the

myurbanist
reader

essays on provocative
urbanism

Chuck Wolfe

Published by FastPencil, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Chuck Wolfe

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First Edition
To cities everywhere.
❧
Contents
Chapter 1 Defining Provocative Urbanism ................. 1
Chapter 2 Practicing Cautionary Placemaking:
Urbanism and the Venetian Ghetto ............. 9
Chapter 3 Jerusalem Stories: Sustainability as
Detente? ........................................... 17
Chapter 4 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and
“Innocents Abroad” .............................. 23
Chapter 5 Six Postcards Not to Send to an Urbanist .... 37
Chapter 6 The Mission Ahead: Recalibrating
“Urbandwidth” .................................... 43
Chapter 7 Hill Towns as Icons of Placemaking .......... 47
Chapter 8 A Tale of Two Nighthawks—Recalling the
Indelible Urban Image Anew ................... 53
Chapter 9 What about “Shapes of Avoidance” on the
Landscape? ........................................ 59
Chapter 10 Re-Visioning Neighborhood and the City,
Then and Now .................................... 65
 1
Defining
Provocative
Urbanism

provocative urbanism [pro·voc·a·tive

ur·ban·ism] [noun]: stimulating or con-
troversial forms of urban community,
which demonstrate vitality and human
interaction reminiscent of traditional city
life.
Amid today’s writing on cities, there is a
theme afoot. Something called provocative
urbanism could define today’s excitement and
communication about cities, as the focus of mul-
tiple articles, tweets, videos, and lectures.

1
2 the myurbanist reader

After all, we like cities when they work their

magic of safe, dynamic, and walkable multi-pur-
posing, and provocative urbanism could aptly
advertise such success. No one has yet champ-
ioned provocative urbanism among the many
existing urbanisms of the airwaves. In particular,
urbanism wordsmiths such as Yuri Artibise and
Jason King haven’t kicked this tire. (In fact, Yuri
picked other monikers for his ‘P’ Urbanism in a
recent alphabetical list, starting with “paid.”)

The Provocation
But just what are we provoking, and why
and how?
Some of us are simply geeks about urban
areas. Some see them as salvation—whether as
city over suburb, or in the realm of economics,
architecture, politics, law, transportation, and
health—or all together, in one of those silo-free
nirvanas of sustainability, resplendent of both
creative and contemporary buzz.
But a Google search for provocative
urbanism produces surprisingly few results, and
those which readily appear suggest an interesting
theme: it is provocative to harken back to
 Defining Provocative Urbanism 3

unplanned, spontaneous urban patterns in

invoking our vision of the urban future. In fact,
one such Google result links to an essay on
Richard Sennett’s The Uses of Disorder and
champions urban complexity, randomness and
conflict over prescriptive approaches that indis-
criminately mandate technology (light rail) or
policies (smart growth).
In an interesting, more structured parallel,
Trent Noll has written recently in a Planetizen
essay that the naturally occurring basics of place-
making (ie, comfort, variety, entertainment, and
walkability) have existed for time immemorial in
successful cities, but today’s design challenge is a
more purposeful implementation of such basics
with a value-engineered mindset, to spur invest-
ment incentives for savvy developers.
At the center of provocation is the tension
of imposition of order versus the wonders of a
naturally changing city, often prompted by the-
matic catalysts and campaigns (e.g. Streets for All
Seattle).
This tension is not new. Even in the 1920s,
colleagues of Clarence Perry critiqued his later
well-known “neighborhood unit” approach in the
4 the myurbanist reader

context of the existing urban fabric of the New

York region, then adapting to repercussions of
automobile proliferation. Eminent Scottish town
planner Thomas Adams wrote:
“[D]iscussions… seem to suggest that neigh-
borhood life is something that can be created. All
city life is neighborhood life in some form. We
should not discuss it as something that is non-
existent and can be brought into being, but as
something that exists in forms that need to be
changed, improved and better organized.”(Mem-
orandum, Adams to Perry, January 23, 1928,
Papers, Regional Plan Association, Cornell Uni-
versity)

Communicating the Provocation

There is something about the human condi-
tion that celebrates successful community, where
and when we can co-exist safely, in a mutually
supportive way. This especially rings true when
this community can be conveyed through media
that inspire the senses, much like the original
experience of “being there.” As implied above,
perhaps this celebration is most provocative
when it occurs spontaneously, something seen
 Defining Provocative Urbanism 5

more often in organic old world environments

than in the new.
So, ironically, perhaps we wish to celebrate
the successes of the unpredictable and disjointed
as much as the successes of the prescriptive and
planned. Unintentionally or outright, we often
dwell in the incredible irony where the prescrip-
tive and planned achieve what used to occur nat-
urally.
Today, provocative urbanism can be com-
municated simply and democratically, which,
frankly, adds even more provocation. With the
wonders of technology and the grassroots web,
we can now instantly connect around the world,
and immediately display that the urban vernac-
ular can be simultaneously multicultural and
timeless, and that the two dimensions of print
can easily become sight, motion and sound. Wit-
ness Seth Sherwood in the New York Times on
December 1:
“Damascus loves to flaunt its age. It claims to
be the world’s oldest inhabited city — replete with
biblical and Koranic lore, Roman ruins, ancient
Islamic edifices and Ottoman-era palaces. But
that’s not to say the Syrian capital is stuck in
6 the myurbanist reader

time. Dozens of centuries-old mansions have

been reborn as Mideast-chic hotels, and fashion-
able shops and restaurants have arisen in the
ancient lanes of the Old City. Throw in a fledgling
generation of bars and clubs, and the age-old met-
ropolis has never looked so fresh.” [Emphasis
added.]
In summary, today’s organizing institutions
of land use—constitutional precepts of private
property, or a zoning code or judge’s ruling—can
be spun through time and space into a prospec-
tive dictionary term that adds even more color to
the already crowded urban lexicon.

This article was authored as the introduction to a

presentation, “Vignettes of Provocative Urbanism”,
which will take place Thursday, December 9 in
Seattle.
Defining Provocative Urbanism 7
8 the myurbanist reader
 2
Practicing
Cautionary
Placemaking:
Urbanism and the
Venetian Ghetto

The urban scenes below are where “small-

g” ghettos come from, the Ghetto in the Can-
nareggio section of Venice. This small island,
with seven-story “high-rises” dictated by
necessity, became the namesake of over-
crowded and segregated urban neighbor-
hoods around the world. Yet, at the same
time, from its roots in the sixteenth century to
the present, the Ghetto has featured the com-

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pact, dense, walkable core—the type is fan-

cied as the antidote to sprawl—with qualities
central to mainstream urban reinvention
today.
Are there risks of a “one size fits all”
approach to reshaping our cities, and making
new, sustainable places? Many have asked before
—from those who accuse the “new urbanist”
movement of an overly nostalgic “historic
amnesia” to earlier, social engineering-based
critics of the “neighborhood unit” theory. How-
ever, few if any provided such a direct and ironic
photographic illustration of an undesired land
use and societal outcome.
These ironic photographs are not so much a
tool to criticize goals, but frame a cautionary
essay, an illustration to assure we remain mindful
of the task at hand—to provide more livable
cities, and more sustainable forms of develop-
ment. An overemphasis on spatial outcomes and
descriptors, without more, risks only polemic
debates of urban v. suburban choice, and the vir-
tues of urban alleys v. sprawl and cul-de-sacs.
Australian urban designer Ruth Durack sug-
gested earlier in the decade (with a passing refer-
 Practicing Cautionary Placemaking: 11
Urbanism…

ence to the Venetian Ghetto) that the urban vil-

lage is dictated by a rigid form and function
which clashes with fundamental principles of sus-
tainablity. She argued for a more free-form of
planning which recognizes multiple, interactive
systems which cannot be dictated by static phys-
ical models, premised on the “cultures” of green
(e.g. agri-, perma-, and aqua-). She provided a
pragmatic focus by stressing commencement of
sustainable community planning with a specific
strategic act or project, such as a housing start,
rather than imposition of a village plan.
The strategic act, she notes, should feature
dynamic citizen input, and accept the unpredicta-
bility and discontinuities of American urban evo-
lution. Durack’s emphasis was a careful
undressing of “new urbanism:” without an aware-
ness of urban ecology and a strategic input, the
urban village may be little more than a dangerous
sinecure. Nonetheless, we need guiding “live-
work” principles of the compact, walkable,
transit-based communities which frame
emerging urban policy. But we also need to keep
a contextual eye on the prize. Integration of local
values and preferences is a central aspect of the
12 the myurbanist reader

public process and is critical to the creation of

unique communities.
For instance, as we concluded in a recent
study of barriers to transit-oriented development
in Washington State, silo-specific orientations
often fail to discern the wide variety of invest-
ments, regulations, policies, financing mecha-
nisms, and public outreach needed for devel-
oping alternatives to conventional auto-centric
development.
The point: Track context over catchwords.
In another place at another time, the virtues of
compact, walkable, and dense were the very isola-
tion we now abhor.

At first glance: A tasteful and compact, new urbanist venue?

 Practicing Cautionary Placemaking: 13
Urbanism…

Waterside living, or medieval tenement?

14 the myurbanist reader

Proportional height to streetscape with tasteful simplicity or verticality by necessity?

 Practicing Cautionary Placemaking: 15
Urbanism…

After 1516, Christian curfew guards (paid for by Jewish residents) assured that island
inhabitants were secured at night by locked gates at the bridge.
16 the myurbanist reader

The story of the Ghetto, a classic urban village

 3
Jerusalem Stories:
Sustainability as
Detente?

In Jerusalem, a municipal administration

rides a pendulum between sustainability and
geopolitics. Greenbelts, light rail, complete
street-making, and the storied demolition
orders for Palestinian homes in a floodway:
all live on a world stage.
Last week, addressing Pacific Northwest
professionals visiting Jerusalem with Seattle-
based i-SUSTAIN, Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur
prescribed the ultimate sustainable urbanism,
drawing from a Hebrew phrase. Jerusalem must

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“emerge from its [many] walls”, old and new, she

argued, and enhance the city’s diverse public
areas, largely already shared by all. The Jerusalem
of gathering spaces and neighborhoods is already
present, she claimed, and should no longer grow
out in rings of settlements, but preserve compact
neighborhoods based on affinity, interlinked by
public transit and defining connectors such as
Jaffa Road and the Street of the Prophets.
The tools? Public process, for one, even in
areas annexed after the 1967 six-day war, to help
define a collective local voice.
Her systemic analysis of the city is familiar
and compelling as she simultaneously seeks to
avoid a Nicosia outcome (a reference to the
divided Cyprus to the northwest). Arguably, she
is peacemaking on a platform of the sustainable
city.
For instance, Deputy Mayor Tsur thinks at
night about the infrastructure lacking in East Jer-
usalem, and how the city should rise above the
intractable and remedy untreated eastern water-
shed drainage which flows directly to the Dead
Sea. It would be feasible, she says, to pump this
sewage to the state of the art treatment plant
 Jerusalem Stories: Sustainability as… 19

which already treats the western watershed

sewage, and create drinking water through sus-
tainable technology.
Meanwhile, in the East Jerusalem village of
Silwan, along the Kidron Valley, just below the
City of David and Hezekiah’s water tunnel, resi-
dent Fakhri Abu Diab thinks at night about other
things—what to tell his children about the
potential fate of the family house which still “car-
ries the smell of his mother.” As recently
reported by the New York Times’ Ethan
Bronner, the Abu Diab house was one of several
which received a demolition order because it was
expanded without a permit. It is also the poten-
tial location of an archaeological park at the base
of excavations already mired in the complexities
of political archeology—a search not only to
document biblical events, but seen by detractors
as a Jewish land-claim process in disguise.
In Abu Diab’s view, the post-1967 munici-
pality has ignored him before, and he lacks confi-
dence in the proposed relocation offer which is
under negotiation for a move to higher ground.
Walls, sleepless nights, conflict, water, and a
future for children. The human condition speaks
20 the myurbanist reader

loudly in this most urban of cities, as the debate

over the future of Jerusalem brings a reality-tele-
vision aura to local land use administration.
Jerusalem Stories: Sustainability as… 21
 4
Jerusalem Stories:
Light Rail and
“Innocents Abroad”

From an American perspective, it’s a story

of barriers and solutions that is at first blush
familiar, melding the geometric growth of an
auto-centric lifestyle with old and incomplete
streets. According to plot, a modern light rail
“starter line” promises enhancement of the
city’s compact, historic core, along with right-
of way-redesign and “street diets” aimed at
bicycle and automobile co-existence.
But the similarity ends there, because this is
venerable Jerusalem, dateline 2010, where tradi-

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tional issues of transportation implementation

merge with religious and cultural subtleties amid
daily news dynamics of war and peace.

Twain’s Dignity: Today’s Complexity for

Modern “Innocents Abroad”
On first sight in 1867 of “the city that pic-
tures make familiar to all men, from their school
days till their death,” Mark Twain described in
Innocents Abroad how “the thoughts Jerusalem
suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more
than all, dignity.”
Now, amend Twain to state “more than all,
complexity” as, after frustration and delay, the
inaugural light rail project sees the prospect of a
five year-tardy 2011 opening.
For a visiting Seattle i-SUSTAIN contingent
in May, a meeting with staff and outside counsel
for the Jerusalem Mass Transit System Project
showed the ultimate complexity of implementing
a modern transportation corridor amid today’s
geopolitics and a changing population.

Sustainability Meets the Divided Thirds

 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 25

Similar to an earlier dialogue with Jerusalem

Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur, one take-away from
planner/community relations manager Amnon
Elian and counsel Amir Kadari was an admirable
urban sustainability ethic—in this case
addressing transit and bicycle infrastructure—
and perhaps, as written last year in The Trans-
port Politic, “a train to peace.”
However, Elian also described a project
wrestling with the de facto linking of disputed
lands, and associated questions of how distinct
user constituencies—secular residents, ultra-
orthodox Jews, and Palestinans—will co-exist as
light rail users (in this case along a 23-station
route as it travels almost 15 kilometers from
Mount Herzl in West Jerusalem, across the 1949
Armistice “Green Line”, through Shuafat, a Pal-
estinian neighborhood, to Pisgat Zeev, a large
Jewish settlement of over 40,000 built in the early
1980’s).
Elian emphasized the “red line” light rail
corridor, located largely within existing rights of
way, which, due to their narrow and historic
nature required massive infrastructure and utility
relocation and custom redesign by segment to
26 the myurbanist reader

integrate multiple transport modes. Each seg-

ment was handled by different architectural and
engineering firms which redesigned roads and
added bridges to prepare for rail installation.
The red line traverses disparate neighbor-
hoods of West and East Jerusalem and affinity
groups now reliant on essentially separate transit
systems, at different boarding costs (the East Jer-
usalem system fares are roughly half as much as
West Jerusalem system fares), often different
vehicle types, largely mutually exclusive destina-
tions, and often different expectation of social
conduct among passengers (e.g. large ultra-
orthodox families with distinct seating expecta-
tions and travel preferences).
To Elian, the ultimate demographics of light
rail system use remain unclear amid attempts to
offset a doubling of automobiles by 2020 (after a
ten-fold growth from 1967 to 2003). He termed
the planning effort “tremendously challenging to
put all under one roof,” simultaneously accom-
modating a population almost evenly split in
three: ultra-orthodox Jews, Arabs, and “others”
(including a declining secular Jewish popula-
tion).
 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 27

Even the mechanics of processing bus-to-

light rail transfer have been difficult to design.
Under a worst case scenario, Elian suggested “we
could still have a divided transportation system.”
Others have echoed the tension of ideology and
traditional transportation planning, amid
archaeological discovery in Shuafat. As noted by
Isabel Kershner in the New York Times, some
call the red line an ideological enigma, serving a
lost vision of a united capital for all faiths rather
than the realpolitik “glass walls” of today. Others
find the red line yet another symbol of occupa-
tion and expansion to leverage an undivided city.

“A Project for All”

In contrast to Elian, lawyer Kadari echoed
“mundane reasons of service and profitability”
cited by Kershner: he said light rail planning
always focused on a project for all constituencies,
and “the project was almost ‘blind’” to religious
and cultural factors other than from a service
analysis perspective which assumes service bene-
fits to ultra-orthodox and Palestinian popula-
tions.
28 the myurbanist reader

But, as he focused on issues of contracting

and permitting, Kadari acknowledged such
sweeping optimism must wrestle with today’s
political and practical realities. For example, the
private concession, BOT (“build-operate-
transfer”) approach has been complicated by
contract difficulties and delays as construction
drags on.
He explained how in arbitration proceed-
ings with the concessionaire, a consortium of
three entities, Israeli (construction) and French
(cars/rails and operators), the arbitrator often
starts sessions reminding project officials of their
naïvete in assuming success of service through
Shuafat, which, as detailed by Kershner, has been
the site of controversial archaeological finds and
is more geographically aligned with Ramallah
than Jerusalem.

The Vision Meets Reality—The Universal

One Stop Need
Kadari focused on a shortcoming familiar to
American permit system critics: the need for a
real one-stop shop for project permitting and
licensing.
 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 29

According to Kadari, despite a lack of clarity

of central authority, in the planning stages, a part-
nership of national ministries and city govern-
ment proceeded reasonably well, but as the reali-
ties of permits and impacts on City residents set
in, times changed. “A new generation replaced
the old in the municipality and the Ministries of
Transportation and Treasury, and it became
three parties in an unclear situation,” he said.
“Planning is dreaming, but when digging and you
need permits and need to interfere with a major
artery [e.g. Jerusalem’s main thoroughfares such
as Jaffa Road]—and there are political pressures,
and no central organization to impose, there is
breakdown, fragmentation and complexity”.
”There have been too many authorities, and
you need clear authority, one authority, but to do
that you need legislative change at highest levels
—you can’t just decide to do it, you need the
Knesset [Israeli Parliament].”

Delays and Perseverance

Added Elian, in the process, infrastructure
has been unearthed, utilities moved and
upgraded, rails installed and reinstalled, and
30 the myurbanist reader

streets sometimes torn up twice. A controversial

bridge design was implemented without public
input. Citizens and businesses show the time-
honored fatigue of disruption characteristic of
any new transportation system. “We put the first
line in the most difficult area of the city—with
history, old infrastructure, and density—the idea
was to strengthen the historical core, but it back-
fired,” he said.
”We put the red line, the backbone of new
transportation system on the main roads of an
ancient city, and should have chosen a simpler
first line for learning and come to the city center
later. There’s been criticism, anger, and anxiety
and the people are right. There were good inten-
tions, but it takes too long,” he said.
”A former colleague told me that as a
project, the first line failed—but let’s see if the
train itself will succeed.”

Bicycle Integration
One byproduct of light rail is bicycle
enhancement to enhance station accessibility.
According to a planning consultant to the city,
Selmah Nilson-Arad, walking distance to stations
 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 31

will often be too great for many users, so a system

of bike lanes is under construction to serve at
least five percent of light rail users, and tradi-
tional parking and automobile lanes are being
retrofitted for bicycle use. At least in initial opera-
tions, bikes will not be allowed on the trains, at
least during rush hour times. The bike lanes, with
a special eye towards ultra-orthodox and student
users, will follow a mixture of physically sepa-
rated paths (6 kilometers), alleys or striped road
and sidewalks (12 kilometers).

The BRT Future and the Transportation

Plan
The city has responded in a just announced
transportation plan with a changes in emphasis
and claims of hard lessons learned, as officials
claim to address many issues emphasized by
Elian and Kadari. High on the new transit agenda
is a new, north-south “blue line” dedicated to Bus
Rapid Transit (BRT), with features such as a
dedicated right of way, state-of-the-art vehicles,
next-bus information, and uniform ticketing. In
Kadari’s view, BRT is more viable in Jerusalem
given far less need for excavation and utility relo-
32 the myurbanist reader

cation, and, echoing sentiments in other Israeli

cities, probably should have been the mode of
choice to begin with.
Light rail expansion is part of the new trans-
portation plan, but as described in the Jerusalem
Post, the entire process will be centralized, more
transparent and overseen from the beginning by
a steering committee with a state approved
budget, rather than a BOT bidding process that
lacked full public accountability.
Learning the bottom line has occurred on
the job in Jerusalem, amid challenges of engi-
neering, funding, permitting and politics, and
suggests BRT as the city’s mass transit future,
supplemented by bicycles, and, perhaps by
Israel’s cutting edge electric car technology,
Better Place.
For modern “innocents abroad,” is there
take home learning from the city in which Mark
Twain observed that “no neighborhood seems to
be without a stirring and important history of its
own?” Is the lesson one of context, that, from the
start, more simple and pragmatic solutions would
have fit today’s “glass-walled” city? Or does the
 Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 33

storied and eternal universality of Jerusalem live

on?
After all, when complete, this complex tale
may teach the world a real lesson: if light rail can
be done in Jerusalem, it can be done anywhere.
34 the myurbanist reader
Jerusalem Stories: Light Rail and “Innocents… 35
36 the myurbanist reader
 5
Six Postcards Not to
Send to an Urbanist

Interested in mocking your favorite

urbanist’s belief in, inter alia, reclaiming the
public domain, and deemphasizing automo-
bile use as well as auto-dependent chain retail
establishments? Send away.

37
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Six Postcards Not to Send to an Urbanist 39
40 the myurbanist reader
Six Postcards Not to Send to an Urbanist 41
 6
The Mission Ahead:
Recalibrating
“Urbandwidth”

Writing and conversing about the urban

experience has made one thing clear. Short of
the word “urbanism” and its modified var-
iants, there is no one English word which
holistically captures the qualities of livable
cites or the associated metrics that many
commentators tout and exemplify.
Portland’s Jason King supports this point in
his wonderful article,”[Fill in the Blank]
Urbanism” (found at his web site, landscapean-
durbanism.com). King’s article profiled the range

43
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of paired terms which modify the basic urbanism

premise—and asked readers to name a favorite.
Others have described the inadequacy of
commonly used catchwords. Writing in the
Washington Post on May 8, architect Roger
Lewis called for terms far more descriptive than
“transit-oriented development” (TOD) to
describe the qualities of walkable cities, calling
for “multimodal TODs”.
Similarly, the National Trust for Historic
Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab Director,
Liz Dunn, working with Walk Score’s Matt
Lerner, have advocated for a Jane Jacobs-based
comprehensive metric, the Jane Score, to more
completely measure urban diversity and “granu-
larity” and supplement the increasingly recog-
nized Walk Score tool.
With such ever-expanding and thoughtful
efforts to diversify the measures applicable to a
renewed, compact, walkable, and multimodal
urban fabric, it would help to have one word to
describe the phenomenon.
I suggest that we are talking about recali-
brating urbandwidth around the world.
 The Mission Ahead: Recalibrating “Urban- 45
dwidth…

Consider the recalibrated urbandwidth of City Square in Melbourne, Australia

 7
Hill Towns as Icons
of Placemaking

Human settlement is often driven by top-

ography, viewpoints, and strategic advantage.
Independent towns and urban neighbor-
hoods alike share an historic affinity for hills. Ter-
rain-intensive cities like San Francisco and
Seattle are no exception, and city planning con-
siderations converge around “urban villages”
such as Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Capitol Hill and
Queen Anne Hill. Places in their own right, these
hilltop centers can serve as the partially self-con-
tained models for the compact and dense urban
neighborhoods which are increasingly the van-
guard of new century urbanism.

47
48 the myurbanist reader

But what about the the hill town of old? Is it

an an artifact of the bygone invaders and armies
beyond the walls? Touring the dramatic perches
(“perched”, or hill towns) in the South of France,
it is hard to simply dismiss them as an anach-
ronism—especially in light of today’s stated
urban ideals.
After all, several common hill town charac-
teristics are consistent with new urbanist princi-
ples.
These features include: a blending with with
natural topography; a pedestrian identity, with
limited vehicular access; an emphasis on aes-
thetic principles (views to and from); communal
groupings of institutions around public open
space; careful blending of public pathways and
private dwellings; efficient living spaces and
allowance for density; as well as innovative bases
for water collection and storage and management
of sewage and stormwater discharge.
Of course, we can only carry such inspira-
tion so far. Do we see light rail stops at the towns’
base? Energy efficiency and LEED certified con-
struction? These elements are clearly outside the
context of the historic examples pictured here.
 Hill Towns as Icons of Placemaking 49

Nonetheless, we need to take regular walks

among human precedent, where under duress,
people showed innovation and dynamic place-
making in order to survive.
50 the myurbanist reader
Hill Towns as Icons of Placemaking 51
52 the myurbanist reader
 8
A Tale of Two
Nighthawks—
Recalling the
Indelible Urban
Image Anew

This year, both my law practice and writing

have featured unforgettable images of urban
issues and examples, using photographs as
visual supplements to compare traditional
organic urbanism with emergent perspec-
tives.
I have framed many references with the
camera’s “biography” of urban points in time.

53
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But I’ve also been a religious reader of

today’s urban pundits, and tried to contrast their
verbiage on the power of the city-as-settlement
with the imagery of urban moments and city
places. Traveling yesterday from big city to
small, the contrast of words to photos was appa-
rent while reading the Brookings Institution’s
Bruce Katz in Time Magazine. Katz promotes
our cities as America’s necessary investment
future—places of ideas and economic engines to
harness and take us forward—while leaving
behind the romantic notion of small town
America. According to Katz, economic incentives
should be focused on large urban areas if we are
to compete on the world stage.
Maybe true, I thought, but reductionist in a
way that not only could subtract from the
everyday, ordinary moments and interactive ele-
ments we wish to recreate in our cities, but also
could rob us of the small-scale imagery, the pic-
tures that can motivate us to ponder more than
just broad-based words of economic might. And,
as a footnote, perhaps Katz’s words are just a bit
too bereft of emotion and compassion to reflect
 A Tale of Two Nighthawks—Recalling the… 55

the recessionary years which have so affected us

all.
On cue, an indelible urban image which has
been much critiqued and recreated for almost 70
years appeared anew. At a breakfast destination
in a smaller city, still in early morning darkness,
an apparition showed none other than the classic
scene from another place in another time—
Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks—his most famous
painting, the 1942 New York late night rendition
said to illustrate the loneliness and isolation of
urban life.
However, this morning’s deja vu showed the
start of the day in a university city, without the
larger metropolitan potential for the booming
synthesis called for by Katz, but nonetheless a
place of ideas and stimulus for change—a place
both urban and small town at once.
First glance evolved while experiencing the
dawn version of Nighthawks today. Amid an
upbeat small city crowd, there was resilience and
interaction both additive to Katz and the oppo-
site of Hopper.
After entering, interacting, listening, and
leaving, it became clear that new imagery, how-
56 the myurbanist reader

ever similar to Hopper’s masterpiece, frames a

new narrative. Today’s angular diner scene, and
customers within, suggest that all cities with a
future need not be lonely, metropolitan megalo-
polises, but rather places where the positive ele-
ments of human interaction can manifest the
baseline for all of our urban potential.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, via Wikipedia (fair use)

A Tale of Two Nighthawks—Recalling the… 57
 9
What about “Shapes
of Avoidance” on the
Landscape?

The form of urban settlements and appear-

ance of constituent structures reflect under-
lying culture and regulation.
In times of change, such form can alter, to
reflect the impact of new or modified policy or
regulation. Resulting shapes of compliance, such
as the pattern of height, bulk and density dictated
by a new downtown zoning code, has the poten-
tial to reinvent the urban landscape.
But the urban landscape can also be dramat-
ically altered by “shapes of avoidance”.

59
60 the myurbanist reader

Consider, in the context of everyday

urbanism, those shapes and patterns dictated by
avoidance of regulation. Here, I am discussing
not just spontaneous parklets and sidewalk tables
of “guerrilla urbanism” or “pop-up” cities, but
examples of urban form that result when policy
or regulation is creatively defied on a widespread
basis.
Call it the urban landscape’s manifestation
of French/American microbiologist Andre
Dubos’ classic discourses on human adaptation
to environmental change, Man Adapting and So
Human an Animal.
A compelling example is the alteration of a
southern Italian landscape in the 15th to 17th
centuries premised on the avoidance of taxes or
fees—the apparent explanation for the unique
shape of trulli houses in Puglia—and the
resulting appearance of the Itria Valley and the
town of Alberobello.
As the story goes, conical houses that don’t
look like houses were built without mortar for
easy destruction so the Counts of Conversano
could avoid property tax payments on permanent
 What about “Shapes of Avoidance” on the… 61

structures (such as residences) to the King of

Naples.
What are today’s trulli?
Are they merely a list of unenforced zoning
violations (e.g. unpermitted home occupations,
illegal accessory dwellings, unsanctioned tent
cities, vehicles on lawns) or perpetual temporary
uses?
Given the extent of land use regulation
today, could spontaneous, repetitive trulli-like
“shapes of avoidance” define a sustainable urban
landscape more interesting than those that are
planned?
Or are the most visible “shapes of avoid-
ance” now limited to freedom of expression in
the ballot box and on urban walls?
After all, some might argue that graffiti and
the recent electoral landscape are the trulli of our
times.
62 the myurbanist reader
What about “Shapes of Avoidance” on the… 63
 10
Re-Visioning
Neighborhood and
the City, Then and
Now

Today’s efforts to recreate elements of the

city, of whatever prescription of urbanism
(e.g. “new”, “landscape,” or “ecological”)
often turn on issues once considered in
design competitions long forgotten.
Central to such efforts, new or old, is the
relationship of a city segment to the surrounding
urban area and the role of public streets in the
integration process between neighborhood and
city.

65
66 the myurbanist reader

A sometimes overlooked legacy can be

rediscovered in the Chicago of 100 years ago,
where a still-relevant competition, once summar-
ized by Lewis Mumford, centered on integrating
neighborhood housing with “markets, schools,
churches, and other institutions that serve the
local area rather than the city as a whole”.
In December, 1912, the City Club of Chi-
cago staged a competition for the design of a
quarter-section of the Chicago grid. The effort
was later documented by Alfred B. Yeomans, a
Chicago landscape architect who edited the com-
petition’s publication in 1916. He acknowledged
new attention to the planned development of the
local area premised on the increasingly compre-
hensive role of the street. He noted that the
“purely mechanical extension of existing street
systems is giving way to scientific methods of
development based on a careful study of the
probable economic, social and aesthetic needs of
prospective inhabitants”.
The various entries stressed the funda-
mental role of the street in integrating city and
neighborhood.
 Re-Visioning Neighborhood and the City… 67

Several of the entries emphasized the role of

the local street system and public open spaces.
The first prize entry, by Chicago architect Wil-
helm Bernhard, contained a community center
and stressed deterrence of through traffic from
surrounding Chicago. Arthur C. Comey, the
second prize winner, employed the English allot-
ment garden within blocks, with houses facing
inward, an intermediate street system for local
use, recreation spaces, and buildings grouped
about small parks.
Other entries took up more directly the
question of integration with the surrounding city,
thereby starting a debate on the worth of isolated
communities at variance with the surrounding
grid. This debate has never fully resolved, espe-
cially as modes of transportation expand, while
contemporary thinking increasingly emphasizes
the relationship and proximity of home to work.
In particular, landscape architect G.B. Cone
noted that the proposed neighborhood was not
destined to exist independent of Chicago’s
entirety. He argued for retention of the gridiron
throughout, foreshadowing today’s defenders of
continuity within the grid and implying that the
68 the myurbanist reader

imposition of a curvilinear scheme would nega-

tively isolate the community from the prevailing
pattern of development. Nonetheless, he empha-
sized the use of interior-block open space and the
community center.
Similarly, William Drummond, a Prairie
School architect and disciple of Frank Lloyd
Wright, proposed grid-based “neighborhood
units” (well prior to large-scale adoption of the
concept by Clarence Perry and others) with
allotment gardens and interior courts.
These designs were but a fraction of the
Chicago competition’s entries. Yet they exhibited
best the perceptive synthesis of reform ideals and
site planning sensitive to the uses of the street
within the new arena of the urban neighborhood.
In response to such efforts, the competition
provided a “Sociological Review of the Plans” by
Dr. Carol Aronovici, then director of the Bureau
of Social Research of Philadelphia, and a lecturer
on housing and town planning at the University
of Pennsylvania. Aronovici cautioned that the
new, local street plans within specific areas
should not proceed without determination of
 Re-Visioning Neighborhood and the City… 69

“the relationship that this area is intended to bear

to the whole”.
Aronovici, like many of today’s urbanists,
saw virtue in the grid. He viewed the abandon-
ment of the gridiron street system as a possible
symptom of an “artificial and radical” attempt to
set the planned community off from its surround-
ings. He urged the location of public and semi-
public buildings on the community’s periphery
rather than grouped about local community cen-
ters, so as to preserve contacts with adjacent
neighborhoods. Finally, he perceptively identi-
fied problems inherent in public regulation and
ownership of inner block open spaces and saw
the necessity of assuming community mainte-
nance of public areas:
“The whole question of ‘shut-in spaces,’
whether they be parks, playgrounds or allotment
gardens, is one that should be carefully weighed.
The line of cleavage between public and private
ownership, between public and private mainte-
nance, should be sharply drawn. While I am
heartily in favor of extending the bounds of
public ownership, I am opposed to common
70 the myurbanist reader

ownership that is not coupled with common

responsibility.”
In the spirit of both deja vuand amnesia
(concepts combined by American actor/writer
Stephen Wright), the debates of the legacy Chi-
cago competition continue, 100 years later, as the
dialogue on streets and neighborhood-urban area
integration lives on.
For more on the precedential Chicago Com-
petion, see Yeomans, A.B., ed. 1916. City Residen-
tial Land Development. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. This chapter was adapted from
Wolfe, C.R. “Streets Regulating Neighborhood
Form,” Ch. 7. in Moudon, A.V., Public Streets for
Public Use, Columbia University Press (1987,
1991).
 Re-Visioning Neighborhood and the City… 71

G.B. Cone’s Chicago competition entry. (Source: Yeomans 1916: 34)

72 the myurbanist reader

W. Drummond’s Chicago competition entry shows a bird’s-eye view and a typical city block.
(Source: Yeomans 1916: 37,41)