Signs, Signs, Signs When we drive we are used to seeing all sorts of signs. This is an acceptable reality because the roads can be a dangerous place and it has a required amount of order needed. In the image to the left, a rather humorous one invokes a few questions. Why does stopping put me in any sort of danger? If there were threats, shouldn't they be dealt with by good security. The notice alone makes me have more fear in general. Imagine you'll drive on this road and your tire blows out. What then?
All jokes aside, signs are the law of the land. You have to obey the speed limits, you have to do as they say. But there are signs like this that are for pedestrians too. Signs that really are supposed to come up with the short fall of bad design (like unsecured prison cells). Take this sign from Milwaukee. If the building was designed in a way to call for the much expected ice and snow from the eaves of the building on the street level, there would never be a sign asking the population to do the impossible. In fact, this is just guaranteeing nothing more than a means of recourse of a potential lawsuit. Signs like this exist all over, just to prevent liabilities; the lawsuits rarely care for the wellbeing of the public that will occupy the spaces...then there would be a net or something (which in Milwaukee, there are on some buildings). Obviously this is a consideration individual architects should take into account when designing, but even factors on the street level could be changed to make it less dangerous. This site has a very narrow sidewalk, so it gives people little to no leeway of squeezing by the 'danger zone.'
Assumptions of the Public Realm and the People Who Will Regularly Ignore them.
Here is a little audio I recorded of my thoughts on jay walking.
We write about what we know, so I will begin these blogs with a bit of description work, sans (I will use french without warning) any analysis formally. So this means I will begin with Howard County's places of interest, namely Columbia, Ellicott City, and of course, Mount Airy.
Mount Airy is in the far reaching northwest corner of Howard County, in fact being part of other counties neighboring it. I reside in a location that I will often joke as 'not quite Mount Airy, not quite Lisbon, but pretty much still in the middle of nowhere.' It was a similar situation where I wasn't really near anything that was associated with Ellicott City when I used to live in 'Ellicott City.' In other words, the boondocks, or the 'boonies.' I do not know what other definitions people use to describe the boondocks, but let's say it is the suburbs of the suburbs. To put it: the outer layers of a already unknown place (to someone from, let's say out of town).
Most Americans know what I mean. It means you need to encounter a 30 mile per hour speed limit, a few four way stops, perhaps. Along the way you'll see corn or cows. Then, randomly, a development, or a slew of single family homes that are next to one another on smaller plots of land. Even though you were about a mile south of Interstate 70, you would think you were in the middle of nowhere without any major indication of where to go next. That is where I currently live, sort of Mount Airy, but not really.
What implications does this have for me, as a resident? Not being able to really understand where I am, have any major place to go, and so on. It means I need a car. The only buses that come through this area are yellow school buses in the mornings and afternoons. But they do not take anyone to schools in the area, that is for sure. It would take me about 4 minutes down the main road here to the next town of Lisbon to find a business: a liquor store. A few other needed establishments are there as well: dentist, veterinarian, and barber. Two gas stations are mere yards further down the same street.
To get to the city in which I am legally a part of, a need to go in the opposite direction, make a few turns, over Interstate 70, and then go down a series of windy roads and viola! Mount Airy. And since I wrote it, let's go into what this Eureka moment is -- it is not a mere expression, but a formal and spatial understanding I am entering Mount Airy as I would know it.
I tend to be rather prolific in my writings, so I figured it would be of great benefit to myself and anyone else who may wish to read these posts a way of going about my findings, pictures, drawings, et cetera.
Post numbers are catalog numbers which will describe the content; the intro is an unmarked 000:
000 - Website related comments, personal notes, and so on
100(a-z) When writing about spaces, I will not go in alphabetical order, so I want to recall in what order I travelled to places. Also, this number will allow me to go back to places and give a new entry with the same number and a different letter if more information is acquired.
200 - General rants on urbanism not specifically related to findings
These numbers will be the only labels on certain posts, to make it easier for me. Any city on the list on the bottom of my blog will become a link when I begin to write about it, and will have it's catalog number along the side. I hope this will allow me to keep some organization of this endeavor with time.
More academic minded individuals like to begin with a definition of terms, so I will start by saying what I mean when I say 'urban realm.' Many will picture towering buildings over bustling roads, others will see industry, some traffic jams and noise. Urban is frequently associated with cities, large or small, with grid streets, lots of pedestrians, public transportation, et cetera. I am not disagreeing with these individuals, but I say that urban environments are pretty much any environment where people coexist and thrive. Some may take issue with this definition, because that would be suburban developments are urban. That would mean small farm towns are urban. And I would argue, indeed they are. They are just urban forms at a different scale, because in the end, if people are using spaces and infrastructure that was designed to be used by the public, that is pretty much the crux of an urban setting.
Why? Why Write About This?
I am not much of a reader; people cannot get me to read books even if my life depended on it. But as far as I can see, the best way to learn is from experience, from going to a place and 'feeling it.' Architects are familiar with the phrase genus loci, which can be generalized to mean sense of place, the feeling a space gives you and so on. I described in my side bar note that designers of structures are supposed to keep in mind that drawings and models and even walk through movie clips cannot do justice. Even a full scale model, in a way, cannot do what a building will do when it is built. Architects are supposed to imagine, foresee, and build upon a vision to make it a reality. It is no easy task, and I argue still to this day many fail at fully recognizing design flaws because of it. But who can blame them?
When you are in a classroom looking at slides of the Roman Pantheon, or getting lectured on the layout of Central Park, we get a very programmatic, analytical take on the design. This left side of the brain approach is very important, but it appears that when talking about Urban forms, the left side arguments take over much more. I am too lazy to remove notes from a box in a room a few rooms away, so I will draw on my memory. The memory of my only urban theory class, full of graduate students with a few of the undergraduates like me. "Access equals value," "define the edge of the street," and "generators of urban form," are phrases that come to mind. But they lack a right side element. I find that walking through cities this is left to a sort of spontaneous order, which then in turn gives us the final form.
To make my argument more clear, it is as if I learned only how to bubble diagram a city. I am not regarding bubble diagrams as worthless. In fact, quite the contrary. Bubble diagrams prove to be strong foundations for any plan of design, but the articulation is where the devil can come into play. Who cares if the public can access a park, if the access if unattractive, blocked, uninviting. The immediate historical precedence of a well-intended policy to spawn a better city environment was discovered in New York after the Seagram Building (Mies Van der Rohe) was erected with it's large public plaza. Policy shifted to include plaza design as an incentive of more building rights of developers, which resulted in a slew of new plaza designs around the city. Many were terrible -- they were cold, uninviting, and a pure example of how the left brain can get the best of the right brain.
Intent
But what is a good right side design? In an urban environment, I argue you need strong precedence. Cities in general have many good examples of spaces that 'work' and many that do not. By traveling to just a single city, one can deduce what even well known spaces could benefit from. What clandestine spaces are to be discovered? And more importantly, a discovery of what makes any space in any city successful. A look at how a place looks on foot, by car, and who knows what else...I am excited. I hope you will join me on this shot in the dark approach to design critique.
I learned as an architecture student: you must experience a space to understand the space. But when I started looking into Urbanism, and what makes urban design 'good' or 'bad' I discovered a more clinical, detached way of looking at the world.
So I thought, for a crazy moment: what if I could go to these spaces, some well known, some not, drive, walk, ride, sit, photograph, draw, and most importantly, experience the spaces created in the urban realm. The realm that to the man on the street is the negative space between man's creations.
I realized this would be quite an endeavor, but understood that since I may be traveling to Japan and like to drive around here in the States, it would be worth a shot.
This blog is simply a collection of work I collect on my own forming a thesis of what good urbanism is based on my instincts first, and then analysis second. No bird eye views, no city grid maps with diagrams to initiate the critique. Just a man on the street. Life in perspective, life in the urban realm.
Signs, Signs, Signs
