can be done by incorporation of more scientific modeling of typically non-urban disciplines, such as the complex modeling processes in physics. It is, to me, much more interesting to envision this study through updates of the seminal urban research studies, which would be a worthy endeavor in our ever globalizing world and our constantly diversifying cities.

This post originally appeared on THINK.urban on January 05, 2012.

THINK.urban: Introducing Megapolitanism

A recent article from John King at the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the concept of using the Megalopolitan scale for planning purposes. The article references the new book by Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang entitled 'Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America's Metropolitan Geography' (APA, 2011).

As an example, King mentions the Sierra Pacific Megapolitan Area, seen below as a large geographical area that extends from the San Francisco Bay area all the way into Western Nevada, around Reno. The region includes 27 counties and includes over 12.4 million people, and its expected to grow substantially in the next 30 years.

 

As mentioned in the article, the significance of the concept of megapolitan areas is to look more broadly at a larger scale, King, quoting Nelson, mentions that "regions can be more proactive in everything from transportation planning to economic strategies... to have people look at things a little differently, the whole rather than the parts." While explicitly not a model for mega-regional government, there are some possibilities of what this might mean for regions by looking at larger areas. As mentioned by King, "It's too early to say whether the concept of megapolitan areas will catch on as a framework for government policy, much less in terms of how regular people define where they live." The significant of megapolitan areas, thus is undetermined.

The overall ambiguity of the defining characteristics of a 'city' has led to a lot of questions related to city centers, sprawl, and other hybrid urban agglomerations like edge cities, exurbs, and the shift from urban area to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). This leads to a lot of diversity in definition (outlined in the SF Gate article) - including the largest megapolitan area (NY-Phil 33.9 million people) to the smallest, fastest growing (Las Vegas 2.4 million). While Vegas booms, the Steel Corridor of wester PA is creeping along slowly. In terms of diversity, not surprisingly, the Southern California region has the largest percentage of minorities (62.7%) and the Twin-Cities are the least diverse with 15.5% of minorities. The terms megaregion, megalopolis, megapolitan area, while similar in nature, are somewhat different historically, spatially, and statistically, so it is worth a look at some of the designations. A map of megaregions shows the eleven areas in the United States as determined by the Regional Plan Association.

 

This differs somewhat from a more recent version of Megapolitan areas from a recent essay by Lang and Nelson on Places from Design Observer) They identify 10 megapolitan clusters that exist in 23 megapolitan areas that are similar but slightly different from those above.

 

The different terms, definitions, and geographical extents makes the concepts a bit difficult to parse, but in general terms, the areas are defined by a population of more than 10 million people that exist within a 'clustered network of cities' typically delineated through transportation corridors. The new interpretation of Megapolitan area builds on earlier concepts to describe a more general 'transmetropolitan geography' which is typically thought of more commonly in larger, global areas such as China, Japan, Brazil - which include megaregions of 120 million (Hong Kong, Shenzen-Guangzhou), 60 million (Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe) and 43 million (Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo). While the concepts are similar, the scale of these new global areas are immense in comparison to the US.

Interestingly enough, the term has been used since the 1820s, and the conceptual usage of the concept of Megalopolis as a grouping of urban areas within a region dates back almost 100 years. This includes references by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918) and Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities (1938). The most popularized recent usage was from 1950s and 60s, in the book on the Northeast United States by Jean Gottmann entitled 'Megalopolis' (1961).

 

More on this in subsequent posts, specifically additional information on Lang and Nelson's longer essay in Places, and a closer look at the book. Stay tuned.

[Originally Posted:  12/02/11 from THINK.urban - by Jason King]

Europe Journal: Home Base

An interesting aspect of the European journey was the ability not to stay in hostels or hotels, but to live in some of the places that people actually inhabit in these cities.  This was done courtesy of crashing on my sisters couch in London, and utilizing the fabulous air.bnb for finding amazing flats to stay at along the way (highly recommended btw). 

This yielded an interesting experience in understanding cities not as a tourist, but in the words of Rick Steves - as a "temporary local".  More on some of these home bases and the ways in which one connects with a certain neighborhood, but for now, I found it interesting, via Google Earth, to look at the locations in comparison of urban form - each one at approximately the same scale - with a yellow dot on where we lived.

London  (Waltham Forest)

Barcelona (Gracia)

Rome (2 locations in Coliseum/Forum area)

Siena (near the Duomo)

RBC: Notes on the Third Ecology | Kwinter

Notes on the Third Ecology | Sanford Kwinter

Kwinter used the dichotomy of city/nature, rooting in our historic perceptions that evolved in the Industrial era.  As mentioned, this concept is characterized by a time "...when immense upheavals in social, economic, and political life transformed the very landscape around us and our relationship to it irreversibly and in depth.” (94)

In essence, the evolution of cities had previously existed in tandem with available natural resources, which limited their size and scope. Technological improvements in transportation and the accumulation of wealth shifted us from local dependence on surrounding nature.  This has continued in our technologically advanced modern society, as Kwinter explains:

“Three billion of earth’s citizens today live in cities, and virtually all of the exponential growth in population anticipated over the next fifty years will be urban. A significant number of those who do not live in physical urban environments increasingly live in psychic ones...” (98)

This concept of modernization leads us to the desire to 'clean up' areas that don't fit a specific conceptual idea of use or style.  This originally persisted in slum clearance which replaced the squalid with placelessness, trading one dysfunctional environment for another.  We continue this idea of 'modernization' in many cities today, as Kwinter points to, such as Beijing’s Hutongs or the focus of the remainder of the essay: Dharavi slum quarter in Mumbai, where he mentions that “Current ameliorative development in cities targets the archaic physical structures and the archaic social lifeforms that adhere to them.” –  (99)

The concept of 'modernization' and 'fixing' problems in this case is based on a different set of cultural expectations that those held by the people of slums like Dharavi  which are driven by the "...intensity of its local commerce, the vastness and ubiquity of its social markets, which are virtually coextensive with its metropolitan fabrics.” (99)  This includes economies that exist on the detritus of modernity, such as the secondary economy of recycling of materials.

:: Dharavi slum - image via Indian Adventures

These economies have existed (persisted) for centuries, "part of an ancient ecological and urban web." (100) which allows these areas to function.  It is suprising to hear that Dharavi creates it own sort of socio-ecological structure that is self-supporting but also supports the larger metropolis of Mumbai in which it is located.  Again Kwinter explains:

“Though it may be the world’s largest slum, it has 100 percent employment. But Dharavi is also a city in itself, and its streets and alleys know no distinction between work and social space or even domestic or residential functions… Although sanitation, water, and sewerage represent acutely serious problems in Dharavi, it nonetheless represents the veritable lungs, liver, and kidneys of greater Mumbai, as it cleans, reprocesses, removes, and transforms materials – and adds value – that are endemic to the economic and material functioning of greater Mumbai and beyond.” (101)

While rife with issues of poverty and social inequality, this 'community' has an identity, "a place of visible and palpable civic pride…” (102) and function that will be permanently destroy by processes to 'fix' and 'modernize' it, through clearance and rebuilding.

::

 :: Dharavi slum - image via Black Tansa

Kwinter elaborates on this point of the double-edged sword of slum clearance::

“Although such urban transformations are always done in the name of remediation and modernization and presented as a way to transfer prosperity to ever greater numbers of inhabitants, it is clear that the effects in this case will not only be cultural and political but will have profound ecological impacts, both existentially and in terms of the efficient means – currently at risk of being lost – by which raw materials have traditionally cycled over and over through the system.” (102)

Instead of clearance per se, but a true accounting of the human ecology and perhaps the ability to learn from and expand our worldview by studying these cities and their ad hoc principles of slum urbanism.  Kwinter quotes Thomas Friedman in this context, mentioning that “We may well learn over the next years that cities, even megacities, actually represent dramatically efficient ecological solutions, but this fact alone does not make them sustainable, especially if the forces of social invention remain trapped in tyrannies that only ecological thinking on an ecumenical scale can free us from.” (103)

:: Dharavi recycling economies - image via Life

Thus the imposed order of what constitutes the appropriate ecological city is in need of re-evalution.  Kwinter evokes Guattari’s ‘existential ecologies’ a “concept intended to compromise everything that is required for the creative and dynamic inhabitation and utilization of the contemporary environment.” (104) as a frame for reconciling this condition, and folding the social and natural together into a coherent, non-dichotomous idea of city & nature. As explained:

"...the cultural and social dimensions of our environment as rooted in the natural - are poorly theorized and understood, and at any rate insufficiently acknowledged.  Yet they are the key components of our ecology, without which none of the other parts could fit." (104)

The importance of studying these areas is evident, as “we are still unable to imagine most of the changes required of us, nor even to imagine the scale of required change as possible… it does pose an unprecedented challenge to the design community to serve as an organizing center for the variety of disciplines and systems of knowledge whose integration is a precondition for connecting them to clear political and imaginative and, most important, formal ends.” (105)  The precedents of Dharavi and restraint in creating order out of their inherent chaos is a challenge to our mindset as planners and designers, but the new complexities of our contemporary urban condition demand a level of acceptance and understanding never before realized.

(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.94-105)

RBC: Urban Earth: Mumbai

Urban Earth: Mumbai  |  Raven-Elison & Askins

Urban Earth, with studies in Mumbai, Mexico City, and London:  Their approach: “walking across some of Earth’s biggest urban areas, to explore their spatial realities for the people who live there and challenge dominant media discourses regarding the places in which most of us now live.  The idea is to walk a transect across an urban area, taking a photograph every ten steps.” (84) 

The concept reminds me of Christopher Girot's essay 'Vision in Motion' in the Landscape Urbanism Reader (Waldheim, 2006), on the role of new representational techniques and the ability to document the interstitial, non-destination spaces, echoing Conan, the 'black holes' in the urban fabric that   “...have become the dominant feature of peripheries and urbanized countries… need to consider these long non-entities as probably equally significant as the most celebrated vistas…” (Waldheim 2006, p.100)

Each frame becomes a story which is fascinating on it's own although nothing you would typically document in the day to day.  Here's a random image of London from their Flickr stream...

And the transect is also interesting as an experience, alluding to Girot's new representational techniques, as seen in this great video of the stitched together for Mexico City:

:: video from Urban Earth YouTube page

(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.84-93)

The Deconstructed City

Amazing new maps from an L+U favorite, Strange Maps, featuring 'A Taxonomy of City Maps:  "Imagined cities built from the fragments of real ones: something similar is happening in Tout bien rangé, a cartography-based artwork by French artist Armelle Caron. It consists of a series of map pairs, one a blind, but recognisably real city map, the other what looks like an assembly kit for that same city, with the its blocks impracticably but neatly arranged by shape and size."

A few selected cities such as New York (top) and Berlin (bottom) - click to enlarge images:

And a closeup of the two panels from Paris - to see some more detail:

As mentioned, "Caron strips cities of their spatial context. Roads and rivers become irrelevant, districts and parks disappear. The relationship between built-up areas and empty spaces is obliterated."  See more on Armelle Caron's website

Smart Growth

One of the recent awards from the EPA for the 2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement went to Portland Metro region for it's 2040 Growth Concept.

Policies, Programs, and Regulations: 2040 Growth Concept, Portland metro, Oregon
EPA says: Metro, the elected regional government of the Portland, Oregon, area, is making sure that future population growth can be accommodated through its “Making the Greatest Place” effort. Building on the 2040 Growth Concept, this effort helps protect current and future residents’ quality of life by providing access to transportation choices, investing in compact communities, and preserving farms and forests.

Alien Urbanism

De-Urbanization as Defense Against Alien Invasion

The previews for the new Rogue movie 'Skyline' made me think of a possible benefit from the general dispersion of urban populations.  As shown in the film, the prototypical invasion is preceded by.the traditional 'parking' of ships above all of the 'worlds cities' that has been echoed in sci-fi genres since, well, forever.

:: image via shockya.com

This focus on urban areas - and the concept of dense aggregation of populations makes us vulnerable to attack by aliens due to the ease in which they can focus their energy in a few areas, versus trying to conquer and occupy the globe 'block-by-block' if you will.  The energy to root out the distributed population around the world would have been difficult, if not impossible.

:: image via coming attractions

With the ever increase move towards cities, we have tipped the scales as to our virtual ease of invasion, which has likely caught the attention of alien cultures.  Long written off as rural 'hicks' the massive move towards an urban culture has definitely put us on the radar in terms of planets with considerable natural resources, able-bodies worker/slaves, and comparably low-tech weaponry, gleaned from historical accounts, such as 'War of the Worlds'.

 :: image via What If

As seen in Independence Day, the ability to concentrate on a few cities gives a competitive disadvantage.  A survey of world cities shows that from the largest (Tokyo, Japan 32.4 million) to the 100th largest (Napoli, Italy 3.0 million).  Given the impact of destruction on the top 100 or even the top 50 would wreak serious havoc on the world economies and peace of mind.

:: image via Top 10 List

A breakdown of the top fifty shows the geographical distribution - and although only 4 of these are US cities - they seem distributed throughout the area nicely for maximum impact - being able to keep an eye or remaining, less dense zones.  Hollowing out of larger US cities and megalopolitan agglomerations of multiple cites and edge cities will make it harder to define a 'center' in which to hover.  This has reduced our vulnerability, and massively expanding super-metropolises in Asia will be greater targets.

1. Tokyo, Japan - 32,450,000
2. Seóul, South Korea - 20,550,000
3. Mexico City, Mexico - 20,450,000
4. New York City, USA - 19,750,000
5. Mumbai, India - 19,200,000
6. Jakarta, Indonesia - 18,900,000
7. Sáo Paulo, Brazil - 18,850,000
8. Delhi, India - 18,680,000
9. Õsaka/Kobe, Japan - 17,350,000
10. Shanghai, China - 16,650,000
11. Manila, Philippines - 16,300,000
12. Los Angeles, USA - 15,250,000 
13. Calcutta, India - 15,100,000
14. Moscow, Russian Fed. - 15,000,000
15. Cairo, Egypt - 14,450,000
16. Lagos, Nigeria - 13,488,000
17. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 13,170,000
18. London, United Kingdom - 12,875,000
19. Beijing, China - 12,500,000
20. Karachi, Pakistan - 11,800,000
21. Dhaka, Bangladesh - 10,979,000
22. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 10,556,000
23. Tianjin, China - 10,239,000
24. Paris, France - 9,638,000
25. Istanbul, Turkey - 9,413,000
26. Lima, Peru - 7,443,000
27. Tehrãn, Iran - 7,380,000
28. Bangkok, Thailand - 7,221,000
29. Chicago, USA - 6,945,000
30. Bogotá, Colombia - 6,834,000
31. Hyderabad, India - 6,833,000
32. Chennai, India - 6,639,000
33. Essen, Germany - 6,559,000
34. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - 6,424,519
35. Hangzhou, China - 6,389,000
36. Hong Kong, China - 6,097,000
37. Lahore, Pakistan - 6,030,000
38. Shenyang, China - 5,681,000
39. Changchun, China - 5,566,000
40. Bangalore, India - 5,544,000
41. Harbin, China - 5,475,000
42. Chengdu, China - 5,293,000
43. Santiago, Chile - 5,261,000
44. Guangzhou, China - 5,162,000
45. St. Petersburg, Russian Fed. - 5,132,000
46. Kinshasa, DRC - 5,068,000
47. Baghdãd, Iraq - 4,796,000
48. Jinan, China - 4,789,000
49. Houston, USA - 4,750,000 
50. Toronto, Canada - 4,657,000

New York City is an obvious target, as well as being a world center - it is the identification of the American ideology of cities... the showdown in 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' making Central Park a 'landing strip' for first contact.

:: image via Entertainment Wallpaper

:: image via Box Office Mojo

The phenomenon is not relegated to the cinematic, but permeates animated features - like this tri-valent attackers about a San Francisco-like urban area in 'Monsters v. Aliens'.

:: image via Box Office Mojo

The worlds icons perhaps will be the next wave, as shown in this photo op from 'Mars Attacks' - taking down the Taj Mahal.  This is more of a strategic destruction left for

:: image via Electronic Dragonfly

Another recent film, District 9 shows a more dystopian view, the disabled ship hovering over the ever sprawling shantytowns outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.

:: image via Sound on Sight

The television series 'V' shows that although special effects and technology evolve - the focus on world cities is not variable... hovering over 1980s (and then returning in the 2009 for more.  Sure they act nice, but they park their ships about all the world's series ready to turn us in to lizard people.  You definitely don't see these parked over Grand Forks, North Dakota (maybe due to the still remaining nuclear arsenal in the Dakotas - or maybe because they are scared of this.)

:: V (1980s version) - image via Automopedia

:: V (2009 version) - image via AstroNerdBoys Ramblings 


As with many of these films and series, the escape from cities is the only hope - rendezvous with other survivors in the desert (hopefully one with a large collection of planes and Jeff Goldblum & Will Smith).  While the occasional film will show aliens in the cornfields of the Midwest, or the sacred natural spaces in the middle of nowhere - but odds are, they will soon be hovering over a large city near you.

With this news, we may rethink our flight to the cities and look for a sprawling alternative - evenly covering the globe in groupings no larger than a few thousand - not calling attention to our agglomerations.  It may be our only hope.

On Agrarian Urbanism

An opportunity for point-counterpoint on the topic of Agrarian Urbanism - one that, with the recent explosion of discussion and interest in urban agriculture - is vital to discussing the place of food in the city, and what impact this will have on the form and function of our urban agglomerations.  The topic is poignant here in Portland, as it is both a hotbed of urban agriculture, as well striving for density through urban growth boundaries (UGBs) to protect adjacent farmland.  The question becomes one of spatial configuration - as space within cities can be allocated in whatever configuration we choose - but this does have implications on the overall spread.  I'm amazed with the ability to drive 10 minutes and find working farms - (while also looking around my neighborhood and finding working produce, poultry and other small-scale productive urban gardens).  Both of these will contribute to a final spatial arrangement of the city.

:: image via OregonLive

More on this urban/rural - inside/outside dichotomy, but for now a few bits of related reading.  Charles Waldheim has a recent post on Design Observer: Places, 'Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism', which is excerpted from the recent issue of Bracket: On Farming' and takes a mentioning Wright's Broadacre City, Ludwig Hilberseimers 'New Regional Pattern' and Branzi's Agronica  (a great article, once you translate from Italian here) which is great as a social critique, if not in its formal design qualities.  Looking backwards to see the future, the idea is to think about these not in terms of individual interventions, but with an eye on holistic urbanism.  From the article.

"To date the enthusiasm for slow and local food has been based, on the one hand, on the assumption that abandoned or underused brownfield sites could be remediated for their productive potential; and on the other it has been based on the trend toward conserving greenfield sites on city peripheries — on dedicating valuable ecological zones to food production and to limiting suburban sprawl. But these laudable goals are not much concerned with how urban farming might affect urban form."

:: image via Places

As a historical overview, Waldheim's thesis (the point) is to understand some of this utopian precedents, 

Broadacre City as a vision is appalling, but as a futurist prediction of auto-dominated sprawl, it may not be that far off.  To augment the examples mentioned, I would add Le Corbusiers' Radiant City - perhaps with a less modernist blank green space but as dense spires amidst farmland... Both this and Broadacre City are equally dispiriting, but in polar opposite ways.  In the abstract - both could be vehicles for agricultural urbanism that will appeal to a particular urban/suburban demographic of the population.

:: image via Brian's Culture Blog

The Howard-esque Garden City/Greenbelt City  is another integrated agro-urban example, focused more on concentration of uses (focused urban density) than full integration.  Similar to the drivers of Portland's UGB, there is clear compartmentalization of agriculture from city - keeping it in proximity but also at arms length... to connect the urban dweller to the rural worker in physical and cultural ways - at least in the abstract.

 :: image via Cornell Library

All the examples are not urban per se (as in densely agglomerated), but rather suburban (dependent on continued decentralization) in their contexts (or at least in their location of agricultural uses) - but do tell us much about the cooperative potential of the urban and the agricultural... perhaps the connection between the desire for land and space (our roots) and the historical suburban dispersion.  It was less about a 19th century model of  fleeing the ills of the city, as it was about recapturing some of our agrarian ideals.  The problem therein, lies in really tackling this in a truly urban form not the quasi-middle ground of suburbia (although a ripe ground for re-purposing to include agricultural uses, for sure). 

:: image via Places

The point is that it is fundamentally about what we want in cities (the actual urban parts, not the sprawling metropolitan statistical areas) - monocentric agglomeration and density or polycentric dispersion and space?  The point being, when looking at the 'landscape' of cities - the spaces for non-building, road, etc. there is opportunity (Mason White's 'Productive Surface'?) available at a variety of scales, where 'agriculture' amongst other uses (programmed and other) can exist within cities.  This may be the simplistic, Thus the continuum of spaces is not specifically relegated to the dispersed - large tracts of agricultural land in cities (reducing density, likely leading to sprawl) or the hyper-dense (and I say neo-utopian) vertical farms (technological solutions at exorbitant cost - although I hear they may save the world).

:: image via Treehugger

It's obvious that industrial agriculture is undergoing a necessary shift, and that some space is necessary for food production in the city, but the extent and shape of this (both spatially and culturally) is yet to be determined.  This differs (and influences) urbanism in many ways, depending on what you believe, where you live, and what you grow - amongst myriad other variable.  But is on the minds of many.  These are leading to both inventive proposals, the provocative, the cute and ephemeral, the strange, or the already tried and true - yet somehow new ideas, in the name of agriculture made urban.

The historical account of Waldheim may be compared to (the counterpoint), a similar crop of recent writings by Andres Duany on the same topic, particularly the New Urbanist recent interest in Agricultural Urbanism - which spawned a very NU-centric book (but mostly referenced by Duany as the same 'Agrarian' moniker).   As mentioned on Planetizen, this is to become an emphasis:

"At the 18th Annual Congress for New Urbanists, Andres Duany announced 'Agrarian Urbanism' as his new planning emphasis. He believes that the success of New Urbanism has stultified its progress and reduced its potential...  Agrarian urbanism is a society involved with the growing of food," explains Duany. He now aims to create a locavorous community where the resident is responsible for designing his "own utopia." Greg Lindsay believes the ideas could be attractive to the Whole Foods demographic but is unsure if they are ready for the hard work involved with growing food. Duany concedes that his agrarian communities would still "end up hiring Hispanic laborers to do the dirty work," but that these laborers would have a closer relationship with their employers."

For some of Duany's view on this topic (echoing the above quote) you can turn to Fast Company,  New Urbanism for the Apocalypse, a snapshot of the CNU annoucement, particularly how this viewpoint fits into the NU paradigm.  From the article:

"Agrarian urbanism, he explained, is different from both "urban agriculture" ("cities that are retrofitted to grow food") and "agricultural urbanism" ("when an intentional community is built that is associated with a farm)." He was thinking bigger: "Agrarian urbanism is a society involved with the growing of food." America abounds with intentional communities, he pointed out -- golf course communities, equestrian ones, even the fly-in kind. So why not build one for locavores? And they can have as much land as they like -- it's just that they would have gardens instead of yards, or community gardens and window boxes if they choose to live in an apartment. Their commitment to "hand-tended agriculture" would be part of their legally binding agreement with the homeowners' association. "You design your own utopia," he said. Instead of a strip mall in the town square, there's a "market square" comprised of green markets, restaurants, cooking schools, an agricultural university, and so on. "This thing pushes buttons like mad," he said. "The excitement this triggers -- they get as excited about this as they did in the old days about the porch and the walkable community."

:: Agricultural Transect - image via Fast Company

I particularly enjoy the idea of writing this into the CC+R's of a community (above underlined passage) a sort of 'thou shall farm' edict that allows you to design your own utopia, as long as it fits within certain cultural and community expectations as defined and dictated those in power.  Is this the small-scale version of hobby-farming to the suburban masses - because it isn't really a model of truly 'urban' development?


Another, from Houston Tomorrow, sums up a recent presentation on 'Agricultural Urbanism: Transects & Food Production' with a focus on the recent NU-inspired Southlands project in BC .  Picking up the thread of CNU18, Kunstler shows he may be on board, quoted  on Clusterfuck Nation echoing the need for this return to the farm as also a response to impeding climate change related disruption. (underlined quote mine)

"Among other things, the most forward-looking leaders in the New Urbanist movement now recognize that we have to reorganize the landscape for local food production, because industrial agriculture will be one of the prime victims of our oil predicament. The successful places in the future will be places that have a meaningful relationship with growing food close to home. The crisis in agriculture is looming right now -- with world grain reserves at their lowest level ever recorded in modern times -- and when it really does hit, the harvestmen of famine and death will be in the front ranks of it."

The Houston article links to the long presentation by Duany about the topic, via YouTube - although I haven't had a spare two hours to check it out yet... anyone will to summarize, let me know.

For some related content, one must delve into the interesting concept of CPULs.  Also check out the project 'Garden Block' project by Daniel Nairn, which has garnered praise for it's plausibility from Smart Growth advocates like Kaid Benfield ('Agricultural Urbanism that actually is urban') who have been critical of some urban agriculture proposals.  As an object of defined spatial arrangement incorporating density and agriculture - it seems to work for this block (one that would attract some, but not all urban agrarians).  I expect and desire more models, both the practical to the sublime, from NU/LU/EU and other 'U's - investigating codified solutions and abstract indeterministic ones - giving plenty of fodder for discussion on the future of food in the city.

:: image via Grist

The question of this not just as a site or district image, but as it relates to the overall structure of how we plan and shape cities - is a much larger question indeed.  Looking at utopian precedents, and site specific examples, we have opportunities for not just the physical integration of agriculture into cities, but a clear picture, good and bad, of what some of the consequences may be. 

New York City's Amphibious Heritage

Via the always interesting Strange Maps, a utopian proposal from the early 20th Century for New York City with current parallels of either the practical Dutch examples of land reclamation or the ridiculous Dubai examples of artificial islands.  Immediately making me think of Robert Grosvenor proposal for 'Floating Manhattan' - This 1911 proposal by Dr. T. Kennard Thompson entitled 'A Really Greater New York' poses a large scale land reclamation of New York and the surrounding areas - adding 50 square miles of land to the metropolitan area.

:: image via Strange Maps

Some additional explanation:

"...proposed to expand New York into its adjacent waters for a grand total of 50 square miles. Thomson was neither a lightweight nor a crackpot. As a consulting engineer and urban planner for the City of New York, he had been involved in the construction of numerous bridges and over 20 of New York's early skyscrapers, specialising in their foundations, designing pneumatic caissons. It was the versatility of these caissons that would lead Dr Thomson to envisage a much wider application for them. In August of 1916, he wrote an article in Popular Science, advocating 'A Really Greater New York'."

For a full picture of the concept, check out the full post, but in a nutshell, my favorite part was the new proboscis attached to the end of Manhattan ('New Manhattan') - retaining a New York/New Jersey split.  Think of the cost-benefit of this (ecosystem health and environmental impact aside) were it built 100 years ago.

:: image via Strange Maps

This isn't to say that Manhattan, and many other cities around the world haven't expanded their footprint in less dramatic ways through landfilling, edging slowly into the adjacent lands.  Is it such a crazy proposition, thinking of the value of land in Manhattan and other densely developed (and land-locked) cities, is it such as strange idea?  Boston is a great example of a city built on fill, not by spreading inland,  but by capturing significant amounts of land within the Charles River basin and Harbor areas.

:: image via Crusoe Graphics

Or instead of giving this over to building, how about restoration of the areas where we've destroyed the margins through industrialization.  We could add, through land-filling, wide vegetated buffers for open space and restoration of coastal ecosystems engineered specifically for recreation, habitat, and riparian health - strips for phytoremediation between city and river - buffers for us and to remedy or ills.  While difficult to generate using existing built up edge conditions, this new process of reclamation of riparian corridors, although artificial (a la P-REX), would be a hybrid ecology that may work versus a traditional, reactive, natural methodology.

:: image via Als Dream Journal

Density of the Dead

A little cross-post from the Veg.itecture blog, where the concept of a vertical cemetery in Mumbai 'Vegitecturally Vertical Cemetery' was presented as a way to satisfy cultural expectations while efficiently utilizing scarce urban land. As we've become less likely to cross program or use cemeteries as quasi-public parks and open space - these areas (while heavily weighed down with much baggage) are literally urban dead space. A diagram of the amount of comparative density on a plot of land shows the inefficiencies of this horizontal infrastructure for disposal - at a density of 4000 bodies to 100 acres.

:: image via Inhabitat

Using similar mapping/datascape techniques of MVRDV (some info here) - it would be interesting to posit the acutal spatial impact of such a land use - even factoring in the differing cultural aspects. Even as we densify the planet, there's still a bunch of land in this big world of ours - at a rate of 1000 s.f. per body - that land surplus is gonna go away quickly.

:: image via Bellville Cemetery (Ohio)

So as we develop new cultural techniques for disposing of bodies - there still persists the need to memorialize - which inevitably leads to more use of space, often of the urban kind. I often wonder about the orderliness of the pastoral cemetery as an adjunct, in miniature, of the suburbs - as if in death we must live with a plot of land, a swatch of lawn, a marker worthy of our self-image, and a few neighbors. If life does mimic the hereafter, is there an appropriate correlation of living density and land use as there is for the dead?

:: image via cruelkev

Are we willing to use these spaces, either new or historic, as public or open space, perhaps even letting the lawn go for habitat. Or is a combined cemetery off the table as a way of urban cross-programming? Either way, does it not make sense to utilize this space more fully, and also come up with alternatives that at the very least have a significant multi-functional aspect - utilizing the square footage in a new, more efficient manner (going vertical? subterranean?

More on this for sure, as two things remain - the ideas of transforming urban density, and cemeteries - will continue to fascinate.