401a: Asia Town

I am writing from the office on lunch break, so please understand I cannot elaborate fully on the topic at this time.

For all those who listened to my piece on Chinatown in Washington, DC with the picture presentation, I came to a conclusion that cities love to think they have a say in who lives where for image sake. We want 'good jobs and good homes' here and 'a booming downtown.' Well, through tax incentives and well meaning plans, these ideas can come to life, but I have come across a piece from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) that bothers me in a paragraph. My boss in Frederick today sent me a link (http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0206/0206d_bta.cfm) which if one leads in it's entirety, could discover a concept for a 'Asia Town.' He called it to my attention and now I feel I need to look at this more closely. The exerpt is from by Zach Mortice, Associate Editor:

"The northernmost section of Charles North is slated to grow into Asia Town, a Pan-Asian community of Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Middle-Eastern residents and entrepreneurs. Though there is already an Asian presence in the neighborhood, it will require the dominant landowner in the area to attract such people to the neighborhood in much greater numbers for such a distinct cultural district to emerge. This could be a difficult task, as a traditional “Chinatown” has never taken root in Baltimore. Similar to the Backstage District, this area will contain a mix of uses and hundreds of thousands of flexible retail, gallery, studio, and office spaces, as well as incubator spaces. The master plan also calls for row houses to be reconceived as Asian-style shop houses, where business owners split work and living space in one building. "

I highlighted the key phrases in this passage. The notion of 'requiring' more people is not a minor one. In fact, the idea should be questioned before this idea has any credence. DC is proof enough that centrally planning who lives where is not successful. Maybe once upon a time DC had a large Chinese population, but there is no way to keep that. But arguably, people claim they want to hold on to a piece of history and culture. That is a good idea, but how? Through signage, through Chinese archways? How about focusing on key Chinese people...parks for chinese figures in the town. That way it can have a sense of historical permanance. We seem to forgot about people when we are designing. Chinatowns are worldwide, and they never needed people to plan them. They have them in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, New York, LA, San Francisco, London, and Paris...

But back to Baltimore. They NEVER had a Chinatown, why? Because Chinese people never formed a group large, cohesive, and culturally evident to present itself. It is not like NYC said "chinese people will move here, here, and here." Heck, the actual district in NYC flucuates with the years...and looking to other cultural locales, like Harlem, that thing has changed from group to group. Why not name it "Little Puerto Rico?" Case and point.

Another luxury taken in the piece is one of cultural ignorance. Asia Town assumes a lot of things, that people want to be grouped together based on nationality, heritage, etc, and also that people want to be grouped by continent. Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese living together could work, but if it did, wouldn't it have already happened. Architecture should never inform who lives where, but the people who live there can inform the architecture.

So I stress that if there is barely an Asian presence in that part of Baltimore, making Chinese signs, making Asian style buildings, and herding Asian people to live there will not make this area successful, at least as a cultural center. Culture depends on people...people who activate it with music, language, clothing, customs, and the like. Let's stop pretending we can pick who lives where, because frankly, we shouldn't do that to begin with. It makes the Asians a puppet of a grand plan, a pawn of some municipal concept. That is nothing like Chinatown

I intend to talk about the rest of the article in a future discussion.

400 series will be for current events in urban design