My fascination with history and place is no secret. While i am intrigued with urban history in many forms, there's always a desire for a connection with the place you inhabit. Typically this fascination comes via maps, which have been well documented, but the timeline of the past 150 years plus of Portland is worth a bit of investment. For folks on the go, there's also an app that highlights historical site - prepared by the Architectural Heritage Center. Also a new site, WhatWasThere, is a crowd-sourced version that allows folks to upload history photos of their places.
In addition, there are a number of other sources that augmented by a number of great resources that are provided by city and other historical society archives. Each has some overlap but occupies a unique and often personal niche for the blogger and site owner - to scratch their particular history itch, and all make for some great information.
A veritable decoupage of historical imagery awaits at Portland History - a no-frills site that organizes images, postcards, and a few words - sorted into categories like streets, amusement parks, A good shortcut is to go the site map, which gives some links to the categories - but just randomly moving around the site isn't a bad idea either.
Council Crest, the Dreamland of Portland, Oregon
Lost Oregon is a great example of an engaging history tour, albeit typically focused on architecture and riddled with some really bad theme ideas like this one. The site is simple and delves into some more details about some of the areas, buildings, and locations - which augments what is somewhat visually based on other sites.
A spinoff of Lost Oregon writer is PDX: Then/Now which juxtaposes historic and current photos of buildings and places. Some show destruction or evolution, and some, such as the Union Bank Building in Downtown, are eerily similar over 40 years later.
Vintage Portland is another site 'exploring portland's past', through "...photographs, postcards, illustrations, advertisements, etc. ... It’s not a history lesson, it’s not an architectural critique. It’s a
forum for displaying photos of the city’s past, to show how we lived,
what we’ve lost (for good or bad) through progress and just to enjoy
some wonderful camera work."
I particularly appreciate the 'mystery' posts - which show a building, corner, streetscape - with a question to help find where the site is. Sometimes it's to fill in a missing link to an archival photo, but other times it becomes more of a game. The context over time is fascinating evolution - and really highlights the impermanence/permanence of the urban realm. This shot of MLK @ Ainsworth from the north - replace Texaco with Starbucks (old fuel/new fuel?) and Gilmore with Popeyes (old grease/new grease?).
Cafe Unknown is a new one for
me, but author Dan Haneckow pulls you in with compelling history (more
text than other sites) along with some good images. A recent post on Mark Twain in Portland is a good read, and some of the trivial pursuits are great - like Will- vs. Wall- for our fair river (which subsequently ended up 'Willamette') are nuggets of pure gold. Haneckow is a true historical writer - with the requisite head shots of historical figures quoted... along with some really solid writing and research. These walking tour images were pretty interesting finds - along with the story of a missing sculpture found. This stuff is priceless - and firmly about our place.
Check all of these resources out - It is true - you will be sucked in for a few hours/days/weeks - and might come out forever changed. I feel like a landscape or at least urbanism oriented history site wouldn't be a bad endeavor - if someone is inclined to collaborate - look me up. But the caveat on these sites, and historical maps, photos, and primary materials - it's addictive. Don't say i didn't warn you.
Arsenal
Moving along with the Shrinking Cities readings, the first part of 'Origins of the Urban Crisis' by Segrue recounts the development of the City of Detroit around WWII as the 'Arsenal of Democracy' which made it one of the highest paying blue-collar cities in the US. In the words of Segrue, "Mid-twentieth-century Detroit embodied the melding of human labor and technology that together had made the United States the apotheosis of world capitalism." (p.19) This height of Fordist production makes the inevitable fall even more extreme.
:: 'Criss Crossed Conveyors' from the Ford River Rouge Plant - Charles Sheeler (1927) image via Art History Archive
As mentioned, the visitors of today's Detroit marvel at the industrial ruins and disaster porn, but at the time, people flocked to the city to see the massive technologies and industrial might at work, and mostly "they stood rapt as the twentieth century's premier consumer object, the automobile, rolled off the assembly lines by the dozens an hour." (p.19) It is hard to think of the spectacular model of modernity that Detroit once embodied, one that reshaped the city with a new form of 'industrial geography' which tied factories to suppliers and workers to homes with unprecedented efficiency.
The traces of grand boulevards from Woodward's L'Enfant-inspired plan of 1807
remained - fanning out in a radial pattern of wide avenues from the city center, which added to
the idea of speed and efficiency that has characterized Detroit, and the
automobile industry for decades. Much like Los Angeles being the embodiment of the auto-centric city, Detroit is the perfect model of Fordist urbanism at work - not just in the factories - driven by mass-production along with high union wages, and the accessibility of the blue-collar worker to live in a single-family house of their own - with a dearth of any sort of apartment of multi-family housing to accommodate lower-income or those not wealthy enough, or white enough, to buy houses.
The focus on single-family houses led to perpetual housing shortages - particularly when combined with a history of official and unofficial policies that prevented blacks from obtaining housing. Unlike many of the eastern cities where the geography was a patchwork of ethnic enclaves, Detroit was much more literally black and white, as Segrue mentions, "class and race became more important that ethnicity as a guide to the city's residential geography." (p.22) While it was understood as a "City of Homes" for most, the influx of black workers from the South, who came in the 'Great Migration', were met with a consistent range of discrimination and violence, as existing residents perceived in-migration as a threat to their community, starting in the 1920s and continuing all the way through the 1970s. As mentioned in Segrue:
"White neighborhoods, especially enclaves of working-class homeowners, interpreted the influx of blacks as a threat and began to defend themselves against the newcomers, first by refusing to see to blacks, then by using force and threats of violence, and finally establishing restrictive covenants to assure the homogeneity of neighborhoods." (p.24)
There were some inroads to employment in good jobs around WWII, driven by a tightening labor market, the coalitions of unions and civil rights groups, and some federal policies, which made sure that "blacks made significant gains in Detroit's industrial economy during the war." (p.27) There was still an undercurrent of racial tension, which played out in housing and employment, a continual topic that Segrue alludes to being a 'structural' racism that played out in Detroit, and were displayed in significant riots and other violence throughout the years, but that this didn't stop the influx of blacks coming into the city, leaving the Jim Crow south for something better. It's debatable if Detroit was much better.
The Time Bomb
The availability and quality of housing was poor for blacks - driven by a number of social and policy factors. While the New Deal had instilled a new ideology of opportunity for blacks - it had also instilled an ideology for current residents that the government would protect their property and the status quo. Thus the competing ideals of opportunity and protection played out in Detroit, and although, as seen previously, some gains were made - the majority of the wins came in maintenance of the status quo and protection from the new waves of poor, black residents.
As seen in the map below, there were very specific segregated neighborhoods that were predominately populated by blacks - in particularly the original Paradise Valley and West Side Neighborhoods (which had been an areas for wealthy blacks that had deteriorated), along with the wealthier blacks in Conant Gardens and the more distant Eight Mile-Wyoming area, where they had land for gardens to grow food, which became for some pioneering blacks, "their one opportunity, as they saw it, to own their own homes and rear their families." (p.39)
The geography of race was perpetuated by the real estate community as well, who were actively involved in the exclusion of blacks from housing. Another aspect was construction, with new houses rarely being built for blacks or in a price range that was suitable. As Segrue mentions, in "1951, on 1.15 percent of the new homes constructed in the metropolitan Detroit area were available to blacks." (p.43). Another major issue that shaped this geography in Detroit, and many other cities around the United States, was the concept of redlining. Maps were produced by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, informed by local real estate brokers and lenders, to rate the neighborhoods in cities according to a scale from A (green) to D (red). While ostensibly a methodology for determining investment risk, the process became a de facto method for exclusion, disenfranchisement, and continued disinvestment in the minority areas.
Black neighborhoods, even those with a small percentage of black residents, were given a rating of 'D', which was deemed hazardous and colored red (as seen in the unfortunately fuzzy map above, which shows significant portions of the downtown). I haven't been able to track down maps from Detroit - although they do exist for a number of cities - and tell as pretty sad tale of federally aided racism. The ratings kept out new loans for new construction or home repairs, furthering a cycle of disinvestment, as outlined by Segrue:
"Residents in areas rate 'C' and 'D' were unlikely to qualify for mortgages and home loans. Builders and developers, likewise, could expect little or no financial backing if they chose to building in such risky neighborhoods." (p.44)
When you factor in restrictive covenants (the actual and implied), and the work of redlining along with real-estate industry maintenance of status quo, it equated to an impossible position for the largest growing population of residents in Detroit to get adequate housing, which further fueled tensions. For a bit more context, here's a video about the Race Riots from Detroit 2020 offers a concise history on the topic:
The final element of the oppression of poor minority residents in Detroit came, as it did in many areas, through the disguise of urban renewal, in particular the construction of highways through 'slums' that cleared out substandard housing without replacing it with enough to handle what was lost, much less house the large numbers of new residents. From Segrue: "The most obvious problem with slum clearance was that it forced the households with the least resources to move at a time when the city's tight housing market could not accommodate them." (p.50)
This was exacerbated with landlords charging more rent (up to 35% more) for blacks for less housing, which, coupled with the lower wages and job opportunities, forced many to live in great numbers, and not have anything left over for maintenance. This further degraded already deteriorating stock, which further declined, and continued the narrative that some whites believed - that blacks would destroy neighborhoods. The cycle continued. Unlike some areas that built robust (if often misguided) public housing, the next chapter showed that Detroit, city of 'homes' had some similar issues with density, and a new-found Nimbyism which led to a slow provision of subsidized housing, which may have aided in softening some of the myriad impacts of the 1950s and 1960s.
Public Housing
The promise of the New Deal, in post-WWII era, was predicated on government intervention to solve the problems of the city. One of those things was to provide adequate housing for the poor, whether this be true building of community and opportunity, or the more commonly wielded tool of 'social engineering' to make better citizens. Through a number of acts, the US developed policy and funding for many types of affordable housing, complementing the already robust subsidies of single family home construction and highway building.
The trend toward 'modernist' totalitarian schemes emerged from this process of social engineering, embodied by the work of a group of professionals called the Citizens' Housing and Planning Council (CPHC), which took a mission of "improvement of the environmental conditions of Detroit's slums through the elimination of crowded, dirty, and substandard housing, and the construction of sanitary, well-lit, and well-ventilated public housing in its place." (p.61) This type of rhetoric smacks of much of public housing projects of the era, which provides housing, as Segrue mentions, that has "ameliorative effects on living conditions and would modify the behavior and character of urban residents... Public housing would also uplift the 'morale' of urban dwellers," which could happen through "social and individual improvement through orderly planning and urban redevelopment." (p.62)
The problem in Detroit, was that nobody seemed to want public housing, as it was fought almost everywhere by both whites, unions, real estate agents, developers and even some established black residents. The adjacency of even some black areas was problematic, and developers had to make deals with the FHA, such as the 1 foot thick, 6 foot high wall that separated the new development from the old - remnants of which still exist. This sort of approach reinforced the FHA's official policy, not of true equality, but as mentioned by Segrue, even with some of the more enlightened bureaucrats, "a separate but equal philosophy." (p.67)
:: Wall Separating Black from White - remnant - image via Detroit Fly
The official ideology of racial segregation couched in urban renewal also bled into the policies of the City Plan Commission (CPC), which continued the rhetoric of "an emerging program to create a totally planned metropolis, combining public housing with strictly regulated private development..." and the group began using zoning to start "composing a master plan to guide city and regional growth... for the 'reconstruction of Detroit's 'blighted' neighborhoods'..." (p.68) The use of condemnation and slum removal, and strategic placement of black neighborhoods aimed to 'clean up' areas and protect others from deterioration, but more often than not led to housing shortages for those most in need.
The contention over public housing locations was intense, with everyone agreeing that there was a chronic shortage, but no area wanting to be the location for housing to be built. It is understandable, as the inclusion of black neighborhoods, even those Federally-funded, would place these areas in danger of redlining, meaning that value for those living nearby would degrade, and their access to money for improvements and new construction would be significantly decreased. Many planned projects, such as the Sojourner-Truth housing project in Northeast Detroit, which was a planned 200 unit development opposed by whites as well as existing, establish blacks. The overt racism was sometimes couched in a patriotic fervor, "couched in the language of Americanism," as seen in the flags atop the blatant message below but also came with a hint of threatened violence, all with an aim, in the words of existing homeowners, to "preserve the racial and architectural homogeneity of their neighborhood." (p.78)
The Federal government flip-flopped multiple times on location and type of housing - at one point within a two week period switching from black to white, and back to black. The New Deal dichotomy of rights vs. existing protection was at play in many of these conversations as well, as mentioned by Segrue, while: "Acknowledging the 'moral and legal right' of blacks to adequate housing..." existing residents countered that they "had established a prior right to a neighborhood which we have built up through the years - a neighborhood which is entirely white and which we want kept white." (p.80) The government, with pressure from residents, unions, and other groups, implied redlining from real-estate agents, and continued white flight to the suburbs, often acquiesced to these demands, further creating a tension of high rent and little opportunity that continued to flare up in violence.
The venue of public housing debate became a political touchstone as well - with mayoral elections being decided not by the traditional means of party affiliation and union membership, but by black and white, specifically a candidates views of public housing. This conflict, as Segrue mentions, of "politics of home" versus the "politics of the workplace" was another interesting institutional element that made Detroit a large city with very little public housing compared to many other US cities.
As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the racial and social strife had already taken a toll on Detroit, even before deindustrialization, and that loss of industrial might that made the city the Arsenal of Democracy, will continue to play out in racial division, housing, and employment.
Oh the sick and twisted future... a film from General Motors in 1940 entitled 'To New Horizons' talking about the world twenty years later. Yes indeed, "Man continually strives to replace the old, with the new!"
Spotted on one of my favorite new sites - Copenhagenize. Check it out.
A class this term at Portland State involves a reading and conference on 'Shrinking Cities'. Led by professor Ellen Bassett, a group of a dozen students from PhD and Masters in Urban Studies and Urban and Regional Planning reading and discussing four diverse texts, along with a range of other writings on the subject.
:: Detroit Race Riots - 1967 - image via Brittanica
Our first book is "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Segrue. Originally published in 1996, this book has won a number of awards for history, and continues to provide an overview of the connections between racial and economic inequality as played out in the post-WWII urban landscape of Detroit.
This is By no means a comprehensive overview of the subject, but the aim of the group is to discuss the social, economic, political, and spatial phenomena at work in a number of US Shrinking Cities, to better understand this issue. Stay tuned for some thoughts over coming weeks, and if you have suggested readings to include, that would be very welcome.
Another round of Siftings from the past couple of days. Starting off with a couple of Occupy-related posts, including a great article from Saskia Sassen and Hans Haacke from Artforum entitled 'Imminent Domain'. The first sentence - "OCCUPYING IS NOT THE SAME as demonstrating..." points out a recent and annoying trend of calling any sort of protest an occupation. It diminishes the act of occupying to do so. Worth reading, but a snippet I will include:
"To occupy is to remake, even if temporarily, territory’s embedded and often deeply undemocratic logics of power, and to redefine the role of citizens, mostly weakened and fatigued after decades of growing inequality and injustice. Indeed, the occupations have revealed to what extent the reality of territory goes beyond its dominant meaning throughout the twentieth century, when the term was flattened to denote national sovereign territory."
The National discusses a competition for Egypt's Tahrir Square, particularly to provide a monument that is a "memorial competition to commemorate the actions of the revolution." Particularly, the article mentions, is to remember the estimated 846 people who died in the protests (yes, that was a real occupation). It points out also, that while in the US, we can claim public space, and also claim a measure of shared atrocity with the liberal use of baton and pepper spray to disperse crowds, we're still along way from bullets and grenades as a typical strategy, as is found in many parts of the world.
On a different note, Richard Florida, if anyone is still listening to him, has an article in the Atlantic on 'How the Crash Will Reshape America' which is worth a read, along with an interesting exploration on 'The Case for Congestion' - which argues for some slow-ness, but perhaps not to the degree of the scenarios that imagined a "City Without Its Public Transportation" and what that would mean for automobile gridlock.
An article from the NY Times 'Taking Parking Lots Seriously, as Public Spaces' includes some study from Eran Ben-Joseph, including some startling stats, such as that there are: "...500 million parking spaces in the country, occupying some 3,590 square miles, or an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined."
The article and slideshow (thanks NY Times for not allowing pic downloads!!!) - also yielded a gem from Lewis Mumford, which has definitely made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook:
"“As the critic Lewis Mumford wrote half a century ago, ‘The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.’"
And finally, from 'Growing Your Greens', an interesting Incredible Edible Public Garden in Irvine, California (with apologies for the host yelling all the time)... The title is a bit misleading, as it would be quite a feat to feed 200k of people with 7.5 acres. Enjoy.
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.
An interesting article making some strange connections between the land of free spiritedness that is Burning Man, specifically the arrangement of the temporary settlement 'Black Rock City' with the ideology of New Urbanism. I can't think of two uniquely different mind-sets and approaches, so find the connection to be somewhat comical - but am keeping an open mind. So read for yourself... and determine perhaps if that next vacant town square surrounded by walk-up townhouses would benefit from an iconic super human sculptural icon that regularly is set aflame? Maybe it would be a Waldheim effigy? Who knows.
"One of the many ways in which Black Rock City epitomizes thoughtful city planning, Mr. Garrett said in a 2010 interview, is that people are responsible for managing their own waste. (“Leave no trace” is a Burning Man mantra.) Another is that cars are sidelined, thanks to a layout that makes walking and biking far less onerous than driving. In that approach Mr. Garrett had allies among the New Urbanists, the town planners sometimes labeled reactionary for promoting quaint enclaves like Seaside, Fla. He also had a soul mate in Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s transportation commissioner, who is responsible for closing some streets to vehicular traffic"
A formative source in thinking about indeterminant spaces is Terrain Vague, a 1995 essay by Spanish Architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales. The essay starts with a discussion of the idea of photography, which is mentioned by the author as vital to our understanding, particularly through photomontage and their inventive juxtaposition of forms, aiding our ability to explain the urban realm. Conversely, with its ability to frame and 'edit' the urban conditions - resulting in a disconnect of image from reality. As mentioend by de Sola-Morales, "When we look at photographs, we do not see cities - still less with photomontages. We see only images, static framed prints." (109) From this jumping-off point of photography comes the 'non-space' of terrain vague, as defined by the author:
"Empty, abandoned space in which a series of occurrences have taken place seems to subjugate the eye of the urban photographer. Such urban space, which I will denote by the French expression terrain vague, assumes the status of fascination, the most solvent sign with which to indicate what cities are and what our experience of them is." (109)
The etymology of the definition is explored, due to the lack of a clear translation into English. First, the concept of terrain (as opposed to the concept of land) is more expansive, including more spatial connotations and the idea of a plot of land fit for construction, meaning that it has more direct ties to the urban. Vague, on the other hand - has ties to a range of ideas. From German 'woge' which is tied to the movement of seas - we get "movement, oscillation, instability, and fluctuation." From French, the roots lie in 'vacuus', which yields connotations of vacancy, emptiness, and availability. Another meaning is derived from the Latin 'vagus' which is most closely related to the origins in landscape urbanism thinking giving "the sense of 'indeterminate, imprecise, blurred, and uncertain.'" (110)
Thus the dual concept of a plot of land defined by indeterminacy is the key to understanding of terrain vague, which has both a spatial as well as a social connection - defined by what it is, but that being specifically defined by how the space is used. As de Sola Morales mentions, these become "spaces as internal to the city yet external to its everyday use. In apparently forgotten places, the memory of the past seems to predominate over the present." (110)
These spaces have an innate duality - due to their marginalization, they have the sense of externality ot the order and security of the city making them alluring as a way of out the typically homogenized urban realm, meaning they become "both a physical expression of our fear and insecurity and our expectation of the other, the alternative, the utopian, the future." (111) Identified as a certain 'strangeness' which has been cataloged throughout urban history as tied to the social dislocation of our shift to urban dwellers - most notably captured in Georg Simmel's 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' and our evolution to the blase cosmopolitan.
This is captured by de Sola-Morales as 'estrangement' which becomes the formative construction of the terrain vague: "The photographic images of terrain vague are territorial indications of strangeness itself, and the aesthetic and ethical problems that they pose embrace the problematics of contemporary social life. What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague definition?" Thus these become fertile ground for artists whom "seek refuge in the margins of the city precisely when the city offers them an abusive identity, a crushing homogeneity, a freedom under control. The enthusiasm for these vacant spaces - expectant, imprecise, fluctuating - transposed to the urban key, reflects our strangeness in front of the world, in front of our city, before ourselves." (112)
Terrain Vague is a difficult concept - being essentially 'non-design'- but is also powerful in its ability to theorize on the margins of the ordered world in which we reside. On the difficult side, the actions of a designer is somewhat in opposition to the unstructured configuration of these spaces. As de Sola Morales mentions: "the role of the architect is inevitably problematic. Architecture's destiny has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal." (112) This innate desire to transform disorder into order leads to a catch-22 in the employment of design 'agency' within these structures, as mentioned in the text:
"When architecture and urban design project their desire onto a vacant space, a terrain vague, they seem incapable of doing anything other than introducing violent transformations, changing estrangement into citizenship, and striving at all costs to dissolve the uncontaminated magin of the obsolete into the realism of efficacy." (112)
While design is about form, there is still plenty of potential in exploring the concept of terrain vague, as it offers the opportunity to give shape (both spatial and social) to an existing urban phenomenon of indeterminancy, tapping into the city inhabitants continual seeking of "forces instead of forms, for the incorporated instead of the distant, for the haptic instead of the optic, the rhizomatic instead of the figurative." (112) It is still unclear how we use this, but further investigation should yield the possibilities of learning from this existing urban condition - not trying to recreate it, which is inevitably an exercise in futility, but looking at the ability to allow disorder, not fall into the trap of modernism in trying to rationalize and organize all of the spaces within a narrowly defined set of uses. Can it work? de Sola Morales posits that:
"Today, intervention in the existing city, in its residual spaces, in its folded interstices can no longer be either comfortable or efficacious in the manner postulated by the modern movement's efficient model of the enlightened tradition. How can architecture act in the terrain vague without becoming an aggressive instrument of power and abstract reason? Undoubtedly, through attention to continuity: not the continuity of the planned, efficient, and legitimized city, but of the flows, the energies, the rhythms established by the passing of time and the loss of limits... we should treat the residual city with a contradictory complicity that will not shatter the elements that maintain its continuity in time and space." (113)
More on this as we tie together threads of the 'terrain vague' with the ideas of 'heterotopias' and other models of indeterminate 'otherspace' in the urban context. In classic urbanistic inquiry, the field of study has been identified, theorized, and classified - the translation of this into actions of architecture, urban design, planning, and landscape architecture - is another, more difficult jump. But then again, that's the fun, no?
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.
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.
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)
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.
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:
Brilliant study of the meshing of urbanization and gold mining in Johannesburg, South Africa by Dorothy Tang and Andrew Watkins (on Design Observer). As mentioned in the article and accompanying photo essay; " In particular, the 80-kilometer mining belt between the two cities is riddled by deep-shaft mines, where companies built an extensive network of underground tunnels and moved large amounts of earth to the surface. These operations have weakened geological strata, disrupted natural drainage patterns and altered ecological habitat. The original semi-arid grasslands ecology is now converted to an urban forest, and sediment from mining waste has blocked natural waterways, unexpectedly creating wetlands with rich bird habitat."
While mining and urban areas is not necessarily a different scenario (the many sand and gravel pits around cities have a similar pattern) - the cyanide-extraction method of gold mines makes them especially toxic neighbors - especially when coupled with adjacent areas of poverty. The overall urban pattern that emerges pairs the informal settlements with gold mining particularly on the fringes of the urban area.
Some of the diagrams show the processes of mining on a macro and site specific scale - which is helpful for understanding the complexities of the process.
In addition to analysis, there is thought of opportunities and solutions that take advantage of these new ecologies that have emerged - as Tang & Watkins propose: "While Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni face grave environmental challenges, including contaminated soils, acid mine drainage, undermined land and scarce water resources, it is also important to recognize the possibilities found in the existing regional infrastructure of pipelines and the large quantities of land being released for use. Currently operating gold mining companies recognize the environmental challenges they face and are actively pursuing more sustainable mining practices. Informal settlements are finding productive political strategies and are maintaining a positive entrepreneurial nature. The scarce water resources of the Witwatersrand are a critical entry point for landscape interventions, especially in relation to the provision of sanitation and the remediation of acid mine drainage. Can gold mining and informal settlements, two seemingly disparate players in the region, provide solutions for the future development of the “Ridge of White Waters”?
I previously featured a video from the online video series "The City Concealed" produced by Thirteen, a project of New York station WNET. The series offers glimpses into some of the terrain vague of the metropolis by: "...exploring the unseen corners of New York. Visit the places you don’t know exist, locations you can’t get into, or maybe don’t even want to. Each installment unearths New York’s rich history in the city’s hidden remains and overlooked spaces."
The alerted me to a recent video on the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is 2,800 acres of passive natural area and more traditional parkland, a short distance from Manhattan.
A bit of context from a location map shows the full extent of this agglomerated green zone slicing through the center of the island.
A close up shows some of the detail of the connected areas and the juxtaposition of the active and passive elements.
The proximity to Fresh Kills Park is obviously not lost on the potential for expanded greenbelt potential, connecting the southwestern portions to the new park, extending to the western shore of the island.
A quick tour of the recent videos has some great finds, including this one exploring the abandoned Hincliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey and how it is slowly being enveloped by vegetation, and efforts to save this historic resource.
The City Concealed video series explores historical locations around New York City that are either off-limits to the general public, or are otherwise difficult or impossible to see. The City Concealed, now in its third season, is part of THIRTEEN.ORG’s original online video offerings for New Yorkers.
Destinations of the nine upcoming episodes include New York's last Greek Synagogue in the LES; the decommissioned Ridgewood Reservoir; the abandoned Ft. Tilden in The Rockaways; the closed-off High Bridge, plus a few more.
THIRTEEN is owned by the New York public media company WNET.ORG.
From the recent post on watershed boundaries, a reader mentioned the concept of underground aquifers and their relation to geographical boundaries and . My title is in jest (sort of) referring to 'Aquitards' which according to Wikipedia is "a zone within the earth that restricts the flow of groundwater from one aquifer to another", but I thought an apt metaphor for our overuse and depletion of these amazing resources. So in a crude analysis, the map of US aquifers is pretty amazing (here's a comparison of 'watersheds' and 'aquifers' in two maps with some context of states and cities (images from National Atlas mapping tool)
aquifers
watersheds
While many aquifers develop in tandem with surface waterways, others are disconnected from these sources giving them different patterns. Ancient sources are often tapped, with draw-down causing these to be depleted much faster than they are recharged. One of the most familiar, the 10 million+ year old Ogallala Aquifer (synonymous with 'High Plains Aquifer') that supplies water to the agricultural bread-basket of the world - centered in Nebraska and spreading from the southern tip of South Dakota into the northern panhandle of Texas.
I hadn't considered the number of aquifers and their distribution (another great tool is an online mapping application from National Atlas, found here), but it's interesting to see the difference between more broadly based, central aquifers (not specifically linked to a river) like the Ogallala, or in Oregon the Pacific Northwest Basaltic rock aquifers (unlike the Columbia River based systems to the north. These more agriculturally oriented aquifers can be compared to small scale aquifers like the Biscayne which supplies drinking water to much of Central Florida.
The interactive mapper allows you to zoom in on state & county boundaries, as well as locations of significant cities, to see the relationship of urban agglomeration to aquifers, for instance a closer look at the area centered on Chicago (mapped from the National Atlas).
The cause and effect of cities and aquifers is probably more significant in the impacts of urbanization on water supplies (both through depletion and pollution) and the delicate interaction between surface and subsurface conditions.
While subsurface conditions do exist separate from visible surface conditions, there are impacts as many rivers as charged with these underground sources, and depletion (and diversion) has caused some rivers to no longer reach the oceans - such as the Rio Grande and the Colorado (anyone guess the reasons) or the filling of traditionally large reservoirs like Lake Mead and Powell - creating significant water scarcity issues in certain metropolitan regions. Another great lens to look at cities, so more on this to come... seems the hydrological cycle is tied to everything we do.
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.
"...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.
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.
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.
Explorations in landscape architecture and urbanism, with a focus on aligning theory with practice.
Jason King is a landscape architect and Principal of TERRA.fluxus in Portland, Oregon, and currently is in the doctoral program at Portland State University in Urban Studies.
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