206: urbānus + "ics" = Study of the City

..."If thought can corrupt language, then language can corrupt thought"...

(George Orwell)

Urbanism is a concept that is confusing. Simple as this fact seems, it is not a word that has much history, strict definition, or even recognition among most. Unlike other fields of study – ones that end in -omics, -ture, and ign, urbanism ends in ism, and is therefore a school of thought. But the word itself is used to imply a large array of items that are basically pertaining to a city.

The more I think about the concept of urbanism, which sounds more and more like a school of thought than a discipline, I come to see that it is a very rich study that has a broad subject base. For instance, if I were to argue that New York City is poorly planned, this is obviously in the umbrella of an urbanism discussion. Furthermore, if I were to argue a part of the history of the city, when planners did so and so, again, obviously a part of urbanism. Moreover, what if I were to discuss a plaza design. Or a policy decision to enforce plazas. Or a discussion on who lives in what parts of a city. But what if I postulate for you readers a concept that urbanism is more than a school of thought, a discipline of study, or an aggregate of other topics, but an approach to these topics.

Historians can go in depth about politics of the national level governance – but many more specialize in topics of media and art and so on. Cities, in their abundance, have their historians too – who can recount and see the clear path their local jurisdiction has taken. But not all cities have this sort of documentation. Some are, seemingly, uninteresting, trite, and at worst, ignored. But as all things have a past, all things must have a history.

History, I will argue, is a key component of looking at Urbatics, Not Urbanism. But the way a city is standing, what makes the city what it is. Not the way people wish it can be changed or enriched. Many times in design class we have the notion of Urban Design, how a city is thought to be ideal, how a city is contrived, and how a city yields from that intervention decades previous. But what about the notion that there is more than just philosophy that goes into constructing large centers of people? What if I were to argue there is a benefit in examining even the small centers of people?

Urbanism forces the reader and myself to infer a basic assumption: that there is a thought process to all design, universally understood and applied. But we all know that in a field of study so complicated as politics, the amount of isms are far from short supply. These isms themselves are important to understanding history of the world. How can one examine Soviet-era politics without Marxism. Vietnam without Communism. The US without Federalism or Republicanism. And going out of politics into Architecture, where there are Modernism, classicism, etc. The point is that Urbanism is a misnomer, for it applies a philosophical and academic approach that so surreptitiously sneaks in with the way we examine the history.

There is a monopoly on thought, application, and process with the same term. I was taught there is only one good way to do things in a city. Nodes, access to amenity, and so on. The issue I take with this is that it’s a very universal analysis. What about the more tedious, the more minute. This again points to the issue of all these ideas coming under the term Urbanism. How can one go into the more complex without digging into other approaches, large and small?

Perhaps it is because the term is in its infancy that it has not been more widely debated. Below is a quote for it’s possible origins:

‘Urbanism’ in English gains its contemporary meaning as a translation of the French expression l'urbanisme, which can be translated as ‘town planning’. But it has implications which go beyond this translation. Urbanism suggests an approach which comprehends the city as a whole and contains a theory which seeks to explain urban relations. Perhaps the most influential such theory has been the neo-Marxist development, by such writers as Manuel Castells and Henri Lefebvre, of urbanism as a set of spatial relations which have distributive and class consequences independent of those generated by industrialism (the mode of production).
— Lincoln Alliso

Mr. Alliso’s quote furthers the point that the idea of (1)‘town planning’ is the word’s true origin. But then goes on to coattail the definition to also mean (2) the study of the city and (3) the impact of the physical make up of the city on the people who live there. Urbanism, therefore, is a complicated concept. Urbanism is implying much more than simply a study. More than just architecture with its theory’s below, but a full set of theory along with it’s analysis.

The phrase “New Urbanism” should be an immediate cry for help that more vocabulary is used in the field of Urbatics. Unlike the study of cities and spatial interactions with people, New Urbanism promotes itself like a treatise. Just as Marx had his doctrine and Adam Smith had his, the bottom line is that isms are schools of thought. So in this piece, I will use my own term, Urbatics, deriving from urb, latin for city, and tic, meaning pertaining to – Urbatics. This is to contrast Urbanism, which in it’s root ism infers it has a doctrine, a system, or a theory behind it.

When discussing philosophies it is important to address these notions. Vocabulary is the first step in a new understanding of a topic. And with all understandings, it is important to separate the objective facts from the subjective thoughts. Let us go on to discover Urbatics.

So what is an urbanist? I would argue just like an architect that struggles for his style may himself wish to be called a Modernist, an Urbanist can have a school applied to his name. But it is important to not any good modernist be well versed in all schools of urbanism after learning about the fundamentals of urbatics.

Now with these differences at hand you can more readily apply what way Le Corbesier thought as he drew, versus what Rouse envisioned with Columbia. All of them will fall under the umbrella of Urbatics.

402a: Columbia Chases Windmills

A note before I unleash this beast: I have done a lot of work looking and thinking about Columbia...it is the biggest 'city' near me. I have a lot to write on it, but this is the latest.


IS ROUSE OFFICIALLY DEAD?
A Commentary and Brief History of Columbia, MD

The Columbia Board of Residents is meeting to discuss yet again plans to introduce a ‘downtown’ feeling to the suburban planned city. If the board thinks they want to keep his vision alive, maybe they should go back and just see how dead Rouse’s vision actually is today.

Columbia wants to bring the downtown idea of the city to their mall centered suburban (city). Columbia wants it, needs it. That is what they say.

I am a firm believer in the adage from Karl DuPuy of knowing what you want, and then knowing how to get it. I think the primary question is often glanced over with little trepidation, as it is more excited to postulate, dream, and imagine a future space or scenario that is
favorable.

"Booming downtown with lights, shopping, residences, and great times."

Or more in their words from the article
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/howard/bal-columbia0515,0,2111083.story

"To me, it should be a city, but how big a city?" Citaramanis said. "I want it to be a city downtown, and the urban core of Howard County."

She and other citizens fear that too dense a downtown might produce unwelcome crowding and congestion that current residents might hate, while the plan's boosters see those objections as potential roadblocks to a bright fulfillment of founder James W. Rouse's original vision.

It is easy to make assumptions that there is truth to the classic line from field of dreams "If you build it, they will come." Usually they will come, and sometimes, come full force, but there is a difference between success of volume of population, and the success of the spaces themselves.

I was struggling for a few weeks to figure out why the idea of Columbia having lofty goals for a not so distant scheme in their future would be ironic. And it is because Columbia itself was that a mere 45 years ago when Rouse dreamt up his thesis in the rough of Howard County in the mid 60s. A city to revolutionize the idea of diversity, make great communities for all economic statuses and walks of life. To make a great suburban space that was more than just a Levittown, an exit off the expressway.

But when we look at the success of such a scheme, it is a mixed result. Columbia is afluent, many people live there. But how successful is it as a city. The car dependent citizens would argue that the connectivity and ability to use town centers and village centers has failed with impeccable precision. And the quality of those town centers themselves is highly suspect.

So when we have a board of people who think they know what they want and there for how to get it, I have a few recommendations in mind.

Columbia is a case study in the point I make with all New Urbanists I come across. NUs are great people, who know what a city needs, we may differ on what it takes to get there and the correct amount of policy intervention, but they are correct with data and sociology on there side -- for starting places from scratch.

I argue Columbia, like most sprawling conurbations and even locales in the boondocks, such as my last two houses, is an established place. People live there, and if that isn't enough, they live there in large numbers. So it is often a lot harder for a NU to make a claim that with New Urbanism, or as I prefer, good urbanism, we can transform space. Columbia is too big. And like many systems, like Baltimore and Baltimore's Metro area, the system is complex and depends on looking at the flux of the people who go in and out.
Columbia's major systemic flaw is that if you were to argue the village centers are successful in providing the needed ammenities to their residents, it is more difficult to lay claim to such for the Town Center. The vision, as I have read, was to have a place that anchors the city where people can gather. It has a central library, a location for meetings and concerts, a lakefront for public view, and of course, the mall.

I love Columbia on a cynical level not only because it is a city that has a mall as it's central core. It is because the road system, the artery that is to bring people in, Little Patuxent Parkway, loops around it, making the cities infrastructure itself based around the mall. The office buildings that form an electron shell around the vast deserts of asphalt and painted lines. To protect, the mall on the inside.

But I fear I am focusing much too much on the town center proper. The main vein of the ideas that lived on in Rouse’s vision have disappated. One can argue that diversity has preserved in Columbia, but then again, it has in many other cities that did not take such radical measures to ‘diversify’ in the first place. Another notable remark is the lack of a proper transit system, which of course Rouse fought for. Where are the committees requesting such a system be created to make a more efficient and equitable, if not just esuriently, means travel in the ‘city.’
Because of the car-oriented design, Columbia is such an ardent failure in achieving the goal of a downtown because of its complete disregard for the bipedal types, the ones on bikes and on their feet, given that from all sides, the mall requires a hike up a series of stairs and hills, through some garages, between the light posts, and finally, you come inside.

Just imagine if you would have exported the parking of the mall on LPPkwy from the get go. Take the Macy's, JCPenny, the bath and body and place it on the main avenue. Replace the center of the asphalt park with a real park. A park that unlike Centennial park, is in the real heard of town. You could take advantage of the hills, mix the pedestrians with the cars, bring in a natural element that is indeed surrounded by the active part of the city center.

But that isn't the case. The mall is so ingrained and so permanent. What downtown main street appeal would you place on LPPkwy? What gravitational pull could make people wish to walk along side such a unpedestrian friendly avenues that snakes around a bigger commercial center. After all, a sidewalk on the side of a fast paced thruway doesn't equal mainstreet appeal. And who wants to walk across the parking lot to the bistro of LPPkwy when you have an extensive food court already installed.

Lesson: Nothing is in a vacuum. You can't treat LPP like it is all alone without the gigantic monstrousity of the mall. The Mall (of Columbia) is so successful, itself presents the issue of the injected downtown. Which begs the question, what came first, the downtown, then
the city? Or the city, then the downtown? If you argue the mall is the downtown that lead to the city that lay today, I would agree with you. If you suggested that Columbia’s been somehow devoid of a downtown until these discussions, I’d be less inclined to see that.

All these factors need to be considered before the wild dreams of board members that want this new look to occur for their city. I am sad because most of the angst this is generating is not about my concerns, but because of the potential deforestation of a part of symphony woods. I have never been in there, aside for concerts. And now they are debating making the Columbia area more accessible from the South via 29. The car will dominate all the more. And downtown areas need to control the amount of cars. Look how many people love walking along side route one.

This is not to say there aren't ways to accomplish the goal. But the goal needs to be less dependent on the human condition and more realistic on the cause and the effect, which I fear, could be minimal.